WW III

“Okay — I’ll wear the white suit,” the president told Trainor. He didn’t like playing the media game, but he knew it would be a heck of a lot easier getting things done for the country if he was reelected.

After the photo opportunity in front of Aspen Lodge’s kidney-shaped pool, the president and Trainor headed out by limousine to Andrews for the long hop to California. On the way they saw a banner: “Reelect Mayne — the peace president.”

“That,” said Trainor with conviction, “is what’s gonna beat the ass off Leyland! Seems a terrible thing to say, Mr. President, but in the long run, Vietnam may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise for this country.”

“Well, Paul,” said the president, on the lookout for more groups of supporters, “you’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

“I mean, Mr. President, that this country is going to think twice before they let the drum thumpers send our boys out to get slaughtered for a piece of real estate that means squat-all when you come right down to it.”

A group of Leyland supporters flashed by, holding an enormously long banner reading, “Vote Leyland. And make America great again!”

“That’s one hell of a drawn-out message,” said the president, glancing back. “Take you half an hour to read it.”

“Yeah,” agreed Trainor. “Look great on TV, though. They’ll have to pan wide to get it all in. More exposure.”

“By making America great again,” reflected the president,

“I suppose they mean it’s time we bombed something. Flex American muscle?”

“Something like that,” responded Trainor.

“Well, if that’s what they want from me, they’re going to be sadly disappointed.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Before dawn, Independence Day, the pungent odor of breakfast kimchi and gasoline fumes filling their interiors, the riot buses, twenty of them, wound their way down through the early morning traffic and pollution to central Seoul, disgorging a squad here, a squad there, at various strategic positions throughout the city. Subway entrances in particular were favored by those retreating students hoping to grab a train out of the fray when the “riot ritual,” as the police call it, got too rough for them. And it would get that way soon enough in the exhausting and exhilarating business of baiting the police amid temperatures that AFKN, the U.S. Army radio network, predicted were going to climb well into the nineties with matching humidity, creating a fifty- fifty chance of late thunderstorms. But now it was still cool as the police quietly took up positions throughout an H- shaped grid running north-south through the city’s western sector down Sejong and Taepweong, and in the eastern sector running down Chang-Gyeong. Joining the two arms of the H were platoons stationed along Cheong Gye, the largest concentrations in the left half of the H around City Hall. Of the squads allocated to the protection of U.S. buildings, most were stationed outside the U.S. Chancery, as it, unlike the heavily fenced-in embassy, was immediately accessible from the street.

“Maybe it’ll be too hot for them,” joked a platoon leader in one of the rear buses.

“It’s too hot now,” replied one of those standing in the aisles. “This gear’s killing me.”

There was a chorus of mock sympathy and a punching of shields.

“You’ll have rest soon enough, Chun,” said the platoon leader. “Some student’ll put you on your ass.”

“I’ll break his head first,” said Chun, lifting his truncheon.

“You monster!” cried out another. “What if it’s a woman?”

“Then I’ll stick it somewhere else,” Chun retorted.

“Someone’ll have to show you where it is.”

“I know where it is.” Chun was twenty-four, son of a janitor, and a policeman who hated university students with a passion. It wasn’t only the fact that he had come from a poor family and had missed out on the opportunity to go further than high school that made him feel so hostile toward the students — rather it was what he saw as their blatant hypocrisy. The same hooligans who would be throwing rocks and insults at him today would, in four years time, be executive trainees for Hyundai, Samsung, or some other giant chaebol while Chun would still be a policeman fighting a new generation of students shouting their obligatory anti-U.S. slogans. The latest were “Drive away the American bastards!” and “Down with the government!” banners scrawled in their own blood. Oh, some of them, the leaders, were genuine Communists, and Chun hated them the most for inciting the more gullible in the giant “reunification rallies,” thousands of students deafeningly applauded the Democratic Reunification Party’s belly-crawling overtures to Pyongyang. But Chun believed most of them were simply out for excitement under the pretense of it being serious political protest. It was a lark, a time to vent all the teenagers’ pent-up rage against parents forever pressuring them to Kongbu haera! — “Study! Study!” A chance to lash out at police, teachers — against all the Confucian-bred respect for authority.

Chun filed out with the rest of his platoon near City Hall, but designated as a “flying wedge,” his platoon would not remain at any particular junction. Instead it would be on standby — ready to move quickly to reinforce weak spots in the H. Chun took great pride in knowing he was a member of the most experienced riot police in the world. Never mind all the “Cherry Berets”—the old “Olympic Police”—sliding headfirst down ropes like monkeys for the evening news crews, or the blue-denimed National Police; when the big battalions of protesters came out, when it went from bricks to Molotov cocktails, it was Chun and the other “Darth Vaders,” the black-helmeted riot police, who settled it. A squad of neatly turned out National Police passed by, their white helmets wonderful targets for any projectile. One of them waved. Chun nodded with stiff formality; the riot police remained aloof. Someone in Chun’s platoon said the Catholics and Protestants were coming out in support of the students.

“So?” a rookie asked.

“Protestants!” replied a corporal. “That’s how they got their name, right? Protest-tants. Means golchikkori—troublemakers!” As far as Chun was concerned, the Catholics were no better. And if it was true the Christians were going to get involved, it would be a long, hard day. Students might then win middle-class support. The worst possible combination.

He heard a crackle of radio static; another three platoons, a hundred men in all, were being requested by the officer in charge of policing the square around Myongdong Cathedral. Catholic nuns were forming a human chain, swaying and singing hymns. Then there was a call from police HQ diverting two platoons to Yonsei University in the west. Less than a minute later an urgent plea came in from Korea University campus in the city’s northeast. This was unusual, the students normally favoring inner-city streets for their protests, where they could best be concentrated to gain maximum TV coverage and where if you ran out of paving stones, there were always construction sites — plenty of loose brick. Besides, the Molotov cocktails, made mostly with empty OB and Crown beer bottles, were much more effective against closely packed police in city streets than on open campuses. What was behind the new tactic? Chun wondered.

A “most urgent” call came in for a “wedge” at the corner of Yulgog and Donhua about four blocks northeast of the U.S. Embassy.

* * *

The first shower of projectiles thudded against the bus’s thick window mesh as it passed Changdokkung Palace on the left. Chun could see the students, about two thousand, he guessed, overwhelming a hundred or so National Police, white helmets dotting the huge crowd as it swarmed about the entrance to the Secret Garden — a phalanx of placards demanding reunification. Soon the crowd of students, half already inside the gate, was expanding, contracting, and expanding again, at once controlled and uncontrollable, pushing and pulling, its waves surging through the gates, spilling into the gardens.

“Beautiful!” said Chun. “Those bastards are bottled up inside by the wall. Perch in a pond.” He pulled out his club. “Boom! Boom!”

“Chun!”

“Sir?”

“You’re on tear gas.”