I nodded. “Nei. Allago shipoyo.” Yes. I want to know.
“Kurum. Kapshida.” Well, then. Let’s go.
The Public Affairs Officer seemed perplexed-maybe by my speaking Korean-but he made no effort to stop us. I followed Commander Goh down the carpeted hallway.
He made a couple of turns past busy offices with typewriters clattering away and gorgeous young Korean secretaries serving tea to bored-looking Korean officers. He pushed through a door with a large window in it that looked out toward another vast expanse of lawn behind the building, striding straight for the cliffs.
For a moment I thought he was going to keep going and see if I’d follow him over the edge. Instead, Goh veered toward a massive bronze statue of an ancient Korean warrior in metal helmet and brass-plated vest. Just beneath the huge sword leaning against the warrior’s leg, the commander stopped abruptly.
“Yi Sun Shin,” he said, gesturing toward the statue.
I knew who he was. The Korean admiral who’d invented the ironclad, sulphur-spewing kobuk-son-turtle boats. With his daring tactics and guerillalike forces, he had almost single-handedly stopped the invasion of Hideyoshi’s naval forces through the straits and isthmuses of the islands off the southern coast of Korea. Even in Japan, his military genius is revered.
“Yes,” I said, speaking in Korean. “He’s very famous.”
Commander Goh nodded. Satisfied.
He turned and clasped his hands behind his back and stared across the Han River below us.
“So you’ve come about Shipton,” he said in Korean.
“Yes. We have reason to believe that he’s killed three people.”
Commander Goh nodded. “He’s a very disturbed man.”
“You knew him well, then?”
“Very well. We worked together every day. We traveled together around the country to inspect naval fortifications. After work I showed him what life was like in our teahouses and in the floating world of the night.”
The military elite ran this country. They had money and they had prestige. And when they decided to visit a kisaeng house or some other place of pleasure, you can bet they received the very best. For a moment, I envied Lieutenant Commander Shipton. To run with them. Why would anyone go AWOL from a setup like that?
“What went wrong?” I asked.
Commander Goh breathed deeply of the salt air and took a few steps closer to the cliff. Twenty or thirty yards below, the churning waters of the Han River Estuary lapped against jagged rocks. He studied the low-lying fog.
“Shipton became very friendly with us. We all liked him. He even started to speak some Korean. Not as well as you, Agent Sueno, but he was progressing.”
He paused and gazed at distant clouds hovering over the Yellow Sea. The old habits of a sailor.
“One of our admirals had a daughter. She was a very well brought up young woman with a good education, but maybe she wasn’t the most attractive girl in the world. So the family was having trouble finding a suitable husband for her. It was decided that since she wasn’t going to find the very best of Korean husbands, she could settle for an American. She was introduced to Shipton.
“Besides,” Goh said, turning away from the water, “the admiral and his family had dreams of emigrating to America.”
He raised and lowered his broad shoulders.
“None of this, of course, we told to your previous investigators, Agent Sueno. We thought it would do no good. Now that he’s killed-killed again-we must tell you the full truth.”
“Killed again?”
“Yes.” He swiveled his craggy face toward me. “Can you keep what I’m about to tell you out of your report?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what it is.”
His expression didn’t change but he nodded. “We cannot afford for any of this to ever come out.”
“It will be kept strictly confidential,” I said. “Classified. No one outside of our investigative services will ever see it, unless it needs to be used in a trial.”
“But you will try him for these three murders he’s recently committed?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to reach a decision. “You won’t need what I’m about to tell you for that.” He glanced at my hands. “I notice you don’t take notes.”
“I have a good memory.”
“If I’m to tell you what I know about Shipton, it must never come up in his trial and it must never come up in your official reports.”
“You’re protecting this Korean admiral, the father of Shipton’s fiancee.”
He looked at me steadily. “Yes.”
It was a tough bargain, but I needed all the information I could gather if I was to have a chance of finding Shipton. We already had him pegged for three homicides. Maybe the evidence would be questionable in a high-class stateside trial, but for a military court-martial, here in 8th Imperial Army, it was plenty. I could get by without what Commander Goh was about to give me.
“All right, then,” I said. “No notes. No recordings. And what you tell me will never appear in an official report.”
“Or a trial?”
“Or a trial.”
He let his breath out slowly and turned away again, as if searching for strength in the distant sea.
“The girl’s name was Myong-a. Her family name isn’t important. She spoke English well, and she and Shipton liked each other immediately. It seemed as if she did something for him. Shipton had been a lonely man. He left his family years ago and had never returned home. He spoke of his mother only when asked and of his father not at all. But Myong-a was a bright girl. She knew how to make him smile and make him laugh, and it seemed that he was forgetting the horrors of the war he had left behind.”
A fisherman and his son rowed slowly on a splintered prow down the river, heading for the verdant waters of the estuary. As they slipped out of the fog Commander Goh watched them, and when they were once again covered in mist he resumed his speech.
“What Shipton didn’t know, and what most Americans don’t know, is that we Koreans are a very practical people. Marriage, to us, is primarily an economic union, a union designed to continue the growth and prosperity of the family. Love, if it comes at all, comes later and grows slowly. Marriage proposals don’t usually start with love for us. But they did for Shipton.
“Myong-a, however, was a spirited young woman, and as such she had been in love with a Korean man, one of her former classmates at middle school. A man who wasn’t suited for her. A common laborer. Even though she was planning on marrying Shipton and leaving the country, she-foolishly and to the shame of her father-continued to see this man, “Shipton, although somewhat befuddled by your American notions of love, was also observant and shrewd. It didn’t take him long to realize that not all of Myong-a’s devotion was directed toward him.”
Commander Goh opened his palms toward the heavens. “Shipton followed her, waited to see what she was planning to do, and broke in on them while she was in a room in a cheap yoguan with her young man.”
He shook his head, his eyes crinkling, as if he were fighting back tears.
“He killed them both! Why? So foolish. So rash. And then he was gone. We never saw him again. The National Police found the bodies, but when they discovered the identity of the girl we were notified and we immediately assumed jurisdiction of the investigation.”
Korea had been under virtual martial law since the Korean War. A few strings, pulled in the right places, and the navy could have what it wanted. Even a murder investigation.
“Why didn’t you notify us?” I asked.
“Ah, don’t you see? This became a personal matter. Between the officers here at Navy Headquarters and Shipton. We wanted to catch him before he somehow slipped out of our country. We wanted our own revenge.”
“But you failed?”
“Yes. Lieutenant Commander Shipton is a very resourceful man.”
“And as a consequence, three more people are dead.”
Commander Goh’s eyes burned into mine. “Would you have been able to stop him, Agent Sueno?”