Together, we walked to the edge of the cliff. Somber mist billowed gently between the distant peaks of the Taebaek Range.
Captain Prevault inhaled deeply. “It’s beautiful up here,” she said. “And the air is so clear.”
Most of these monasteries had been here for centuries. Some of them predated the Chosun Dynasty, their founding stretching back to an ancient time when Buddhism had been ascendant in the politics and cultural life of Korea, before the first king of the Chosun Dynasty established Confucianism as the official state religion. The strict precepts of Confucius had long ago taken control of Korean social structure, and although they were still revered by the people, Buddhist monks were definitely not the dominant power anymore.
“Why are we starting here?” Captain Prevault asked me.
“My experience has been that these monasteries are the repositories of local knowledge and local history.”
“What about the Korean National Police? Like that KNP station we passed in Im-dang?”
I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her about the feuding I suspected between the KNPs and the ROK Army. Instead I just said, “The Korean National Police in some areas of the country are seen not as law enforcement but rather as arms of the occupying government.”
“I thought Pak Chung-hee was popular.”
“He is, in Seoul. Out here, not so much.”
Ernie was checking the oil in the jeep. I suspected if we waited long enough a delegation would emerge from the Simkok-sa Monastery, and I was not disappointed. The big wooden doors beneath the crimson arch creaked like bones and then popped open. Two men walked out, both bald, both wearing saffron robes.
Captain Prevault and I stepped forward and bowed to the men. They bowed in return. The level of education in Buddhist monasteries is very high and more often than not when I’d encountered monks here in Korea they could always produce at least one of their number who could speak English.
“Good morning,” one of the monks said. “Welcome to Simkok Temple.”
He was a youngish man, thin but strong, maybe in his late thirties. The monk next to him was considerably older, with blue pouches beneath sad eyes.
“Thank you,” I said. I pulled out my identification and handed it to him. He glanced at it and handed it back. “I am Agent Sueno from Eighth Army headquarters in Seoul.” I introduced Captain Prevault as a military psychiatrist and Ernie as my assistant. He wouldn’t have liked that but he was out of earshot, still fussing with the jeep, content to let me handle the boring parts of our job.
I told the men about the young woman we called Miss Sim, how she’d been abducted from the home for the criminally insane and how we were anxious to find her. We also told them about the man and the woman who had abducted her.
“Why would Americans be interested?” he asked. “The crime, as I understand it, involves three Korean citizens.”
I agreed. Then I went on to explain about the man with the iron sickle, the Americans who had been murdered and why I believed the man had been systematically leading us to this area of the Taebaek Mountains.
“The Lost Echo,” the monk repeated. “Very poetic.”
“Yes. Have you heard of it?”
“I haven’t.” He turned to the older man and they conversed for a while until the younger man said, “Excuse us,” and the two of them walked away. Captain Prevault and I waited, out of earshot.
“Do you think they’ll help?” she asked.
“We’ll find out.”
The two returned and the younger man spoke. “Our master remembers the farm couple who was murdered by a young woman with a hoe.” The monk shook his head. “Tragic. And he also remembers the hardships of the war, the winter when the Chinese invaded, the Americans suffering and dying along with Koreans. He remembers it all.”
“Does he remember the Lost Echo?”
“He remembers something like it. On that mountain.” The monk turned and pointed. “On that ledge on the southern slope.”
“I see it.”
“That’s Mount Daeam. The Americans set up their signal equipment there. Later, when the Chinese came, they took the equipment down and hid.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure, exactly.”
“Were they ever seen again?”
“Never. Only rumors.”
“What sort of rumors?”
“Superstitions, really. Some of the farm people hereabouts claim that on certain nights, when there is a full moon, they can hear the strange foreign sounds of the Americans, like a whispered conversation, floating on the wind.”
“Do you believe it?”
The monk shrugged. “All things come within the purview of the Lord Gautama Buddha.”
“Where is this farm you were talking about, the one where the two elderly people were murdered by the young girl?”
The monk asked for some paper and pencil and offered to draw me a map. Instead, I pulled out my tactical map and spread it out on the hood of the jeep. Only dim sunlight filtered through the heavy overcast, so I aimed my penlight at the map while the monk studied the multicolored contour lines. He was a bright man. It took him only seconds to say, “Here, this is our position.” He pointed to the military symbol for a Buddhist temple, a red inverted swastika. “The farmhouse is at this end of the valley, in the foothills between us and Mount Daeam.”
“Not too far from where Echo Company had set up their equipment.”
“As the crow flies, yes,” he said, surprising me once again with his mastery of English colloquialisms, “but very far indeed if you had to make the climb.”
“You couldn’t go straight up from the valley to that cliff, could you?”
“No. There is a narrow path that winds far into the mountains and then a less traveled path that leads back to the cliff.”
“You’ve hiked those areas?” I asked.
“Often.”
“Have you ever heard the whisperings of the Lost Echo?”
“When I meditate,” he said, “I hear only the whisperings of eternity.”
It was almost midday when we reached the valley that stretched between the monastery and Mount Daeam. Already we were hungry again, and I realized that in our haste to get out of Yongsan Compound we hadn’t planned this trip very well.
“We should’ve brought a case of Cs,” Ernie said. He was referring to canned C-rations.
“Too late now.”
“Maybe we should stop at one of these farm houses,” Captain Prevault said. “See if they’ll fix us some lunch. We could pay them.” She was hungry too.
“Not a bad idea,” I said. “Up there,” I told Ernie pointing forward. “Pull into that area in front of the pig hut. Don’t get too close to the main house, though.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to scare them. This is a military vehicle after all.”
Ernie did as I asked. I told them to wait, and I walked toward the straw-thatched farmhouse. Smoke trickled from a sheet-metal pipe. Eventually an old woman tottered out, wearing a long woolen skirt and a short traditional silk blouse with a blue ribbon. She stared at me, her wrinkled face scrunched against the pale rays of the afternoon sun.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said, taking a step forward.
She nodded back noncommittally.
I told her we were hungry, and we were looking for some place to eat. She told me there was no place around here. When I pressed her she told me about the Driver’s Eatery back in Im-dang. We didn’t want to go there. I offered her money if she’d fix lunch for the three of us. She brightened at that.
“It will only be soybean soup and kimchi,” she told me. “And my rice is brown.”
I told her that would be fine. She was a trusting woman, and we didn’t set a price. Twenty minutes later she carried a low wooden table out of her kitchen and set it on the long wooden porch that ran the length of the farmhouse. We sat cross-legged on the porch and ate, lifting the bowls to our mouths and shoveling in the unhusked grain. The soybean soup had no meat in it and that was okay, but the cabbage kimchi was sour, as if it had fermented so long it was turning to vinegar. Still, we ate our fill. When we were done I asked her where the byonso was and while Captain Prevault used it and then Ernie, I spoke to the woman in private. I described the farmhouse in the foothills at the end of the valley that we were looking for. She knew all about it. It had been abandoned for years and was probably overrun now by field mice.