the top of his head.
A disciple hissed. 'Someone is coming.'
Ragyapa spat out the last of the blood and slid off the pony. His fellow Mongols crouched in the shadows behind the equipment of the amusement park. Footsteps scraped on gravel. A man appeared beneath the stone archway.
He wore a khaki uniform and a visored cap. Cautiously, he scanned the park. Fondling his big metal whistle, he stepped forward.
Ragyapa couldn't call out, but he knew that his trained monks would take the action that was necessary.
The policeman strolled slowly toward the pony and the small carousel.
As he passed the wooden replica of a small train engine, a man slipped out of the darkness, moving with all the quickness of death itself. Ragyapa saw the flash of the blade and then the policeman's head being jerked viciously backward. There was a gurgling sound and in the glow of the almost full moon, blood spurted across stiffly starched khaki.
'Hold him!' Ragyapa commanded.
He rushed forward, holding the wooden bowl, blood sloshing over its edges.
As the other Mongols held the struggling policeman, Ragyapa lifted the bowl up to the cruel gash in his neck and caught the hot, squirting gore.
The policeman slumped to the ground. One of the Mongols dragged him into the caboose of the wooden train. Ragyapa stared down at the full bowl, satisfied.
When his disciples gathered around him, Ragyapa raised the bowl up to the almost full moon.
'Nothing will stop us,' he said, 'from finding the jade skull of our ancestor, the Great Khan Kublai.'
'Nothing will stop us,' the men intoned.
'All power to the Lord Mahakala!'
Ragyapa lowered the bowl to his lips and drank deeply. He handed the bowl to the Mongol standing next to him, who drank and passed it on.
Ragyapa fumbled inside his tunic and pulled out six train tickets. He handed one to each man.
Embossed on each ticket in Korean and English was the name of their destination.
Taejon.
16
Clouds boiled atop the peaks of the Bomun Mountains, far to the south of the city, watching us.
At the Taejon bus station, the milling crowds of Koreans stared at the three tall people moving amongst them. We carried overnight bags slung over our shoulders and the three of us-Lady Ahn, Ernie, and me-all wore blue jeans and sneakers. Ernie and I topped this outfit with bland-looking PX-bought sports shirts, but Lady Ahn brightened up the whole world with a shimmering red silk blouse.
I had trouble keeping my eyes off of her. Although I did my best not to make my attention obvious, she noticed. But I don't think she minded much.
At the ticket window, Lady Ahn purchased three express bus tickers to Ok-dong. I'd never heard of the place but she assured me it was on the coast of the Yellow Sea. When I tried to hand her a few bills, she pushed my money away.
'No,' she said firmly. 'You help me, I pay.'
Ernie leaned against a cement pillar, gazing intently at the women in the crowd. When he occasionally found one he liked, he zeroed in on her like radar honing in on a North Korean fighter jet.
Sometimes the women noticed and turned away. Sometimes they noticed and giggled. But whatever their reaction, it made no difference to Ernie. It was his right to stare, he figured. And until someone hit him in the forehead with a two-by-four, he'd continue to do it.
Before we climbed on the bus, Ernie stopped at a snack stand and bought four double packets of ginseng gum. If we were heading for the wilds, he needed proper provisions.
Outside the windows of the bus, the city of Taejon faded into warehouses and factories and finally into broad fields crisscrossed with the wet patchworks of rice paddies. The bright sunshine turned the tender rice shoots emerald green. Straw-hatted farmers, pant legs rolled up, waded through the muck, hunched over their work as intently as physicists peering through electron microscopes. White cranes rose from the paddies, lifting lazily into the blue sky.
I sat next to Lady Ahn and Ernie sat right behind us, next to an old lady eating watermelon seeds. She popped open a few seeds, sucked out the nut inside, and after a while offered some to Ernie. He accepted gladly and soon she had accepted a stick of ginseng gum in return.
She chattered away happily in Korean, Ernie smiling and nodding occasionally, not understanding a word she said. Actually, she was telling him about her grandchildren, but Ernie didn't give a damn one way or the other.
Lady Ahn was silent for the first part of the trip, the smooth flesh of her forehead crinkled slightly in concentration.
At the front of the bus sat a uniformed stewardess who occasionally made trips down the aisle handing out warm hand towels or lukewarm cups of barley tea. I used the towel to wipe down the back of my neck, because without the rain the morning was beginning to become a little warm.
Lady Ahn looked as cool as a chilled melon.
One thing we Mexicans know about is patience. I didn't push her. I didn't badger her with questions. I waited.
About an hour later, it paid off.
She turned in her seat and studied my face.
'You're not an American,' she said.
'Yes,' I answered. 'I am an American.'
'But your family, they come from another place.'
'My parents were both born in Mexico.'
'Aah.' She nodded gravely. 'Mexico.'
Lady Ahn seemed to be weighing something in her mind. Finally, she spoke again. 'I have question about Mexico.'
'Shoot.'
'Why is it a poor country?'
That one stumped me. Mexico had been poor, was poor now, and probably always would be poor. But why, I had never thought about. Lady Ahn continued.
'Mexico is bigger than Korea, isn't it?'
I nodded.
'And it has many mountains and gold mines and much land to grow rice or corn or whatever people want to eat.'
I nodded again.
'So why is it poor?'
I thought about the Spanish legacy, the corruption, the overcrowding, the millions of acres of land that would never be irrigated. I tried to formulate an answer for her but it didn't hang together. So I told the truth.
'I don't know why Mexico is poor, Lady Ahn.'
She studied me for a while longer, that same serious expression on her perfect features.
'Your family, did they come from Spain?'
I didn't know exactly. Most of the' explanations I'd received from my relatives had been pretty garbled but I gave her the most accurate answer I was aware of.
'Some,' I said.
She leaned forward slightly, excited now. 'Were they conquistadors?'
