A Korean in U.S. Army fatigues came out of the front door as McCoy pulled the Russian jeep up in front of the veranda beside three jeeps and a three-quarter-ton ambulance. The overpainted Red Cross markings on the sides of the ambulance body were still visible.
The Korean—he was at least six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, enormous for a Korean—came down the stairs, slinging his Thompson submachine gun over his shoulder as he did.
He said nothing.
In Korean, McCoy ordered, "Take the colonel in the house. Put him in one of the basement rooms. Once he's there, put a guard on him, untie him, take the sandbags off his head, and give him something to eat. I want him alive and unhurt."
The enormous Korean nodded his understanding. "The others?" he asked in English.
"They'll be here early tomorrow morning, all of them," McCoy said. Then he asked, "Is he here?"
"In the library," the Korean replied, again in English.
McCoy nodded, and he and Zimmerman got out of the Russian jeep and walked into the house.
The library was the first door on the right off the foyer. McCoy pushed open the door and walked in.
The first time McCoy had been in the room, the bookshelves lining three walls had been full. Now they were bare. The Inmun Gun had stripped the house of everything reasonably portable as soon as they had taken over the building.
"It's not amazing how little is left," Dunston had philosophized, "but how much."
Dunston, a plump, comfortable-appearing thirty-year-old whose Army identification card said that William R. Dunston was a major of the Army's Transportation Corps, sat at a heavy carved wooden table. A Coleman gasoline lantern on the table glowed white, and Dunston was using it to read Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper.
Dunston was not actually a major, or even in the Army, despite his uniform and identity card. He was in fact a civilian employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, and before having been run out of Seoul by the advancing North Korean Army had been the Seoul CIA station chief. After the landings at Inchon, Dunston had flown back into the city as soon as enough of the runway at Kimpo Airfield had been cleared to take an Army observation aircraft.
McCoy and Zimmerman pulled chairs—one heavy and of carved wood matching the table, the other a GI folding metal chair—to the table and sat down.
"What's with the Coleman lantern?" McCoy asked by way of greeting. "I heard the generator. . . . The perimeter floodlights are working."
"No lightbulbs," Dunston replied. "I'm working on it. Probably tomorrow." He paused, then went on: "I was getting a little worried about you, Ken."
"We're all right," McCoy said. "But I'm hungry and thirsty."
"Hard or soft? There is also a case of Asahi cooling in the fridge."
"I think one medicinal belt, and then beer," McCoy said. "Food?"
"There's steaks and potatoes, no vegetables."
"Hot water?" Zimmerman asked.
Dunston nodded. "And your laundry awaits," he said.
"I'm going to have a beer, a shower, a drink, and a steak, in that order," Zimmerman said.
A door opened, and a middle-aged Korean woman stood in it waiting for orders.
Dunston, in Korean, told her to bring beer and whiskey and to prepare steaks.
"I think if you had found him, you'd have said something," Dunston said.
"Close, goddamn close, but no brass ring," McCoy said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he saw us looking for him."
"But you think he's alive?"
"I'm pretty sure he was alive six, eight, maybe twelve hours before we found his arrow."
"Did you tell the general?"
McCoy nodded.
"I sent a message through the 7th Division G-2," he said, "and sometime tonight, I want to get a message out to the Badoeng Strait."
The USS Badoeng Strait (CVE 116) was the aircraft carrier—a small one, dubbed a "Jeep Carrier"—from which Major Malcolm Pickering had taken off on his last flight. His wing commander, Lieutenant Colonel William "Billy" Dunn, USMC, was doing all he could to locate and rescue Pickering; McCoy wanted him to know what had happened on this last ground search mission.
"No problem," Dunston said.
"What's going on here?" McCoy asked.
"It says in here," Dunston said, dryly, tapping Stars and Stripes, "that Seoul has been liberated. I guess nobody told the artillery."
"I wondered what all that noise is," McCoy said. "But that's not what I meant. I got a message from Hart saying to be at Kimpo at 0900. What's that all about?"
"El Supremo's flying in. He's going to turn Seoul over to Syngman Rhee. I guess the general's coming with him."
El Supremo was General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, and, since shortly after the Korean War began, Commander, United Nations Forces in Korea.
"They sent you a message?"
Dunston shook his head no.
"I'm a spy, Ken. I thought I told you. I've got a guy at Haneda. The Bataan’s being readied as we speak."
McCoy chuckled. Haneda was the airbase outside Tokyo where the Bataan, MacArthur's personal Douglas C-54 transport, was kept.
"I wish I had better news for the boss."
"That he's alive is good news."
"Yeah, and six hours after I tell him that, we'll find his body."
"The bastard walks through raindrops, Killer," Zimmerman said. "You know that."
"Where's General Howe? And did you tell him that MacArthur and the boss are coming?" McCoy asked.
Major General Ralph Howe, a World War I crony of then-Captain Harry S Truman, was in the Far East as the personal representative of the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of its Armed Forces.
"I got a message from him about six o'clock, saying he's with Chesty Puller's Marine regiment," Dunston said. "And no, I didn't tell him. (a) I figured they'd get word to him, and (b) I didn't want him to ask how come I knew."
The Korean woman came into the room carrying a tray. It held quart bottles of Asahi beer, a quart bottle of Famous Grouse scotch, and ice and glasses.
"Where'd you get all the booze?" Zimmerman asked.
"I paid a courtesy call on General Almond," Dunston said. "That general knows how to go to war. With a trailerload of hootch and cocktail snacks, and clean white sheets. Almond told his aide—Haig?—to take care of me."
"Why did Almond tell El Supremo Seoul's been liberated?" McCoy asked, indicating the pounding rumble of the heavy artillery with a finger pointed at the ceiling.
He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured two inches in one of the glasses. Zimmerman picked up one of the beer bottles. Dunston slid him a bottle opener.
"I think it was the other way around," Dunston said. "And Almond is too smart to disagree with El Supremo. MacArthur said he wanted Seoul liberated within two weeks of the landing at Inchon, and by God, it has been liberated."
"We bagged a North Korean lieutenant colonel—" McCoy began.
"And his Russian jeep," Zimmerman interjected.
"And his jeep?" Dunston asked, smiling. "What are you going to do with that?"
Zimmerman opened the bottle, and then left the room, drinking from the bottle as he walked.
"—who I turned over to Paik Su," McCoy went on, "with instructions to put him in the basement, feed him, and make him comfortable. I think he's important. Probably an intelligence officer, maybe a political commissar, but somebody important. I think he should be interrogated by somebody besides Zimmerman and me—or, for that matter, you. This guy is not impressed by a couple of clowns riding around the boondocks in a jeep. But I think he might respond to somebody he thinks is important."
"Paik is very good at getting people to tell him things," Dunston said.