For a North Korean agent-especially one as. valuable as Shipton-to be caught right in the middle of the 8th Army Headquarters complex was something the North Korean Communists would avoid at all costs. The international repercussions would be too great.
If I couldn’t wait for him, I asked, how could we catch him?
Herbalist So had an answer.
I would enter the compound, he said, clandestinely. Like a thief in the night. No one, including the authorities, would be aware of my presence. Not until it was too late.
I had no idea how I could do this but he told me not to worry, I would be contacted. An escort would be provided.
Finally, I agreed. I wasn’t happy with it but he was right. It was probably the only way.
We settled on details and, in Western fashion, shook hands.
“We will contact you,” he said. “When the moment arrives.”
I bowed deeply to him and he bowed back, then left with his boys. I finished my tea and wandered out into the empty street. At each intersection I searched for the Chinese woman. She wasn’t there.
The waiting was the hard part.
To make it easier, I went down to the arms room and took a little target practice on the firing range. Palinki stood behind me, red plastic muffs over his ears.
“You’re getting better, Sueno,” he said, “but bend more at the knees. And try to relax your shoulders.”
I managed to hit the target a few times. Once, when I imagined it was Shipton, right through the heart.
After about thirty rounds, Palinki clapped me on the back.
“Keep at it and one day you’ll be the best in the detachment,” he said.
Not likely. Where I grew up nobody knew anything about handling guns, because nobody could afford them. The teenage gangs in the neighborhood went in for knives and baseball bats. Traditionalists all.
After I cleaned the. 38, I asked Palinki if he had a few more bullets he could spare-off the inventory.
“No sweat, brotha. You just keep me straight if you catch me down in the ville.”
“Will do.”
Palinki didn’t drink often, but when he did his big Samoan face flushed red and he went on a rampage, like a mindless caveman suddenly trapped in a world of maddening intricacies. Now he was in the program, attending meetings and trying not to drink. He was doing real good, but he had decided to get out of the army. The army, what with the NCO Clubs and the Happy Hours and the bars off post, was set up for drinking. Too much temptation, Palinki figured;
He was going back to Samoa and fish, he said. I hoped he made it.
I grabbed the extra rounds, popped them in my pocket, and climbed back up the cement stairwell toward the daylight.
The days slipped past slowly. Ernie was still in the 121 Evac, and at night I hung out in Itaewon expecting any minute to be contacted by Herbalist So or one of his boys. Or, better yet, the Chinese woman.
I heard nothing.
Meanwhile, the weather had cleared, the skies were porcelain blue, but the thermometer had dropped like a fighter going down from a kick to the head. Dirty snow clung to the edges of rooftops, hardening into bizarre shapes like soot-covered gargoyles.
I didn’t give up on the ration control numbers Herbalist So had provided. I stayed on the phone during the day, checking with local MP’s where the numbers had turned up, and they even made a couple of arrests. Each time, however, the story was the same. Some guy had sold the GI the ration control plate-cheap-guaranteeing that it was safe.
It looked as if Shipton was trying to keep our attention diverted. The phony ration control plate incidents worked up the spine of Korea. From Taegu to Taejon to Pyongtaek to Songt’an-up to Seoul.
He was getting closer.
I checked on Ernie every day. His condition had stabilized, and the doctors hoped he’d be up and about in a couple of weeks.
They talked about taking judicial action against him for leaving the hospital without authorization. But it was just talk. Designed more to keep him in bed and on his medications more than anything else.
Ernie passed the time by hobbling around the hospital and watching medics administer injections. And asking a lot of questions about prescriptions.
“A pharmacist,” he told me. “That’s what I should’ve been. A pharmacist.”
I laughed. That would’ve been like a glutton guarding the cream puffs.
We talked about the Nurse. He asked me a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer. No, there was no reason why she should’ve died. She was young and had much to live for. Shipton had been after us, not her, I told him. She’d just gotten in the way.
That didn’t make it any easier for him. He conned one of the medics into slipping him a few extra capsules of tranquilizers, and when I left him that day his eyes were calm, staring off into space.
The intensity of Shipton’s lust for revenge haunted me. He had killed Ernie’s girlfriend and tried to kill Ernie. All because we were chasing him or because, as the voice in the cellar had said, we had killed Miss Ku. But why did he accuse us of having killed her when it was obvious that he was the culprit? I couldn’t explain it. However, it was a topic I was looking forward to discussing with him.
Four days dragged by. Tomorrow the list of sites for the buried nuclear devices would be shipped out of Geographic Survey and their Security NCO could breathe a sigh of relief.
I was tense. I couldn’t understand why Herbalist So hadn’t contacted me. Alternate plans started in my mind. Maybe I should spill the whole story to the First Sergeant, get a few reliable MP’s assigned to accompany me, and stake out the place myself. If we played it right, maybe Shipton or his comrades wouldn’t spot us and we’d be able to trap him. I didn’t like the idea but it looked as if my request for help from the slicky boys was a bust.
I was on my way down to the snack bar for lunch, staying away from the go-go girls at the Lower Four Club. They reminded me too much of Miss Ku and the Nurse. My hands were thrust deep into my pockets, my head down.
A coal cart whizzed past me, pushed by a sturdy Korean in a cast-off wool uniform. These were the men who delivered coal to the big furnaces that kept the barracks and the public buildings on 8th Army Headquarters warm. It was a dirty job and done mostly in the wee hours of the morning when everyone else was fast asleep. It was unusual to see a coal cart during the day.
By the side of the road a group of Koreans, men and women, chopped ice to clear the sidewalk. They heaved the big chunks into a growing pile.
As I passed, one of the women jumped in front of me, brandishing a wickedly curved metal scythe. I stopped instinctively, ready to pull my hands out of my pockets and protect myself. Within the folds of the white bandana wrapped tightly beneath her chin, her wrinkled face smiled broadly.
“Greetings from Herbalist So,” she said.
For a moment I thought she was going to swing the scythe and stab the sharpened point into my heart. She read my concern and laughed.
“Tonight,” she said, “you are to visit the home of Kuang-sok’s father. Just before curfew. Be prepared.”
Kuang-sok’s father, Mr. Ma, the retired slicky boy.
The other workers were still bent over, hacking at the ice, seemingly oblivious to our little confrontation. The woman smiled again, gaps flashing in white teeth, lowered her scythe, and rejoined the line of workers.
I wanted to ask her questions but it was clear that no one had anything more to say to me. They chopped and hacked, ignoring me as if I’d never existed. I watched her broad back for a second, then continued on.
In the distance, steam rose from the snack bar’s long tin roof. Clouds rolled in. The afternoon sky started to darken.
Tonight I would invade the U.S. Army’s compound with the retired slicky boy Mr. Ma.
It had to happen tonight. This would be Shipton’s last chance to steal the information on the tunnels. And my last chance to catch him before his mission was complete and he disappeared into the mist.
I patted the. 38 under my jacket. Suddenly I wished I’d spent more time on the firing range.
