The Iron Sickle

— 8-

The Provost Marshal wasn’t happy with us. He stood behind his desk, hands on narrow hips, scowling.

“What happened?” he asked.

“When Dexter went for his gun,” I said, “I charged at him. A round went off, scared the crap out of all of us, but by then I’d reached him and knocked him backward over his barstool and then him and me and the two other MPs went down in a heap. I’m not clear on what happened after that other than I kept swinging and when another round went off, we all stopped fighting.”

The Provost Marshal turned his scowl on Ernie. “That’s when you fired into the mirror behind the bar?”

“Yes, sir,” Ernie replied. “I managed to secure Dexter’s weapon and then fired it once, just getting their attention.”

Colonel Walter P. Brace, the Provost Marshal of the 8th United States Army, exhaled long and slow. “So now two MPs are in the hospital, one with a dislocated shoulder and the other with a concussion, and I have a weapons incident, shots fired during an arrest. And what, exactly, are the charges against Staff Sergeant Dexter?”

“Vandalism with malicious intent,” I said.

“Which means?”

“He destroyed a pochang macha.”

The colonel sat down. “A pochang macha?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

Colonel Brace stared quietly at the blotter in front of him. He started to thumb through some papers but thought better of it. Finally he looked back at us.

“And how about the murder of Corporal Collingsworth? And the hacking to death of Mr. Barretsford? Any progress on those?”

“We’re still developing leads, sir.”

“Leads.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the KNPs?”

“Lab reports on the pochang macha crime scene should be back this morning.”

“There’s that word again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you turn your daily progress report in to Staff Sergeant Riley?”

“Working on that now, sir.”

“Not now,” he said. “Get over to the KNP headquarters and add their lab reports into your daily. Go on now, get out.” He flicked his fingers at us, as if to chase away flies. “Get out.”

We saluted, turned, and marched out of his office.

In the jeep, Ernie said, “Asshole.”

Ernie parked the jeep in front of the Korean National Police headquarters, and we strode through the front door and past the information counter. Mr. Kill’s assistant, Officer Oh, told us he was conducting interrogations and couldn’t be disturbed.

“Do you have the lab reports?” I asked.

Her long face flushed red. “Only he can give those to you.”

Ernie was about to argue with her, but I waved him off. “Where’s the interrogation room?”

She debated whether to respond, but in the end she rose from her chair and said, “I’ll show you.”

We walked down the two flights of stairs we’d just climbed, but when we reached the ground floor we kept going down. After one flight, we hit a door. Officer Oh pressed a buzzer. A metallic voice said, “Yoboseiyo, Kim Kyongjang imnida.”

Officer Oh identified herself and then a buzzer sounded. We pushed through the door. A dimly lit cement hallway stretched into darkness. Doors were imbedded into the walls; holding cells. Officer Oh led us in the opposite direction and opened a door marked Muncho-sil, interrogation room. Straight-backed chairs and a counter faced a one-way window through which a red light glowed in a space not much bigger than a rectangular closet. The interrogation was being conducted.

“Where’s the popcorn?” Ernie asked.

Officer Oh motioned for us to sit and then she switched on the sound. They were speaking Korean, of course, in low but insistent tones. Mr. Kill was doing most of the talking. Next to him sat a young officer taking notes. What surprised me was the person being interrogated. Ernie and I both recognized her. She was the woman who ran the PX snack stand in the building opposite the 8th Army Claims Office.

“What the hell’s she doing here?” Ernie asked.

The woman looked haggard and thin, as if she’d been there for days. Patiently, Mr. Kill asked question after question, and she kept shaking her head, exhausted.

“How long has she been here?” I asked.

Officer Oh looked at me sharply but didn’t answer.

“Who else has he been interrogating?”

When she didn’t respond, I stood up and walked out of the room. Ernie followed. Officer Oh trotted after us. I continued down the long hallway, stopping at the doors, peering through the peepholes located just below my eye-level. Each of the rooms was well illuminated and had a short wooden bench and a bucket for waste. There were no windows, books, radios, televisions, or phones. Just a cement block cubicle. Even this peep hole, I imagined, worked only one way and would be opaque to the prisoner inside. After examining the first cell, I moved to the next.

Officer Oh said, “An dei.” Not permitted. She reached out as if to stop me, but I shrugged her off and kept moving. Ernie followed. We peered into every cell along the hallway and then started back on the ones on the opposite side. Besides the PX snack stand woman and her husband, I recognized the receptionist at the Eighth Army Claims Office, two of her co-workers, and the gate guard who was on duty the morning of the Claims Office attack.

When I was halfway back, Mr. Kill emerged from the interrogation room.

“Agent Sueno,” he said, “and Agent Bascom. Welcome.”

I strode toward him. “Why are these people locked up?” I said.

“We are interrogating them,” he replied calmly, “as part of our investigation.”

“But these people are witnesses,” I said. “Witnesses. Not suspects.”

“Can you be sure?”

“But there’s no reason to suspect them. No evidence links them to the crime.”

“Do you have evidence that proves they weren’t?” Mr. Kill asked.

The question stumped me. Ernie stepped in. “How long have they been locked up?”

“Long enough.”

“One day? Two days?”

Mr. Kill shrugged.

“You can’t just keep people like this.”

He stared at us blankly.

I tried to think, get over my shock. I knew the Republic of Korea was a police state. Their president, Pak Chung-hee, was a former colonel who’d taken over the government, promoted himself to general, and, through a polling process most international observers viewed as laughable, had finally won the election for president. There weren’t any local police departments run by cities or counties, only one police department run by the federal government: the Korean National Police. They were a quasi-military organization charged with not only fighting crime but also with protecting the country from foreign threats-mainly Communist North Korea-and from internal threats: anyone who had the nerve to challenge the legitimacy of the regime. They did things their way. There might’ve been human rights enshrined in their constitution but all that was for show. In reality the Korean National Police did whatever they wanted to do, all within the supervision and absolute control of the government officials in charge.

Mr. Kill wasn’t taking any chances. This was more than just a murder investigation. It was also an investigation into an incident that could threaten the special relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea. As such, it would be monitored by the very highest levels of their government. Mr. Kill wasn’t identifying suspects. To him, everyone was a suspect.

“Let them out,” I said, pointing at the doors down the hallway. “They’ve suffered enough.”

“In due time,” Mr. Kill answered.

Incongruously, I thought of how well he spoke English. I don’t believe I’d ever heard a Korean use that phrase, “in due time.” And then I remembered the lab report. I asked him about it. He snapped his fingers at Officer Oh. She bowed and ran upstairs.

“Go back to your compound,” he told us. “When I have more information, I will call you.”

“You’re not going to release these people?” Ernie asked.

Mr. Kill swiveled on him and his face hardened. “Not your business,” he said.

“Well it damn sure ought to be our business. These people work for the United States government. They were originally identified as witnesses by Eighth Army law enforcement, and the crimes were committed on an Eighth Army military compound.”

“But they’re Korean citizens,” Mr. Kill said. “They fall under our jurisdiction. Not yours.” Ernie started to say something but Mr. Kill cut him off. “Your Colonel Brace knows we picked them up. He signed off on it. Didn’t he tell you?”

Ernie’s mouth started to open, but he quickly shut it again. He glared at Mr. Kill and for a moment I was afraid he was about to sock him in the jaw. But he must have rummaged around deep in the recesses of his reptilian mind and managed to find a modicum of self-control. Instead of doing what I knew he wanted to do, Ernie pulled a stick of ginseng gum out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped the gum into his mouth.

As he started to chew, I said, “Come on, Ernie.”

Ernie kept staring at Mr. Kill. Deliberately, he wadded up the gum wrapper and tossed it on the ground. Finally, he turned. Together we walked toward the stairs. Before we hit the first landing, Ernie was cursing up a blue streak-part of it in Korean, part in English, and some words I figured were Vietnamese-dredging up every dirty word he’d ever learned.

Painstakingly, I translated the KNP lab report from the scene of Collingsworth’s murder, using the Essence Korean-English Dictionary I kept on my desk. Some of the words were medical terms and weren’t in my dictionary. I asked Miss Kim, the admin secretary, for help, but not all the words were familiar to her either.

“Why didn’t you wait for them to translate it?” Riley growled.

“Them?” I said. “How would you be able to trust the translation?”

“What do you mean?”

For Staff Sergeant Riley and most GIs in the 8th United States Army, translation into English was a simple thing, like one plus one equals two. Each Korean word could be replaced with the English equivalent word. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. But try to explain that to a colonel who’s in a hurry. Most KNP reports probably weren’t mistranslated intentionally. More likely, the work was just too difficult for the Korean clerks assigned to the job, and he or she was under pressure to finish quickly and just wrote down what was within reach of their English vocabulary.

I was trying to get it right.

I typed up the final draft and turned it in to Riley, who handcarried it to the Provost Marshal. All it said, really, were things we already knew. The few fingerprints the KNPs had been able to take off the serving counter and the drinking cups belonged mostly to Mrs. Lee, the woman who owned the pochang macha. Two other prints probably belonged to the two customers, who hadn’t yet been identified. As Mrs. Lee reported, the perpetrator himself wore gloves. At the murder site, the blood samples were all the same blood type as Corporal Ricky P. Collingsworth, O positive. The color, thickness, and texture of the hair samples were analyzed and appeared to match him and Senior Private Kwon Hyon-up, the ROK MP who’d been briefly knocked unconscious in the attack.

So that was it, nothing much at all. The man with the iron sickle wasn’t leaving us anything to go on. He’d worn gloves and long-sleeved clothing, and he knew the crime scene would be analyzed closely so he’d been careful not to leave traces. No traces at all, other than the totem, which he’d later taken away. I pulled the drawing out and glanced at it again. I should’ve had copies made for Staff Sergeant Riley, the Provost Marshall, and every MP in 8th Army. For some reason, I hesitated. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because the Provost Marshal had given permission for Mr. Kill and the Korean National Police to pick up and interrogate people who were faithful employees of the US government-and he didn’t bother to tell me or Ernie. Maybe it was because of the sympathy he’d shown for Moe Dexter and his crew and the belittling attitude he’d displayed at the risk we’d taken in arresting them. Maybe it was because of the almost drooling agreement I’d seen amongst the 8th Army officer corps when the statuesque Major Rhee Mi-sook lectured them on the dangers of North Korean agents. Maybe it was one of those things, maybe it was all of those things. Whatever it was, I figured I had to hold something back. Like the man with the iron sickle, I decided to hide something under my coat. I’d pull it out at a time when it would provide maximum surprise and maximum discomfort for my enemies.

Who those enemies were, I wasn’t quite sure yet. At times it seemed like everyone was.

The phone rang. Staff Sergeant Riley picked it up. He identified himself and listened for a while, saying, “Will do” two or three times. He hung up.

“Sueno!” he yelled, although I was just a few feet from him. “Bascom! You two are to get your sorry butts out to the ROK Army headquarters right now. Report to Major Rhee. While you’ve been sitting on your sorry asses, someone in this man’s army has been doing some work.”

“What’ve they got?” I asked.

“What’ve they got? They’re just about to bust this case wide open. Get over there now. They want the Eighth Army to witness this historic moment in joint ROK/US law enforcement.”

“They got him?” Ernie said.

“How the hell should I know? But a big task force is moving out. Be there or be square. Move out sharply! Hubba hubba!”

Ernie and I shrugged on our coats. On the way out, Ernie flipped Riley the bird.

Even though she was wearing ROK Army fatigues, Major Rhee Mi-sook looked smashing. The baggy uniform had been tailored to accentuate the roundness of her hips and the smallness of her waist. Raven black hair had been piled atop her head and pinned beneath a camouflage cap.

“You’re late,” she said.

A row of six ROK MP jeeps followed by an armored personnel carrier were lined up in front of the brick ROK Army headquarters. Like the 8th Army headquarters down the street, the entire complex had been built by the Japanese Imperial Army before World War II, but you didn’t mention that around here, or you were liable to get your butt kicked.

“Why’d you wait for us?” I asked Major Rhee.

She studied me quietly for a moment, and then Ernie, letting us take in the full magnificence of her unblemished oval face and the full pouting redness of her lips. Her black eyes were full of hatred, or love, I wasn’t sure which. With her, there might not have been much difference.

“We need Americans,” she said finally. “We always need Americans. Just follow,” she told us. “Don’t do anything. Stay out of the way and watch.”

Without waiting for a reply, she performed a smart about-face. On the way back to the lead jeep, she raised her right arm and circled her pointed forefinger in the air. All the jeeps and the armored personnel carrier fired up their engines. Ernie and I scurried to our jeep and followed the convoy out the main gate into the busy midday Seoul traffic. When we reached the Samgak-ji Circle, the convoy bulled through all the kimchi cabs and the three-wheeled pickup trucks piled high with garlic or shimmering green cabbage and backed up traffic for a quarter mile.

As we drove, I tried to calm the revulsion in my gut at seeing Major Rhee. In North Korea, working as a double agent, her mission had been to hunt me down. She done so and then she’d tortured me, seeming to greatly enjoy her work. If I hadn’t been rescued by the Manchurian Brigade, she would’ve forced me to make a phony confession and might’ve even had me executed as a capitalist spy. I couldn’t forget these things, especially the way her eyes had glazed over as I’d screamed in agony.

She was wearing the uniform of a South Korean officer now, performing important work for the South Korean brass. I was supposed to forget what she’d done up north, that was all part of the spy game they told me, but I still saw her as the serpent in the garden, gorgeous but deadly.

Ernie, as usual, brought my thoughts back to sordid reality.

“So did you get any of that?”

“What? You mean when I was in North Korea?”

He shrugged. “Whenever.”

“No time.”

“But you have time now.”

I shuddered. “She’s not interested in me, not in that way.”

Ernie barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? She looks at you like a python looks at a rat.”

I’m not sure why but that made me even more uncomfortable than I was already. I decided not to think about Major Rhee Mi-sook gobbling me up, which was hard for a minute, until the convoy swerved away from the main road and took a left up a steep incline. This road was much narrower. The few cabs and wooden pushcarts traveling downhill were forced to pull over and press themselves up against open shops and brick walls to get out of the way. Clumps of pedestrians stopped what they were doing and stared at the massively armed convoy trundling past. Old women wearing short blouses with long ribbons and flowing skirts balanced huge bundles of laundry atop their heads and gawked. They’d seen military convoys before, plenty of them, but they’d never seen a woman-and such an eye-catching woman-in the lead jeep.

We walked along the edge of the slope for about a half mile until we reached a straight stretch of road with a cement retaining wall on the left and a ledge overlooking the western edge of the city. Major Rhee ordered a halt. Armed men hopped out of the armored personnel carrier, all of them holding M-16 rifles. Commands were barked. At either end of the retaining wall were broad stone steps. One squad of soldiers climbed the stairs on the left, the other the stairs on the right. Major Rhee motioned for us to follow. As the soldiers trotted ahead of us, Major Rhee hurried to keep up. We stayed right with her.

At the top of the ridge, there were no more paved roads, just an endless shanty town that had been there probably since the end of the Korean War. The soldiers filed through narrow pedestrian lanes, passing crowded hooches, most of them made of plaster and rotted boards. Toddlers without pants were gently shoved out of the way, chickens squawked, and women squatted in front of huge plastic pans, looking up startled from their chopping of turnips or shelling of peas.

Finally, we came to a halt at a small intersection, at the center of which sat a weathered oak with colored pieces of paper and folded notes attached to it for good luck. Major Rhee spoke to the sergeants in charge of the two squads, pointed down one particularly narrow alley and then walked back to us.

As she approached, she pulled a.45 automatic pistol out of her black leather shoulder holster. She ratcheted back the charging handle, letting it slide forward with a clang. “I’m going in first,” she said. “Would you care to come along?”

“We’re not armed,” I said.

She smiled a lethal smile. “Don’t you trust me to protect you?”

The answer was no, but I didn’t say it. Instead, I held out my open palm and said, “Lead on.”

She turned and stepped into the narrow alley.

The soldiers fanned out into parallel lanes as Ernie and I followed Major Rhee down the center pathway. Overhanging thatched roofs closed in above us, and soon we were stumbling through mud, groping forward in the dark, swatting at spider webs. When we reached another narrow intersection, Major Rhee crouched.

She waited until I crouched next to her, and then she pointed at a wooden gate that looked like it was about to fall off its hinges. Chunks of plaster had crumbled away to expose brick beneath the wall, which was topped with shards of broken glass to ward off thieves. Major Rhee Mi-sook rose and walked toward the gate. At either end of the passageway, ROK Army soldiers waited, weapons poised. I expected there were more troops in back of the hooch, although we were not in position to see them.

Holding her pistol pointed toward the sky, Major Rhee grabbed the string that worked as a pulley to unlock the gate. Metal rattled, but the door didn’t open. She motioned with her free hand and two soldiers approached holding a heavy wooden log with iron handles, their rifles strapped behind their backs. She stepped back and, on the whispered count of “hana, tul, seit,” the soldiers swung the battering ram forward.

The old gate slammed inward. Major Rhee entered first, yelling “Umjiki-jima!” Don’t move! The soldiers with the battering ram stepped back and men on either side filed in. Ernie and I followed as far as the wooden porch.

The hooch was quickly secured. Soldiers ran around the side of the house, more soldiers emerged over the back wall, and Major Rhee and two soldiers entered through the front sliding doors, none of them bothering to take off their boots, a serious violation of ancient propriety.

Then I heard the commotion from within, like a heavy chest of drawers or a large wooden box had crashed to the floor. Someone shouted and then cursed, and an M-16 round was fired before Major Rhee’s voice screeched angrily to cease fire. Ernie and I made it inside in time to see something ram against a wall. A small bearded man swung a short stick-a mongdungi used for beating wet laundry-in a broad arc, fighting off Major Rhee and the two armed guards. Children huddled in the corner, two of them, clutching flat cushions to their chests, their eyes wide with terror. The man was screaming, frothing white at the mouth, swinging the heavy wooden stick in front of him.

Major Rhee backed away, shouting orders that she wanted the man taken alive, and more soldiers rushed into the room, holding their rifles forward like shields. Five or six of them pressed up against him. Still trying to swing his heavy wooden stick, he was on the floor, biting and kicking and commanding them to get off of him. Within seconds, his hands were trussed behind his back and a sock was stuffed deep into his mouth. Too deep, I thought. As they dragged him out, saliva poured from his mouth, and he was starting to turn red.

Major Rhee shouted for the men to get out of the hooch and not to touch anything. She watched as one of the squad leaders pulled out a length of rope and securely bound the prisoner’s hands behind his back. She ordered that the sock be pulled out of his mouth, and when the man started cursing again, she called for it to be put back in.

“If you want to breathe,” she told him in Korean, “you’ll behave.”

The squad leader roughly shoved the prisoner out of the muddy courtyard.

When they were gone, Major Rhee slipped on plastic gloves and returned to the dilapidated hooch, and with another sergeant’s help, she started going through the man’s personal belongings.

Ernie and I were being ignored. I stepped outside the gate for a moment, mainly to get away from the whimpering of the children. Not a soul in this teeming jumble of humanity moved. Everyone was hiding. I heard nothing, not even the squawking of chickens; nothing except the flapping of wet laundry in the afternoon breeze. I returned to the hooch.

Major Rhee apparently hadn’t found anything of note in the man’s meager possessions. She ordered that the walls and flooring be cracked open. While the soldiers ripped the house apart, I asked her what she was looking for.

“Incriminating material,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like a radio to broadcast to North Korea.”

“In this dump?” I said, incredulously.

She shrugged. “Or union propaganda.”

By decree of President Pak Chung-hee, unions were outlawed in South Korea. All except one: the Foreign Organization Employees Union, which mainly comprised the workers of 8th Army.

“What about the children?” I asked.

“What about them?” she replied.

“Now that their father’s gone, what are you going to do with them?”

She shrugged. “They must have relatives.”

She turned and walked away from me. I followed. She seemed to be examining the outside of the hooch. Using a bamboo stick she found on the ground, she poked through the overhanging thatched roof. We entered the dark passageway between the back of the hooch and the surrounding wall.

“The man you just arrested,” I said, “he doesn’t look anything like the man with the iron sickle.” Major Rhee didn’t answer. “He’s short,” I continued. “His legs are stunted from malnutrition. He has a beard.”

“He could have grown that in the last few days.”

“Hair doesn’t grow that fast,” I said.

Again, she didn’t answer.

“What evidence do you have that he’s the man with the iron sickle?” I asked.

“He’s a union organizer,” she said, “and therefore he is our enemy. We’ll question him and see if he’s the man who did the killing.” She shrugged elaborately. “If not, maybe he knows who did.”

“You’re doing this just to make your bosses believe you’re making progress.”

She stopped poking with the stick, turned, and pointed her finger at my nose, very insulting in Korea. “ROK Army business is ROK Army business,” she said. “You are here just to observe.”

“I’m observing all right,” I told her. “And I believe you’ve been observing me. Whose sedan was that last night in Itaewon?”

She snorted an ironic laugh, half turned away from me and then thought better of it. “Huh. You think you’re so important we would watch you all the time.”

“You’re worried about what I’m going to find out.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like maybe the man with the iron sickle isn’t a North Korean agent.”

“So what if he’s not? It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll catch him anyway.”

“So you don’t think this man is the murderer?”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

“Who’s going to conduct the interrogation?” I asked. “You?”

“You’ve seen me in action,” she said. “Don’t you think I can do it?”

“I think you can do it very well.”

She stepped closer, a half smile angling her face. “So maybe you’ll want to watch.” Then she slapped me. It was so fast I didn’t have time to flinch. I slapped her back. Her face twisted but then she stared back at me, laughing. Before I could stop myself, I stepped forward. She lunged toward me and then I grabbed her small waist, and she was kissing me and pulling me closer to her. I hated her, I knew that, but then I started to react, the biological reaction of all healthy young males. Her fingernails clawed into the back of my neck and her leg wrapped around my thigh; behind that dirty hooch, her soldiers not more than a few feet away.

Suddenly, I realized what I was doing and I pushed her away, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You no likey, GI?” she said, her eyes taunting me.

I turned clumsily in the narrow passageway and stepped back into the light. Before returning to the front of the hooch, I paused, willing myself to calm down, but it wasn’t working too well. Finally the lump in my pants started to soften.

As if nothing had happened, Major Rhee continued her search through the low-hanging thatch.

When I had fully recovered, I returned to the front of the hooch.

Ernie squatted in front of the kids, trying to calm them down. Their eyes were as big as summer pears. He pulled out some ginseng gum, tore one stick in half, and offered each child a piece. They just stared at him, unmoving. He continued to speak soothingly and smiled a lot until one of the little arms darted out, and small fingers deftly grabbed the torn stick of gum.

Outside, a woman screamed hysterically. The wife, I thought, back from the market. She pushed past two soldiers and rushed inside, slipping off her plastic sandals and scurrying toward her children. She knelt and wrapped them in her arms, and they all started to cry. Ernie backed away.

Major Rhee, who had emerged from the far side of the hooch, ordered that they be removed from the premises. Where they were taken, I could only imagine.

Back at the CID office, Miss Kim handed me a phone message. It was from Mr. Pak Hyong-ku, the owner of the Sam-Il Office that did so much business with 8th Army Claims. He wanted me to meet him tonight at about seven at a teahouse in the Sugye-dong area.

“Did he say what it was about?” I asked.

“No. He only said someone wanted to talk to you.”

“Someone?”

She nodded. The cannon for close of business sounded and the outside speakers blared out the tinny, tremulous notes of the retreat bugle. I picked up the phone and called Mr. Pak. No answer. It must be nice to be in business making good money. You didn’t have to work late.

I’d also received a message from Captain Prevault. She had a lead for me, she said, and she wanted me to pick her up at six with the jeep.

Ernie tossed me the keys to the jeep’s padlock. “Don’t let me butt in,” he said.

“It’s not a date,” I told him.

“ ‘Pick me up at six.’ What else are you going to call it? By the way, you spent quite a bit of time behind that hooch with Major Rhee. Was she interrogating you again?”

“Get bent, Ernie,” I told him.

He promised me he would.

When we went outside, three of the four tires of the jeep were flat. Ernie cursed and knelt next to the nearest tire, pointing at a slash in the rubber. Then he examined the other two. Same story.

“MPs,” Ernie said.

“Isn’t Dexter still locked up?” I asked.

“Yeah, but he’s got plenty of buddies.”

I handed him the keys back.