Ernie and I walked into the office. It was Spartan. A grey Army-issue desk with a full in-basket and wooden filing cabinets behind and a black phone resting on a blue cloth at the edge of the desk. The filing cabinets each had a metal bar running vertically through the front handles, which were padlocked securely into place.
I started riffling through the in-box. Ernie checked the desk drawers. Sergeant Jerrod’s name was everywhere, along with the unit designation of Headquarters Company, 501st Military Intelligence Battalion.
“I think she sent someone to get him,” I told Ernie.
“Get who?”
“Jerrod.”
“You think he has a hooch nearby?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“With a cushy setup like this? Yeah, I probably would.”
The paperwork in the in-box and in the desk drawer was routine. Personnel matters, policy directives concerning unit training and physical fitness. The good stuff pertaining to the three counterintelligence cases Jerrod had brought recently were almost certainly in the locked file cabinets. Ernie and I stared at them in frustration.
“How are we going to get in?” he asked.
“You can’t kick that metal bar off?”
“Not without breaking my leg. Maybe the grumpy old broad downstairs has a crowbar.”
“Maybe. But I have a better idea.”
“What?”
“I think the guy with the keys is on his way. Maybe he’ll open the cabinets for us.”
“Maybe he will,” Ernie said, “if we ask him nice.”
Ten minutes later, footsteps tromped up the stairs.
Ernie and I had turned off the lights and re-closed the door. Of course, the lock was still busted, but there was nothing we could do about that. The footsteps slowed to a halt on the other side. “Anybody in there?” called a deep but unsteady voice.
Ernie and I sat on straight-backed chairs on either side of the room’s only entrance. We didn’t answer. Slowly, someone pushed the door open. Then a hand reached in and flicked on the light switch. The man waited a second, then burst into the room, quickly reaching the opposite wall and swiveling around. He held a .45 automatic in his hand. His eyes were wide, his face sweaty.
Sergeant Leon Jerrod was a stout man. Not fat, but pretty wide for his height, which was about five-foot-six. Still, he looked strong and had a low center of gravity, so fighting him wouldn’t be easy, and knocking him off his feet might be impossible. His hair was dark, trimmed short in a butch haircut that accentuated his round head. His eyes were round, too, bovine and wet. Of course, what Ernie and I noticed first was the barrel of his gun pointing at Ernie, then at me.
“Sorry about your door,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ernie added. “We were in sort of a hurry. And your charming hostess downstairs wasn’t much help.”
“In a hurry for what?”
“To talk to you,” I said, “about a couple of cases you closed in the last few months.” Both Ernie and I kept our hands motionless at our sides. Rule number one: never make an armed man nervous. “Can I reach in my pocket,” I asked, “and pull out my ID?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Agent Sueno, Eighth Army CID. He’s my partner, Agent Bascom.”
“Sorry for the intrusion,” Ernie said, smiling.
“Yeah,” Jerrod said, swiveling the gun between us and motioning with his free hand. “Let me see some ID.”
We both started to reach into our jackets but he screeched, “One at a time! You first.”
I pulled out my CID badge. “Slide it to me on the floor,” he said.
I did.
Crouching but still keeping the gun on us, he flipped open the leather holder and held the ID up to the light. Then he turned to Ernie. Ernie reached slowly into his coat and repeated the process.
“Okay,” he said, tossing the badges onto his desk. “What the hell is all this about?”
“You are Sergeant Leon Jerrod,” I asked, “aren’t you?”
He wasn’t wearing his uniform. Like us, he was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
“I’ll ask the questions,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just paying a friendly visit,” Ernie said. “And looking for some backup information on that guy you put away.” He turned toward me. “What’s the name?”
“Do you mind?” I asked, motioning toward my jacket pocket again.
He nodded. I pulled out Major Schultz’s inspection report, thumbed toward the back pages and said, “Arenas, Hector A., Staff Sergeant. Convicted by general court-martial of espionage. Twenty years at Leavenworth.”
“Good job,” Ernie said, smiling even more broadly.
“Just what I get paid for,” Jerrod said, but I knew he felt proud.
“Do you want to frisk us or something,” I asked, “before you put the gun away?”
He stared at the .45 as if just realizing it was clutched in his hand. “Oh, this. Yeah, sorry.” He switched on the safety and shoved the weapon beneath his belt. “You guys gave me a start.”
“Sorry about that,” I said.
He grinned at us like a guy hungry for companionship. Which he probably was. I’d seen the crowd at the VFWs and AmVets around the country, and they were mostly geriatric. Korean War and World War II veterans, few within a decade of Jerrod’s age. And as a counterintelligence agent, he wouldn’t be encouraged to socialize with the young guys on Camp Red Cloud. He had, after all, been sent here to spy on them.
“How about we have a beer downstairs?” he said.
“Sounds good to me,” Ernie said, slapping his knees.
“Me too,” I said.
Ernie and I stood, towering over Jerrod. He grimaced briefly, but then laughed and backed out of the door. We followed him downstairs and ordered a liter of cold OB and three glasses from the ravishing creature behind the bar. How she felt about serving us, no one could tell. Her face remained grim at all times; I thought she’d missed her calling as an undertaker. The first beer was followed by the second, and then Jerrod suggested a round of bourbon. Ernie and I heartily agreed. We sipped on the imported whisky, but since Ernie was buying, Jerrod kept putting single shots away, and then doubles, as fast as Miss Congeniality could pour.
The way I understood it, these barrooms operated under the charter of the American veterans associations while someone else, invariably a Korean, paid for the concession. So the barmaid must’ve been happy to see two big spenders from Seoul, although you’d never guess it from her facial expression.
By the time the regular drinking crowd showed up, Jerrod was looped. Ernie engaged him in animated conversation-something about how the counterculture wastrels were leaching our resolve to fight Godless Communism-and while they raved, I leaned against Jerrod and unhooked the keys that hung by a metal ring clasped to his belt loop. I excused myself to use the latrine, but when I returned, I passed the two guys arguing now about whether or not Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In had weakened our national fiber and, while the barmaid was busy serving some old vets, I slipped upstairs.
A single key opened all three cabinets. One of them was empty, and another held Jerrod’s military-issue field gear: fur-lined cap, parka, mittens, rain poncho, wet-weather overshoes. The central file had what I was looking for. The Arenas file was right up front. Behind it, farther back in the alphabet, I found the other two. I slipped the files into a large mailing envelope, then slipped the envelope beneath my belt in front. I zipped up my nylon jacket and slapped my stomach to make sure the entire package was secure. Then I relocked the cabinets, turned off the light and trotted downstairs. Ernie glanced over at me. I gave him the high sign and continued out the front door, walking quickly over to the jeep. By the time he approached, I’d already pulled the Arenas file and slid the other two files under the metal floor panel beneath the passenger seat where the jack, crowbar, flares and the other pieces of roadside equipment were stored, including a short-handled axe for chopping off ice during the brutal Korean winters.