“If you find her,” I asked, “will you charge her with the murder?”
“I will have no choice,” he told us. “The decision will be made, how do you say, above my pay grade.”
“She’ll be convicted and thrown in jail, and the embarrassment will be over.”
Kill poured more hot water into his cup. “Exactly,” he said. “Unless you two figure out who else might’ve had a motive to kill Major Schultz.”
“We’re working on that,” Ernie said.
“You’d better work fast. Once we find Miss Jo Kyong-ja, she’ll be on trial within days.”
“How long do you figure the trial will last?” I asked.
Mr. Kill grimaced. “Maybe past noon,” he said. “Probably not.”
Ernie dropped me off at the 121st Evac Hospital on Yongsan South Post. He drove away to top off the jeep, and we would rendezvous at the barracks in an hour. We had a plan, but in order to implement it, we had to stay away from the Provost Marshal for as long as possible.
I made my way to the officers’ lunchroom.
Inside the double doors, a steam table stretched along a serving line, and to the left were rows of about two-dozen Formica-topped tables. I wore the civilian coat and tie required of a CID agent on duty so no one questioned my presence. She was there, sitting alone at a table in the far corner. I zigzagged my way through the boisterous crowd of nurses in their starched white uniforms and absentminded doctors with stethoscopes still hanging around their necks. When I approached, she looked up. Her eyes were large and moist, and when she saw me she dropped her spoon and looked away. Before she could object, I sat down opposite her.
“I have to talk to you.”
“No need,” she said.
“Of course there’s a need.” There was no one in earshot, but nevertheless I lowered my voice. I didn’t wait for her permission, and just started talking fast, so she couldn’t interrupt; something I don’t normally do. I told her about my childhood, about my mother dying when I was small and being abandoned by my father, and what it was like growing up in one foster home after another.
“It wasn’t all bad,” I told her. “Many of my foster parents were good people, but at a certain age I would be shuffled to another home, ripped away from the other foster kids, who’d become like brothers and sisters to me. It was confusing. And as soon as I became a teenager, I grew as tall as a man, and stronger, and suddenly my presence made people nervous. As soon as I could, I joined the Army.”
Captain Leah Prevault listened patiently, staring at her unfinished bowl of navy bean soup.
“My greatest fear,” I told her, “was to have a child I couldn’t take care of. And now, because of this oppressive South Korean regime, that’s the situation I’m in. If I could’ve rectified that, if it had ever become possible for Yong In-ja and me to get back together and raise our son, that’s always what I would’ve done. Regardless of how my feelings for her might’ve evolved, I’d have done it for him.”
She finally looked up at me. “And you’d do it now.”
“You’ve changed everything,” I said.
She studied me, gauging my sincerity. “But you can’t be sure.”
I broke from her gaze. “Right now it’s impossible for me to see Il-yong’s mother. She’s a fugitive. If the Korean CIA catches her, they’ll interrogate her, torture her, and probably execute her without a trial. So planning our future is moot. But politics are funny. There could be a revolution tomorrow, Pak Chung-hee could be overthrown and suddenly she’d be able to come out in the open. That’s why I’m hesitant.”
“As unlikely as that is,” she said, “you don’t want to bet against the chance that it might happen.”
“I never want to mislead you.”
She sat quietly for a moment, then said, “So what do you want to do?”
I really, honestly searched for an answer. I detest people who default to saying they don’t know the answer to a question because it involves something as difficult as thought. Or something more complex, like reflecting on your own emotions. But finally, I had to give her my honest answer. “I don’t know.”
“And me?” she asked. “What am I supposed to do?”
When I didn’t reply, she pushed her soup away. “I have to think about this,” she told me.
Helplessly, I watched her make her way through the crowded lunchroom, ignoring the few people who greeted her. One of the nurses a few tables away had been watching us. She glared at me as if I’d done something wrong. I probably had.
– 20-
“Where the hell is this address, anyway?” Ernie asked.
We were in the Taehyon-dong district of Seoul, which was packed with bean curd eateries, bicycle repair shops and small stationery stores on the main road, and homes stacked one atop another like tile shingles leading up the sides of the steep hills.
“Slow down,” I said, “I can’t read the signs.”
Behind us, impatient kimchi cabs and three-wheeled trucks honked as they swerved around us. Pedestrian crossings were packed with men pushing carts and old women balancing impossibly huge bundles atop their heads.
“How do people live in this mess?” Ernie asked.
“Pretty well, sometimes,” I said. “Behind those brick walls, some of those hooches are pretty luxurious.”
“Some,” Ernie said. “Most not.”
We turned up a narrow lane. The first few yards were paved until, about halfway up the hill, blacktop gave way to mud. The jeep’s four-wheel drive churned upward. Now most of the homes were held up by walls not of brick, but of splintered wood.
“Miss Kim always looks so nice when she comes to work,” Ernie said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
We marveled at how she’d managed it, emerging like a goddess from a soiled cocoon. Finally, we neared the address we were looking for-117 bonji, 227 ho. Walkways too narrow for the jeep split off the main path.
“Stop here,” I said. “Let me hop out and look around.”
I walked down one pathway, reading the numbers painted on wood, but they were wrong, so I doubled back and tried the pathway on the opposite side of the road. About three hooches down, I found it. I ran back and waved to Ernie. He inched the jeep as close to the wall as he could, turned off the engine, padlocked the steering wheel, and joined me at the mouth of the alley.
“How we going to work this?” he asked.
I studied him. “My God, Ernie, you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” he said. But his shoulders had risen, his stomach was pulled in and his eyes darted from side to side like a schoolboy at his first dance.
“Okay,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You’re not nervous. I’ll do the talking.”
We marched through the muddy lane until we reached the gateway marked 117 bonji, 227 ho. The family name printed next to the number was Kim. Miss Kim’s family name, obviously, but that didn’t mean much. In Korea, roughly a third of the country is named Kim, from three or four ancient clans. Another third of the country is named Pak or Lee, and the final third shares about a hundred different names. Was this the right Kim? According to the five-by-eight card Staff Sergeant Riley had given me it was, but there was only one way to be sure. I pushed the buzzer. A few seconds later a woman spoke through the intercom. “Nugu seiyo?” Who is it?
I could tell from her voice that she wasn’t Miss Kim.
I leaned forward and spoke directly into the metal grate. “We’re from Eighth Army,” I said in Korean. “We’re looking for Miss Kim who works on the compound. My name is Geogie.”
I pronounced George the Korean way, dropping the hard “r” sound and abrupt consonant ending.
There was a long silence, as if the person on the other end of the intercom was stunned. “Wei-yo?” she finally said. Why?