Had the thief planned on shooting Han Ok-hi? I doubted it. More likely his target had been the owner of the Olympos Casino, probably because he expected there to be more money hidden in a safe in his office. But the owner had fled through the escape hatch in the back wall, the thief had fired in an attempt to stop him, and poor innocent Han Ok-hi had stepped in front of a bullet that hadn’t been intended for her.
That’s the way I saw the case so far.
The next question was, where would the dark thief and the smiling woman go?
Somewhere in Seoul, no doubt. Somewhere they felt safe. Home, probably. But where was that? In a city of eight million people, it wouldn’t be easy to pinpoint them. But there were ways. There had to be.
Once we left the outskirts of Inchon, the train picked up speed. Small stations flashed by: Jeimul-po, Dong- am, Pupyong, Buchon. But we didn’t stop at any of them. This was the express. Seoul Station was our destination. Nothing less. A half hour later, we slowed as we rolled through the densely populated district of Yongdung-po, and then we wound our way onto a bridge that crossed the blue expanse of the Han River. There, on the far river bank, rose the mighty city of Seoul. Green-topped Namsan Mountain loomed to the right, the skyscrapers of the downtown district were straight ahead and to the left. Behind them, craggy granite peaks had long protected the ancient capital from marauding nomads from the north. The train slowed as it reached the far bank and the tracks rose slightly and we rumbled through the southern district of Yongsan. Finally, two miles later, we came to a halt behind the stately old Seoul Station. It was a round-domed building, made of brick, and looked like something out of Doctor Zhivago. It had been built in the 1890s by Russian architects, supposedly a gift to the Korean people from the Czar.
I jumped off the train onto the cement platform and strolled along with the flow of the crowd, surveying directional signs, keeping my eyes open for anything that might give me a hint of where the smiling woman had gone.
At a long row of turnstiles, I stood in line and handed my ticket to a uniformed Korean conductor. The white-gloved man squinted at me curiously but made no comment. Inside the main hall of the station, people hustled back and forth: women balancing bundles on their heads, men pushing carts laden with wood-framed boxes, school children in black military uniforms with square backpacks slung over their shoulders.
Outside, rows of vendors. Six times as many as at the Inchon Station. Systematically, I worked through every stall, showing the sketches of the two men and the smiling woman. Just as systematically, I was told no one had ever seen them before. I showed the sketches to the two policemen working traffic in front of the bus and taxi stands. Again, the response was negative.
The entire left wing of Seoul Station was occupied by 8th Army’s RTO, the Rail Transportation Office. Inside was a counter for traveling GIs to buy train tickets, a small PX, a snack stand, even a barber shop. A little piece of America. Ernie’s highly polished jeep, with its distinctive leather tuck-and-roll interior, sat parked out front. He was waiting for me inside, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to enter 8th Army’s RTO. It would be too much like leaving Korea. I wanted to stay with the people-Koreans-as the smiling woman and the dark thief had done. So, instead of searching for Ernie, I walked down a cement stairway and joined the crowd in a pedestrian tunnel crossing beneath the busy thoroughfare that ran in front of Seoul Station. There were more vendors on the far end of the underpass and more negative responses. I continued walking into the heart of Seoul. In the distance, I saw the green tile-roofed edifice of Namdae-mun, the Great South Gate, a meticulously preserved remnant of the stone wall that had once surrounded the entire ancient capital. Skyscrapers loomed over dark alleys lined with canvas lean-tos. People swarmed everywhere. Signs hung from brick walls covered with the neatly stenciled hangul lettering or the elegantly slashed characters of Chinese script. Squid tentacles boiled in oil, dumplings steamed in straw baskets. Only a few of the Koreans strolling past me gawked at the tall Miguk wandering lost through their bustling city.
I felt alone in this multitude. Where had she gone? Where was the smiling woman?
A horn sounded from behind. Ernie leaned out the driver’s side of his jeep.
“What are you, Sueno, lost?”
I turned away from him and stared into the endless passageways, inhaling deeply the garlic and green onion and rice powder wafting in the air.
Ernie was right. I was lost. As lost as a little half-American girl who’d grown up in this indifferent city. A girl who didn’t belong here. A girl who probably hadn’t even been able to afford to go to school, who hadn’t worn the same dark skirts and tunics and white blouses as the other school-age girls, who hadn’t been welcomed at the playground or the sports field or patted on the head fondly by a bald Buddhist monk. A girl who’d grown up in this teeming city apart. Alone. A girl who’d grown up, despite all her travails, to become a beautiful woman. Beautiful, mad, and dangerous.
Ernie honked again. He parked the jeep, jumped out, and ran after me. Seconds later, he grabbed me by the elbow.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Sueno? Couldn’t you hear me?”
“I could hear you,” I said.
“Then come on! Eighth Army’s had MPs out looking for us all morning.”
A finger of cold fear poked into my stomach. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t know yet. They won’t tell me. But we have to get our butts back to the CID office right away.”
“Why?”
“The CG,” Ernie said. He meant the Commanding General of the 8th United States Army.
“What about him?”
“He wants to talk to us.”
“Us?”
“That’s what I said.”
Ernie tugged me toward the jeep. This time I followed.
Tango.
That is the military code name and what everybody calls the place. Also known as 8th Army Headquarters (Rear). It’s a huge cavern carved out of the side of Mount Baekun, fifteen miles south of Seoul. If and when war broke out with North Korea, this would be the place our heroic military commanders and their bureaucratic staffs would retreat to. It’s a small city unto itself, with offices, communications facilities, sleeping quarters, a chow hall, and even a PX to make sure that no one runs out of chewing gum or cigarettes. They say that Tango’s inner concrete walls are thick enough to withstand a direct nuclear blast of thirty megatons. Now, in the late afternoon haze, twenty-foot-high sliding steel doors stood open, like the welcoming jaws of a hungry dragon.
A squad of MPs approached our Army-issue sedan.
“What’s this all about, Top?” Ernie asked.
Ernie and I were sitting in the back seat. Up front, behind the wheel, was the Provost Marshal’s white-gloved driver, Mr. Huang. Next to him sat our immediate supervisor, the First Sergeant of the 8th Army CID Detachment.
As soon as Ernie and I had returned from Inchon and reported to the CID headquarters in Seoul, all hell broke loose.
“Where you been?” was the main question, interlaced with various four-letter Anglo-Saxon expletives. We heard it from Staff Sergeant Riley, from the CID First Sergeant, and a few minutes later, from Colonel Brace himself, the Provost Marshal of the 8th United States Army.
Neither Ernie nor I answered. They knew where we’d been. Investigating a crime. What they really meant to ask was “What took you so long?” and “Why weren’t you here when I needed information from you in order to avoid bureaucratic embarrassment?”
They knew all about the robbery of the Olympos Casino. It was big news this morning at the 8th Army Command briefing. Mainly because an Army issue. 45-probably mine- had been used to shoot a female Korean bystander. A GI had probably pulled the trigger. This was also the crux of the story splashed all over the Korean newspapers, television, and radio that day.
The Pacific Stars amp; Stripes, official newspaper of the U.S. Department of Defense, had yet to find the story interesting enough to run. They were, however, featuring a full-page spread on the new outhouse built by a combat engineer unit at an orphanage in Mapo.
Ernie and I had just started to type up our report when the First Sergeant emerged from his office, wearing a freshly pressed dress uniform. We were ordered out to the Provost Marshal’s sedan, told to climb in the back seat,
