The Iron Sickle

— 14-

By early morning, we had reached a village known as Im-dang. Ernie looked pretty tired, so I told him we should rest and find some chow. He didn’t disagree. Captain Prevault slept soundly in the back seat, her face leaning up against one of the canvas duffel bags.

The side of my face still hurt. I touched it gently. Bruised. I probably looked like hell. My headache had been alleviated somewhat by the Tylenol Captain Prevault had given me last night, but it was throbbing again and I didn’t have the heart to wake her just for that. She snored softly.

“Where the hell are we going to find chow out here?” Ernie asked.

The village was composed of rickety wooden buildings lining either side of the main road. There were a few signs painted on rotted wood but they said things like GRAIN WAREHOUSE or PAK’S FARM EQUIPMENT. Finally, at the single intersection in town, I spotted the flag of the Republic of Korea hanging from a metal pole on a cement-block building. The local KNP headquarters. We cruised past slowly. No one looked out. Apparently, they were still asleep. A few yards down the road, I spotted three kimchi cabs parked in front of a sign that said Unchon Siktang. The Driver’s Eatery.

“Pull the jeep around the corner,” I said. “We’ll eat here.”

Ernie found a place to park the jeep out of sight of the KNP office and padlocked the steering wheel to the chain welded to the metal floor. I woke Captain Prevault, and she looked around groggily.

“Chow time,” I said.

She rubbed her eyes and climbed out of the backseat. As we walked toward the eatery, she did her best to wipe the sleep from her eyes and straighten her hair. Once she had it properly arranged, she pulled her field cap down low.

“Do you think they’ll know I’m a woman?” she asked.

“I think they’ll figure it out,” I told her. Even though she was shapeless in her fatigues and combat boots, Ernie and I still towered over her.

The glass in the sliding door was smeared with steam, and when I slid it open and ducked through, the clatter of metal bowls, wooden chopsticks, and porcelain cups stopped abruptly. All eyes turned toward me. I was used to this, and I was not going to let it stop me. The aroma of onions and garlic and hot peppers bubbling in a huge vat alongside chunks of beef made my mouth water. Unfortunately, all of the small tables were taken, but I stood my ground. A woman who I figured to be either the proprietress or a waitress glanced at me and then looked away, as if I represented a problem she hoped would go away on its own. Ernie and then Captain Prevault bumped in behind me.

“No place to sit?” Captain Prevault asked.

“Not yet,” I replied.

Ernie scanned the room. There were fewer than a dozen customers there, most of them workmen wearing jackets, at least three of them the drivers of the cabs parked outside. Ernie spotted a table that was round and big enough for the three of us. Only one man sat there. Ernie took a couple of steps forward and motioned to him. The man was studiously ignoring us, his nose buried in his soup. Ernie slipped through the crowd and wrapped his knuckles loudly on the round table. The man looked up from his soup, startled.

Ernie pointed outside. “You drive kimchi cab?” The man stared at him with blank surprise so Ernie mimicked both hands turning a steering wheel. “You drive?” he asked. “Outside?”

The man shook his head negatively and turned back to his soup. Another man rose from a smaller table near the wall and stepped up to Ernie, smiling and motioning toward one of the cabs outside and nodding and pointing at his own nose.

“You?” Ernie said. “You’re the driver?”

The man nodded, smiling broadly, sensing a cash-paying fare. Ernie patted him on the back and put his arm halfway around the man’s shoulders and then motioned to me and Captain Prevault. “Come on over here,” he said. “This is the ajjoshi who drives the cab.” We walked over, not sure what Ernie was up to. When we approached, Ernie swiveled away from the smiling driver and grabbed the mostly empty bowl and cup and spoon and chopsticks that had sat on his small table and lifted them over to the larger round table. Ernie motioned for me and Captain Prevault to sit at the small table he had just cleared. We did. Then Ernie motioned to the driver and together they sat down at the larger round table, joining the morose man who glared at their intrusion.

We waited and within a couple of minutes the rotund middle-aged woman who I believed to be the proprietress approached us, a worried look on her face. When I greeted her in Korean and asked her what they served, she visibly relaxed. In fact she was so relieved we wouldn’t have to wrestle with sign language that she started speaking faster than I could follow. I asked her to slow down and she did. It turned out they had komtang, sliced beef in noodle broth, and since you could usually rely on that to be edible wherever you went I ordered a bowl for myself, as did Ernie and Captain Prevault. Ernie also ordered a chilled bottle of Sunny-tan orange drink. Captain Prevault and I stuck to barley tea.

The morose man got up and left, so we all slid over to the larger table. This time the driver grabbed the bowl and chopsticks the man had left behind and shoved them out of the way. Now we were comfortable and the driver beamed with joy at having stumbled into such august company. Captain Prevault nodded at him and smiled occasionally, adding to his glee.

“Yoja i-eyo?” he asked me. Is she a woman?

Koreans are more frank than Americans about matters of sex.

“Yes,” I told him. “A woman soldier.”

“She’s not very pretty,” he told me.

I translated none of this until Captain Prevault, still smiling, asked me what he said.

“He said this is the first time he’s ever seen a female American soldier.”

She smiled back at him and nodded.

The steaming metal bowls of komtang arrived along with an array of small dishes: rice, cabbage kimchi, and muu-maleingi, dried turnip slices. We wolfed down the soup and the rice and the cabbage kimchi, but when Ernie tried one of the slices of dried turnip he spit it out on the table.

“What the hell is this?”

I told him.

“Who would want to dry a turnip?” he asked. “Isn’t it tasteless enough to begin with?”

Captain Prevault tried the muu-maleingi, chewed thoroughly and said, “Not bad.”

Ernie frowned.

When we were done, I paid the proprietress and we left. The driver followed us outside. He scurried in front of us, reached his cab, and popped open the back door, waving with his hand for Captain Prevault to enter first.

Ernie waved his open palm at the driver.

“No need there, papa-san. I drivey jeep. You arra? Jeep.”

When we breezed past the driver, his face soured. Placing his hands on his hips he walked after us a few paces. When we turned the corner, he was right behind us. Ernie leaned into the open door of the jeep and popped open the padlock. As we started to climb in, the driver screamed at Ernie.

“Okay, okay,” Ernie said, continuing to wave his open palm in the irate man’s face. “So you lost your seat at the chop house. Tough shit. Life’s a bitch.”

Ernie offered the man a stick of ginseng gum. When he refused to accept it, Ernie groaned and pulled out a thousand-won note, two bucks. This the driver accepted. He bowed and smiled. As we drove away, the man stared after us, hands on his hips.

The Simkok-sa Buddhist Monastery sat on a craggy granite cliff surrounded by rolling grey clouds. The roads were treacherous, slippery with mud, and Captain Prevault and I held on for dear life during the entire ride. Ernie, however, seemed to be having a wonderful time, zooming around curbs, downshifting up inclines, slamming on brakes, steering into skids, acting as if the entire rock-hewn road had been especially designed for his driving pleasure. When we finally pulled into the gravel clearing in front of the main gate of the temple, Ernie turned off the engine and Captain Prevault and I climbed out to pay homage, at last, to solid ground.

Together, we walked to the edge of the cliff. Somber mist billowed gently between the distant peaks of the Taebaek Range.

Captain Prevault inhaled deeply. “It’s beautiful up here,” she said. “And the air is so clear.”

Most of these monasteries had been here for centuries. Some of them predated the Chosun Dynasty, their founding stretching back to an ancient time when Buddhism had been ascendant in the politics and cultural life of Korea, before the first king of the Chosun Dynasty established Confucianism as the official state religion. The strict precepts of Confucius had long ago taken control of Korean social structure, and although they were still revered by the people, Buddhist monks were definitely not the dominant power anymore.

“Why are we starting here?” Captain Prevault asked me.

“My experience has been that these monasteries are the repositories of local knowledge and local history.”

“What about the Korean National Police? Like that KNP station we passed in Im-dang?”

I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her about the feuding I suspected between the KNPs and the ROK Army. Instead I just said, “The Korean National Police in some areas of the country are seen not as law enforcement but rather as arms of the occupying government.”

“I thought Pak Chung-hee was popular.”

“He is, in Seoul. Out here, not so much.”

Ernie was checking the oil in the jeep. I suspected if we waited long enough a delegation would emerge from the Simkok-sa Monastery, and I was not disappointed. The big wooden doors beneath the crimson arch creaked like bones and then popped open. Two men walked out, both bald, both wearing saffron robes.

Captain Prevault and I stepped forward and bowed to the men. They bowed in return. The level of education in Buddhist monasteries is very high and more often than not when I’d encountered monks here in Korea they could always produce at least one of their number who could speak English.

“Good morning,” one of the monks said. “Welcome to Simkok Temple.”

He was a youngish man, thin but strong, maybe in his late thirties. The monk next to him was considerably older, with blue pouches beneath sad eyes.

“Thank you,” I said. I pulled out my identification and handed it to him. He glanced at it and handed it back. “I am Agent Sueno from Eighth Army headquarters in Seoul.” I introduced Captain Prevault as a military psychiatrist and Ernie as my assistant. He wouldn’t have liked that but he was out of earshot, still fussing with the jeep, content to let me handle the boring parts of our job.

I told the men about the young woman we called Miss Sim, how she’d been abducted from the home for the criminally insane and how we were anxious to find her. We also told them about the man and the woman who had abducted her.

“Why would Americans be interested?” he asked. “The crime, as I understand it, involves three Korean citizens.”

I agreed. Then I went on to explain about the man with the iron sickle, the Americans who had been murdered and why I believed the man had been systematically leading us to this area of the Taebaek Mountains.

“The Lost Echo,” the monk repeated. “Very poetic.”

“Yes. Have you heard of it?”

“I haven’t.” He turned to the older man and they conversed for a while until the younger man said, “Excuse us,” and the two of them walked away. Captain Prevault and I waited, out of earshot.

“Do you think they’ll help?” she asked.

“We’ll find out.”

The two returned and the younger man spoke. “Our master remembers the farm couple who was murdered by a young woman with a hoe.” The monk shook his head. “Tragic. And he also remembers the hardships of the war, the winter when the Chinese invaded, the Americans suffering and dying along with Koreans. He remembers it all.”

“Does he remember the Lost Echo?”

“He remembers something like it. On that mountain.” The monk turned and pointed. “On that ledge on the southern slope.”

“I see it.”

“That’s Mount Daeam. The Americans set up their signal equipment there. Later, when the Chinese came, they took the equipment down and hid.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure, exactly.”

“Were they ever seen again?”

“Never. Only rumors.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“Superstitions, really. Some of the farm people hereabouts claim that on certain nights, when there is a full moon, they can hear the strange foreign sounds of the Americans, like a whispered conversation, floating on the wind.”

“Do you believe it?”

The monk shrugged. “All things come within the purview of the Lord Gautama Buddha.”

“Where is this farm you were talking about, the one where the two elderly people were murdered by the young girl?”

The monk asked for some paper and pencil and offered to draw me a map. Instead, I pulled out my tactical map and spread it out on the hood of the jeep. Only dim sunlight filtered through the heavy overcast, so I aimed my penlight at the map while the monk studied the multicolored contour lines. He was a bright man. It took him only seconds to say, “Here, this is our position.” He pointed to the military symbol for a Buddhist temple, a red inverted swastika. “The farmhouse is at this end of the valley, in the foothills between us and Mount Daeam.”

“Not too far from where Echo Company had set up their equipment.”

“As the crow flies, yes,” he said, surprising me once again with his mastery of English colloquialisms, “but very far indeed if you had to make the climb.”

“You couldn’t go straight up from the valley to that cliff, could you?”

“No. There is a narrow path that winds far into the mountains and then a less traveled path that leads back to the cliff.”

“You’ve hiked those areas?” I asked.

“Often.”

“Have you ever heard the whisperings of the Lost Echo?”

“When I meditate,” he said, “I hear only the whisperings of eternity.”

It was almost midday when we reached the valley that stretched between the monastery and Mount Daeam. Already we were hungry again, and I realized that in our haste to get out of Yongsan Compound we hadn’t planned this trip very well.

“We should’ve brought a case of Cs,” Ernie said. He was referring to canned C-rations.

“Too late now.”

“Maybe we should stop at one of these farm houses,” Captain Prevault said. “See if they’ll fix us some lunch. We could pay them.” She was hungry too.

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “Up there,” I told Ernie pointing forward. “Pull into that area in front of the pig hut. Don’t get too close to the main house, though.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to scare them. This is a military vehicle after all.”

Ernie did as I asked. I told them to wait, and I walked toward the straw-thatched farmhouse. Smoke trickled from a sheet-metal pipe. Eventually an old woman tottered out, wearing a long woolen skirt and a short traditional silk blouse with a blue ribbon. She stared at me, her wrinkled face scrunched against the pale rays of the afternoon sun.

“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said, taking a step forward.

She nodded back noncommittally.

I told her we were hungry, and we were looking for some place to eat. She told me there was no place around here. When I pressed her she told me about the Driver’s Eatery back in Im-dang. We didn’t want to go there. I offered her money if she’d fix lunch for the three of us. She brightened at that.

“It will only be soybean soup and kimchi,” she told me. “And my rice is brown.”

I told her that would be fine. She was a trusting woman, and we didn’t set a price. Twenty minutes later she carried a low wooden table out of her kitchen and set it on the long wooden porch that ran the length of the farmhouse. We sat cross-legged on the porch and ate, lifting the bowls to our mouths and shoveling in the unhusked grain. The soybean soup had no meat in it and that was okay, but the cabbage kimchi was sour, as if it had fermented so long it was turning to vinegar. Still, we ate our fill. When we were done I asked her where the byonso was and while Captain Prevault used it and then Ernie, I spoke to the woman in private. I described the farmhouse in the foothills at the end of the valley that we were looking for. She knew all about it. It had been abandoned for years and was probably overrun now by field mice.

“Can you give me directions?” I asked and I started to pull out my field map, but she stared at in horror. I realized the interminable squiggles meant nothing to her, so instead I encouraged her to describe the route in her own way.

“Follow the road about two li until you reach the creek that flows south past the stand of elms. On the far side of the trees will be a wooden footbridge. Be careful crossing it because it hasn’t been repaired in years, and last year a boy fell in the creek while he was fishing. Follow that pathway up into the hills, and you will find the farmhouse where the old people used to live.”

“How far into the hills?” I asked.

“Until the land becomes too steep to farm.”

She seemed nervous with my questions. In fact she seemed nervous about the whole business of the abandoned farm. I asked her if she’d ever been there.

“Not since the war,” she replied.

“Why not?”

She studied me as if I were an idiot. “They come out at night.”

“Who comes out at night?”

“Them. The two old people. Many have seen them at night, crying and complaining and wailing.” Then she hugged herself, shivering even though the wind hadn’t picked up. “Demanding justice.”

I pointed over my shoulder to Daeam Mountain, toward the cliff where the monks believed Echo Company had once set up its signal equipment. “How about that cliff up there?” I asked. “During the war, Americans were there. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I knew. They were famous.”

“Famous, why?”

“Because they were the only people with food and medicine and heating fuel.”

“Did you ever talk to them?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

This seemed to make her angry so I didn’t press it. “Do you know how I can get up there?”

“You can’t get up there.” She saw my puzzlement and then added, “Not alone. You’d need someone to guide you.”

“Why?”

“The woods are too thick, there are too many obstructions, and there is no direct pathway. You’d have to know the way. And if you got lost, the tiger would take you.”

“Tiger? There are no more tigers in Korea.”

“Huh, that’s what they say.”

I considered this. This woman seemed to believe Siberian tigers still stalked these mountains, but according to the books I’d read, no tiger had been spotted in South Korea since the late 1950s. Still, there was no point arguing with her.

“Do you know someone who could guide us up there?”

“There’s only one person.” She paused for a moment and then said, “Huk Sanyang-gun.”

I didn’t have my Korean-English dictionary with me, but I believed huk sanyang-gun meant “the black hunter.”

“He hunts tigers?”

She looked at me as if I were a child. “The tigers protect what he hunts.”

“So what does he hunt?”

“The most prized possession in these mountains.”

And then I knew what she meant. “Insam,” I said.

She nodded.

Wild ginseng, sometimes called royal ginseng, was prized far above the value of the cultivated ginseng grown in the lowlands. One gnarled old red root could make a man rich. Ten thousand US dollars in Hong Kong was a low price for the prized medicinal herb, and I’d read that in private sales particularly venerable roots had gone for even more. In Asia, ginseng was considered to be a magical tonic, able to make the old man young again and the young man wise. Ernie believed it, which was why he was always chewing ginseng gum, although I hadn’t noticed him wising up any. The difference between a stick of ginseng gum made from the mass-produced version of the herb and a slice of the flesh of an authentic royal ginseng root was the difference between a copper penny and a Spanish gold doubloon.

“How can I get in touch with this Hunter Huk?” I asked.

“You can’t get in touch with him,” she told me. “If you’re pure of heart and you pray for him, he gets in touch with you.”

The old farmhouse was located right where the woman told me it would be. The afternoon was getting late and the shadows were long. We wandered around the ruin, searching for anything of interest but finding nothing. Ernie didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking: Why the hell had I brought them out here? I was starting to question the wisdom of it too, but I reminded myself we had to keep searching for some sign of the man with the iron sickle, the fancy woman from Mia-ri, and the mental patient known as Miss Sim Kok-sa. It had all started here for them, and I believed they’d return. Up here, in these isolated communities, certainly someone would spot them if they showed up.

“Over here,” Captain Prevault said. She stood atop a small man-made earthen hill. “Is this a burial mound?” she asked.

“I think so.” It was covered in weeds, not well-tended lawns like the vast burial mound areas that surround the city of Seoul. I climbed the mound and she pointed to a rotted wooden board lying on the ground. It was slashed with black ink.

“Can you read it?”

I knelt and swiped off part of the dirt. Chinese characters, two rows. Names, I thought. I pulled out my notepad and copied them down. The first character I could read: “Kim,” the most common family name in Korea. The next two characters would be the given names, probably of the husband since he would normally be listed first. The second row of characters probably represented the woman’s name. She had only two characters, the first a word I couldn’t decipher but was probably her family name, and then only one character for her given name. It made sense. In Korea, wives don’t give up their names when they marry. Below the names were Chinese numbers and the character for “year.”

“Two people,” I told Captain Prevault. “Probably the two people buried in this mound. The husband’s family name was Kim. The year was 1951.”

“Over twenty years ago,” she said. Then she paused and added, “It’s them.”

It was dark now and the road was narrow and there was no sign of light anywhere in the universe except for the headlights of the jeep.

“That darkness up ahead,” Ernie said, “is Mount Daeam.”

“That’s where Echo Company is,” I said. “Somewhere on that mountain.”

“And you believe our unholy little trio should make a pilgrimage up there.”

“Not a pilgrimage,” I said. “The man with the iron sickle wants us to go there.”

“So we’re going. You see any place to stop and get a chili dog around here?”

Captain Prevault said, “We should’ve brought tents and sleeping bags.”

“And a diesel heater,” Ernie added.

“Okay,” I said, “I didn’t think this through. But we were sort of in a hurry to get out of Yongsan Compound.” Ernie snorted. I continued. “Most of the places I’ve traveled in Korea have always had some sort of civilization. I didn’t expect these mountains to be so full of nothing.”

“No bathhouse,” Ernie said, “no yoguan, no chop house, no mokkolli house, no nothing!”

“All right, Ernie,” Captain Prevault said. “He gets the point.” Then she added, “Why don’t you pull into that Howard Johnson’s up ahead.”

Ernie did a double take and she startled giggling. Then I was laughing and so was Ernie, and then we were all gliding through the night in our little jeep in the middle of the Taebaek Mountains, happy for once, not complaining about being hungry or tired or cold. Happy to be alive-unlike the couple in that cold earthen burial mound-and able to laugh and complain about the hand we’d been dealt.

By morning we were grumpy again.

We’d slept all night in the jeep. Ernie had found a place to pull over and even though he would’ve liked to have kept the engine running so we could keep the heater on, he’d turned it off to conserve fuel. We’d bundled ourselves up as best we could in every piece of field gear we’d brought and managed to get a little sleep-not much, because of the biting cold. Captain Prevault fared best. She curled up in the back seat on top of the mostly empty duffel bags and slept like a housecat on a fluffy couch.

I awoke first and stepped outside the jeep and stretched myself. Then I walked to the edge of the clearing beside the road. A creek gurgled at the bottom of an incline. I walked downhill, squatted next to the water, and washed my face. I found an isolated area downstream above the water line and did my business, digging a hole and covering it up like the Army field manual tells us. Soon Ernie and Captain Prevault were up and following my pattern. I’d brought a toothbrush and a razor blade but figured I’d wait for hot water before trying to scrape the stubble off my chin. Once we’d all performed our morning toilette, we climbed back in the jeep and Ernie drove off. I studied the map.

“The closest village,” I said, “to the last known position of Echo Company is up ahead about three or four klicks.”

“What’s it called?”

“I’m not sure if this is a name or just a description.”

“What is it?”

“I-kori.”

“Which means?”

“Two roads.”

“They didn’t put a lot of thought into that name.”

And when we reached the village, we realized why no one had.

“There’s nothing here,” Ernie said.

Captain Prevault leaned forward, her hands on my seat. “That looks like a cattle pen,” she said.

“Or a pig pen,” I corrected. I doubted there was a lot of high-end livestock up there.

“And chicken coops,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ernie replied, “but they’re all empty.”

“Let’s talk to that guy, up there.”

I pointed. Ernie slowed the jeep next to an old man pulling a cart along the side of the road.

“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said.

The man grinned and nodded but didn’t stop walking. Ernie kept pace with him.

“Yogi-ei I-kori iei-yo?” Is this Two Roads?

He nodded.

“No one lives here?”

He shook his head.

“During the war,” I said, “I understand there was an American army unit nearby.” His face remained impassive. Then I said, “Do you know where I can find Hunter Huk?”

The old man stopped his cart. Ernie slammed on the brakes and backed up a few feet. As I waited for the old man to speak, I noticed his cart was full of edible plants, probably pulled from the edge of the stream that ran parallel to the road.

“Hunter Huk?” he repeated. His voice was reedy and tattered, as if he’d used it for far too many years.

“Yes,” I said. “Hunter Huk.”

The old man shook his head. “Who told you of him?”

“A woman down the road.” I pointed back from where we’d come. “She told me he was the only one who could lead us to the cliff where the American military unit had once set up their equipment.”

The old man nodded. “That’s true enough.” We waited for what seemed like a long time. “I wouldn’t advise you to look for him.”

“Why not?”

“You can only find him in the mountains, and it’s cold up there.”

I nodded.

“And once he finds you, he always exacts a price.”

“What kind of price?”

The old man shook his head once again. “Too high of a price. Go back to Seoul. Leave these mountains alone.”

“We are determined to climb Daeam Mountain.” I pointed toward the cliff the monks had originally told us about. “How do I get up there?”

“By helicopter,” he said. His face was straight; it wasn’t a joke.

“If I walk, how would I get up there?”

“You are in I-kori,” he said. “The road you are on now is the first road. The second road is the one you just passed. It leads into the mountains.”

“Have you been there before?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

The man shook his head once again and grabbed the handle of his cart. “Go back to Seoul,” he said and started walking away.

We tried the road. Ernie drove along its unpaved surface. It was bumpy and uneven, but the US Army jeep was designed for just this type of terrain. Each of the four tires had its own independent suspension so the tire on the left could be in a ditch and the tire on the right could be elevated over a bump. They weren’t connected by an inflexible axle. This made moving forward possible and Ernie was a good driver, but we knew the main danger when driving a jeep over rough terrain was its inherent instability. GIs were constantly driving jeeps too fast and taking corners too sharply and thereby turning their jeeps over. Ernie wouldn’t do that, I hoped, but the road was becoming progressively more treacherous. And steeper. And then we were winding in and out of stands of pines, and the road wriggled up Daeam Mountain like a cold-weather serpent. Periodically I spotted the cliff that was our destination.

We must’ve reached an elevation of at least a thousand feet when we finally hit a dead end. Ernie climbed out of the jeep and surveyed the obstacle. It was a wall of earth and rock.

“This looks man-made,” he said.

Even though it was covered with vegetation, I agreed with him. It appeared the rock cliff behind had been blown up with explosives for the express purpose of causing this avalanche. “They wanted to block the road,” I said.

“Did a good job of it, too.”

I glanced upward. If I backed up about twenty yards, I could just make out the eastern edge of the cliff that had once been the home of Echo Company. Using my Army-issue compass I took a reading on the direction.

“Can we make it up there before dark?” Ernie asked.

“I think so,” I replied. “If we hustle.”

I started to tell Captain Prevault to wait there for us when she cut me off and said, “No way. You’re not leaving me here. I’m going with you.”

And so the three of us packed up our gear, climbed carefully over the rock wall, and started humping our way up the last couple of miles between us and the old home of the Lost Echo. Halfway up, I tossed a newspaper-wrapped package to Captain Prevault. She opened it, looked inside, and said, “You’ve been holding out on us.”

Ernie glanced at the package and said, “Kimpap. You bought it from the old woman at the farmhouse?”

“I figured we’d need a little extra on the road.”

We stopped in a clearing to rest for a while and wolfed down one tube each of the glutinous rice wrapped in paper-thin seaweed, saving the rest for dinner. I drank deeply from the water in my canteen, and then we stared back up the trail.

The view from the cliff was breathtaking. It was apparent why Echo Company had picked this spot to set up their signal equipment. Far to the left, fading out of sight in the thick mist, was the eastern coast of Korea, and if I calculated the azimuth on my map correctly, there would’ve been a straight line of sight to the US Navy vessels anchored off the coast of Sokcho. To the right, the valley stretched away far to the north, probably to units operating on the enemy side of the 38th Parallel. The valley below looked like a panorama set up by giants. Tiny little people moved between tiny little houses, and smoke rose from chimneys like wavering threads of black silk.

“The top of the world,” Captain Prevault said.

“That’s what it seems like.”

We still had maybe an hour of daylight, and I didn’t want to waste it. Systematically, we searched every square foot of the scalloped shelf of the cliff, a natural formation that was about the size of a regulation baseball diamond. We paid particular attention to the back wall because there was an overhang there that would’ve protected the Americans from rain, snow and, with any luck, incoming enemy artillery.

We found a number of items: old K-ration tins, a P-38 handheld can opener, a moldy brass belt buckle, a couple of rounds of M-1 rifle ammunition, and a brown combat boot that was so worn it had a hole in the sole and rips in the leather near the ankle.

“So a US Army unit was here,” Ernie said. “So what? It proves nothing.”

No, it didn’t. But I was still convinced the man with the iron sickle wanted to bring us here for a reason. What it was, I still couldn’t be sure.

“It’s too dark to go back now,” Ernie said. The sun was almost down.

“So we spend the night here,” I said.

“But tomorrow,” Ernie said, glaring at me, “we return to the jeep and get the hell back to civilization.”

He was tired of being cold and hungry, and I knew Captain Prevault was, too. So far, we had nothing to show for our little excursion, which would be hard to explain back at 8th Army headquarters.

With Captain Prevault’s help, we gathered firewood and Ernie dug a pit beneath the rock overhang. Using my old Boy Scout skills. I managed to start a fire, and soon it was a roaring affair. Ernie stacked up enough firewood to keep it burning all night. Captain Prevault cut some vegetation and, using one of the duffel bags as a cover, made herself a tidy little bed. Ernie and I did the same but our constructs were somewhat less neat. Then we sat down around the fire and Captain Prevault handed out the last few rolls of kimpap. It tasted delicious. I washed it down with plenty of fresh spring water from my canteen because with all this hiking and all this work, I’d become more dehydrated than I knew.

We told a few listless stories, avoiding ghost stories, and this time, I believe I was the first one asleep.

The moon was high when I awoke, my bladder full. I arose from my lumpy duffel bag bed and tossed a couple of thick branches on the fire, which crackled with appreciation. I made my way to the far edge of the cliff, stepped behind a quivering poplar tree, and started to do my business. I was trying not to splash too loudly into the mud when I noticed movement off to my left. The edge of the cliff there didn’t end in a rock wall but continued through low vegetation back to the forest that stretched away up the mountain. I didn’t have my.45. The shoulder holster was cumbersome and difficult to sleep with so I’d taken it off and placed it on the ground next to me, but when I’d risen to take a leak, still half asleep, I’d forgotten to bring it with me.

Whatever was moving out there in the bush, I told myself, couldn’t have been a Siberian tiger, or it would’ve been much more stealthy. Then I saw a flash of white moving away from me, from tree to tree, and when it stepped into a moonbeam, I saw it clearly.

Miss Sim Ok-sa, wearing her white hospital gown, glanced back at me fearfully, stumbling through the brush. No time to go back and alert Ernie or Captain Prevault. Within seconds she’d have disappeared into the immensity of the forest. I also didn’t want to yell for help because that would only frighten her more. All these calculations were made with the speed of thought and before I knew it, I had tucked myself back into my pants and was shoving my way through the forest, moving quickly in the wake of the little mental patient.

She was surprisingly fast. But the rustling she made and the branches whipping behind her kept me on her trail. I became more reckless, running at almost full tilt, trying to make sure I didn’t stumble over any gnarled old roots or stub my toe on low-lying rocks. Luckily, I’d been sleeping in my full fatigue uniform along with field jacket and my laced-up combat boots, but already I wished I’d brought my winter cap and my hooded parka to fight the mountain chill.

I followed her through the thick forest until suddenly I found myself in a moonlit meadow. Grass stretched before me, ankle high, forming an oval about the size of two roller skating rinks. I stood at the edge, scanning the glowing night, expecting to see Miss Sim running through the field with her white gown billowing behind her. Instead, I saw nothing. She was gone.

I couldn’t believe it. I knew she had emerged right where I was standing. I searched the brush around me, finding nothing, until finally I retraced my steps about ten yards back into the forest. No sign of her.

Maybe I’d just imagined it. Maybe it hadn’t been Miss Sim at all. Maybe I’d been so overwrought at the idea of bringing Ernie and Captain Prevault all the way out here for no good reason that I’d started to imagine reasons. I shook my head and put that aside. I’d seen her. I knew I’d seen her.

I walked out into the meadow and turned around. Nothing but a calm, cold evening in the middle of the Taebaek Mountains.

I sighed and started back. I stepped into the forest just where I’d left it. For the first few yards I walked forward confidently. And then I reached a large elm tree and tried to remember if I’d passed it to the right or to the left. No matter, such a minor deviation shouldn’t throw me off much. I stepped to the left. I didn’t recognize any of the trees farther in, but I wouldn’t have been looking at them from this angle, since I’d been coming from the opposite direction. I turned around to see if that would help me orientate myself. It didn’t.

I returned to the large old elm tree. I touched its bark, enjoying the reassuring reality of its rough edges, and told myself that I should sit down for a moment and think this through.

That’s when it dropped on me; from up above, something dark and heavy and as large as a man. Before I could look up to see what it was, I felt a jarring in my skull, as if my head had been suddenly crunched between the prongs of a giant nutcracker, and the world and everything in it went black.

I was cold.

So cold that I thought I’d never been cold before. Cold had supplanted every inch of my flesh from the top of my head through my face, down my neck, along my chest and my back, through my shriveled testicles and on down my legs to my feet. But that was just the start. Then it seeped inside. My bones were nothing more than carvings of ice, and my heart and my lungs and my liver were snow puffs clinging to glassy ribs.

Something slapped the side of my face. It felt good. Warmth. Again, something slapped the opposite side and my eyes popped open.

A woman. An upside down woman. Mentally, I tried to focus, turning her right side up, trying to think through the caverns of my frozen misery, noting the long black curly hair and the thick lips and the disappointed eyelids. Madame Hoh, the fancy woman from Mia-ri, the woman who’d owned the Inn of the Crying Rose, the woman who’d sicced a pack of local punks on me; the woman who, I believed, had been responsible for Mr. Ming’s losing his head.

I also realized something else. She wasn’t upside down, I was.

I realized this because of the screaming pain in my ankles. At least one part of my body had feeling in it; an excruciatingly painful feeling, but a feeling nevertheless. A rope, or maybe a thick wire, was biting into my ankles, keeping me from falling to the floor.

Madame Hoh leaned toward me until our noses almost touched. Her breath reeked of stale tobacco. “Hello, baby,” she said. “How’s it hanging?”

I couldn’t reply. I wasn’t sure if my throat would work. There seemed to be phlegm bulging through it, following the downward course of gravity. And when I tried to open my mouth I wasn’t sure if my jaw or my lips were moving. Everything was too cold for feeling.

With her long red nails, Madame Hoh caressed the side of my face. I was grateful for the tenderness-and for the warmth.

“Can’t talk? I understand. You just relax, baby.” She leaned back. “That’s it. Spit it up. Get it out. That’s a good boy.”

I coughed and choked and spit out as much phlegm as possible. As I did so my stomach muscles knotted so I could raise my head just a little. I was in a cave. There was light coming from an oil lantern behind Madame Hoh, and I was suspended against something boxy and metal. When I stopped coughing I looked up along the length of my body. I was naked, I could see that, and I was right about my ankles. They were bound in what appeared to be a thick hemp rope. Beyond that was some sort of wire, metal rods, and an antenna-like contraption. I relaxed my stomach muscles and gazed at Madame Hoh. She was smiling. Then she said in Korean, “Arraso?”

Do you understand?

And suddenly I did. I started to buck, flailing my body against metal like a hooked fish fighting for life.

It was the totem. That’s what it had been all along. The wood from an old ammo box had been used to replicate the boxy shape of a US Army signal truck, a truck that had once belonged to Echo Company of the 4038th Signal Battalion (Mobile). And the wire contraption above the totem represented the antenna which Echo used to so diligently relay signals. And me? I was the rat dangling from a string. The dead rat.

Madame Hoh started to laugh-more than laugh. She shrieked with glee. And then someone was beside her, someone shoving her out of the way. Someone I recognized. I’d seen him in the alley in Itaewon, taunting me, daring me to come after him. And of course I couldn’t have mistaken him because of what he held in his left hand. It was the man with the iron sickle.

In his other hand he held a narrow bottle. It was red, or filled with a red liquid. His hand twisted and I saw the label. The bottle and its contents were familiar to me. I saw them on every table in every mess hall since I’d been in the army. They were one of those manufacturers who’d landed a government contract decades ago and had been tenacious enough-and influential enough with Congress-to never let it go: Little Demon Hot Sauce, with a grinning red devil wielding a pitchfork on the label, fumes rising from the coals of hell.

The man with the iron sickle screwed the cap off the bottle, tossed it aside and, as Madame Hoh grabbed the back of my head and held on, he tilted the snout of the bottle into my right nostril and poured. Liquid pepper ignited the tender linings of my sinuses. I screamed and yelled and bucked, trying to snort and wheeze the burning flame upwards, out of my nose, but gravity kept it roiling inexorably into my skull, searing all the tender linings behind my eyeballs. Madame Hoh held on with surprising strength, and the man with the iron sickle continued to pour until the contents of the bottle had plunged deep into my nasal cavities. I coughed and retched and water poured from my eyes.

Despite the pain-or maybe in an attempt to avoid experiencing it fully-my mind was still evaluating evidence. I thought of the old couple at the PX snack stand, about how they’d said the man with the iron sickle sniffled as if he had a bad cold. Now I knew why. Somewhere in his distant past his sinuses had been violated by just such a treatment as I was receiving, leaving permanent damage. And I thought of how Mrs. Lee, the owner of the pochang macha, had told me about how he walked as if he were traipsing on egg shells, as if every step was painful to him. My livid ankles knew the genesis of that additional peculiarity.

If I felt any satisfaction in this analysis, it was soon swallowed up by another blast from the surging pepper. I coughed and screamed and cursed a company that would use a little demon as their logo.

Then I saw the iron sickle, held in his hand. He stepped toward me, raised it, and as he swung, I flinched. The rope gave way. I crashed head first to the ground. Dazed, I rolled on my side, raising my knees toward my chest, spitting and coughing and using gravity to cleanse my nose of the viciously burning fluid.

They were using candles now. Madame Hoh sat on a stool beside me, smoking blissfully, as if enjoying her cigarette after a fine meal. The man with the iron sickle sat opposite her, hands on his knees, the sickle dangling from relaxed fingers. Gently, with a soothing voice, Madame Hoh began to talk.

“They came in the fall,” she said. “We watched them march in their sturdy combat boots, crushing dried leaves beneath the thick soles, and we watched as they set up their equipment and laughed at us and pointed and tossed bits of chewing gum and candy to us children. We all squealed in delight.”

Hot sauce still drained from my nose, and I fought to breathe.

“And then they set up their equipment,” she said, “and yanked a long cord, and their generator rumbled to life, and the little metal cabin lit up with light. And some of the GIs set up guard positions with sandbags and others-I believe their commander-marched down into the village, one of them holding a rifle trained on us gawking country folk. We were simple then. We knew nothing of electricity and none of us had ever spoken into a phone and the idea of refrigeration was not something we’d even imagined.

“The officer dictated the terms. None of us would be allowed inside the perimeter of the campground they were setting up, and we were under no circumstances to leave the area of our little village without checking with him first. The elders complained about this because some of the men and women had to carry their produce down into the valley to sell. And the officer replied that until they moved on, there would be no more trips to the lowlands.

“And so we acquiesced because we’d seen other soldiers, South Korean soldiers, in the area, and when they gave orders the punishment for not obeying those orders was death. But we also knew the snows were coming, and the punishment for not bartering in the valley and bringing back grain to store for the winter was also death. So at night, with the approval of the elders, some of the young men sneaked out with A-frames strapped to their backs and made their way clandestinely into the valley.

“And then the sapper came. A North Korean, alone, separated from his unit. But he had a canvas belt filled with explosives. He sneaked close to the American lines, set up his lethal devices, and somehow ignited them, destroying the truck that stored their diesel and burning to death six GIs. Then he disappeared into the night.

“The Americans erupted in a frenzy, shooting into the black sky, screaming for help, and their commanding officer took charge. He led the men as the flames were doused and supervised the salvage operation. All night long, the burned soldiers screamed. Even down in the village we could hear their cries of agony. Finally, only one was left. Even though his voice was hoarse and singed by the fire, his hideous screams continued. None of us slept that night. Neither, I’m sure, did any of the GIs. Just before dawn, we heard a single gunshot and the screaming stopped. A squad of soldiers led by their commander left their encampment and within minutes they were in our village. Everyone was ripped out of their homes: men, women, and children.”

Behind the man with the iron sickle, flames licked out of a pit. They’d started a fire. I squirmed toward it, hoping for some warmth that would stop the chattering of my teeth. With her left foot, Madame Hoh kicked dust toward my face. I stopped.

“Unfortunately,” she continued, “at exactly that moment, two young men with grain sacks hanging heavily from their A-frames trudged up the last incline of the trail. The GIs arrested them immediately, and the interrogations started. The elders denied that any of us had anything to do with the explosion and told the commander about the North Korean commando, but he didn’t believe any of it. From that moment on, we were kept under constant surveillance, allowed to do nothing without the permission of an American soldier. The snow came, thicker than we’d seen in years. The GIs were grumbling about trouble they’d heard about over their radio, trouble to the north. Apparently, the United Nations advance into North Korea, all the way to the border with China, had been stalled and now they were in retreat.

“ ‘Joe Chink,’ the GIs told us. ‘Joe Chink.’ That’s all they could think about. Massive legions of Chinese Communist soldiers were on their way south, but the men of Echo Company had to stay put and relay communications. But soon they ran out of fuel for their generators, and all transmission stopped. The commander saved just enough diesel to power their truck so the company would be able to drive out of the Taebaek Range. But it was too late. The roads were impassable, clogged with snow and ice. So the Americans waited, holding us as their hostages. Their slaves. The GIs grew bored. Soon they were bothering the unmarried girls. When that wasn’t enough, they had their way with the married women. When husbands protested, they were beaten. And then they started turning their eyes on the younger girls, the ones who hadn’t become women yet.

“Their food ran out and still it snowed. Americans and villagers both grew sick and died. They were buried in snowdrifts, preserved for later burial. The ground was frozen too hard to dig into. And then the commander died. We’re not sure how. Some say he was murdered by his own men. While the GIs weren’t watching, our people began to leave-those who were strong enough to walk through the twelve-foot-high snow drifts. The weak ones stayed behind and grew weaker. All the food was gone, including the grain and the canned goods the Americans had brought. Then one of the GIs pulled a body out of the snowdrift. He chopped it with an axe and charred its flesh over an open fire. Some told him to stop, some threatened to kill him, but in the end they all ate. And still the snows fell. There was no more power now, the last of the diesel had been used, and all communication with other military units had been lost. One by one we all escaped except for two old people who would bring the GIs victims. They would tell their fellow Koreans in distant villages about how rich the Americans were and about how they had medicine and food and heating oil, and then those people would follow them to the American encampment. But instead of being allowed to beg for penicillin to save the life of a loved one or to plead for a can of beans to stave off starvation, they were turned over to the GIs and slaughtered like swine and devoured.”

Madama Hoh paused.

“And those two,” I said, coughing as my ravaged throat became accustomed, once again, to speaking, “they were the couple hacked to death by Miss Sim.” My voice was a croak.

“Her name is Ahn,” she said. “And yes, she was a good girl. She stayed with her parents until the end and even accompanied them to the American encampment. When her mother realized they had been betrayed, she fought while her daughter escaped.”

“So she hid in the woods,” I said, “and heard her parents plead for their lives.”

“And heard their final screams before their throats were cut and smelled the smoke from the sizzling of their flesh.”

No wonder she’d gone mad. “What about this?” I said, nodding toward my bound feet and arms. “Why this? Why are you treating me like this?”

“We are treating you the same way my older brother was treated when he was caught stealing a can of beans by the GIs. Back when there was still food. They stripped him naked, strung him up by his feet, and poured hot sauce down his nose. You, we cut down after less than an hour. Him, they kept hanging all night.”

I’d heard of similar punishments in wartime. Veterans sometimes bragged about it.

“But why do it to me?”

“To show you.”

“Show me what?”

“What you need to know.”

“For your claim?”

Madame Hoh puffed on her cigarette. “We’re beyond that now.”

“But you did put in a claim, for yourselves and for the other victims of this atrocity.”

“Yes. One of the young men who carried the A-frame, who was older than us, found a lawyer after the war and filed the claim. But what good did it do us? Miss Sim, as you call her, had already been locked away in the mental hospital. The lawyer who filed the claim was threatened, a pistol put to his head. The A-frame man ran away and was never seen again. My friend here, my older brother who cared for me and tried to protect us all, was convicted of treason against the state.”

I didn’t believe he was her literal brother. Koreans often refer to someone as their “brother” or their “sister” if they’re close friends or have been through a tribulation together.

“They put your ‘brother’ in jail?” I coughed, spitting up dried remnants of the hot sauce.

“For twenty years. They said he was a Communist.”

“Why?”

“Because he was party to the claim.”

“And you?”

“The KNP officer in charge of our case sold me to a brothel.”

“How old were you?”

“At that time, fourteen.”

“And your brother?”

“Sixteen.”

“They gave him twenty years when he was sixteen years old?”

“They claimed he was the one who led that North Korean commando to the American encampment.”

“Was he?”

“No way. He was just trying to survive, like the rest of us.”

“What happened to his family?”

“Both his mother and his father were suffering from starvation and too weak to move. That’s why he tried to steal the beans. When he failed, they died.”

“And your family?”

She looked away. Finally, tears streaming from her eyes, her pudgy face contorted in rage, she said, “What do you think happened?” Angrily, she threw her cigarette to the ground, stomped on it, and walked away. The man with the iron sickle walked forward and stared down at me.

And then I heard his voice for the first time. It was rough and gravelly and devoid of emotion-no fear, no hatred, no resentment-except for an overwhelming plaintive quality. In a matter of fact way, as if to clarify the record, he wanted to justify himself. In my experience in law enforcement, that desire to confess and explain it all to someone is a strong one. With this man, the words came out in an overpowering rush. Maybe it was because he’d never before encountered an American who could understand him, who could speak Korean. I nodded and listened, saying a brief word occasionally, in order to encourage him to continue.

He told me that the man in the claims office had been killed to show how wronged Korea had been by Eighth Army. He hadn’t enjoyed it but it had to be done. The MP was murdered simply to show people that American law enforcement was not invincible. Despite being part of the greatest military power in the world, they were just men. The GIs in the signal truck were similarly slaughtered as stand-ins for the Lost Echo who had engendered all this misery. And then he told me what he planned to do next. He didn’t name a specific target, but he said everyone would be shown soon. What he meant by that I wasn’t sure, but I knew better than to ask questions. Then he walked away, leaving me alive. I studied the dark corners of the cavern, my ankles aching. As far as I could tell, there were no more bottles of Little Demon hot sauce.