“There is no doubt,” she told the audience, “that the man who murdered Mr. Barretsford and the man who murdered Corporal Collingsworth are one and the same person. And there is also no doubt that he is a highly competent and thoroughly trained professional sent south by the North Korean bandit government to sew dissension between our ROK/US alliance. This,” she said, peering into the eyes of the silent officer corps, “shall not be allowed.”
The group broke into spontaneous applause.
“What is this,” Ernie said, leaning close to me, “a freaking strip show?”
“Quiet,” I replied.
“If she starts unbuttoning her tunic,” he told me, “these guys are going to go nuts.”
Ernie was right about one thing, the ROK Army was pulling out all the stops. They had their best up there delivering the briefing because they weren’t taking any chances of allowing a couple of murders to damage the special relationship between South Korea and the US. Too much money was at stake. Hundreds of millions of dollars of military and economic aide passed each year from the American treasury to the ROK government, and if stories managed to make their way into newspapers back in the States about how our brave boys overseas were being brutally murdered by evil foreigners, that could jeopardize the steady flow of cash. Blaming the murders on the North Koreans had the effect of solidifying our alliance. It gave us a common goal. Stop the Commies.
Mr. Kill was not there, nor were any representatives of the Korean National Police. They and the ROK Army worked independently. By the amount of olive drab in the room, however, it was apparent the 8th Army had thrown their lot in firmly with the ROK Army.
Major Rhee was replaced at the podium by a senior officer, a husky middle-aged general brandishing a gold-plated pointer. The ROKs were good enough showmen to keep Major Rhee up on stage, sitting in a straight-backed chair, her long legs crossed and glistening beneath the overhead lights.
When the general had said his piece, the show was over. Officers filtered out. Not one item of hard evidence had been presented, only innuendo, such as the fact that there were a suspected two to three thousand North Korean agents in South Korea, and that their training included wielding mundane weapons like the naht and other farm implements. We were reminded they were experts at creating and using false identification, not to mention experts at survival, escape, and evasion.
None of this proved the man with the iron sickle was a North Korean agent. He might be, but also he might not.
The Provost Marshal spotted Ernie and me. When he didn’t gesture for us to join him, we made a quick retreat.
Just before leaving the auditorium, I stopped and looked back. The woman I had known as Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook still stood on the podium, her arms crossed. Our eyes met. She didn’t smile. She wasn’t the smiling type. Her face was hard, cold, but hideously beautiful.
After leaving the ROK Ministry of National Defense, Ernie turned left toward the Samgakji Circle and then south toward Han River Bridge Number One. Halfway there, he hung a left and entered the back entrance of Yongsan Compound South Post. An MP I didn’t know stopped us at the gate and checked our dispatch.
“You headed to the morgue?”
“Eventually everybody is,” Ernie said.
“No, I mean now.”
“Why would we go there?”
The MP shrugged. “Seems like that’s where everyone’s going.”
“What do you mean ‘everyone’?”
“All the MPs.”
He waved us through, Ernie stepped on the gas, and the jeep surged through the gate.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of hard feelings about Collingsworth. Maybe some people are stopping over there to pay their respects.”
“Maybe. Not a bad idea. I want to look at the body again anyway.”
Ernie shrugged but turned right after the 121 Evacuation Hospital, heading for the morgue.
There were three MP jeeps parked out front.
“A convention,” Ernie said,
He parked and locked the jeep and we walked past the wooden sign stenciled with the words MORGUE, 8TH UNITED STATES ARMY. We pushed through double doors into an air conditioned environment. The white smocked clerk at the front counter checked our badges.
“Collingsworth?” he said.
We nodded.
“Join the crowd. There’s a few of them back there.”
And he was right. A half dozen uniformed MPs stood inside the cold locker. One of the long metal cabinets had been pulled out of the wall, displaying a shroud with a body underneath.
As we walked down the central corridor, the MPs stared at us. Ernie nodded to them because we knew most of them. All of them had taken off their helmets and tucked them under their arms. Everyone was armed, with black holsters hanging off canvas web belts.
“He was a good man,” Ernie said.
They continued to stare, but no one responded. Then, single file, they marched out of the room.
After they left, Ernie said, “What the hell’s the matter with them?”
I stared at the body beneath us. “They figure since we’re CID we should’ve caught the man with the iron sickle after the first murder. Then maybe Collingsworth would still be alive.”
“We weren’t even on the case until this morning.”
“They don’t give a shit about that.”
We were used to hard feelings. From the MPs’ point of view, we Criminal Investigation agents got all the glory, and they did all the grunt work. Ernie shrugged it off. He gestured toward the body. “You want to do the honors?”
I took a deep breath, reached in, grabbed the edge of the heavy cotton shroud, and whipped it back.
Collingsworth stared straight up at us, his blue eyes open, shining with light almost as if he were alive. But his skin was pasty, his cheeks slack, and now that the blood had been washed away, the wound was nauseatingly apparent. Like a cloud of gas, the odor reached us: meaty, sour, dead. Grey tubes of flesh stuck out of a slash in the neck. Blood coagulated around the edges of the wound and it was so wide-about four inches-and so deep that every artery and vein and esophageal passageway stood out as clearly as a drawing in Grey’s Anatomy.
Ernie looked away. “So what are we here for, anyway?”
“Just to see if there’s something I missed out at the crime scene. I was sort of hyper out there.”
I studied the wound more carefully. It was on the left side of his neck, starting almost at the spine and slicing forward. This was consistent with the wound on Barretsford at the 8th Army Claims office. They seemed to have been delivered so fast that the victim never even had time to flinch, much less raise his hands to ward off the blow. Apparently, Collingsworth heard something, he turned to look back, and the tip of the blade caught him in his neck, the naht slicing forward. Simultaneously, Collingsworth continued to turn and flinched backward. This had the untoward effect of causing the blade to slice even deeper into Collingsworth’s neck, severing his air passage and the carotid artery. Blood would’ve gushed out, pumping like a hose spewing water. Some of it would’ve landed on the attacker, on his coat, on his shirt. The killer must’ve been standing too close to avoid it, not like at the Claims Office, where he was reaching forward across Barretsford’s desk. This time, instead of continuing the attack in a frenzied manner, as he had on Barretsford, the man with the iron sickle backed off. There was only one slice, one wound, but it was a lethal one. He would’ve known that. He showed discipline, not madness. Knowing Collingsworth was a dead man, he departed immediately, as if concerned about being caught.
I pulled the shroud down further and examined Collingsworth’s arms. Untouched. No cuts or bruises. He’d never seen the blade coming.
This was a disciplined and skilled assassination, giving credence to the ROK Army theory that the man with the iron sickle was a highly trained agent. But why had he lingered at the Claims Office? Had he not been sure a fatal blow had been struck? Or was he merely enjoying himself? Enjoying the kill? Or enjoying some other type of emotion? Lust? Revenge? Hate?