The Wandering Ghost

10

I’ve often wondered what it’s like to jump out of an airplane.

To take that final step into the abyss, with the wind rushing by and birds gliding below, and then to fall and twist and float free, away from all restraint, gliding through clouds. Airborne troopers do just that at least once a month to keep their parachute status active and thereby collect an additional fifty-four dollars per month in jump pay.

When I stood in the middle of that crowd and the young Korean man handed me the megaphone and I held it up to my mouth and I started talking, I suddenly knew what it was like to leap out into eternity.

I’m not sure exactly what I said. Ernie recounted it to me later. Something about every country being able to control its own destiny and every courtroom being accountable to the people of that country. It wasn’t much and it was garbled, but the overriding point of my little speech-as far as the U.S. Army’s concerned-was that I’d participated in a prohibited demonstration. It didn’t matter how minor, or how dumb, my participation might’ve been. Such participation, in and of itself, was a court-martial offense. Of course, so was returning to the 2nd Division area of operations after we’d been ordered not to. So I was just adding one sin onto another.

But what riveted my attention while I held the microphone was not the line of helmeted KNPs lining the railroad tracks, nor the adoring attention of the demonstrators who gazed up at me, nor even the helmeted American MPs barricading the main gate of Camp Casey. What riveted my attention was Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott and Warrant Officer One Fred Bufford, both of whom were standing in fatigues before the main gate behind their protective line of MPs; both men perched atop the hood of a U.S. Army jeep. Colonel Alcott, realizing who was speaking, stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Fred Bufford, meanwhile, smirked. A broad twisted smile. Satisfied. As if to say that everything he suspected about me had finally been proven true.

The huge MP statue looming behind the main gate seemed to have changed its expression from bland idiocy to disbelief. Disbelief, apparently, that I could do something so stupid. Stupid, maybe. But it was my only chance of obtaining a lead on the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson. As a cop assigned to a mission, I do what is required. Regardless of what Stanley Alcott or Fred Bufford thought.

When I finished talking, the crowd of demonstrators roared in approval and then a Korean speaker took over the megaphone and the students holding the photographs of Chon Un-suk started chanting and parading through the crowd. The chanting grew louder and I ducked down next to Ernie. Everyone ignored us. The crowd swirled around us, picking up speed, picking up the volume of its outraged roar. Finally, some of the demonstrators stooped and grabbed rocks from the side of the road and, with wild abandon, launched them at the main gate of Camp Casey. A few of the stronger young men managed to reach not only the main gate but behind it all the way to the MP statue, where the rocks bounced off the big dumb MP’s chest and tumbled uselessly to the ground.

One of the vegetable vendors was surrounded by students and I soon realized why. She had smuggled in a pile of rocks in her cart. Plenty of ammunition. And then the students became organized. When every one had a rock, they began chanting, “Chon Un-suk. Chon Un-suk.” And then, timing it by counting down from ten, the students in unison launched all their missiles, like a battalion of ancient Carthaginians armed with slings assaulting the glory that was Rome.

The MPs roared in rage. The students grabbed more rocks and once again began their chant. KNPs along the tracks conferred. Another volley of rocks sailed through the air toward Camp Casey. Again the MPs roared in anger but this time the KNPs along the railroad tracks formed up in a V shape and, on the count of three, charged.

Pandemonium.

Some of the students were overcome with a senseless heroism and counterattacked, running pell-mell into the riot police. Others crouched to the ground in panic. None of them ran. Only Ernie and me. We ran away from the crowd, away from the charging KNPs, away from the main gate of Camp Casey. But in our case, the damage had been done. I’d been witnessed by a field-grade officer participating in an unauthorized political demonstration. The word would be out. We were here, even though we weren’t supposed to be, and every MP-and KNP-in Division would be searching for us.

Once inside the bar district, we stopped in an alley and tried to catch our breath. I noticed that there didn’t appear to be any people on the street-no GIs, no business girls-but no KNPs or MPs either.

“The place is deserted,” Ernie said. “Now’s our chance.”

“Our chance for what?”

“The Black Cat Club,” he said. “Brandy.”

He was right. Using the back lanes, we wound our way toward the back door of the Black Cat Club.

The old crone who ran the Black Cat Club was there along with a few of her business girls but no GIs. The GIs had been restricted to the compound in anticipation of today’s demonstration. I asked for Brandy and of course they denied that she was here. They had no idea where she was. Since torture was out of the question, Ernie and I performed a quick check of the hooches out back and then searched the Black Cat Club itself.

No Brandy.

We stepped behind the bar. Ernie poured himself a shot of bourbon. I found a ledger. Drink chits is what it recorded. Most bars kept a similar accounting. When a GI buys a girl a drink, she earns credit: a few additional won that turn up in her end-of-month paycheck. Who records the chits? At the Black Cat Club, apparently, the bartender does. I studied the handwriting. Quirky, leaning to left, blocklike. Exactly like the handwriting on the note Brandy had shown us.

I stuck the ledger under the fluorescent bulb beneath the bar and spread the note next to it. Ernie peered down.

“Aah,” he said. Even though he couldn’t read Korean hangul script, Ernie could see the resemblance to Brandy’s distinctive style. She’d been the one who had written the note that drew us to fish heaven. She’d set us up to be killed.

We could’ve continued our search for Brandy and when we found her we could’ve beaten the truth out of her. But our main mission was still to find Corporal Jill Matthewson. Ernie and I talked about it. Whoever had broken into Pak Tong-i’s office before us might’ve found a lead to Jill’s whereabouts and that meant, if they hadn’t already found her, they might do so at any moment. The whole purpose of my speaking at the demonstration was to obtain the cooperation of the students who had promised to lead me to Corporal Jill Matthewson. So we loitered in the northern end of Tongduchon near the little hooch they used as their hideout. But by late afternoon we realized that waiting any longer was useless. The KNPs had located the student leaders’ hideout. Ernie and I spotted them coming and made ourselves scarce. Within an hour, dozens of Korean cops would be swarming over the dilapidated little hooch, searching for clues that would allow them to prosecute the students under Korea’s voluminous antisedition laws.

Ernie and I retreated to the only other place where we might be able to make contact with the students. The residence of Madame Chon. No dice. The KNPs weren’t searching her home-out of respect for her wealth and connections-but they had stationed armed guards at her front gate.

“We’re up kimchee creek,” Ernie said. “Trapped in the Division area, no leads to Jill, no way to contact the student demonstrators. We’re right back where we started. Except worse.”

I didn’t have an answer for him. Not yet.

We sat in a Korean teahouse on the western edge of town, a half block from the MSR, the route that led from TDC to the Western Corridor. Not far from where Chon Un-suk had been run over.

“They have us both nailed for disobeying a direct order,” Ernie said. “To wit, returning to the Division area after being ordered to leave. And they’ve got you nailed for participating in a prohibited demonstration. It’s over. The best thing for us to do is police up my jeep and return to Seoul. Tomorrow morning we report to work and take our lumps.”

Ernie was saying it, and saying it forcefully, but I knew he didn’t believe it. Private Marvin Druwood was still dead. Corporal Jill Matthewson was still missing. We couldn’t leave now. We couldn’t let the bastards win.

A frail young Korean waiter in black pants, white shirt, and black bow tie offered another cup of overpriced instant coffee. We both declined. Bowing, he removed the porcelain cups from in front of us. After he walked away, I said, “He can’t wait for us to leave.”

“Him and everybody else in TDC.”

“Understandable,” I said. “We’re rocking their boat.”

“To hell with their boat.”

“Yeah. That’s what I say. If we find Jill, we find out why she left and how she managed to come up with two thousand dollars and, given what we’ve uncovered already, we might be able to put a case together.”

“Against who?”

“Against the Division honchos. The guys who run the mafia meetings. The guys who are black-marketing their butts off in TDC. The guys who covered up Marvin Druwood’s death.”

“How can we prove they’re black-marketing?” Ernie said. “All the evidence was destroyed in that fire out at the Turkey Farm.”

“Destroying evidence. That’s what’s gone on since we arrived. Destroying the evidence of how Private Druwood actually died, destroying the evidence of what those two young MPs were actually doing when they ran over Chon Un-suk, destroying the evidence of black-market activities that had been supporting the mafia meetings. It’s all about destroying evidence. You’re right, Ernie. And if we return to Seoul now and ‘take our lumps’ like you said, they’ll win. And Jill Matthewson better stay in hiding.”

“You don’t know that she has evidence that’ll help us. For all we know, she might be black-marketing herself. In it all the way up to her freckled nose.”

“Could be.”

He studied me, with that cagey look in his eye that he gets when he thinks he’s reading me like a book. “But you want to ask her, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes. I want to ask her.”

“So do I.” He inhaled the pungent, coffee-laced air and then let his breath out slowly. “Okay,” he said. “It’s still Sunday. We still have a few more hours. How do we find her?”

I called the waiter over and borrowed a stubby pencil and a sheet of brown pulpy paper. After spreading it on the tabletop, I drew a map. As I penciled in the names of towns and villages and rivers and mountain ranges, I realized that I knew more about this part of the country than I thought I did. It was a beautiful part of the world. With lush river valleys and craggy peaks and Buddhist temples and shrines to ancient patriarchs. And then I filled in the DMZ and the military base camps and then the brothels. Suddenly, my map looked as if it were breaking out in an adolescent rash.

Ernie and I barely fit into the seats.

The bus was designed for Koreans so each seat was narrow and legroom was nonexistent. We twisted and turned and, as best we could, folded our legs under the seats in front of us. The middle-aged men in suits and the young people in blue jeans and fancy jackets ignored us. But the old ladies who climbed aboard the bus with massive bundles balanced atop their heads couldn’t take their eyes off of us. Foreigners on a Korean bus! We might as well have been space aliens.

Within a few stops after Tongduchon, all seats were filled and the aisles were jammed full of countryfolk ferrying themselves and their children and their belongings-including a crate of chickens and even a small goat-from one village to another. We passed ROK Army compounds and a few military convoys, but along the way no one stopped us.

At one particularly bumpy stretch of road, Ernie felt compelled to rise and offer his seat to one of the country women who was having trouble keeping her balance in the aisle. I did the same and so we were stuck in the aisle on the swaying bus, our heads bowed because of the low ceiling. It was a long ride to Bopwon-ni, Legal Hall Village. Over an hour because of all the stops and all the loading and unloading of passengers and gear.

When we finally arrived, night had fallen. Ernie and I hopped off the bus and strode directly toward neon, into the Pair of Dragons beer hall, the same place we’d stopped last night on our way to TDC with Brandy. We marched to the bar and ordered two draft beers.

In Tongduchon, when Ernie said that we were right back where we started from, he was wrong. We had information. Quite a bit of it. All we had to do was collate it and make sense of it and then use it to formulate a plan of action.

What we knew for sure was that Corporal Jill Matthewson had left Tongduchon twenty-four days ago and, as far as we could tell, she’d never returned. That meant that wherever she was, her needs were being met. If she was dead, of course, those needs would be zero. If she was alive but being held captive, it would be up to her captors to meet her needs. Or not, as they saw fit. But if she was on her own and free-as I certainly hoped she was-she was meeting her own needs. That is, paying for a roof over her head and food and drink and a place to launder her clothes and bathe her body. To do that, she needed a job.

“So what kind of work can she do?” I asked Ernie.

“Law enforcement’s out.”

“You got that right.”

“And all the menial jobs,” he continued, “like being a waitress at a teahouse or washing dishes in a restaurant are out because Koreans take those jobs.”

“So what else is open to her?” I asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

I did. Prostitution. But from everything I’d learned about Jill Matthewson, I didn’t believe she’d stoop to that.

“Besides that,” I asked Ernie, “what else could she do?”

“She could strip. Like Pak Tong-i said, she has big geegees.”

“And she has a girlfriend who already knows the business,” I added. “So we have to put that down as one of the possibilities. Still, I don’t think she’d become a stripper.”

“Why not?” Ernie asked. “It pays well.”

“For an American woman it would pay great,” I agreed. “But it would also attract attention. A lot of attention. There’d be advertising. Posters announcing when she was going to perform, that sort of thing.”

Ernie nodded his head. “I see what you mean. So something more low-profile.” Then he thought of it. “Hostess.”

“Exactly.”

Ernie meant a bar hostess in a fancy drinking establishments. A tradition in Korea. No self-respecting Korean businessman wants to sit alone, or even with his pals, and drink the night away without a “beautiful flower” to laugh at his jokes and pour his drinks and light his cigarettes. The fanciest of these drinking establishments were called kisaeng houses. Kisaeng in ancient Korea were highly trained female performers who were responsible for entertaining royalty. Somewhat like Japanese geisha. Since the Yi Dynasty, however, their job has degenerated to merely acting as the beautiful and charming hostesses to rich businessmen in private clubs. The pay can be fabulous. In the higher-class clubs some of the sought-after kisaeng are remunerated out of corporate expense accounts and pull down hundreds of dollars per night. But that’s for the most high-class girls. In most of the dives in and around Seoul, bar hostesses are lucky to pull down the equivalent of ten or twenty dollars a night. As an American, however, and a blonde verging on beautiful, Jill Matthewson could demand top dollar right from the start.

“But there’s jillions of kisaeng houses,” Ernie protested.

“Right. But maybe we can narrow down our search geographically.”

“How?”

The bartender checked our half-empty mugs. Much to my surprise, Ernie declined a refill.

“Jill had taken the time to put two thousand dollars together before she left Tongduchon. So she probably took the time to plan her escape. That meant that she had both a low-profile job and a low-profile place to live waiting for her,” I said.

“She’d already been hired?”

“Yes. I think so. That’s one of the reasons she has been able to hide so successfully. An American woman traveling from bar to bar searching for a job would’ve been spotted.”

“So Pak Tong-i set her up with a job.”

“I think so. Both her and his girlfriend, Kim Yong-ai.”

“But the job could be anywhere. And there are a lot of bars in Seoul.”

We both knew that if Jill Matthewson had gone to Seoul and taken work at some obscure nightspot, living in a hooch on the premises, it could take months to find her.

“Maybe not Seoul,” I said. “First, when I searched Pak’s files they were all for work in and around the 2nd Division area, both Eastern and Western Corridors. Nothing in Seoul.”

“Seoul’s not his territory.”

“Right. And with a good-looking girlfriend like Kim Yong-ai, it also makes sense that he’d want to keep her nearby. He wouldn’t want to send her down to Seoul, into the hands of those sharks. Not voluntarily.”

“So not in Seoul. But he wouldn’t want to land them a job in Tongduchon either.”

“No way. Too risky.”

“So he’d find them work in the Western Corridor.”

“Exactly.”

That’s why I’d drawn my map. I pulled it out now.

The newly built highway, Tongil-lo, Reunification Road, runs down the center of the Western Corridor, a fertile valley filled with rice paddies that has been an ancient invasion route for the Chinese, the Mongols, and the Manchurians. It runs from Seoul Station up through Bongil-chon to the city of Munsan. From there, it continues north until it hits Freedom Bridge crossing the Imjin River. Beyond that, civilians are not allowed, not without special permission. But the road continues north into the Demilitarized Zone, until it finally hits the Military Demarcation Line that separates South Korea from communist North Korea in the truce village of Panmunjom. All the way from Seoul to Jayu Tari, Freedom Bridge, there are kisaeng houses and other bars that cater strictly to rich Korean businessmen. It isn’t unusual to see a small convoy of black sedans cruising north out of Seoul to reach a kisaeng house in the countryside. Out of town they can forget the hustle and bustle of the big city and enjoy a relaxing business meeting, the overworked businessman catered to by a bevy of beautiful women. These places are busy during the lunch hour and busy again at night. And more than one wealthy businessman has promoted his favorite hostess to be his well-compensated mistress.

Jill Matthewson would fit into this world like a goddess dropped from the sky.

“So we search every kisaeng house and high-class Korean bar,” Ernie said. “From Munsan down to the outskirts of Seoul.”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“What do you mean?

“I think we can narrow the search further.”

“How?”

“If you were on the lam from the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division, what would you be worried about?”

“Them finding me.”

“And if you were as smart as Jill Matthewson…”

“What do you mean ‘if’?”

“I mean since you are as smart as Jill Matthewson, you’d want a backup plan in case they found you.”

“Right.”

“You’d want to still have a chance of getting away if they stumbled onto your location.”

“Right.”

“So you’d have to plan a second escape.”

Ernie studied the map I’d drawn. Then he saw it. “You’d want to be close to Seoul. If you had to run, you’d have a better chance of disappearing if you could get lost in the crowd in a city of eight million people.”

“Right. You wouldn’t want to be stuck up north in Munsan, near the DMZ. There’d be nowhere to go.”

That was an exaggeration. There’d be some places to go but the options for escape into the teeming metropolis of Seoul would be better if you could locate yourself at the southern edge of the Western Corridor.

Ernie glanced again at the map, at the southernmost city within the 2nd Division area of operations.

“Byokjie,” he said.

Because of its nearness to Seoul, it had a plethora of kisaeng houses. In the two years since Tongil-lo had been completed, making the drive from Seoul to the countryside more convenient, they’d sprung up like sunflowers after a summer rain.

“Byokjie,” Ernie said, almost reverentially. Then he brightened. “We ain’t there yet?”

Byokjie was nothing more than a good-sized intersection. Reunification Road, all four lanes of it, ran north and south along the edge of miles of fallow rice paddies. Bright headlights zoomed by in the darkness. Another road, this one two lanes, stretched from Uijongbu in the east and ran west until it smacked right up against Tongil-lo, forming a T-shaped intersection. The little village of Byokjie, sitting along the stem of the T, was lit up by floodlights. The small collection of buildings was what you’d expect: a sokyu sign for the gas station, a tire warehouse, a mechanic’s workshop, and then a few noodle stands. All of the establishments were still open, hoping for late-night business. A well-lit sign next to a large bus stop listed the connecting runs between here and numerous farming villages, all of them home to some people, adults or students, who commuted into Seoul every day.

The cab driver who’d driven us from Bopwon-ni asked us where to stop.

“Kisaeng,” Ernie said.

The driver laughed and waved his hand. “I kuncho manundei,” he said. In this area there are a lot of them.

And there were. We had him cruise slowly east from Byokjie, along the road that headed toward Uijongbu. Every few meters, hand-carved wooden signs and even a few signposts made of marble were engraved with the names of exclusive entertainment establishments. Each had its own gravel-topped driveway that led off the main road and up into the tree-covered hills. Occasionally, a dark sedan drove up one of the gravel roads.

“Take your pick,” Ernie said.

After I spotted more than two dozen signs I said, “We need your jeep.”

“That we do.”

I ordered the driver to continue eastward toward Uijongbu, promising once again that because he had to leave his authorized area of operations in Bopwon-ni, we’d pay him double meter.

An hour and a half before midnight we returned to Byokjie, this time in Ernie’s jeep. Methodical as usual, we cruised down the road, Ernie pulling over each time he saw a signpost. In this manner I jotted down the names of the various kisaeng houses and located the turnoffs on our map. After a few of these stops, Ernie said, “This is going to take forever.”

“You’re right. But one of those kisaeng houses back there, the Koryo Forest Inn, seemed to have more business than anybody else.”

“And?”

“So we reconnoiter.”

“How? They’ll spot our jeep as soon as we drive up.”

“So we park in Byokjie, at the gas station, and hoof it back there.”

Ernie sighed. “You really are nuts, you know that Sueno?”

I didn’t answer.

Ernie pulled the jeep into the enormous gas station and parked at the edge of the gravel lot. I talked to the attendant, flashed my CID badge, and told him we would be back for the vehicle in an hour. He didn’t argue and I purposely didn’t give him a tip. As long as he thought I was here on official business, he wouldn’t dare complain. A nice thing about living in a police state is that people support local law enforcement. Whether they want to or not.

“It’s cold up here,” Ernie said.

“Hush.”

We huddled in the tree line on the edge of the forest, gazing across a parking lot filled with compact black sedans. Most of them were Hyundais, made in Korea, but a few were imported Volvos and BMWs. Rich crowd. White-gloved chauffeurs, slim young Korean men all, stood in clumps, bundled up against the cold, smoking and joking.

The front of the Koryo Forest Inn looked like an ancient palace. A gate painted in red lacquer and carved with the faces of fierce, green-eyed dragons. Beyond the gate, water trickled over rocks in a lush garden and beyond that loomed the raised, varnished floor of the inner sanctum of the Koryo Forest Inn.

“Nice place they got here,” Ernie said. “But expensive.”

We were used to paying a hundred and fifty won, about thirty cents, for a bottle of OB beer in the dives we frequented. Here, in the Koryo Forest Inn, they probably wouldn’t stoop so low as to tell you how much they were charging for booze. And no self-respecting businessman would lower himself to ask. The bill was presented, it was paid out of the company expense account, and that was it. Guys like me and Ernie, who wanted to see a price list before ordering, were not welcome.

“So what’s your plan?” Ernie asked.

“The usual,” I answered. “We go in. We ask questions.”

For once, Ernie Bascom was intimidated. “What if they charge us?”

“For what?”

“For talking to a hostess. I heard they slap a ten thousand won charge on you the minute she sits down.”

“So we won’t sit down. Come on.”

I pushed through the underbrush and walked between two parked cars. By the time the chauffeurs noticed me, I was already underneath the hand-carved wooden portal of the Koryo Forest Inn, Ernie right behind me.

Stunted trees, raked gravel, koi luxuriating in ponds, all lit by hanging Chinese lanterns. We followed the flagstone steps to the elevated porch and as I was about to slip off my shoes, two beautiful young Korean women, decked out in full regalia-jade hairpins, silk-embroidered chima-chogori-stepped forward and bowed.

In unison, they said in lilting, singsong voices, “Oso-oseiyo.” Please come in.

When they rose from their bows their heavily made-up eyes widened.

“Ohmaya,” one of them said, raising her cupped fingers to her mouth. Dear mother. An expression of shock.

The other hostess had more presence of mind and scurried off into a side hallway. I stood on the lacquered wooden floor in my stocking feet, speaking to the remaining hostess.

“Yogi ei Miguk yoja ilheissoyo?” I asked. Has an American woman been working here?

She stared at me without comprehension, still in shock at seeing a long-nosed foreigner plopped down right here in the midst of the opulent Koryo Forest Inn.

Ernie had reached the landing now.

“So they haven’t seen a big nose before,” he said. “Who gives a damn.”

He stepped forward into the main hallway.

The surprised woman found her courage. She scooted in front of Ernie, blocking his path, and bowed. “Andeiyo,” she said. Not permissible.

Ernie kept moving. She stood her ground.

“Andei,” she said again. “Sonnim issoyo.” Not permissible. There are guests.

Ernie understood that part. He pushed past her saying, “Screw your high-class sonnim. I’m a guest, too.”

Ernie had recovered from his initial reticence. And the way the two young women reacted to our presence had made him determined to make sure that everybody on the premises was aware that their cozy little pleasure dome had been defiled by the presence to two Miguks.

The entrance hallway ran through the building to another garden out back. But to the right, the sound of laughter and low male voices floated down a long varnished corridor. The odor of fried shrimp followed the voices like an oily cloud. Ernie pointed his nose toward the sound and pounded his way down the hallway. Light filtered through the first oil-papered door. He slid it open and stepped into the private room.

The hostess who had scurried away returned, this time with two burly young Korean men in suits. One glance told me that they were weightlifters. By the light of the overhead bulb, I could also see that the one standing closest to me had noticeable calluses on the knuckles of his right hand. Martial arts. No doubt.

I nodded toward the two men who stared at me impassively. Without showing fear-or at least hoping I wasn’t showing fear-I stepped forward and pulled out my credentials. I told them in Korean that I was from 8th Army CID, here as part of a criminal investigation.

Down the hallway, someone shouted.

I turned and ran, the two weightlifters right behind me.

Ernie stood inside the private room. It was about twelve tatami mats square. A low rectangular table occupied the middle of the room with eight or nine businessmen seated around it. Bulkogi and bottles of Scotch and boiled quail eggs overflowed the table. The businessmen had taken off their coats, which were hung on the wall behind them. Kisaeng sat next to them. Beautiful Korean women, most of them dressed fashionably, in Western skirts and blouses, as opposed to the traditional clothing of the two girls who had greeted us at the front door.

The faces of the Korean businessmen were flushed with booze. And maybe something else. Shock at the fact that some big yangnom, foreign lout, had barged his way into their private party. The oldest of the businessmen, the only one with streaks of gray in his hair, stood toe-to-toe with Ernie, shouting at him, waggling a short finger at Ernie’s pointed nose. For his part, Ernie yelled at the man in English while the man shouted back in Korean.

“Yoja,” Ernie was saying. “Woman. You know, Miguk woman.” He made wavy motions with his hands. “You arra?” You understand? “American MP woman.”

What the red-faced businessman shouted back was too rapid for me to decipher, but I do know that it was filled with invective. I grabbed Ernie by the elbow. “Come on.” When he seemed reluctant to leave, I said, “There are more rooms down the hallway.”

He shot a withering look of contempt at the enraged businessman and backed out of the room. Ernie proceeded down the long corridor, sliding open every oil-papered door, revealing groups of businessmen and other wealthy gentlemen drinking and enjoying themselves. Some of the kisaeng were dressed smartly in Western clothes, others wore the full traditional silk chima-chogori. But what we didn’t find, and what everyone denied knowledge of, was a Miguk yoja. An American woman.

The weightlifters had stayed close to us but so far they hadn’t made a move. I’m sure they were held back out of their respect-and fear-of my badge. But by now the entire Koryo Forest Inn was in an uproar and kisaeng and customers stood in the halls shouting. Ernie ignored them. He paraded up and down the corridor as if he owned the Koryo Forest Inn, the city of Byokjie, and the entire province in which it sat.

Finally, when he started to check the rooms out back, the weightlifters became fed up. One of them started to speak to Ernie in Korean, as if he wanted to reason with him, convince him to stop this disconcerting search through their little establishment. When the weightlifter reached out to touch Ernie’s arm, Ernie swiveled and shot a straight punch at the man’s nose. Within seconds, Ernie was flat on his back. Instead of jumping in to wrestle with the guy, I backed off a few steps, pulled my. 45, and aimed it at the two burly martial arts experts. They froze.

Down the corridor, the hubbub of outrage ceased, changing to a stunned silence. Ernie rose to his feet, dusted off his pants, and shot a long hard stare at the man who’d dropped him on his butt. For a moment, I was afraid he was going to repeat his stupidity. Instead, he regained his self-control. Before he lost it again, I motioned to him and he and I walked toward the front entrance. In Korean, I told everyone to stay put. Quickly, Ernie inspected the upstairs area and the empty side rooms that we hadn’t looked into yet and finally the gazebo out back that was used during the spring.

“Nothing,” he said when he returned.

“I guess that does it then.”

Speaking in Korean, I thanked everyone for their cooperation. Ernie and I backed out of the Koryo Forest Inn. The chauffeurs stopped smoking when we passed by. Together, we hustled down the gravel road.

“They’ll call the KNPs,” Ernie said.

“Yeah. Thanks to you.”

“Well, what did you want me to do? They weren’t answering your questions.”

“I hadn’t started asking questions.”

“Same difference.”

We returned to the jeep, Ernie started it up and we drove toward Reunification Road.

The time was ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes until the midnight to four curfew. Ernie and I sat in the jeep in a cleared area next to Reunification Road that was normally used as a bus turnaround. For the last twenty minutes we’d been observing a steady stream of expensive sedans-Hyundais, Volvos, BMWs-streaming south, back toward Seoul.

Nobody was driving north.

“There must be a million of them,” Ernie said.

“Yeah. Which means a big demand for kisaeng.”

“Some of those gals back at the Koryo Forest Inn were good-looking hammers.”

“You noticed.”

“I did.”

The traffic in front of us started to thin. The vehicles that continued south were routinely breaking the speed limit, in a hurry to make it back to Seoul and get off the street before curfew.

“Here we are,” Ernie said. “Cold as shit, we haven’t uncovered anything new, and curfew’s about to descend on the entire world.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that I don’t want to sit here in this freaking jeep all night long.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Good point.”

“Glad you concur.” He waited for the silence to lengthen and then he raised his voice and said, “So what in the hell are we going to do about it?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was thinking about the case.”

“The case? But we didn’t learn anything new tonight.”

“Sure we did.”

“Like what?”

“Like Jill Matthewson has never worked at the Koryo Forest Inn.”

“Great. That narrows down our search.”

“And during the hubbub you created, one of the kisaeng was holding on to another kisaeng’s arm, whispering to her.”

“Sweet. Whispering what?”

“Whispering ‘Chil Un Lim.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Forest of Seven Clouds, I think. But I’d have to see the Chinese characters to be sure.”

“You and your Chinese characters. So what do you make of it?

“The girl knew we were looking for an American woman, she whispered the name of a kisaeng house to her girlfriend. What do you think that means?”

“It means that she heard that a Miguk woman was working at that kisaeng house.”

“Exactly.”

“She might be right; she might be wrong.”

“That’s true.”

“So where is this place?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“That helps.”

“At least you’re becoming more optimistic.”

“Yeah. Now if I don’t freeze my spleen tonight, my attitude will perk up even more.”

“Wouldn’t want to dampen your attitude.”

We drove off toward the nearest village, searching for a place to flop. We found it. In a yoinsuk, a Korean flophouse with an outdoor toilet and communal sleeping rooms. A half-dozen Korean trucks drivers were snoring so loudly that I thought the tile roof would fall off. That part didn’t bother Ernie. He can sleep through anything. What did bother him was their kimchee breath.

“If I had a knife,” he told me, “I could cut the stink up into bricks and package it.”

As soon as he said that, one of the truck drivers farted. Ernie groaned and rolled over on his sleeping mat.

An hour before dawn, the proprietress provided-for a small fee-towels and pans of hot water and black-market shaving equipment. After we washed up, she provided us with a complimentary bowl of rice gruel and muu maleingi, slices of dried turnip. Thus refreshed, Ernie and I started our search for the Forest of Seven Clouds.

Or at least I thought we were going to start our search for the Forest of Seven Clouds.