He offered the mama-san enough money to cover Miss Shin’s earnings for the entire evening. Her job would be to accompany him to the top of the hill and approach the Americans. With her pleasing smile and the help of a couple of bottles of soju, she would gain access to the truck and then ease the way for the gentleman to join the party.
According to Miss Shin, the mama-san didn’t believe a word of it. She believed the man was up to no good, but on the other hand he was offering cash, twice as much as Miss Shin could’ve expected to earn in one evening. The mama-san accepted. Miss Shin had no choice but to go.
I asked her if she thought this man might hurt her.
No, she didn’t think so, because he appeared to be such a kind gentleman.
I asked her if she thought the mama-san cared one way or the other if she was hurt or not.
She lowered her eyes and wouldn’t answer.
These girls are literally purchased from poor farm families. The mama-san and the other girls in the group then become their new family. As in all Confucian families, the young owe unquestioning obedience to their elders. The elders, in turn, are required to make wise decisions on the behalf of the young. To hear it suggested that in her “family” this sense of responsibility ran only one way filled Miss Shin with shame.
The climb up the hill had been grueling. When they finally reached the top, the kind gentleman had been very solicitous to her and fetched her water to wash up. He encouraged her to walk alone the last few yards to the signal truck. He handed her the brown sack with the two bottles of soju and told her to bow and smile and when she gained entry to the truck to open the door after twenty minutes or so. He’d be waiting outside.
“He promised me extra money,” she said.
“For what?”
“For getting inside and for opening the door for him.”
“Did he want you to tell the Americans he was there?”
“No. He was very clear about that. His entrance into the truck had to be a surprise. He told me not to worry about that part. He would take care of everything.”
“Did he?”
Again, she lowered her head.
By mid-afternoon, Mr. Kill, the Chief Homicide detective of the Korean National Police, had arrived at 8th Army Headquarters South, as had Major Rhee Mi-sook of the ROK Army. Major Rhee commanded a lot of GI attention in her exquisitely tailored fatigues as she strutted down the metal slat walkways lain in the mud. The Provost Marshal entered into a private conference with her, then, separately, did the same with Mr. Kill. Both of them wanted a copy of my report and access to the signal truck, which they were provided. Neither Ernie nor I were allowed to talk to either of them as the Provost Marshal wanted to handle this sensitive issue himself. Eighth Army was both embarrassed and enraged that two American GIs had been murdered right under our noses. There was even some whispering that the CG was considering relieving Colonel Brace as 8th Army Provost Marshal. But that was just talk. Nothing official had come down.
Both Major Rhee of the ROK Army and Mr. Kill of the Korean National Police inquired as to why the two lead CID agents on the case, me and Ernie, were pulling guard duty rather than continuing our investigation. At least, that’s the word I got from Riley. The Provost Marshal would have never told us such a thing directly.
The reason we’d been put on guard duty was that the entire 8th Army was on move out alert. That meant, in military parlance, that everybody was required to participate. Everyone had to check out a rifle from the arms room, pack up their field gear, pitch in to hoist portable equipment onto the back of trucks, and be prepared, for once in our rear-echelon lives, to act like soldiers. The very few people excepted from this team effort were excused only because they were next in line on the duty roster-Staff Officer at the headquarters, medics at the emergency room, a skeleton crew back at the 8th Army Commo Center, and a handful of MPs assigned to physical security around Yongsan Compound. Other than that, no matter how important your regular job at 8th Army headquarters might be, you were doing the duffel bag drag and heading for the field along with every other swinging dick assigned to the command. No exceptions. And if the 8th Army Commander and the 8th Army Chief of Staff and the 8th Army Provost Marshal had to go, then a low ranking schmuck like a CID investigative agent was definitely going. For 8th Army to have allowed Ernie and me to stay behind and continue with the investigation would’ve been tantamount, in their minds, to admitting that our jobs were more important than theirs. This would never happen in a hierarchical military organization. That is, until the man with the iron sickle struck again.
That’s when the 8th Army honchos were overruled. The special relationship between the Republic of Korea and the Unites States was in danger, and the 8th Army Commander better do something about it. The word came down from on high; maybe from the Ambassador, more likely from the US Army Pacific Commander himself: get your people out there and arrest the man with the iron sickle.
What the Provost Marshal did in response was send Ernie and me back to Seoul, with specific orders to cooperate with both the ROK Army and the Korean National Police to capture or otherwise put out of commission the man who was causing so much disruption.
Or, as he put it, to “Pop a cap into the son of a bitch.”
Ernie and I were booked a ride on the next thing smoking. In this case, it turned out to be an empty fuel truck headed for Seoul. Ernie and I sat up front with the driver, our duffel bags stored in a narrow compartment behind the seats.
“Free at last,” Ernie said.
“Free to have our butts busted if we don’t find this guy.”
“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Sueno.”
Ernie never worried about anything, not that I could tell. I admired him for it because I was a constant bundle of anxieties; anxieties he never failed to tease me about.
“Why do you think the Provost Marshal wouldn’t let us talk to Mr. Kill?” he asked.
“Because Eighth Army had already lost enough face. The PM didn’t want to make it worse by letting a VIP talk to a couple of enlisted pukes.”
“And Major Rhee?”
“He wanted her all to himself.”
“They all do.” As soon as she’d arrived, the Chief of Staff and half the officers who worked for him found time to join in the conference.
We were heading back to the world of electricity, hot showers, clean clothes, and chow you didn’t have to spoon out of a can. That was good enough to make Ernie happy.
Me, I was happy about that part, too, but I was still thinking about Specialist Four Anthony Ertagglia and Private First Class Roosevelt Hargis and what they looked like when we stumbled over their bodies in that signal truck. Blood everywhere. Grey tubes sticking out of their necks. And I was thinking about what the Chief of Staff was going to say when he wrote to their next of kin. I hoped he’d be able to say that the man who murdered their son or their husband or their brother was under arrest and rotting in a Korean prison.
Either that or rotting in hell.
I decided that as soon as we arrived on Yongsan Compound, I’d head straight for the Military Police arms room and exchange this unwieldy M-16 for a.45 automatic. Whatever it entailed, the work we would be doing in the next few days, or maybe the next few hours, wouldn’t be done from a secure distance. It would be up close and personal. Of that much, at least, I was sure.
The 8th Army Staff Duty Officer was Major Woolword. We knew him briefly because he’d appeared on the MP blotter reports a few times for being drunk on duty. The only reason he hadn’t been kicked out of the service with a bad conduct discharge was because the 8th Army Chief of Staff had a soft spot for him. They’d served together in the same unit in the Korean War. Woolword still had a few months to go until he could retire at his full rank of major. Knowing he was useless, the honchos had moved him up on the duty roster and left him behind at the almost deserted 8th Army headquarters in Seoul. He was being assisted by an efficient Staff Duty NCO by the name of Ervin, whose main job was to make sure that Major Woolword stayed sober. The third soldier assigned to staff duty was a KATUSA driver. KATUSA stood for Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, and they were usually rich Korean kids whose parents paid for a cushy assignment for them during their mandatory three-year tour in the military.