The time for the meeting came and went. Nothing happened. Apparently, the owner of the Sejong Inn had a phone. Riley called us just before midnight.
“No-show,” he growled. “You’re wasting my time.”
“Maybe they’re checking the place out,” I told him. “Be patient.”
“Well, I’m not waiting around. Some old broad here is bugging the crap out of me, trying to talk me into buying fresh octopus. The little fucker keeps pushing his tentacles up over the edge of the bucket. Creeps me out.”
“All right. We’re on our way.”
I set the phone down and looked at Mr. Kill. I’d been holding the receiver a few inches from my ear and he’d heard what had been said. His face had turned pale. Without speaking to me, he barked an order at one of the uniformed officers waiting outside his office. The man stepped into the open doorway, listened to the commands, bowed, turned and ran down the hallway.
“What is it?” I asked.
Ernie was on his feet.
“No time,” Mr. Kill said, immediately up and sprinting toward the door. Ernie and I ran after him.
Inspector Oh, out of her nightclub apparel and back in uniform, slammed on the brakes as Mr. Kill hopped out, Ernie and I in hot pursuit. These catacomb-like pedestrian lanes weren’t wide enough for cars. They were barely wide enough for Mr. Kill, Ernie, and me to hop single-file through the darkness, avoiding open sewage drains and slapping at low-hanging cobwebs.
Ahead I saw the blue and red neon sign that blinked in hangul: sejong inn. Footsteps, men shouting and the waving beams of flashlights converged all around us. Mr. Kill was apparently familiar with these dark passageways, and pulled ahead a few yards. I was about to speed up and close the gap when a small figure burst out of an indentation in the darkness. I skidded to a halt, Ernie bumped into me. From the glare of moonlight, I looked down on a round, wrinkled face. One eye seemed to be closed shut.
“You buy?” she asked, holding up a bucket that smelled of the sea. A small tentacle gripped the metal lip. She smiled a gap-toothed smile and tilted back the lid. Inside, murky water sloshed. Something fleshy, lined with what seemed to be at least a dozen suction cups, wriggled and groped for the sky. I touched a meaty shoulder covered in felt and moved her gently to the side.
“Not now, ajjuma,” I said.
She offered the bucket to Ernie. He wrinkled his nose and said, “Maybe later.”
We continued running toward blue and red neon. We took one wrong turn and then another, but finally reached the pathway in front of the gate that led into the small courtyard of the Sejong Inn. Over a half-dozen uniformed Korean National Police officers milled about, waving their flashlights, checking the grounds in front of the low wooden porch. Ernie and I slipped off our shoes and walked inside.
Behind an open oil-papered sliding door, Staff Sergeant Riley sat cross-legged on the vinyl floor. On a cushion opposite him sat Mr. Kill.
“She was an old hag,” Riley told him, “trying to sell us octopus.”
“Did she speak English?” Mr. Kill asked.
“A little. Broken English, like she’d been selling useless shit to GIs for centuries.”
“And Nam went with her?”
“He said he wanted to buy some whatever-you-call-it.”
“Nakji.” Octopus.
“His wife likes it.” Riley shuddered. “I don’t know how anybody can put those creepy little suction cups in their mouth. Gross.”
Chief Homicide Inspector Gil Kwon-up reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a rumpled pack of Turtleboat cigarettes. He offered them around to me, Ernie, and Riley but we all refused. We weren’t health freaks or anything, but somehow none of us had ever acquired the habit-too busy boozing, I suppose.
Kill pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and puffed contentedly. Then he looked at Riley and said, “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“That woman,” he said, “the one you called an old hag. She’s a high-ranking officer in the North Korean People’s Army.”
“Her?”
Ernie and I glanced at one another.
“Yes. The woman who was trying to sell you fresh octopus. I believe she is the operative Mr. Nam has been calling Commander Ku.”
“He never said Commander Ku was a woman,” I replied.
“Maybe he didn’t know. Or maybe he held back, hoping to make his escape. If so, it worked.”
“But . . . they can’t have gotten far,” Ernie said. He was about to admit that we’d just seen her outside, but swallowed his words. Professional pride, I suppose.
Kill shook his head. “She must have had an escape route well planned. Yes, we might get lucky and stumble upon them, but if I were a betting man, I’d save my chips. She’s gone, and even if she weren’t, I don’t know that we’d be able to bring her in. Not alive, anyway.”
I thought about what Kill had just said and realized that, even within the past few minutes, she could have traveled far outside the perimeter the KNPs had set up. There wasn’t anything more I could do, but I did have one question: “Why’d she go to all this trouble just to pull Nam’s butt out of the fire?”
“They want to interrogate him, of course. See what we wanted. But also they want to send a message to those who cooperate with them that if they’re caught, they won’t just be left to their cruel fate.”
“What will the North Koreans do with him?”
Kill shrugged. “Maybe put him on a new assignment, give him a new identity down here in the south. Or smuggle him north.”
“They can do that?”
“There are plenty of fishing boats in the Yellow Sea. We can’t monitor them all.”
I turned to Riley. “So what’d she ask you?”
He shrugged. “Routine stuff, like where I was stationed. Told her I was a civilian. She seemed impressed and asked me how much money I made.”
“What’d you say?”
Riley quoted a fantastic sum.
“Sure, in your whiskey-fed imagination you make that much,” Ernie said.
“Hey!” Riley replied. “I was undercover.”
“Did you tell her you repaired missiles?” I asked.
Riley nodded. “I told her about the canisters and deuterium and all that stuff.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said I don’t look that smart.”
Ernie barked a laugh. Even Kill seemed amused. Riley’s face turned red, and he looked like he wanted to punch somebody.
“You did a good job,” I told him, standing up. “Let’s get out of here.”
Before we left, Riley accepted one of Mr. Kill’s cigarettes. Officer Oh drove us back to the Munsan Police Station, where Ernie, Riley, and I switched to the new 21 T Car motor pool jeep.
“Hey,” Riley said, when he climbed in the back seat. “What happened to the tuck-and-roll?”
Ernie flipped him the bird. “Sit on it and rotate, Riley.”
“I risk my life for God and country, and this is the thanks I get?”
A few minutes later, we were on the Main Supply Route, rolling south. Riley made himself comfortable on the canvas seat in back, and soon he started to snore.
“Octopus,” Ernie said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We should’ve bought some.”
– 37-
Even if we hadn’t succeeded in collaring Commander Ku, we’d established a link between North Korean espionage agents and Mr. Nam-a known associate of Captain Blood, on whom the late Major Schultz had filed an official investigation report. This effectively established a motive for murder, other than the revenge narrative that had tied Miss Jo Kyong-ja to the crime. And it made much more sense that someone with a large set of connections and resources, rather than an Itaewon business girl, had pulled off the murder of a high-ranking officer.
But I still didn’t think we had enough evidence to present our case to the Provost Marshal. Because of all the murmured invective and disapproving looks we’d received when we reported on the facts behind the deaths of Captain Blood and Specialist Fenton, I wanted more before I laid the Schultz murder case on Colonel Brace’s desk.