Back at the barracks, I didn’t feel like going to my room right away. Instead, I stopped at the CQ’s desk and said, “You need a break?”
“Yeah, I wanted to walk down to the PX and buy some smokes.”
“Go ahead. I’ll cover for you.”
The CQ took off, and I sat at the rickety field table in the main entranceway that served as his desk. When the hallway emptied, I picked up the phone and dialed. This time, she didn’t answer. It was a voice I was unfamiliar with. “Female BOQ. Lieutenant Norris speaking, sir or ma’am.”
In my most officious tone, I said, “Captain Prevault, please.”
“Can I say who’s calling?”
I remembered the name of the doctor who’d treated me at the 121 after I’d been beaned out in Itaewon. I used it.
“Hold on, sir.”
I listened to the footsteps down the hallway, the knock on the distant door and then a long wait. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I heard a door creak open, then whispered words, urgent, purposely hushed. The door closed and the footsteps returned.
“She’s not in, sir. Do you want me to leave a message?”
“No, thank you. I’ll contact her later.”
I set the phone down and stared out the front door of the barracks. GIs pulled up in jeeps or trucks and hopped out and ran inside laughing. A couple of them dropped thirty-five cents into the beer machine and out popped a can of cold brew. When they left, I bought one for myself. Falstaff. I didn’t know anything could taste so good. And it eased the pounding in my head that still throbbed right behind where the welt was most tender. After polishing off my first, I had another.
“Are you okay?” Ernie asked.
“Okay,” I confirmed.
It was early morning. We were walking downhill, past the long brick 8th Army headquarters building, heading for the CID Admin Office.
“You look like you tied one on last night.”
“I did. When Riley came back to the barracks, we shared his last bottle of Old Overwart.”
“You’re down to socializing with that loser?”
“The rye whiskey worked fine.”
He studied me. “What the hell are you so worried about, Sueno? Captain Blood?”
“Nah,” I said. “We’ll get that puke.”
“That’s the spirit.” Ernie slapped me on the back. “So what is it?”
“Nothing,” I said, in an irritated tone of voice. That was enough to back Ernie off. I didn’t want to tell him or anybody else what I was really worried about.
We walked up the stone steps that led to the CID office.
I was worried about losing everything. By holding on to Il-yong and the possibility of being part of his future, I couldn’t let go of his mother, Dr. Yong In-ja, not completely. If by some miracle she returned to me and proposed that we establish a family, how could I say no? If I did, I’d be turning my back on my own child, something I’d promised myself I’d never do. On the other hand, I was being unfair to Leah Prevault, which she’d made abundantly clear last night by not taking my phone call.
I had to see Captain Prevault, and I had to be honest with her, I knew that. I’d do it today, as soon as I had the chance to break away.
Riley was already sitting behind his desk shuffling paperwork, looking none the worse for wear.
“You’re late,” he shouted.
Ernie glanced at his watch. “Two minutes.”
“That’s what I said. You’re freaking late.”
Ernie ignored him and breezed his way to the stainless steel coffee urn.
“The Colonel wanted to talk to you.”
“So we’ll talk,” I said.
“You’re too freaking late. He just left for the Chief of Staff briefing.”
I sat down, grabbed Riley’s copy of the Pacific Stars and Stripes, and opened it to the editorial section. On the left side of the page, the columnists were beating up on Nixon, and on the right side they were making excuses for him. I turned to the comics section: Andy Capp, my little island of sanity.
“You two are to go nowhere,” Riley said. “As soon as the Colonel returns from the briefing, he wants to chew your butts personally.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For not making progress on the Schultz case and for interfering with counterintelligence operations.”
“Interfering? How did we do that?”
“You questioned Captain Blood, didn’t you, at the Five Oh First?”
“Yeah.”
“Without the Provost Marshal’s approval?”
“We didn’t arrest him, for Christ sake, we just tried to ask him a few questions. None of which he answered, by the way.”
I was about to add that he’d threatened me but thought better of it. The fewer people who knew about Il-yong’s mother being a fugitive from ROK authorities, the better.
“Max nix,” Riley said. “The Colonel doesn’t want you questioning field grade officers without first receiving his express permission.”
Ernie returned with a mug of coffee. “He’s not a field grade officer. He’s a captain.”
“But he’s in charge of the Five Oh First, which is a battalion, so he’s operating at a field grade level.”
We both shook our heads. Forcing us to ask permission to talk to people was a clear indication that the PMO didn’t approve of where our investigation was heading. It also indicated the elevated status that Captain Blood enjoyed amongst the 8th Army Officer Corps. Why? Was it the force of his personality? Or another, more unsettling reason? I suspected it had something to do with the almost inquisitorial power Blood had managed to accumulate. He could accuse anyone of espionage. Or if not that, of somehow being a dupe for North Korean Communist agents. Such an accusation would ruin an officer’s career, or worse, send him to the federal pen.
“Fine, if we can’t ask him,” I said, “we’ll ask you. Did you find out anything else about Captain Blood?”
Last night, while we were polishing off his bottle of rye, Riley’d agreed to make inquiries with his 8th Army contacts in Personnel.
“I called Smitty,” he told me.
Sergeant Smith was another workaholic, like Riley, who invariably arrived at the 8th Army Personnel Office at least an hour early each morning.
“What’d he say?”
“Blood is overdue for a promotion. It’ll be up-or-out for him at the next promotion board.”
Up-or-out was the shorthand term for the US Army’s policy of getting rid of officers, or enlisted men, who didn’t receive their next promotion in a reasonable period of time. Once an officer was promoted to captain, he was not eligible for promotion for three years. After that, he was considered for promotion to major in each annual promotion board, held in the Army Personnel Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. If he was passed over for promotion three times, he’d be asked to leave the service. This meant Captain Blood had been passed over twice; this year was his last chance. Which possibly explained how uptight he’d been about me and Ernie asking questions. A bad mark on his personnel record at this point would mean he’d be toast on the next promotion board, then tossed out of the army and back onto the street as a “silly-vilian,” which maybe doesn’t mean much to non-military people. But when you’ve been in command of over forty soldiers and overseen a budget of tens of thousands of dollars, it’s not easy to go hat in hand to an employment agency, seeking work as a temp. Sure, maybe he could build himself a new life as a civilian-many GIs who’ve been forced out of the service had-but with his temper and his arrogance, it didn’t seem likely that Captain Blood would resign himself to pounding the pavement and begging for a job.
“By the way,” Riley said, “Smitty told me Blood had a legal name change. When he joined the service as a private-E-nothing, his name was Vladimir Bludovsky, from Buffalo, New York.”
Ernie slurped his coffee. “Cold up in Buffalo.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Riley said. “And not too many guys named Lance.”
I rose from my chair, walked over to the coffee pot and pulled myself a cup. Black. When I returned, I glanced at Miss Kim’s desk for the first time this morning. Her vase was gone, as was its flower, and the adjacent box of tissue.