'But you needed a reason for us to help her,' I prodded.
'Right. Ragyapa came up with it. Pretend that Mi-ja had been kidnapped.'
Ernie couldn't stand it any longer. His fists clenched. 'So you turned your little girl over to a criminal?'
Herman pleaded with his moist eyes. 'He was working with me.'
'And what about the ear, you dickhead?'
Ernie was becoming angry again. I patted him on the shoulder and leaned him back up against the railing of the pagoda.
'The ear was Ragyapa's idea,' Herman answered. 'I didn't like it, but he said it would really get you guys motivated to find the skull and free Mi-ja.'
'That it did,' I said. 'Did Ragyapa do the cutting?'
'No way,' Herman said. 'He's a Buddhist.'
'So who did?'
'I did it. The razor was real sharp. She didn't feel much.'
Like an enraged jaguar, Ernie leapt across the pagoda. He smashed Herman upside the head, knocked him off the bench, and started kicking. Herman yelped and curled into a fetal ball. Ernie kicked the toe of his shoe into Herman's spine about three times before I could react. Using all my strength, I pulled Ernie off.
After I got them both calmed down, I sat Herman back up on the bench.
'Sorry for the interruption, Herman.' I glanced back at Ernie. 'It won't happen again.'
Ernie leaned on the railing of the open-air pagoda, glaring at Herman, breathing hard.
Herman's peeved eyes glanced at him a couple of times and then turned back to me.
'I had to do it,' Herman said. 'It was the only way I was ever going to earn that kind of money. I did it for Mi-ja.'
I let that one sit for a while. When Ernie didn't jump, I asked, 'How so?'
'I was going to put the whole five grand in a certificate of deposit. For her college education.' When he saw we weren't buying it, he kept talking. 'They have fake ears nowadays. I've seen 'em at the One-two-one Evac. Or when she got older she could just wear her hair long. But how else was she going to get an education? My retirement check is three hundred bucks a month. I clear maybe four or five hundred more on the black market. Me and Nam were never going to come up with the kind of dough she'd need for college.'
The rain kept falling.
'What about the finger, Herman?'
He let his head hang. 'That hurt her more.' A tiny serpent of drool slipped from his lips. 'But it was only a little finger. She'd still be able to write and all that.'
'Just get on with the fucking story,' Ernie snarled. 'Just get on with it.'
Herman looked at me. I nodded.
'So you guys fell for it. And you went after Lady Ahn just like we hoped. And you helped her steal the jade skull. And when you returned back to Seoul you called me and told me you had it. I let Ragyapa know.'
Now it was my turn to explode. I gripped the railing of the pagoda tightly, until the tendons in my arms felt as if they were going to snap. I relaxed, took a deep breath, and spoke as calmly as I could.
'And with that knowledge, Ragyapa attacked Lady Ahn in the yoguan?'
'Yeah. The son of a bitch double-crossed me. We were supposed to go up there together. Instead, the fire in the yoguan starts and I'm still waiting on a street corner with my thumb up my ass. He and his boys went alone. If she'd had the skull, Ragyapa would've kept it for himself.'
'So when I told you the jade skull was locked in a safe place…'
'I figured you meant the CID safe and there was no choice but to grab it.'
'What about Mi-ja?' Ernie snarled. 'When you took off with the jade, you weren't thinking about her education then, were you?'
'That was a mistake,' Herman said. 'I guess the money got to me. But I didn't think Ragyapa would kill her. I mean, he's a Buddhist, you know. They're not supposed to kill anybody.'
'Neither are Christians.'
Herman stared at me blankly, not quite able to compute that one.
'How'd you find out that Mi-ja was murdered?' I asked.
'The lifers at the MAC terminal at Osan. That's all anyone was talking about.'
'But you boarded that flight to the States anyway.'
'I wasn't thinking clearly.'
'You just wanted to make your getaway with the skull. And now you realize that's not possible.'
'No. It's not.'
'I'm glad you finally realize all this shit, Herman.' I paced in a circle around the pagoda. 'Once you make a full confession, you'll feel better. Probably won't even be slapped with much time in the monkey house. Koreans are lenient with foreigners. Especially former military.'
'I'm not turning myself in.'
Ernie bristled. 'The hell you're not.'
'I want to be there when you exchange the skull for Lady Ahn. I want to talk to Ragyapa one more time. About how he double-crossed me. About what he did to Mi-ja.'
'Afraid that's not possible, Herman,' I said. 'You'll be in custody. Ernie and I will take the jade skull and make the exchange with Ragyapa for Lady Ahn.'
'Not without me, you won't.'
'Shit,' Ernie said. 'How the hell you going to stop us? We got the skull. We're going to kick your fat ass into jail. What the hell you going to do about it?'
Ernie snatched up Herman's leather bag and unzipped it. His eyes widened as he reached in and pulled out the heavy sphere inside.
It wasn't the jade skull of Kublai Khan. It was a patchwork of black and white pentagons. A soccer ball. Cut open.
I grabbed it and turned it upside down. Rocks clattered to the cement slab.
'You don't think I'd carry anything around as valuable as the skull, do you?' Herman asked. 'I have it hidden in a safe place. So we got a deal? We go after Ragyapa and his Mongols together?'
Ernie's teeth sounded like iron spikes grinding on stone. I steadied him with the back of my hand.
We had no choice. Beating Herman wouldn't do any good. He'd proven he was impervious to pain. Cooperating with Herman the German, the only man in the world who knew the whereabouts of the jade skull of Kublai Khan, was the only way we were going to save Lady Ahn.
Even Ernie realized it. The grinding of his teeth slowly subsided.
I spoke first. 'All right, Herman,' I said. 'We have a deal.'
'Only one more thing,' Herman answered. 'You both stay near me, to protect me from the slicky boys. And you definitely don't tell Slicky Girl Nam where I am. After what happened to Mi-ja, she'll be out looking for me. With a knife. To cut my balls off.'
'If she don't,' Ernie promised, 'I will.'
33
Herman took us to the place where Ragyapa and his boys had been holed up part of the time while they held Mi-ja.
It was a ramshackle hooch, two stories, with a mangy brown-and-gray mutt tied on a short leash in the central courtyard. As we entered, the cur barked and bared his yellow fangs.
The place was in Dong Binggo, the Eastern Ice House, a district in Seoul not a half mile from Itaewon. During the Yi dynasty, barges floated down the Han River from the mountains to the north and unloaded blocks of blue ice for storage underground. Later, the glacial chunks were cracked open when the nobles at the royal court wanted something cooled off. It was frustrating to realize that Ragyapa and Mi-ja had been so close to us. But if you drew a circle on a map, using the distance from Dong Binggo to Itaewon as the radius, you'd enclose thousands of tiny
