The Iron Sickle

— 3-

An hour later we were ordered to report to the Provost Marshal-immediately if not sooner. We found him out on the parade field in front of 8th Army headquarters, standing with a group of dignitaries on a white bunted podium. We skidded to a halt at the edge of the field.

“Too late,” Ernie said.

A bass drum pounded and the United Nations Command Honor Guard marched onto the raked gravel. First out was a unit of the Republic of Korea Army with their green tunics and white hats, followed closely by the American honor guard in their shiny brass buttons and dress blue uniforms. Finally a platoon of Gurkhas from the British Army swung white-gloved fists resolutely forward as they strutted onto the field in their bright red blazers. A six-gun salute from a battery of 105mm howitzers blasted into the sky as sergeants shouted commands and the parade wound into formation in front of the podium. Smoke roiled across the field, cuing the 8th Army band to strike up first the Republic of Korea national anthem and then “The Star Spangled Banner.”

“Who are they trying to impress?” Ernie asked.

“Some dignitaries from the UN,” I said, “here on an inspection tour.”

“Hope they watch out for guys with sickles.”

A Korean general spoke first. I couldn’t understand everything he said; the language was formal and used a vocabulary seldom heard in the red light district of Itaewon, but I picked up most of it. Every few sentences he paused, and a younger officer translated what he’d just said into English. The general expressed his gratitude to the countries of the United Nations for their support of the free Republic of Korea, both now and during their time of need some twenty years ago, when they’d been attacked by the forces of the North Korean Communists and the massed legions of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the Red Chinese People’s Army.

After a few more droning remarks by the American general, which were similarly translated into Korean, a plaque was presented to a UN civilian in a grey suit. Dutch, I believe he was. Then a half-dozen Korean women, decked out in full-skirted silk hanbok, placed leis over the heads of the smiling dignitaries. The pretty young women backed up and bowed deeply. More martial music blasted out, and the UN Honor Guard saluted with their silver bayoneted rifles. Then, to the accompaniment of a pounding drum, they marched smartly off the field.

The assembly was dismissed and Colonel Brace, along with many of the other dignitaries, hopped off the podium. After saluting a few generals and exchanging some smiling remarks, he motioned for us to meet him beneath a quivering elm tree. When he reached us, his demeanor had changed completely. His eyes were squinting, and he glanced away from us, setting both fists on his hips, as if manfully controlling his temper. Colonel Brace was a jogger who kept his weight down to anorexic levels as was the fashion of the 8th Army officer corps. He might have been much smaller than either of us, but his fists tightened as if he were preparing to spring forward and pummel us both.

“Where do you two guys get off,” he said, “upsetting Mrs. Barretsford like that?”

“We didn’t upset her,” Ernie replied. “The fact that we were assigned to the black market detail is what upset her.”

Colonel Brace shook his head slightly, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Finally, he said, “No ‘sir’ in that answer, Bascom?”

“Sir,” Ernie said.

“You should’ve kept a low profile,” he told us, “done your work without drawing attention to yourselves.”

When neither of us answered, Colonel Brace continued. “I’m putting you back on Sergeant-of-the-Guard duty, effective immediately. Report to the MP Station after evening chow. You’ll be on that detail every night until further notice.”

“No more black market?” Ernie asked.

“No more black market. And end your questions with ‘sir.’ Is that understood?”

“Understood, sir,” Ernie replied.

He stared at us for a while, as if amazed at the human wreckage he had to deal with. Finally, he shook his head again and said, “Dismissed.”

Ernie and I saluted, maintained the position of attention, and waited for the colonel to stalk away. As we watched him go, Ernie chomped on his gum a little louder. Other than that, he showed no reaction to the butt chewing. We were used to being treated as if we were lower than whale shit. It’s a leadership technique the officer corps uses. I believe at West Point they have a week-long seminar on the finer points.

When the colonel was out of sight, we returned to the narrow parking lot where we’d left our jeep. Ernie hopped in, but I hesitated to climb into the passenger seat. He looked up at me.

“I have work to do in the admin office,” I told him.

He rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself. I’m going to catch some shut-eye before we start the night shift.” The jeep’s engine sputtered to life. Ernie backed out of the narrow space, shifted gears, and roared off in a cloud of carbon and grime.

Inside the CID office, Staff Sergeant Riley was busy shouting into the phone about some personnel transactions that had gone missing. The admin secretary, Miss Kim, industriously typed away on a stack of reports that had come in concerning the Barretsford case. She allowed me to read them, both the American ones and those from the Korean National Police. There wasn’t much to see: a whole lot of interviews, plenty of harassed bus drivers and cabbies, and US officers and civilians who had known Barretsford. But nobody seemed to know anything about why he had been attacked. In the entire stack, there was no new information. When I finished, I placed the paperwork back on her desk and said, “Komap-sumnida.” Thank you.

She smiled in response.

Miss Kim was a gorgeous woman, tall and shapely. I liked the way she held herself: poised and self-aware while at the same time quiet and watchful. I had often been tempted to ask her out on a date. What held me back was not shyness but worse. She had once been close to my partner, Ernie. At the time, she thought the relationship was serious, but eventually she discovered that to Ernie Bascom, nothing is serious, neither life nor death and certainly not romance. Now she could barely stand the sight of him. I believed she still cared for him, and I figured if I made a concerted effort I could break through those emotions and win a place for myself in her affections. But there’s something about the memory of another man-especially a man you know well-that can stop a romance from developing. Jealousy, it’s called. So instead of asking her out, I was unfailingly polite to her, showing kindness whenever the opportunity arose. I brought her gifts: a rose, a small bottle of PX hand lotion, candy on holidays. She appreciated my thoughtfulness but I wasn’t winning her heart. And I wasn’t trying to-at least that’s what I told myself.

I found a typewriter on a wooden field desk at the back of the office. I rolled a sheet of paper, along with three carbon onionskins-one green, one pink, and one yellow-into the carriage. Carefully, I started to type, first the date and then the subject: INTERVIEW AT THE PX SNACK STAND. And the case: C. WINSTON BARRETSFORD, HOMICIDE.

I typed out what the couple at the tiny snack stand across from the Claims Office had seen. An Asian man in his thirties, about five ten, a hundred and forty to a hundred and fifty pounds, with a deformed lower lip; well dressed, wearing a suit and a long overcoat and apparently holding something hidden beneath the coat. I described how he stood completely still, out of the rain, staring at the locked front door of the Claims Office. I even mentioned how his nose was running and how the old woman had speculated that he seemed to be staring at some far away vision. I described how he abruptly disappeared after the Claims Office opened at zero eight hundred. At the end of the report I typed my name, rank, and badge number. Then I pulled the four sheets out of the typewriter, peeled off the carbon, and signed my name at the bottom. The original would go to Colonel Brace; the green copy would stay in the CID file cabinet; the yellow copy would go to Lieutenant Pong, the Korean National Police Liaison officer; and the pink copy was mine, to be stashed in a dusty brown accordion file I kept in my wall locker back in the barracks.

I dropped the reports into Riley’s in-basket, stuffed my copy into my pocket, and nodded my goodbye to Miss Kim.

Nobody else noticed me leave, which was good because if they’d asked me where I was going, I would’ve been reluctant to admit that I was on my way to see someone who my old drill sergeant in basic training would’ve referred to as an egghead.

The military doesn’t trust intellectualism. The honchos of 8th Army only appreciate raw facts and actions based on those facts. Anyone who hunts for motive by delving into the recesses of the human mind is either laughed at or, more often, ignored.

I stood in a small office at the end of a long hallway in the western wing of the 121st Evacuation Hospital. The receptionist for Captain Leah Prevault was a punctilious Korean woman who’d probably been working in the hospital since before Christ was a corporal. She asked me if I had an appointment, and when I answered I didn’t, she told me I’d have to make one. I reached across the counter and, before she could react, twisted the appointment book in my direction.

“Captain Prevault is free until two thirty,” I said.

“Yes, but you still must make an appointment.”

I pulled my badge out of my pocket and showed it to her. “Tell her it’s a matter of life and death.”

It never fails. Having lived in a police state for all of her life, the woman’s face blanched and from somewhere in the folds of her skirt a handkerchief appeared. She swiveled on her chair and, holding the embroidered cloth to her nose, disappeared into a back room. Five minutes later, she was back.

“Captain Prevault will see you now,” she said.

Captain Leah Prevault stood with her back to me as I entered the room, studying a book from a shelf behind her desk. She wore the neatly pressed tunic and skirt of a US Army captain. She put the book away, turned, and motioned for me to sit. She was a slender woman, not particularly tall but with long legs and arms she seemed to have to work at keeping under control. She sat at the same time I did and stared at me intently through horn-rimmed glasses, reminding me of a precocious adolescent examining a water bug that had just crawled out of a sewer. Her long brown hair had been pinned back so as not to interfere with her meticulous observation. She continued studying me, saying nothing.

The silence worked. I told her why I was there.

She cleared her throat and glanced briefly down at her Army-issue blotter. “I was wondering when you’d contact me,” she said.

“You mean me?” I asked, pointing at my nose.

“Not you specifically.”

“So no one else in law enforcement has bothered to ask you about the murder?”

“You’re the first,” she said.

I pulled my notebook out of my jacket pocket. Thumbing through it, I pretended to be reading from notes. I gave her the description of the Korean man who’d been seen waiting in front of the Claims Office.

“You think he’s the killer?” she asked.

“Most likely,” I said. “He matches the descriptions given by the workers inside the Claim Office, even down to the damaged lip.”

“Why do you say ‘damaged?’ ”

“It might’ve been a recent injury.”

“But the woman at the snack stand said it appeared to her to be a permanent deformity.”

“Thanks for pointing that out,” I replied. “But I’m here to ask your help. Are you the only psychiatrist here at the one-two-one?”

“Yes. And after I return to the States, there’ll be none.”

“Why?”

“Budget cuts.”

“Who will take on your case load?”

She shrugged. “The worst cases are shipped to Camp Zama. Or Tripler in Hawaii.”

“Do you have any patients who match the description of the man who murdered the Claims Officer?”

“We don’t do Koreans,” she said.

“Who does?”

“There are a few practitioners on the economy. Not many. Most of the criminally insane would be handled by the Korean health service.”

“You think he’s criminally insane?”

“Either that or he’s what everyone at the Officers Club says he is: a North Korean terrorist.”

“But in your professional opinion, anyone who did what he did would have to be insane.”

“Little doubt.” She placed her hands in front of her chin, touching the tips of the long fingers together. “The attack was too unexpected, too brutal, to be anything else.”

“Was he after Mr. Barretsford in particular, do you think?”

“Unlikely. If it was personal, between Mr. Barretsford and the killer, there would’ve been a moment of confrontation. A moment of taunting, a moment of blame, maybe even an attempt at humiliation. Instead, the killer went immediately to work, as if he wanted to blot Barretsford from the universe. The Eighth Army Claims Officer represented something to him. What exactly, I couldn’t speculate-not without a thorough examination.”

“Come on, Doctor. There’s no way we can examine him. I need you to stick your neck out a little. What do you think motivates this guy?”

“Unofficially?”

“Unofficially,” I said, nodding.

“Hatred,” she said, without hesitation. “This man has been traumatized, deeply and probably repeatedly. For some reason the Chief of the Eighth Army Claims Office represented to him everything he loathes, everything that has caused him to suffer. Even if he’s a North Korean agent, this is what motivated him. Hatred of a man who represented a system he’s been programmed to hate.”

I started to write that down in my notebook but she said, “Unofficial, remember?”

I stopped writing and stared for a moment at the blank page. “This Korean mental health service you mentioned, can you refer me to anyone there?”

“Wouldn’t the Korean National Police already have checked them out?”

“Maybe,” I replied, “but most of the thinking is the killer is a North Korean agent. Not a nut case.” I realized my mistake and felt my face flush red. “Sorry.”

Captain Prevault stared at me. Her face was narrow with a smooth complexion and not unattractive. If a GI stared at another GI like she was doing at me, he might get his nose punched. On her, it seemed normal. Disconcerting, but normal.

“They might be right,” she said. “Even considering the gruesomeness of the crime scene, a North Korean agent might’ve done the same, if he were trying to spread terror.”

“That’s what the brass thinks, yes. The more gore, the more panic.”

“But you don’t?”

“I try to keep an open mind.”

She smiled faintly. It was a nice smile. “An open mind is not good for promotion, not in this man’s army.”

“No,” I agreed.

“What’s the saying? Get along …”

“Go along to get along,” I corrected.

“Yes, which is why I’ll be getting out of the military soon.” She swiveled on her chair, pulled out a drawer at the bottom of her desk, and appeared to be thumbing through some files. She stopped, lifted a clump of paper, stared at it for a moment, and then dropped it back into the folder. Closing the drawer, she turned back to me.

“I’ll make some inquiries,” she said. “Do you speak Korean?”

“Some,” I replied.

“That will help. If the person I’m thinking of consents to talk to you, I’ll let you know.”

“Just give me his name,” I said. “I’ll find him.”

She smiled a sad smile, as if I were hopelessly naive. “That’s not the way it works. Not in the civilian world and particularly not in the academic world. But I’ll be quick about it. I understand the urgency.”

I stood and thanked her and handed her my card. Without glancing at it, she placed it in the center of her desk. I considered offering my hand to shake but when she just kept studying me, I decided against it.

As I was leaving, she said, “Agent Sueno.”

I turned.

“Did I pronounce your name right?”

She had pronounced the “n” as the “ny” in canyon.

“Yes. Very good.”

“I would like to go on a date with you.”

I fidgeted, unaccustomed to anyone being so direct.

She smiled. “I’m making you uncomfortable.”

“It’s just that I’m an enlisted man,” I stammered. “And you’re an officer.”

“But in the CID, your ranks are classified. No one will ever know.”

“I have guard duty tonight,” I said, hating myself for my tone of voice. It was as if I were conjuring up an excuse that was my last line of defense. And maybe I was. The thought of going out with an American female officer was something I’d never even considered. We were constantly being warned against fraternization between ranks.

Captain Prevault continued to stare at me evenly, but the smooth complexion of her face took on just the shadow of a frown.

“Perhaps some other time then,” she said.

“Perhaps,” I agreed, not knowing what else to say. “Some other time.”

I turned and fled from her office.

Grimes was surprised to see me.

“I thought they took you guys off of guard duty.”

“Back on again,” I said.

A steady drizzle spattered the mud around us. We wore army-issue rain gear: hooded plastic parkas over weather-resistant trousers that were held up by suspenders. We stared at the same filth-filled drainage canal we’d stared at the previous night, flushed now with rushing water. But instead of somber darkness beyond the concertina wire, there were rows of yellow lights about a quarter-mile in the distance and beyond them, flashing neon and cars whizzing through the rain.

“Curfew in less than an hour,” Grimes said, tossing a still-burning cigarette butt into the dirt. It sizzled in the mud and went out. “Gets boring around here after that.”

He was referring to the nationwide midnight-to-four A.M. curfew, slapped on by the ROK government supposedly to make it more difficult for North Korean spies to infiltrate the South. The real reason, I thought, was to provide a daily demonstration to the South Korean people that the military regime of President Pak Chung-hee was in complete control of their lives.

“We’ll do a midnight commo check to make your life more interesting,” I told Grimes.

Unconsciously, Grimes patted the walkie-talkie at his side. “Do that,” he replied.

I nodded goodbye and walked off toward the next stop on my rounds. My pullover plastic boots sloshed in the mud. I kept thinking about Captain Prevault. She was an attractive woman, at least to me. Ernie would think she was too bookish and too plain, but he specialized in flashy women. I didn’t. Maybe I should call her tomorrow, let her know that once they take me off this night shift guard duty, I’d have more time and maybe we could get together then. Maybe I could take her to a Buddhist temple out in the countryside, somewhere that would be new and interesting to someone of her intelligence-somewhere without a thousand GIs staring at us.

As I was daydreaming, I thought of Dr. Yong In-ja. She had been in charge of the Itaewon District Health Clinic, treating the dozens of Korean business girls who needed her help every week. I’d worked with her on a cold case, a case involving an American GI who’d been dead twenty years. One thing had led to another and during the investigation, Doc Yong and I had become close. Very close. She landed in trouble with the Korean authorities, trouble so serious she felt compelled to flee to North Korea, the homeland of her parents. Later, I’d seen her again, when I’d been sent up there to try to search for tunnels that led south beneath the DMZ. While there I discovered she’d given birth to Il-yong, our son. When the three of us returned to the South, her troubles began to multiply, and eventually she’d taken Il-yong and disappeared. It had been months now, and I’d received no word from her.

I was a professional cop. I could’ve searched for her, and I believed that if I searched long and hard enough, I’d find her. The only problem was that in so doing the Korean National Police almost certainly would take note of my investigation. A KNP report would be passed up the chain of command and eventually would reach someone who’d realize that I was searching for a fugitive-a highly sought-after fugitive.

I couldn’t search for her because I couldn’t risk leading the KNPs to her. If I did, and she was arrested, she’d face the possibility-the probability-of spending the rest of her life in prison.

Ernie kept telling me that it was her responsibility to contact me. If she was very careful, she could do it. But if she wouldn’t make the effort, it meant she was finished with me, and I was therefore free to see other women. It had been months now and I’d heard nothing from her. Ernie was right. It was time to emerge from my shell and start to live again.

As I wallowed deep in this morose reverie, something whistled through the air. Reflexively, I ducked. Whatever it was splashed into the mud on the pathway in front of me. I leapt backward, thinking it was a grenade. In a moment of panic, I realized I had nowhere to hide. This was it. I was done for. For a few agonizing seconds, I waited for the ordnance to explode, for a thousand metal pellets to zing through the air and rip into my body, slicing me into a tattered patchwork of bloody shreds.

Nothing happened.

I stared at the lump in front of me. It lay inert. I stepped forward, pulled out my flashlight, and knelt to study it. Just a rock, a jagged chunk about half the size of a brick. I stepped to the ten-foot-high cement block wall and with both hands, pulled myself up so I could peek over the ledge through the rusty concertina wire.

Nothing. A bare alley. I lowered myself back to the ground.

Maybe some kids had run by on their way home before curfew. Maybe one of them had seen the rock, picked it up, and thrown it. Still, I hadn’t heard any footsteps. No teenage giggling.

Someone had silently slipped down the alley; maybe they’d stood still and listened for my approach. Had they wanted to bop me on the head? Why would anyone do that? I lifted the rock and studied it. There was nothing special about it. I dropped it back into the mud.

About a half hour later, I returned to the MP Station. Ernie was dozing on the wooden bench. I pulled off my wet parka.

“Reveille,” I said, without much enthusiasm. He cracked open an eye, groaned, crossed his arms, and leaned back on the bench, trying to get as comfortable as possible on the varnished wood.

I pulled off my wet overshoes, set them under the bench, and tromped in my combat boots toward the back counter to pull myself a cup of coffee before realizing the metal urn had been removed by the 8th Army chow hall. The sense of urgency surrounding the Barretsford case was dissipating, and as best I could tell from the MP rumor mill, little if any progress had been made on the investigation. No suspects, no clear motive, not even a murder weapon. Even if the 8th Army was dropping the ball, the KNPs would come up with something. Korea is a highly controlled society: everything’s recorded, and the KNPs have plenty of manpower. By now, every bus driver and cabbie who’d entered the southern part of Seoul on that fateful morning had probably been interviewed. Somebody would’ve seen something. At least that’s what I believed.

The information that had somehow leaked and that everyone was gossiping about concerned C. Winston Barretsford’s personal life. Apparently, he’d been less than faithful to his good wife, Evelyn. Already, one of the massage parlor girls at the steam and cream behind the 8th Army Officers Club had admitted he’d been one of her regulars. Also, the Claims Office civilian driver revealed that Barretsford had made an inordinate number of so-called “inspection trips” up North to a suspect establishment in the red-light district of Yongju-gol.

All of this wasn’t unusual. Civilians, officers, and GIs all took advantage of the sex trade in Korea. During the Korean War the country had been completely devastated. Most of the populace had been malnourished and many had literally starved to death. In the twenty years since, much progress had been made: a four-lane highway was built from the Port of Pusan in the extreme south of the country all the way to Seoul, high rise buildings were being constructed in urban centers, and state-of-the-art manufacturing plants were cropping up all over the countryside. Still, much of this wealth had yet to trickle down to the poor working classes in the cities or farmers in the agrarian countryside. Young men were required by law to perform military service from the ages of twenty to twenty-three. Young women, after finishing their schooling, sometimes found employment in the new industries that were coming into existence, but many of them didn’t. Those who didn’t were excess. Their families could no longer support them, and there was no gainful employment to be found. Many ended up in brothels catering to Korean or Japanese businessmen, and some ended up in the GI red light districts like Yongju-gol up north, or Itaewon here in Seoul. Few healthy American males with time on their hands and money in their pockets could resist the lure of the Korean sex trade, and C. Winston Barretsford hadn’t been one of them.

So far, the 8th Army had made heroic efforts to keep this information from his wife. They’d also tried to keep it from the ladies of the Officers’ Wives Club. This wasn’t only motivated by concern for Mrs. Barretsford’s feelings. The less the OWC knew about Itaewon and Yongju-gol, the 8th Army honchos believed, the better for everyone.

I was mulling these thoughts over and plotting the various ways I might be able to track down a cup of hot coffee when the Desk Sergeant called my name.

“Sueno!”

He sat behind the high reception counter of the MP Station, holding a phone receiver in his left hand and motioning frantically with his right hand for me to come running. I did.

“What is it?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he thrust the phone into my hand. I raised it to my ear and said, “Hello?”

The connection was bad, and the message was mostly garbled. It was a GI shouting into a pay phone in Itaewon. Something about someone being hurt and there was blood everywhere and he thought one of the guys might be an MP.

The man was panicked. I knew I had to get information from him and get it quickly.

“Where?” I shouted.

He told me in front of the OB beer tent, one block off the MSR near the Itaewon Market.

“What’s your name?” I shouted, but the line had already gone dead.

I slammed down the phone

“Ernie!” I shouted. “Let’s go.”

He was already up, tucking his fatigue shirt into his trousers and slipping on his field jacket. As we headed for the door, I called back to the Desk Sergeant, “An ambulance! At the southern end of the Itaewon Market. Now!”

We pushed through the big double doors and trotted through the drizzle, sloshing our way toward Ernie’s jeep.