Equipment was smashed, along with a glass display case, and photographs had been ripped from the wall.
I picked up a placard written in English and Korean. It explained that after the Inchon landing, the 8th United States Army had re-taken Seoul and the first Armed Forces Korea Network radio station had been set up atop the Bando Hotel. It was from here that General Douglas MacArthur broadcast his call for Kim Il-sung and the leadership of Communist North Korea to lay down their arms and surrender. Unfortunately, they hadn’t, and once the Chinese entered the war, Seoul had been retaken by the enemy and the war had dragged on for almost three more years.
“When did this happen?” Ernie asked.
“Maybe one hour ago. Many people come and go through lobby. Somebody come up here, do this.”
All remnants of this glorious little shrine had been ripped to shreds. I thought I knew why. During those horrible days with the Lost Echo, the one link the suffering GIs would’ve had was the AFKN radio broadcasts. Even the Koreans would’ve heard it constantly, since all civilian radio stations had been abandoned because of the war. Just listening to it must bring back horrible memories for them.
I described Madame Hoh and the man with the iron sickle to him and then asked if they’d seen these people with an elderly American.
He thought about it. “Maybe.”
We rushed back downstairs. Two staff members remembered seeing three people who matched that description, about the time the AFKN shrine had been trashed.
“How about the older American?” I asked. “How did he look?”
“Frightened,” the front desk clerk said, “but I thought it was just because he was not used to Korea.”
We walked outside and stood on the busy sidewalk.
“So where are they now?” Captain Prevault asked.
A big PX Ford Granada taxi pulled up and two Americans climbed out. Then I thought of something-what the man with the iron sickle had said to me, about people would be “shown.” Before the cabbie left, I leaned in the passenger window and asked if there had been a party of three, two Korean and one American, picked up here within the last hour. He didn’t know but Ernie flashed his badge and made him call dispatch. After some discussion, the dispatcher confirmed that a party matching that description had been picked up in front of the Bando about a half hour ago.
“Where’d they go?” I asked.
“Yongsan Compound,” the driver said.
“Where on Yongsan Compound?”
He conferred with the dispatcher. He clicked off and looked at us and said, “The AFKN Club.”
We ran to the jeep.
AFKN, the Armed Forces Korea Network. They’d long ago stopped broadcasting from downtown Seoul and now had their own studio complex near 8th Army headquarters on Yongsan Compound.
“They have an American with them,” I told Captain Prevault, “so that and being in a PX taxi will get them through the gate.”
“Don’t they check everybody’s ID?”
“Yes, supposedly. But the gate guards are aware of the veterans in country. They’re given special privileges.”
“The other two can be signed in as guests,” Ernie told her, “unless they already have phony ID.”
“Won’t the guards know to be looking for Mr. Walton?”
“Maybe,” I told her. “But it’s unlikely that word has reached the gate guards yet. Besides, nobody’s expecting them to head for the compound.”
Captain Prevault sat back with her arms crossed.
“So what are they going to do at the AFKN club?”
“All their suffering had to do with signal, with communications, with broadcasting,” I said. “Now they have one of the signalmen who was a member of the same battalion as the Lost Echo. Madame Hoh and the man with the iron sickle know they’re going down. They just want to go down big.”
“In a blaze of glory,” Ernie said.
“Something like that.”
“But why?” Captain Prevault asked.
I didn’t have time to explain all I’d learned in that cave. “They have reason,” I said.
Ernie flashed his badge to the gate guards and gunned the engine of the little jeep all the way along the winding road that led to the top of the hill above the Yongsan Main PX where the AFKN complex sat. Besides the television and radio studios, AFKN also had a barracks and a small Quonset hut set aside as their all-ranks restaurant and nightclub. The AFKN Club.
By the time we barged into the main ballroom, the AFKN Club was mostly empty. The lunch hour rush was over. We made our way to the far side of the building and crossed a well-tended lawn to the main broadcast facility. We walked down a hallway lined with radio broadcast booths, checking each one as we went, getting startled looks from at least one GI disc jockey with earphones enveloping his head. Finally, we reached the TV studio.
A bulb atop the big camera glowed red. The lights on the sound stage were on, bright and hot. Slumped behind the camera was a GI in fatigues, his throat cut, lying in a puddle of blood. On the stage, sprawled over the news anchor desk, lay a man I recognized. He was the one who read the officially-sanctioned world news to us every night in a deep monotone. The side of his face rested in a puddle of gore.
“Back here,” Ernie shouted.
The engineer at the broadcast control panel was still alive. With paper towels she’d grabbed along the way, Captain Prevault stanched the blood on the side of his neck.
“The bleeding isn’t arterial,” she said. “He’ll live.”
He croaked something. I leaned closer. “What?”
“The camera,” he said.
“What about the camera?” I asked.
“Turn it off. It’s on. We’re broadcasting live.”
Broadcasting death was more like it.
The MPs shut the compound down. Nothing moved but I had little hope that we’d find them. A quick inventory by the AFKN First Sergeant revealed that one of their mobile broadcast trucks was missing. I immediately called Mr. Kill and left a message with Officer Oh. She’d relay a description of the truck, and the license number, to the KNPs.
“Do they still have Mr. Walton?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered, “as far as we can tell.”
I was exhausted but Captian Prevault kindly brought me a cup of hot coffee from the AFKN Club. Ernie and I allowed a gaggle of MP investigators to start interviewing anybody who might’ve seen anything.
“Okay,” Ernie said. “They’ve made their statement. First with Mr. Barretsford, then with Collingsworth, and again with the two GIs in the signal truck.”
“Now they’ve graduated to live TV,” Captain Prevault said.
“So where are they now?” Ernie asked.
“Koreans don’t watch it,” I said.
Captian Prevault touched my forearm, concerned.
“Don’t watch what?” Ernie asked.
“They don’t watch AFKN. Not during the day anyway.”
On weekdays, the two Korean television stations weren’t allowed by the government to start broadcasting until five P.M.
“Okay,” Captain Prevault said slowly. “The Koreans, most of them, aren’t watching.”
“They didn’t see the murder,” I said.
“No, they didn’t.” She squeezed my arm tighter. “You need rest.”
“That means,” I continued, “that they’ll want a big venue where the Korean public will be watching.”
“Like a Korean TV station?” Ernie asked.
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. Not now. The KNPs will be alert for that.”
“Then where?”
“Someplace big,” I said. “Someplace grand.”
Captain Prevault tore open a small bag of saltine crackers for me. “Eat,” she said. I did. Before I had finished chewing, she brought me a cup of water. I drank it down.
An army sedan pulled up outside. Somebody ran through the front door. Boots tromped down the hallway.
“They found them,” Riley said, pushing through the double swinging doors of the broadcast station. I’d never seen him so excited or his face so flushed, except when he was halfway into a fifth of Old Overwart.
“They found who?” I asked.