Startled at first, Hwang quickly regained his composure. With a swift, smooth move, he slid the automatic across the floor behind him so that it was well out of reach of both men. Then he joined Chon in the stalking movement, slowly narrowing the gap between them. Chon watched carefully, anticipating when the younger man would make his move. Sensing what was about to come, without so much as a flicker of his eyes that might signal his intentions, Chon lashed out with a sudden kick. In the old days, it would have been aimed at the jaw. Now his target was somewhat lower.
Hwang, already into his own thrust, was caught by surprise but managed to block the kick, though it threw him off balance. Chon followed with two quick blows, one of which caught Hwang on the side of his head. Though it rattled him, he was able to counter with a punch that rocked the old man backwards.
Hwang wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and saw a smear of blood. "You fight well for an old man," he said. Then he grinned. "But the fight has just begun."
"Perhaps I can teach you a little respect for your elders," Chon replied without rancor.
"You wish me to observe the filial piety of your Confucianist virtues, eh? Believe me, old man, Confucius was a busy-body."
As they circled again, Hwang abruptly reversed directions, turning with a sudden kick toward Chon's face. The old man felt it coming and dodged to one side, parrying with a forearm. But Hwang was too fast. He came back with a flurry of kicks. One caught Chon in the chest and toppled him backwards. Hwang pressed his advantage and leaped forward to launch a double-punch that dropped the old man to the floor, stunned.
When Chon regained his senses, he found his arms handcuffed behind his back. He struggled to sit up and cast a hostile look at his assailant. But the fight was over. He had lost.
"Let's begin with these," Hwang said lightly, dangling a crowded key ring in front of him. "Which of these goes to your Namdaemun fruit stall?"
Chon knew he was a dead man. This was just the beginning. Hwang would soon demand to know who had sent him with the drawings and questions about movements. He would refuse, of course, and the systematic torture would begin. In the end, the assassin would kill him. He spotted an apple sitting on the counter in front of him, probably left over from some worker's lunch. It looked full, red and juicy. He began to concentrate on the apple, allowing his mind to float beyond his body. Let Hwang do as he wished. Chon would cancel out the pain with his concentration. And with appropriately snide remarks, heavily laden with sarcasm, he would goad the assassin into killing him quickly. He was determined not to divulge the identity of Captain Yun Yu-sop.
Chapter 18
For Pak Tong-hui, a lucrative business deal was always a cause for celebration. And celebrations were meant to be shared with good friends. Pak was not an educated man, but he had a born trader's knack for negotiation. A short, bushy-haired sprite in his late forties, he resembled an abbreviated Oriental version of Larry in the Three Stooges. He had signed a terrific deal earlier in the day with a manufacturer of fabrics. Mostly overruns, some seconds, the varied supply of piece goods he was buying should eventually net him something in the neighborhood of seven and a half million won, which translated to about ten thousand dollars. Pak marketed his wares in a Namdaemun stall just up the alley and on the opposite side from Mr. Chon.
Koreans believed that drinking parties were meant for one purpose, to get drunk. Pak had laid in a goodly supply of soju, the potent national beverage, along with a few pork dishes garnished with green onions, garlic and sesame leaves. He invited two close friends, and the party began early. As the evening wore on, the men took turns pouring each other cups of the clear liquor distilled from sweet potatoes. In the accepted tradition, the drinkers would hold their cups in both hands while the host poured. They would down their drinks quickly, sometimes in a single gulp, then the bottle would change hands.
Well before midnight, the thoroughly drunken celebrants sprawled inert on their sleeping mats. They might be said to have achieved that treasured Korean goal of balance and harmony in the extreme. Gradually they stirred enough to burrow beneath their thick blankets and slept.
Sometime around two o'clock in the morning, Pak awakened at the sound of a motorcycle moving slowly through the alley. He lay there for a few moments, debating whether to turn onto his back or roll over to the other side. Then he concluded the pressure on his bladder would not allow him to get back to sleep in either case. Struggling to his feet, he carefully picked his way through the rice paper door. Steadying himself with shaky hands feeling for the sides of tables that would hold mounds of fabric come daylight, he reached the entrance and was about to step out into the alley when an odd sight brought him to a halt. He blinked bloodshot eyes and stared. Someone, dressed in black, appeared to be unloading crates from a motorcycle trailer at the front of Mr. Chon's. A fruit delivery in the middle of the night, in the dark? A few breaths of the cold air helped to clear his vision. He saw the man reach into the trailer and lift out something obviously quite heavy. As the figure struggled with its burden, Pak observed… arms? Legs? They disappeared inside the stall. Pak knew that Chon always kept an iron grating pulled across the front and locked at night. Obviously it had been opened. Then the indistinct figure returned, jumped on the motorcycle, and headed off down the alley.
It struck Pak immediately that the man had not closed the iron grating. He had heard no sound, and the grating made an unmistakable clatter when pulled. Waiting a moment to be certain the motorcycle would not turn back, he scurried across to the front of Chon's stall. A fresh splotch of blood on the ground where the trailer had sat stopped him cold. It also produced instant sobriety. Heart pounding as he became seized by a sense of fear and foreboding, he rushed for the nearest telephone.
In the dream, Captain Yun stood before a panel of four prosecutors, an unlucky number in Korea. Each bore the full-faced scowl of Prosecutor Park, and each in turn berated him for wasting their time with absurd theories about conspiracies. The final one snarled. "This has the obvious look of satanism. You must answer for it to the NSP." Then the telephone rang on the table before them. The first Park picked up the phone, listened, then said with a sinister grin, "It's the NSP." Oddly, the phone rang again, while Park was still speaking into it.
Yun roused himself from the warmth of the ondol floor beneath his sleeping mat as he realized the telephone ring was for real. He always left the phone on the floor nearby at night. He grabbed it and said, "Captain Yun."
"Sorry to disturb you, Captain. This is Lieutanant Rhee."
Yun blinked his eyes in the darkness and squinted at the clock. The red LED numbers glowed 2:30. Rhee was assigned to a patrol unit at the Namdaemun Station. His men responded to calls received on the 112 emergency phone number.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" He was hoping for some simple explanation that would quickly return him to the warmth of the ondol, under-the-floor brick flues that carried the warmth from a wood fire in the kitchen. Maybe his dreams would strike a happier note the next time around.
"A short while ago, we received a call from the Namdaemun Market area. The caller reported unusual activity around one of the stalls. He had seen a man on a motorcycle with a trailer attached unloading crates."
"What's so strange about that?" Yun asked, irritated. That sort of thing went on all the time, though admittedly not so much at this hour of the night.
Rhee ignored the interruption. "It seems he also unloaded something that appeared to have arms and legs. When the caller investigated, he found evidence of blood in front of the stall."