The Wandering Ghost

11

Ernie balked. He’d been more than willing to come up here during our time off and take the risk of playing cat-and-mouse with the Division MPs, but he wasn’t willing to directly defy 8th Army.

“In two hours,” he said, “we’re going to be AWOL.”

We sat in the jeep, parked next to the wood-slat wall of the yoinsuk. In front of us, at the end of a gravel access road, the paved Tongil-lo highway, Reunification Road, sat on its earthen foundation elevated above the rice paddies that spread through the valley. A blanket of fog lay on the land. Our breath formed clouds on the windshield of the jeep.

“You’re wrong, Ernie,” I replied. “Failure to repair. That’s the most they can slap us with.”Missing mandatory formations is punishable, but it’s not AWOL.

Ernie looked at me as if I were out of my gourd. “Failure to repair, AWOL, either way we’re in line for an Article Fifteen. It’s now zero-six-hundred on Monday morning, Sueno, in case you forgot. We have two hours to show up for work-clean shaven, shoes shined, smiles on our chops-at the Criminal Investigation Detachment on Yongsan Compound. That’s by direct order of the Eighth United States Army provost marshal. If we leave now, and the Seoul traffic’s not too bad, we just might make it.”

“Your shoes aren’t shined.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not changing the subject. We go back now, they’ll never let us return to Division. The honchos will stick together and not one of them will be willing to take responsibility for making a decision that directly contradicts the 2nd Division request to have us recalled.”

Ernie kept his arms crossed. “Not my lookout,” he said. “When we get back we tell them what we know. If the provost marshal sees it our way, he’ll send us back up here to finish the job.”

“By then,” I said, “it might be too late.”

Ernie studied me, his eyes squinted. I explained.

Whoever had snuffed Pak Tong-i at the office of Kimchee Entertainment in Tongduchon most likely had obtained an excellent lead on the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson by stealing Pak’s file on the stripper Kim Yong-ai. Chances were good that the file contained either her new address or the location of her new job or some other information that could lead to Kim Yong-ai and, from there, to Jill Matthewson. Maybe they’d already found her. Maybe they were still looking. But after a fitful night’s sleep, an idea had come to me. I explained it to Ernie.

“Camp Howze,” I told Ernie. “We check there. They’ll know if someone’s been looking for Jill. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Ernie cursed but in the end he started up the jeep and, when we hit Tong-il Lo, he turned north.

Camp Howze clung to the edge of a steep hill, overlooking the squalor of Bongil-chon. The morning fog had started to lift but the entire GI village looked raunchy and raw. Unlit neon signs advertised nightclubs: the SEXY LADY and the SOUL BROTHER and the PINK PUSSYCAT. Above the village, rows of Quonset huts perched on a craggy ridge looking down on the fertile invasion route of the Western Corridor. Other than the fur-capped guards at the gate, there seemed to be no life on Camp Howze. And no life in the ville. And no kisaeng houses.

Two MPs manned the guard shack at the front gate. Ernie drove up to them and, as I’d instructed, turned the jeep around and kept the engine running, prepared for a quick getaway. I hopped out of the front seat.

I flashed my CID badge to the MP but within milliseconds I’d folded it and stuck it back inside my jacket.

“Bufford,” I told the MP. “MPI Warrant Officer from Camp Casey. He been around?”

The MP look surprised, almost as if I’d woken him up. There wasn’t much traffic here at the main gate of Camp Howze. Only an occasional jeep or army deuce-and-a-half and no civilian traffic at all. It wasn’t allowed.

The MP glanced back at another MP sitting at a wooden field table reading a comic book. There were a stack of alert notifications next to his elbow but they looked untouched. One of them, I figured, mentioned me and Ernie. Out here, at this sleepy little outpost, who really paid attention to such things?

“Jonesy?” the MP asked. “You ever heard of some investigator from Casey named Bufford?”

Jonesy looked up from the dog-eared comic. “The one with the big nose? Skinny?”

“That’s the one,” I said.

“He’s been living out here,” Jonesy replied, disgust filling his voice. “Him and that sidekick of his. What’s the name? Earwax?”

“Weatherwax,” I said.

“Yeah. He’s an arrogant asshole, too.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They always want Camp Howze MPs to do their legwork for them. They’re hunting some big important fugitive, according to them.”

“They say who?”

“How would I know? They don’t tell me nothing. I work the gate.”

“Is Bufford still here?”

The MP shrugged. “Ain’t my day to watch him.”

I thanked the two MPs, told them to take it easy, and ran back to the jeep. Before either MP had a chance to give us much thought, Ernie and I were zooming toward Tongil-lo. After I briefed him, Ernie started honking his horn, forcing kimchee cabs to swerve out of our way. We understood now that speed was everything. And compared with the fact that Corporal Jill Matthewson was being hunted-now-by Mr. Fred Bufford and Staff Sergeant Weatherwax, our bureaucratic troubles with 8th Army really didn’t mean much.

I only hoped we weren’t too late.

We started our search by heading toward Seoul. I wanted to locate on my map every kisaeng house between Seoul and the DMZ and since we were closest to Seoul, it was easier to start on the southern end. However, after five minutes of driving, Ernie and I reached the dragon’s teeth, the rows of concrete monoliths that were designed to stop the North Korean communist armored divisions from invading Seoul. This marked the southernmost edge of the 2nd Division area of operations. Ahead, about a hundred yards away, stood the concrete bunker that was the Division checkpoint in the Western Corridor, manned by American MPs and Korean honbyong.

Ernie pulled over to the side of the road. “We don’t want to go there,” he said.

“No, we don’t.”

He waited until the traffic cleared and performed a U-turn on Reunification Road. We were heading back north and now I knew for sure that the first kisaeng houses north of Seoul were in Byokjie. When we reached the Byokjie intersection, we turned east on the road heading toward Uijongbu. It took us about a half hour to finish mapping the few remaining kisaeng houses in the area. All of them were shuttered and closed but I was able to read their names on the signposts. None of them were called the Forest of Seven Clouds, or anything close to it.

We returned to Tongil-lo, turned right, and continued north toward the Demilitarized Zone. After passing Bong-il Chon again, we were able to mark the positions of about a half-dozen more kisaeng houses along the road, none of which was named the Forest of Seven Clouds. We came to the turnoff for Kumchon. Kumchon is the largest town between Seoul and Munsan, and the county seat of Paju, the agricultural county through which we were now traveling. We’d reached about halfway along our planned route.

“There must be plenty of kisaeng houses over there,” Ernie said.

“Must be. Let’s try it.”

To be fair, Ernie and I were using the term kisaeng very loosely. During the Yi Dynasty, girls of intelligence and beauty were taken from their families and taught the gentle arts: calligraphy, the playing of musical instruments, dancing, drumming, even how to write a form of short lyric poetry called sijo. Once trained, they were sent off to the royal or provincial courts to entertain aristocracy. Sometimes they were even transported to remote military outposts. The advantage they received over normal women was education. The disadvantage was that they were forced to leave their families and never marry; their lives were unbearably lonely. Some of the greatest Korean poetry has come from kisaeng, usually dealing with longing and loss.

The women we were seeing in the modern, so-called kisaeng houses were, for the most part, poorly educated country girls. And their work was only one step above that of common prostitutes. Still, they were called kisaeng, women of skill, and that gave them status. A rock upon which to rebuild their pride.

The town of Kumchon sat two kilometers west of Tongil-lo. Already we’d seen two or three signs pointing up gravel roads that led into the hills, advertising establishments with elaborate Chinese characters in their names. Characters like “dream” and “cloud” and “flower” and “palace” and “peony.” Kisaeng houses all. But not the one we were looking for.

When we reached the outskirts of Kumchon, Ernie slowed the jeep to about five miles an hour. A two-lane road passed through the center of town. Shops framed of weathered wood lined either side of the road and farmers pushed carts laden with sacks of grain or piled high with glimmering winter cabbage. Old men in jade-colored vests and billowing white pantaloons, holding canes and wearing the traditional Korean horsehair stovepipe hat, strolled unconcerned across the road, expecting vehicular traffic to make way for their venerable personages. It did. Even impatient young truck drivers refused to honk their horns at the elderly. The entire city of Kumchon reeked of fresh produce and raw earth.

“Like going back in time,” Ernie said.

On the shops, handwritten signs advertised their wares: hot noodle eateries, fishmongers, silk merchants, porcelain vendors, even a little shop with a glowing acetylene torch advertising ironworks. One of the names of the shops was slashed with red Chinese characters: Kongju Miyongsil. Princess Beauty Shop. It caught my eye:

We reached the end of town which tapered off into smaller buildings and then empty lots and finally we were cruising, once again, through endless fields of fallow rice paddies. No signs for kisaeng houses out here. After about a half mile, we turned around.

It was almost ten in the morning and I realized that Ernie and I were two hours AWOL, although I didn’t mention this to him. In fact, I tried to banish the thought from my own mind, but without much success.

As we were driving back through Kumchon, I noticed that someone had switched on a light inside the Princess Beauty Shop.

“Pull over,” I told Ernie.

“Why? No kisaeng houses around here.”

“No. But that beauty shop’s open. I want to ask some questions.”

“What beauty shop?”

“Never mind. Just find a place to park.”

He did. At the edge of town near an eatery that catered to cab drivers. We chained and padlocked the jeep’s steering wheel and hoofed our way into downtown Kumchon.

I rapped twice on the door of the Princess Beauty Shop and entered, poking my nose in first.

“Anyonghaseiyo?” I asked. Are you at peace?

One young woman sat in a chair with a pink cloth draped over her body, her hair in curlers, gaping at this strange creature-me- who’d just entered her world. A middle-aged woman wearing a white beautician’s smock stood behind her. In Korean, I said, “Sorry to bother you. Do you think it would be too much trouble if I use your telephone?”

Involuntarily, both women glanced at a counter in the waiting area. On a knitted pad sat a clunky black telephone. Telephones are status symbols in Korea. Not everyone has them, not by a long shot. The phone company, which is a government monopoly, demands a costly security deposit-often well over a thousand dollars-before it will entrust anyone with phone equipment. But it figured that a going concern like the Princess Beauty Shop would have a telephone because they had to be able to make appointments with the wealthy ladies who were their clients.

The two women sat in stunned silence. Another two women in the back room had apparently heard my voice. Both wore beautician’s smocks and peered out through a beaded curtain. Ernie entered the beauty shop and this gave the women even more to gawk at.

I strode over to the phone saying, “I’m sorry but I have to make a call to Seoul.”

The eldest beautician started to say something in protest, but I pulled out a five hundred won note, a little more than a buck, and laid it on the counter next to the phone. That shut her up. Pretending to ignore her, I dialed the number for the 8th Army exchange.

Ernie strolled around the shop, smiling, studying the color photographs of beautiful women with beautiful hairdos. I stared at the photos, too. Korean women of unearthly beauty. I listened to clicking sounds and various pitches of dial tone.

Phone systems in Korea in the seventies are primitive. Lines are easily overloaded, and it isn’t unusual to wait twenty minutes just to be able to get through to the 8th Army operator. As I waited, I watched the beauticians. The two young ones had emerged from the back room and pretended to be busy preparing their work areas. Ernie smiled at them. They smiled back. Amongst themselves they whispered.

I held the phone slightly away from my ear, listening.

“Muol hei?” What are they doing?”

“The big one wants to use the phone.”

“I can see that. What are they doing here in Kumchon?”

“Who knows?”

And then the clicking grew louder and suddenly, above the static, a Korean-accented woman’s voice said in English, “Eighth Army Operator Number Thirty-seven. How may I help you?”

I gave her the number to the CID administrative office and waited. In Korean, I said to the beauticians, “Miguk kisaeng dei dei ro yogi ei wassoyo?” Does the American kisaeng sometimes come in here?

The women’s eyes widened and they stared at one another.

Staff Sergeant Riley’s voice came over the line.

“Sueno?” he asked, after I’d identified myself. “Where in the hell are you?”

“On our way to Seoul,” I said. “But first we have to pick up Corporal Matthewson.”

“You found her?”

“Just about.”

“‘Just about’? What is that supposed to mean?”

“We have a solid lead.” About as solid as a whiff of perfume in a windstorm.

“The first sergeant has a case of the big ass,” Riley said. “So does the Eighth Army PMO.”

“Stall’em for us, Riley. We almost have her.”

“I don’t know if I can do that. The Second ID honchos have been teletyping messages down here like mad. Apparently, you-or somebody who looks like you-was spotted at a student demonstration in Tongduchon.”

“Do you believe everything you hear?”

“That’s not an answer,” Riley growled.

“How about the ration control records? The ones that were classified?”

“Smitty says he should have them by tonight. But what do I tell the First Shirt?”

“No time now. Got to run. Tell them we’ll be back as soon as we can.”

He started to say something more but, quickly, I hung up.

I noticed that the Division hadn’t messaged 8th Army about the shooting incident at the Tongduchon Market. Nor had they mentioned the fire at the Turkey Farm. Division was being, as usual, selective in their outrage.

I turned back to the beauticians, flashed my best smile, and bowed. “Thank you for the use of your phone.”

The eldest woman nodded.

One of the younger beauticians blurted out, “Ku yoja arrassoyo? ” You knew that woman?

I didn’t like the use of the past tense but I kept my face as impassive as I could. Ernie stood still, sensing that I’d just been stunned by something the young beautician had said.

“Of course, I knew her,” I replied.

“Then you know what happened?”

All the women waited for my response. They were testing me. I decided to take a chance.

“You mean at the Forest of the Seven Clouds?”

They all exhaled together.

“Yes.”

“I heard something about it. Can you explain?”

“No. We don’t know either. All we know is that many powerful people were angry and the women who work at the Forest of the Seven Clouds haven’t been in here to have their hair done since then.”

How long ago, I thought, but I didn’t want to show my ignorance. They might stop talking. So I said, “Can they go that long without a hairdo?”

One of the youngest of the beauticians giggled, modestly covering her mouth with cupped fingers. “It’s only been three days,” she said.

I grinned. “Yes. Only three days. So no one from the Forest of the Seven Clouds has been in since that time. Not even the American woman?”

They shook their heads sadly. The youngest one piped up again. “Her hair was lovely. Gold with just a little red. And each strand so thin.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together as if caressing silk.

“Where is the Forest of the Seven Clouds from here?” I asked.

“Not far. Usually they take a taxi.”

The youngest one piped up again. “Kisaeng are rich.” Another beautician elbowed her to be quiet. The young one pouted.

I bowed once again to the women. “Thank you so much for your help.”

On our way out, Ernie grinned and saluted them. They waved back, the youngest beautician saying, “Bye-bye.”

We were halfway back to the jeep when Ernie asked, “What’d they say?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.”

An empty kimchee cab was cruising down the road toward us. I waved him down. When I opened the door and started asking him questions, his face drooped in disappointment. Obviously, he thought that Ernie and I were two GIs stranded far from our compound and a fat fare was in the offering. When I asked him for the location of the Forest of the Seven Clouds the disappointment on his face became more profound. He wasn’t working us for a tip. Most Koreans, especially those who live in the countryside, don’t think that way. They’re not born to hustle. They’re born to be polite. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a one thousand won note. Two bucks. He shook his head. Not necessary, he told me.

Then he explained that the Forest of the Seven Clouds was one of the highest-class kisaeng houses in the entire Paju County region. It was situated by itself on the side of a hill overlooking the valley. He pulled out a pad of brown pulp paper and a pen and sketched a quick map for me. I took the map and thanked him and tried once again to offer the thousand won note. Again, he refused. I told him that his time was valuable and so was his information and asked him not to embarrass me by not accepting my gift.

Reluctantly, the young man pocketed the money.

The narrow road was bordered by rice paddies. The fog had lifted but no sun came out, only a cold gray overcast that shrouded the world. We were traveling east. A few farm families pushing wooden carts were traveling west, pushing their wares toward the markets of Kumchon.

I studied the cab driver’s map. The roads were clear enough but his handwriting was difficult for a foreigner like me to make out. We came to an intersection. Ernie slowed. The signpost pointed off to the right toward the village of Chuk-hyon. The map, although indecipherable by itself, clearly showed the same name, now that I knew what I was looking for. We turned right. After a hundred yards, the road curved left, up towards hills, and then we were rising rapidly.

As we rounded a bend in the road, off in the valley below, three white cranes rose from the muck and winged their way gently into the dark sky.

Just the fact that the Forest of the Seven Clouds was so far from Seoul made it more high class. In order to have the time to drive all the way out here, you had to be a powerful boss who didn’t worry about punching the clock.

The remoteness also had another advantage, at least from Jill Matthewson’s point of view. There were no American military compounds within miles. And I’d be willing to bet that they’d never seen a GI up here in the entire history of their establishment, with-I was hoping-the possible exception of Corporal Matthewson.

The time was just after eleven but already fancy sedans covered about half the parking lot. Must be nice to take that much time off work, to drive out in the country and be catered to by beautiful women. Maybe Ernie and I were in the wrong line of work. Ernie’s thoughts must’ve been similar to mine.

“Assholes ought to be shot,” he said. “Making all that money, having all that fun, and not having to do any freaking work.”

The “assholes” he was referring to were a group of suit-clad Korean businessmen piling out of three sedans that had just pulled up, in a small convoy, to the front of the Forest of the Seven Clouds. We huddled once again as outcasts at the edge of the tree line, our jeep parked out of sight some fifty yards beyond the entrance road. As the men strode through the lacquered wooden gate a bevy of beautiful young women clad in traditional silk gowns bowed and cooed. The businessmen nodded to the women and strutted like peacocks through the carefully raked garden and into the inner confines of the Forest of the Seven Clouds.

The parking lot grew quiet again. Three uniformed chauffeurs lit up tambei, cigarettes, and stood leaning against one of the cars, smoking, and chatting with one another.

“Jill Matthewson worked here?” Ernie asked me.

“The women at the Princess Beauty Shop didn’t say so exactly but they said there was an American kisaeng who worked here, and she’d take a taxi into Kumchon to have her hair done.”

“Living the high life,” Ernie said.

“Maybe. But they also implied that something had gone wrong and she wasn’t here anymore. And none of the women who work here had been seen in three days.”

“What could go wrong out here?”

Ernie indicated the pine-covered forest and the fresh air and the snow-covered peaks above us.

“Let’s find out,” I said.

We strode out of the trees, across the parking lot. The chauffeurs stopped talking and stared at us. I nodded and said, “Anyonghaseiyo?” Are you at peace?

Dumbfounded, they nodded back.

Inside the main gate, Ernie and I made our way through the garden and at the entrance, I started to take off my shoes. The varnished floor was elevated, in the traditional Korean manner, about two feet off the ground. At least a dozen pairs of elegant men’s shoes sat neatly arranged beneath the platform. Ernie grabbed my elbow.

“Let’s keep ’em on,” he said.

Horrors! In Korean culture about the grossest thing a person can do is step onto an immaculately clean ondol floor wearing shoes that have picked up filth from the street.

When I hesitated, Ernie said, “We might have to leave in a hurry.” To further make his point, he pulled his. 45 out of his shoulder holster.

I didn’t like it but I couldn’t argue. If there’d already been trouble here, there could be a lot more trouble when Ernie and I barged in and started asking questions. Reluctantly, I stepped onto the immaculately varnished wooden floor still wearing my highly-polished, army-issue low quarters.

The clunk of our shoes down the long hallway sounded to me like the tolling of the bell of death.

The Korean businessmen thought we were mad; they were just as outraged as the group we’d encountered last night at the Koryo Forest Inn. How could we possibly have the temerity to defile their expensive sanctuary? But through all the shoving and shouting and red faces blasting whiskey-soaked breath, Ernie and I held our ground. Even during the outraged shouts about our shoes and how we’d spread dirt throughout the palatial grounds and how we had no business upsetting honest customers and hard-working kisaeng, nobody threw any punches. But finally, the elderly woman who managed the place pulled us aside.

She wore the most elaborate chima-chogori I’d ever seen. The silk of her vest and skirt was hand-embroidered with tortoises, phoenixes, and dragons-lucky creatures all. She stood on her tiptoes and hissed in my ear. “Tone,” she said. Money. She’d give us money if we’d just leave.

I told her that we didn’t want money. We only wanted information. Then, I showed her the locket containing the photo of Kim Yong-ai. I also showed her the military personnel jacket photo of Corporal Jill Matthewson. She stared at both photos long and hard, and then nodded her head in surrender and said she’d tell me the entire story. But the quid pro quo was that Ernie and I had to return to the entranceway and take off our shoes.

We did so.

Immediately, silk-clad kisaeng, heavily made-up and reeking of expensive perfume, grabbed moist towels and, folding them neatly, began to scrub the floor. From the spot where Ernie and I had entered these hallowed precincts all the way to where we’d encountered the irate businessman, they cleaned as if their lives depended on it. As if this was their last chance to eradicate the influence of filthy foreigners. Somehow, I think they knew that the floor would never again be as clean as it once had been.

We sat with the aging kisaeng on a wooden bench in an inner garden. She told me that her name was Blue Orchid and she’d been sold by her parents to a kisaeng house near the outskirts of Pyongyang when she was twelve years old. Her training had been rigorous and traditional. When the Korean War broke out and General MacArthur’s United Nations Command bulled its way through Pyongyang, heading north toward the Yalu River, she and some of her fellow kisaeng had become refugees. After months of hardship, they made their way to Seoul. Since then, she’d held many positions but she’d been at the Forest of Seven Clouds for almost twelve years now.

“Never before,” she told me in Korean, “did we have as much trouble as we did this week.”

A young woman, just a girl really, brought a tray with folding legs and set it on the bench next to us. Ceremoniously, she poured handle-less cups full of green tea. Ernie and I sipped the warm fluid. Blue Orchid watched and cooed in approval as the young girl left.

Blue Orchid straightened her skirt before she started to talk. “Jill was very popular here,” she said. “We called her Beik-jo.” White Swan. “She was so gracious. Friendly with all the women and charming to the customers. You should be proud of your compatriot,” she told me. “We’ve never had a woman before-not even Jade Beauty- who’s been so popular with the powerful men from Seoul.”

I wanted to ask who Jade Beauty was but we didn’t have time. Jill Matthewson was in danger. Not to mention the time pressure on us to return to 8th Army as soon as we could. Reluctantly, I prodded Blue Orchid to return to the main story. She did.

Jill Matthewson started working at the Forest of Seven Clouds a little more than three weeks ago. That jibed with when she’d gone AWOL. The position was procured for her, and for her friend, Kim Yong-ai, by a friend of a friend of the owner who happened to be a business associate of the entertainment agent, Pak Tong-i.

I didn’t tell Blue Orchid that Pak Tong-i was dead.

Jill had to be taught many things, Blue Orchid told us. She had to be taught how to kneel on a hardwood floor, how to offer everything to a guest-whether it was a warm hand towel, or a plate of quail eggs, or a shot glass full of imported Scotch-with two hands. Never use one hand; that would be insulting. She had to be taught when to bow, when to giggle politely, when to light a man’s cigarette, and when to open her eyes wide in astonishment when he explained his business triumphs-even when she didn’t understand a word he was saying. And she had to be taught how to never turn her back on a guest, to back out of the room bowing and facing the guest in a respectful manner. And she had to be taught how to dress and how to wear her hair and even how to apply her makeup. And after all these lessons were learned, she still made mistakes. But the Korean men were indulgent. They were impressed that an American was getting even a few of their customs right. And they were flattered when she turned her full radiant attention on them, what with her big, round blue eyes and her intent way of staring at a man, a boldness that a Korean woman would never be allowed.

“Everybody like,” Blue Orchid said, switching to English. “Many men come from Seoul. Want to see Miguk kisaeng.”

The Miguk kisaeng. The American woman of skill.

Ernie was becoming antsy. Still, I didn’t rush Blue Orchid. She’d stopped using Korean now and had switched almost exclusively to English. This told me that during those years of hardship during and after the Korean War, before she’d landed this gig at the Forest of Seven Clouds, she’d made her living not as a kisaeng but as a business girl-for GIs. As I hoped, Blue Orchid finally reached the point in her narrative where something went wrong.

“Two days ago, man come.” Blue Orchid’s face crinkled in disgust. “American man. GI. He drive up in jeep, have another GI with him. They both wear uniform. Everything dirty. Clothes dirty, boots dirty, even GI teeth dirty.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“Tall. Almost like you. But skinny, like him.” She pointed at Ernie. “But more skinny than him.”

“An MP?” Ernie asked.

“Yes. He wear black helmet with “MP” on front.”

Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. Had to be.

“And the driver?”

“Black man. Small guy. Skinny, too. He don’t say much.”

Maybe Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“He walk in wearing boots. Same like you.” The cardinal sin. “Then he find Beik-jo.”

“She sit in room with customers. Important customers. They drink much whiskey. Buy taaksan anju.”

Anju means “snacks.” Taaksan is Japanese for “much.” English, Japanese, and Korean all in one sentence: Buy taaksan anju. Blue Orchid was slipping back into GI slang.

“Tall GI find Jill, he pull his gun.” Blue Orchid mimicked a man pointing a. 45 automatic pistol. “He tell Jill she gotta go back compound. She say, hell no! He try to grab her. Then Jill knuckle-sandwich with him.” Blue Orchid waved a small fist through the air. “Tall, skinny GI go down, drop gun, Jill pick it up. Point it at GI, take him back outside, make him and black GI karra chogi.” Go away.

“And she kept the pistol?” Ernie asked.

Blue Orchid nodded vigorously.

“Bold,” Ernie said, once again impressed with the exploits of Corporal Jill Matthewson.

“What’d she do next?” I asked.

“She… how you say?”

Blue Orchid mimicked grabbing things and placing them in a container.

“She packed her bags?” I said.

“Right. Pack bags. She and Kim Yong-ai. Right away, they go.”

“Kim Yong-ai was working here, too?”

Blue Orchid nodded. “Not taaksan popular like Jill. But she good woman.”

“Where’d they go?”

Blue Orchid shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Moolah me.” I don’t know. “They cry, they thank everybody for helping them, they so sorry they gotta go but, anyway, they gotta go.”

“They left that same night?”

“Yes. They leave same night. After they go, maybe one hour, GI come back. This time he have many jeeps and many MPs. They search every room, make our customer taaksan angry. They ask anybody where Jill go but nobody tell them nothing because nobody know.”

“Were there any KNPs with them?”

Blue Orchid shook her head. “None.”

“But they searched your premises. Did you report them to the KNPs?”

“No. We no call. Later, when KNP honcho come drinkey, I tell him. He taaksan kullasso.” Very angry. Blue Orchid was using English, Japanese, and Korean again.

“Did he do anything about it?”

Blue Orchid shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

Probably not. For the local boss of the Korean National Police to admit that 2nd Infantry Division MPs had taken it upon themselves to search a legitimate business enterprise without a warrant, an enterprise over which they had no jurisdiction, would be a tremendous loss of face. The KNP boss would never report the breach of legal procedure officially but, you can bet, he’d be waiting for his chance to take revenge.

We asked if we could see Jill Matthewson’s room. Blue Orchid not only agreed but escorted us there herself. I was disappointed. It was just a little cubbyhole with a vinyl-covered ondol floor and cherry tree wall paper furnished with a down-filled sleeping mat and a plastic armoire. It had been totally cleaned out. Nothing was left to indicate Jill Matthewson’s brief residence. Kim Yong-ai’s room was the same.

I grabbed Blue Orchid by her silk-covered shoulders and swore to her that Ernie and I weren’t here to harm Jill Matthewson. I told her of the letter from Jill’s mother and I even showed it to her. After she’d read it-or pretended to read it-I asked her to tell me anything she knew that could help me find Jill, and find her before she was located by her enemies.

Blue Orchid shook her head. “Jill Matthewson smart woman. She know that if she tell us anything, someday we tell somebody else. So she no tell us nothing. I swear.” Blue Orchid raised her right hand. “Beik-jo didn’t tell us where she go.”

I believed her.

As a group, the kisaeng of the Forest of the Seven Clouds followed us out to the exit. I thanked them for their cooperation. As one body, they bowed as we left.

“Zippo,” Ernie said. “Nada. Not a goddamn thing. That’s what we have to show for all these days of work. She’s gone. She’s in the wind and we don’t have a clue as to where she might’ve gone.”

Ernie was right. I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right.

We were in the jeep, driving back toward Kumchon.

“And furthermore,” he continued, “we now have one day of AWOL on our record. One day of bad time.”

By “bad time” Ernie meant that any days of absence without leave do not count toward earning a twenty-year military retirement.

He was right again. Our gamble hadn’t paid off. Bufford had reached Jill Matthewson before us. But how? Then I remembered the body of Pak Tong-i; I remembered how he’d been tortured, systematically strangled. He’d probably revealed information before he’d been stricken down by a heart attack. The timing was right. Bufford had learned the whereabouts of Jill Matthewson and Kim Yong-ai and then he and Staff Sergeant Weatherwax had hot-footed it over to the Forest of Seven Clouds.

What had he planned to do with Jill? Was he just going to arrest her and return her to 2nd Division custody? Somehow, I thought not. Pak Tong-i was dead; Druwood was dead. If Warrant Officer Fred Bufford was in any way responsible for their deaths, bringing Jill Matthewson back to Camp Casey would be too dangerous. My guess was-and judging by Jill’s reaction it was probably her guess, too-that Bufford intended to kill her. That’s why she’d threatened his life with his own. 45. And that’s why she’d left no word with the women of the Forest of the Seven Clouds as to where she was going.

“For all we know,” Ernie said, “she went to Seoul and we’ll never find her.”

He was becoming gloomier by the minute. I was fighting the feeling but gloom was overwhelming me, too. No matter how I turned it over, all the things we’d learned since arriving in Division gave us no clue as to where Jill might’ve gone.

Additionally, it now looked as if our work concerning the black-market activities of the 2nd Division honchos and the suspicious circumstances of Private Marvin Druwood’s death might come to naught. Once we were back in Seoul, even if Staff Sergeant Riley managed to come up with those classified ration control records, any anomaly they showed would be handled through regular channels. That is, the Division provost marshal himself, Colonel Alcott, would be notified immediately. Any covering up he had to do he could handle at his leisure. The same with the death of Private Marvin Druwood. Alcott would be asked to investigate his own MPs. The worst that could happen is that there would be some embarrassment on the 2nd Division commander’s part and Alcott would be relieved and transferred back to the States.

One thing you could be sure of is that Ernie and I would be kept strictly away from the investigation. When the integrity of honchos in positions of power is threatened, investigations are handled with the utmost delicacy. And delicacy isn’t what Ernie and I are known for.

Would Jill Matthewson eventually be hunted down and murdered? Possibly. Along with her friend, Kim Yong-ai. If their bodies were dumped in a ditch, or tossed into the fast-flowing Imjin River, they’d never be heard from again. And Ernie and I would still be working the black-market detail down in Seoul, busting the Korean wives of enlisted men for selling maraschino cherries and dehydrated orange drink. Standing around with our thumbs up our butts while a good soldier was stalked and murdered.

Ernie’s thoughts must’ve been running parallel to mine. His face was twisted in anger and his knuckles on the steering wheel were white. He raced faster than he should have through the city of Kumchon, passed the Princess Beauty Shop without slowing down, and when we reached Reunification Road, without a word to me, he turned south toward Seoul.

I sat with my arms crossed, brooding. It was late afternoon now; the sun was lowering, cold and damp, behind enormous banks of gray clouds.

At Bongil-chon Ernie threw the jeep into low gear. He turned off the main road and drove under the overpass toward the compound that sat on the craggy peaks. Before reaching the road that led up to the compound, he turned into the narrow lanes of the village and gunned the engine, letting it whine. Like a crazed road-race driver, he roared through the narrow lanes, splashing mud everywhere. People jumped out of his way. He zigzagged back and forth, up and down, until he located the central road of the village. It was lined with nightclubs.

Along the main drag, he found a place to park the jeep. He chained and padlocked the steering wheel, turned to me, and said, “Let’s go get drunk.”

As if to help me with my decision, one of the neon signs blinked to brilliant life. YOBO CLUB, it said. I pondered my decision for about three seconds, finding no flaw in Ernie’s plan.

“We ain’t there yet?” I asked.

The time was about an hour and a half before midnight. Ernie and I were so drunk that we were starting to hold on to the edge of the bar to steady ourselves. We must’ve hit every dive in Bongil-chon and of all of them, this one was probably the worst. The Bunny Club, they called it. It was full of half-dressed business girls and half-crazed GIs with pockets full of spending money and access to more cheap booze and rock and roll and women than they’d ever seen in their lives.

Ernie and I loved it.

We’d spotted the local ville patrol a couple of times; it was composed of an MP from Camp Howze and a Korean MP from a nearby ROK Army compound and, of course, a surly Korean National Policeman. They hadn’t bothered us or seemed to notice us in any way. Ernie and I were just two more drunken GIs wasting their money as far as the ville patrol was concerned. Even though the Division was looking for us-and these MPs had probably been notified-it’s not the type of thing that a busy MP spends a lot of time worrying about. Two 8th Army CID agents, how dangerous could they be? Besides, even if Division managed to distribute photos that quickly, nobody pays any attention to that stuff. A cop on patrol has other things to worry about.

Tomorrow, Ernie and I would return to Seoul to face the music. Tonight, we were partying. At least we were trying to. Actually, though, we were just drowning our sorrows. For whatever drunken reason, Ernie and I decided to leave the Bunny Club and stagger to another bar. It was a good thing we did because just as we pushed our way through the swinging doors of the Bunny Club, an MP jeep rounded the corner. Ernie and I kept walking at our normal pace. I grabbed Ernie by the elbow.

“What?” Ernie asked.

“MPs.”

“So?”

“So look.” I pointed a shaky finger. MPs climbed out of either side of the jeep, one of them tall and skinny, the other not quite as thin but shorter.

“Bufford,” Ernie said. His fists knotted.

Before I could stop him, he was staggering back toward the Bunny Club, leaning forward at the waist, his entire posture one of determination. Ernie Bascom had decided to kick some ass.

By now, Bufford and the other MP were approaching the front door of the Bunny Club. In the overhead light, I could see that the other MP was indeed the man we’d surmised had accompanied Bufford to the Forest of the Seven Clouds: Staff Sergeant Rufus Q. Weatherwax. The left side of his nose was still a dark purple from that night in TDC when Ernie had punched him. Both MPs drew their. 45s, all their attention riveted on the entranceway of the Bunny Club, and together they pulled back their slides.

Under normal MP procedure, a weapon is drawn only when you know that your life is in danger. These guys looked not as if they were worried about being hurt, but as if they’d already decided to go in firing.

I ran after Ernie, trying to pull him away.

Startled by our footsteps, Bufford and Weatherwax turned. They were about ten yards away. I grabbed Ernie’s shoulders and yanked him backwards. Just as I did so, a round was fired. I felt hot air pass above Ernie’s arm, and then we were both tumbling backward, somehow keeping our feet. Another round blasted into the night, but by now we’d slid into one of the narrow alleys running alongside of the Bunny Club. Ernie’d forgotten about kicking Bufford’s ass and he’d regained his balance-and regained his sobriety. The two of us were running shoulder to shoulder, bumping into one another, down the narrow alley. Ernie dodged to his left at the next alley, me with him, and as we did so another round blasted out, this one exploding into a brick wall behind us where we’d just been standing.

Our feet turned into flying machines. Bufford and Weatherwax stayed close. I could hear the pounding of their boots and their occasional shouted commands to one another. Ernie and I twisted and turned and dodged and since Bufford and Weatherwax had to slow occasionally to see which way we had gone, we were starting to lengthen our lead.

I wanted to keep running. Even though Ernie and I were both armed, I didn’t want to turn and fight. If, and when, Ernie and I returned to 8th Army headquarters in Seoul, we’d have enough explaining to do. I didn’t want to add two dead MPs to our list of indiscretions. Not if I could help it.

There were no streetlights back here. When I looked back I could see the beam of an MP flashlight bouncing against brick.

Ernie turned and turned again and then found a small inlet into which to dodge. We stopped, breathing heavily, listening to our pounding heartbeats. A streetlamp about twenty yards away cast a dim glow but we were hidden in shadow. Ernie pulled his. 45. If they closed in now, it would be an all out firefight. Their footsteps pounded a couple of alleys away. The steps retreated and then returned and then paced farther away in the opposite direction. Finally, after a long wait, all was quiet.

Ernie whispered, “Where are we?”

“Somewhere on the western edge of Bongil-chon, I think.”

“Can we make it back to the jeep?”

“They probably already have it spotted. Best if we catch a cab to take us to Seoul.”

We still had about another hour until curfew. Enough time to take a kimchee cab to the northern edge of Seoul. Once there we could switch cabs and head back to 8th Army’s Yongsan compound on the southern edge of the capital city.

“Okay. I’ll go first,” Ernie said.

We started to return to the land of the living when suddenly, out of the shadows, something moved. At first I thought it was simply the play of light, but then I heard the tread of shoe leather on gravel. Before I could react, cold steel pressed into the hot flesh of my neck.

“Freeze.”

The voice was low, forceful. A woman’s voice. An American woman’s voice.

Ernie raised his hands; I raised mine also. Then, I stepped away slowly and turned. She switched on a flashlight and aimed it at her highly polished jump boots. From its glow I saw the outlines of a shapely woman, a woman wearing a full uniform of pressed green fatigues, a web belt with a brightly polished brass buckle, and a black leather holster hanging at her hip. The rank insignia of corporal was pinned to her collar along with the crossed-pistols brass of the United States Army Military Police Corps. Even though the light was dim, her black helmet glistened and the big white letters MP shined like neon. But mostly I saw the unholy pit of the barrel of the. 45.

“You’ve been following me,” the voice said from behind the pistol.

I didn’t deny what she said. Neither did Ernie.

“My name is Jill Matthewson.” the voice said again. “You will keep your hands in full view at all times.” She motioned with her. 45. “Do you understand?”

Ernie and I both nodded. We understood.