A fisherman and his son rowed slowly on a splintered prow down the river, heading for the verdant waters of the estuary. As they slipped out of the fog Commander Goh watched them, and when they were once again covered in mist he resumed his speech.
“What Shipton didn’t know, and what most Americans don’t know, is that we Koreans are a very practical people. Marriage, to us, is primarily an economic union, a union designed to continue the growth and prosperity of the family. Love, if it comes at all, comes later and grows slowly. Marriage proposals don’t usually start with love for us. But they did for Shipton.
“Myong-a, however, was a spirited young woman, and as such she had been in love with a Korean man, one of her former classmates at middle school. A man who wasn’t suited for her. A common laborer. Even though she was planning on marrying Shipton and leaving the country, she-foolishly and to the shame of her father-continued to see this man, “Shipton, although somewhat befuddled by your American notions of love, was also observant and shrewd. It didn’t take him long to realize that not all of Myong-a’s devotion was directed toward him.”
Commander Goh opened his palms toward the heavens. “Shipton followed her, waited to see what she was planning to do, and broke in on them while she was in a room in a cheap yoguan with her young man.”
He shook his head, his eyes crinkling, as if he were fighting back tears.
“He killed them both! Why? So foolish. So rash. And then he was gone. We never saw him again. The National Police found the bodies, but when they discovered the identity of the girl we were notified and we immediately assumed jurisdiction of the investigation.”
Korea had been under virtual martial law since the Korean War. A few strings, pulled in the right places, and the navy could have what it wanted. Even a murder investigation.
“Why didn’t you notify us?” I asked.
“Ah, don’t you see? This became a personal matter. Between the officers here at Navy Headquarters and Shipton. We wanted to catch him before he somehow slipped out of our country. We wanted our own revenge.”
“But you failed?”
“Yes. Lieutenant Commander Shipton is a very resourceful man.”
“And as a consequence, three more people are dead.”
Commander Goh’s eyes burned into mine. “Would you have been able to stop him, Agent Sueno?”
I thought of our own contacts on the Korean economy. Slim to none. If the ROK Navy investigators hadn’t been able to find Shipton, we were unlikely to.
“No,” I said. “We probably wouldn’t have.”
The commander nodded. “So don’t put the blood of these new victims on our hands.”
Bureaucratic shuffling. Even when the entrails of sweet young ladies are being sliced out of their soft bodies. I thought of the Nurse and I got mad. Mad at their arrogance, their willingness to keep things covered up, their overbearing desire to have their integrity protected, no matter what the cost. Even at the cost of blood.
“If the blood is not on your hands, whose hands is it on?” I asked bluntly.
“Shipton’s.”
He was right, but he was also wrong. With more manpower, maybe we would’ve stumbled onto Shipton by now. Maybe Ernie and I would’ve been less gullible. Maybe we would’ve been more likely to protect Miss Ku and the Nurse. But I was too angry to argue. It was useless now. I only wanted one thing. To bring Shipton down.
“I want everything your investigators have uncovered.”
“They will brief you.”
“Now,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
We marched silently back into the headquarters building.
They showed me photographs of the two bodies. The young woman laying naked in an alley, her neck snapped. The young man with sliced arms, razorlike cuts to the legs and torso, a deep killing gash in the center of his chest below the sternum.
A couple of Korean sailors in dungarees were standing next to the jeep, goofing off from a work detail. Ernie was leaning out of the jeep, showing them the pictures in the magazines, pointing and making comments that had them laughing uproariously.
It was good to see his spirits lifting.
When he saw me coming, he folded up the magazine and handed it to one of the sailors. The sailor tried to refuse but Ernie insisted and also presented both of them with a couple of sticks of gum. They chomped happily with their big square bronze jaws.
“Took you long enough,” Ernie said.
“You should’ve gone in there with me. Some of the secretaries are finer than moon goddesses.”
“Yeah?”
Commander Goh strode quickly across the lawn. Both sailors snapped to attention, saluted, bowed, and got back to work. Commander Goh ignored them and stopped at our jeep.
“You also are an investigator?” he asked, staring at Ernie. His English was accented but understandable.
“Yes,” Ernie said.
Commander Goh shook his forefinger at me and resumed speaking in Korean.
“He, too, must abide by our bargain. Silence on the murder of the daughter of one of our brother officers.”
“Kokchong halgossi oopsoyo,” I said. You have nothing to worry about.
He nodded, took another hard look at Ernie, turned, and strode away.
“Who was that asshole?” Ernie asked.
“His name’s Commander Goh. He wanted to make sure you and me are operating on the same sheet of music.”
“Why?”
“Let’s get out of here. Then I’ll tell you.”
The two sailors in faded dungarees waved as we drove off.
I filled Ernie in on what I’d learned. About how the ROK investigators had followed Shipton around the country, how he’d eluded them by only minutes in a couple of spots, but eventually he’d disappeared entirely from their radar screens. They figured he was receiving help. Possibly from one of the organized crime syndicates in the country.
Ernie frowned. “The slicky boys?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. They’re not the only hoodlums in the country.”
If Shipton was receiving help, he would’ve been a natural for mobsters to use to obtain phony identification and buy black market items out of the commissaries and the PX’s. And that’s what we could’ve been checking out all this time, but the ROK Navy hadn’t notified us. I complained about that, but it didn’t seem to bother any of the stoic Korean investigators. The fact that a kisaeng and a business girl had been slaughtered cut no ice with them. And they were only vaguely disturbed by the murder of a British soldier.
As usual, Ernie summed up the situation.
“So we still don’t know where in the hell he is?”
“You got that right.”
“So what’s our next move?”
I pulled out the slip of paper the Chinese girl had given me this morning.
“Eighth Army Data Processing,” I told Ernie. “We live in an age of computer punch cards.”
Ernie shifted into low gear, gunned the engine, shifted back into high, and swerved around a farmer riding a rickety wooden buggy pulled by a flea-bitten pony.
“Fuck a bunch of computers,” he said.
31
