Thick vinyl flooring lay hidden beneath sweat-stained sleeping mats and thick cotton comforters. The room reeked of perfume and flatulence. One of the tufts of curled hair sticking out of the comforters was blonde. Mr. Kill pulled back the blanket. The woman beneath wore brown wool long johns. She pulled her legs up and hugged herself. Then her eyes popped open. Instantly, she sat up, her cute figure showing itself even through the thick material.
“Wei kurei?” she said in a childlike, whining voice, rubbing her eyes. Why this way?
Mr. Kill spoke to her in soothing Korean. “Miss Na, I’m sorry to bother you.” He showed her his badge. “I just have a few questions.” The girl continued to rub her eyes and started to rise. “No need to get up,” Kill said, holding out his palm. “Two nights ago, you sat with Mr. Choi. I think he drank quite a bit.”
“Yes,” she said. “Can I go to the bathroom?” Miss Na didn’t seem at all surprised to see Mr. Kill in her boudoir. Probably other men barged their way in here at odd hours. The other girls were starting to rouse themselves.
“Of course you can go to the bathroom,” Mr. Kill said, “in a moment. Did Mr. Choi take off his jacket or did he wear it?”
“He wore it,” she said. “It’s cold down there. Ajjima won’t pay for heat.” She hugged herself again and started to rise. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Mr. Kill held her shoulder. “In a moment,” he said, “after you’ve answered my questions.”
She hammered a small fist against the wall and spoke once again in her small, whining voice. “But I have to go.”
“What happened to Mr. Choi’s badge, the one that was clipped to his lapel?”
Miss Choi closed her eyes and stomped her foot. “I have to go.”
“As soon as you answer my question.”
She shook her head in frustration. Silky blonde strands swayed beneath brown roots. “I didn’t want to do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“I didn’t want to take the badge.” She stared up at him as if he were stupid. “But ajjima said I had to.”
“Why?”
“Why? Some man, a strange man, was offering her money. She took it.”
“This man asked her to steal Mr. Choi’s badge?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Did you see this man?”
“No-oo. Can I go to the bathroom now?”
She pushed past Mr. Kill. He let her go. After poking her feet into plastic sandals, she stomped down the hallway. The door to the bathroom only closed partially so we all stood there and listened to her tinkle. As we did so, the other women scooted away from us, various expressions of suspicion and alarm on their faces. Mr. Kill slid the door shut.
When Miss Na returned, he said, “So while this Mr. Choi was drinking, you slipped the badge off his lapel?”
Miss Na stomped her foot again. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You had no choice,” Mr. Kill said soothingly. “You had to go to the bathroom.”
The girl pouted.
“How did you get the badge?” Mr. Kill asked.
“It was easy,” Miss Na told. “Choi ajjosi gets so drunk.” Her button nose crinkled.
We left the bedroom and hurried downstairs. The older woman had changed into a long velvet house dress, combed her hair back and sat at the bar smoking. When Mr. Kill walked up to her she said, “He didn’t tell me his name.” Kill stood next to her, his hands in his pockets, glaring at her. As if discussing the weather, she continued. “He offered me twenty thousand won if I would get Mr. Choi’s badge for him.”
“How did he know Choi would be here?”
“He followed him. But we didn’t steal it.”
“How did you get it then?”
“We waited until Choi Sonseingnim was very drunk and then I had Miss Na ask him if he would give it to us. He did.”
“And you sold the badge for twenty thousand won?”
“You think I’m a fool?” She puffed her cigarette, blew out the smoke and said, “I sold it to him for forty thousand.”
— 6-
When we returned to the CID Detachment, Miss Kim handed me a pink phone message printed in her precise hand. The caller was Captain Prevault. As she handed it to me she gazed at me inquiringly, a slight smile on her lips, wondering, I imagined, who this cultured woman was who called. I thanked her but didn’t answer her unspoken question.
I found a phone in the back of the detachment that wasn’t being used. I dialed. No answer. As the phone was ringing, Riley shouted at me.
“Sueno! Bascom! About time you got your butts back here. You have ten minutes to get over to the ROK MND.” The Ministry of National Defense. “They’re having a briefing on what they know so far about this North Korean agent.”
I set the phone down and walked toward his desk. “What North Korean agent?”
Riley put his hands on his narrow hips, staring at me, letting his eyes cross. “The man with the iron sickle, for Christ’s sake. The guy you’re looking for.”
“They’ve got him?”
“I don’t know about all that. All I know is that the Provost Marshal will be there and the Commander of the Five-Oh-First Counter Intelligence unit and your sorry presence is mandatory.”
“Mandatory” was a word Riley dearly loved. He caressed the word, filtering it through his yellow, crooked teeth.
“Better belay that, Bascom,” Riley said to Ernie, who was lazily pouring himself a cup of coffee. “If you’re not there by fourteen thirty hours your ass is grass.”
Ernie stirred sugar into his coffee. Ten minutes later we sauntered toward his jeep. I glanced once again at the message from Captain Prevault and stuffed it in my pocket.
A ton of brass sat in the first few rows of the auditorium, the Korean officers looking relaxed, the American officers less so, out of their element in this oddly proportioned building reeking of kimchi. The seats were too small for Caucasian bodies. On the stage was a female ROK Army officer wearing a tight green skirt and a matching tunic, a woman so statuesque and beautiful that not one man in the room could tear his eyes from her. Her name was Major Rhee Mi-sook. I’d met her, if that was the right word, during my one and only sojourn into the Communist state of North Korea. There, she’d worn the brown uniform with red epaulettes of the North Korean People’s Army and her rank was Senior Captain, a rank that didn’t even exist in the South Korean army. As beautiful as she was, she repelled me viscerally. My stomach knotted just looking at her. She’d been pursuing me-or pretending to pursue me-in her capacity as a North Korean counter-intelligence operative. When I managed to escape back to South Korea where I’d been debriefed, she showed up again, this time in Seoul, this time wearing her South Korean army uniform.
I’d reported what I knew about her but I was told to keep quiet. I protested. How could we allow a North Korean intelligence officer to operate in our midst? She was a double agent, I was told, working for the South Korean government, our allies, and only pretending to work for the North Koreans. I was ordered to let it go at that.
They could say she was on the South Korean side but I’d seen her operate in the north, and I didn’t believe anyone could fake that much love for the Dear Leader and that much avidity in her work. I had the scars to prove it.
Now that same Rhee Mi-sook was in charge of the hunt-on the ROK Army side-for the man with the iron sickle. Someone with stars on his shoulders-whoever had appointed her to this job-also had stars in his eyes, dazzled by her charm. As I watched her, it was easy to see why.
Major Rhee strode back and forth across the stage on her black stiletto heels, rapping her stainless steel pointer against charts and graphs, speaking every sentence first in Korean and then in sweetly pronounced English.