The Iron Sickle (16 page)

“You’re late,” she said.

A row of six ROK MP jeeps followed by an armored personnel carrier were lined up in front of the brick ROK Army headquarters. Like the 8th Army headquarters down the street, the entire complex had been built by the Japanese Imperial Army before World War II, but you didn’t mention that around here, or you were liable to get your butt kicked.

“Why’d you wait for us?” I asked Major Rhee.

She studied me quietly for a moment, and then Ernie, letting us take in the full magnificence of her unblemished oval face and the full pouting redness of her lips. Her black eyes were full of hatred, or love, I wasn’t sure which. With her, there might not have been much difference.

“We need Americans,” she said finally. “We always need Americans. Just follow,” she told us. “Don’t do anything. Stay out of the way and watch.”

Without waiting for a reply, she performed a smart about-face. On the way back to the lead jeep, she raised her right arm and circled her pointed forefinger in the air. All the jeeps and the armored personnel carrier fired up their engines. Ernie and I scurried to our jeep and
followed the convoy out the main gate into the busy midday Seoul traffic. When we reached the Samgak-ji Circle, the convoy bulled through all the
kimchi
cabs and the three-wheeled pickup trucks piled high with garlic or shimmering green cabbage and backed up traffic for a quarter mile.

As we drove, I tried to calm the revulsion in my gut at seeing Major Rhee. In North Korea, working as a double agent, her mission had been to hunt me down. She done so and then she’d tortured me, seeming to greatly enjoy her work. If I hadn’t been rescued by the Manchurian Brigade, she would’ve forced me to make a phony confession and might’ve even had me executed as a capitalist spy. I couldn’t forget these things, especially the way her eyes had glazed over as I’d screamed in agony.

She was wearing the uniform of a South Korean officer now, performing important work for the South Korean brass. I was supposed to forget what she’d done up north, that was all part of the spy game they told me, but I still saw her as the serpent in the garden, gorgeous but deadly.

Ernie, as usual, brought my thoughts back to sordid reality.

“So did you get any of that?”

“What? You mean when I was in North Korea?”

He shrugged. “Whenever.”

“No time.”

“But you have time now.”

I shuddered. “She’s not interested in me, not in that way.”

Ernie barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? She looks at you like a python looks at a rat.”

I’m not sure why but that made me even more uncomfortable than I was already. I decided not to think about Major Rhee Mi-sook gobbling me up, which was hard for a minute, until the convoy swerved away from the main road and took a left up a steep incline.
This road was much narrower. The few cabs and wooden pushcarts traveling downhill were forced to pull over and press themselves up against open shops and brick walls to get out of the way. Clumps of pedestrians stopped what they were doing and stared at the massively armed convoy trundling past. Old women wearing short blouses with long ribbons and flowing skirts balanced huge bundles of laundry atop their heads and gawked. They’d seen military convoys before, plenty of them, but they’d never seen a woman—and such an eye-catching woman—in the lead jeep.

We walked along the edge of the slope for about a half mile until we reached a straight stretch of road with a cement retaining wall on the left and a ledge overlooking the western edge of the city. Major Rhee ordered a halt. Armed men hopped out of the armored personnel carrier, all of them holding M-16 rifles. Commands were barked. At either end of the retaining wall were broad stone steps. One squad of soldiers climbed the stairs on the left, the other the stairs on the right. Major Rhee motioned for us to follow. As the soldiers trotted ahead of us, Major Rhee hurried to keep up. We stayed right with her.

At the top of the ridge, there were no more paved roads, just an endless shanty town that had been there probably since the end of the Korean War. The soldiers filed through narrow pedestrian lanes, passing crowded hooches, most of them made of plaster and rotted boards. Toddlers without pants were gently shoved out of the way, chickens squawked, and women squatted in front of huge plastic pans, looking up startled from their chopping of turnips or shelling of peas.

Finally, we came to a halt at a small intersection, at the center of which sat a weathered oak with colored pieces of paper and folded notes attached to it for good luck. Major Rhee spoke to the sergeants in charge of the two squads, pointed down one particularly narrow alley and then walked back to us.

As she approached, she pulled a .45 automatic pistol out of her black leather shoulder holster. She ratcheted back the charging handle, letting it slide forward with a clang. “I’m going in first,” she said. “Would you care to come along?”

“We’re not armed,” I said.

She smiled a lethal smile. “Don’t you trust me to protect you?”

The answer was no, but I didn’t say it. Instead, I held out my open palm and said, “Lead on.”

She turned and stepped into the narrow alley.

The soldiers fanned out into parallel lanes as Ernie and I followed Major Rhee down the center pathway. Overhanging thatched roofs closed in above us, and soon we were stumbling through mud, groping forward in the dark, swatting at spider webs. When we reached another narrow intersection, Major Rhee crouched.

She waited until I crouched next to her, and then she pointed at a wooden gate that looked like it was about to fall off its hinges. Chunks of plaster had crumbled away to expose brick beneath the wall, which was topped with shards of broken glass to ward off thieves. Major Rhee Mi-sook rose and walked toward the gate. At either end of the passageway, ROK Army soldiers waited, weapons poised. I expected there were more troops in back of the hooch, although we were not in position to see them.

Holding her pistol pointed toward the sky, Major Rhee grabbed the string that worked as a pulley to unlock the gate. Metal rattled, but the door didn’t open. She motioned with her free hand and two soldiers approached holding a heavy wooden log with iron handles, their rifles strapped behind their backs. She stepped back and, on the whispered count of “
hana, tul, seit
,” the soldiers swung the battering ram forward.

The old gate slammed inward. Major Rhee entered first, yelling “
Umjiki-jima
!” Don’t move! The soldiers with the battering ram
stepped back and men on either side filed in. Ernie and I followed as far as the wooden porch.

The hooch was quickly secured. Soldiers ran around the side of the house, more soldiers emerged over the back wall, and Major Rhee and two soldiers entered through the front sliding doors, none of them bothering to take off their boots, a serious violation of ancient propriety.

Then I heard the commotion from within, like a heavy chest of drawers or a large wooden box had crashed to the floor. Someone shouted and then cursed, and an M-16 round was fired before Major Rhee’s voice screeched angrily to cease fire. Ernie and I made it inside in time to see something ram against a wall. A small bearded man swung a short stick—a
mongdungi
used for beating wet laundry—in a broad arc, fighting off Major Rhee and the two armed guards. Children huddled in the corner, two of them, clutching flat cushions to their chests, their eyes wide with terror. The man was screaming, frothing white at the mouth, swinging the heavy wooden stick in front of him.

Major Rhee backed away, shouting orders that she wanted the man taken alive, and more soldiers rushed into the room, holding their rifles forward like shields. Five or six of them pressed up against him. Still trying to swing his heavy wooden stick, he was on the floor, biting and kicking and commanding them to get off of him. Within seconds, his hands were trussed behind his back and a sock was stuffed deep into his mouth. Too deep, I thought. As they dragged him out, saliva poured from his mouth, and he was starting to turn red.

Major Rhee shouted for the men to get out of the hooch and not to touch anything. She watched as one of the squad leaders pulled out a length of rope and securely bound the prisoner’s hands behind his back. She ordered that the sock be pulled out of his mouth, and when the man started cursing again, she called for it to be put back in.

“If you want to breathe,” she told him in Korean, “you’ll behave.”

The squad leader roughly shoved the prisoner out of the muddy courtyard.

When they were gone, Major Rhee slipped on plastic gloves and returned to the dilapidated hooch, and with another sergeant’s help, she started going through the man’s personal belongings.

Ernie and I were being ignored. I stepped outside the gate for a moment, mainly to get away from the whimpering of the children. Not a soul in this teeming jumble of humanity moved. Everyone was hiding. I heard nothing, not even the squawking of chickens; nothing except the flapping of wet laundry in the afternoon breeze. I returned to the hooch.

Major Rhee apparently hadn’t found anything of note in the man’s meager possessions. She ordered that the walls and flooring be cracked open. While the soldiers ripped the house apart, I asked her what she was looking for.

“Incriminating material,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like a radio to broadcast to North Korea.”

“In this dump?” I said, incredulously.

She shrugged. “Or union propaganda.”

By decree of President Pak Chung-hee, unions were outlawed in South Korea. All except one: the Foreign Organization Employees Union, which mainly comprised the workers of 8th Army.

“What about the children?” I asked.

“What about them?” she replied.

“Now that their father’s gone, what are you going to do with them?”

She shrugged. “They must have relatives.”

She turned and walked away from me. I followed. She seemed to be examining the outside of the hooch. Using a bamboo stick she found on the ground, she poked through the overhanging thatched
roof. We entered the dark passageway between the back of the hooch and the surrounding wall.

“The man you just arrested,” I said, “he doesn’t look anything like the man with the iron sickle.” Major Rhee didn’t answer. “He’s short,” I continued. “His legs are stunted from malnutrition. He has a beard.”

“He could have grown that in the last few days.”

“Hair doesn’t grow that fast,” I said.

Again, she didn’t answer.

“What evidence do you have that he’s the man with the iron sickle?” I asked.

“He’s a union organizer,” she said, “and therefore he is our enemy. We’ll question him and see if he’s the man who did the killing.” She shrugged elaborately. “If not, maybe he knows who did.”

“You’re doing this just to make your bosses believe you’re making progress.”

She stopped poking with the stick, turned, and pointed her finger at my nose, very insulting in Korea. “ROK Army business is ROK Army business,” she said. “You are here just to observe.”

“I’m observing all right,” I told her. “And I believe you’ve been observing me. Whose sedan was that last night in Itaewon?”

She snorted an ironic laugh, half turned away from me and then thought better of it. “
Huh
. You think you’re so important we would watch you all the time.”

“You’re worried about what I’m going to find out.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like maybe the man with the iron sickle isn’t a North Korean agent.”

“So what if he’s not? It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll catch him anyway.”

“So you don’t think this man is the murderer?”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

“Who’s going to conduct the interrogation?” I asked. “You?”

“You’ve seen me in action,” she said. “Don’t you think I can do it?”

“I think you can do it very well.”

She stepped closer, a half smile angling her face. “So maybe you’ll want to watch.” Then she slapped me. It was so fast I didn’t have time to flinch. I slapped her back. Her face twisted but then she stared back at me, laughing. Before I could stop myself, I stepped forward. She lunged toward me and then I grabbed her small waist, and she was kissing me and pulling me closer to her. I hated her, I knew that, but then I started to react, the biological reaction of all healthy young males. Her fingernails clawed into the back of my neck and her leg wrapped around my thigh; behind that dirty hooch, her soldiers not more than a few feet away.

Suddenly, I realized what I was doing and I pushed her away, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You no likey, GI?” she said, her eyes taunting me.

I turned clumsily in the narrow passageway and stepped back into the light. Before returning to the front of the hooch, I paused, willing myself to calm down, but it wasn’t working too well. Finally the lump in my pants started to soften.

As if nothing had happened, Major Rhee continued her search through the low-hanging thatch.

When I had fully recovered, I returned to the front of the hooch.

Ernie squatted in front of the kids, trying to calm them down. Their eyes were as big as summer pears. He pulled out some ginseng gum, tore one stick in half, and offered each child a piece. They just stared at him, unmoving. He continued to speak soothingly and smiled a lot until one of the little arms darted out, and small fingers deftly grabbed the torn stick of gum.

Outside, a woman screamed hysterically. The wife, I thought, back from the market. She pushed past two soldiers and rushed inside, slipping off her plastic sandals and scurrying toward her children. She
knelt and wrapped them in her arms, and they all started to cry. Ernie backed away.

Major Rhee, who had emerged from the far side of the hooch, ordered that they be removed from the premises. Where they were taken, I could only imagine.

Back at the CID office, Miss Kim handed me a phone message. It was from Mr. Pak Hyong-ku, the owner of the Sam-Il Office that did so much business with 8th Army Claims. He wanted me to meet him tonight at about seven at a teahouse in the Sugye-dong area.