“Couldn’t sleep,” Ernie said. He glanced at the paperwork in front of us. “What you got?”
I filled Emie in on what we’d found, happy to have him back.
“How’d you get the RCP numbers?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you later.”
We decided that we had to check with both the navy and the air force liaison officers here on post. Ernie took the fly-boys. I took the squids.
“When the First Sergeant comes back from the command briefing,” I told Riley, “tell him we’re close. And we don’t have time for any damn black market detail.”
“Not to worry. I’ll keep him happy.”
As we were leaving, Miss Kim pulled a nail file out of her purse and slashed at red claws.
Ernie didn’t seem to notice. On the other hand, he didn’t offer her a stick of gum, either.
Sometimes you wear out shoe leather for days and come up with nothing, and other days you ask a simple question and people look at you like, “You didn’t know that?”
I passed by the big black anchors on the front lawn of the Commandant Headquarters, Naval Forces Korea, and pushed through a heavy teak door into carpeted offices. I pulled out the black-and-white photo that Herbalist So had given me and showed it to the petty officer sitting behind a varnished desk. The brass in the office gleamed; the odor of disinfectant and boiled coffee hung in the air.
“This guy?” the petty officer said, fingering the photo. “Sure I know him. Lieutenant Commander Bo Shipton. Navy Seal.” He shook his head. “Bad mother. Jumped ship about three, four months ago.”
Bingo!
“When did you last see him?”
“Nobody’s seen him since then.”
“Do you have his personnel folder?”
“You’ll have to talk to the commandant first.”
“Can do easy.”
The picture worked wonders. The commandant decided to see me right away. After a short chat, I obtained the information I wanted, assuring him that the integrity of the navy would be preserved. He was worried because anything that reflected badly on the navy could reflect badly on him.
The commandant offered me a cup of coffee but I didn’t have time. I was out the teak door, past an old Korean man in a ragged khaki shirt. He silently scrubbed a huge brass ball with a sticky yellow fluid.
Children skated on frozen rice paddies and smoke curled from tubelike chimneys above the straw-thatched roofs of farmhouses. The roads were slippery and spotted with broad fields of black ice. Snorting oxen pulled wooden carts laden with giant turnips. Ernie sped around the obstacles as if he had every curve and hazard preprogrammed into his brain.
“Navy Seal, huh?” he said.
“Yeah. As bad as the Green Berets. On his way up, too. An officer, twelve years in.”
“So why in the hell did he go AWOL?”
“That’s what the commandant wouldn’t talk about. His personnel folder was excellent. Beauregard Shipton, from south Texas, father a small-time rancher near the Mexican border who lost his land wildcatting for oil. Shipton had some problems with his father and wanted to be on his own. After Seal training he went to Vietnam. Served two tours there. A bunch of awards. Looks like he loved it.”
“Those fucking Seals used to go up into North Vietnam. Right into Haiphong Harbor.”
“According to Shipton’s personnel record,” I said, “he caught shrapnel in the jaw, couldn’t breathe, and performed a field tracheotomy on himself. Sliced into his own throat, stuck a bamboo tube into his windpipe, and survived like that for three days until they managed to med-evac him out.”
Ernie shifted into low gear and slowed for two farmers perched atop a rickety tractor. The tractor’s ancient engine chugged doggedly forward, billowing black smoke into the gray sky. Ernie spotted an opening in the oncoming traffic, stepped on the gas, and swerved around the rattling machine. The two farmers stared.
When he built his speed back up Ernie asked, “So you gonna tell me now? About how you got those ration control plate numbers?”
I told him about the message written in blood above the Nurse’s body and the tattered vocal cords of the landlady. I told him, too, about my meeting with Herbalist So, although I didn’t mention the ceremony.
“So in the morning,” Ernie said, “the Chinese girl gave you this information?”
“Right.”
“This guy, Shipton, must be living off the black market, pulling down a grand or two every month.”
“Probably.”
“So why’s he killing people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who do you think is next on his list?”
“Us.”
Ernie nodded. “Makes more sense than the people he’s killed so far. At least with us he has a reason. We’re trying to put him behind bars.”
I moved my arm and felt the 38 rub against my chest. “Behind bars,” I said. “That’s one place to send him.”
“Or to hell, huh?”
“Maybe better.”
The road curved into a farm village. Ernie didn’t slow much but blinked his lights on and off, and the white- gloved policeman on a platform in the center of town whistled us through. Schoolgirls with waist-long pigtails scurried out of our way, pointing and giggling at the long-nose GI’s.
The road sign pointed toward Heing-ju Sansong, the fortified cliffs of Heingju, two kilometers away.
In the sixteenth century the Japanese Shogun, Hideyoshi, invaded Korea. The bulk of Hideyoshi’s naval armada streamed up the Han River, past the cliffs of Heing-ju, heading for Seoul, the ancient capital of the Yi Dynasty. It was there at Heing-ju that the Korean defenders made their stand. They blockaded the river with pontoons filled with fighting men and huge sharpened stakes near the shore and from the cliffs of Heing-ju they launched fire arrows and blazing oil-soaked clumps of hemp and rock from wooden catapults.
Hideyoshi and his fleet took heavy losses, but in the end the Japanese landed successfully farther upriver. The Shogun’s forces swallowed Korea whole, causing untold destruction and death. It might’ve happened a long time ago but the Koreans still remembered it, as they remembered every crime perpetrated on them by the Japanese.
In memory of the great battle, the ROK Navy’s Central Headquarters was stationed here at Heing-ju, on the cliffs overlooking the blue expanse of the Han River Estuary. Lieutenant Commander Bo Shipton had been given a plum assignment-liaison officer to the ROK Navy, the only American serving with them at this headquarters. It was from here that he had gone AWOL three months ago. So far, no one had been able to tell me why.
Technically, Shipton was no longer AWOL. Thirty days after jumping ship his status had been changed. The U.S. Navy now officially classified him as a deserter.
The ROK Navy headquarters building was a rambling, single-story brick building with an elegant facade of inlaid brass and teak. A single pole stood out front. From it, the Korean flag fluttered in the breeze off the Han River. An expanse of lawn, brown and stunted now in the icy winter wind, spread toward the cliffs and dropped off into gray mist.
Ernie pulled in near the end of the parking lot and turned off the engine. I looked at him.
“You going in?”
“Too much brass. You take it.”
“Okay.”
He settled back in the canvas seat and pulled out a flat, brown paper sack stuffed with magazines from Scandinavia. Long legs, blond hair, pale skin.
“What’s the matter, pal?” I asked. “Getting kinky on me?”
“No. Just need some shit to tell Strange.”
That’s Ernie. Always prepared.
I climbed out of the jeep and headed across the gravel parking lot toward a huge double door with brass
