by Martin Limon
The woman flicked her cigarette atop the edge of a crystal ashtray. Her stubby white fingers were covered with rings of all shapes and sizes. Gold, silver, cheap gems—no real diamonds there, as far as I could tell.
“You talk,” she told me in a thick European accent. “I no like speak English. Make me tired.”
Katie Byrd Worthington patted her solicitously on her bare forearm. “You’re doing fine, Sofia.”
We sat in a place called the Top Hat Scotch Corner in the northeastern Susaek-dong area of Seoul. It was a small cocktail lounge sitting pretty much by itself amidst a few square blocks of textile factories. Three Korean businessmen in cheap suits sat at the bar, smoking and discussing labor costs. Also, I thought based on my eavesdropping, how to find short-term loans to cover those labor costs. An electric piano and a couple of horned instruments sat on a dark stage, waiting for the musicians to come along and breathe life into them. We were early.
“Who paid you to go into the mountains to the army base?” Katie asked.
“I told you already,” Sofia said.
“He needs to know, too.”
Sofia studied me. “He’s cop. Cop always trouble.” When neither of us responded, she said, “What Sofia get? Who pay me this time? I talk, no get money. Only get trouble.”
“You’ll get justice,” I said.
Her eyes widened, puzzled. “What’s that,” she said, “justice?”
For a moment, I thought she was asking a philosophical question. Then I realized that the word fell outside of her vocabulary.
“It means,” Katie Byrd told her, “that those men at Three Corps will be punished.”
“Go to jail?”
“Yes,” Katie replied. “Jail.”
Sofia puffed on her cigarette. “That be good,” she said.
“So tell us what happened.”
She did. Painfully and slowly, using the limited English she had, not knowing enough Korean to switch to that instead. Katie, I realized, could’ve been a trauma counselor or a father confessor. She patiently pulled every last drop of information out of the troubled woman. A woman alone and adrift in the world, stranded in a country she didn’t understand amongst people who didn’t value her aside from her body.
Finally, it came out. What General Bok and his subordinates had done to her and the other girls. How they’d been kept up there for weeks against their will. And that none of them had ever received the money they’d been promised.
A juicy story, I knew, for the Overseas Observer. Still, I wondered if Katie would publish it. It criticized representatives of the Korean government, a regime that didn’t have a First Amendment and wasn’t planning on establishing one any time soon. Katie Byrd and anyone else associated with the Oversexed Observer could be kicked out of the country for good—if they weren’t charged with sedition and thrown in jail.
“Who convinced you to go up there?” Katie asked. “General Crabtree?”
“No. He very nice. And that dark man, mean face.”
“Sergeant Major Tapia?” I said.
“Yes, him. He nice, too.”
I sensed Katie start to lose interest in the story. No way to hammer the US Army. But then Sofia mentioned something that neither of us had considered.
“General Crabtree, he really like Estella.”
“Estella?”
“Yes. I think General Bok, he no like. How you say?”
I had no idea what Sofia was talking about. Katie was the one who came up with the word. “Jealous?” she asked.
“Yes. Jealous.”
Katie’s nose for news began to quiver. “So did General Crabtree bring Estella back personally? Is he taking care of her now?”
Sofia studied Katie, puzzling out what she’d said. “Estella now with General Crabtree?”
“She is?” Katie started to write.
“No.” Sofia shook her head. “Not with General Crabtree.”
Katie let her notebook rest back on her knee. “Then where is she?”
“With General Bok.”
“Here in Seoul?”
“No. Up there.”
“In Third Corps?”
“Yes. He no let her leave. Estella must stay.”
“Why?”
Sofia shook her head. The heavily teased hair rustled like dried straw. “General Bok want her to stay. General Bok no let her go.”
“She’s a captive?”
Sofia shook her head again. For a moment, I thought she didn’t understand the word “captive.” Then I realized she did understand it but didn’t think it was the right word. “She, how you say . . .”
Katie and I waited.
Finally, light came to Sofia’s eyes. “Estella, she hostage.”
“Hostage? Why?”
Sofia shrugged. “I don’t know. General Bok, he want General Crabtree to do something. What he want him to do, I don’t know. So don’t ask me. I’m tired.”
She pulled out a fresh cigarette and lit up.
Katie gently tried to question her a little more, but to no avail.
Before we left, I insisted Sofia take 10,000 won. Twenty bucks. Which she did, slipping it quickly into a loose pocket in her skirt without thanking me. She lit another cigarette and puffed madly, glancing at the preoccupied businessmen. Not getting their attention, she turned back to her lonely table next to the wall. She didn’t say goodbye to either of us as we walked out.
So Major General Bok was using Estella to coerce General Crabtree into doing something for him. But what?
Ernie made a list of the 19th Support Group compounds within a reasonable driving distance of Seoul. Right after evening chow, we started our search, wearing civilian clothes since it was after duty hours. We knew for sure what one of the bank robbers looked like, the burly guy who’d tried to rob Old Hwang in Yongju-gol. The one who’d been described by witnesses in the robberies as a bodybuilder type. He was strong—that I could vouch for.
“You think he’s Mexican?” Ernie asked.
“No,” I answered, shaking my head. “No way. He wasn’t Mexican.”
“Then what was he?”
“Something we don’t see much of in the army. Middle Eastern, maybe.”
“Five o’clock shadow, dark hair, heavy eyebrows.”
“Yeah. Somewhere in the Levant.”
Ernie didn’t know what the Levant was. I told him: the countries bordering the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
“How’d you learn a word like that?”
“Eric Ambler,” I said.
“Who?”
“Eric Ambler. He’s an author. Writes thrillers about exotic places.”
Ernie swerved through a gyrating thread of speeding kimchi cabs. “You oughta write about exotic places,” he said.
“Me? Exotic places? Like where?”
“Like here.”
The reek of garlic hit us as Ernie surged past a three-wheeled produce truck piled high with a small mountain of cloves.
“Here?” I asked. “What’s exotic about here?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Just another day in the R-O-K.”
“Another night,” I corrected.
“That, too.”
“How about the other two guys?” I asked. “Besides the dark-haired one. Did you get a look at them?”
He shook his head. “Negative.”
Neither of us was sure about them. They’d appeared out of the dark alley and attacked so quickly that I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a positive ID. Unfortunately, they could certainly identify me and Ernie. So we had to be circumspect. The two we couldn’t recognize could spot us and attack without us even being aware that we were in danger. We decided to focus on locating the jeep first.
We started at the 21st Transportation Company motor pool i
n Seoul, and after threatening the night dispatcher with our CID badges, he told us that none of the jeeps in their inventory had been reported with a dented right rear bumper. Just to be sure, we walked down three long rows of parked jeeps, checking the bumpers with our flashlight beams, not finding any that had been recently damaged.
Then we drove to Camp Coiner and the Far East Compound in downtown Seoul, and then out to ASCOM, the Army Support Command, in Bupyong. Shortly before midnight, we arrived at Camp Mercer in the city of Bucheon. And it was there that we walked through the dark and silent motor pool, inspecting each vehicle with the beam of our flashlights, and finally found a right rear fender, dinged and with a slash of white paint on it.
“Maybe,” Ernie said, bending down, examining the dent closely.
We checked the jeep, not finding anything inside except for the routine roadside emergency gear. I jotted down the unit designation: HHC, RR&I, 19SG.
“What in the hell’s that mean?” Ernie asked.
HHC stood for Headquarters and Headquarters Company. 19SG meant the 19th Support Group. But what RR&I was, neither of us knew. We walked over to the Staff Duty Office at the Camp Mercer Headquarters building. A Sergeant First Class named Homer was leaning back in a swivel chair, combat boots up on the desk, watching a small television set tuned to the American Forces Korea Network.
“What you watchin’?” I asked.
He jerked forward, tilted to his side, and almost fell out of his chair. “Nothing,” he said, standing up and switching off the TV.
“Looks like Gunsmoke to me,” Ernie said.
“Had to be,” I said, turning toward Ernie. “I’d recognize Matt Dillon anywhere.”
AFKN was famous for reruns. Oldies but moldies.
“I wasn’t watching anything,” Sergeant Homer said. “Just getting ready to do my hourly inspection.”
“Good. Maybe you can show us where RR&I is.”
“Why should I?” he asked warily.
“So we don’t turn you in for watching television on duty,” Ernie replied.
He thought about it and said, “RR&I is the third building down on the right.”
“That old warehouse?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Do they have a duty officer?”
“No. Locked up at night.”
“And their barracks?”
“They’re billeted with the rest of Headquarters Company. In the three buildings behind warehouse row.” He motioned toward the eastern wall of the compound.
“Thanks.” We started to walk out.
At the door, Ernie turned and asked, “What the hell does RR&I stand for, anyway?”
“Refrigeration Repair and Inspection.”
“What kind of refrigeration?” I asked.
“Like big freezers at transshipment facilities. Or walk-ins at mess halls.”
“Food storage.”
“Yeah.”
We turned and started to walk out. Behind us, the SDO yelled, “Who the hell are you guys, anyway?”
“Just lookin’ for a friend,” I told him.
He sat back down heavily in his chair. When we were ten yards out, we heard the sounds of gunfire. Apparently, Marshal Dillon was busy dispensing frontier justice.
The RR&I facility was closed and locked up tight.
Lights were on in the three barracks behind the warehouses, but they were mostly deserted. Through the bare windows, only a couple guys were visible. One sat on his bunk reading, and the other fiddled with a towel and shaving kit, preparing to head to the latrine. We recognized neither.
“Should we question them?” Ernie asked.
“No,” I said. “Better if we come back tomorrow during duty hours when it’s more likely the guys we’re looking for will be here.”
“Yeah,” Ernie said. “With backup.”
We both knew that with criminals as trigger-happy as these, overwhelming force and the element of surprise would be critical to a clean arrest. One with no bloodshed.
Before dawn the next morning, we were on our way to the Snack Bar when we heard something that sounded like a large lizard.
“Pssst,” somebody said.
Ernie and I turned. Lurking in the darkness on the edge of the Quonset hut was Strange, his sunglasses and cigarette holder peeking around the gray metal.
“Pssst,” he said again.
“We heard you,” Ernie told him. “Quit imitating an overweight iguana.”
We followed him around the edge of the building and then across the street to some single-story brick buildings, where he finally stopped out of the line of sight of anyone who might pass by on the main road. The only illumination was from caged red bulbs above the entranceways.
“What the hell is it, Strange?” Ernie asked.
“The name’s Harvey.”
“Right, Sergeant Harvey. What is it?”
“That’s Sergeant First Class Harvey to you.”
I suspected Ernie had pissed him off with the overweight reptile remark.
“What’ve you got for us, Sarge?” I asked.
“Two things.” He looked around warily. These were supply buildings, dark and locked from the outside. No prying eyes. “First, confirmed that it’s our CIA talking to Major General Bok. There’s a lot of unhappiness in the country with Park Chung-hee. You know, all those Commies and sweet young university dollies waving signs and protesting in the streets.”
Koreans called these protests demos. Most took place either on college campuses or in the heart of downtown Seoul, demanding free elections and the cessation of the arrests and disappearances of President Park’s political opponents. Some of these demonstrations had consisted of hundreds of thousands of people and had brought Seoul to a grinding halt. Even worse was the resulting violence—sometimes starting with the more radical protesters, sometimes with the riot police—which was broadcast on televisions all over the world, embarrassing not only to the Park Chung-hee regime, but also to its most stalwart ally, the United States of America.
“So our CIA wants President Park gone?” I said.
“Maybe, maybe not. But they want another option in case that becomes a yes.”
“Okay. So the CIA’s talking to General Bok,” Ernie said, “setting him up for the big time. That explains why he figures he can kidnap a bunch of foreign hookers and nobody will say shit. What else you got?”
“Isn’t that good enough?” Strange asked.
“You said you had two things.”
“I do.”
“Well, spill.”
“I will. But a guy deserves a little appreciation first.”
“I don’t have time to come up with bullshit stories for you, Strange,” Ernie said, stepping toward him.
“Come up with bullshit stories?”
“You know what I mean,” Ernie said, realizing he’d stepped in it.
“No. What do you mean?” Strange asked.
“I just mean bullshit as in shooting the breeze too long. I’m getting plenty of strange. More than I can handle, in fact, which is why I pass it along.”
Strange adjusted his shades. “Okay,” he said, somewhat mollified. He turned toward me. I nodded.
“The second thing,” Strange continued, “is that General Crabtree has been going off script. That’s why he was ranting and raving in his skivvies the other night—because he was so damn mad that Eighth Army told him to cooperate with General Bok and to stop sending up so many critical reports.”
“Critical reports about what?”
“About Third Corps’ defensive posture. And their readiness. Crabtree doesn’t think Bok is a qualified commander. Says a North Korean invasion would run right over him. And that he only landed his position by virtue of being related to the First Lady.”
This flew in the face of what
General Crabtree had told us at the chophouse, describing Bok as a competent commander.
I paused, thinking it over. We didn’t have much time; the supply functions around us would be coming to life soon. “Why is sending up reports critical of General Bok’s expertise considered to be going off script?”
“Isn’t that obvious? Because the American CIA likes Bok. He’s a committed anti-Communist.”
“So is Park Chung-hee.”
Strange’s cigarette holder tilted upward. “Have you ever seen Park Chung-hee on television? He’s a disaster. Looks like the guy in the torture chamber tying your grandmother onto the rack. This is the celebrity age. Bok offers glamour.”
“The CIA would tear down a government just for that?”
“No. But it looks as if the South Korean people are about to make the change for them. Better to get out ahead of the power shifts.”
“Plan B,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“What else you got?” Ernie demanded.
“That’s not enough? Don’t I get some hot chocolate?”
“One marshmallow,” Ernie said.
“No, I want two this time.”
“You off your diet?”
“Yeah,” Strange said, slapping his sizeable stomach. “Finally hit my fighting weight.”
Ernie glanced down. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”
Strange looked up, aggrieved, but out here in the darkness, he didn’t have the nerve to say “up yours” in response.
The three of us walked toward the bright lights of the 8th Army Snack Bar.
I kept wondering why the Army wouldn’t take General Crabtree’s reports seriously concerning the III Corps’ deficiencies. Wasn’t that vital? What was more important than defending the Republic of Korea from a North Korean attack, which was why we were here?
And then I thought of the bigger picture of the Cold War. The precarious standoff called mutually assured destruction that kept a nervous peace between the United States and our enemies: the Soviet Union, Red China, and North Korea.
