by Martin Limon
“Bets?”
Strange nodded.
“Did you place one of those bets?” Ernie asked.
“What kind of guy do you think I am?”
Strange grinned. It was hideous, like a snaggletoothed marsupial eyeing carrion. Suddenly, I regretted having been kind to him. I grabbed Ernie by the elbow, and before saying something that might permanently cut off our source of classified information, we retreated from the 8th Army Snack Bar.
“I’m so pleased you gentlemen decided to join us,” Staff Sergeant Riley said as we walked into the office. “Where in the hell have you been?”
“Out,” Ernie said and headed for the coffee urn.
Miss Kim wasn’t in yet, so I grabbed the UNC/USFK/8th Army telephone directory off her desk. It wasn’t much thicker than your average edition of National Geographic but printed on cheaper paper. I found the number of the Korea Bureau of the Pacific Stars and Stripes and dialed. When somebody answered, I asked for Mort Cleveland.
“He’s not in.”
“Why not? Does he keep bankers’ hours?”
“Who’s this?”
I told him.
“I’m Rob Futzmann, the Bureau Chief here. What the hell does the CID want to talk to him for?”
Futzmann was a Department of the Army Civilian, a DAC. There were plenty of them scattered around the headquarters.
“Come on, Mr. Futzmann,” I said, “you know I can’t tell you that. What I can tell you is that Mort isn’t in any trouble. When do you expect him in?”
There was a pause. “Now you’ve got me worried.”
“How so?”
“Mort was supposed to be in a half hour ago. Not only is he always on time, he’s always early. One of the most dedicated newspaper men I’ve ever worked with. But he’s late for the first time in the almost ten months I’ve known him, and now the CID calls. You’re freaking me out.”
“He’s late.”
“Yeah. As simple as that, but Mort is a Master Sergeant in the US Army. He’s never late.”
I gave him our office phone number and spelled my name for him. “I’m going out,” I told him. “If he comes in, call and leave a message with our secretary, Miss Kim.” She walked in as I mentioned her name. “She’ll make sure I get it.”
“Are you going to check on him?”
“Yes,” I told him. “We’re leaving now.”
“A half-hour late?” Ernie said. “For Christ’s sake, Sueño. You’re too freaking nervous.”
“Mort Cleveland is never late.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I hope you’re right.”
Ernie shut up. He would never admit it, but I knew he was as worried as I was. In the Army, being late for work is a serious offense. A soldier can be court-martialed for it as a violation in the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice; an offense known as “failure to repair.” And the coincidence was real enough to get our attention. As soon as we were about to ask Mort Cleveland if he’d had any contact with a murderer, he hadn’t shown up for work on time for what sounded like the first time in his life.
We flashed our dispatch at the western gate of Yongsan Compound, and after the MP waved us through, we sped into the village of Samgakji. Ernie parked the jeep and we hopped out and trotted across the street, entering the pedestrian lane where we’d been shot at before. Ernie reached up and touched the dent in the wall where the round from the M16 had hit.
“Still here,” he said.
We ran through the shadowed lanes and reached the double-wooden gateway that led into Mort Cleveland’s hooch. I tried the small door cut into the gate, but it was locked. Ernie pounded on the old lumber until it rattled.
“Mort!” he shouted. “Mort Cleveland. It’s us. The two guys from the CID.”
The small door creaked open, and the withered face of a little old Korean lady peeked out. Ernie and I rushed past her.
The door to Mort Cleveland’s hooch was closed, and the light was off. The little old lady had followed us in. She waved her right arm and said, “Kasso. Kasso.” They’ve left. They’ve left.
I spoke to her in Korean and asked where they’d gone.
She seemed relieved to be able to communicate and told me that yesterday, early in the evening, another American had come and there’d been an argument. She hadn’t seen it all because she’d been out at the vegetable market, but when she’d come home, Mort’s wife was crying and clutching her little boy and Mort was bleeding. She pointed to the top of her head. Somebody’d called a PX taxi for them, and they’d gone over to the hospital on the compound.
“Did they come back?” I asked.
“Not yet,” she replied.
“Did you see the man he argued with?”
She shook her head. He was already gone when she’d arrived.
Ernie and I thanked her. As we retraced our steps down the narrow lanes, we were as wary as an infantry squad on patrol. When we reached the dent in the wall, Ernie reached up and touched it again.
“For good luck,” he said, kissing his fingertips.
And then we were out in the street running toward the jeep, keeping a double-arms distance from each other. As far as we knew, Sarkosian no longer had a weapon. But he’d proven a resourceful guy. Until we definitively knew otherwise, we’d assume he was lying in wait for us. Like a trained assassin.
-21-
We flashed our badges at the reception counter of the 121st Evacuation Hospital on South Post of 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound. “Cleveland,” I told the female medic. “Mortenson’s the first name.” She thumbed through a card file, stopped, flipped back, and said, “Which one? Senior or junior?”
“There’s two of them here?”
“Two cards,” she said, lifting them out halfway as if to prove it. “Master Sergeant Cleveland is in ward eighteen bravo. Junior is in the ICW.”
“The Intensive Care Ward?”
“You got it.”
“Which way is eighteen bravo?”
“That way,” she told us. “But it’s not visiting hours yet.”
We ignored her last comment and rushed down the tiled causeway.
“It must’ve been Sarkosian,” Ernie said.
“Maybe,” I replied. “Either way, when the CIA appears in your life, it’s a bad moon rising.”
“They’re not so bad,” Ernie said, swerving around a medic pushing a patient on a gurney.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they used to fly that pure China White in from Burma,” he said, “for us troops in Vietnam, to raise money for their operations.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Somebody flew it in,” he said. “And I enjoyed that more than a Bob Hope USO Show.”
“Better than Joey Heatherton?”
“Even her.”
We reached Ward 18-B and checked the clipboard wired to the foot of each bunk. Finally, we found Cleveland’s. We stared at unruffled sheets.
“Gone,” Ernie said.
“I think I know where to find him.”
We hurried toward the Intensive Care Ward.
Sitting beside a little boy in a big hospital bed were Mort Stevenson and Mort Jr.’s mother, Coco, both sound asleep, looking so peaceful that Ernie said, “I hate to wake them.”
But we did. And as soon as Mort Cleveland’s eyes popped open, he ignored the bandages around his head and stood up and leaned over his son. Coco woke up and joined him.
“What happened?” I asked.
He told us.
On the way back to the CID office, I considered Mort’s story.
A dark man with a heavy five o’clock shadow and short hair had arrived in front of his hooch shortly after sundown. From the overhead floodlight, Mort had seen that he was wearin
g blue jeans and a tucked-in, red-checkered shirt with a button-down collar and a nylon jacket with a name embroidered on the front.
“Karim,” he told us, pronouncing it correctly.
“You’re observant,” I said.
“I’m a reporter.”
Mort told us that he’d received a few stitches in his head and the doctors were watching him for signs of concussion, but he had high hopes of being released this morning.
“Coco waited with you here all night?”
“Yeah. The nurses told her to leave but, you know, Korean custom. They eventually gave in and let her stay.”
In Korean hospitals, the attention paid by staff to individual patients wasn’t comparable to Western hospitals. Some of them didn’t even provide meals. It was customary for family members to stay in the hospital with their loved ones both day and night, to watch out for them and perform routine chores like take them to the toilet, change their sheets, and make sure they received enough food and water.
“How do you figure Sarkosian found you?” Ernie asked.
“I’m not sure yet. But I suppose the same way you did.”
“We got your address from Billeting.”
Mort frowned. “So maybe somebody at the Stripes bureau told him.”
“Could be. Or maybe he described you and asked some people in the neighborhood if they knew where you lived.”
“Yeah,” Mort said. “Koreans always know when one of us miguks lives in the area.”
“What’d he do once he found you?” I asked.
“He called my name, and I slid open the door and went outside on the porch. Mort Jr. followed me out and started to play. Karim was friendly at first, telling me he had a news story and wanted to contact the lady who wrote for the Overseas Observer. He asked if I could give him her whereabouts. I remembered you guys asking the same thing, and since this guy wasn’t with law enforcement I got suspicious, so I asked him why he wanted it. That’s when things went bad. His face twisted and he started sputtering, and then he accused me of screwing him up.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah. His exact words were, ‘You’re fucking me up.’ And then he did something I should’ve been prepared for but wasn’t. He leapt forward and grabbed Mort Jr. I went at him, but he dodged me and held my son by the neck, swinging him in the air.”
Mort closed his eyes in pain at the memory. Coco must’ve understood much of what he said because she started to cry softly and touched her son on his bare arm.
“Sarkosian was choking him,” I said.
Mort nodded. “I backed off, holding my hands up so he wouldn’t hurt him more. By now Coco was outside, and she was crying and pleading with him not to hurt Mort Jr., so I told him he could find Katie Byrd Worthington at the Bando Hotel downtown. He said that if I was lying, he’d be back to hurt the boy, and I told him I wasn’t lying. He backed toward the gate, and at the last second he set Mort Jr. down and ducked backwards through the doorway. I ran after him, charging through the door as quickly as I could, but he fooled me. Instead of running away, he was waiting right outside the opening, and when I came out, he smacked me on the head with something.”
“Something like what?”
“I’m not sure,” Mort said, gingerly rubbing the top of his bandaged skull. “But it felt like a ball-peen hammer.”
“But you hadn’t seen the weapon before, when he was standing in front of your hooch?”
“No. He must’ve either had it in his back pocket or left it outside the front gate.”
“Where it might’ve been stolen,” Ernie said.
“Yeah,” Mort agreed. “Sort of unlikely, huh? If he needed it for self-protection, he would’ve kept it on him.”
“How about your boy?” I asked.
“I was dizzy, almost out, kneeling in the dirt. By the time I recovered, the guy was gone, and when I returned to the hooch, Mort Jr. was unconscious. At first I thought he wasn’t breathing, but when I leaned in closer, there was a faint intake of air making his chest rise and fall. One of the neighbors called a PX taxi for us and we took it to the One-Two-One.” The 121st Evacuation Hospital.
PX taxis were big Ford Granadas owned and operated by the Post Exchange on base. They were allowed to enter the US military compounds, unlike kimchi cabs.
Mort Cleveland looked at his son. “We’ve been here ever since.”
“What’s the prognosis?” I asked.
“That’s what we’re waiting for. The doctor should be in soon. In fact, I’m going to go find him.”
Mort hurried off. Ernie and I glanced at each other. There wasn’t much we could do here. I took a long look at the boy. Wires and tubes were attached to various parts of his body. Reddish welts covered his neck. His mother stared at us with pleading eyes, as if we could do something.
We couldn’t.
Nothing except catch Specialist 5 Karim Sarkosian, the man who’d done this, and make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else.
When we returned to the CID office, Staff Sergeant Riley was less than his usual charming self. Instead of asking us where we’d been, he personally guided us to the Provost Marshal’s office, all the while sporting a self-satisfied grin. When we entered, Riley shut the door behind us.
We saluted Colonel Brace, who ignored us and continued to thumb through a stack of paperwork. Behind him, draped in all their colorful splendor, were the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command. Finally, Colonel Brace slid the paperwork aside, looked up at us, and said, “What did you do to General Crabtree?”
“What did we do to him, sir?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Sueño.”
“We didn’t do anything to him, sir,” Ernie said.
I waved him off. It was obvious that Colonel Brace was upset about something, and the best way for an enlisted man to act when faced with the wrath of a full bird colonel was with diplomacy. Ernie didn’t have a diplomatic bone in his body. He understood this, clamped shut his jaw, and let me do the talking.
“I’m not sure I understand, sir,” I said.
Colonel Brace shoved a blotter report toward me. Up top, it said that it had been issued by the 597th MP Company at I Corps Headquarters, Camp Red Cloud. I scanned the report and handed it to Ernie.
“He’s acting the fool again,” Colonel Brace said. “Storming around in his command and control center at night, ordering units into the field for no apparent reason. Standing there, we’re told, with his helmet and his flak jacket on but only his skivvies underneath.”
“He’s an intense guy,” I said. “He probably woke up in the middle of the night, rushed outside, and forgot to put on his uniform.”
Colonel Brace snorted. “He looks like a lunatic. And when the intel boys at the Command bunker here in Seoul questioned him about his decisions, he said that he was trying to save democracy. Imagine that,” Colonel Brace said, glancing between me and Ernie. “Democracy. Here in Korea. Right in the middle of the Park Chung-hee regime. President Park is locking up people for promoting democracy. What does Crabtree think he’s doing?”
Neither Ernie nor I had any idea, so we stood mute.
“What I want you to do,” Colonel Brace said, “is go back up there. Talk to him. See if the rumors flying around headquarters are true.”
“What rumors, sir?” Ernie asked.
Colonel Brace stared at him sourly. “That all this aberrant behavior, this obsession with Major General Bok and the ROK Army Third Corps, that it all has to do with that woman, that mistress. The one Bok’s keeping up there. What’s her name?”
“Estella,” I said. I wondered how Colonel Brace knew about her, but there were likely others who’d been spreading rumors. Maybe the MPs who transported the rest of the women back from the ROK III Corps headquarters. Or the women themselves.
“Yes, Estella. Can two general officers really be threatening each other with move-out alerts because of jealousy over a woman?”
Ernie and I exchanged glances. Should we tell Colonel Brace that this so-called mistress, this Estella, claimed to be an agent for the American CIA? Or was he already aware of that information and withholding it from us because we didn’t have a need-to-know?
I could tell by Ernie’s demeanor that he had no desire to make things worse by bringing it up, and neither did I. Let the bosses hash this out amongst themselves. We’d follow orders and try to keep our noses clean. Still, Sarkosian was running amok here in Seoul. If we left and traveled north toward I Corps, who knew what he might do next? I told Colonel Brace about Sarkosian’s attack on Master Sergeant Cleveland.
“Unfortunate,” the Colonel said. “I hope the child recovers. But one fugitive running around Seoul is something that with any luck, the KNPs will be able to deal with. Have you reported the incident to them?”
“I was just about to.”
“Good, do that. Then get up to First Corps and talk to General Crabtree. If you have to, find this Estella woman and take her somewhere so these two guys quit fighting over her. The Chief of Staff is fed up with their bickering and the stupid accusations they’re making against each other.”
“What sort of accusations, sir?”
“Never mind that. They’re too farfetched to repeat. Just get between them and get this Estella issue resolved. And if you have to, remind General Crabtree that if this thing isn’t settled immediately—and I mean immediately—the Eighth Army Commander will take decisive action. You know what that means.”
“What, sir?” Leave it up to Ernie to make him say it.
Colonel Brace frowned and stared each of us down. Then he said in a low voice, “General Crabtree could be relieved of his command.”
In the world of high-ranking officers, being relieved of your command was worse than being impaled on a wooden stake and left in the sun to be eaten by fire ants. And General Crabtree would have to kiss goodbye any hope of recovering his career.
