handles in the shape of anchors. Two sailors dressed in black with white caps and white leggings raised their rifles and came to attention as I approached. One checked my identification and I told him I was here to talk to someone about the former U.S. Liaison Officer, Lieutenant Commander Beauregard Shipton.
Some quick words were whispered into an intercom, the door was opened, and I was waved in.
The carpeted hallways were paneled with varnished oak and hung with painted scenes of historic Korean sea battles. In a glass case a metal astrolabe, one of the earliest in human history, invented by some ancient Korean scholar, glistened. I was trying to decipher the brass plaque below it when a Korean lieutenant in a dress naval uniform hurried down the hall, all smiles, holding out his hand.
“Good afternoon. You’re here about Shipton?”
“Yes.”
It turned out he was Lieutenant Lee, the Public Affairs Officer, and spoke excellent English. He took me back into his office and after checking my identification he told me the usual: that they had already given a full statement to the U.S. authorities concerning the disappearance of Lieutenant Commander Shipton, and they didn’t see anything more they could add.
“I want to speak to the people Shipton worked with,” I said.
“That would be Commander Goh, his former supervisor. Unfortunately he is very busy.”
I explained why we were after Shipton; about the three murders. And I told Lieutenant Lee that if I didn’t receive cooperation immediately more innocent people could be killed.
His eyes narrowed at that and there was some more hushed conversation on an intercom. Lieutenant Lee was clicking back on his intercom when a stout man in a naval officer’s uniform stormed into the room.
He had a craggy, square face and broad shoulders, and his chest was loaded with ribbons. The Public Affairs Officer stood up immediately and bowed.
“This,” Lieutenant Lee said, “is Commander Goh.”
Goh’s hard eyes studied me, the creases around his nose and mouth tight, as if he were having a terrific bout of indigestion. His Korean was gruff. Guttural.
“Shipton rul allago shipyo?” he said. You want to know about Shipton?
I nodded. “Nei. Allago shipoyo.” Yes. I want to know.
“Kurum. Kapshida.” Well, then. Let’s go.
The Public Affairs Officer seemed perplexed-maybe by my speaking Korean-but he made no effort to stop us. I followed Commander Goh down the carpeted hallway.
He made a couple of turns past busy offices with typewriters clattering away and gorgeous young Korean secretaries serving tea to bored-looking Korean officers. He pushed through a door with a large window in it that looked out toward another vast expanse of lawn behind the building, striding straight for the cliffs.
For a moment I thought he was going to keep going and see if I’d follow him over the edge. Instead, Goh veered toward a massive bronze statue of an ancient Korean warrior in metal helmet and brass-plated vest. Just beneath the huge sword leaning against the warrior’s leg, the commander stopped abruptly.
“Yi Sun Shin,” he said, gesturing toward the statue.
I knew who he was. The Korean admiral who’d invented the ironclad, sulphur-spewing kobuk-son-turtle boats. With his daring tactics and guerillalike forces, he had almost single-handedly stopped the invasion of Hideyoshi’s naval forces through the straits and isthmuses of the islands off the southern coast of Korea. Even in Japan, his military genius is revered.
“Yes,” I said, speaking in Korean. “He’s very famous.”
Commander Goh nodded. Satisfied.
He turned and clasped his hands behind his back and stared across the Han River below us.
“So you’ve come about Shipton,” he said in Korean.
“Yes. We have reason to believe that he’s killed three people.”
Commander Goh nodded. “He’s a very disturbed man.”
“You knew him well, then?”
“Very well. We worked together every day. We traveled together around the country to inspect naval fortifications. After work I showed him what life was like in our teahouses and in the floating world of the night.”
The military elite ran this country. They had money and they had prestige. And when they decided to visit a kisaeng house or some other place of pleasure, you can bet they received the very best. For a moment, I envied Lieutenant Commander Shipton. To run with them. Why would anyone go AWOL from a setup like that?
“What went wrong?” I asked.
Commander Goh breathed deeply of the salt air and took a few steps closer to the cliff. Twenty or thirty yards below, the churning waters of the Han River Estuary lapped against jagged rocks. He studied the low-lying fog.
“Shipton became very friendly with us. We all liked him. He even started to speak some Korean. Not as well as you, Agent Sueno, but he was progressing.”
He paused and gazed at distant clouds hovering over the Yellow Sea. The old habits of a sailor.
“One of our admirals had a daughter. She was a very well brought up young woman with a good education, but maybe she wasn’t the most attractive girl in the world. So the family was having trouble finding a suitable husband for her. It was decided that since she wasn’t going to find the very best of Korean husbands, she could settle for an American. She was introduced to Shipton.
“Besides,” Goh said, turning away from the water, “the admiral and his family had dreams of emigrating to America.”
He raised and lowered his broad shoulders.
“None of this, of course, we told to your previous investigators, Agent Sueno. We thought it would do no good. Now that he’s killed-killed again-we must tell you the full truth.”
“Killed again?”
“Yes.” He swiveled his craggy face toward me. “Can you keep what I’m about to tell you out of your report?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what it is.”
His expression didn’t change but he nodded. “We cannot afford for any of this to ever come out.”
“It will be kept strictly confidential,” I said. “Classified. No one outside of our investigative services will ever see it, unless it needs to be used in a trial.”
“But you will try him for these three murders he’s recently committed?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to reach a decision. “You won’t need what I’m about to tell you for that.” He glanced at my hands. “I notice you don’t take notes.”
“I have a good memory.”
“If I’m to tell you what I know about Shipton, it must never come up in his trial and it must never come up in your official reports.”
“You’re protecting this Korean admiral, the father of Shipton’s fiancee.”
He looked at me steadily. “Yes.”
It was a tough bargain, but I needed all the information I could gather if I was to have a chance of finding Shipton. We already had him pegged for three homicides. Maybe the evidence would be questionable in a high-class stateside trial, but for a military court-martial, here in 8th Imperial Army, it was plenty. I could get by without what Commander Goh was about to give me.
“All right, then,” I said. “No notes. No recordings. And what you tell me will never appear in an official report.”
“Or a trial?”
“Or a trial.”
He let his breath out slowly and turned away again, as if searching for strength in the distant sea.
“The girl’s name was Myong-a. Her family name isn’t important. She spoke English well, and she and Shipton liked each other immediately. It seemed as if she did something for him. Shipton had been a lonely man. He left his family years ago and had never returned home. He spoke of his mother only when asked and of his father not at all. But Myong-a was a bright girl. She knew how to make him smile and make him laugh, and it seemed that he was forgetting the horrors of the war he had left behind.”
