“How much money was in that briefcase?”
“The whole monthly payroll for the Aviation Detachment. Over ten thousand bucks.”
Ernie and I canvassed the area for witnesses. At the Moyer Recreation Center, no one had seen anything. These thieves were quick and professional. Get in. Get the money and the jeep. Get out. Not your typical GIs pulling some caper.
“What’s our next step?” Ernie asked.
“They have a jeep, they have a satchel full of money, and they have a female second lieutenant. What we do is put out an allpoints-bulletin and wait for one of those items to turn up.”
Ernie pulled out another stick of ginseng gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. “Hopefully, it will be the second lieutenant.”
I nodded in agreement. “And hopefully, she’ll be alive.”
“Always preferable to dead.”
Ernie’s wish came true. A half hour later we received a call from the Korean National Police in the city of Kimpo, about fifteen miles west of Seoul. They had Second Lieutenant Burcshoff. She was alive. She was on the phone. Shouting.
“They took everything! The money, the jeep. I can’t believe it but the sons of bitches even took my goddamned.45!”
I held the phone away from my ear. She didn’t sound frightened, she sounded angry as hell. I told her to remain calm. Ernie and I would be there in a few minutes. We drove to Kimpo.
Second Lieutenant Constance R. Burcshoff held herself as if she were constantly at attention. The Korean cops stared at her surreptitiously, appalled that a woman would be wearing a fatigue uniform and combat boots, but she ignored their amazement.
“The thieves kicked me out of the jeep about two miles from here,” she said. “In the middle of a few acres of rice paddies. I caught a tractor into town.”
“They didn’t try to hide their identity?”
“They made me lie facedown in the back of the jeep. Still, I caught a glimpse of both of them.”
The description she gave didn’t match what Sergeant Holtbaker had told us. This time the blond guy wasn’t as tall and not quite so thin. The brown-haired guy seemed a little chubbier in her description. None of it gave us much to go on.
We drove Lieutenant Burcshoff back to Seoul. She sat ramrod straight in the back seat of the jeep, staring straight ahead, occasionally touching the empty holster at her hip.
Ernie offered her a stick of ginseng gum. She refused. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she didn’t want any part of it. I’d already checked her personnel records. She had earned her reserve commission from a Southern military-agricultural school, and she came from a long line of army officers. Her father had retired as a colonel and her grandfather had been a general in World War II. She even had ancestors who’d fought on both sides of the Civil War.
Lieutenant Burcshoff was the only female assigned to payroll officer duty and she was the only payroll officer who’d been robbed. I couldn’t tell which was worse for her, the humiliation of being robbed or the humiliation of losing her grandfather’s pearl-handled.45.
All the way back to Seoul she sat with her face set in stone.
That afternoon the stolen jeep turned up at the Seoul train station. Ernie and I hustled over there.
It was parked in front of the main red brick building next to other military vehicles belonging to the 8th Army Rail Transportation Office. There were many ways to leave the train station: by train, bus, subway, or taxi. Ernie and I interviewed a few of the ticket sellers and the security officers who controlled the taxi queue, but no one remembered two Americans in civilian clothes parking a jeep and walking away.
There were plenty of fingerprints on the jeep, none of which were likely to do us much good without the perpetrators.
Back at the CID office we were told that General Skulgrin, the commanding general of 8th Army, was hopping mad that someone would steal an army payroll. He wanted the thieves caught and he wanted them caught immediately, if not sooner.
Overseas, GIs are paid not in greenbacks but in Military Payment certificates. The theory is that Communist agents won’t be able to hoard a bunch of US dollars and buy arms on the international market. Also, government officials fear that a few tons of US green in the local economy could lessen the value of the won, the Korean currency. Eighth Army has a press in Japan that prints up the MPC and each bill is assigned a serial number. Since GIs generally aren’t big spenders, there are no denominations larger than a twenty.
At 8th Army Finance, Ernie and I obtained a list of the serial numbers issued to Lieutenant Burcshoff. We passed it up the chain of command to the provost marshal, who showed the 8th Army CG. The next thing we knew, 8th Army Finance had a task force formed to search all incoming MPC and report the appearance of any of the stolen bills.
We heard a lot of grumbling from the finance clerks. It was going to mean a lot of extra work for them.
Ernie and I had the easy job, waiting for one of the stolen bills to turn up.
About three days later, one did. Turned in at the bank on Yongsan, the headquarters compound for 8th Army. The problem was that it was part of the main PX cash deposit. No telling who had spent it there. Maybe one of the thieves. Maybe somebody they’d passed the bill off to. We were no closer than we had been.
It was a little disheartening, but Ernie and I took it philosophically. There was no way the crooks could leave the country with that much MPC. Every bag on every flight leaving Korea, whether military or civilian, is searched by a customs agent-one of the benefits of investigative work in a country that lives in constant fear of terrorism.
On the fourth morning after the robbery we caught a break.
The alert siren sounded, vehicles were prohibited from entering or leaving the compound, and the commanding general declared all Military Payment Certificates null and void. Everyone in 8th Army was instructed to turn in their old MPC to their unit commander in exchange for the new Military Payment Certificates. They were bright orange. The old bills had been blue.
At 5 P.M., close of duty day, all the old blue MPC would become worthless.
The change in MPC made the finance clerk’s search a lot easier. Everyone who turned in the blue MPC had to produce military identification and sign a register that said how much they were exchanging and, if it was over a hundred dollars’ worth, declare the source of the money.
A lot of lightbulbs burned at 8th Army Finance that night. Ernie and I paced the reception room, sipping coffee, waiting for something to break. Nothing did.
At about oh-dark-thirty, one of the clerks tapped my arm. “You Agent Sueño?”
I rubbed my eyes. “That’s me.”
“Here’s the register with the stolen bills. A whole stack of them.”
Ernie rose from a vinyl-cushioned couch, stretched, and leaned over me and the clerk as we studied the register. “MED-DAC,” I said. The 8th Army Medical Command. “Six hundred bucks. Turned in by Specialist Four Crossnut, Reginald R.”
A Spec 4 pulls down about two hundred and fifty dollars a month.
The clerk pointed to the remarks section of the register. “Claimed he made the money gambling.”
“The old standby,” Ernie said.
In the latrine, we splashed water on our faces and then ran outside. The first fingers of dawn crept over distant hills. On the wide cement porch we almost bowled over Lieutenant Burcshoff. She wore an immaculately pressed dress green uniform that clung to the curves of her lean body.
“You have a lead?” she asked.
Ernie grinned. “We got ’em nailed. Just a matter of time now. When you see those two thieves again, they’ll be standing in a lineup.”
A shadow of concern crossed the even features of her face.
We didn’t have time to chat. Ernie and I ran to the jeep and drove to the barracks of the 8th Army Medical Command.