So far, everything was peaceful.
A KNP contingent stood along the railroad tracks, opposite the main gate, behind the protestors. They also wore riot helmets and thick chest padding and wielded long batons that they held in their hands impatiently. All in all, there were almost as many MPs and KNPs as there were protestors, although the cops were much better armed.
Ernie and I crouched in the center of the student protestors.
“If the MPs spot us out here,” Ernie said, “we’re toast.”
“What choice do we have?” I answered. “We were sent up here to find Jill Matthewson. That’s what we’re doing.”
“We’ll lose our CID badges.”
“We’ll tell them we were working undercover.”
“Eighth Army will never buy it.”
“Screw Eighth Army.”
Ernie shook his head. “You’re changing, Sueno.”
Maybe he was right. I thought about it. One of the protestors screamed through a megaphone at the top of his lungs in rapid Korean.
Finally, I replied. “I’m changing,” I told Ernie, “because finding Corporal Jill Matthewson should’ve been an easy assignment. Instead, at every step of the way someone’s tried to stop us. They stopped Private Marvin Druwood and then they stopped the booking agent, Pak Tong-i. Permanently. And last night, they tried to kill us. Why?”
Ernie shrugged.
“We have to find out,” I said.
“We could go talk to Brandy.”
“We’re too hot to enter the Black Cat Club. Or even the bar district. The KNPs are probably watching.”
“They’re watching us here.”
“They’re watching the crowd. Not us. This is the last place they’d expect to find us.”
“This is the last place I’d expect to find us.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes. Then they promised to lead us to her.”
“They might be lying.”
“Chon Un-suk’s mother believes them.”
Ernie shrugged again.
The leader of the protest shouted into his megaphone, speaking in Korean. Occasionally, he paused and the crowd shouted back their assent. Finally, he switched to English, turned, and directed his words at the main gate of Camp Casey.
“Now,” he said. “One of your own will speak to you.”
He motioned for me to stand. Ernie stared at me, wide-eyed. I rose to my feet. Like Adam accepting the apple from Eve, I grabbed the megaphone.
10
I’ve often wondered what it’s like to jump out of an airplane.
To take that final step into the abyss, with the wind rushing by and birds gliding below, and then to fall and twist and float free, away from all restraint, gliding through clouds. Airborne troopers do just that at least once a month to keep their parachute status active and thereby collect an additional fifty-four dollars per month in jump pay.
When I stood in the middle of that crowd and the young Korean man handed me the megaphone and I held it up to my mouth and I started talking, I suddenly knew what it was like to leap out into eternity.
I’m not sure exactly what I said. Ernie recounted it to me later. Something about every country being able to control its own destiny and every courtroom being accountable to the people of that country. It wasn’t much and it was garbled, but the overriding point of my little speech-as far as the U.S. Army’s concerned-was that I’d participated in a prohibited demonstration. It didn’t matter how minor, or how dumb, my participation might’ve been. Such participation, in and of itself, was a court-martial offense. Of course, so was returning to the 2nd Division area of operations after we’d been ordered not to. So I was just adding one sin onto another.
But what riveted my attention while I held the microphone was not the line of helmeted KNPs lining the railroad tracks, nor the adoring attention of the demonstrators who gazed up at me, nor even the helmeted American MPs barricading the main gate of Camp Casey. What riveted my attention was Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott and Warrant Officer One Fred Bufford, both of whom were standing in fatigues before the main gate behind their protective line of MPs; both men perched atop the hood of a U.S. Army jeep. Colonel Alcott, realizing who was speaking, stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Fred Bufford, meanwhile, smirked. A broad twisted smile. Satisfied. As if to say that everything he suspected about me had finally been proven true.
The huge MP statue looming behind the main gate seemed to have changed its expression from bland idiocy to disbelief. Disbelief, apparently, that I could do something so stupid. Stupid, maybe. But it was my only chance of obtaining a lead on the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson. As a cop assigned to a mission, I do what is required. Regardless of what Stanley Alcott or Fred Bufford thought.
When I finished talking, the crowd of demonstrators roared in approval and then a Korean speaker took over the megaphone and the students holding the photographs of Chon Un-suk started chanting and parading through the crowd. The chanting grew louder and I ducked down next to Ernie. Everyone ignored us. The crowd swirled around us, picking up speed, picking up the volume of its outraged roar. Finally, some of the demonstrators stooped and grabbed rocks from the side of the road and, with wild abandon, launched them at the main gate of Camp Casey. A few of the stronger young men managed to reach not only the main gate but behind it all the way to the MP statue, where the rocks bounced off the big dumb MP’s chest and tumbled uselessly to the ground.
One of the vegetable vendors was surrounded by students and I soon realized why. She had smuggled in a pile of rocks in her cart. Plenty of ammunition. And then the students became organized. When every one had a rock, they began chanting, “Chon Un-suk. Chon Un-suk.” And then, timing it by counting down from ten, the students in unison launched all their missiles, like a battalion of ancient Carthaginians armed with slings assaulting the glory that was Rome.
The MPs roared in rage. The students grabbed more rocks and once again began their chant. KNPs along the tracks conferred. Another volley of rocks sailed through the air toward Camp Casey. Again the MPs roared in anger but this time the KNPs along the railroad tracks formed up in a V shape and, on the count of three, charged.
Pandemonium.
Some of the students were overcome with a senseless heroism and counterattacked, running pell-mell into the riot police. Others crouched to the ground in panic. None of them ran. Only Ernie and me. We ran away from the crowd, away from the charging KNPs, away from the main gate of Camp Casey. But in our case, the damage had been done. I’d been witnessed by a field-grade officer participating in an unauthorized political demonstration. The word would be out. We were here, even though we weren’t supposed to be, and every MP-and KNP-in Division would be searching for us.
Once inside the bar district, we stopped in an alley and tried to catch our breath. I noticed that there didn’t appear to be any people on the street-no GIs, no business girls-but no KNPs or MPs either.
“The place is deserted,” Ernie said. “Now’s our chance.”
“Our chance for what?”
“The Black Cat Club,” he said. “Brandy.”
He was right. Using the back lanes, we wound our way toward the back door of the Black Cat Club.
The old crone who ran the Black Cat Club was there along with a few of her business girls but no GIs. The GIs had been restricted to the compound in anticipation of today’s demonstration. I asked for Brandy and of course they denied that she was here. They had no idea where she was. Since torture was out of the question, Ernie and I performed a quick check of the hooches out back and then searched the Black Cat Club itself.
No Brandy.
We stepped behind the bar. Ernie poured himself a shot of bourbon. I found a ledger. Drink chits is what it recorded. Most bars kept a similar accounting. When a GI buys a girl a drink, she earns credit: a few additional won that turn up in her end-of-month paycheck. Who records the chits? At the Black Cat Club, apparently, the bartender does. I studied the handwriting. Quirky, leaning to left, blocklike. Exactly like the handwriting on the note Brandy had shown us.