“Screw them,” he said. “We can take this guy down on our own.”
I agreed with him. I wasn’t too anxious to lead anyone-even a serial killer of American GIs-to an ROK Army or Korean National Police slaughterhouse.
Ernie, Captain Prevault, and I drove back to Itaewon. At a noodle house near the edge of the nightclub district, I spoke to the proprietor, and paid her 500 won for the use of her phone. It took only about ten minutes to reach the 8th Army telephone exchange where I gave the operator the number. Riley answered on the first ring.
“Where the hell are you?” he asked, as usual. “I’ve been waiting here past duty hours for your call.”
“Nice of you.”
“I’m a considerate kind of guy. I checked with the Eighth Army Historian’s office about this Forty Thirty-eighth Signal Battalion. It turns out they were disbanded shortly after the Korean War because there was some sort of a scandal involving a subordinate unit of theirs, namely Echo Company. It appears that during the fighting, when the two million or so Chinese ‘volunteers’ swept down the Korean peninsula, Echo Company was separated from the main body of the battalion. They broadcast for a while, relaying signals, but then their transmissions became intermittent and eventually they stopped transmitting altogether. They were called ‘the Lost Echo.’ Even their equipment was lost and never recovered. The official history carries the entire unit as being lost in action.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where were they lost? What was their last known position?”
Paper rustled. I imagined Riley shuffling through his notes. He was angry with me for keeping him from the bottle of Old Overwart in his wall locker, but when Staff Sergeant Riley did a job he was thorough.
“Here it is,” he said. He read off the coordinates.
I jotted them down. “Where the hell is that?”
“Somewhere in the Taebaek Mountains. About thirty klicks inland from the port of Sokcho, which is where the Forty Thirty-eighth was disembarked from a Navy transport ship.”
“Thanks, Riley. Anything else?”
“Only that the guy at the Historian’s office says if you find any artifacts concerning the Lost Echo, don’t get any bright ideas. They’re official war relics protected under the Status of Forces Agreement. They have to be surrendered to Eighth Army as soon as they’re found.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Any time.” I was about to hang up when Riley shouted, “The Provost Marshal wants your butt in here tomorrow morning at zero eight hundred.”
“That might not be possible.”
“Might not be freaking possible? You better make it possible, Troop. That’s a direct order from your commanding officer.”
“We have a lead.”
“What kind of lead?”
“Maybe the final lead. I have to go somewhere. I’ll call you when we get there.”
“Where? Where the hell are you going?”
I hung up on him. I didn’t want to take any chances that the Korean National Police Liaison Officer would be notified as to our destination-or worse yet, that Major Rhee Mi-sook would. I pulled out my notepad and started to write down what I knew.
Sim Kok-sa wasn’t her real name. She’d been named for the Buddhist Monastery that sat on the slopes of Mount Daeam, where she’d been found after chopping two elderly people to death with a hoe.
The landlord of the Inn of the Crying Rose had told me that Madame Hoh, the proprietor of the Crying Rose, was originally from the east coast province of Kangwon-do.
“The Lost Echo” had disappeared thirty kilometers inland from the port of Sokcho.
Finally, the file we’d pilfered from the Status of Forces Secretariat office contained a claim having to do with a military unit in the Taebaek Mountains; one of the claims that 8th Army, and the ROK government, had tried so desperately to suppress.
I explained this to Ernie and Captain Prevault. “I believe they’ve gone to the Taebaek Mountains,” I said. “They’re taking Miss Sim back to where they came from, to where all this started.”
“Why?” Ernie asked.
“The man with the iron sickle wants us to know all this killing has to do with the Lost Echo.”
“He also wants us to know,” Captain Prevault said, “that he’s desperately angry about something.”
“Like what?” Ernie asked.
“Whatever happened up there in the mountains. Whatever happened to cause this young girl, Miss Sim Kok-sa, to go mad and chop two people to death with a hoe.”
“And for the man with the iron sickle to kill four Americans.”
“And one Chink,” Ernie said.
We stared at him. “One Chinese,” Captain Prevault corrected.
Ernie shrugged.
“That brings up a good question,” I said. “The earlier victims were all Caucasian. In fact, he studiously avoided hurting the Korean MP on the ville patrol with Collingsworth. So why murder Mr. Ming, a fellow Asian?”
“He wasn’t Korean,” Captain Prevault said.
“But he came here as a child and grew up here and spoke Korean fluently and acted like a Korean.”
Captain Prevault shook her head. “Still not the same. These people, the man with the iron sickle and the ‘fancy’ woman, for whatever reason, have a set of rules. Koreans aren’t harmed, foreigners are. This Mr. Ming was, in their eyes, a foreigner.”
“They did hurt the ROK Army MP in Itaewon,” Ernie said, “and the attendant who tried to stop them from taking Miss Sim.”
“Not fatally,” Captain Prevault.
“But either of those attacks could have been fatal,” Ernie replied. “In fact the attendant was hurt pretty badly.”
We all nodded. No question these people were dangerous to anyone they encountered.
“It won’t take the KNPs long to come to the same conclusions we have,” I said.
“They don’t know about the Lost Echo,” Ernie said, “or about the Bogus Claim File.”
“They’ll figure it out soon enough. Everything this man with the iron sickle has done is designed to lead us to the Taebaek Mountains.”
“So aren’t we walking right into his trap?”
“Maybe.”
Ernie frowned, thinking it over. Captain Prevault looked back and forth between us, sensing our indecision. “We have to go,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because of Miss Sim.”
“What will they do to her?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure why they even want her. But whatever the reason, it’s important to them. What they’re doing is commonly called ‘acting out.’ They’re trying to teach us something, teach the world something, and Miss Sim is about to play an important part in this drama.”
“As a sacrifice?” Ernie asked.
Captain Prevault hugged herself. “God, I hope not. Not now. Not when we’re on the verge of finding the key to her mental illness, the events that precipitated her trauma, and therefore a possible cure. If we don’t rescue her now, she’ll be lost forever.”
“Either that,” Ernie said, “or dead.”
At the BOQ, Captain Prevault packed a duffel bag with her winter field gear and returned to the jeep in record time. We drove to the other side of the Yongsan Compound, and Ernie parked at the far end of our barracks, where the floodlights had long ago sputtered out. We told Captain Prevault to wait quietly, and we’d be right back.
There weren’t many GIs in the barracks, just a few hanging around the beer machine, dropping in thirty-five cents, and watching greedily as a cold Falstaff fell out. They didn’t even notice us as we walked past. Ernie pulled out his key and entered his room, and I continued down the hallway to mine. I flipped on the light, found my duffel bag and shook it out, and started stuffing wool fatigues, a field jacket, and a parka into the bag. I debated about whether or not to bring my Mickey Mouse boots, inflatable severe winter foot gear, but in the end decided against it. Combat boots and rubber overshoes would give me more mobility. When I figured I finally had everything, I tossed the bag over my shoulder, relocked the door, and hurried down the hallway. Ernie was waiting for me. We exited the barracks and stepped into darkness.