turned and, as best we could, folded our legs under the seats in front of us. The middle-aged men in suits and the young people in blue jeans and fancy jackets ignored us. But the old ladies who climbed aboard the bus with massive bundles balanced atop their heads couldn’t take their eyes off of us. Foreigners on a Korean bus! We might as well have been space aliens.
Within a few stops after Tongduchon, all seats were filled and the aisles were jammed full of countryfolk ferrying themselves and their children and their belongings-including a crate of chickens and even a small goat-from one village to another. We passed ROK Army compounds and a few military convoys, but along the way no one stopped us.
At one particularly bumpy stretch of road, Ernie felt compelled to rise and offer his seat to one of the country women who was having trouble keeping her balance in the aisle. I did the same and so we were stuck in the aisle on the swaying bus, our heads bowed because of the low ceiling. It was a long ride to Bopwon-ni, Legal Hall Village. Over an hour because of all the stops and all the loading and unloading of passengers and gear.
When we finally arrived, night had fallen. Ernie and I hopped off the bus and strode directly toward neon, into the Pair of Dragons beer hall, the same place we’d stopped last night on our way to TDC with Brandy. We marched to the bar and ordered two draft beers.
In Tongduchon, when Ernie said that we were right back where we started from, he was wrong. We had information. Quite a bit of it. All we had to do was collate it and make sense of it and then use it to formulate a plan of action.
What we knew for sure was that Corporal Jill Matthewson had left Tongduchon twenty-four days ago and, as far as we could tell, she’d never returned. That meant that wherever she was, her needs were being met. If she was dead, of course, those needs would be zero. If she was alive but being held captive, it would be up to her captors to meet her needs. Or not, as they saw fit. But if she was on her own and free-as I certainly hoped she was-she was meeting her own needs. That is, paying for a roof over her head and food and drink and a place to launder her clothes and bathe her body. To do that, she needed a job.
“So what kind of work can she do?” I asked Ernie.
“Law enforcement’s out.”
“You got that right.”
“And all the menial jobs,” he continued, “like being a waitress at a teahouse or washing dishes in a restaurant are out because Koreans take those jobs.”
“So what else is open to her?” I asked.
“You know the answer to that.”
I did. Prostitution. But from everything I’d learned about Jill Matthewson, I didn’t believe she’d stoop to that.
“Besides that,” I asked Ernie, “what else could she do?”
“She could strip. Like Pak Tong-i said, she has big geegees.”
“And she has a girlfriend who already knows the business,” I added. “So we have to put that down as one of the possibilities. Still, I don’t think she’d become a stripper.”
“Why not?” Ernie asked. “It pays well.”
“For an American woman it would pay great,” I agreed. “But it would also attract attention. A lot of attention. There’d be advertising. Posters announcing when she was going to perform, that sort of thing.”
Ernie nodded his head. “I see what you mean. So something more low-profile.” Then he thought of it. “Hostess.”
“Exactly.”
Ernie meant a bar hostess in a fancy drinking establishments. A tradition in Korea. No self-respecting Korean businessman wants to sit alone, or even with his pals, and drink the night away without a “beautiful flower” to laugh at his jokes and pour his drinks and light his cigarettes. The fanciest of these drinking establishments were called kisaeng houses. Kisaeng in ancient Korea were highly trained female performers who were responsible for entertaining royalty. Somewhat like Japanese geisha. Since the Yi Dynasty, however, their job has degenerated to merely acting as the beautiful and charming hostesses to rich businessmen in private clubs. The pay can be fabulous. In the higher-class clubs some of the sought-after kisaeng are remunerated out of corporate expense accounts and pull down hundreds of dollars per night. But that’s for the most high-class girls. In most of the dives in and around Seoul, bar hostesses are lucky to pull down the equivalent of ten or twenty dollars a night. As an American, however, and a blonde verging on beautiful, Jill Matthewson could demand top dollar right from the start.
“But there’s jillions of kisaeng houses,” Ernie protested.
“Right. But maybe we can narrow down our search geographically.”
“How?”
The bartender checked our half-empty mugs. Much to my surprise, Ernie declined a refill.
“Jill had taken the time to put two thousand dollars together before she left Tongduchon. So she probably took the time to plan her escape. That meant that she had both a low-profile job and a low-profile place to live waiting for her,” I said.
“She’d already been hired?”
“Yes. I think so. That’s one of the reasons she has been able to hide so successfully. An American woman traveling from bar to bar searching for a job would’ve been spotted.”
“So Pak Tong-i set her up with a job.”
“I think so. Both her and his girlfriend, Kim Yong-ai.”
“But the job could be anywhere. And there are a lot of bars in Seoul.”
We both knew that if Jill Matthewson had gone to Seoul and taken work at some obscure nightspot, living in a hooch on the premises, it could take months to find her.
“Maybe not Seoul,” I said. “First, when I searched Pak’s files they were all for work in and around the 2nd Division area, both Eastern and Western Corridors. Nothing in Seoul.”
“Seoul’s not his territory.”
“Right. And with a good-looking girlfriend like Kim Yong-ai, it also makes sense that he’d want to keep her nearby. He wouldn’t want to send her down to Seoul, into the hands of those sharks. Not voluntarily.”
“So not in Seoul. But he wouldn’t want to land them a job in Tongduchon either.”
“No way. Too risky.”
“So he’d find them work in the Western Corridor.”
“Exactly.”
That’s why I’d drawn my map. I pulled it out now.
The newly built highway, Tongil-lo, Reunification Road, runs down the center of the Western Corridor, a fertile valley filled with rice paddies that has been an ancient invasion route for the Chinese, the Mongols, and the Manchurians. It runs from Seoul Station up through Bongil-chon to the city of Munsan. From there, it continues north until it hits Freedom Bridge crossing the Imjin River. Beyond that, civilians are not allowed, not without special permission. But the road continues north into the Demilitarized Zone, until it finally hits the Military Demarcation Line that separates South Korea from communist North Korea in the truce village of Panmunjom. All the way from Seoul to Jayu Tari, Freedom Bridge, there are kisaeng houses and other bars that cater strictly to rich Korean businessmen. It isn’t unusual to see a small convoy of black sedans cruising north out of Seoul to reach a kisaeng house in the countryside. Out of town they can forget the hustle and bustle of the big city and enjoy a relaxing business meeting, the overworked businessman catered to by a bevy of beautiful women. These places are busy during the lunch hour and busy again at night. And more than one wealthy businessman has promoted his favorite hostess to be his well-compensated mistress.
Jill Matthewson would fit into this world like a goddess dropped from the sky.
“So we search every kisaeng house and high-class Korean bar,” Ernie said. “From Munsan down to the outskirts of Seoul.”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“What do you mean?
“I think we can narrow the search further.”
“How?”
“If you were on the lam from the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division, what would you be worried
