The Door to Bitterness

22

Would it do any good to notify 8th Army? No. They had no way of doing a better job than the Korean cops. In fact, if a pack of cowboy MPs barged in while I was trying to save Ernie, they’d only get somebody killed.

I was on my own on this. And I had to find him.

“Where would they have taken Mr. Yun?” I asked Captain Kim.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“It’s Chusok,” I said, trying to think it through. “Like all Koreans, they want to visit their ancestors. Their ancestors are in Yoju, the same as their uncle, Mr. Yun.”

Suk-ja crinkled her nose. “They no like them.”

She was right. She was exactly right. The smiling woman and her brother had been ostracized by their own family. They wouldn’t want to worship ancestors who had turned their backs on them. So who would they worship? The one ancestor who hadn’t turned away. Who had stood by them always. Their mother.

Where was she buried?

Probably, she hadn’t been. The Uichon mama-san had told me the smiling woman carried with her a white box wrapped with black ribbon. That almost certainly contained the ashes of her deceased mother. To worship her, all they had to do was set the box on a table and bow.

At the murder site of Jo Kyong-ah, the black marketeer, she’d been forced to bow in front of a table partially cleared. Had the smiling woman and her brother forced Miss Jo to bow to the box containing their deceased mother’s ashes?

When Specialist 5 Arthur Q. Fairbanks was executed, the killer had set a cardboard-like paper against the pump handle and forced Fairbanks to bow three times. A photograph of Miss Yun, the mother? And then another person had entered the courtyard. His sister carrying the white box containing their mother’s ashes? Then Fairbanks was killed.

I pulled out the photo Jimmy had given me. Miss Yun Yong-min, her daughter, and her son. Such a pathetic little family. Three people, all alone in the world. If I was correct, there was no set site for the smiling woman and her brother to pay homage at the shrine of their deceased mom. They could’ve taken Ernie and Mr. Yun anywhere.

It was late afternoon. The sun would go down soon and the lights of Itaewon would blink to life as they had for so many years since the end of the Korean War. But tonight, they’d blink on without Ernie Bascom.

Suk-ja and I stood out on the street, waiting. A motor bike putt-putted up the street. A red helmet flashed by. I watched as Jimmy the photographer parked his bike in front of the King Club, his boxy camera with flash slung over his shoulder, ready for another night’s work.

Then I knew.

I grabbed Suk-ja’s hand. “Come on.”

I dragged Suk-ja across and stopped Jimmy before he could enter the swinging doors of the King Club. I pulled out the photo he had given me and asked him some questions. Jimmy’s memory was excellent, and he pointed to the big wooden arch under which Miss Yun and her two children had posed, all three smiling bravely. Together, we recited the name of the Buddhist temple where he’d flashed the photo: Hei-un Sa. The Temple of Sea and Cloud. Jimmy gave us directions.

Suk-ja and I thanked him and waved down a cab.

Before we left Itaewon, Suk-ja insisted on stopping at a pay phone to place a call. To her brother, she said. While I waited in the cab, I watched her chatting away, unable to hear what she was saying. It didn’t matter. I figured I already knew who she was calling and what she’d be saying. Still, I worked on finding a way to believe that I was wrong about her and that she really was talking to her brother.

With the passenger door ajar so the inside light would stay on, Suk-ja and the cab driver studied a map of Kyongi Province.

“Over there,” she said, pointing.

We had already traveled many miles east of the outskirts of Seoul, and I knew from driving these areas during daylight that we weren’t far from the Han River Estuary. The map indicated we were close to the temple, and the driver agreed with her. I closed the door as he restarted the engine. He drove down the bumpy, unpaved country road.

Litter lined the sides, and muddy tire tracks were everywhere. It had been a busy day out here, but with the crowds of Chusok worshipers back in the city, the area was desolate and barren. Wind swirled inland from the cold sea.

Why did I believe that the smiling woman and her brother would come out here for their Chusok ceremony? Because they’d been happy here. They’d visited with their mother when she was alive, many times, according to Jimmy. It was the logical place to finally bury her ashes. But as Jimmy had warned me, land-even a small burial mound-could be expensive. Hundreds of dollars. Even thousands, if the mound had an unobstructed view of the sea.

The terrain started to rise. According to the map, the cemetery tended by the Buddhist monks was located on the bluffs along the River Han, at a spot where the Han meets the Imjin River and they flood out into the Yellow Sea. During the day, the view must’ve been beautiful beyond compare.

Maybe that’s what all this was about. Maybe the robbery of the Olympos Casino, in the minds of the smiling woman and her brother, hadn’t been a robbery at all. Maybe they had just decided to claim their inheritance. An inheritance from an uncle who should’ve, by Korean custom, taken care of them from the day they were born. And maybe their desire for money was not so they could splurge on the finer things in life, but to buy their mother a burial plot that would give her the respect in death that she was never afforded in life.

Maybe, if you looked at it their way, this entire crime spree-starting with bopping me over the head and proceeding to murder after murder-could be seen as an act of filial piety of unparalleled proportions. I might be wrong. But if I was right, the smiling woman and her brother would be here tonight.

The cab’s shock absorbers groaned as we bounced over a muddy ridge. We were north of Kimpo International Airport, even farther north of the port city of Inchon. In churning waters beyond rocky cliffs, the theoretical demarcation line between North and South Korea ran through the center of the Han River Estuary. A few of the small islands on the northern side, I knew, were patrolled and heavily fortified by the northern Communist regime.

The wind was whipping up. A few splats of rain fell onto dirt.

“Andei,” said the driver. No good.

He was right. If the wind blew in rain clouds off the Yellow Sea, these dirt roads would turn to mud in a matter of minutes.

The driver slowed, wanting to turn back.

“Jokum to,” I said. A little farther.

He sighed and kept driving.

The road started to rise more steeply. Lightning flashed over the Yellow Sea. I spotted the outline of grave mounds dotting the hills.

The driver stopped, backed up, and started to turn around.

“All right,” I said. “All right.”

I climbed out. Suk-ja too.

“You go back,” I said. “I have to find Ernie and I have to move fast.”

I paid the cab driver. More rain spattered his windshield.

He wanted to get out before the roads turned to mud. I told Suk-ja to climb inside.

“No. I go with you.”

“No!” This time I shouted. “I have to go quickly and quietly. I can’t slow down and worry about you.”

In the reflected glow from the headlights, I saw her face fall. She lowered her eyes.

“Okay, Geogi. Sorry I bother you.”

“No bother.” I patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

She glanced at me, eyes flashing with anger. Then she climbed back in the cab, and the driver rolled forward. I stood watching them until the headlights reached the main road. The cab turned and sped off around a bend out of sight.

The roiling clouds came fast, pushed inland by a stiff breeze. All about me was becoming darker. The only light came from the swirling beam of a distant lighthouse, and the occasional flash of lightning over the water.

I walked uphill, toward the grave mounds.

The cloud cover broke for a few seconds and, as if to light my way, a Chusok moon, as full as the calm face of a Buddhist saint, shone.

When I was a kid in East L.A., the worst part was not having parents. Poverty, hunger, all those things you can stand- but without parents, you’re nothing.

Some of my foster parents were all right, some not so right. But I always knew that I lacked something fundamental that other kids had. A place to belong. A person to love you. A spot that was all yours and yours alone in this vast empty universe.

That’s what ancestor worship was all about. Why the Koreans made such a big deal about it. It told them who they were, where they belonged, how they fit into this gigantic puzzle we call human life. I envied them their dedication, and although I usually didn’t admit it to myself, I longed to join them.

But I had no place in it. Before I was old enough to start school, my mother died in childbirth, along with the sibling she was laboring to bear. Shortly afterwards, I’m told, my father ran off to Mexico, never to return.

At Suk-ja’s brother’s house, they’d set up two photographs of the ancestors of her nephews and nieces. I envied those kids. At least they knew who their parents were.

I would never know mine. Not personally. But somehow, whenever I was in trouble, I felt that my mother was near.

Walking beside me.

The grave mounds rolled like an undulating sea to the cliffs overlooking the confluence of the Han and the Imjin Rivers. There was movement behind one of the mounds, of that I was sure. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could differentiate one shadow from another. Occasionally, I could even hear the sound of murmuring voices, floating out to me on the salt-tanged wind.

I was freezing-cold and damp. The rain had fallen intermittently, coming in squalls of sudden pellets, but I’d been out here long enough to be soaked. My teeth chattered.

How I wished I had a weapon. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, I could’ve checked out a replacement pistol from the CID arms room. But that would’ve entailed filling out paperwork, and walking it from Staff Sergeant Riley’s office to the First Sergeant’s office and then the Provost Marshal’s Office, facing smirking clerks all the way. I not only didn’t have the time, I didn’t have the stomach to run such a humiliating gauntlet without punching somebody square in the nose. So I lived without. A decision I now regretted.

Crouch-walking through the mud, I edged closer to the high mound near the edge of the cliff.

Someone screamed. A male. Anguished. And I recognized the voice: Ernie.

I was at the side of the mound now. A human figure lay against it. The head bobbed forward occasionally. Ernie? Tied up?

Standing in front of him was a man. Standing still. Waiting. Kong, the son. Brother of the smiling woman.

Almost certainly he was armed. There were twenty yards between us. How to cover that without being spotted and gunned down? Only one way. Lightning.

When it flashed again, I would be blinded. But so would the man standing over Ernie. Before he could spot me or take aim, I’d be on him. That was my only chance.

The tall shadow stepped forward and once again Ernie screamed.

I crouched, flexing my knees, waiting to spring. No lightning. The wind picked up. More rain, but no flash.

All around me loomed burial mounds. Some had stone urns on top for burning incense. Others supported statuettes, likenesses of the dead in the cold ground below. Their stone eyes seemed to be watching. Smiling. Amused at my puny efforts.

The wind howled. More droplets of rain. It dribbled down the back of my neck. I worked my way forward.

A flash and lightening filled the world. I was on my feet, moving, trying to pick up traction in the sloshing mud. I ran. In the flash, I’d seen someone near Ernie, lying face down, unmoving, looking for all the world like a corpse. Was it Uncle Yun Guang-min?

And then my vision cleared, and I saw him: Brother Kong, in all his glory. His arm at his side, holding something long and heavy. He turned his startled eyes toward me. His hand came up, the barrel of the. 45 still not pointing directly at me. With a great leap, I was on him. Punching, ripping, kneeing, screaming.

Ernie shouted. What, I didn’t know. The gun lay in the mud now and the wide-eyed man beneath me stared up into a fist plunging toward his mouth. I punched him again and again. Blood ran, out of his nose, and mouth, and ear. He stopped struggling. His head lolled to the side. I could now hear what Ernie was saying.

“Untie me, goddamn it! Untie me!”

I grabbed my. 45, shoved it in my pocket and stood, legs wobbly. The man didn’t move. He was out cold. I turned, staggered forward, and knelt beside Ernie.

The red light of the Chusok moon peeked out from behind storm clouds. I could see that my assumptions had been correct. Lying next to Ernie in the mud, the back of his head blown open in a bloody pulp, was Mr. Yun Guang-min, former owner of the Olympos Hotel and Casino.

“Wires,” Ernie said. “In knots. He kept pulling on them, tightening them around my wrists and ankles. Hurt like a mother. Untie them, will ya?”

“Okay, okay.”

I studied the knots as best I could in the dark, going mainly by feel, listening for any movement behind me. Finally, I twisted the tightly wrapped wire but, as Ernie groaned, I realized that I was twisting the wrong way. I reversed the torque and the wires popped free. Ernie reached across and unknotted his other hand.

“Untie my feet,” he said.

I did. Ernie ripped all the wires off of his torso and hopped upright. He strode toward the supine man in front of us, knelt, and lifted the back of his head.

The moon had risen higher. Borum, the Koreans call it. The full moon. It was only a third of the way above the horizon but with this temporary break in the fast moving clouds I had enough light to see clearly the unconscious face before us. Kong. The brother of the smiling woman. He was an Asian man, or an American, depending on your point of view. His nose was broad but slightly pointed, his eyes were Oriental, but deeply recessed in his skull, and his lips were full. The hair was brown, almost as dark as a Korean’s, but the tips of each strand curled.

“Half-Miguk,” Ernie said.

I thought of the photographs I’d seen of Miss Yun. He looked like her. She had been a beautiful woman, and he wasn’t a bad-looking man. He looked like the little boy he’d been in those photographs: frightened, worried, clinging to his mother’s skirts.

“Who else is up here?” I said.

“That’s it.” Ernie wheezed. “The sister left. Couldn’t stand the rain.”

Ernie grabbed a few strands of broken wire. Together, we rolled the brother over and tied his hands behind his back.

I was exhausted. Ready to crash right there. But I knew we had to transport this guy to the nearest Korean police station, turn him in, and then convince somebody to police up the dead body of Mr. Yun Guang-min. After that, we’d spend the next couple of hours giving our report. A long night but it had to be done. I had just started to twist wire around his wrists, when I heard the footsteps behind us.

Ernie and I both turned.

With the full moon framing her head, a blonde woman stood with her shoulders thrust back, pointing the barrel of a pistol at my nose.

She was smiling.

Ernie and I rose slowly to our feet, holding our hands out to the sides.

With her free hand, she motioned for me to pull the. 45 out of my coat pocket. I did as I was told, holding the weapon butt first.

She pointed at the ground in front of her, and I tossed the weapon down. She bent at the knees, careful to keep her pistol pointed at us, and picked up the. 45. She stuck in her belt, behind her back.

All the while she was doing this, she kept smiling gleefully, the madness in her eyes flaming.

“You know nothing,” she said, still smiling. “You don’t know how many times they beat up my brother. He come home from school, every night, bleeding, cut up, bruised. One time they break his arm. Another time they break his, how you say?” She pointed at her side.

“Ribs,” I said.

“Yes. Hurt every time he breathe. No can go doctor. No have money. Me? I’m okay. Kids make fun of me, other girls laugh at my hair, but nobody beat me. Just boys all time touch, pinch me, say my mother yang kalbo. You understand?”

“Foreigner’s whore.”

“Even teacher one time say why I don’t go back my own country. My father country. I no say anything. Too ashame. I don’t know my father. Where he go? Who he? What his name? I don’t know. I ask my mother, she slap me. Later, I ask my mother if my brother’s daddy same same my daddy. She slap me again. Then she cry. How I know who my father is? And then my mom get sick. Can’t work in nightclub no more. Can’t earn big money from GI. GIs who come to our house every night, sleep in bed with my mother, make a lot of noise.”

She inhaled and exhaled, heavily, as if asthmatic. Smiling all the while.

“And me and my brother, we lay on floor next to bed, hold each other, try to sleep but we no can sleep. Drunk GI wake up, tell my mother to do things she don’t want do. And then they fight and GI try take money back, but my mother won’t let GI have money, and they fight more, and finally my mother do what he want her do. And before finished, my brother, he already sleep. Me? I no can sleep. I listen my mother. After finish, after GI sleep, she cry. Once I go to her, touch her arm, ask she not cry. She slap me. Tell me go back to sleep. But Ai-ja… ” With her free hand, she pointed at her own nose. “Ai-ja no can sleep. Ai-ja never sleep. Ai-ja always watch out for GI. Watch out for woman who no help my mother. Woman who always take things my mother get from GI boyfriend, things out of PX, sell to this woman. Later, when money gone, does she help my mother? No way, Jose. Karra chogi, she say. Get lost. So we leave and my mother every day she more sick. Every day she catch GI, but sometimes they no pay her and what you gonna do? We stay in yoguan at first during winter time, sleep outside during summer. But next winter money all gone. Snow come, we sleep outside. Sometimes, my brother he get angry. Taaksan angry. He punch GI. But GI punch him back and brother fall down, no can get up. When he’s older, he get up, punch GI. Sometimes, he win and GI run away. Is my mother happy? No way. She slap my brother, tell him go away, she no can feed him no more. So he stay away all day, but at night he find us and he sleep with us on sidewalk.”

Her brother started to rouse himself.

“Pretty soon he wake up,” the smiling woman said. “He all the time wake up. Even big GI knock him down, my brother he tough. He all time wake up.”

The moon hovered behind her head, and her smile was as bright and broad as the red face of the lunar orb. But the storm clouds off the sea were on the move again. They rolled inland and started to blot out the moonlight. The darkness deepened, and more drops of rain splattered the mud.

“And then VD honcho come,” the smiling woman said. “What’s his name?”

“Fairbanks,” I said.

Ernie’s eyes darted, looking for escape, but even Ernie knew he couldn’t outrun a bullet.

“Yes, Fairbanks,” the smiling woman said. “He come. Say my mother have TB. She say ‘bullshit.’ We cry, we scream, we punch but they take her anyway. Where? We don’t know. Me and brother, we don’t know.”

Her smile was broader than ever now. So broad that I honestly believed the flesh on her face might rip open.

“So me and my brother,” she said, “we run away from, how you say? Koai-won?”

“Orphanage,” I said.

“Yeah. We live on streets of Seoul. My brother, he run fast. Sometimes he see old people with money, he grab money and run. Or he grab food and run away, but sometimes KNP catch, lock him up, but next day let him go. I wait outside, then we together again. Later,” she said, “I start make money again the way my mother’s boyfriend teach me.”

At her feet, her brother groaned. He raised his head from the mud, shook it, looked around, and sprang to his feet, flinging loose wire from his wrist. Without speaking, his sister gave him the pistol. He grabbed it and aimed it at me and then Ernie.

“Kei sikkya,” he spat. Born of dogs.

The smiling woman said something to him in rapid Korean. He backed up a step.

“Here,” she said, pointing at the burial mound. “Me and brother get money and we pay at temple for this place to put my mother.” That explained why she no longer had the white box wrapped in black ribbon. “Bald men come and say a lot of thing I no can understand and they light fire and wave, what you call?”

“Incense,” I said.

“Yes. Incense. And they do lot of pray and we put mother in ground.”

Then she stepped away and I could see what rested against the side of the burial mound. A photograph. I strained to make it out. The rain came down harder.

“My mother,” the woman said. “She was beautiful, right? All GI likey.” Her smile was a mad leer.

Her brother growled. She turned to him. “Anyway, we do now.”

“Do what?” Ernie said.

“You,” she pointed at Ernie with the barrel of the. 45. “You lie down here. In mud.”

She pointed at the side of the burial mound, near her brother, just a few feet from the dead body of Mr. Yun. The brother waved his. 45 also, and Ernie complied, lying down face first at the edge of the mound.

“You,” she said. “You Sueno, you face my mother.”

She knew my name. I was surprised at that. I shouldn’t have been. These two had done their homework. Why did they want me and Ernie? Maybe because Ernie was fair, like the smiling woman, and I was dark, like her brother. We were stand-ins in this ceremony we were about to perform for the fathers they’d never known. That was what she’d meant in the back alleys of Itaewon when she told me she had a job for me.

I shuffled sideways until I was standing before the photograph.

“Now,” she snarled. “You do seibei.”

She wanted me to lower myself to my knees and bow to her mother. I hesitated, thinking about it.

“Now!” she screamed, her face angry, but smiling. When I still didn’t move, her brother jacked a round into the chamber, moving a bullet inches closer to Ernie’s head.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

She chanted some singsong Korean. Not the ancient ritualistic incantations I had heard earlier at Suk-ja’s brother’s house. Simpler words. Words I could understand.

“This man, this GI, pays homage to you, Mother, for all the bad things he did to you.”

I knelt, but didn’t bow my head to the ground.

“He looks like my brother’s father,” she said. “That’s why we have chosen him to take his place in sacrificing to you.”

I glanced at Ernie. His eyes were wide with fear. I nodded my head slightly.

“Bow!” the woman shouted.

“The hell he will,” Ernie said.

“Sikkya,” the brother hissed, and stepped closer to him.

“You’re both nuts,” Ernie continued. “You understand?

Dingy dingy.”

It was luck, nothing more. I rose to a kneeling position and moved at the brother, preoccupied with Ernie. I knew Ernie would lunge at the woman. Not a move we’d rehearsed. But in general, if you make a play for someone who has the drop on you, go for the opposite person. Counter block, as they say in football. You go for the one guarding your partner, your partner goes for the one guarding you.

We had to try something. When she’d said sacrifice, both Ernie and I knew it was all over. These two were crazy beyond redemption. And they were desperate. They knew the KNPs would catch them soon enough, so there was no bargaining with them.

They’d be executed for their crimes. Hanged. Their fate was beyond doubt and they knew it, but if they could take revenge on all the GIs who’d abused them and their mom over the years, now was their opportunity.

On Chusok, no less.

Kong swiveled. I was dead. Just as that reality was sinking in, Ernie lunged toward the woman.

But as he did so, the world exploded into light. Lightning.

I dove to my right, landed on my knees, leapt back to my feet. I plowed into the brother and he was on the ground again. He went down easy; he’d been hurt the first time. I had the. 45.

Ernie clutched the woman from behind, a forearm around her neck.

At the bottom of the hill, gears churned. Around a bend, headlights flashed. The lights turned toward us, a line of them. As the beam from one pair of headlights flashed on the vehicle in front of them, I could read the stenciled hangul.

Kyongchal, it said. Korean National Police.

The vehicles formed a line at the bottom of the hill, and uniformed officers climbed out. Behind them, leaping out of a taxi was Suk-ja. My relief at seeing her was quickly overcome by the men who climbed out of the cab with her. The two missing bodyguards of the late Mr. Yun.

Suk-ja had been working for them all along. She’d been sent to follow my investigation, hoping to get a line on the whereabouts of the smiling woman and her brother, so Mr. Yun’s thugs could put an end to them.

Where else would she have found the money to buy her freedom from the Yellow House? Only from the casino owner, Mr. Yun. And the phone call she’d made earlier this evening from Itaewon. To Yun’s thugs.

While Ernie and I searched for the smiling woman and her brother, what else had Yun’s minions done? They’d murdered Haggler Lee’s serving girl. She hadn’t been shot with my. 45. Her throat had been cut. Nothing like the other killings. Probably the brother had bought the dumplings, delivered them to Haggler Lee’s apartment, and, pretending to be a delivery boy, gained entry. Why kill the serving girl? He hadn’t. He’d waited there with her, holding her hostage. Hoping for Haggler Lee’s return so he could have Lee perform his ceremony. And then he would have been ritualistically murdered like all the others. But he’d been interrupted. Suk-ja had earlier tipped off Mr. Yun’s thugs that Ernie and I thought Haggler Lee would be the next victim. Yun’s thugs barged in. But the brother ran to the balcony and escaped down the vine-covered trellis. That’s why the window was broken outwards and the vines had been pulled down to the ground. The man they sought had vanished. Yun’s bodyguards hoped the serving girl knew something. They tortured her with burning cigarettes. Nothing. So they killed her.

Could I prove all this? Probably not. I’d report my suspicions to the Korean police, but what was the chance of justice being done?

Ai-ja gazed down at the police cars below.

“So,” she said. “They will hang us.”

She was smiling when she said it. Her smile seemed saintly.

I glanced at her, then at her brother. He was dazed, kneeling. A few feet from him lay the bloody corpse of Yun Guang-min, his uncle. I knew what I had to do.

“We have a few minutes,” I said.

“For what?” Ernie asked.

“I’ll show you.”

I fired a shot downhill. The policemen crouched.

“What?” Ernie said. “Are you nuts?”

“Stay back, you bastards!” I fired again.

This time the KNPs scurried back to the cover of their vehicles and began radioing headquarters.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Ernie screamed.

“Just a few minutes,” I said. “That’s all I need.”

“For what?”

Ernie’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t try to stop me as I sloshed in the mud back toward the burial mound.

I grabbed Ai-ja by her thin arms and dragged her over to her brother. Together, we helped him up and walked him over to the mound with the photograph of their deceased mother. In the ruckus, the photo had been knocked over. I set it upright and stood the smiling woman and her brother on either side. The KNP radio squawked below. I resumed my position in front of the photo. They both faced me.

“They’re coming up the hill again,” Ernie said.

“Hold them back!” I shouted.

Ernie’s eyes widened. “You’re nuts!”

“Keep them back!”

“Okay, okay.”

Ernie turned and fired a wild shot over their heads.

Police shouted and sloshed in the mud.

“They gone?” I asked.

“Not gone. But they won’t move out from behind their vehicles for a while.”

I turned back to Ai-ja.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Say the words.”

She was confused at first, but then she seemed to understand. Haltingly, she started to speak.

She chanted the words of contrition. I fell to my knees in the mud. She continued to smile, speaking of all the sacrifices her mother had made and how the entire world had turned its back on her. When she finished, I performed the seibei as it was supposed to be performed-bowing solemnly again and again, taking my time.

When I was done, I stared up at her and her brother. She was crying, but still smiling. Her brother’s face was twisted, as if he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. I looked away and stared at the photograph of their mother held between them.

“I’m sorry,” I said to it. “On behalf of my countrymen, I apologize. We were wrong, very wrong, to treat you and your son and your daughter as badly as we did. We should’ve taken care of you. It was our responsibility, but we didn’t live up to our responsibility. For that, I shall always be ashamed. And I humbly apologize.”

I bowed again.

I rose to my feet, and waited. Their heads were bowed.

“You don’t have to hang,” I said.

She looked at me, a quizzical expression on her face.

In answer, I pointed toward the cliffs behind us.

“The Yellow Sea,” I said.

For the first time since I had seen her that night in the King Club when she drugged my drink, the taut flesh of her face relaxed. The smiling woman dropped her smile. She looked at me, face calm, lips straight. She was radiantly beautiful.

Her brother looked back and forth between us, more confused than ever.

Facing me, she lowered herself to her knees and bowed her forehead three times into the mud. When she rose, she said, “Thank you.”

She smiled again. A real smile. Not one of madness. I savored it, like the beautiful face of the autumn moon.

She grabbed her brother’s hand, pulled him toward her, and hugged him. He embraced her.

Below us, doors slammed. Men shouted to one another. A half dozen sloshed through mud, heading uphill.

Ernie stood awkwardly, holding his. 45, glancing back and forth between me and the smiling woman. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“They’ll decide,” I said.

Ai-ja nodded to Ernie and whispered a little thank you.

Holding her brother’s hand, she stepped toward me and put her hand on my shoulder, stretched to her full height and kissed me gently on the cheek. I felt the lingering softness of her lips. She and her brother walked away from us. Away from the KNPs.

Hand in hand, sister and brother walked toward the cliffs overlooking the rocks below. The storm clouds had cleared once again, and the Chusok moon shone brightly in the starry sky.

They paused. Yun Ai-ja and her brother gazed off into the distance. They seemed to take a deep breath. Hands joined, they stepped over the edge.

“Are you Sueno, George, no middle initial, on temporary assignment to the Criminal Investigation Detachment under the provisions of Eighth Army Supplement to Army Regulation 250-17, paragraph five?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And are you aware of your rights under the Uniform Code of Military Justice while being charged with misappropriation of government property in conjunction with a Report of Survey?”

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“And was the weapon in question lost in the line of duty?”

“No, sir.”

“And has the weapon been recovered?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Intact and in serviceable condition?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Therefore we can waive replacement charges.”

His name was Major Wardman, a quartermaster officer assigned as the disinterested party to conduct a Report of Survey concerning my lost. 45. He had broad shoulders and a big square head, and the collar of his dress green shirt was one size too small. As he leaned over the paperwork, he licked his lips and squinted, filling in each block of the carbon-copied forms with meticulously printed block letters.

“However,” Major Wardman continued, “you are responsible for the misappropriation of the government property and its subsequent use in multiple felonies. How do you plead?”

“Guilty.”

“Do you waive court-martial jurisdiction?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you accept punishment as outlined under the provisions of Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice? To wit: Thirty days confinement to quarters, loss of one month’s pay, and extra duty for thirty days to run concurrently with previously mentioned confinement.”

“I do, sir.”

“Sign here.”

I scribbled my name.

“In the future,” he said, “watch the drinking.”