Up the flight of stairs behind him, noontime crowds jostled their way through the mass of open-air stalls known as the Namdaemun sijang, or Great South Gate Market. It was named for the short section of stone wall, capped by an ancient wooden structure with double eaves, that stood in the center of a nearby five-way intersection. The Great South Gate had been designated as South Korea's National Treasure No. 1. But its namesake market appeared to be more treasured by the throngs of shoppers who gained new vigor from the early October chill in the air. Full of the exhuberance that Koreans are famous for, they picked at and haggled over everything from hot red peppers to cold brass and copper cookware.
Captain Yun Yu-sop gave a solemn shake of his head to dismiss a smiling waitress who paused to inquire if he cared for anything else. After twenty-one years of service in the Seoul Metropolitan Police Bureau, Yun's outlook had become a bit jaded. The foibles of mankind had left him little to smile about, particularly with the most troubling investigation of his career weighing heavily on his mind. Until recent months, his star had been on the ascendancy. Now his place in the firmament seemed to be heading the way of the setting sun.
For a moment, he shifted his attention to a couple eating at a small table against the opposite wall. The girl was a thin slip of a thing with long, stringy bangs. He recognized the boy as Ma Tuk-bom, a notorious leader in the student demonstrations that plagued the city with the regularity of a horde of locusts. During the past year, Yun had observed how the green-uniformed combat police had appeared curiously restrained, allowing the demonstrations to build in size. Leaders like Ma Tuk-bom were permitted to remain free, fomenting ever more vocal demonstrations filled with chants of "Down with the Government!" and "Americans Go Home!" Then a faction of the ruling party had unexpectedly split off, charging that the previous election had been rigged, and demanded a new vote for president. Suddenly the students were out in force, demonstrating "for" something. The embattled government finally agreed to a new plebiscite. In a whirlwind campaign, the newly formed Democratic Unity Party, calling for unification of the peninsula, one of the students' cherished goals, and a reduction of outside influence, swept to victory in a landslide.
Word in the bureau grapevine said the combat police restraint had been ordered by a certain individual within what became the inner circle of the new Democratic Unity Party. His sources identified the man as Han Sun-shin, a former colonel in the ROK Army, an older man, a contemporary of the new president, Kwak Sung-kyo. Han was now head of the NSP, the Agency for National Security Planning.
When it was reorganized from the old KCIA in 1980, the NSP was supposed to have been toned down from the excesses of its embarrassing past. The new constitution included provisions against coerced confessions and torture, but Yun was not convinced this prohibition was being followed. In any event, he had never approved of the NSP's methods of operation. He would happily have gathered evidence on some of their more outrageous acts, but he knew of no public prosecutor bold enough to press the charges. Anyway, the NSP was a political organ. He was a law enforcement officer, not a politician.
He cleared his mind of all such distracting thoughts and stabbed at his chapchae, staring into the shiny bowl as if it were a crystal ball. He could use one right now. This investigation would drive him gray if it didn't get him fired first. In the Korean justice system, it was intended that a police investigator work under the supervision of a public prosecutor, who would evaluate the evidence he gathered. The prosecutor could request warrants or decline further pursuit of the investigation. Because of the heavy caseload, it was impossible for the prosecutors to monitor every case. But they had authority to intervene whenever they desired, and Yun's investigation was important enough that he was under the microscope. He glanced at his watch. In one hour he was to appear at the prosecutor's office to review his two troubling homicide cases.
Without a further glance at Ma and his skinny girlfriend, Yun paid for his chapchae and walked back up the steps to the crowded street. He picked his way across, dodging between slow-moving trucks and carts. At the next corner he sniffed at the not-so-delicte aroma of fish, squid and eel, and pressed on, unconcerned with all the trade going on about him. He was not on a shopping spree. Not a normal one, at any rate. Besides all the mountains of food and merchandise, the market provided a place to acquire less tangible commodities, such as various personal services, and information. Yun was shopping for the latter.
He strolled along one of the crowded alleyways, too narrow for a normal street. It would accommodate little more than a three-wheeled motorcycle. The buildings had narrow openings that accommodated the market stalls. Yun stepped into one that displayed cartons of red berries, oranges, tangerines, bananas, pineapples, kumquats, the apple-shaped Korean pears, and an assortment of melons. The stall extended back a good fifteen to twenty feet inside the building. An older woman with straight black hair pulled to the back of her head and knotted and a bright-faced young girl with silken tresses tended the stacks of fruit. Squatting on his haunches in the half-darkness at the rear was an elderly man with a scraggly white mustache and goatee. He wore a wide-brimmed white hat and puffed slowly as he lit a long-stemmed pipe.
Captain Yun stopped in front of the old man and bowed. "The oranges look full and juicy," he said.
The lines in the old merchant's face seemed as deep as the valleys that criss-crossed the country's mountainous spine. He took his time with the pipe. Finally pulling it from his mouth, he puckered his lips and said, "Trucked in fresh from Cheju-do. Been a good year for fruit. Lots of rain, lots of sunshine. You want some oranges?"
Hunched down beside him, Yun nodded. "I might take a dozen. Tong-shin likes to keep oranges around."
"You should bring your wife here to shop more often. She is a lovely flower."
He was a smooth operator, Yun reflected. "She'll do," he said.
"And how is your son?"
That was a subject capable of bringing a smile to Yun's normally dour face. "The boy is fine. Boy?" He chuckled. "I guess I shouldn't call him a boy anymore. He's a man. Taller than me. Probably smarter, too, but I'll never tell him that." Se-jin had recently completed four years at the National Police College and received his commission as a lieutenant in the Seoul Police Bureau. He had made his father proud.
The old man raised an eyebrow. "These days the young ones get too smart too soon. But smart is not wise. Wisdom comes with this." He pulled at his sparse white hair.
His name was Chon. This was only one of a dozen stalls he owned, but he had started out here many years ago and this was where he preferred to spend most of his time. Before the day was over, however, he would circulate among the others, asking questions and picking up the observations, gossip and street talk garnered by each location. Information was a good cash crop, and it also provided insurance against interference from the authorities. Captain Yun Yu-sop knew not all of Chon's customers were so decent and straightforward.