“Exactly.”
“She might be right; she might be wrong.”
“That’s true.”
“So where is this place?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“That helps.”
“At least you’re becoming more optimistic.”
“Yeah. Now if I don’t freeze my spleen tonight, my attitude will perk up even more.”
“Wouldn’t want to dampen your attitude.”
We drove off toward the nearest village, searching for a place to flop. We found it. In a yoinsuk, a Korean flophouse with an outdoor toilet and communal sleeping rooms. A half-dozen Korean trucks drivers were snoring so loudly that I thought the tile roof would fall off. That part didn’t bother Ernie. He can sleep through anything. What did bother him was their kimchee breath.
“If I had a knife,” he told me, “I could cut the stink up into bricks and package it.”
As soon as he said that, one of the truck drivers farted. Ernie groaned and rolled over on his sleeping mat.
An hour before dawn, the proprietress provided-for a small fee-towels and pans of hot water and black- market shaving equipment. After we washed up, she provided us with a complimentary bowl of rice gruel and muu maleingi, slices of dried turnip. Thus refreshed, Ernie and I started our search for the Forest of Seven Clouds.
Or at least I thought we were going to start our search for the Forest of Seven Clouds.
11
Ernie balked. He’d been more than willing to come up here during our time off and take the risk of playing cat-and-mouse with the Division MPs, but he wasn’t willing to directly defy 8th Army.
“In two hours,” he said, “we’re going to be AWOL.”
We sat in the jeep, parked next to the wood-slat wall of the yoinsuk. In front of us, at the end of a gravel access road, the paved Tongil-lo highway, Reunification Road, sat on its earthen foundation elevated above the rice paddies that spread through the valley. A blanket of fog lay on the land. Our breath formed clouds on the windshield of the jeep.
“You’re wrong, Ernie,” I replied. “Failure to repair. That’s the most they can slap us with.”Missing mandatory formations is punishable, but it’s not AWOL.
Ernie looked at me as if I were out of my gourd. “Failure to repair, AWOL, either way we’re in line for an Article Fifteen. It’s now zero-six-hundred on Monday morning, Sueno, in case you forgot. We have two hours to show up for work-clean shaven, shoes shined, smiles on our chops-at the Criminal Investigation Detachment on Yongsan Compound. That’s by direct order of the Eighth United States Army provost marshal. If we leave now, and the Seoul traffic’s not too bad, we just might make it.”
“Your shoes aren’t shined.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject. We go back now, they’ll never let us return to Division. The honchos will stick together and not one of them will be willing to take responsibility for making a decision that directly contradicts the 2nd Division request to have us recalled.”
Ernie kept his arms crossed. “Not my lookout,” he said. “When we get back we tell them what we know. If the provost marshal sees it our way, he’ll send us back up here to finish the job.”
“By then,” I said, “it might be too late.”
Ernie studied me, his eyes squinted. I explained.
Whoever had snuffed Pak Tong-i at the office of Kimchee Entertainment in Tongduchon most likely had obtained an excellent lead on the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson by stealing Pak’s file on the stripper Kim Yong-ai. Chances were good that the file contained either her new address or the location of her new job or some other information that could lead to Kim Yong-ai and, from there, to Jill Matthewson. Maybe they’d already found her. Maybe they were still looking. But after a fitful night’s sleep, an idea had come to me. I explained it to Ernie.
“Camp Howze,” I told Ernie. “We check there. They’ll know if someone’s been looking for Jill. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Ernie cursed but in the end he started up the jeep and, when we hit Tong-il Lo, he turned north.
Camp Howze clung to the edge of a steep hill, overlooking the squalor of Bongil-chon. The morning fog had started to lift but the entire GI village looked raunchy and raw. Unlit neon signs advertised nightclubs: the SEXY LADY and the SOUL BROTHER and the PINK PUSSYCAT. Above the village, rows of Quonset huts perched on a craggy ridge looking down on the fertile invasion route of the Western Corridor. Other than the fur-capped guards at the gate, there seemed to be no life on Camp Howze. And no life in the ville. And no kisaeng houses.
Two MPs manned the guard shack at the front gate. Ernie drove up to them and, as I’d instructed, turned the jeep around and kept the engine running, prepared for a quick getaway. I hopped out of the front seat.
I flashed my CID badge to the MP but within milliseconds I’d folded it and stuck it back inside my jacket.
“Bufford,” I told the MP. “MPI Warrant Officer from Camp Casey. He been around?”
The MP look surprised, almost as if I’d woken him up. There wasn’t much traffic here at the main gate of Camp Howze. Only an occasional jeep or army deuce-and-a-half and no civilian traffic at all. It wasn’t allowed.
The MP glanced back at another MP sitting at a wooden field table reading a comic book. There were a stack of alert notifications next to his elbow but they looked untouched. One of them, I figured, mentioned me and Ernie. Out here, at this sleepy little outpost, who really paid attention to such things?
“Jonesy?” the MP asked. “You ever heard of some investigator from Casey named Bufford?”
Jonesy looked up from the dog-eared comic. “The one with the big nose? Skinny?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“He’s been living out here,” Jonesy replied, disgust filling his voice. “Him and that sidekick of his. What’s the name? Earwax?”
“Weatherwax,” I said.
“Yeah. He’s an arrogant asshole, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They always want Camp Howze MPs to do their legwork for them. They’re hunting some big important fugitive, according to them.”
“They say who?”
“How would I know? They don’t tell me nothing. I work the gate.”
“Is Bufford still here?”
The MP shrugged. “Ain’t my day to watch him.”
I thanked the two MPs, told them to take it easy, and ran back to the jeep. Before either MP had a chance to give us much thought, Ernie and I were zooming toward Tongil-lo. After I briefed him, Ernie started honking his horn, forcing kimchee cabs to swerve out of our way. We understood now that speed was everything. And compared with the fact that Corporal Jill Matthewson was being hunted-now-by Mr. Fred Bufford and Staff Sergeant Weatherwax, our bureaucratic troubles with 8th Army really didn’t mean much.
I only hoped we weren’t too late.
We started our search by heading toward Seoul. I wanted to locate on my map every kisaeng house between Seoul and the DMZ and since we were closest to Seoul, it was easier to start on the southern end. However, after five minutes of driving, Ernie and I reached the dragon’s teeth, the rows of concrete monoliths that were designed to stop the North Korean communist armored divisions from invading Seoul. This marked the southernmost edge of the 2nd Division area of operations. Ahead, about a hundred yards away, stood the concrete bunker that was the Division checkpoint in the Western Corridor, manned by American MPs and Korean honbyong.
Ernie pulled over to the side of the road. “We don’t want to go there,” he said.
“No, we don’t.”
