Buddha's money

20

"Try to drive!" I shouted, "Get this thing moving."

I figured our best chance was to stay in the car, keep it rolling forward, try to break loose from the crowd. But Mr. Peik was a complete wreck. He was crying and moaning, and the little sedan still idled in park, a stationary target for the enraged students now surrounding us.

Ernie reached across Mr. Peik, popped open the door, and began shoving the gambler out of the car. "Move!" he shouted.

Mr. Peik clawed at Ernie in terror. Ernie propped his back against the far side of the car and, using the soles of his dirty sneakers, kicked the gambler out onto the street. The protesters pounced. But when they realized their prey was Korean, the punches and kicks stopped. By then Ernie had slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He popped the clutch: The little Hyundai sedan lurched through the sea of students. We moved like a giant frog, leaping a few feet forward whenever Ernie found a small opening.

Demonstrators swarmed toward us. We were the center of attraction for the mob now. Ernie gunned the engine, ground the gears; swerving, slamming on the brakes, and cursing all the while.

Lady Ahn sat rigidly still, the bag containing the jade skull strapped around her neck.

Glass splintered into the car. Lady Ahn let out an involuntary murmur but quickly composed herself.

"Get down on the floor!" I shouted.

She sat up even straighter. "No. I will not kneel to these people."

The road ahead was clogged with students. Those in front-even if they wanted to-would be unable to move because of the surging crowd pressing behind them. Ernie swerved again, a confused bull surrounded by picadors.

Like a tidal wave, the bodies engulfed us. More windows smashed; hands reached into the car. I slapped at them, punched them, twisted them, broke them, but still more hands seeped in. Tentacles from a thousand-armed beast.

Fingernails scratched me everywhere. Blood started to trickle down my forehead into my eyes. Blinded, I felt Lady Ahn being pulled from me. I hugged her waist but there were too many arms pulling against me. She was dragged across the jagged shards of broken glass and out through the window.

That's when I got pissed off.

I jumped out of the car and started punching and kicking, feeling the hard rock of skull and bone against my flailing fists. A few demonstrators backed off. That gave Ernie enough space to back up the Hyundai. While he did, I leapt at the students holding Lady Ahn. I was scream- ing, clawing, slavering at the mouth, insane with panic and anger.

They let go of her for just a second. I kicked one, he went down, and I yanked her back toward the sedan.

Ernie had managed to clear some space and was driving in a tight circle. We moved into the center of the circle and Ernie kept moving around us, gunning the engine fiercely, widening the gyre, backing off the sea of shouting students until Lady Ahn and I stood in the center of a human whirlpool.

Ernie screamed for us to hop in.

"Oddiso?" Lady Ahn said, patting her chest. Where is it?

The grain bag with the jade skull was gone. Before I could stop her, she sprinted into the crowd. The mob watched Ernie spinning the Hyundai sedan like a mad top. Lady Ahn darted from person to person searching for the bag. Finally, she found it.

A couple of loud punks had turned the heavy burlap bag upside down, were grabbing handfuls of grain, and tossing them mindlessly into the crowd. In a few seconds, I knew, the jade skull would come tumbling out.

Lady Ahn charged the two men, shoved one back, snatched the bag from the other's grasp. Someone grabbed her by the arm. Without a second's hesitation, she whistled her small fist through the air and smacked him in the chops.

The man's head snapped back, his eyes filled with rage, and he reached for her. I attacked.

I ran full force into him. Cursing, he went down, Lady Ahn screamed, and about a million paws reached out of the crowd and clawed at me.

I punched and kicked and head-butted anyone who came near but it wasn't doing any good. There were just too many of them.

A wave of shouting rippled through the crowd. The pec- pie around me slowed their assault. Lady Ahn grabbed me, holding on.

"Bikkyo!" someone yelled. Make way!

Male students sliced like a phalanx through the mob. People backed up for them, and miraculously, attention shifted away from us.

A dozen bald-headed monks emerged from the chaos, all garbed in loose robes the color of red rust. In their midst was another bald person, a woman, draped in dirty white hemp garments. The hue of mourning.

When the woman in white came closer, I recognized her: Choi So-lan. Small Orchid Choi. The little nun Ernie and I had rescued in Itaewon.

The crowd hushed as she approached. Most people took an involuntary step backward. Many bowed.

I'd never seen Koreans show such reverence to anyone.

The engine of the Hyundai was still churning, Ernie still making his tight little circles, still trying to keep the mob at bay.

The little nun and her entourage reached the edge of the crowd and watched Ernie making himself dizzy. Finally, Ernie realized that no one was attacking. He slowed, stepped on the brake, and turned off the engine.

When no one charged, Ernie climbed out of the car, set one elbow on the roof of the sedan, and smiled over at the little nun.

"Thought you'd never get here," he said.

She turned to one of the monks. "Mullah gu?" What'd he say? The monk leaned down to whisper in her ear.

I pulled Lady Ahn closer to the little nun.

The crowd seemed to come alive, and many started shouting again. "Kill the foreigner!" "Avenge the little nun!"

The monk next to the nun raised his naked arms in the air, slowly turning in a circle. Again, the crowd grew quiet. The monk shouted in Korean.

"These men helped the good nun. These men are not our enemies. Choi So-lan says they must be protected!"

A murmur of confusion rippled through the mob. The monk shouted again.

"They are the ones who saved her from her attacker!"

This time heads nodded and the murmur was higher pitched. Approval.

Like magic, small towels were offered out of the crowd. I took one, handed it to Lady Ahn, and took one for myself. The cuts on my forehead stung as I wiped them down. A woman in a light blue smock with a red cross on her vest emerged from the forest of torsos. She produced a bottle of purple ointment and dabbed the stinging potion onto our cuts.

Ernie hadn't been hurt at all. He sauntered over to the little nun and offered her a stick of ginseng gum. Smiling broadly, she accepted.

Over by the main gate, the chanting began again. "Down with the foreign louts! Avenge the nun! Go back to America!"

Ernie kept smiling. Lady Ahn clutched the grain bag to her chest. I spoke in Korean to the little nun. "You have become very famous."

The monk standing next to her ignored my Korean and answered me in English.

'Yes. She is a symbol now to all Koreans. Of our resistance to an American occupation that would allow one of your soldiers to brutalize one as innocent as this."

He sounded like a propaganda recording. "We did not allow it," I told him. "The man who attacked her is a criminal."

"But you haven't turned him over to the Korean authorities yet."

My surprise must've shown on my face. The monk started to smirk.

There was no reason why Eighth Army CID couldn't have picked up the culprit by now. Ernie and I had left all the information any good investigator would need. What was holding them up?

"I'm sure he'll be turned over soon," I said.

The monk shook his bald head. "No. Your superiors claim they haven't even captured him yet."

Haven't captured him yet! No wonder the Korean students were mad.

The little nun was paying no attention at all to us. She kept chomping on her gum and smiling up at Ernie. For his part, he scanned the crowd, occasionally pointing at somebody with their hair tied up by their white headband or their face smeared with paint, making faces, imitating them.

The nun laughed like a little girl.

"Why is she wearing a hemp robe?" I asked.

The monk crossed his long arms. 'You know nothing of Korean custom?"

"Hemp robes are the sign of mourning," I said.

"Yes."

"So who died?"

"No one yet. In two days someone will."

I waited. He smiled.

"The virtuous nun," he said. "The little one you see before you."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "She's young. Healthy. What's going to kill her?"

"Fire. At a rally in downtown Seoul. If the attacker is not caught and turned over to us, this good nun, Choi So-lan, will pour gasoline over her body. She will set herself aflame."

A holler erupted from the demonstrators. People closed in and started shoving.

Down the street, emerging from the high stone gate of the Ministry of National Defense, slithered a long row of helmeted riot police, waving their batons.

The students hooted and tossed stones.

Ernie turned to me. "Time to un-ass the area."

The monk smiled. "I will see to that." He raised his arm. A few monks scurried away and in less than a minute a long American-made station wagon nosed its way through the throng. It was ancient, almost twenty years old, and the outer walls were paneled with revarnished wood. A "woody," they used to call it back in Los Angeles.

Ernie took one look at it and grinned. "Shit. And here I am all out of surfboard wax."

The station wagon pulled up next to us and two monks jumped out and opened the doors. The elder monk motioned with his arm.

"Please. Be our guest."

Ernie shook his head. "I'll walk. Itaewon's just a few blocks from here."

Lady Ahn preferred walking, too. With the jade skull strapped in a bag over her shoulder, she didn't trust these Buddhists at all.

They both looked at me. "Yes," I said. "We prefer to walk."

"Ah," the monk said, "but we insist."

A dozen tough-looking monks closed in on us in a tight circle. Behind them were hundreds of angry demonstrators. The police near the Ministry of National Defense started to scrape their batons along the tops of their riot control shields.

It was an eerie sound. Like Roman legions preparing to clear a square.

The monk motioned again for us to climb into the sta- tion wagon. Ernie ignored him and stepped away. Before I could move, three monks hoisted Ernie into the air, and shoved him into the backseat of the woody like a flailing side of beef.

We were outnumbered. There was nothing else for us to do but comply.

Lady Ahn clutched my arm but kept her face set in stony aloofness. Regally, she stepped forward and entered the car. I followed.