Fetch? This guy’s English was becoming more impressive by the minute.
“Who?” I asked.
“In time.” He blew smoke in the air from his Turtle boat cigarette. “Now is my time.”
His first grammatical failing.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” I asked.
“About Corporal Matthewson.”
I tried to hide the surprise on my face.
“We believe she’s become a deserter,” he said.
Deserter. A loaded word. Technically, Corporal Jill Matthewson would begin to be carried on the 2nd Division books as a deserter as soon as she had been absent without leave for thirty days. One week from today. This is standard procedure. But this mystery man was calling her a deserter right now. To classify Corporal Matthewson as a deserter before the thirty days were up, you needed knowledge of her intent, her intent to desert. But I ignored the word deserter for a moment.
“Who,” I asked, “is ‘we’?”
He waved his cigarette in the air. “Unimportant. What’s important is that we have reason to believe that you will be opposed, and opposed quite forcefully, if you continue your search for Corporal Matthewson.”
“Are you warning me to stop?”
“Not at all. This is just one cop to another. There are dangerous people involved and I feel it is only fair to warn you that this is not your usual-how you say? — fender bender.”
“Not your usual missing person’s case.”
“Exactly.”
His big Asian face beamed, satisfied that I was beginning to understand. I felt like a disciple of Confucius who’d just realized the importance of filial piety.
“But you don’t want me to stop looking for her,” I said.
He shrugged. “That’s up to you. And your superiors.”
“Are you looking for her?”
He shrugged again.
“Will you try to stop me?”
This time he didn’t move. Instead, he puffed on his cigarette and studied me through the smoke. A long silence passed between us.
“We’ve heard of you,” he said. “We Koreans are always impressed when a foreigner takes the time to learn our language, to understand our culture. You’re respected. Maybe not your partner, but you. That’s why I’m warning you.”
He allowed his cigarette to drop to the wood-slat floor. He hoisted himself from his chair and stomped on the burning butt.
“Go back to Seoul,” he said. “You’ll live longer.”
“You guys look like shit.”
The man who stood in the reception area of the Tongduchon Police Station was Staff Sergeant Riley, the Administrative NCO of the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division. He was even thinner than most of the Korean cops and his frail body seemed lost in the starched material of his fatigue uniform. His teeth were crooked and he wore his black hair just a little longer than regulation. During the duty day he greased it down and combed it straight back but at night, when the work day was done, he wore it in a rakish pompadour, like some has-been fifties rock star.
Ernie and I ignored his insult. Maybe we did look like shit. But after being locked in a Korean dungeon for the better part of a twelve-hour period, we were delighted to see him. Outside, a green four-door army-issue sedan stood ready to whisk us to freedom.
“What about my jeep?” Ernie asked.
“Division’s bringing it,” Riley answered.
“Tell them to keep their paws off it.”
Riley ignored him. There was paperwork to complete. On behalf of the 8th United States Army, Staff Sergeant Riley signed receipts for Ernie and me, as if we were items of property. At the time he took us into custody, he assumed responsibility for our future conduct.
I felt like a toaster he’d won at a raffle.
After the paperwork was done, we retrieved our clothing and our identification. The final things the KNPs turned over to Riley were our. 45’s, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied tightly with twine. He tucked the two weapons under his arm. None of the KNPs came to see us off. Outside, Ernie and I stood for a moment, breathing the late afternoon air, laced with the aroma of burnt diesel and fermenting kimchee. The breeze from the north was bitingly cold but we didn’t mind. To us it was the bite of freedom. Down the road, in the TDC bar district, neon began to twinkle to life, as if to fight back against the gray overcast that darkened the sky.
As we sauntered down the sidewalk, Staff Sergeant Riley assured us that we hadn’t been charged with a crime. However, Division had lodged a formal complaint with the 8th Army provost marshal about our firing rounds at their soldiers. In response, the 8th Army PMO agreed that we would be withdrawn from the 2nd Division area of operations.
“Immediately if not sooner,” was the way Riley put it.
Ernie howled. “What? You’ve got to be shitting me? We were just starting to make progress.”
Riley shook his head. “I’m not ‘shitting’ anybody. If you were making progress, you should’ve made it faster. Eighth Army says you’re history up here.”
Racial tensions were high at all fifty-seven U.S. military base camps throughout the Republic of Korea and the 8th Army honchos were well aware of it. A couple of years ago there’d been riots in Itaewon-black GIs fighting white GIs-and the Command had received horrible press coverage. They weren’t taking any chances of that happening again.
As soon as we reached Riley’s sedan, three jeeps pulled alongside. Two armed Division MPs sat in the first two. Trailing them was another jeep we recognized. Ernie’s. An MP was driving that one, too, and they refused to turn the jeep over to us until we reached the border of the Division AO. Argument was futile, so Ernie and I climbed into the sedan.
As Riley slid into the driver’s seat, he said, “Watch the merchandise back there.”
Ernie grunted. I looked back and saw an old army blanket covering some lumpy objects. Probably Riley was black-marketeering. The less I knew the better.
We pulled away from the police station, cruising south toward the Main Supply Route. Within a mile, we’d left the city limits of Tongduchon. The two Division MP jeeps and Ernie’s 8th Army jeep trailed behind us. No one spoke. Ernie and I were too exhausted. I still hadn’t had a chance to tell Ernie about the mystery man. Time for that later.
About five miles on, we reached the southernmost Division checkpoint. The MP guards and the Korean honbyong had been notified by field radio to expect our little convoy. Holding their automatic rifles pointed at the sky, they blew their whistles shrilly, and waved us on. About twenty yards past the checkpoint, we reached the last row of dragon’s teeth. Four-foot-high cement monoliths stretched away from the MSR for miles on either side, like a poor man’s version of the Great Wall of China.
Riley pulled over and so did the Division MPs. The guy driving Ernie’s jeep hopped out, tossed the keys to Riley, and climbed into the back of one of the Division MP jeeps. Without so much as a fare-thee-well, the Division MPs performed a U-turn and roared off back north, gunning their engines all the while. Irritated, apparently, at having to venture so close to the realms of REMF territory.
Riley tossed the keys to Ernie. “Can you drive?” he asked.
“Can I drive?” Ernie growled out the question, leaving no doubt that he believed he was capable of driving under any conditions.
As Ernie walked toward the jeep, Riley turned in his seat and said, “Okay. You can come out now.”
The bundles beneath the army blanket wiggled. Then the old blanket was tossed back and a huge Afro hairdo emerged. With a big smile spread across round cheeks, a voluptuous woman rose from the back seat of Riley’s sedan like Athena springing from the brow of Zeus.
“Ain’t no bag, man,” she said.
