The Wandering Ghost

13

O ur first problem was trying to figure out how to return to Tongduchon. My guess was that after the gunplay last night in Bongil-chon, the Division MPs would set up roadblocks throughout the Division area.

That meant we couldn’t use the jeep.

“Where will we leave it?” Jill asked.

The three of us stood next to the jeep, in the raked gravel lot in front of the Wondang Buddhist temple.

“Back to I Corps,” Ernie said.

Camp Red Cloud, where we’d left it before, was the logical place to stash the jeep. I Corps was a higher headquarters than Division and the 2nd ID MPs had no jurisdiction there. But to get to Red Cloud we’d have to return to Reunification Road, drive south past Camp Howze in Bongil-chon, and then turn east at Byokjie. Anywhere along that route, the 2nd Division MPs might be waiting for us.

“I have a better idea,” I told Ernie.

While Jill and Ernie waited, I entered the temple, taking my shoes off at the elevated wooden floor. I pushed my way through a heavy wooden door and entered a room filled with carved effigies of devils and demons and gods. Candles were lined up on an altar, along with bouquets of pungent incense. No people. I knelt in front of the central figure of the Hinayana Buddha and waited.

Soon a bare-headed monk appeared. He kneeled beside me and bowed three times to Buddha. In Korean, I asked for a favor. Could we leave our jeep in his parking lot for a couple of days.

“You’re here to help the American woman?” he asked.

“You know about her?”

“Wondang is a small community.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m here to help her.”

“Then, by all means, leave your jeep.”

“It will only be two days.”

“Two days. Two years. It will be here when you return.”

I asked if I could make a contribution to the temple. He told me it was up to me. Then he guided me to a bronze urn near the entranceway. I shoved a few military payment certificates into it, bowed to the monk, and exited.

Outside, Ernie said, “We can leave it here?”

I nodded.

“For how long?”

“Until you attain enlightenment.”

“I thought I had already.

The bus that ran most often out of Wondang Station was the bus to Seoul. Second to that was the express to Uijongbu, the one we bought three tickets for. After waiting twenty minutes, we hopped aboard. The seating, as usual, was tightly packed. There were two seats on either side of the aisle. I had hoped to sit next to Jill but Ernie aced me out. I was across from them, listening to their conversation, but unable to participate over the whine of the big diesel engine. The little old Korean lady who sat next to me smiled and nodded repeatedly but didn’t attempt to engage me in conversation. Instead of moping about not being able to talk to Jill, I decided to use the time to think. I leaned back in my tiny seat, inhaled the aroma of stale kimchee and cigarette smoke, and closed my eyes.

So far, the only hard evidence I had of the 2nd ID black-marketing were the ration control records of Colonel Stanley Alcott’s open RCP. And, actually, I didn’t have them yet. Staff Sergeant Riley down in Seoul was still trying to obtain a copy of the records from his buddy, Smitty, who worked at 8th Army Data Processing. But as Riley’d told me before, the records were classified and therefore Smitty was having trouble getting a copy. Even if we obtained the records, all they would prove is that Alcott had bought truckloads of merchandise from the Camp Casey PX. They wouldn’t prove that he’d broken army regulations and Korean law by actually selling those goods in Tongduchon. For that, we’d need the testimony of the MPs who’d made the purchases on Colonel Alcott’s behalf and then transported them in military vehicles to the Turkey Farm. Incidentally, that would result in another charge: misappropriation of a military vehicle. However, there was a big flaw in all this.

Jill had told me that it was Bufford who handled the day-to-day use of the open ration control plate. Colonel Alcott was the man responsible for the plate, the RCP’s “owner” in effect. Alcott could always testify that he didn’t know what Warrant Officer Bufford nor Corporal Matthewson nor Private Druwood nor any of the other MPs involved in the black-marketing were doing with his open RCP. He could claim they’d used it without his knowledge. Of course, no one would believe that such a huge operation could be operated using his RCP without his knowledge. He’d be reprimanded for not supervising his subordinates more closely, he’d almost certainly be relieved of his position as Division provost marshal, and probably he’d be shipped back to the States fast enough to make a brass Buddha’s head spin. But he wouldn’t be found guilty of any crime.

Somehow, I had to nail Alcott with evidence that would tie him to the black market. Jill told me about the money he kept in his safe. I’d seen for myself, albeit briefly, the meticulous records that the Turkey Lady had kept of the incoming and outgoing black market merchandise at the Turkey Farm. Those records had been destroyed by fire. But what good are records on one end of a transaction, if the seller doesn’t have comparable records on the other end of the transaction? That would be the only way to insure that the men ultimately in charge of this black-market operation-the colonels of the mafia meetings- weren’t being ripped off by the Turkey Lady. Alcott must have kept records of his own. Could they be in the same safe in his living quarters where, according to Jill Matthewson, he kept piles of cash?

Most likely. Alcott would want to keep the records close, so he could destroy them if the heat was ever turned on. Well, the heat would be turned on soon. I decided to call Riley, check on our duty status at 8th Army, and see about getting the 8th Army JAG to provide us with a search warrant for Lieutenant Colonel Alcott’s living quarters. I was still hopeful that 8th Army would see the light and allow us to do what needed to be done.

Something woke me. I checked my surroundings. Jill and Ernie seemed to be sleeping. So was the elderly Korean lady sitting next to me. The bus had been zooming eastward toward Uijongbu, but the driver was now downshifting and pumping the brakes. That was what had roused me. Why was he stopping? We weren’t in Uijongbu yet. I tapped Ernie on the shoulder. He opened his eyes.

“Trouble,” I said.

From his aisle seat, Ernie leaned across Jill and poked his head out the window. He turned back to me.

“Roadblock,” he said. “They’ll check everybody.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“How?” Jill asked. She was awake now.

“The back door.”

We all rose, the only three Miguks on the bus, and hurried down the aisle to the rear. Most of the old-model Korean buses, the ones that ran country routes, had large doors in the back for accepting oversize loads. When they weren’t transporting passengers, some of the seats could be taken out and something large and boxlike could be slipped onto the bus through that rear door. Usually, it was a coffin. Buses were often chartered to carry entire families out to the countryside, with the dearly departed in his or her elaborately painted Korean coffin in the back, and professional mourners in hemp cloth robes riding up front.

Politely, I asked the young man in the back seat to move.

Groggily, he looked up at me and said, “Weikurei?” What’s the matter with you?

The bus had stopped now, behind a line of vehicles being inspected at the checkpoint.

I asked the young man again to move. He pouted and stared up at me as if I were mad. Ernie grabbed him my his jacket, tugged, and pulled him roughly to his feet. Other men sitting nearby stood and started to shout and wag their fingers at Ernie. Jill tried to mollify them but it wasn’t working. Koreans are usually unfailingly polite. But if they believe that one of their own is being mistreated by a foreigner, hostility can take the place of propriety. Quickly.

Ernie growled at the men, shouted back, and wagged his own finger.

I kneeled in front of the door. The long handle had been painted over with gray paint. I tried to move it but it wouldn’t budge. I needed more leverage. It had to be pulled up. I stood, grabbed the handle with both hands, and hoisted upwards with all my strength. ROK Army soldiers were at the front of the bus now, shouting instructions at the driver, motioning for him to pull closer to the side of the road.

You could bet that 2nd Division MPs were up ahead as the last line of defense.

My fingers were red and indented from pulling but so far the handle hadn’t budged. I took off my jacket, folded it, and slipped it beneath the door handle. This time I flexed my knees and took a better grip. Two-handed again. Using the strength of my thigh muscles along with my shoulders and my arms, I heaved with every ounce of strength I possessed. Jill knelt and examined the handle, seeing if there was anything she could do to help. There wasn’t.

Korean men were now shoving Ernie. As soon as he started shoving back the fists would begin to fly and we’d never get out of here.

I was about to give up, wondering if we could climb out a window, knowing that the ROK Army MPs would spot us if we did. I gave the handle one more pull, it moved this time, just slightly, groaned, and then popped upwards. I fell sideways onto two young women huddling next to the window.

Jill kicked the door open and, still clutching her AWOL bag, hopped out. I regained my balance, grabbed Ernie, and dragged him toward the back door. He was punched in the back a couple of times as I pulled him out onto the road. He tried to go back to finish the fight but I told him we had to get out of there. Finally, he followed.

Jill led the way down the waiting line of vehicles. Kimchee cabs mostly. A few three-wheeled trucks loaded with winter cabbage or mounds of fresh garlic. As we zigged and zagged between the vehicles, we heard a shout behind us. An American voice.

“Round eye,” he shouted. A Western woman. Up here, that could only be an American. Boots pounded on cement.

There was a small farming village just off the road. A few of the hooches were roofed with tile but most were thatched with straw. The three of us sprinted for the hooches. Off to the left were rice paddies. Above the hooches, on a hill, were terraced cabbage patches and, beyond that, woods. But between the road and the village was an open space of about twenty yards. As we sprinted across it I expected to hear the sound of rifle shots. But there were none. Only shouted commands for us to halt.

These MPs, unlike Bufford and Weatherwax, weren’t willing to shoot fellow Americans in the back just because they’d been ordered to take us into custody.

Lucky for us.

In the village, we dodged pigs and chickens and a couple of toddlers wearing only T-shirts, staring up at us with mucous-encrusted lips. Cute kids, but we didn’t have time to tickle them and watch them giggle. Jill and Ernie stayed right behind me, trusting me to guide them. At the rear of the village, I ran uphill, crossed a cabbage patch, and with a last burst of speed, plowed into the woods.

Breathing heavily, I held branches aside, making way for Jill and then Ernie, to take cover behind the tree line.

“Come on!” I said, continuing to climb uphill.

We blazed our way through the small forest until we reached the top of the hill which was covered by grave mounds. I crouched behind a row of tombstones and studied the village below. The MPs had stopped to inspect some of the hooches. They were attempting to interrogate the villagers-in English.

“Big nose, like me,” one of the MPs said, pointing at his nose. “Odi ka?” Where’d they go?

The village woman he was questioning stared at him blankly. We had been in and out of the village so fast that few, if any, of the villagers had seen us. Except for the toddlers. The MPs milled around for a while, inspecting the tiny barnlike structures that were just big enough to house one animal. Usually an ox. The MP who seemed to be in charge gazed up past the cabbage patches into the woods but didn’t show any enthusiasm for continuing further. He gathered his men and marched them back to the road.

On the field radio back at the checkpoint, he’d report our sighting to the Division PMO. In minutes, Bufford and Weatherwax and whatever reinforcements they could muster would be on their way south. We had a blonde American female with us. There’d be no doubt it was us.

“Let’s move out,” Ernie said.

Jill nodded, so did I. No discussion necessary.

The rest of the day consisted of a long afternoon and a longer night. We stayed away from the Main Supply Route and military patrols and military checkpoints. We cadged rides on three-wheeled tractors, on the backs of trucks, and even, for a while, on an ox-drawn cart. Steadily but surely we made our way north. After night fell, we walked; afraid to take one of the country kimchee cabs because the Division MP checkpoints would be moving from spot to spot and their mobile patrols would be prowling the back roads. Best to stay on foot, on ancient pathways leading from village to village. As far as I knew, the Division MPs didn’t even know these pathways existed.

Convoys of headlights prowled the paved roads.

Finally, about an hour before the midnight curfew, we stopped at a yoinsuk, a traditional Korean inn. It was situated atop a gently sloping hill that had three pedestrian pathways leading to it, but no parking lot. The building’s lumber was ancient; it had probably been constructed long before the Korean War. When I asked the proprietress about it, she told me that the inn had been built before the Japanese Occupation in 1910, back in those halcyon days when the king of Korea still sat on his throne in Seoul. The name of the inn was the Chowol-tang, Temple of the Autumn Moon.

It was a dump.

The soup they brought had no meat in it, only bean curd, and I had to pluck a couple of tiny pebbles out of the rice that accompanied the soup. Still, after a day of hiking through the hills of Kyongki Province, the chow tasted delicious. Once again, we three slept in the same room, on the warm ondol floor, but this time a family of strangers stayed with us, huddled together on the other side of the room. After eating, I was too exhausted to even attempt to speak Korean to them, so I spread out my gray cotton sleeping mat, pulled a tattered silk comforter over my sore shoulders, and was asleep before my head hit the bean-filled pillow.

At dawn, the three of us were up and ready to go. I sorely wished that I could take a shower and change into clean clothes, but there were no shower facilities here at the Temple of the Autumn Moon and the bag containing my change of clothes had been left behind after Ernie and I were ambushed at fish heaven. I was stuck with the same old sports shirt, the same old blue jeans, and the same old nylon jacket. After using the outdoor byonso, we declined breakfast, hoping we could find something better down the road. We did. Pears plucked fresh from an orchard.

Before noon, we stood on a hill looking down on the fog-shrouded city of Tongduchon. To the east, Camp Casey spread like a slothful potentate reclining across acres of arable land. Behind the heavily fortified main gate, the statue of the twenty-foot-tall MP, his pink face still smiling, seemed to be staring right at us.

First, I found a phone.

In a run-down teahouse a couple of blocks west of the Tongduchon City Market, the place where Ernie and I’d been shot at. The sleepy proprietress barely found the energy to shove my two hundred won into the pocket of her sleeping robe. Then she shoved the red phone across the counter, turned, and slid back a door that led to her sleeping quarters. She wasn’t open for business yet but Ernie and I had insisted she open.

I dialed the number for the 8th Army operator and waited. And waited. And waited. I hung up and tried again.

Still the same sound of static and clicking, but no human voice.

“The lines are down,” Ernie said.

Happens all the time, but why now?

“We’ll try again later,” Jill said.

“Right.”

I tried not to let it bother me. Still, it seemed an omen. Ernie and I were in over our heads, 8th Army wasn’t backing us up, the 2nd Division provost marshal had apparently unleashed his men on a murderous rampage. How often do GIs knowingly shoot at other GIs?

Not often. GIs steal from one another, they seduce one another’s wives, they lie about one another in order to cop a quick promotion, they do all those things but they seldom shoot at one another. Still, that’s exactly what’d been happening routinely ever since Brandy brought Ernie and me back to Division.

“Brandy,” I said. “At the Black Cat Club.”

“Too dangerous,” Ernie replied.

He meant that the ville would probably be crawling with MPs.

Jill started to tell us about Brandy.

“She was nice to me,” Jill told us. “She helped me find my hooch and she introduced me to Kim Yong-ai and then she even came to my hooch to show me how to change charcoal and where the trash goes and things like that.”

Since we had a minute, I asked Jill what exactly had happened at the Forest of the Seven Clouds. How had she and Kim Yong-ai managed to escape when Bufford and Weatherwax had come looking for her?

“Colonel Han,” she said. “A ROK Army colonel. He’d been in there before with important businessmen and Kimmie and I served him. He speaks English really well and he was curious about my situation, but I didn’t tell him that I was AWOL. The day Bufford and Weatherwax came looking for me, Colonel Han put me and Kim in the back of his canvas-covered jeep, threw a tarp over us, and drove us right past the checkpoints the MPs had set up.”

It figured. In Korea, what with 700,000 bloodthirsty communist soldiers across the DMZ just itching to invade, the ROK Army is untouchable. Even the president of the country is a former ROK Army general. Nobody can inspect ROK Army jeeps. Not even 2nd Infantry Division MPs.

The idea hit me suddenly. It seemed so obvious, once I thought about it, that I must’ve been awfully tired not to have thought of it earlier.

“I know where we can find a phone.”

“We have a phone,” Ernie said.

“But also a place to hide out, while we wait for the lines to be reconnected.”

Ernie saw it, too. “The Chon family residence,” he said.

Then I told Jill about what Madame Chon had said about a wandering ghost. And about the kut. Without hesitation, Jill agreed to help.

Ten minutes later, we were standing at the front gate of the Chon family residence.

Jill pressed the button of the intercom and told the person who answered who she was. Immediately, the gate buzzed open. The elderly maid stepped off the lacquered front porch and into her slippers, and following her came Madame Chon. She rushed toward Jill, her arms thrown open, and the two women embraced. Both of them were crying.

I turned to Ernie. He turned away from the two women. Then he said, “Enough of this bullshit. Let’s go shoot somebody.”

“We will,” I told him. “But first we have to talk to a ghost.”

The only light in the large back room of the Chon family residence came from the flickering glow of thirty-six candles. Above the candles sat a gleaming bronze effigy of Kumbokju, the chubby god of plenty of Korean myth. The sharp tang of incense permeated the room, and about thirty guests sat on the floor on plump, silk-covered cushions. The guest list included myself, Ernie, Corporal Jill Mathewson, and what seemed like every middle-aged matron in the city of Tongduchon. Since his daughter’s death, Chon Un-suk’s father had been working long hours at his business in Seoul and seldom showed his face in Tongduchon. Maybe because of grief. Maybe he had a mistress. Who knows? But one thing I knew for sure is that no self-respecting Korean male wants to attend a kut.

The name of the mudang was the Widow Po.

She was a tall woman, buxom, with a regal, oval-shaped face that might’ve been beautiful except that her skin had been ravaged by smallpox. Her black hair was long and tangled and now streaked with sweat. She had begun her ceremony by banging on a handheld drum and dancing, then shaking rattles and shrieking at the top of her lungs, all designed, Madame Chon told us, to frighten away evil spirits. It had worked pretty well. The 2nd Division MPs hadn’t come anywhere near.

The time now was midnight. Madame Chon, in her usual gracious style, had allowed us to eat and bathe and rest; Ernie and Jill Matthewson and I felt a lot more human. While we’d rested, I had managed to put a call through to the 8th Army CID Detachment.

“Smitty came up with the records,” Riley told me. “Beaucoup purchases out of the Camp Casey PX. Then I did what you told me. I laid it all on the desk of the 8th Army provost marshal. I told him what you said about the mafia meetings and the rape of the stripper and the systematic black-marketing at the Turkey Farm. I even told him about your suspicions concerning the death of this Private Marvin Druwood.”

“How’d he react?”

“How do you think he reacted? He went ballistic. First, you and Ernie go AWOL, you don’t leave the Division area of operations as ordered, and now you’re casting aspersions on the integrity of every ranking field-grade officer on the Division staff.”

I waited.

“They want your ass back here,” Riley said. “They want your report in person and they want it now.”

“If we do that,” I told him, “Division will have time to cover up all the evidence, threaten their MPs so they won’t testify, and nobody will be busted for anything.”

“How’s that your lookout? You’re supposed to report to the PMO. That’s it!”

“That’s not it,” I said. “As part of the Division attempt to cover up, they’ve shot at Ernie and me, trying to kill us, and they might’ve murdered Private Druwood. And maybe a ROK civilian by the name of Pak Tong-i.”

“You have no proof.”

I did what I seldom do. Instead of reasoning with the man I was having a disagreement with, I started screaming.

“How in the hell am I going to get proof if I have to return to Seoul?”

Riley waited for the sound of my voice to fade. Then he said calmly, “They didn’t buy it, Sueno. You have to come back.”

I waited, allowing the pause to grow.

He said, “Sueno? Sueno? You don’t want to do this.”

I listened to his breathing for a while. Then I hung up the phone.

A row of candles flickered in the darkness of the main worship hall. Food had already been served. Food for the kut. The seance. Rice dumplings, for the spirits supposedly, but Ernie grabbed a couple and popped them in his mouth. When glasses were poured full of soju for the pleasure of spirits from the great beyond, the neighbor women helping Madame Chon realized that Ernie wasn’t able to resist. Instead of making him suffer, they poured an extra glassful for him. He offered me some but I refused, as did Jill. His behavior, as is the case so often, was irreverent. Ernie has no time for proprieties, for ancient customs, even for respect for the dead. But I noticed that neither the local women, nor Madame Chon, nor even the smiling bronze face of Kumbokju, seemed offended. Only Jill and I were embarrassed. But when Jill leaned toward me and started to complain about Ernie, I placed my hand on her forearm and told her to be patient. I was right. As time went by, the women fed Ernie more and more dumplings and poured him more and more soju. Apparently, what Jill and I considered bad manners, they recognized as signs of possession.

Suddenly, from within the crowd, one of the women started chanting. Her voice was strained, singsong, as if she were warbling some sort of discordant tune. Madame Chon translated for me. “Her son is speaking,” she said. “He was killed in a car accident.”

“Killed?” I asked.

“Yes. Twenty years ago. She all the time come kut.”

Madame Chon’s answer was completely matter-of-fact. She and all the women in this room believed that communion with the dead was routinely achieved by mudang such as the Widow Po.

Jill Matthewson, listening to our conversation, rubbed her upper arms and bowed her head and murmured a prayer.

The Widow Po beat her drum and danced closer to the wailing woman.

“Mal hei,” the Widow Po said. Speak. “Mal hei, Wan-sok-i.”

Apparently, Wan-sok was the spirit’s name.

Wan-sok’s mother, still using a tightly pitched voice, started to speak.

“I’m cold, mother,” the voice said. “I’m cold because I’ve lost your warmth. Why, when I was alive, did you treat me so badly? Why, when I was alive, did you give me everything for which I asked? Why, when I was alive, did you purchase me a car? Why, when I was alive, did you let me go out at night? Why, when I was alive, did you let me drive so fast? Why, when I was alive, did you not keep me closer to your heart? Why, when I was alive, did you turn your back on me?”

Then the woman shrieked and collapsed into the arms of the women around her.

Ernie sipped on his soju. “Phony,” he said. Jill elbowed him.

The Widow Po banged rapidly on her drum. “Hear me, oh spirit,” she shouted. “Hear me, spirit of Wan-sok. What kind of son are you to punish your mother? What kind of son are you to blame her for your greed? What kind of son are you to torment the woman who gave you birth? Desist spirit!” She banged on the drum. “Desist in your lies!” She banged again. “Desist in your torment of your good mother!” This time she banged repeatedly, deafeningly, and the woman who had fainted groaned and started to come to.

Ernie offered his bottle of soju. It was passed to Won-sok’s mother and liquid was poured across her lips. She coughed and choked and wiped away the soju. Her eyes shot open and she sat up and placed her flattened palms in front of her nose and started to pray.

“This mudang,” Ernie said, “knows how to work the crowd.”

Like a whirlwind, the Widow Po banged rapidly on her drum and twirled through the women seated cross-legged on the floor, heading straight for Ernie. When she stopped banging, she stood directly over him, red eyes blazing, candlelight flaming behind her, voice wailing.

“Chumul-cho!” she screamed. Then she banged on her drum again. Ernie looked at me, confused. “Chumul-cho!” the Widow Po screamed, more loudly this time. Her drum became an incessant roar.

“Dance!” I told Ernie. “She wants you to stand up and dance.”

“Bull! I don’t know how to dance.”

“Its not that kind of dancing,” I said.

“Chumul-cho!” the Widow Po screamed again and this time Ernie bounced to his feet as if he were being pulled up by strings. The Widow Po let go of her drum with one hand and slapped him. Hard. The splat of flesh on flesh resounded throughout the room. “Chumul-cho!” she shouted.

Ernie began to dance.

His legs shook at the knees and his arms flailed akimbo and the Widow Po seemed pleased and grabbed Ernie’s hand and dragged him out in front of the glowing bronze Kumbokju. She wailed and drummed and swirled around him and Ernie kept up his flailing, looking for all the world like Elvis Presley gone spastic.

Jill started to laugh. So did I. And then all the women in the room were roaring and this seemed to encourage Ernie. The Widow Po drummed madly and Ernie flailed more wildly and finally, his face slathered in sweat, the Widow Po flung Ernie like a rag doll back into the arms of the women in the crowd.

Exhausted, he collapsed onto his pillow. One of the women took pity on him and, grabbing another bottle of soju, poured fiery rice liquor across his lips like a mother feeding a baby.

The drumming stopped. The Widow Po stood stock-still, her back to all of us. Perspiration on her black hair glistening in the candle glow. Her body started to quiver. Not move. Just quiver. As if something hideous was passing through her, entering through a cavity in her body and filling every pore of her being with a power that could only be expressed by the quaking of her statuesque torso.

Then she screamed.

The collapse to the floor was total. She slammed into wood. Rib cage, skull, everything crashed against the solid surface as if she’d fallen from a thirty-foot precipice. I thought she’d killed herself. I started to rise, but Madame Chon grabbed my arm with surprising strength and forced me to sit back down.

Like a butterfly, effortlessly, now the Widow Po started to rise.

She floated. Or it seemed that she floated. Probably she was standing on her tiptoes like a ballerina. But in the dark room in the flickering candlelight it seemed for a moment that she was actually levitating. And then she twirled. Her face was hideous. Contorted, angry, frightened. Aggressive and frightened at the same moment, which I knew from real life was the most dangerous state a person could be in.

She growled.

“Ohma!” Mother.

The voice came from somewhere deep in the Widow Po’s throat.

Madame Chon sat up as if someone had jabbed her in the butt with an electric prod. “Un-suk-i?” she asked.

“Na pei kopa!” I’m hungry. “Why didn’t you come look for me? Why was your door locked to me? I’ve been searching for you. Where are you, Mother? Where have you been?”

I hadn’t noticed earlier, but now I realized that off to my right for the last few seconds I’d been hearing an incessant humming. Like a bumblebee but louder. Jill Matthewson was praying. Her eyes were closed and she was humming through moist lips and then, without being called, she rose to her feet and walked forward; stepping deftly between the cushions and the seated women, with her eyes still closed, heading straight for the Widow Po.

“Nugu syo?” the Widow Po asked. Who is it? But she asked it in the voice that Madame Chon recognized as her daughter’s.

“Jill,” Corporal Jill Matthewson said. “It’s me. I’m here for you.”

She spoke in English, but the Widow Po-or Chon Un-suk or whoever it was-seemed to understand. Once more, the Widow Po collapsed to the floor. This time she lay on her back, writhing and moaning like a child. A pitiful sound emerged from her full-grown body. A sound any human being would react to. The sound of a child in pain. The sound of a child dying.

Jill knelt next to her. I scooted to my left to see better. Jill’s eyes were still closed but her hands performed the movements they’d been trained to perform. First, she cleared the air passage. Then she checked for bleeding. Then she took off her own blouse and covered the Widow Po and grabbed the drum that lay on the floor and used it to elevate the Widow Po’s feet. Then she leaned forward and said in English, “You’re going to be all right, honey. You’ll be all right. Someone’s coming to help you. They’ll be here soon.”

The Widow Po said, “Ohma,” and then she took a huge breath, held it, and as she let it out her entire body shuddered. She lay still.

I thought the Widow Po was dead; I was sure she was dead. So did Jill Matthewson. Or the person who once called herself Jill Matthewson. In a trance, Jill leaned down, touched the body’s chest over the heart, pinched the carotid artery, and lowered her cheek in front of the Widow Po’s open mouth. When she was sure that the body below was dead, Jill began to cry. I tried to rise to my feet. No one, not even a mudang as skilled as the Widow Po, could hold her breath for that long. I tried to rise to my feet but Madame Chon grabbed my elbow with two hands and, with the strength of a man, held me where I was.

Nervously, Ernie slugged down another shot of soju.

Then, Jill Matthewson leaned further over the body, slid her forearms beneath the body’s back, and raised the body of the Widow Po into the air. The Widow Po, tall and as heavy as she was, hung lifelessly in Jill Matthewson’s arms. Jill, still on her knees, turned and finally her eyes opened. She seemed to be searching for someone, and then she found her. The woman sitting next to me, Madame Chon, the mother of Chon Un-suk. Jill rose to her feet- almost effortlessly considering all the weight she was carrying- and walked toward Madame Chon. Everyone rose to their feet, sighing, crying, hugging one another. When Jill stood in front of Madame Chon, she bowed and as if she were offering a bouquet of roses, she placed the lifeless body in Madame Chon’s arms. Tears streamed from Madame Chon’s eyes but she grabbed the body, enfolded it, clasped it against her breast, and kneeled. Jill helped her lower the body until the Widow Po lay, lifeless, across the lap of Madame Chon.

No more sound came from the Widow Po. Only whimpering from the crowd.

Jill left the room. Ernie and I found her out in the courtyard, leaning next to the stone well.

Vomiting.

The next morning, Madame Chon assured us that the Widow Po was all right.

“She do all the time,” she told us.

“She dies all the time?” Ernie asked.

“Yes. Then come back. No problem.”

Jill punched Ernie in the shoulder.

They were starting to like each other. I’d noticed that, and I can’t say that I was happy about it. Brandy, I didn’t mind, but now Ernie was after Jill Matthewson. It wasn’t any of my business, I knew that rationally, but it bothered me nevertheless. I liked the way she smiled and the freckles across her nose and the way she was determined to do the right thing.

After a breakfast of steamed rice, roasted mackerel, and pickled bean sprouts, we were ready to start our day. As we sipped barley tea, I made Jill go over it again, the story of how she and the stripper, Kim Yong-ai, overnight, raised two thousand dollars U.S.

“She helped me all the time,” Jill said. “How to change the charcoal, how to cook on the butane stove, how to wash my laundry and where to hang it up to dry. With everything.”

“So you became friends?” Ernie asked.

“Yeah. She lived right next door. We drank tea. We talked.”

“Her English was pretty good?” I asked.

“Okay. I taught her some. She taught me Korean. Out of her dictionary.”

“So the Division honchos did a number on her at the mafia meeting,” Ernie said. “She had a case of the ass.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Jill asked.

“I suppose I would,” Ernie replied.

“She wanted out of the life,” Jill continued, “but she was two thousand dollars in debt to gangsters for key money for her hooch, and for costumes, and for transportation to gigs, and for money just to live.”

“So she asked you to help?” Ernie said.

“Why do you make it sound that way? Like she was trying to con me or something? I knew about it, she told me, but she never asked me for money.”

“Until after she was raped by the Division honchos.”

“Even then,” Jill said, becoming angry now, “she didn’t ask me for money. She asked me to help her get even.”

“And the best way to do that…” Ernie let the question hang.

Jill frowned.

Their romance was deteriorating quickly but I knew Ernie was just doing his job. Skeptical and cop are the same word.

“She showed me photographs another girl had taken,” Jill said. “Of old farts with pot bellies on top of her. And on top of the other girls. Even Colonel Alcott.”

“Why do you say ‘even’ Colonel Alcott?” Ernie asked.

“Because he always made a big deal about being a deacon in his church back home and made speeches about trusting in God and all that stuff but as soon as he had a chance, he hopped on a helpless Korean business girl just like every other GI in the ville.”

She glared at Ernie. The statement was more like an accusation. Ernie crossed his arms and stared back at her. She continued.

“So we decided to use the photographs to get money. Not money out of their pockets, all of them were too cheap for that, but money out of the slush fund. The mafia meeting slush fund.”

“Where was this slush fund located?” Ernie asked.

“On compound. In Colonel Alcott’s room. It’s more than a room really, it’s almost like a little house. Bigger than the trailer me and my mom lived in. He has a safe in there.”

“So you just waltzed up one day,” Ernie said, “showed Colonel Alcott the photographs and demanded two thousand dollars?”

“That’s pretty much it. He wanted to bargain but I told him he could replace the money with one black-market run out to the ville and I told him that I didn’t care about my military career and I would write my congressman in a heartbeat if he didn’t come across. So he did. Two thousand big ones.”

“And then Miss Kim thanked you,” Ernie said, “tears in her eyes.”

“You’re laughing at me.” Jill said.

“Not laughing,” Ernie said. “It’s the oldest con in the ville. But usually it’s worked on GIs who are only thinking with their dicks. With you, she had to rely on your sympathy for a woman set upon by the male power structure.”

“Screw you, Ernie.”

“Any time. But you were taken, Jill. Miss Kim Yong-ai used you to get at that mafia meeting slush fund.”

She thought about it for a while. “No,” she said finally. “Miss Kim didn’t use me. I’m glad she’s free.”

“Free to work in a teahouse?” I said.

“How did you know?”

“If she’s not stripping, and not selling herself, the only place in Wondang that would stay open until curfew would be a teahouse.”

“She’s a hostess to wealthy men,” Jill said, “but it’s better now.” Then she stared at me and Ernie, defiant. “So how do we get the proof to bust these assholes?”

They both looked at me.

I sipped my barley tea. Madame Chon had left us but the old maid was rustling around the cement-floored kitchen. I found her and asked for a paper and pen. In a few minutes, she’d cleared the eating table, wiped it down, and laid out a ballpoint pen and a fresh pad of writing paper. I drew a map.

Camp Casey has four gates. The main gate, the supply/motor pool gate, and the gate leading to Camp Hovey are all guarded by Division MPs. They are heavily armed with automatic pistols, M-16 rifles, and. 50-caliber machine guns. The chain link fence surrounding the massive compound is topped with rolled concertina wire and is patrolled twenty-four hours a day by guards hired by a security contractor approved by the Korean government. All the Korean security guards are well trained, motivated to keep one of the few jobs in country with good pay and benefits, and almost all of them are Korean War veterans since they receive priority in hiring. Each guard is armed with an M-1 rifle and knows how to use it.

The fourth and final gate is the gate leading to the Camp Casey firing ranges where GIs practice their marksmanship. These gates are chained at night but not guarded by MPs, merely patrolled by the subcontracted security guards.

None of it seemed too promising as far as surreptitious entry went and Jill Matthewson, who’d actually visited all of these gates, didn’t like the idea of trying to sneak our way in.

“Those security guards are sharp,” she said. “They’re not asleep at the switch. They’ve had North Korean commandoes try to slip in before, and they know they’ll be fired if someone breaks in on their watch.”

“I don’t like it either,” Ernie said. “Too risky.”

“So how do we get to Colonel Alcott’s safe?” I asked.

“There’s a way,” Jill said.

We listened. She took a deep breath, as if revealing something very important to us. “Tomorrow is March first.”

I knew what it was. Samil jol, it’s called. The March First Movement. A Korean national holiday to honor the student-led civil uprising against the Japanese colonial occupation that took place March 1, 1919.

“All the students are off,” Jill said. “The GIs aren’t.”

“So they’re coming up here,” Ernie guessed, “for another demonstration?”

Jill nodded. “This is going to be the big one.”

“How do you know?”

Then she told us about the Colonel Han she’d mentioned, the man who’d helped her and Kim Yong-ai escape from the Forest of the Seven Clouds when Bufford and Weatherwax had come to arrest her. Colonel Han Kuk-chei was the Commander of the 1611 Communications Brigade. What made him unusual for a ROK Army officer was not that he frequented kisaeng houses. That was routine. Rather, it was that he was involved with student demonstrators and he was opposed to the current regime. He belonged to an old yang-ban family, Confucian scholars and landholders, and he considered the current occupant of the Blue House-the Korean version of the White House-to be an usurper of an office that rightfully belonged to him and his kind. That’s why he was cooperating with radical students.

His goal, however, according to Jill, was more radical than even the most radical student. His goal was to reunify the Korean Peninsula-both North and South Korea-into one country. A country to be ruled under traditional Confucian principles.

I took Jill’s hand. It wasn’t soft. It was a hand used to work, used to holding the butt of an automatic pistol, but it was a woman’s hand nevertheless.

“We can bust these black-market honchos at Division,” I said. “It won’t be easy but we can do it. But if you’re caught in the middle of some political game with the Koreans, there’s no telling what could go wrong. You could be hurt.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But I promised him.”

“’Him?’”

“Colonel Han.”

“You promised him what?”

“I promised that I’d help, at the critical moment. The plan is beautiful really. And when you listen to him talk about why it’s necessary, you’ll be as convinced as I am.”

“We’re Americans, Jill. This is Korea. It’s their country.”

“But we’re involved,” she answered. “We’re the reason why their country is divided.”

Ernie rolled his eyes. I felt the same way. That’s all we needed. A political radical along with all our other problems. I still didn’t know what all this had to do with us gaining access to Camp Casey and the black-market records held in Colonel Alcott’s safe.

The front buzzer rang. We sprang to our feet. Madame Chon appeared and whispered something to the elderly maid. She nodded and they both walked to the front of the house. The maid returned with our shoes and Madame Chon walked across the courtyard to the front gate.

“Nugu seiyo?” she asked. Who is it?

“Sohn Tamjong,” a man’s voice said. Agent Sohn. Then he asked if he might speak to her, using honorific verb endings and sounding very polite. I remembered the voice. I grabbed my shoes from the maid and asked her where to find the back exit. She led the way.

Ernie whispered, “What’s up?”

“That voice,” I told him. “I’ve heard it before. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Ernie and I headed for the rear of the house. Jill grabbed her bag and followed. We reached the back door and went outside, past the byonso reeking of bleach, to a brick wall with a short metal door in it.

“Who was it?” Ernie asked.

“At the KNP station, here in Tongduchon, when we were interrogated, he sat in back of me. Observing. Only speaking at the end.”

“KCIA,” Ernie said. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency. The agency responsible for quelling internal political dissent.

“What makes you say that?”

“Who the hell else would it be?”

He was right. Only the KCIA had the power to butt in on KNP operations.

A padlocked, rusty iron rod barred the small back gate. The maid reached into the pocket of her skirt, pulled out a key, and popped open the padlock. Then she backed up and pointed. Ernie stepped forward, grabbed the rusty rod and, twisting it, managed to pull it free. With a squeak, the little door swung open. Ernie pulled his. 45 and peeked through.

Immediately, he ducked back inside. I stepped past him and looked outside. A narrow passageway between brick walls, barely wide enough for a man to pass through, ran off in both directions. To the right was a T-shaped intersection, but to the left stood two bored-looking Korean men wearing coats and ties. Their attention was on the front of the house.

“KCIA,” Ernie whispered.

I asked the maid if there was another way out. Some sort of subterranean drainage ditch or a passage over the rooftops, although I could see that the neighbor’s roof was too far for us to reach.

She shook her head.

At the front door voices were raised. Madame Chon was denying entrance to Agent Sohn. He was insisting on searching the grounds. Whether or not he had a search warrant, in a society where national security takes precedence over everything, Sohn would have his way.

Ernie and I had participated in a student demonstration. So had Jill. Technically, we could be arrested just for that.

“We could run for it,” Ernie said.

“They’d spot us.”

“We’re armed.”

Now it was Jill’s turn to roll her eyes. I spoke for both of us when I said, “We can’t shoot KCIA agents, Ernie.”

“We can if they shoot at us,” he said.

Just what we needed. A running gun battle through TDC. That’d bring the MPs down on us.

Meanwhile, the maid hustled over to a far corner of the courtyard and rolled back a small wooden cart. Frantically, she motioned to me and then pointed at a row of earthenware kimchee jars shoved up against the brick wall.

“Bali,” she said. Hurry.

I understood. Ernie and I and Jill hoisted one of the large earthenware jars onto the bed of the cart. It must’ve weighed fifty pounds. The voices at the front gate grew louder. The maid’s brow crinkled and she said, “Andei.” Not good. She told us to put another jar on the cart. We did.

“What’s she going to do with those?” Ernie asked.

I didn’t answer because I was busy making way for the maid. She shoved the heavily laden cart forward. I opened the small gate for her and helped her lift the two rubber tires of the cart over the threshold. Then she ducked outside and propelled the cart which, picking up speed, headed directly at the two men standing at the end of the alley.