What Camp Arrow did provide was a clear view of the traffic, mostly military, crossing Liberty Bridge. That’s when Mr. Nam found a real buyer. An agent for an anonymous Korean man he later came to know as Commander Ku contacted him about renting space on the compound. It would be an excellent produce transshipment point, he claimed. Nam didn’t see how it could be, pushed right up against a tributary of the Imjin River like it was, and in that area, the northern side of the river was used strictly for military training, so no agriculture was allowed. But as they say in Korea, “Sonnim-un wang ida.” The customer is king. So he didn’t argue. When Commander Ku became aware that the seller was the 501st MI, he insisted on meeting Captain Blood. After Blood took a few interviews with Commander Ku’s men, according to Mr. Nam, the two went into business together.
Each Army-issue map composing the mosaic was about three feet by three feet. I reached up and grabbed the one held in place with a red pin representing Camp Arrow. Carefully, I pried loose rows of staples until I was able to pull that section of the map off the wall.
“That’s where they went,” I said.
“How do you know?”
I pointed to the contours of the ridgeline. “You could hold off an army from there.”
“That’s why they put Camp Arrow there in the first place,” Ernie said.
“He’s waiting for us.”
“Why?”
“To deal.”
“Deal for what?”
“Miss Kim’s life.”
The phone rang. Ernie and I looked at one another. It rang again. I reached for it.
“Sueno,” I answered.
“If you want to see her alive, you’re going to call off the KNPs. And I want Nam brought up here to me. Now.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’re not stupid, Sueno.”
So my hunch was correct. Even if Nam had signed a statement that implicated Captain Blood in espionage, it was just a piece of paper. Eliminate the live witness, and a good attorney could go to work to destroy the credibility of a statement that they’d claim was signed under duress. So Mr. Nam was the key to this whole mess. What Captain Blood wanted to do now was put a bullet into Nam’s skull and throw him into the Imjin River.
“If we bring Nam, you’ll turn Miss Kim over to us?”
“That’s the deal. But only you and Nam. No KNPs.” He confirmed that he was at Camp Arrow.
“I need my driver.”
Ernie winced.
“No dice,” Blood replied. “You and Nam. That’s it.”
“How am I supposed to pry him loose from the KNPs?”
“You’re a clever guy, Sueno. You’ll think of something. Eighth Army has clout with the Korean government.”
“Okay,” I said. “But it’ll take time to convince them to turn him over to us and drive up there. At least a couple of days.”
“You have until twenty hundred hours.” Eight p.m. “Tonight. If you’re not here by then, we’ll toss what’s left of her in the river.”
“I want to talk to her,” I said.
Instead, there was a scream so loud even Ernie could hear it. Blood hung up.
“Who screamed?” Ernie asked. When I didn’t answer, he said again, “Who screamed?”
“Easy, Ernie,” I warned.
But the answer sat uneasily, weighing on both of our chests. The voice unmistakably belonged to Miss Kim, and we had just a few hours to save her.
– 33-
Ernie downshifted the jeep over a patch of black ice. The temperature had dropped by ten degrees Fahrenheit. According to the Armed Forces Korea Network, a cold front was moving out of Manchuria down the Korean Peninsula, and the full force of the storm traveling with it was expected to hit at midnight.
Nam wasn’t with us. After Captain Blood hung up, I called Inspector Kill and explained the situation. He refused to turn Nam over to us for a rogue mission without KNP involvement. What he did promise to do was meet us in Tuam-dong, the old village that once served Camp Arrow. He, Nam, and a troop of armed KNPs would be waiting there.
“We’ll stay out of sight,” he told me. “We’ll turn Nam over to you up in Tuam-dong, and then two of our officers will conceal themselves in your vehicle as you bring Nam into the camp.”
Miss Kim’s scream replayed in my head. Her life was at stake. I had no choice but to agree to Inspector Kill’s plan. Once we made our way to Camp Arrow, I’d play it by ear.
Ernie wound around another curve and said, “Where in the hell is this place?”
I aimed the beam of my flashlight onto my map. It wasn’t late, only mid-afternoon, but the sky was so overcast that visibility was poor. “Not too far now. Before we hit Liberty Bridge, we’ll head on up into the hills.”
Freedom Bridge was the largest and most famous bridge across the Imjin River. Once you crossed the Imjin there, the next stop, a few miles farther on, was the
heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, the only buffer between us and the 700,000-man-strong Communist army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea. Normally, the farthest north civilians could get was along the southern banks of the Imjin River. A park and national shrine had been set up by the Korean government just south of Freedom Bridge to commemorate the heroic multi-national effort that had kept South Korea a free country during the Korean War. Tour buses drove up there, people took photos by the fast-flowing Imjin, and happy couples even stood for formal wedding pictures, the military bridge lined with explosives serving as the backdrop. The waters of the Imjin sometimes held floating mines launched south by the citizens of the Communist North.
Liberty Bridge, by contrast, didn’t have tourists.
It was in an area that was restricted to civilians unless you lived in one of the farm villages dotting the nearby hills. And Liberty Bridge wasn’t nearly as scenic as Freedom Bridge. Instead of being suspended elegantly twenty yards or so above the flowing water, Liberty Bridge was a cement platform on concrete stanchions that was elevated just a few feet above the normal flow level of one of the tributaries of the Imjin. Why this was so, I wasn’t sure, but it was probably because this originally made it a more difficult target for North Korean air and artillery assault.
The men who guarded the bridge wore rubber overshoes because on any windy day, of which there were many in the narrow valley, the choppy surf from the river washed across the roadway and soaked their combat boots.
Ernie must have made good time, because when we reached the village of Tuam-dong, Inspector Kill and his officers hadn’t arrived yet. We parked near a large wooden building just a few yards from Liberty Bridge. The side wall had been whitewashed with just a single coat. Beneath the thin layer of paint, the old sign could still be made out: pink dragon club. And on the other side of the street, the smile bar and number one chop house. All closed and shuttered since the American base had been mothballed.
The bridge itself was guarded by ROK Army soldiers. In the distance, we watched them pace the length of the low-slung cement. On the embankment closest to us, two of their vehicles were parked-one a two-and-a-half-ton truck, probably for transporting the guards, and the other a jeep with a long radio antenna for the officer in charge. We stepped away from the jeep and studied the hills that ran parallel to the river. Though a heavy mist rolled slowly in, there was still enough sunlight to see most of the terrain features.