around the pathway and Lady Ahn stumbled on something, I think the wreckage of a wooden crate. She tripped and sprawled forward, letting go of the jade, and crashed face-first into the mud.
The armored vehicle rolled slowly downhill.
Lady Ahn bounced back up almost immediately, gazing forward, screaming.
The jade skull skittered across the slick pathway like a soccer ball heading for the goal. It rolled in front of the armored vehicle, bounced, hit the metal floorboard, rolled again, and stopped just beneath the clattering treads.
In seconds it would be crushed.
Lady Ahn wailed and charged forward. I tried to stop her, but the smooth flesh of her forearm slipped out of my grip. When she reached the front of the armored vehicle, she dived, scrabbling forward, almost there.
We heard a crunching sound and saw what seemed to be a puff of green dust. And then a scream.
Lightning flashed. Thunder. And then a wall of rain hammered down.
My eyes were momentarily blinded by the lightning but then I focused. The long row of treads ground heavily across Lady Ahn's leg.
Only when the vehicle passed could we pull Lady Ahn out of the path of the next armored vehicle rattling down the lane.
A tiny sea of green gravel swirled in the running rainwater. It began to trickle like the tail of a comet into the dark gutter. I reached forward and grabbed a handful. The remains of the jade skull of Kublai Khan sifted through my fingers like the dust of a giant emerald.
The armored vehicle stopped. The hatch opened. Soldiers started to climb out.
'Pick her up! Carry her!' Herman shouted. 'I'll cover you!'
Herman waved the M-16 he'd taken from the soldier he'd squashed.
Ernie and I did as we were told. We started trundling Lady Ahn away from the armored vehicle. Herman let go a burst of fire. The soldiers hopped back into the armored vehicle and slammed the lid shut.
At the top of the hill, I looked back down at the intersection in front of Guanghua-mun. Even up here we could hear the gunfire and the screams. The students were surrounded. The soldiers of the White Horse Division were cutting through them like hot bayonets through lard.
'I told you the government would get pissed off,' Herman said.
Ernie slapped his head. 'Shut the fuck up, will you?'
Lady Ahn's leg was mangled and bleeding badly. But she wasn't whimpering. I whipped off my belt and used it as a tourniquet. When I tightened it, she winced at the pain but didn't cry out. She seemed lost in a world of misery, and I don't think it had anything to do with her leg.
We wandered through alleys until we reached a section of Seoul where life was still somewhat normal. Waving the M-16, Herman stopped a cab. The terrified driver skidded to a halt. Ernie and I loaded Lady Ahn aboard and climbed in after her. There wasn't room for Herman.
'Report to the MP Station,' Ernie told Herman. 'You're still in my custody.'
'Not the MP Station,' Herman said. 'I have some things to take care of first.'
'I said the MP Station!'
Herman leveled the M-16. Ernie gazed into the barrel.
'Okay,' Ernie said. 'Maybe I was a little hasty. Where would you like to surrender?'
To my surprise, Herman answered.
'Itaewon. Tomorrow afternoon. Four o'clock.'
Ernie nodded. 'Sure. Any particular spot?'
'Yeah. The Virtuous Dragon Dumpling House, where they chopped up Mi-ja's ear. And come alone. You and George. No one else.'
Ernie looked at him quizzically. 'Okay, Herm baby. You got it.'
I told the driver to take us to Yongsan Compound. 'And bali bali!' Hurry.
The nervous driver nodded, sweat dripping from his nose. He jammed the kimchi cab into gear.
Lady Ahn's blood trickled through my fingers.
37
Ernie held out his shiny new. 45 and let the monsoon rain splash off of it.
'Damn thing's too new,' he complained. 'No rust on it.'
We stood under a storefront awning in Itaewon, across the street from the Virtuous Dragon Dumpling House.
'They're not supposed to have rust on them,' I said. 'It causes them to jam.'
'An old wives' tale,' Ernie said. 'You have to work a weapon in, let it get dirty and muddy so all the gears mesh right.'
'Pistols don't have gears.'
Ernie stared at me. 'That's the problem with you, George. You take all this technical shit too seriously.'
I ignored him and studied the front of the Dumpling House. So far, Herman hadn't entered. If he kept his word, he should be here any minute.
Last night, when we arrived at the front gate of Yongsan Compound, the MPs wouldn't let us through with an 'unauthorized civilian' in the cab. I told them to go fuck themselves and forced the driver to take us to the 121 Evacuation Hospital anyway.
The emergency room nurse was also reluctant. But once she took a look at Lady Ahn's wounds, she went ahead and started working on her.
The doctors were worried that they might have to amputate Lady Ahn's leg. The decision would be made tonight. Luckily, they hadn't spared the sedatives, because Lady Ahn was still more distraught about losing the jade skull than about losing any part of her body.
We'd spent most of the day at the CID office writing up our reports and getting new weapons issued and taking a series of ass-chewings from the First Sergeant. He was pissed that we'd let Herman escape, pissed that we'd been involved with a civilian demonstration, pissed that a civilian woman had been admitted to a military hospital.
I reminded him a couple of times that if we hadn't stopped Choi So-lan, the Buddhist nun, from torching herself last night, the entire country would've become engulfed in an armed revolt. As it was, the students were put down and the nun escaped alive.
This cut no ice with the First Sergeant. It was all the military regulations we'd broken that gave him a case of the ass-and the explaining he had to do to the Eighth Army honchos. He almost restricted us to compound while all our actions were being 'reviewed,' but we talked him out of it by mentioning that we had a rendezvous with Herman the German this afternoon.
He wanted to know where, because he was planning on sending at least a platoon of MPs to pick Herman up. If the First Sergeant and the Military Police handled it in their usual clumsy way, Herman would smell a trap and bolt and we might never see him again.
When we wouldn't spill, the First Sergeant gave in.
'But you'd better bring him back,' he told us. 'And I mean tonight. And I want him locked up in the MP Station. You got that?'
We said yeah about eighteen times and he finally let us go.
It was a gentle rain that was falling on Itaewon. Danbi, the Koreans call it. Sweet rain.
The thick cloud cover allowed only a filtered gray light to illuminate the village. Wind whistled through the alleys. But still, Itaewon smelled of roses, as if the pattering rain had washed away all its sins.
My body ached and I was cut and bruised all over. So was Ernie. But we could operate. Operate well enough to wrap this case up once and for all.
A foot sloshed into a puddle. I elbowed Ernie. 'It's him.'
Like a fat shadow, Herman slipped into the front door of the Virtuous Dragon Dumpling House.
'Let's go.'
