your ribs.”
“I lost a little weight.”
“I’ll say. Didn’t they feed you up there?”
“Sometimes.”
Ernie turned back toward the jeep. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“There’s a couple of people I want you to meet.”
I led Ernie into the inn.
Il-yong liked him right away. They played a game where Ernie hid a coin and Il-yong squealed with delight when he occasionally managed to grab it. Doc Yong knew Agent Ernie Bascom from before, when she’d been in charge of the women’s health clinic in Itaewon. As part of our duties as Criminal Investigation agents, we’d worked with her on many cases, mostly involving young women who were raped or otherwise abused. In the past she’d been cold to Ernie, barely tolerating him in fact, but this time she ordered him to sit down in front of her and made him swear never to report her presence to anyone in the South Korean government. He swore.
After paying the bill, we hopped in the jeep and headed back to Seoul. Doc Yong sat in back, clutching Il- yong, terrified-I thought-by the opulence she saw around her. The neon signs, the whizzing traffic, buses full-to- bursting with people commuting to and from work. The noise, the honking, the whistles. The shops packed with food and radios and televisions. The gaudily painted movie marquees. None of this was part of life in North Korea. In the “people’s paradise” workers stayed put, living either near their factories or in them. Nobody commuted. Nobody had cars. Traveling was considered suspicious activity. Disloyal. Here, everyone was on the move. The bustling city of Seoul was disorienting to me too. People hurtling this way and that. There didn’t seem to be any order to this society. I wasn’t sure I could get used to it.
That afternoon, we found a place in Itaewon for Doc Yong and my son to stay. After they were settled in, Ernie drove me to the Yongsan Compound. First we stopped at the emergency room of the 121 Evacuation Hospital and a medical aide there redressed my wounded leg and gave me a shot of something to keep the swelling down. Then we went to my room in the barracks where I was greeted by a few of the guys I knew. I showered and changed into my dress green uniform.
A half hour later, I reported to the J-2, the Chief of Military Intelligence for the Eighth United States Army, U.S. Forces Korea, and the United Nations Command. Within minutes, a meeting was convened and a row of officers sat on a dais before me. One of them was Major Bulward, the man who’d led my briefings before I’d departed for North Korea. The senior officer was Colonel Yancy, Chief of Intelligence for Eighth Army.
“They want what?” Colonel Yancy peered at me, his blue eyes incredulous in his puffy red face.
“Ammunition,” I repeated. “Weapons. Medical supplies. It’s an insurrection, sir. The Manchurian Battalion wants to lead the fight against the Dear Leader. They don’t want him to inherit power from his father. Others will join them, like the Second Corps commander in the Hamgyong Province.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Bandit Lee told me.”
“Who’s he?”
“The leader of the Manchurian Battalion.”
My debriefing continued like this for hours, Eighth Army wanting mainly to know where the tunnel was, but I refused to tell them. Not until I was promised two things. First, a commitment that they’d supply ammunition and medical supplies to the Manchurian Battalion. With helicopters, the supplies could be flown right across the DMZ and dropped near Mount O-song. This suggestion was received with resounding silence. Second, that Eighth Army would obtain a full pardon from the South Korean government for the charges that had been lodged against Doctor Yong In-ja before she’d fled north.
Naively, I expected immediate compliance. Maybe they’d court-martial me later for trying to run my own foreign policy, but right now they were under pressure to act. After all, any delay could endanger the first armed uprising that Kim Il-sung’s regime had faced since taking power in 1948. Surely, if they practiced what they preached, if-as we’d so often been told-the godless North Koreans were the worst threat to Western civilization since the Black Plague, the anticommunist honchos of the Eighth United States Army would want to help. When they dissembled, I was appalled.
“They’re dying up there,” I told them. “Maybe they can hold out for a few days. Maybe only a few hours. We have to act now.”
“We understand your concern,” Major Bulward said.
“It’s more than concern,” I said. “They’ll be slaughtered.” I thought of the men of the Manchurian Battalion who’d risked their lives to rescue me from torture. I thought of the people who’d so generously nursed me back to health, who’d taken care of my son, who’d protected his mother from harm. “We have to do something!” I said. “We have to act now.”
But no one acted. Negotiations dragged on. Gradually, it dawned on me that they weren’t going to act. Instead, they kept hammering me for information on the tunnels. I kept refusing. Demanding now, in writing, the two things I wanted. Resupply for the Manchurian Battalion and freedom for Doc Yong. I was threatened with not only court-martial but also being charged with every crime in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Still, I’d been around military law enforcement long enough, and the uses and abuses of power in the Eighth United States Army, to know that when you have a bargaining chip, you don’t give it up. Not without ironclad guarantees.
And I had the tunnels.
Enraged, Colonel Yancy restricted me to the compound. For security reasons, he told me. But the real reason was that after having spent so much time in North Korea, and after having expressed views sympathetic to the Manchurian Battalion, the honchos of Eighth Army no longer trusted me. If they ever had.
Now, with the suspicion that had so unexpectedly turned my way, I wouldn’t have left the compound anyway. I didn’t want anyone following me to the hooch where Doc Yong and Il-yong were staying.
I did manage to break free from my briefings for long enough to make it over to Eighth Army Finance and collect the back pay that was due me. I’d never had so much money in one chunk in my entire life. Some of it I converted to won.
At night, Ernie took the money I’d converted and a few things-baby oil and fruit juice and cartons of powdered milk-out to Il-yong and Doc Yong. He took a circuitous route and promised he’d watch for anyone tailing him. I longed to go with him but dared not. Who knew what spies were lurking? It was too dangerous. Not only could I be court-martialed for violating my restriction, but, without a pardon, if Doc Yong were arrested, she might spend the rest of her life in a South Korean prison.
After two days, it was apparent that Eighth Army wasn’t going to budge. They weren’t going to provide ammunition and medical supplies for a group of fighters whom they considered to be Communist bandits and enemies of their allies in the South Korean government.
Still, they wanted the information on the location of the tunnel. I refused to give it to them. They eventually did what I’d been expecting, formally threatening me with court-martial.
“That’s why we sent you up there,” Major Bulward told me. “To gather intelligence for the United States of America. You’re under orders to provide that information.”
Still, I refused.
The federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth was a long way away. In the wheat fields of Kansas. But if I had to go there to protect Doc Yong and my son, I’d do it.
Strange told us to meet him at the “snatch bar.” It was actually the Eighth United States Army Snack Bar. GIs called it the “snatch bar” because occasionally a young soldier managed to form a liaison with one of the American female civilians or dependent teenage daughters who frequented the busy cafeteria. Of course, when one did, he’d blather the news all over the barracks.
Strange was the NCO in charge of classified material at the headquarters of the Eighth United States Army. I didn’t believe he was one of those lucky GIs. Not with his potbelly, receding hairline, and cigarette hanging limply from a plastic holder. Still, he thought he was Mister Cool.
“They’re not buying it,” he told me.
“Buying what?” Ernie asked.
“Sueno’s bargain. He wants his girlfriend let off…”
“She’s more than my ‘girlfriend,’ ” I said. We’d been through too much together for our relationship to be brushed off so easily.
