As we did so, from where Sergeant Otis lay we heard the heavy thump of wood on bone. A final scream and then silence.
Reinforcements arrived. I climbed up on a low branch of one of the trees. Two-and-a-half ton trucks, maybe a dozen, pulled up behind the railroad tracks to the rear of the frightened KNPs. A ROK Army officer leaped out of the cab of the first truck and saluted Agent Sohn. After a short conference, with Sohn gesturing toward Camp Casey, the ROK Army officer nodded. He shouted orders and men started jumping out of the backs of the trucks. They fell into unit formations. ROK Army infantry, the White Horse Division, the best of the best. Vietnam veterans. Each soldier armed with an M-16 rifle. While standing at attention, they were ordered to don their protective masks. They looked like a hive of lethal insects. Within seconds, they marched past the grateful KNPs and formed themselves into one massive V-shaped formation. They fixed bayonets with a clang of metal on metal. Then the officer shouted an order and, pounding one foot in front of the other, the V-shaped formation started shuffling toward the main gate of Camp Casey.
I jumped down to brief Ernie and Jill on what I’d seen.
“Colonel Han,” she said. She ran through the crowd. Ernie and I followed.
As we approached Colonel Han near the quarter-ton truck, a few protestors hassled us. One of them blocked my way. I tried to push past and he shoved me. I shoved back. Just as his buddies were about to jump in, Ernie pulled his. 45. He fired into the air. Startled, the men dropped back.
For just a moment, after the gunshot, the advancing hive of ROK soldiers halted. Warily, they searched the crowd. When they realized no gunfire was directed their way, they resumed their advance.
Colonel Han shouted at his followers to let us through.
When we reached him, Jill stood at his side.
I shouted at both of them. “It’s over. Those ROK Army soldiers are going to use whatever force is necessary to quell this demonstration. Blood will be shed. People will be hurt. Time to call it off, Colonel.”
“No,” Jill shouted.
“No?” Ernie mimicked. “What are you? Out of your mind? Those ROK soldiers mean business.”
“We’ve worked too hard,” Jill said, “and planned too long. The world has to know what’s happened here, that innocent children are being killed and women raped, and something has to be done about it.”
“Done? Like what?”
“Like what we planned.” She turned back to Colonel Han. Smiling beatifically, he patted her on the shoulder.
It was then that it hit me. I’m not sure why. It had nothing to do with what we were facing at the moment but maybe it was the depth of Jill Matthewson’s emotion that triggered all the contradictory information I’d gathered in the last few days to suddenly fall into place. Maybe her reaction was the last clue I needed. But I knew now and so I said it.
“You were there,” I told Jill. “The night Pak Tong-i died.”
She looked at me, so did Colonel Han, so did Ernie, all of them waiting for me to continue. I did.
“You slipped back into Tongduchon and maybe you had a key but somehow you gained entrance to his office.” I was staring directly at Jill now, daring her to deny my words. “When you found him there you tried to force a full confession out of him. About how he’d provided women to the Second Division honchos for years, about how he’d set the women up, letting them think they’d be dancing or performing, although Pak knew they’d be raped by whichever officer took a fancy to them. And you wanted his records, to document the years of black-marketing that had gone into paying for all these mafia meetings and other boys-will-be-boys excursions. You were too close to Kim Yong-ai to let it go. You wanted to prove it all to the world. But there wasn’t enough there. Pak was cagey. He kept few records. But he was so frightened that he told you about Colonel Alcott being deathly afraid of being cheated by Koreans, or by Bufford or Weatherwax so that he kept meticulous records of all black market transactions. When you questioned Pak Tong-i, you had to threaten him with your. 45. He was a weak man, a man who never exercised and ate too much and smoked too much and drank too much, and suddenly something inside of him went bust. His face flushed red, he couldn’t breathe and you knew the symptoms meant heart attack. When he died, you shoved him into the closet, closed it, and exited Kimchee Entertainment without being seen. That’s what happened, Jill, isn’t it?”
The ROK Army suddenly halted. The commanding officer shouted more orders and repositioned his forces. They broke into smaller groups, then reformed again. Now five V-shaped formations were pointing right at us. Then they started, once again, their slow forward shuffle.
“He deserved it,” Jill snarled.
Even Colonel Han flinched at the sound of her voice.
“They all deserve it,” she continued. “Paying for sex with girls who are just out of middle school. Girls who still have their hair bobbed, for Christ’s sake, because they finished the ninth grade only weeks ago. Now those same girls are made-up like whores and dancing in sequined outfits and these middle aged men with wives and children in quarters back on army bases in the States grab them and paw them and make them giggle and then stick their tired old pricks inside that soft virgin flesh. And the men laugh about it. And boast. And don’t even seem to care that I’m a woman and despise every one of them, and then they have the nerve to make comments about me. About my butt. About why a woman would be an MP. And they ask me dumb questions, like if I’ve ever burned my bra, and there were so many times”-Her fist tightened into knots-”so many times when I came that close to pulling out my. 45 and blowing their fuck-ing brains out.”
“Jill,” Colonel Han said. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. Her face relaxed and she turned to him and smiled.
“It’s time, Jill,” he said. “Time for us to do what we planned.”
“Yes,” she said.
Jill stepped away from Colonel Han and stared at me once again. She pointed at the ledger in my hand. “You have the proof now. I know you two guys. I respect you. You’ll make sure that the truth comes out. And one other thing. It’s true that I roughed Pak Tong-i up a bit. But when I left him he was still breathing. Maybe later, God forgive me, he died of a heart attack. I’m not proud of that.”
Colonel Han shouted something to a group of men who’d been hovering nearby. They stepped between me and Ernie and the quarter-ton truck. Colonel Han climbed back on top and helped Jill up. Then he started to address the crowd.
Exactly what he said, word for word, has been transcribed from tape recordings made by protestors who were there. The transcribed speech has been passed around Korea and has now, in translation, been passed around the world. What he said, in effect, was that Korea must control its own destiny. It was time for Koreans, both in the North and the South, to reject foreign influence, to expel all foreigners, and to reunite. The first step was to take back Korean sovereignty, both on the land and in the courts. Once he’d made these points he said that Koreans were strong enough to defend themselves and, once the Americans were expelled, if the northern communists refused to reunite, then the soldiers of the Republic of Korea should march north and force reunification. Blood would be shed, people would die, but to prove his sincerity he was going to do more than just talk. He was going to act.
Most of the speech was in language too sophisticated for me to follow. But the last part, when he said he was going to act, I understood.