The Wandering Ghost (george sueno and ernie bascom)

by Martin Limon

  “You were there,” I told Jill. “The night Pak Tong-i died.”

  She looked at me, so did Colonel Han, so did Ernie, all of them waiting for me to continue. I did.

  “You slipped back into Tongduchon and maybe you had a key but somehow you gained entrance to his office.” I was staring directly at Jill now, daring her to deny my words. “When you found him there you tried to force a full confession out of him. About how he’d provided women to the Second Division honchos for years, about how he’d set the women up, letting them think they’d be dancing or performing, although Pak knew they’d be raped by whichever officer took a fancy to them. And you wanted his records, to document the years of black-marketing that had gone into paying for all these mafia meetings and other boys-will-be-boys excursions. You were too close to Kim Yong-ai to let it go. You wanted to prove it all to the world. But there wasn’t enough there. Pak was cagey. He kept few records. But he was so frightened that he told you about Colonel Alcott being deathly afraid of being cheated by Koreans, or by Bufford or Weatherwax so that he kept meticulous records of all black market transactions. When you questioned Pak Tong-i, you had to threaten him with your. 45. He was a weak man, a man who never exercised and ate too much and smoked too much and drank too much, and suddenly something inside of him went bust. His face flushed red, he couldn’t breathe and you knew the symptoms meant heart attack. When he died, you shoved him into the closet, closed it, and exited Kimchee Entertainment without being seen. That’s what happened, Jill, isn’t it?”

  The ROK Army suddenly halted. The commanding officer shouted more orders and repositioned his forces. They broke into smaller groups, then reformed again. Now five V-shaped formations were pointing right at us. Then they started, once again, their slow forward shuffle.

  “He deserved it,” Jill snarled.

  Even Colonel Han flinched at the sound of her voice.

  “They all deserve it,” she continued. “Paying for sex with girls who are just out of middle school. Girls who still have their hair bobbed, for Christ’s sake, because they finished the ninth grade only weeks ago. Now those same girls are made-up like whores and dancing in sequined outfits and these middle aged men with wives and children in quarters back on army bases in the States grab them and paw them and make them giggle and then stick their tired old pricks inside that soft virgin flesh. And the men laugh about it. And boast. And don’t even seem to care that I’m a woman and despise every one of them, and then they have the nerve to make comments about me. About my butt. About why a woman would be an MP. And they ask me dumb questions, like if I’ve ever burned my bra, and there were so many times”-Her fist tightened into knots-”so many times when I came that close to pulling out my. 45 and blowing their fuck-ing brains out.”

  “Jill,” Colonel Han said. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. Her face relaxed and she turned to him and smiled.

  “It’s time, Jill,” he said. “Time for us to do what we planned.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Jill stepped away from Colonel Han and stared at me once again. She pointed at the ledger in my hand. “You have the proof now. I know you two guys. I respect you. You’ll make sure that the truth comes out. And one other thing. It’s true that I roughed Pak Tong-i up a bit. But when I left him he was still breathing. Maybe later, God forgive me, he died of a heart attack. I’m not proud of that.”

  Colonel Han shouted something to a group of men who’d been hovering nearby. They stepped between me and Ernie and the quarter-ton truck. Colonel Han climbed back on top and helped Jill up. Then he started to address the crowd.

  Exactly what he said, word for word, has been transcribed from tape recordings made by protestors who were there. The transcribed speech has been passed around Korea and has now, in translation, been passed around the world. What he said, in effect, was that Korea must control its own destiny. It was time for Koreans, both in the North and the South, to reject foreign influence, to expel all foreigners, and to reunite. The first step was to take back Korean sovereignty, both on the land and in the courts. Once he’d made these points he said that Koreans were strong enough to defend themselves and, once the Americans were expelled, if the northern communists refused to reunite, then the soldiers of the Republic of Korea should march north and force reunification. Blood would be shed, people would die, but to prove his sincerity he was going to do more than just talk. He was going to act.

  Most of the speech was in language too sophisticated for me to follow. But the last part, when he said he was going to act, I understood.

  He and Jill Matthewson leaped off the truck, strode past the destroyed Camp Casey main gate, and marched across the open pavement toward the advancing ROK Army troops. The crowd was silent. Jill Matthewson pulled her. 45.

  “No!” I shouted. Frantically, I lunged forward. Both Ernie and the men assigned to us by Colonel Han held me back.

  “No!” I shouted again, because what they were about to do seemed perfectly obvious to me.

  Jill held her. 45 aloft and then aimed it at the KCIA man standing behind the row of KNPs. She popped off a round. At that range, twenty or thirty yards, the round flew high but the reaction of the KNP brass was immediate. They fell to the ground. Now Colonel Han stepped in front of Jill. He pulled his pistol and aimed it at the advancing ROK troops. They didn’t wait for an order. A fusillade of M-16 rounds slammed into Colonel Han’s body. He didn’t twirl in the air as he would’ve done if this had been a movie. His body slammed to the pavement as if he’d been sucker-punched in the chest by a twenty-foot-tall giant.

  Jill stepped over Colonel Han’s body until she was straddling it, kneeled down in his spreading blood, and kissed him on the forehead. When she stood again, she started to raise the. 45 in her hand.

  That’s when I broke free of Ernie’s grip and charged at the ROK soldiers in front of me. “Sagyok chungji!” I shouted. Hold your fire!

  Jill looked back.

  It was just that one or two seconds of hesitation that allowed me to sprint across the road. I slammed into her and executed a tackle that would’ve made my old coach at Lincoln High proud. Jill fell, Ernie arrived, and soon we three were stumbling away from the line of ROK soldiers. Jill struggled but Ernie punched her and I slipped handcuffs on her.

  We were in a Hyundai sedan, heading south, Ernie driving. The vehicle had been loaned to us by Madame Chon. While we were still in Tongduchon, Jill had changed into civilian clothes and since none of us were now in uniform-and we were riding in a civilian vehicle-we hoped that we could slip past the southernmost 2nd Infantry Division checkpoint on the MSR. They had no jurisdiction over civilians. With any luck, we could make our way back to Seoul.

  “Back there,” Ernie said, “you told us that you all but killed Pak Tong-i.”

  “He died the same night. So I’ve felt responsible for his death. His heart must’ve been weak.”

  “You weren’t the one who killed him, Jill,” I said.

  “Then who did?

  “Bufford. And maybe Weatherwax. They interrogated him after you left. That’s how they obtained the information that led them to the Forest of Seven Clouds.”

  Jill sat in silence, thinking about that.

  “Did you use a rope on him?” Ernie asked.

  “A rope?”

  “To strangle Pak Tong-i. To scare him into talking.”

  Jill shook her head.

  “Then it wasn’t you who killed him. It had to be Bufford and Weatherwax.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said finally.

  “I’m right,” Ernie replied.

  Stanchions blocked the road ahead. Ernie slowed.

  “Easy now,” I told him. “These civilian license plates should ward them off. Of course, they’ll see we’re Miguks, and Ernie and I have short hair and look like GIs, so they might try to talk to us anyway. But what we do is we ignore them and keep rolling slowly through the checkpoint. They have no authority to stop us.”

&nb
sp; “Seems like up here at Division,” Ernie said, “people don’t worry much about the legal extent of their authority.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But these MPs have no reason to stop us.”

  “Unless they figure that you’re those Eighth Army CID agents they’ve been looking for,” Jill said.

  “Or that you’re an AWOL MP,” Ernie shot back.

  “Not AWOL any longer.”

  We’d taken the handcuffs off of Jill and she’d voluntarily submitted to our instructions to return with us to Seoul. So she was once again under military jurisdiction and-technically-no longer absent without leave. And since she’d returned to military jurisdiction prior to thirty days after leaving her unit, she couldn’t be charged with desertion.

  We passed the reinforced concrete bunker with the M-60 machine gun. Beyond that stood an armed ROK soldier. He peered into the car, saw our civilian license plates, and waved us on. The last obstacle was the American MP. He was tall and skinny and held his M-16 rifle at port arms, his back toward us.

  “He isn’t even paying attention,” Ernie said.

  We were about to cruise past him when suddenly he turned, lowered his rifle, and stepped in front of us. Ernie slammed on the brakes. From beneath the MP’s helmet, a long skinny nose pointed out.

  Jill screamed.

  Ernie shouted a curse but it was too late for him to step on the gas. The MP had leveled his weapon and was pointing it right at Ernie’s face. Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. In the flesh. I popped open the passenger door and rolled onto the blacktop. Ernie sat frozen behind the wheel. Jill ducked but it was too late, Bufford had spotted her. He started shouting for us to get out of the car, hands up. Shielded by the side of the vehicle, I pulled my. 45.

  Boots clomped behind me. I turned. The ROK Army soldier’s rifle was pointed directly at my face. I lowered my. 45, dropped it to the ground, and raised my hands in surrender.

  At the point of a gun, Bufford marched Jill Matthewson into the bushes.

  Ernie and I stood at the side of the road, our hands up, guarded by the ROK Army MP. Another ROK Army MP had taken over at the checkpoint, glancing into vehicles, waving them through. What had happened to the American MP who normally worked here? Probably, Bufford had sent him back to his unit, with a bullshit story about the move-out alert. Ernie and I were both worried about the same thing. What was he going to do to Jill?

  I started speaking Korean to the ROK soldier. His name tag, hand embroidered, revealed that he was Private Yun. I told him that I was an agent for 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division and that my credentials were in my inside coat pocket. At first he ignored me. I kept at him. I told him that Warrant Officer Bufford was a fugitive from justice and Yun was now taking orders from the wrong man. I warned him about how much trouble he would be in if he didn’t listen to me. Finally, Private Yun, still holding his rifle on us, reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my CID badge. I warned him that he now had thirty seconds to lower his rifle and return our weapons.

  The young man’s face flushed with indecision. He shouted at the other ROK Army MP. They conferred in rapid Korean. Finally, they decided that one of them would cover for the other while they used the radio to call the sergeant of the guard. That wasn’t quick enough for us. By the time they ran the information up the chain of command and a decision came back down, Corporal Jill Matthewson might be dead.

  From the north, from the 2nd Division area, a car screeched up to the checkpoint. A long sedan. Black. A driver in a dark suit popped out of the front door and another dark-suited man emerged from the passenger’s side. The driver opened the back door and a man climbed out. Agent Sohn, the KCIA man. When he held up his badge, the ROK Army MP nearest him shouted a martial greeting. Private Yun, still standing in front of us, glanced back. That’s all Ernie needed. He charged low, diving for Yun’s ankles. I stepped to my left and then threw myself at the ROK MP. A shot rang out. Apparently, it didn’t hit me because I was able to thrust my shoulder full force into Private Yun. He went down. Ernie scrambled for the rifle, seized it, and pointed it at the KCIA men. They backed off. While Ernie held them at bay, I retrieved our. 45s.

  Ernie shot out the tires of the KCIA sedan. We ran into the woods, following a trail of broken branches and trodden grass left by Bufford as he’d forced Jill at gunpoint into the forest. Through the tree line and beyond, ten-foot-high cement megaliths stretched in a double row. Dragon’s teeth. As far as the eye could see.

  Ernie and I stopped when we saw them. They lay between two dragon’s teeth, near a creek in a grass-covered meadow, perhaps twenty yards away. It was clear what was happening.

  He was naked. Bony knees, pale flesh, elbows rubbed raw and red. He held Jill’s. 45 in his hand, finger on the trigger, the barrel propped beneath her jaw. Her pants were pulled low but her legs were still locked, and she lay back with her butt pressed against mud. Her eyes were clenched tightly and she was crying. Not tears of helplessness but tears of rage.

  Ernie pointed the rifle and fired. A round caromed madly off one of the dragon’s teeth. Bufford looked at us but he didn’t climb off of Jill. He shouted that he’d pull the trigger if we didn’t back off.

  “You’re finished, Bufford,” Ernie shouted. “Even if you kill her, there’s no way out.”

  “I’ll kill her now!” Bufford said.

  As he shouted at Ernie, the barrel of his. 45 shifted, just slight- ly. But it was enough. Enough for Jill Matthewson to know that this was her chance.

  She brought a fist up in a looping left cross and at the same time propelled her knee up right between Bufford’s legs. He screamed. The gun went off. Ernie and I sprinted forward. Through the smoke and confusion I couldn’t tell what had happened to Jill. We stumbled and clawed our way through the mud and as the smoke cleared I realized that she was still alive. I’ve never seen anyone in such a rage. By the time Ernie and I approached she was on top of Fred Bufford. His pistol lay uselessly in the mud and Jill Matthewson was pulverizing him and had started to gouge out his eyeballs. It took Ernie and me two minutes to pull her off of him. We handcuffed her because it was the only way we could stop her from killing Bufford with her bare hands. Our mistake was that we handcuffed her with her hands in front rather than behind her back.

  Bufford lay unconscious next to the creek. Blood trickled from his eyes, nose, and mouth.

  I policed up the. 45 and found Jill Matthewson’s wallet lying next to her torn blue jeans. A couple of photographs had fallen out. I picked them up and held them up to the light. A rape scene. I saw three men: Lieutenant Colonel Alcott; a man I recognized as H.K. Pacquet, the Chief of Staff of the 2nd Division; and Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. All naked. All working on some poor young woman who’d been bound and gagged. The lighting was dim. I studied the woman. I expected her to be the stripper, Jill’s friend, Kim Yong-ai. But then I realized that she wasn’t Kim. She wasn’t even Korean. She was American. And then I realized who she was. The impetus for Jill Matthewson’s rage became clear to me.

  Ernie was too busy to look at the photos, what with handcuffing Bufford and helping Jill climb out of the mudhole she was lying in. When the KCIA men appeared at the edge of the clearing, Ernie warned them back with the M16 rifle. They stood and observed, as Jill pulled up her pants and adjusted what was left of her torn shirt and blouse.

  Before Ernie could notice, I stuffed the photographs into my pocket. I didn’t want Ernie, or anyone other than Jill, to see them. I handed her the wallet. Automatically, she searched for the photos. When she didn’t find them, she looked up at me. I pulled them out of my pocket and handed them to her. She refused to take them.

  “It’s over now,” she told me.

  “Okay,” I answered. “What should I do with them?”

  “Destroy them.”

  “We might need them to get you out of this mess.”

  “I don’t care. Destroy them.”

  I did. I borrowed a lighter from one of the KCIA men and set them on
fire.

  While Ernie talked to the KCIA men and the photographs burned, Jill dragged the now conscious Fred Bufford near the creek behind one of the dragon’s teeth. We weren’t paying attention, all of us still in shock. Warrant Officer Fred Bufford didn’t shout for help. Maybe he couldn’t. Jill, her wrists still handcuffed in front of her, shoved Bufford’s head face-first into the mud. She held him there. By the time we realized what she was doing, Warrant Officer Fred Bufford was dead.

  16

  T here were more student demonstrations. Tons of them. In Seoul, in Pusan, in Kwangju. There was enormous pressure for the regime of President Pak Chung-hee to reduce the number of American troops stationed in Korea. And it almost happened. Contingency plans were written up in the Pentagon, professors at American universities wrote articles about how Korea was ready to be fully self-reliant. But, at the last moment, a new evaluation of the North Korean threat was released. Suddenly, it was discovered that instead of 700,000 troops in their army the North Koreans now had one million. The South Koreans, meanwhile, could only field an army of a paltry 450,000 soldiers. So plans for a U.S. draw down were rescinded.

  The incident at Camp Casey never hit the Pacific Stars amp; Stripes. It was reported by Reuters and the international press and, eventually, even AP and UPI. But they played it as just another student demonstration, one that had proven to be a little more violent than others but just a demonstration nevertheless.

  Ernie and I kept Colonel Alcott’s ledger in a safe place, at the hooch of Ernie’s latest girlfriend in the red-light district of Itaewon.

  When we were debriefed, the ledger was never mentioned. Blackmail is an ugly word anywhere but particularly in the hallowed halls of the 8th United States Imperial Army. Not only did we not want to have to threaten anyone with blackmail, the 8th Army provost marshal didn’t want to admit that he had ever been blackmailed. Therefore, the existence of the ledger, although rumored, was never mentioned in any official file.