The Door to Bitterness

6

“Any Miguks?” I asked.

“Not that I could see.”

Ernie had just returned from a stroll down the loading ramp, reconnoitering the crowd. But in the dim morning light and with so many people, it was difficult. The Korean National Police were out in force. Lieutenant Won figured that the Caucasian fugitive who’d gotten away from us last night might use the morning rush hour of workers commuting to Seoul to escape from Inchon. The roadblocks had been called off. The KNPs had decided it was too disruptive to keep them on this morning. Our only chance was to get very lucky here at the train station. So far, luck didn’t seem to be going our way.

In an hour, the rush hour had subsided. I bought a copy of the Korea Herald, an English language daily. Miss Han Ok-hi, the young casino worker who’d been shot, was still in critical condition, according to the report.

Before we reached the train station, Ernie and I flashed the sketches of the two thieves and the smiling woman to all the vendors who sold newspapers and dried cuttlefish and warm barley tea outside on the street in front of the station. None recognized anyone in the sketches, and all claimed to have been asked the same questions by the Korean National Police yesterday. But our persistence paid off.

One old woman pushing a wooden cart supporting a cast iron stove shouted her lungs out trying to interest passersby in warm chestnuts. When I showed her the sketches of the two men, she claimed to have been shown copies yesterday by a Korean policeman. She hadn’t recognized the two men then; she still didn’t recognize them today. But the new sketch, the sketch of the smiling woman, intrigued her.

“Boasso,” she said, gravely nodding her head. I’ve seen her. “Before noon yesterday,” she continued, “rushing toward a train. I noticed her because she was tall and had a wool scarf tied over her head which I thought was unusual for such a young woman. And she clutched a canvas bag.”

“That’s the only reason you noticed her?” I asked.

The woman blushed slightly.

“Also,” she said, “she’s different.”

“How so?”

“Like you guys,” the old woman said. “Maybe she’s American.”

“Was she alone?”

“No. Someone was with her. A man, I think, but I didn’t pay attention.”

They’d hurried right past her and hadn’t stopped to buy chestnuts. Still, the half-American blonde Korean woman had been unusual enough for the old chestnut vendor to notice.

“Had you ever seen her before?” I asked the old woman.

“Never,” she said. “And not since. But if I spot her again, I’ll grab her and hold her for the police.”

Her eyes gleamed as she told me that. Something about her enthusiasm made me feel uneasy. I shivered in the cold morning air.

I boarded the next train for Seoul.

Ernie would drive the jeep to Seoul yok, the Seoul Train Station and pick me up there.

Why was I taking the train back to Seoul? I wanted to experience what the smiling woman had experienced. I wanted to put myself in the place of two people-one of them clutching a bag full of stolen cash, the other knowing he’d just shot an innocent woman-and see what they’d seen on the train ride back to Seoul.

People glanced at me as I boarded, but most were polite and turned away. I strode up and down a few of the cars, just to get a feel for the train. Wooden benches lined either side of the compartments, and in the center two rows of leather straps hung from metal railings. The train wasn’t too crowded now since it was past 8 a.m., so I found a spot on a bench and plopped down to watch the scenery roll by.

Ernie and I had pretty much nailed the sequence of events. At least to my satisfaction.

The smiling woman, along with two male accomplices, had decided to rob the Olympos Hotel and Casino. To make it easier to bluff their way into the casino’s cashier cage, they needed law enforcement badges and a weapon of some sort. They cased Itaewon. For how long, I don’t know, but eventually the smiling woman found her chance and managed to sit alone with an armed man: me. That’s when she slipped something into my beer. In the alley, her accomplices knocked me over the head, stole my badge and my. 45, and three days later, robbed the Olympos Casino.

After the robbery, the two men split up. One of them fleeing for the anonymity of the Yellow House, the other keeping the money and joining the smiling woman for the train ride back to Seoul. Why the train? It would be leaving right away, it wouldn’t be subject to KNP roadblocks, and the police would be looking for two men traveling together-not a man and a woman.

Had the thief planned on shooting Han Ok-hi? I doubted it. More likely his target had been the owner of the Olympos Casino, probably because he expected there to be more money hidden in a safe in his office. But the owner had fled through the escape hatch in the back wall, the thief had fired in an attempt to stop him, and poor innocent Han Ok-hi had stepped in front of a bullet that hadn’t been intended for her.

That’s the way I saw the case so far.

The next question was, where would the dark thief and the smiling woman go?

Somewhere in Seoul, no doubt. Somewhere they felt safe. Home, probably. But where was that? In a city of eight million people, it wouldn’t be easy to pinpoint them. But there were ways. There had to be.

Once we left the outskirts of Inchon, the train picked up speed. Small stations flashed by: Jeimul-po, Dong-am, Pupyong, Buchon. But we didn’t stop at any of them. This was the express. Seoul Station was our destination. Nothing less. A half hour later, we slowed as we rolled through the densely populated district of Yongdung-po, and then we wound our way onto a bridge that crossed the blue expanse of the Han River. There, on the far river bank, rose the mighty city of Seoul. Green-topped Namsan Mountain loomed to the right, the skyscrapers of the downtown district were straight ahead and to the left. Behind them, craggy granite peaks had long protected the ancient capital from marauding nomads from the north. The train slowed as it reached the far bank and the tracks rose slightly and we rumbled through the southern district of Yongsan. Finally, two miles later, we came to a halt behind the stately old Seoul Station. It was a round-domed building, made of brick, and looked like something out of Doctor Zhivago. It had been built in the 1890s by Russian architects, supposedly a gift to the Korean people from the Czar.

I jumped off the train onto the cement platform and strolled along with the flow of the crowd, surveying directional signs, keeping my eyes open for anything that might give me a hint of where the smiling woman had gone.

At a long row of turnstiles, I stood in line and handed my ticket to a uniformed Korean conductor. The white-gloved man squinted at me curiously but made no comment. Inside the main hall of the station, people hustled back and forth: women balancing bundles on their heads, men pushing carts laden with wood-framed boxes, school children in black military uniforms with square backpacks slung over their shoulders.

Outside, rows of vendors. Six times as many as at the Inchon Station. Systematically, I worked through every stall, showing the sketches of the two men and the smiling woman. Just as systematically, I was told no one had ever seen them before. I showed the sketches to the two policemen working traffic in front of the bus and taxi stands. Again, the response was negative.

The entire left wing of Seoul Station was occupied by 8th Army’s RTO, the Rail Transportation Office. Inside was a counter for traveling GIs to buy train tickets, a small PX, a snack stand, even a barber shop. A little piece of America. Ernie’s highly polished jeep, with its distinctive leather tuck-and-roll interior, sat parked out front. He was waiting for me inside, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to enter 8th Army’s RTO. It would be too much like leaving Korea. I wanted to stay with the people-Koreans-as the smiling woman and the dark thief had done. So, instead of searching for Ernie, I walked down a cement stairway and joined the crowd in a pedestrian tunnel crossing beneath the busy thoroughfare that ran in front of Seoul Station. There were more vendors on the far end of the underpass and more negative responses. I continued walking into the heart of Seoul. In the distance, I saw the green tile-roofed edifice of Namdae-mun, the Great South Gate, a meticulously preserved remnant of the stone wall that had once surrounded the entire ancient capital. Skyscrapers loomed over dark alleys lined with canvas lean-tos. People swarmed everywhere. Signs hung from brick walls covered with the neatly stenciled hangul lettering or the elegantly slashed characters of Chinese script. Squid tentacles boiled in oil, dumplings steamed in straw baskets. Only a few of the Koreans strolling past me gawked at the tall Miguk wandering lost through their bustling city.

I felt alone in this multitude. Where had she gone? Where was the smiling woman?

A horn sounded from behind. Ernie leaned out the driver’s side of his jeep.

“What are you, Sueno, lost?”

I turned away from him and stared into the endless passageways, inhaling deeply the garlic and green onion and rice powder wafting in the air.

Ernie was right. I was lost. As lost as a little half-American girl who’d grown up in this indifferent city. A girl who didn’t belong here. A girl who probably hadn’t even been able to afford to go to school, who hadn’t worn the same dark skirts and tunics and white blouses as the other school-age girls, who hadn’t been welcomed at the playground or the sports field or patted on the head fondly by a bald Buddhist monk. A girl who’d grown up in this teeming city apart. Alone. A girl who’d grown up, despite all her travails, to become a beautiful woman. Beautiful, mad, and dangerous.

Ernie honked again. He parked the jeep, jumped out, and ran after me. Seconds later, he grabbed me by the elbow.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Sueno? Couldn’t you hear me?”

“I could hear you,” I said.

“Then come on! Eighth Army’s had MPs out looking for us all morning.”

A finger of cold fear poked into my stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t know yet. They won’t tell me. But we have to get our butts back to the CID office right away.”

“Why?”

“The CG,” Ernie said. He meant the Commanding General of the 8th United States Army.

“What about him?”

“He wants to talk to us.”

“Us?”

“That’s what I said.”

Ernie tugged me toward the jeep. This time I followed.

Tango.

That is the military code name and what everybody calls the place. Also known as 8th Army Headquarters (Rear). It’s a huge cavern carved out of the side of Mount Baekun, fifteen miles south of Seoul. If and when war broke out with North Korea, this would be the place our heroic military commanders and their bureaucratic staffs would retreat to. It’s a small city unto itself, with offices, communications facilities, sleeping quarters, a chow hall, and even a PX to make sure that no one runs out of chewing gum or cigarettes. They say that Tango’s inner concrete walls are thick enough to withstand a direct nuclear blast of thirty megatons. Now, in the late afternoon haze, twenty-foot-high sliding steel doors stood open, like the welcoming jaws of a hungry dragon.

A squad of MPs approached our Army-issue sedan.

“What’s this all about, Top?” Ernie asked.

Ernie and I were sitting in the back seat. Up front, behind the wheel, was the Provost Marshal’s white-gloved driver, Mr. Huang. Next to him sat our immediate supervisor, the First Sergeant of the 8th Army CID Detachment.

As soon as Ernie and I had returned from Inchon and reported to the CID headquarters in Seoul, all hell broke loose.

“Where you been?” was the main question, interlaced with various four-letter Anglo-Saxon expletives. We heard it from Staff Sergeant Riley, from the CID First Sergeant, and a few minutes later, from Colonel Brace himself, the Provost Marshal of the 8th United States Army.

Neither Ernie nor I answered. They knew where we’d been. Investigating a crime. What they really meant to ask was “What took you so long?” and “Why weren’t you here when I needed information from you in order to avoid bureaucratic embarrassment?”

They knew all about the robbery of the Olympos Casino. It was big news this morning at the 8th Army Command briefing. Mainly because an Army issue. 45-probably mine- had been used to shoot a female Korean bystander. A GI had probably pulled the trigger. This was also the crux of the story splashed all over the Korean newspapers, television, and radio that day.

The Pacific Stars amp; Stripes, official newspaper of the U.S. Department of Defense, had yet to find the story interesting enough to run. They were, however, featuring a full-page spread on the new outhouse built by a combat engineer unit at an orphanage in Mapo.

Ernie and I had just started to type up our report when the First Sergeant emerged from his office, wearing a freshly pressed dress uniform. We were ordered out to the Provost Marshal’s sedan, told to climb in the back seat, and then Mr. Huang drove us south across the Han River. Once we left Seoul, we continued south down the Seoul-Pusan Expressway. Ernie and I were both too stubborn to ask questions. If the First Sergeant wanted to push us around and not tell us what was going on, so be it. We were soldiers. We followed orders. To the letter if we had to. The First Sergeant sat in front with his shoulders back, staring straight ahead. For the entire thirty-minute drive we were quiet, all of us, admiring the brown rice paddies that stretched toward gently rolling hills.

Finally, when we pulled up in front of Tango, this huge bomb shelter that is 8th Army Headquarters (Rear), Ernie couldn’t stand the silent treatment any more. He spoke up and asked what this was all about.

The First Sergeant cleared his throat. “Go with the MPs,” he said. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“Who? The CG?”

“Just answer the questions straight, Bascom. Don’t offer any information that isn’t requested. If you don’t know the answer to something, say you don’t know. Don’t try to bullshit the man. And, most importantly, no mouthing off.”

An MP swung open the rear door. When Ernie hesitated, the MP leaned in and grabbed him by the arm.

“Keep your hands off!” he shouted. “I’m coming.”

With that, Ernie climbed out. So did I. The MPs fell in on either side of us, and without a verbal command, we all marched toward the huge looming doors of Tango, 8th Army Headquarters (Rear).

Mr. Huang shoved the sedan in gear, performed a wide, slow U-turn, and he and the First Sergeant drove off toward the expressway leading back to Seoul.

Neither one of them waved.

Our little detail walked down one of Tango’s endless carpeted hallways. There was dim fluorescent lighting, portable walls, and a feeling of cold immensity above. And no doubt that we were in the hollowed-out center of a mountain. The MPs stopped at the end of the hallway, and one of them knocked on a double door made of paneled wood. In the center hung the red-and-white four-leaf-clover patch of the 8th United States Army.

Ernie and I and the small squad of MPs stood for what seemed a long time. Finally, from within, a hollow voice shouted, “Enter!” The MP saluted and he and his fellow MPs stepped back, forming a single file in the center of the hallway. As one, they performed an about face and marched back down the corridor.

Ernie and I glanced at one another. “I’ve had plenty of ass-chewings before,” Ernie whispered, “but no one’s ever gone to this much trouble.” Then he stepped past me and pushed through the door into the room.