ON NORTH KOREAN INTRUDERS WELCOMED AT THIS GATE.
Then came the roadblocks. Korean soldiers with M-14 rifles peered suspiciously into the bus and then motioned the driver forward to continue the northward journey.
And then the tank traps. Huge cement blocks, weighing tons each-formed enormous overhangs across the road. Loaded with explosives, they would be blown by the last retreating South Korean units-the final attempt to block the advance of the onrushing North Korean tanks.
The bus swam upstream against a river of Korean soldiers. Most had huge packs on their backs, some humped commo gear, and some had machine guns balanced like scales across their shoulders. But they all had a somber and weary look, as if they’d been on this road for years, centuries, a never-ending stream of young men going off to cram their bodies into the insatiable maw of an impervious history.
They were on maneuvers; they had left their base camps and they were moving out. Behind them the deep rumbling of tanks came toward us, the sound carrying like tremors through the cold, packed earth. They lined both sides of the road, and when Ernie followed the bus to a turnoff, he had to flash his lights and wait until there was a break in the endless files to make his left turn.
And then there were no U.S. military compounds, no signal sites, no antiaircraft artillery batteries. Just flat farmland with a few rolling hills between valleys.
In a few more miles we’d come to the foothills of the mountain range that ran along the Korean peninsula like the jagged spine of a long-dead dragon. Where was she going?
The road through the wooded hills narrowed, and gradually there were fewer villages and fewer stops for us to worry about. When the incline really steepened, the road started to twist like a snake as the bus climbed the mountain out of the misty valley. There must have been only a few people on the bus now and Kimiko had to be one of them. Kangnung sat on the other side of the mountain range near the coast of what the Koreans call the East Sea. The rest of the world called it the Sea of Japan.
Suddenly, the bus stopped. There was no village nearby that we could see. Nothing.
Ernie reacted quickly. He zipped past the bus to an outcropping of rock beside the road, and backed the jeep up behind it. We were concealed. He shut off the engine.
The bus idled but not for long. The driver shifted gears and the big powerful diesel groaned slowly up the side of the mountain, picking up speed as it went. We chanced a look.
Across the road, a grove of poplar trees rustled in the breeze, but there were no buildings and no one there, only a wooden sign and a small footpath that led off past the poplars into the evergreens.
Ernie looked at me for a decision. We could always catch up with the bus but we were taking the risk that Kimiko would get off while we weren’t watching. I told him to wait while I investigated.
The sign was painted with an inverted swastika, the ancient symbol for a Buddhist temple that predated the Nazis by about two and a half millennia. The sign, sharpened at one end like an arrow, pointed up the path. The fresh imprints of two small feet led away from the bus stop. Soft-soled shoes. I trotted back to the jeep feeling particularly proud of the Indian blood of my ancestors from Mexico.
Of course, the pathway had been carefully raked and any idiot could have followed those tracks. The Apache trackers didn’t have to worry about their place in history.
Ernie chained the jeep and we started after her. A few yards up the footpath we heard it. It wasn’t just a sound but a long low reverberation that passed through the brush and the forest that surrounded us and then entered our bodies, seeping into our bones and our innards, lifting them gently on a slow wave and then passing serenely by.
A gong. It was calling supplicants to prayer.
That was us, a couple of supplicants. The kind who sit on a stool waiting for the bar to open, hoping the bartender won’t be upset at the intrusion and will slam a cold one down in front of us, like some sort of nugget of holy wisdom.
From the low timbre of the gong I figured we weren’t very far at all from the temple. I didn’t want to stumble upon someone too soon, so I motioned to Ernie for us to get off the footpath, and we crashed straight up a hill through the underbrush until we found a good vantage point.
The temple was made of wood that must have come from the surrounding trees. Except for its enormous size and the smooth, finely shaped slats, it would have looked something like a log cabin. There was a gateway, a large courtyard of raked gravel, and then the main hall. The roof of the hall was shingled and turned up slightly at the ends like the raised toe of a young girl in a traditional dance. Life-size figurines of monkeys lined the roof, protecting the holy place from demons. The foundation of the big hall was made of squared stones neatly fitted together.
Out back were what appeared to be living quarters and to the left, offices or study halls. Fallow but neatly outlined fields stretched out for a couple of acres until they were overcome again by the forest. The place was simple, elegant, and Spartan.
Shaved-head monks in blue robes floated towards the main hall.
“Looks like boot camp,” Ernie said.
A large wooden mallet swished through the air just inside the open doorway of the main hall and the gong sounded again.
“Must be chow time.”
“Prayer time.”
“For me,” Ernie said, “it’s chow time.”
We hadn’t eaten all day and it was almost noon. Sacrilegious. I hadn’t expected to shadow Kimiko all the way out here. And there weren’t any Burger Kings in this neighborhood-or on this continent, for that matter.
“We’ll get some chow in one of those villages we passed.”
‘They better uncork another pot of kimchi because I’m half starved.”
Gray robes fluttered amidst a sea of blue. Her arms were entwined with two monks who walked on either side of her.
“That Kimiko sure makes friends easy,” Ernie said.
Once everyone was inside the temple they bowed, knelt down, and started chanting. After it had gone on for about twenty minutes I paced around the edge of the hill, trying to find a better vantage point to view the layout of the monastery. The stone foundation beneath the main hall was about four feet high and there were a couple of buildings directly behind it and attached. My guess was that there was a basement or some kind of underground storage beneath the main hall, otherwise the foundation wouldn’t have been as large and sturdy as it was.
A cliff dropped off behind the monastery. It looked sheer from where we stood and opened onto a panoramic view of the valley below. The hills surrounding the monastery, including the one we were on, were steep and enclosed the monastery grounds in a cozy little basin. The open fields between the ground and the hills provided plenty of time for the monks to spot anyone approaching. All in all, the monastery was the perfect place to stash something.
Maybe that’s why Kimiko was here. And maybe that’s why those hoodlums who searched her room had found nothing and Kimiko had seemed unconcerned that they would. And it would explain why she had been so careful to shake her pursuers before setting out for this fortress in the woods.
When the chanting was over, Kimiko came out into the courtyard, bowing to the two monks who had escorted her in. They bowed back deeply.
“She must have laid it on heavy when they passed the contribution plate,” Ernie said.
The monks escorted her to the open gate and bowed once again as they separated. We waited until she had passed our position and then we scooted quickly around the waist of the hill.
Kimiko led us up a narrow path and in a few minutes we were on top of a small hill covered with a neatly tended lawn and a few benches facing out toward the huge valley below. Vegetable fields and small clumps of fruit trees reached across the valley, and in the distance gradually rose the magnificence of the mountains.
The hills on the sides of the valley were covered with saplings, barren now except for the pines. The large rounded slope to the right of us was spotted only with shrubs and four large white placards evenly spaced. Each placard had a neatly printed word written on it in Korean script.
The signs were a warning to keep away. Like many other spots in Korea, this hill had been so laden with undetonated bombs, mines, and explosives of all kinds, that the government had not even bothered to clear it but had just decided to keep people out-a lethal reminder of the war that had so devastated the peninsula. There were also small burial mounds scattered all around it. Each mound was about six feet in diameter and four feet high.
