GI Confidential

by Martin Limon

  “From General Bok?”

  Crabtree shrugged again. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Was the black eye still visible?”

  “Barely.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “At first I didn’t believe them. But after thinking about it, I spoke to General Bok. He was embarrassed. Said it was strictly a transportation problem, that they’d had some heavy rains lately and some of the roads had been washed out, so it had taken his combat engineers longer than expected to make repairs.”

  “What about a chopper?”

  “Up there, choppers aren’t always a good idea. The updrafts and other wind turbulence can be treacherous. Even on a calm day, it’ll surprise you. Sudden squalls. Wind shear. Also, I figured flying those women onto a military airfield wasn’t exactly a good idea in terms of avoiding unwanted attention.”

  “I’ll say,” Katie replied. “Like the Bob Hope Christmas Show.”

  “So Sergeant Major Tapia called back down to Camp Red Cloud and ordered the MPs to send a three-quarter-ton truck, along with an armed escort, up to the ROK Army Third Corps Headquarters. When they arrived, we loaded up the women and had them taken back to Uijongbu, where they were released.” He knocked back the last of the soju. “End of story.”

  “How innocent,” Katie said.

  “Yep.”

  “Like a fairy tale.” She stood up, slipped her steno pad into her pocket, and said, “Not what my firsthand sources told me.”

  “Then they lied.”

  “Maybe,” Katie Byrd said. “Maybe not.” She leaned forward, bracing herself on the edge of the table. “General Crabtree, do you know the difference between a fairy tale and a war story?”

  “Do tell.”

  “A fairy tale begins with ‘Once upon a time,’ and a war story begins with ‘This is no bullshit.’”

  With that, she turned and walked out of the chophouse. Sergeant Major Screech Owl’s lifeless eyes followed her every step of the way.

  Later that evening, I called Officer Kang Hey-kyong just to check in, and I was glad I did. The Bopwon-ni cops, working with those stationed in Yongju-gol, had been canvassing the area near Old Hwang’s money-changing shop, asking if anyone had noticed anything out of the ordinary or maybe spotted the three GIs who’d assaulted Old Hwang, not to mention Ernie and me. They’d found nothing until one of the paralegals in the area spilled about a claim he was filing on behalf of a local businessman against the US Army.

  “A jeep,” Officer Kang told me in Korean. “It was parked in front of a kagei.” An open-fronted convenience store. “One GI sat behind the wheel, and when three more GIs ran up to it and climbed in, the driver backed up, hitting the cooler filled with Chilsung Cider that the proprietor kept on the edge of the sidewalk.” Korea’s most popular soft drink. “He smashed it with his rear bumper,” she told me, “while turning around. Fifty-thousand won worth of damage.” A hundred bucks. Which was maybe an exaggeration, but the complainant had to cover the extra fee the paralegal would be charging. The description the store owner provided was vague. “Potong Mikun,” he’d said. Average American soldiers. In civilian clothes, probably blue jeans.

  I thanked her, thinking these might be our guys because the timing matched up. But I didn’t see how it offered us much new information, other than the driver had in fact been present, and they’d probably used the same jeep from the two bank robberies. And that that jeep might now have a dent in it, which didn’t exactly make it unique amongst 8th Army vehicles.

  I was about to hang up when Officer Kang said, “One more thing.” Paper shuffled as she presumably thumbed through notes. “The owner of the kagei said he spotted writing on the rear bumper.”

  My heart leapt.

  The bumper wasn’t covered with tape, which made sense. First of all, they weren’t robbing a bank, only a small money changer. More importantly, Yongju-gol and the entire Division area crawled with GI convoys and military vehicles and practically constant MP patrols by both the US and Korean armies. Tape on a bumper would attract attention, whereas the actual unit designation would probably be glanced at and immediately forgotten.

  “What’d he see?” I asked, trying to keep the excitement from my voice.

  “He doesn’t read English,” she told me, “so to him, all the American letters were just lines and squiggles.”

  My heart fell.

  “But he can read numbers.”

  Of course. Although Koreans had a writing system with its own form of expression for numbers, they still relied on Arabic numerals. After all, those were what was used internationally in higher mathematics, a field much loved in this education-focused country.

  “What’d he see?” I asked again.

  “Nineteen,” she told me.

  “Nineteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes. The number nineteen.”

  “Were there any other numbers?”

  “No. Just two numbers. He was sure of it. Nineteen, that’s it, and then gibberish.”

  “Okay,” I told her. “Thank you. We’ll be looking into it.”

  “How’s Katie?” she asked.

  “As ornery as usual. Maybe more so,” I said in English. When she said “What?” I translated it into Korean. Or tried to. What I ended up saying was that she was still mean.

  “Yes,” Officer Kang agreed. “That’s her.” Hesitating, she tried another gambit. “And Sergeant Bascom?”

  I was standing at a Korean public phone booth, Ernie nearby. I motioned to him and pointed to the receiver. He puckered like he was sucking on a lemon and shook his head. “He’s fine,” I said.

  “Is he there?”

  “No,” I lied. “Not right now.”

  “Tell him I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  We said our goodbyes and I hung up.

  “She ask about me?” Ernie said.

  “Yes. Why weren’t you at least polite enough to talk to her?”

  “Afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yeah, she’s way too rough for me.”

  “You’re getting soft.”

  He grabbed his spine and leaned backward. “Lumbago,” he said.

  The next morning, Katie Byrd Worthington was waiting for us in front of the Camp Red Cloud main gate. She climbed in the back of the jeep and we drove south toward Seoul. After winding through the vicious Seoul morning traffic for the better part of an hour, we dropped Katie off in front of the Bando Hotel.

  She climbed out and waggled her forefinger at us. “Don’t get any funny ideas about leaving for the ROK Army Third Corps without me. I still have plenty of time to call Hong Kong and tell our editorial staff to publish that photo.”

  I told her I’d call her as soon as we ran down the bank robbery lead.

  “And keep me posted on that, too,” she said.

  As we drove to 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound, Ernie let out a whoosh of relief. “It’s nice having that witch off our backs.”

  “For now,” I reminded him.

  He pursed his lips as if he were swallowing something sour.

  On compound, Ernie parked the jeep in the narrow lot behind the 8th Army Snack Bar. We entered through the big double glass doors, and the first thing we spotted was Strange sitting alone at his usual table. After grabbing some chow at the serving line, we joined him, but he didn’t ask if we’d had any strange lately. Even for him, it was too early for debauchery. I sipped on hot coffee and Ernie wolfed down a bologna and egg sandwich.

  “What’ve you got for us?” I asked Strange.

  “Nothing. Everybody’s waiting for your report on General Crabtree.”

  “He’s a good man,” I said.

  “Gimme the real skinny.”

  “Can’t yet,”
I told him. “What do you know about a general named Bok Jung-nam?”

  Strange sat up, shoving his almost-empty mug away.

  “Bold dude. They’re talking about him being the eventual replacement for Park Chung-hee himself.”

  Ernie glanced up from his sandwich. “President Park’s going somewhere?”

  “No. But the North Koreans tried to kill him a few years ago.” In fact, they’d sent thirty-one commandos into Seoul to accomplish the task. And they’d almost succeeded, coming within sight of the Blue House, the presidential palace, before they were neutralized as a fighting force with two captured and the rest killed.

  “Okay, so the US needs a backup South Korean president, if it comes to that. Who’s been talking to General Bok, grooming him for the job?”

  Strange shook his head. “Too highly classified.”

  “That means the CIA,” Ernie said.

  Strange kept his eyes averted and sipped on the dregs of his lukewarm chocolate.

  “Find out for us,” I said. “We need to know who’s talking to General Bok and what they’re talking about.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Strange said.

  “If anyone can do it,” Ernie said, “you can.” Which was bull, but Strange preened, basking in the praise.

  “What are you going to do with the information?” Strange asked. “If, that is, I manage to get it.”

  “Probably nothing,” I told him. “Just for background.”

  Neither of us told Strange that as soon as we followed up on that lucky number nineteen lead, we’d be traveling north to the ROK Army III Corps. Not a trip I was looking forward to. Wandering far from the 8th Army flagpole was something Ernie and I usually considered a relief. We were free, avoiding unwanted scrutiny. But being that far away and out in the middle of the Taebaek Mountains, which bordered the North Korean Communist regime, wouldn’t exactly be a vacation. This was an area of jurisdiction without any Korean civilian oversight to check the whims of the ROK Army III Corps commander.

  Last night, during our meal at Chonwon Bulkalbi, Sergeant Major Tapia had assured us he’d been there many times. And then he’d said, “You two go. Not her.” Tilting his head at Katie Byrd Worthington.

  “You don’t think I’d miss this story, do you?” she’d asked. “Not on your life.”

  Sergeant Major Tapia had protested again, insisting the ROK Army III Corps was no place for a woman. Before Katie could jab a chopstick into his eyeball, General Crabtree had intervened and said she could go.

  That had placated Katie.

  Sergeant Major Tapia had sat glumly for the rest of the evening, arms crossed, apparently lost in thought. I might’ve been mistaken, but it almost seemed like there was a certain sense of satisfaction lurking in his grim expression.

  I rose from our table in the 8th Army Snack Bar, went to the serving line, and purchased Strange another cup of hot chocolate. As I set it in front of him, with only one marshmallow since he was on a diet, I said, “Go find out who in the US government is sponsoring this Major General Bok and what their plans are for him, if any.”

  “I got it, I got it. You don’t ask much, do you?”

  “Remember those blondes in the Oversexed Observer?” Ernie asked.

  “Do I?”

  “I might have a story for you. Not yet, but soon.”

  “You better. I’ll be sticking my neck out. Info on CIA operations is like kryptonite at the head shed.”

  Then it was the CIA.

  The night before, when Katie’s instincts had told her General Crabtree was giving her a line of bull about III Corps and his role in rescuing those women from General Bok, she might’ve been right. There was more going on here than a military-sponsored sex party. The American CIA was involved. What was their endgame?

  We left Strange sipping on his steaming cup of cocoa and returned to the jeep.

  -16-

  “Where in the hell you guys been?” Sergeant Riley shouted.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Ernie said, waving as he brushed past the CID Admin Sergeant, heading straight for the stainless steel coffee urn in the back.

  Riley turned and glowered at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Working on the First Corps report,” I told him.

  “What’d you get?”

  “You’ll see it once I type it up.”

  “We need that report now.” He jammed his forefinger into the center of his government-issue desk blotter.

  “No coffee first?” I asked.

  “Fine. But make it snappy.”

  That was him. Staff Sergeant Riley loved nothing more than giving orders, even though most of the time he was ordering us to do things we already knew we had to.

  After I pulled a cup of hot coffee from the urn, I walked over to a chart on the wall with the bold-print title of 8th United States Army Organization Chart. The way the numerical designation of military units worked had always been somewhat obscure to me, and to other people in the Army as far as I could tell. Units were created, units went away, then for some alchemical reason that no one quite understood, they were sometimes brought back to life. Each unit had not only a number, but also a nickname and usually its own coat of arms. To keep track of it all, the Pentagon had a department called the Institute of Heraldry. I didn’t believe I’d have to go so far as to consult them to figure out what the number 19 on that jeep bumper meant.

  In general, the smaller the number, the higher the headquarters. For instance, 1st Army, which covered the eastern United States. The place we all worked, 8th Army, was responsible for the Korean Peninsula. The main subordinate unit of 8th Army was the 2nd Infantry Division. Again, only one number. Farther down the line were units with three numbers, like the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion or even lower, the fictional 4077th MASH unit, made famous by Hollywood. So a unit identified by the number 19 would be pretty high up on the organizational chart. And there it was. Right toward the top. The 19th Support Group, providing maintenance and supply to the entire US military endeavor on the Korean Peninsula. Their headquarters was at Camp Henry in Taegu, over a hundred miles south of Seoul. But they had outlying support units scattered all over the peninsula. If the Korean kagei owner with the smashed soda cooler had been able to read English letters, his information probably would’ve pinpointed the exact compound the jeep had come from. Though he hadn’t been able to, I knew from a previous case that about two thousand GIs were assigned to the 19th Support Group, so we’d just dropped our odds of finding them from over fifty thousand American servicemen and women stationed in-country to a group a fraction of that size.

  Progress.

  I grabbed one of the 8th Army Telephone Directories, sat down at a rickety field table, smiled, and started dialing.

  I discovered that the elements of the 19th Support Group operated out of thirty-five different compounds throughout the country, stretching from the port of Pusan at the southern end to as far north as Camp Edwards in the Western Corridor, just south of where Freedom Bridge crossed the Imjin River. Twenty of those outposts were either in Seoul or within easy driving distance of 8th Army Headquarters here on Yongsan Compound.

  The question now was how to narrow my search further without alerting the robbers. I had no idea where they worked. I might arrive in a 19th Support Group Orderly Room, ask a few questions, and later find out that I was talking to one of the miscreants himself, maybe the driver, maybe one of the two guys we’d caught a glimpse of during the fight in Yongju-gol. We could also go through the mugshot-like photos in the personnel records and find the body builder.

  We’d gotten a fairly good look at him in the dim lighting of Old Hwang’s money-changing shop, but it would take time, a few hours at least. Worth the time, but there was a catch: the 8th Army personnel shop was itself a 19th Support Group function. Just by the act of two CID agents walking in to look at recor
ds, it was possible, even likely, that the GIs we were looking for would be alerted. Even if no one was present while we did our research, GIs were notorious gossips. Our arrival would spread throughout the enlisted barracks and officers’ quarters like wildfire. CID is combing through the 19th Support Group personnel files. Who else could we be looking for but the bank robbers in the case we’d been assigned? And once the perpetrators were alerted, what might they do? We knew they weren’t afraid to arm themselves and take action, lethal and otherwise. Being reckless with our investigation could cost lives, and not just our own. Better if we could sneak up on the crooks without risking prior notification and take them down before they knew what had hit them.

  While I was pondering these matters, Miss Kim’s phone rang. She politely asked the person to hold, covered the receiver, turned to me, and said, “Do you know someone named Katie Byrd?”

  I took the call.

  The blonde bouffant hairdo looked out of place not only in this smoke-filled cocktail lounge but in this country at large, where the standard to conform to was straight black hair.

  She took a final drag on her cigarette, held it in for a moment, and exhaled toward the ceiling. I recognized this woman as one of the six in the photograph in the most recent issue of the Overseas Observer. If General Abner Jennings Crabtree wasn’t pulling our leg, she’d been one of the women transported from ROK III Corps headquarters back to civilization thanks to himself, Sergeant Major Tapia, and the special MP detachment. Katie Byrd Worthington had tracked this woman down somehow through her contacts. When I asked her about it, she shot me a look that translated to: Mind your own freaking business.