across the pier in airborne waves from the sea.
Exotic foreign ports, sailors living a carefree life, none of that applied here at the Eatery of the Yellow Sea. This was a place for working men; poor working men at that, featuring hot noodles and fried rice and bottles of cheap rice liquor, soju, that would get you drunk and let you forget about today until the inevitable tomorrow. Greeks didn’t hang out here. They had their own places, somewhat classier than this joint. The Eatery of the Yellow Sea was for poor foreign sailors clinging to the bottom rung of the maritime ladder.
Occasionally I heard laughter from inside. Men’s voices in a language I didn’t understand. Through fogged windows I spotted a portly Korean woman with a bandanna tied across her hair serving the foreign sailors, not saying anything to them that I could see. No beautiful young women wearing hot pants and halter tops here. These sailors couldn’t afford the fare.
They looked harmless enough. Poor working men searching for a warm meal, a shot of fiery liquor, a respite from their dreary life of labor on an indifferent sea.
I waited until there was no one entering or leaving, and then I strolled past the Eatery of the Yellow Sea, stepped onto Pier Number 7, and followed creaking wooden planks that led into the darkness. Finally, I reached an overlook above the sloshing waters of the Port of Pusan. I stood next to a thick wooden piling, allowing the shadow to make my silhouette less distinct. I shoved my hands in my pockets and inhaled deeply of the cold night air. Occasionally a seagull dove toward the water and then gracefully lifted skyward. Clouds covered a silvery moon, sometimes parting to reveal its beauty. I stared up, wondering at the magnificence of the world in which we lived, and at its horrors.
I waited.
14
I stood alone on the walkway at the edge of Pier Number 7 for well over an hour. At half past eleven, I was certain that whoever had promised to be there must’ve been pulling Sergeant Norris’s leg. Sailors wandered in and out of the Eatery of the Yellow Sea, but no one turned down this dark pathway that ran along the edge of the bay.
When he did appear, he seemed to emerge from the shadows. He must’ve seen me, but he walked right past. Then, without turning his head, he said in English, “Follow me.”
I did, at about six paces. The wood-planked pathway turned slightly, until we were out of the glow of the single floodlight in front of the Eatery of the Yellow Sea. He stopped and turned, keeping both hands in the pockets of his thick jacket.
“You’re Sway-no,” he said.
“Sueno,” I replied, correcting his pronunciation.
“Ah.” He nodded. “Spanish.”
“I’m an American.”
“Yes. So I was told.”
His accent was difficult to place. Eastern Europe, I supposed, but that was more from a process of deduction than from any analysis of the sounds. Which country this guy was from, I couldn’t say. He was five or six inches shorter than me, maybe five eight or five nine, and he must’ve weighed close to 180; sturdy, with a low center of gravity. His face was mostly hidden in shadow, but, from what I’d seen when he walked past me, it was nondescript: brown hair, brown eyes, thick eyebrows, and a prominent nose rounded at the end. He seemed fairly young, not yet forty, but his cheeks sagged like an old man’s jowls.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“That’s not important.”
“Okay. It’s not important. So, what do you want?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “I am only doing a favor for someone. I am relaying a message.”
“And there’s no money in it for you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe some.”
“What’s the message?”
“First, I must make sure that you are Sueno.”
“How do you want to do that?”
“I need to see your identification.”
“Okay. But that could be faked.”
“Yes. But that first.”
I pulled my badge up and held it out, twisting it toward moonlight. He stepped forward, squinted his eyes, and read, making no move to pull his hands out of his pockets. Finally, he stepped backward. I slipped my badge back into the inner pocket of my coat.
“Now what?”
“I ask you a question.”
“What question?”
He paused for a moment and then said, “In a snowstorm in Itaewon, we left one place and found refuge in another. What are the two places?”
I stopped for a moment, stunned by the question. I knew what he meant, but I was so shocked by the implications that for the moment I was unable to allow the full import to sink in. Thoughts flashed around in my brain like a pinball looking for a home.
The sailor could see that I’d been thrown off balance.
“Well?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “Just a moment. Let me think.” And then I told him. “We left the home of Auntie Mee and then we found refuge in a yoguan, a Korean inn.”
“Very good,” he replied. “You passed the test. I’m convinced that you are truly Sueno.”
Then he pulled his right hand out of his pocket. A piece of thick paper-vellum or parchment, really-about the size of a playing card cut in half, wavered in the evening breeze. “Here,” he said. “For you.”
I took it out of his hands.
“What is it?”
He gestured toward the fragment. “Read.”
With both hands I held it up to my nose and twisted it to catch as much light as possible. Chinese characters. Only a few. What appeared to be a name and a date designation. Not dates like we use them, but characters for numbers and the formal designation of an imperial reign.
“Take that,” the sailor told me, “to someone who knows about these things. Let them help you determine its value. Then come back with money, however much you think my information is worth, and I will tell you how to obtain the full manuscript.”
“There’s more?” I asked.
“Much more.”
If this guy was a dealer in antiquities, I wouldn’t be interested in doing business with him. Not just because what he was doing was probably illegal but, more importantly, because I was in a different line of work. I’m a cop, not a hustler. But the question he’d asked me, the question about a stormy night in Itaewon, changed everything.
“When will I meet you?” I asked.
“We will be traveling to Tsushima for a few days and then we’ll return here. One week from today. We’ll only be in port three days. I’ll be here every night. If you bring someone with you or try to follow me, the deal will be off.”
I nodded.
The man left me with the fragment and started to walk away.
“Wait,” I said. He paused and stared at me. “The night in Itaewon. How do you know about that?”
He pointed to the fragment in my hand. “The owner of the manuscript, the one who entrusted it to me, she told me to find you and to trust no one but you.”
