She shook her head.
At the front door voices were raised. Madame Chon was denying entrance to Agent Sohn. He was insisting on searching the grounds. Whether or not he had a search warrant, in a society where national security takes precedence over everything, Sohn would have his way.
Ernie and I had participated in a student demonstration. So had Jill. Technically, we could be arrested just for that.
“We could run for it,” Ernie said.
“They’d spot us.”
“We’re armed.”
Now it was Jill’s turn to roll her eyes. I spoke for both of us when I said, “We can’t shoot KCIA agents, Ernie.”
“We can if they shoot at us,” he said.
Just what we needed. A running gun battle through TDC. That’d bring the MPs down on us.
Meanwhile, the maid hustled over to a far corner of the courtyard and rolled back a small wooden cart. Frantically, she motioned to me and then pointed at a row of earthenware kimchee jars shoved up against the brick wall.
“Bali,” she said. Hurry.
I understood. Ernie and I and Jill hoisted one of the large earthenware jars onto the bed of the cart. It must’ve weighed fifty pounds. The voices at the front gate grew louder. The maid’s brow crinkled and she said, “Andei.” Not good. She told us to put another jar on the cart. We did.
“What’s she going to do with those?” Ernie asked.
I didn’t answer because I was busy making way for the maid. She shoved the heavily laden cart forward. I opened the small gate for her and helped her lift the two rubber tires of the cart over the threshold. Then she ducked outside and propelled the cart which, picking up speed, headed directly at the two men standing at the end of the alley.
14
The side of the cart scraped against brick then bounced over the cobbled lane, the lids of the earthenware jars rattling, and then another bump-presumably on the opposite side of the passageway- and then a groaning of wood and metal and finally, a crash. Earthenware smashing, vegetable matter and brine reeking of garlic and anchovies splashing onto the dirty stone roadway. The maid screeching, Korean men cursing. I imagined them hopping about, trying to keep their highly polished shoes away from the puddle reeking of fermented kimchee.
“Now,” Ernie said.
Ernie, then Jill and then I ducked through the small door. We turned right and the three of us barreled down the narrow alleyway.
One of the Korean men behind us shouted, “Yah!”
But we had a good lead on them and, I imagined, the maid was doing her best to block their passage with the cart. All the passageways were narrow, sometimes walled with brick, sometimes stone, occasionally thick wooden planks. Finally, we reached a wider alleyway and we knew we must be nearing a regular street. Koreans are used to living like this, with houses all jammed together. That’s why their interpersonal customs are so elaborate. If everybody follows the rules, it lessens the chance of someone getting on someone else’s nerves.
Usually.
Ernie was getting on my nerves now. He ran down one alley with plenty of space to maneuver-at least six feet on either side- with recessed doorways spaced every ten yards or so, reached the end of it, and then stopped. He stared at us, arms akimbo, palms open. Jill and I almost ran into him.
“What?” I said.
Ernie gazed around. “Dead end,” he said.
Around the corner, shoe leather pounded on stone.
Ernie reached for his. 45.
If the man who identified himself at Madame Chon’s front door as Agent Sohn was indeed an agent of the Korean CIA, that explained a lot. First, it explained why he had been monitoring my interrogation at the KNP station in TDC. He wasn’t interested in me or Pak Tong-i, the person I was suspected of murdering. But, he must’ve had information that the person I was after-Jill Matthewson-had somehow made contact with student protesters and, of greater significance, with people in power who might back them up. Insurrection, or a military coup, was never completely out of the question in South Korea. In the early sixties, the Syngman Rhee government had been overthrown because of rioting in the streets. Not just demonstrations by leftist students, but massive movements of the people-shopkeepers, laborers, educators, the works-and the pressure had been more than the corrupt regime could withstand. Later, the current President of Korea, Pak Chung-hee, had taken power via a military coup. No wonder his government was paranoid. To Americans, the Korean student protestors seemed harmless. But the Korean government took them seriously.
The KCIA used bribery and intimidation. If they offered you a stipend and you were poor, you’d accept it gladly. If you refused their money, they might explain that unless you played ball with them, your younger brother would never be accepted to university. People cooperated.
I knew now that the highest echelons of the Korean government were taking recent events in Tongduchon seriously. Very seriously indeed.
We were trapped, in a dead-end street lined with ten-foot-high walls made of stone. Then I heard shouts and the footsteps of the KCIA started toward us.
“Each of you take a door,” I shouted. “Push the button. Pound on it.”
At the end of the pedestrian walkway and on either side were thick wooden doors recessed in the stone walls. Koreans design their homes for security and don’t mess around. I pounded on the door nearest me, pushing the door buzzer next to the intercom speaker at the same time. Ernie pounded on another door and Jill still another.
No answer.
I couldn’t shout. The KCIA agents were only yards away from us, somewhere in the maze of little alleys. I didn’t want to make their job any easier. I was about to give up and try climbing the wall when Ernie hissed. His door had opened. He’d already stuck his foot inside so the frightened woman who peeked out around the wooden gate couldn’t slam it shut. Jill and I raced toward him. As we pushed through the gate I spoke in rapid Korean.
“Mianhamnida,” I told the woman. “We just want to pass through your yard and go out the back. Please show us the way.”
She was a petite Korean woman, maybe in her early thirties; her mouth hung open and her lower lip quivered. She’d opened her front gate to three giant, big-nosed, sweating foreigners. We entered a neat courtyard with a few shrubs, mostly paved with cement. As Jill closed the gate, I heard footsteps and shouts. They’d spotted us but the locked front gate would slow them down. I grabbed the frightened woman by the arm and steered her around the edge of her house, through the narrow passageway between the wall of the home and the side fence. The area in back was even smaller than the courtyard out front: the strong biting smell of an outdoor byonso; a discarded stove starting to rust; no back exit.
Ernie didn’t hesitate. He hopped on top of the stove and climbed atop the fence. Then holding out his hand he helped Jill up, then me. I waved goodbye to the frightened woman and we hopped down into another alleyway.
We ran. This time I heard no footsteps. We’d lost them. But what would they do to Madame Chon and her maid? No time to think about that now. We had to hide. Jill had told us that the Samil demonstration was scheduled to start at noon tomorrow in front of Camp Casey’s main gate. It had become clear to me that the reason Colonel Han Kuk-chei had helped Jill Matthewson to escape from the Forest of Seven Clouds was because he wanted her in Tongduchon for this demonstration. He had some function for her. Would she speak again? Jill only had two more days until her thirty days of AWOL was up and she officially became a deserter. If she let that happen, she’d receive a general court-martial. For twenty-nine days of AWOL she’d only get a summary court-martial. As a returned
