The Door to Bitterness

20

streets of Seoul. You don’t lift a finger to help her son or daughter. And now you go dumb on us when your own nephew robs your casino and kills your employee. What kind of shithead are you?”

I’m not sure if Yun Guang-min understood all of what Ernie was spouting, but he must’ve gotten the idea. Yun was a tough guy. He stared right at Ernie, giving him the evil eye, daring him to squeeze the trigger and pop a cap through his forehead.

From the look on his face, I thought Ernie was going to do it. I sidled toward him, hoping to get close enough to deflect his aim if need be. I continued firing questions at Yun Guang-min. The casino owner answered angrily, telling me nothing, claiming he had no knowledge of why this man we called his nephew had robbed him. He had no idea where that man might be now.

In disgust, I backed off. No telling when reinforcements might arrive. Ernie sensed it too. He swiveled his head, and I knew he was anxious to un-ass the area. Yun Guang-min, however, called me over.

I returned to the table, expecting him to relay something useful, finally. Instead, he glanced down at the photo of his late sister and her two children.

“You forgot your photograph,” he said.

I snatched it up. The son of a bitch had pointedly not touched it. His cold eyes seethed with humiliation. He’d pay us back, I thought. The free pass Americans received in Korea had just been revoked.

We took off.

As Ernie and I emerged from under the red arch at the entrance of the Silla Cho Siktang, a group of young men hurried up the main driveway. I recognized two. Young men in dark suits, straight hair slicked back. Yun Guang-min’s bodyguards.

When they saw us, one pointed and shouted: “Yah!”

Ernie reached for his weapon.

I grabbed his arm. “No good, pal. We’re outnumbered.” Three of the bodyguards had already pulled out pistols. “Come on! Let’s go!”

For once, Ernie saw the wisdom of what I was saying. He followed as I ran toward the lobby and the front entrance. Uniformed bell hops stepped backward. We shoved past and raced into the hotel lobby. Ahead, carpeted steps led to the casino. Elevator doors sat open. Clattering plates and flatware in the Olympos Hotel Restaurant and Coffee Shop raised a din.

Yun’s armed bodyguards were only a few yards behind.

“Smooth move,” Ernie said, clanging back the charging handle of his. 45. “Now we’re trapped.”

“No. Not trapped,” I said. “Come on.”

I sprinted into the coffee shop, Ernie right behind me. Fashionably dressed Korean men and women gawked as we darted through the small sea of tables. I bumped into a waitress carrying a tray full of snacks and beverages but Ernie, right behind me, caught the tray in time and handed it back to the surprised woman.

Yun’s bodyguards burst into the restaurant, guns drawn, shouting.

I darted through the swinging doors of the kitchen, sprinted toward the back, and halted at a tiled wall. Ernie bumped into me.

“So now we’re trapped in here,” he said, “rather than out there.”

He crouched behind a big iron stove and aimed at the double doors. Outside men shouted, and a woman screamed.

“There’s a way out,” I said. “I found it when we were here before, when I went to that office.”

“But that was upstairs, on the other side of the casino,”

Ernie said.

“I heard pots and pans clanging,” I said.

A cook emerged from a large storeroom, carrying a huge glass jar with something slimy inside.

“There,” I said.

We dashed into the storeroom. Behind us, the bodyguards crashed through the kitchen doors, shouting, shoving a couple of cooks out of the way.

Wooden shelving lined the storeroom’s four walls.

“Shit,” Ernie said. He turned and said, “Take cover. I’ll blast them when they come in.”

I tugged on his arm. “Over here.”

Hidden behind the last shelf was a door. Before I had a chance to turn the knob, the cook, who had been carrying the big jar, crashed back through the doors of the storeroom. He reeled backward, still clutching the jar, lost his footing, twisted, and fell to the tile floor a few feet in front of us. Bodyguards crashed in after him. The glass jar smashed, and oil and tentacles and squid flesh splashed along the slippery floor. The bodyguards hit the slime and slid, waving arms like pinwheels. Then they crashed onto the floor atop the supine cook. More bodyguards plowed in after, grabbing wooden shelving to maintain their footing, tipping over neat rows of tin cans and glassware.

I pulled open the door, grabbed Ernie by the back of his jacket, and pulled him through, out into a narrow hallway.

“Come on!”

We turned and ran up a stairway, into a parquet-floored hall that was familiar. We were behind the cashier’s cage of the casino. I sprinted up the wooden stairwell leading to Yun Guang-min’s office. Ernie was right behind. As we climbed to the top of the steps, we heard shouting. The bodyguards were in the hallway now.

Would they shoot us on sight? It was dangerous to murder U.S. Army CID agents. But only if someone knew. If you controlled the local police, and if the bodies of the two Americans disappeared into the Yellow Sea-well, how much risk was there in that?

I ran faster.

We crashed into Yun Guang-min’s office, ran behind his teak desk. I knelt and pulled open the fire-escape door, and was hit in the face with a blast of wind and salt spray from the Yellow Sea.

Ernie leaned next to me and poked his head outside, gazing at the narrow rock ledge that wound around the corner of the building.

“We’re going out there?”

“Watch your footing,” I said. “And hang onto the rocks along the wall.”

We heard voices and the pounding of footsteps behind us. Ernie glanced down at his. 45, and then out at the ledge again. “Okay,” he said. “You go first. I want a clear shot at those bastards if they come after us.”

“Right.”

I stepped through. The ledge was about two feet wide but seemed narrower once I was on it. Below, wild surf crashed into jagged rock, launching leaps of white foam that slapped onto my trousers and kept the ledge moist and slippery. Along the cliff wall, jagged outcroppings of rock were also slippery, but they provided reassuring handholds. I stepped along gingerly until there was enough space for Ernie to emerge from the door and close it behind him. Together, we sidled along the wall. The corner of the building was about twenty yards away. We were halfway there, when the door behind us popped open.

A man stuck his head out. One of the bodyguards. Ernie popped a round off at him, and started to teeter away from the cliff face. Holding onto a slippery chunk of granite, I grabbed the back of Ernie’s coat. He regained his balance and leaned against the rock wall.

The bodyguard peered cautiously at us.

“Move it!” Ernie shouted.

I did, stepping as quickly as I dared toward the corner which would shield us. We were nearly there when I heard grunting ahead.

I froze.

“What’s wrong, dammit?” Ernie yelled.

He looked past me and saw what I saw-another bodyguard. This one held a pistol pointed at us.

I crouched.

Ernie leaned around me and popped off a round at the man’s hand. He missed. The gunman pulled back behind the cover of the rock ledge.

Behind us, another thug stuck his head out of the fire escape door. Ernie leveled his pistol at him, and the man ducked back.

“We’re screwed,” Ernie said. “We can’t go forward, we can’t go back.”

“Yeah. You might be right.

“Does anybody know we’re here?” Ernie said.

“I didn’t call Riley. You?”

“No,” Ernie said. “So there probably won’t even be an investigation.”

“Probably not. They’ll just figure we deserted.”

“Maybe we should have. It would’ve been a lot more fun.”

I glanced down at the churning sea. When the waves rolled in, the water rose. It covered the jagged rocks. Ten yards out, the water was fairly deep.

“There’s one way,” I said.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not.”

The arm with the pistol stuck out around the edge of the building again. I leaned back and Ernie fired across my chest. The hand retreated hastily.

“How many more rounds?” I said.

“Six,” Ernie panted.

“Save ‘em.”

“What for?”

“For later.”

With that, I took a deep breath, waited for a wave to crash into the rocks, and leapt off the edge of the Olympos Hotel and Casino into the waters of the Yellow Sea.