The Iron Sickle (11 page)

“Sweeno,” he said, purposely mispronouncing my name. “And Agent Ernestine. How are my two favorite CID pukes doing this fine afternoon?”

“Get bent, Dexter,” Ernie said.

“Oh,” he said in a falsetto voice. “Are you going to bend me over? How thrilling.”

Ernie walked down the steps, and I followed. When Dexter didn’t get out of the way, Ernie shoved him.

Dexter staggered back in mock alarm. “Oh, rough stuff. How
could
you?”

The eight MPs followed us to our jeep. Ernie and I were about to climb in but stood waiting for them, staring them down. The smile had dropped from Dexter’s face. He stared at us through tinted rectangular glasses.

“When you have a lead on this guy,” he said, “you point him out to us. None of this playing footsy with the KNPs, none of this showing
respect to their bullshit judicial system. This guy killed an MP.” Dexter jammed his thumb over his shoulder. “He was one of our own, and you’re MPs too, or you used to be. Once you find him, you turn the guy over to us,” he said, “not to the ROK Army, not to the Korean National Police.”

There was a long silence. “I can’t do that,” I said.

“Why?” Dexter said, stepping closer. “Because you’re too close to the Koreans? Because you speak their freaking language and eat that foul-smelling shit they put in their mouths? Is that why, Sweeno, because you think you’re better than us? Better than regular GIs?”

“There’s nothing regular about you, Dexter,” I said.

“Not without using Ex-Lax,” Ernie added.

Dexter threw his helmet at Ernie. Ernie dodged it but slid around to the front of the jeep, and before anyone could stop them, the two men were trading blows. Dexter’s hard left jab slid off Ernie’s ear, leaving Ernie close enough to land a right uppercut to the taller man’s ribs. I jumped in, holding the two men apart. Some of the more levelheaded MPs grabbed Dexter.

“Don’t you betray us,” Dexter shouted, spewing spit. “Don’t you throw your lot in with people who ain’t our people. You understand me, Sweeno?”

Without answering, I shoved Ernie into the passenger seat, stalked to the other side of the jeep, and climbed behind the steering wheel. I started the jeep and bulled forward through the MPs, kicking up gravel as I gunned the little jeep out of the parking lot.

I drove to the CID office and got out. Ernie had calmed down a little and he was smiling, trying to pretend Dexter’s taunts hadn’t effected him. He slid into the driver’s seat and told me he’d meet me in the ville at twenty hundred hours. Before he left, I said, “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“From that puke? No way.” He gunned the jeep’s engine and sped off.

Inside the office, both Miss Kim and Riley had already gone home. I picked up a phone and tried Captain Prevault’s number. Still no answer. It figured there wouldn’t be since the cannon had gone off signifying the end of the duty day. I used Riley’s Rolodex and then called the duty officer at 8th Army Billeting. I identified myself, gave him my badge number, and asked for the location of Captain Prevault’s BOQ, Bachelor Officer Quarters. He gave it to me. Yongsan Compound South Post, female BOQ 132, Unit 4. A pretty good walk but one I could manage.

A half hour later, I stood in a long central corridor lined with individual rooms and knocked on the door of Unit 4. It took a few minutes but eventually darkness covered the peephole. The door opened slightly, a security chain drawing taut. A smooth-complexioned face peeked out, hair wrapped in a white towel.

“Agent Sueño,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You didn’t call.”

“I tried.”

“Wait a minute. I have to get dressed.”

She closed the door. I stepped back and leaned against the far wall. Occasionally, a female officer entered or exited a room down the hall, glanced toward me, and when I smiled went about her business. With my short haircut and my CID coat and tie, I didn’t look too threatening.

The door to Captain Prevault’s room opened.

She wore blue jeans and sneakers and a light rain slicker over a white blouse. “You ready?” she asked.

“For what?”

“For a visit to a nut house.”

She smiled demurely, cocked her head, and walked down the corridor. I followed.

Our destination was in the northwest corner of Seoul, an area snuggled beneath Bukhan Mountain known as Songbuk-dong. The
kimchi
cab chugged up a winding road, past a break in the ancient stone ramparts that had once protected the city from waves of invaders: Chinese, Manchurians, Mongol hordes. Now lovers strolled along it, hand in hand, gazing down at the sparkling expanse of the city of Seoul.

“Where are we going?” I asked, staring out at the darkness.

“A sanitarium,” she replied. “What you call a ‘nut house.’ ”

“Sorry about that.”

She turned and in the light of a passing street lamp, I saw her prim smile once again.

A sign in slashed Chinese characters loomed ahead and Captain Prevault motioned for the driver to turn left through stone gates. The driveway wound another quarter mile through dense foliage and finally circled in front of an Asian-style building with moonlight reflecting off a tile roof. Clay monkeys perched on the edges, protecting the inhabitants from evil spirits. A yellow bulb in the entranceway illuminated a double front door painted crimson, and all around the light, moths flailed madly.

As I paid for the cab, I inhaled deeply of the tree-scented air until the cab sped off, spewing carbon.

Captain Prevault stood a few feet away, smiling and gazing around her. “It’s nice up here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

She turned and walked toward the front gate. I followed. She pounded with a brass knocker. The gatekeeper must have been just inside because within seconds the big red doors swung open. A
toothy old man bowed to Captain Prevault, recognizing her. She smiled and bowed back, and then we were walking past the front building and climbing broad stone steps lined with more wooden buildings. Captain Prevault pulled a flashlight out of her bag and switched it on.

“It gets dark up here.”

“Where is
here
, exactly?” I asked.

“The National Mental Health Sanatorium. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“A doctor or a patient?”

“Both.”

The steps stopped in front of a more modern building, one with plate glass windows through which to enjoy the view and a door reinforced with iron bars. Captain Prevault pressed the buzzer. A metallic voice said, “
Nugu seiyo
?” Who is it?

“Leah Prevault, here to see Doctor Hwang.”

Without further preamble, the buzzer sounded, and Captain Prevault pushed through the door. For a moment I felt I was back in my element: an administrative office with three desks, a typewriter on a table, a water cooler, a short row of wooden filing cabinets, and papers stacked everywhere. Overhead, fluorescent bulbs glowed.

The man who let us in was young, not much older than a teenager, and he wore a white tunic and matching pants. His open-toed sandals made him look somewhat less than professional. He bowed deeply to Captain Prevault.

“I called for Doctor Hwang,” she said. “He should be expecting us.”

I’m not sure if the young man understood. His face remained blank, but he turned abruptly and started to walk away. Captain Prevault followed, as did I.

The place was quiet. We were obviously outside of their regular duty hours, and only a skeleton crew would handle the night shift. As our feet clattered on tile corridors, I started to realize this place was
bigger than it looked from outside. We turned right and then left and climbed a short flight of stairs until we stood in front of a very narrow elevator. I’d seen them before in downtown Seoul, appearing as if they were squeezed into a building as an afterthought or purposely made tiny to save money. The young man pressed the button and the door slid open a few feet. The three of us stepped into the elevator, crammed together tightly, each of us staring in a different direction so as not to wash our fellow passengers with hot breath.

Our floor said six, and the young man pressed the button for two. The little elevator shuddered and descended into the bowels of Bukhan Mountain. I felt as if I were in a coffin. The elevator wheezed and moved down fitfully. Finally, it slowed, then shuddered, and the narrow doors slid open. Captain Prevault got off first. I tried to wait for the white-smocked technician, but he insisted I precede him.

We stood in a smooth walled cubicle with a single bulb glowing above us. The bulb was incased in an iron cage. There was nothing here that could be broken, or used as a weapon.

Brusquely, the technician hurried down a long corridor. I was expecting “tiger cages” like I’d seen pictures of at the Long Binh Jail in Vietnam or rock-hewn cells like I’d seen before in the Korean “monkey houses.” Instead, the technician led us through a double door into a spacious lawn with wrought iron chairs and matching round tables. Beyond that, a gentle slope dropped off into a valley lined with narrow walkways that led to stands of willow trees and small tile-roofed buildings adorned with bulbs blinking merrily in the brisk autumn air. On the far side of the valley, about three quarters of a mile away, the sister peak of Bukhan Mountain rose sharply, its jagged silhouette illuminated now by a low-hanging moon. To the right and to the left, the valley was similarly walled off.

Captain Prevault leaned close to me. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s like a bowl, in the center of the mountains.”

“Yes, a safe place for patients to recover. I wish Eighth Army had a similar facility.”

“What
does
Eighth Army have?”

“The stockade in Pupyong.”

The silent technician motioned for us to sit. Dr. Prevault strolled toward one of the tables but continued to stand, arms wrapped tightly across her chest, turning in slow circles as she enjoyed the beautiful cool evening and the fresh breeze wafting into the valley from the mountains above. Night birds trilled and wings fluttered, even at this late hour.

The technician disappeared back into the building. I studied the light shining from the homes in the valley below us. There didn’t seem to be anybody moving about, no central hub of activity. So far, there were no zombie-like mad men shuffling toward us, animated by murderous obsession. I felt safe. It was quiet and peaceful.

The technician reappeared with a steaming brass pot and set it on a white towel he folded and placed in the center of the table. Then, from the pockets in his tunic, he produced two porcelain cups. With his open palm he gestured toward the pot.

“Thank you,” Captain Prevault said and sat down primly. The man poured her a cup of steaming barley tea. With both hands, she lifted the cup, sipped tentatively, and then smiled and thanked the man again. He poured me a cup, set down the brass pot, and backed away.

I tasted the tea. Hot, earthy. Little lumps of barley bounced against my lip.

We sat in silence for a while. Finally, I broke the ice. “Who are we waiting for?”

“I told you. Doctor Hwang.”

“You also said he’s both a doctor and a patient.”

“Yes. It’s sort of a long story.”

“Looks like we have time.”

“After the war,” she said, referring to the Korean War, which had ended twenty years ago, “there was so much death and devastation, so many orphans and people separated from their families, that no one was surprised by the widespread prevalence of mental illness. But it was more than that. The war had been so intense and so disruptive, turning almost everyone in the country into a refugee or worse. You might say that, in a real sense, the entire country had gone mad.”

She paused and sipped her tea. In the valley below, branches swayed and leaves rustled.

“Doctor Hwang did what he could. But there were only a handful of trained mental health professionals in the country. The mentally disturbed were handled in traditional ways, which could mean by medical practitioners or even by shamans, but usually it meant they were handled by the police.”

And eliminated by the police, I thought.

Without warning, someone was standing beside us. Startled, Captain Prevault rose. “Doctor Hwang,” she said. Involuntarily, her right hand touched her neck.

I stood also.

A small man stood before us. In the ambient light, I could see he was
dei mori
, as the Koreans call it, bald on the top of his head with flecks of grey at the temples. He wore the plain cotton tunic and white pantaloons of a peasant from the Chosun Dynasty. His shoes were rubber slippers with the toe pointed upward. The only part of the traditional outfit he lacked was the broad-brimmed horsehair hat. It was as if he’d been in a hurry and had forgotten to put it on. He was a sturdy man, not fat, not skinny, and his face, although lined, was set in a non-committal, albeit pleasant, gaze. He bowed to Captain Prevault and then regarded me.

“Agent Sueño,” Captain Prevault said. “He’s the one I told you about.”

Without changing his expression, Dr. Hwang performed an elegant bow, straight from the waist. I bowed in return. He didn’t offer to shake hands, so I didn’t either.

“Come,” he said, already heading down the long lawn.

Captain Prevault’s eyes widened in an expression of exasperation, but she grinned and tilted her head for me to come along. She gathered up her bag and we followed the quiet little man down into the valley.

We sat on a wooden bench hewn out of a log. Straw-thatched homes surrounded a dirt-floored central courtyard. Villagers stood and squatted, some of them clapping rhythmically as a woman twirled in the center of the circle, with a human rainbow of red, blue, green, and yellow ribbons. She chanted some ancient song and banged on a drum that was looped by a hemp rope over her shoulder. As we sat mesmerized, someone leapt out of the crowd. Women squealed. It was a barefoot man, dressed in white, raising his knees high, as if stepping over knife blades, dancing to the rhythm. He held a brightly painted wooden mask in front of his face, a mask with a huge grimacing red mouth and green eyes flashing evil.

He ran after the woman. She darted away from him but the rhythm of the music grew faster and all around eyes widened and mouths gaped as the demon pursued the shaman. Finally, she stopped and threw her arms toward the heavens and chanted as if directly to the gods. She staggered, gripping her chest, and then struggled back to her feet, as if she had just received a jolt of power. She reached into the folds of her skirt and pulled out a
naht
, a wooden-handled sickle. Using it, she smote the demon, who backed away snarling, twisting out of her reach, doing his best to avoid the slashing blade until he finally crouched and bowed and retreated from the central square. The shaman banged more on her drum, slowed, and then bowed to the thunderous applause of the crowd and skipped away into the darkness.