“Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, has reached huangap,” Major Bulward told me, “the age of sixty, when a Korean man traditionally retires. He’s appointed his son as a full-fledged member of the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, and he’s vowed to unite the country before he turns over power. We believe they plan to do that now, while the American public is still wallowing in self-pity over the failure of political will in Vietnam.”
The failure of political will. That’s the U.S. Army’s way of blaming somebody other than itself. Saigon hadn’t fallen yet but we were mostly out of it already. Nobody expected the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, to hold on much longer.
Major Bulward went on to imply that if South Korea didn’t find a way to tunnel north and insert our own infantry behind enemy lines, the North Korean armored assault across the DMZ might prove so overwhelming that we’d be forced to use nuclear weapons.
“We don’t want to do that,” Bulward assured me, “but we might have to.”
Inwardly, I hated him. Not only for even contemplating using nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, but also for choosing me for this job. But I knew that was unfair. The reason I’d been chosen had nothing to do with Major Bulward. It actually had nothing to do with me or my less-than-stellar qualifications. The reason I’d been chosen was because I’d received a note from an old girlfriend. A woman of substance. A woman I’d once loved and maybe still did. A woman known as Doctor Yong In-ja.
Food Worker Pei’s pretty, round face was sullen. Pouty. She pointed toward my crotch. “I touch,” she said in Korean. “You no touch.” She gestured toward her breasts.
Dumbly, I nodded.
She held out her left hand, the one without the glove. “Money,” she said in English. A word I figured even Albanian sailors understood.
I reached beneath my leather belt into a cloth pouch. I pulled out one large silver coin and held it up to the light. Food Worker Pei smiled. As she stepped forward, I shoved her rubber-gloved hand out of the way.
“I want to trade this,” I said in English, “for ginseng. Red ginseng.”
The most prized type of wild ginseng is the red ginseng, sometimes called royal ginseng, that is found only in the remotest areas of Hamgyong Province, in the mountains of North Korea. In Hong Kong, wild red ginseng could be sold to wealthy old men for a small fortune. Ten to twenty thousand dollars was not unheard of as a purchase price for one of the gnarled crimson roots.
Pei frowned. She didn’t understand a word I’d said. She thought I was bargaining for something other than ginseng. She slipped off her rubber glove and let it fall to the ground. Stepping closer, she upped the stakes and unbuttoned the collar of her dress. I didn’t have time to continue trying to communicate with hand signals and her rudimentary English, so I said the words in Korean, the words that had been relayed to me in the middle of the night in a secluded spot on the edge of the Port of Pusan.
“The Nampo Southern Section People’s Grain Warehouse,” I said. “I must go there.”
Her mouthed gaped open. She’d probably never heard a merchant marine speak Korean before.
“Bali,” I said. Hurry. “Na insam sago sippo.” I want to buy ginseng. Still speaking Korean, I asked her how I could get outside of the fence surrounding us so I could make my way to the grain warehouse.
Pei’s mouth closed. She stared at the silver coin, rebut-toning the collar of her dress. She seemed frightened, confused. I needed to reassure her, so I slipped the coin into her open palm. The flesh was rough and calloused. She gazed up at me, thinking it over. Her brow wrinkled.
“No one will know,” I said in Korean. “A friend told me you’ve done deals before. I’ll be careful.”
Finally she nodded. Her fingers closed around the coin.
Quietly, we stepped farther down the dark hall. She opened a door that led outside, turned, and motioned for me to wait. A few yards away, a guard stood at a side gate. He seemed bored as he stared into the mist-soaked darkness. As Food Worker Pei approached, he turned, clutching his rifle. She bowed and stepped closer to him. When she was almost touching him, she spoke.
If she wanted to betray me, now was the time.
The guard whispered a few questions. Pei answered. Finally, the guard glanced around, ensuring that no one was watching, and took a couple of steps away from the gate. Pei motioned for me to come forward. I did. The gate guard couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. He stared up at me, insolent.
“Tambei,” he said, silently snapping his fingers.
I pretended I didn’t understand. Food Worker Pei mimicked the act of smoking.
I didn’t smoke, but I knew that one of the best ways to inspire cooperation was to always have cigarettes on hand. The ones I pulled out of my pocket were British-made, purchased in Hong Kong. The guard stared at them greedily. I slipped one out of the pack and handed it to him.
Like a magic trick, the cigarette disappeared into the pocket of his jacket. Then he snapped his fingers and said, “Dok.” Again.
I hesitated. Food Worker Pei nodded. I took two more cigarettes out of the pack, handed them to him and, with an air of finality, stuck the remainder of the pack deep into the recesses of my peacoat.
The guard seemed pleased. He glanced around, pulled something from another pocket and handed it to Food Worker Pei. He sauntered off, not looking back. As his footsteps faded, Food Worker Pei bent toward the gate and fiddled with a lock. Metal clinked on metal. She stepped toward me and asked me in Korean, “Odi inji allayo?” Do you know where it is?
I nodded.
This shocked her, the full realization finally hitting her that I was not only a foreigner who spoke Korean but one who knew where the People’s Grain Warehouse was located. The fingers of her left hand rose to her lips, as if the full import of what she was doing was finally coming clear to her. I grabbed her shoulders and spoke to her urgently.
“Kokchong hajima,” I said. Don’t worry. “There’s another silver coin for you when I return. Tell that guard to expect me after one hour. I have more cigarettes. Don’t betray me. If I’m caught, both you and he will be punished.”
She gazed at me in terror. “One hour?” she asked.
I nodded. “One hour. Maybe a little more.”
Then I turned and pushed through the gate, closing it behind me.
I watched as Food Worker Pei scurried forward and snapped shut the lock, feeling guilty about getting her into so much trouble. I had no intention of returning to the People’s Hall of International Friendship. At least not voluntarily.
I had long since memorized the path to the grain warehouse. Eighth Army’s aerial reconnaissance of North Korea is state-of-the-art and covers every square foot of this poor, targeted country. The North Koreans have a small air force but no capacity to stop the U.S. overflights of supersonic aircraft, and certainly no capacity to stop our satellite surveillance. The zoomies tell me that they purposely make sonic booms over the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to remind the Great Leader that we can take him out whenever the spirit moves us.
Back in Seoul, I’d spent hours studying black-and-white blowups of photographs of the Port of Nampo and the surrounding area. I trotted now through cold, narrow alleys, mud sloshing beneath my feet, with few lights to guide me. Only at major intersections did the occasional yellow street lamp stand guard. I avoided these, sticking to the shadows.
The sailor who’d brought me the message back in the safety of the Port of Pusan had specifically said that I must contact a man called Hero Kang at the People’s Grain Warehouse in the southern section of Nampo. It was only a few hundred yards from the People’s Hall of International Friendship and other sailors had gone there to transact black-market deals. Who Hero Kang was or what he looked like, I had no idea. The only thing I was told was to use the code word “orphan.” In Korean, ko-ah. Child of bitterness.