Now it happened. Kim leaned forward again, smiling. “Be careful,” he cautioned Cahill, stabbing the air with his cigarette, his eyes like dark glass, “or all you Americans will end up like the Kennedys — shot down like dogs in the street.”
This was a favorite phrase of Kim’s. To Tae’s relief, Cahill, who had only been on the job for two months, refused to take the bait, calmly asking instead what evidence the NKA had for their accusation about the kite.
“I will show you,” replied Kim confidently. With this he rose. Immediately there was a loud scraping of chairs as he was followed by the entire North Korean delegation. A second later the three Chinese PLA — People’s Liberation Army — officers who had been sitting in the rear as observers also rose, the yellow shoulder boards of their new “ranked” uniforms catching the light. Wearily Cahill and his colleagues followed suit; it was part of the ritual, both sides heading outside to the enclosure of hard, mustard-colored earth within the joint security area, where they were to examine the “evidence.” In the background a voice, one of the visiting U.S. officers, was asking, “Why do we have to take that shit? That rotten insult about President Kennedy and…”
For Tae it was the most frequently asked question by Americans who had bothered to come to Panmunjom, and he didn’t even mention it in his report. Before the video jerkily followed the two delegations out of the room, Kim’s parting shot was, “You Americans do not realize the effect of your defeat in Vietnam. Now everyone in the world knows you can be beaten.”
Privately, Tae conceded that Kim had a point. The danger, as Tae saw it, was that the United States had tried so diligently to forget the war, it was apt to forget its lessons as well. What had Santayana said? — those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Most of the Vietnam vets were now dead or too old to pass on, to anyone who even bothered to listen in America, the know-how of fighting a war in Asia.
For the next two minutes Tae advanced the video, as there was not much to see, the North Korean and UN delegations standing for over half an hour in the broiling sun. The North Koreans apparently didn’t mind, or if they did, weren’t showing it, taking what General Cahill later described as a “typically petty satisfaction” in keeping the UN team sweating and waiting in the stifling, fly-infested heat. Kim was the only man Cahill had ever seen who could tolerate swarms of flies crawling all over his face, across his lips, in and out of his nostrils and eyes, without once allowing himself to blink.
“Have you got something to show me or not?” said Cahill. “If not, my colleagues and I propose an adjournment until…”
Some signal that Tae didn’t see must have been given by Kim, because the evidence, or rather a battered- looking, carp-shaped kite, a dirty orange color, about four feet in length, four to five inches across, was carried solemnly into the cordoned-off compound by two NKA soldiers, two lines of North and South Korean guards grimly facing each other.
“Where’s this camera?” Cahill demanded sharply.
“It is being analyzed,” said Kim. “It is made in Japan.”
“May we see it?”
“I said it is being analyzed. The film, which we have now developed, shows it was a blatant act of imperialist aggression upon the sovereign territory of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by U.S. aggressors and…”
Cahill turned to his aide, a Captain Jordan from the joint U.S.-ROK command. Jordan rolled his eyes skyward. Ignoring Kim, Cahill took a handkerchief from his pocket and proceeded to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead, asking Jordan, “Haven’t I heard this somewhere before?”
“Word for word, General. On Pyongyang radio. All this week.” When Kim had finished his diatribe, Cahill poked the carp’s ugly, gaping face with the toe of his boot. “This…”
Kim stepped forward menacingly, as did his entire delegation. “Do not touch the evidence!” he shouted.
Suddenly the entire compound was electric, both lines of border guards stiffening at the ready. Hands on holsters. Each man fixing his opposite number. Cahill smiled, having forced Kim to react.
“Yes!” shouted Kim’s aide, shifting his gaze from Cahill to the ROK officer, General Lee. “And made in the U.S. lackey state of South Korea.”
“A child’s kite,” repeated Cahill contemptuously. “Blown over to your side by the wind. Why, it’s not big enough to hold a camera, and besides…”
“We have the spy machine!” Kim shouted, pointing his finger. “You cannot deny…”
“Spy machine? You’ve got nothing,” said Cahill, turning on his heel, leading the UN delegation out of the compound.
“We have the evidence!” Kim shouted after him. “We have the film showing that…”
“Showing,” said Cahill, still walking away, “the photos you’re busy taking today so you can fabricate a case.”
“You be careful!” Kim shouted after him. “Be careful, you Americans. You will end up like the Kennedys. You—”
“
“Me, too,” put in the South Korean general.
The video over, Tae dragged the day’s SIGINT — Signal Intelligence — and IR — Interrogation Reports — toward him. There were several Blackbird American infrared SR-71 reconnaissance photos taken from eighty-five thousand feet. No change in the NKA’s unit dispositions except for another surface-to-air missile site being built in the Taebaek Mountains that ran like a spine down Korea’s east coast.
Tae made himself a cup of coffee and for a moment sat admiring the desk photo of his children. Mi-ja, eighteen, was resplendent in a watermelon-pink
He opened the interrogation folder. Another NKA infiltrator caught south of Munsan near the west coast. As usual, he’d refused to talk. The report stated the prisoner had “fallen down stairs.” Even so, he had still not revealed the specific target of his mission — they never did — and so he was put on the train for the prison camp on Koje Island in the Southeast. Tae hoped that these days Koje was more secure than during the Korean War, when the American guards had been so accommodating in assuring prisoners’ rights under the Geneva Charter that the NKA had actually managed to kidnap an American general and stage a massive breakout. Even so, Tae wasn’t naive enough to think the present ROK guards hadn’t been infiltrated by “sleepers,” NKA agents already “in place” in the event of hostilities. For every NKA agent they caught, Tae suspected there were at least four or five who managed to slip across the DMZ undetected. Only one thing of interest had emerged from Tae’s quieter, more democratic interrogation of infiltrators captured in his zone that week, and it wasn’t until after three sessions involving the usual cursory examination of the prisoners’ possessions that he’d even noticed it and decided to add a note to his daily report to Seoul. He had observed that the chopsticks the NKA infiltrators had on them when captured — no Korean would travel without them — were seven inches long instead of the standard nine.
Tae typed his SITREP, situation report, quickly, for he knew that as soon as the general had finished inspecting “nighttime readiness” of the local U.S.-ROK fortifications, he and his aide, Jordan, would leave for the more civilized environs of Seoul HQ.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shortly after 10:00 p.m., heading back to Seoul, Jordan decided to take a chance. He’d been thinking about it ever since the farce in the joint security enclosure. “Ah, General—” he began hesitantly.
“Yes?”
“Ah — I’ve got a buddy — a pilot — stationed down south at Osan. They say he’s a real genius with aerial reconnaissance, camera-to-speed ratios — all that sort of hi-tech stuff.”
