“A celadon vase,” I said, “covered with white cranes.”
“How’d you know?” Jill asked.
“Just a guess.”
We talked about Pak Tong-i. Yes, he’d had a soft spot for Kim Yong-ai but the feeling was not mutual. She’d played along with him mainly because he was the only man who could provide her with steady work. “She’s been poor all her life,” Jill told me. “Born to a farming family down in South Cholla Province. Her father died when she was twelve. She had to quit middle school and go to work to help support her mom and her younger sisters.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
Jill frowned. “You don’t need to know.”
I dropped the subject.
What I needed was evidence of black-marketing. If the operation was as widespread as Jill Matthewson claimed it was, I should be able to get it. That, coupled with her testimony, which I had to admit was extremely believable, would nail them.
Just before dawn, we talked about Marv Druwood.
“He was sweet,” Jill told me. “A couple of years younger than me and still a kid, you know. I liked him but I didn’t like him that way. He had a crush on me so I tried to be nice to him. He was no happier about the black-market situation than I was and he told me that everything that went on at the Turkey Farm made him sick, but I noticed that he didn’t stop going there.”
“Did he have enemies?”
“No. He took a lot of ribbing because he was so mild mannered. He’s from some country town in Iowa. What must’ve happened is that after I left he stopped cooperating with Bufford about the black-marketing. If that happened, they’d immediately become suspicious. Probably afraid that because of his friendship with me, he might decide to turn them in, go above the Division IG, report the operation to somebody.”
“Reason enough to kill him?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s reason enough to start in on him. Start needling him. Start making him angry. He had a temper, you know.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It only flared up occasionally. It was kind of cute in a way, like a little boy throwing a tantrum. Nothing dangerous. But it might’ve been enough so that he said things or threatened things that maybe got him killed.”
“They’re that desperate that they’d kill a fellow GI?”
“They shot at you, didn’t they?”
More than once.
“These guys,” Jill told me, “are out of control.”
I thought of Marv Druwood’s corpse. I believed she was right.
Everything Jill Matthewson told me made sense. It all tied together. She wanted to put a stop to the corruption in high places within the 2nd Infantry Division and therefore she’d put her mom up to writing to her congressman. But why not just come to us directly? I asked her.
“Because then everybody at Eighth Army would know,” Jill told me. “They’d notify Division. The cover-up would start and be completed before you even got here. I had to lure you up here for another reason.”
“Like finding a missing female MP.”
“Exactly.”
One more thing was bothering me. Jill Matthewson had good reason for everything she was doing. Still, people don’t face charges of desertion and possible time in a federal penitentiary just to mollify their sense of right and wrong. Usually there’s a personal reason. A deep-seated personal reason. We were both tired. Both yawning. Both ready to go to sleep. I popped the question.
“I know you’re angry at these SOBs, Jill. And I know they deserve all the punishment we’re going to try to lay on them. But what about you? What made you go AWOL? What made you chuck your entire military career? What, exactly, did Colonel Alcott and Mr. Bufford and the honchos at Division do to you?”
She set down her coffee cup and stared at me long and hard. Finally, she spoke. “Never,” she said, “and I mean never, ask me that question again.”
With that she rose from her cross-legged position, opened the sliding door, and stepped out into the dark courtyard. She stood alone in the cold night air, arms crossed, head bowed.
13
O ur first problem was trying to figure out how to return to Tongduchon. My guess was that after the gunplay last night in Bongil-chon, the Division MPs would set up roadblocks throughout the Division area.
That meant we couldn’t use the jeep.
“Where will we leave it?” Jill asked.
The three of us stood next to the jeep, in the raked gravel lot in front of the Wondang Buddhist temple.
“Back to I Corps,” Ernie said.
Camp Red Cloud, where we’d left it before, was the logical place to stash the jeep. I Corps was a higher headquarters than Division and the 2nd ID MPs had no jurisdiction there. But to get to Red Cloud we’d have to return to Reunification Road, drive south past Camp Howze in Bongil-chon, and then turn east at Byokjie. Anywhere along that route, the 2nd Division MPs might be waiting for us.
“I have a better idea,” I told Ernie.
While Jill and Ernie waited, I entered the temple, taking my shoes off at the elevated wooden floor. I pushed my way through a heavy wooden door and entered a room filled with carved effigies of devils and demons and gods. Candles were lined up on an altar, along with bouquets of pungent incense. No people. I knelt in front of the central figure of the Hinayana Buddha and waited.
Soon a bare-headed monk appeared. He kneeled beside me and bowed three times to Buddha. In Korean, I asked for a favor. Could we leave our jeep in his parking lot for a couple of days.
“You’re here to help the American woman?” he asked.
“You know about her?”
“Wondang is a small community.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m here to help her.”
“Then, by all means, leave your jeep.”
“It will only be two days.”
“Two days. Two years. It will be here when you return.”
I asked if I could make a contribution to the temple. He told me it was up to me. Then he guided me to a bronze urn near the entranceway. I shoved a few military payment certificates into it, bowed to the monk, and exited.
Outside, Ernie said, “We can leave it here?”
I nodded.
“For how long?”
“Until you attain enlightenment.”
“I thought I had already.
The bus that ran most often out of Wondang Station was the bus to Seoul. Second to that was the express to Uijongbu, the one we bought three tickets for. After waiting twenty minutes, we hopped aboard. The seating, as usual, was tightly packed. There were two seats on either side of the aisle. I had hoped to sit next to Jill but Ernie aced me out. I was across from them, listening to their conversation, but unable to participate over the whine of the big diesel engine. The little old Korean lady who sat next to me smiled and nodded repeatedly but didn’t attempt to engage me in conversation. Instead of moping about not being able to talk to Jill, I decided to use the time to think. I leaned back in my tiny seat, inhaled the aroma of stale kimchee and cigarette smoke, and closed my eyes.
So far, the only hard evidence I had of the 2nd ID black-marketing were the ration control records of Colonel Stanley Alcott’s open RCP. And, actually, I didn’t have them yet. Staff Sergeant Riley down in Seoul was still trying to obtain a copy of the records from his buddy, Smitty, who worked at 8th Army Data Processing. But as Riley’d told me before, the records were classified and therefore Smitty was having trouble getting a copy. Even if we obtained the records, all they would prove is that Alcott had bought truckloads of merchandise from the Camp Casey PX. They wouldn’t prove that he’d broken army regulations and Korean law by actually selling those goods in Tongduchon. For that, we’d need the testimony of the MPs who’d made the purchases on Colonel Alcott’s behalf and then transported them in military vehicles to the Turkey Farm. Incidentally, that would result in another charge: misappropriation of a military vehicle. However, there was a big flaw in all this.