“Dick,” Ernie said.
“Yeah. The world’s full of them.”
Instead of the First Sergeant’s office, Ernie and I waited in the Admin section, shooting the breeze with Riley. Miss Kim still hadn’t thawed out, so Ernie didn’t know what to do with himself. And he was out of gum.
Riley pulled something out of his desk. “The KNP Liaison gave me this.”
It was a color photo of the blood scrawled on the wall at the Nurse’s hooch. He handed it to Ernie. Ernie didn’t flinch.
He was acting tough. But that’s all it was: an act. Deep down inside he was burning about the Nurse’s death.
Ernie studied the photograph. “Goddamn,” he said. “ ‘Dreamer.’ That’s your name, isn’t it, pal?”
“One way to translate it.”
“This guy’s really got a hard-on for you.”
I shrugged. Hearing it said that baldly didn’t make me feel exactly warm and secure.
Lights blinked on Riley’s phone. Carefully, he lifted the receiver, keeping the mouthpiece covered. After a few seconds he put the receiver back down.
“The honchos’re burning up the wires.”
“What for?”
“Getting clearance from the head shed. Making sure this doesn’t embarrass the navy too much.”
“Jesus,” Ernie said. “What the hell’s to clear? The guy’s a stone killer.”
“But he hasn’t killed anybody important yet,” Riley pointed out. He saw our grim faces.
“Sorry,” he said.
A few minutes later the First Sergeant’s heavy oxfords thundered down the hallway.
“Sueno! Bascom! I thought I told you to wait in my office!”
We rose but didn’t answer.
“Never mind that now.” The First Sergeant checked his wristwatch. “Go pack your bags. The last Blue Line leaves Seoul Station at seventeen hundred hours. I want you two on it.”
Riley unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. “I’ll issue them some petty cash, Top.”
“Fifty bucks should do it.”
We all stared at the First Sergeant.
“Okay. A hundred each-but that’s it.”
As Riley counted out the greenbacks and filled out receipts for us to sign, Ernie made eye contact with Miss Kim. She looked worried and didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. Finally, she pulled out a handkerchief and scampered down the hallway to the ladies’ room.
Ernie shrugged. As if to say, “Who can understand them anyway?”
32
The Seoul train station is a brick monolith covering a full city block with a huge dome towering above its center. The station looks like something out of Czarist Russia. Which in a way it is, since the “bears to the north,” as the Koreans call them, built the station as a gift to the Korean king in the 1890’s. The Russians’ motives weren’t completely pure, since at the time they were locked in a power struggle with Japan over influence in the Far East.
We pushed through the surging crowds of men in business suits and kids in school uniforms and old ladies with huge bundles balanced atop their heads. In all this madness there was a small sea of tranquility with the red-and-white cloverleaf of the 8th United States Army above its door. The RTO. The Rail Transportation Office. It had a lounge and a PX, and a ticket counter so GI’s wouldn’t have to stand in the long lines with the masses.
While Ernie went over to the counter to get our tickets, I grabbed the military phone on the green shelf and looked up a number in the narrow U.S. Forces Korea phone book.
After I dialed the number it rang twice, then a voice squeaked, “Distribution Center.”
“Harvey?”
“Who’s this?”
“George.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Had any strange lately?”
“Last night, as a matter of fact.”
“Anyone I know?”
“How could it be someone you know if it was strange?”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
“Listen,” I said, “do you have anything new? On that J-two business?”
“Some.”
“What?”
Strange hesitated. “This line isn’t secure.”
“I’m on my way to Pusan. I don’t have time to come in and talk. You questioned the security NCO at J-two. Nothing was missing, but he was going to double-check the items that had been disturbed.”
“Hmmm.”
“What were they?”
“Hard to say.”
“I mean what was the subject of the documents? All I need is a general idea.”
I heard a tapping on the phone.
“What was that?”
“Checking for bugs,” Strange said.
“We’re not being bugged, for Christ’s sake. I just need the general subject.”
Another long silence.
“Okay,” I said. “She was Chinese. From Fujien Province. Came here with her family after Mao took over the mainland. Speaks Korean because she grew up here and went to school here, but right in the middle of things I had her lay a little Chinese on me. Just to see what it was like.”
“And?”
“She reminded me of a beautiful bird in a tree singing a song of happiness.”
“Perched on your branch?”
“Yeah. Perched on my branch. Now gimme the subject!”
“Tunnels.”
“What? Did you say ‘tunnels’?”
The line clicked and buzzed and went dead.
I thought of calling him back but decided against it. We didn’t have much time until the Blue Line left and besides, Strange probably wasn’t going to tell me anything more over the phone anyway.
Security guys. They’re all a bunch of whackos.
We hustled out of the back door of the RTO down the long, covered corridors of the Seoul Train Station. The layout is massive, with signs everywhere written in Korean and English and crowds rushing through the overpasses and the underpasses heading like lemmings for the various trains that find their hub there.
The Blue Line is the only deluxe accommodation that runs nonstop all the way down the Korean Peninsula, from Seoul to Pusan. Well, not exactly nonstop. It stops for exactly four minutes each at the two major cities along the route: Taejon and Taegu. The entire trip of about 340 kilometers takes about five hours. Leaving at five P.M. would get us into Pusan a little after ten, enough time to scrounge accommodations before the midnight curfew. The government won’t allow trains to travel any later.
We stood on the platform waiting with the other passengers, mostly well-dressed Koreans; ladies in fine western outfits or the colorful flowing skirts and blouses of the traditional Korean hanbok, men in suits. Vendors shouted the benefits of their wares: candy and snacks for the kids, or dried cuttlefish and a tin of orange juice to wash it down, or baskets of fat winter pears ready to be peeled.
Ernie stopped one of the saleswomen and bought two large packs of ginseng gum. He was ready how for any adventure.
The train pulled up in a shriek of billowing steam. We climbed aboard on the wrong car but managed to push our way through the crowded aisle until we found our seats. We stowed our bags in the overhead rack and leaned back in the comfortable seats. Plenty of legroom.
After ten minutes, the whistle sounded, the conductor bellowed, and slowly we started to chug forward.
The blue-suited stewardess came by, checking to make sure everyone was seated and comfortable. Ernie stared at her and twisted his head 180 degrees as she passed, zeroing in on her butt.
When she was gone, he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Wake me if she comes back.”
“Will do.”
Out the clean plate glass window, I watched the city of Seoul roll by. Warehouses, residential apartments, the blue expanse of the Han River, and the trees and red tile roofs of Yongdungpo. We were heading south and gaining speed. Soon the buildings of the city’s suburbs gave way to vast tracks of frozen brown rice paddies and blue hills in the distance and little straw-thatched huts huddling amidst patches of frozen snow.
I thought of this guy named Shipton and I thought of Cecil Whitcomb. What was it that had brought these two together? What was the deadly connection? Whatever it was it seemed just out of reach, on the other side of a wall of mist, waiting for me to reach out and grab it. I thought of a kisaeng named Miss Ku and a beautiful young woman who only wanted to be Ernie’s wife.