Slicky Boys

by Martin Limon

  He gulped. “As a matter of fact, I was planning on doing that today.”

  “Good.”

  He reached for his cap.

  I read the Stars & Stripes and drank about four quarts of coffee in the snack bar. I didn’t even bother to call the office. They knew Ernie was in intensive care and the Nurse was dead and I was after her killer. If they couldn’t figure out why I didn’t report in, screw them. At noon I called Strange.

  “They’re clean,” he reported. “But mighty nervous.”

  “About what?”

  “They’re handling documents with a higher classification than they’ve ever received before.”

  “How high?”

  “Top Secret Crypto.”

  Crypto. Secrets transmitted in a cryptographic code so highly classified that even talking about it was a crime.

  “When did they get them?” I asked.

  “Yesterday. And they have a suspense date of five days.”

  Which meant their survey work had to be completed and turned in to the head shed in five days. “What happens then?”

  “What do you think happens?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  “They select the final list of sites.”

  I thought it over. “And after the site list is out of their hands?”

  “First it goes to the Eighth Army commander for his approval. After he chops off on it, it’s locked up down in the War Room, four stories below ground, armed guards twenty-four hours a day, tighter than a chaplain’s ass.”

  “Good work, Harvey.”

  He paused a minute, then said, “Had any strange lately?”

  I told him something. About women and debauchery and long nights. I don’t even remember what it was now.

  That night Mr. Ma didn’t seem surprised when I asked for another meeting with Herbalist So. Two hours later, I was in the patio behind the teahouse, sipping on herbal tea, when I was graced with the presence of the King of the Slicky Boys.

  His bodyguards stayed just out of earshot as I told him what I knew and what I suspected, leaving out the details of my conjectures on the classified information. So nodded thoughtfully as I talked, but when I mentioned Ernie he raised his hand.

  “We already know about that. And the unfortunate death of the young woman. The question is, Agent Sueño, what do you plan to do about it?”

  I let my fists unknot, took a deep breath, and outlined my plan.

  While the Top Secret information was at the Geographic Survey office it was vulnerable. Shipton and his North Korean handlers would certainly know this. Once the decision on where along the DMZ to implant the nuclear devices was finalized, and it went back to the War Room, it would be much harder—probably impossible—to obtain. Now was the time to strike.

  What I proposed to Herbalist So was that he find a way to feed this information to the North Koreans. I doubted that the slicky boys had direct contact with the North Korean Communists, but when you’re buying secrets—and the penalty for dealing in secrets in Korea is death—there’s going to be a tight network that handles the sale of such dangerous information. Over the years, the slicky boys, although they might not deal in such information themselves, would’ve developed conduits into that network.

  When I proposed it, So didn’t bat an eye. I’d been right. He knew how to contact them.

  If a way could be arranged to feed the information indirectly to Shipton, then I could be waiting for him at the Geographic Survey office with a nice MP escort when he arrived.

  Herbalist So seemed to like my plan, as far as it went, but wanted to make modifications. He assured me that once Shipton and his handlers were put onto the Geographic Survey building, they would check the scene out carefully before acting. Any sign of increased security, any sign of extra checks at the front gate, any sign of stakeouts or extra security personnel planted in the area, and they wouldn’t take the risk.

  For a North Korean agent—especially one as. valuable as Shipton—to be caught right in the middle of the 8th Army Headquarters complex was something the North Korean Communists would avoid at all costs. The international repercussions would be too great.

  If I couldn’t wait for him, I asked, how could we catch him?

  Herbalist So had an answer.

  I would enter the compound, he said, clandestinely. Like a thief in the night. No one, including the authorities, would be aware of my presence. Not until it was too late.

  I had no idea how I could do this but he told me not to worry, I would be contacted. An escort would be provided.

  Finally, I agreed. I wasn’t happy with it but he was right. It was probably the only way.

  We settled on details and, in Western fashion, shook hands.

  “We will contact you,” he said. “When the moment arrives.”

  I bowed deeply to him and he bowed back, then left with his boys. I finished my tea and wandered out into the empty street. At each intersection I searched for the Chinese woman. She wasn’t there.

  The waiting was the hard part.

  To make it easier, I went down to the arms room and took a little target practice on the firing range. Palinki stood behind me, red plastic muffs over his ears.

  “You’re getting better, Sueño,” he said, “but bend more at the knees. And try to relax your shoulders.”

  I managed to hit the target a few times. Once, when I imagined it was Shipton, right through the heart.

  After about thirty rounds, Palinki clapped me on the back.

  “Keep at it and one day you’ll be the best in the detachment,” he said.

  Not likely. Where I grew up nobody knew anything about handling guns, because nobody could afford them. The teenage gangs in the neighborhood went in for knives and baseball bats. Traditionalists all.

  After I cleaned the .38, I asked Palinki if he had a few more bullets he could spare—off the inventory.

  “No sweat, brotha. You just keep me straight if you catch me down in the ville.”

  “Will do.”

  Palinki didn’t drink often, but when he did his big Samoan face flushed red and he went on a rampage, like a mindless caveman suddenly trapped in a world of maddening intricacies. Now he was in the program, attending meetings and trying not to drink. He was doing real good, but he had decided to get out of the army. The army, what with the NCO Clubs and the Happy Hours and the bars off post, was set up for drinking. Too much temptation, Palinki figured;

  He was going back to Samoa and fish, he said. I hoped he made it.

  I grabbed the extra rounds, popped them in my pocket, and climbed back up the cement stairwell toward the daylight.

  The days slipped past slowly. Ernie was still in the 121 Evac, and at night I hung out in Itaewon expecting any minute to be contacted by Herbalist So or one of his boys. Or, better yet, the Chinese woman.

  I heard nothing.

  Meanwhile, the weather had cleared, the skies were porcelain blue, but the thermometer had dropped like a fighter going down from a kick to the head. Dirty snow clung to the edges of rooftops, hardening into bizarre shapes like soot-covered gargoyles.

  I didn’t give up on the ration control numbers Herbalist So had provided. I stayed on the phone during the day, checking with local MP’s where the numbers had turned up, and they even made a couple of arrests. Each time, however, the story was the same. Some guy had sold the GI the ration control plate—cheap—guaranteeing that it was safe.

  It looked as if Shipton was trying to keep our attention diverted. The phony ration control plate incidents worked up the spine of Korea. From Taegu to Taejon to Pyongtaek to Songt’an—up to Seoul.

  He was getting closer.

  I checked on Ernie every day. His condition had stabilized, and the doctors hoped he’d be up and about in a couple of weeks.

  They talked about taking judicial action against him for leaving the hospital without authorization. But it was just talk. Designed more to keep him in bed and on his medications more than
anything else.

  Ernie passed the time by hobbling around the hospital and watching medics administer injections. And asking a lot of questions about prescriptions.

  “A pharmacist,” he told me. “That’s what I should’ve been. A pharmacist.”

  I laughed. That would’ve been like a glutton guarding the cream puffs.

  We talked about the Nurse. He asked me a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer. No, there was no reason why she should’ve died. She was young and had much to live for. Shipton had been after us, not her, I told him. She’d just gotten in the way.

  That didn’t make it any easier for him. He conned one of the medics into slipping him a few extra capsules of tranquilizers, and when I left him that day his eyes were calm, staring off into space.

  The intensity of Shipton’s lust for revenge haunted me. He had killed Ernie’s girlfriend and tried to kill Ernie. All because we were chasing him or because, as the voice in the cellar had said, we had killed Miss Ku. But why did he accuse us of having killed her when it was obvious that he was the culprit? I couldn’t explain it. However, it was a topic I was looking forward to discussing with him.

  Four days dragged by. Tomorrow the list of sites for the buried nuclear devices would be shipped out of Geographic Survey and their Security NCO could breathe a sigh of relief.

  I was tense. I couldn’t understand why Herbalist So hadn’t contacted me. Alternate plans started in my mind. Maybe I should spill the whole story to the First Sergeant, get a few reliable MP’s assigned to accompany me, and stake out the place myself. If we played it right, maybe Shipton or his comrades wouldn’t spot us and we’d be able to trap him. I didn’t like the idea but it looked as if my request for help from the slicky boys was a bust.

  I was on my way down to the snack bar for lunch, staying away from the go-go girls at the Lower Four Club. They reminded me too much of Miss Ku and the Nurse. My hands were thrust deep into my pockets, my head down.

  A coal cart whizzed past me, pushed by a sturdy Korean in a cast-off wool uniform. These were the men who delivered coal to the big furnaces that kept the barracks and the public buildings on 8th Army Headquarters warm. It was a dirty job and done mostly in the wee hours of the morning when everyone else was fast asleep. It was unusual to see a coal cart during the day.

  By the side of the road a group of Koreans, men and women, chopped ice to clear the sidewalk. They heaved the big chunks into a growing pile.

  As I passed, one of the women jumped in front of me, brandishing a wickedly curved metal scythe. I stopped instinctively, ready to pull my hands out of my pockets and protect myself. Within the folds of the white bandana wrapped tightly beneath her chin, her wrinkled face smiled broadly.

  “Greetings from Herbalist So,” she said.

  For a moment I thought she was going to swing the scythe and stab the sharpened point into my heart. She read my concern and laughed.

  “Tonight,” she said, “you are to visit the home of Kuang-sok’s father. Just before curfew. Be prepared.”

  Kuang-sok’s father, Mr. Ma, the retired slicky boy.

  The other workers were still bent over, hacking at the ice, seemingly oblivious to our little confrontation. The woman smiled again, gaps flashing in white teeth, lowered her scythe, and rejoined the line of workers.

  I wanted to ask her questions but it was clear that no one had anything more to say to me. They chopped and hacked, ignoring me as if I’d never existed. I watched her broad back for a second, then continued on.

  In the distance, steam rose from the snack bar’s long tin roof. Clouds rolled in. The afternoon sky started to darken.

  Tonight I would invade the U.S. Army’s compound with the retired slicky boy Mr. Ma.

  It had to happen tonight. This would be Shipton’s last chance to steal the information on the tunnels. And my last chance to catch him before his mission was complete and he disappeared into the mist.

  I patted the .38 under my jacket. Suddenly I wished I’d spent more time on the firing range.

  39

  SNOW BEGAN TO FALL EARLY IN THE EVENING. JUST A few scattered flakes at first, but it picked up as the night went on. By the time I left the barracks, the crystals were coming down in fat, wet chunks that lingered on my shoulders like sloppy drunks who don’t know when to go home.

  Flurries charged through the crooked alleys of Itaewon, chased by shifting gusts of wind. The pathways looked different in their white shroud of lace, but I managed to find the old wooden building after recovering from a couple of wrong turns.

  The stone walkway was slick with ice but after descending one flight, I pounded on the door of the basement. Thirty seconds later, the door creaked open. No light flooded out. The inside was black. I slipped into the warmth.

  The shadowy figure of Mr. Ma guided me through the cellar and slid back the door to the hooch he shared with his son. A stained yellow light filtered out. The boy lay facedown on a sleeping mat, a silk comforter pulled up to his shoulders, sound asleep.

  Mr. Ma whispered to me. “Take off your jacket.”

  I did as I was told. He inspected me.

  I wore blue jeans, black combat boots, and a black turtleneck pullover. The .38 formed a lump below my left armpit. Beneath the outer layer of clothing I had on underwear and thermal long johns. Mr. Ma tugged on the tight material of the pullover, letting it spring back into place, and motioned for me to tuck it into my pants.

  When I finished he nodded approvingly.

  “Good,” he said. “But no jacket.”

  It would be cold as a son of a bitch out there.

  There was still some time before curfew so we sat on the narrow wooden porch. I asked him how Herbalist So had maneuvered Shipton and his North Korean handlers into making their move tonight.

  He didn’t have all the details but claimed that one of the workmen on compound, the man who changed the glass bottles of drinking water, had managed to obtain copies of the keys to the inner security rooms of the Geographical Survey building. At Herbalist So’s instructions, this man had approached certain brokers in clandestine information and put the keys on the underground auction block. Someone had snatched up the offer right away. Discreet inquiry indicated the buyers were the same agents who were handling Shipton.

  “Why wouldn’t Shipton have gone in earlier?”

  “The keys were just sold today.”

  Talk about cutting it close.

  “How can we be sure he knows the information he seeks will be gone tomorrow?”

  “We can’t. We’re hoping he obtained that information from other sources. If we offer him too much knowledge, he will become suspicious. Besides,” Mr. Ma said, “the Communist habit is to act immediately. Before they are betrayed.”

  Ma slapped me on the knee.

  “Kapshida,” he said. Let’s go.

  The snow hadn’t let up. It was past curfew now so everyone was off the street. Occasionally, in the dark alleys, we saw another set of footprints, silently erased by the falling flakes.

  We wound through pathways that were new to me, and after a few minutes I was completely lost. Without my jacket the cold bit into the bones beneath my flesh and held on, gnawing at the marrow with a fierce pleasure.

  Finally, we emerged on the MSR. Mr. Ma peeked out onto the main road, looking for the white jeeps of the curfew police. When he saw that all was clear, he waved me forward. Ahead loomed the stone wall, topped with a chain-link fence and barbed wire, that surrounded the south post of Yongsan Compound.

  Without hesitation, Ma picked up speed, running as if he were going to smash face-first into the wall ahead. Instead, he bounded forward, caught a toehold, and kept his momentum, moving his body up the wall like a crab scuttling over a sand bank.

  Why hadn’t he told me about this? Probably because he didn’t want me to think about it. I didn’t. I hit the wall running, moved easily up the craggy rocks about halfway, until my trailing foot slipped and I plummeted down to the ground, tumb
ling backward on my ass into the snow.

  My head snapped against the soft pack.

  I lay dazed for a time, I’m not really sure how long. Finally, I heard Mr. Ma hissing at me. I raised myself on my elbow and fingered the back of my skull. No blood. I’d live. 1 looked up.

  Ma sat atop the wall like a cat, motioning for me to move forward. Shaking my head to clear it, I rose unsteadily to my feet.

  I took it more slowly this time, checking my handholds and testing my foot placements before entrusting my entire weight. After what must’ve been five minutes of struggle I finally made it. Ma grabbed my arm and, with surprising strength for a man of his size, yanked me up to the top of the wall.

  No congratulations, no words of encouragement. We just moved forward.

  We still had the chain-link fence to get over—the metal posts of which were imbedded in the stone—and the barbed wire coiled atop it.

  Prongs at the summit stuck out at wicked angles. The thought of trying to climb over that, with almost a twenty-foot fall below, caused a spasm of fear in my stomach.

  But Ma didn’t make any moves to climb up. Instead, he slid along the top of the wall toward a juncture where the cliff rose even higher. When he reached it he paused and grabbed two loose stones, about the size of bricks. I wondered if he’d planted them there. Working quickly, he shoved the flat side of one of the stones beneath the taut chain-link fence. The muscles on his neck strained as he twisted it up. Miraculously, despite all the tension in the fence, he pried the linked wire up about three inches from the stone wall.

  I glanced down at the road. No pedestrians. No traffic. But it wouldn’t last long. The curfew police would be along soon.

  He grabbed the other stone and, about a yard away from where he had set the first one, he twisted it skyward. Now, there was about four inches of space between the chain-link fence and the stone wall. Twisting his neck at a painful angle he forced his head beneath the fence. I thought for sure he’d be trapped that way: his head on one side of the fence, his rib cage on the other. But he kept wriggling forward, pushing up as much as he could with his hands, and slowly the razor-sharp bottom of the chain link dragged itself over his chest. Once he had wriggled in up to his waist, the rest was easy. He kicked forward, twisted his ankles until his feet popped through, and he was in.