The Iron Sickle (28 page)

Ernie glanced around at the dark rice paddies surrounding us. “You see any clinics around here?”

Ernie told Captain Prevault to pull over to the side of the road. A good chance for a piss break, I thought, which is what we would have normally done, but with Captain Prevault there, I hesitated. She sensed what we were thinking.

“Go in those bushes over there,” she said. “I’ll stay near the jeep.”

So Ernie and I relieved ourselves about ten yards away while Captain Prevault squatted in front of the jeep. An occasional vehicle cruised by but no one paid any attention. In Korea, the natural functions of the body are seen as just that, natural functions. No one pays them any mind.

When we were done, we climbed back into the jeep. Ernie asked me if I wanted to drive, but I told him no. I wasn’t ready for that yet. We rotated into our usual positions: Captain Prevault in the back, Ernie driving, me in the passenger seat.

“You did a good job,” I told her, “getting us out of Seoul.”

“Thanks. It’s not something I want to do again.”

I pulled out the Army-issue maps I’d already stuffed in the glove compartment. Using a penlight, I studied them. The coordinates
Riley had given me, the last known position of the Lost Echo, were only a few kilometers from the Buddhist Monastery known as Simgok Sa, the monastery that had been used to christen the nameless child Miss Sim.

“When we reach the town of Yang-ku,” I told Ernie, “we best see if we can gas up. I don’t think there’ll be much chance beyond that.”

“There’s not much out here already.”

As it turned out, about a dozen kilometers up the road, at an intersection of three country roads, a big neon sign flashed
Sok-yu
. Rock oil. A gas station. We stopped and I spoke to the attendant in Korean and asked him if there’d been any other people up here this evening from Seoul heading into the Taebaek Mountains. He looked at me as if I were mad. I didn’t press the issue. When I paid him, I flashed my badge and told him if anyone asked if Americans had come this way, he was to tell them no. He continued to stare at me blankly.

“
Arraso
?” I asked. Do you understand?

Finally, he nodded.

I don’t think I’d intimidated him, but I still believed he’d keep his mouth shut. Refusing to get involved, in the States, is seen as shirking your civic duty. In a police state it’s the smartest way, and sometimes the only way, to survive.

With a full tank of gas, the three of us hopped back into the jeep. Ernie checked the nonexistent traffic and we drove off into the night.

By early morning, we had reached a village known as Im-dang. Ernie looked pretty tired, so I told him we should rest and find some chow. He didn’t disagree. Captain Prevault slept soundly in the back seat, her face leaning up against one of the canvas duffel bags.

The side of my face still hurt. I touched it gently. Bruised. I probably looked like hell. My headache had been alleviated somewhat by the Tylenol Captain Prevault had given me last night, but it was throbbing again and I didn’t have the heart to wake her just for that. She snored softly.

“Where the hell are we going to find chow out here?” Ernie asked.

The village was composed of rickety wooden buildings lining either side of the main road. There were a few signs painted on rotted wood but they said things like
GRAIN WAREHOUSE
or
PAK’S FARM EQUIPMENT
. Finally, at the single intersection in town, I spotted the flag of the Republic of Korea hanging from a metal pole on a cement-block building. The local KNP headquarters. We cruised past slowly. No one looked out. Apparently, they were still asleep. A few yards down the road, I spotted three
kimchi
cabs parked in front of a sign that said
Unchon Siktang
. The Driver’s Eatery.

“Pull the jeep around the corner,” I said. “We’ll eat here.”

Ernie found a place to park the jeep out of sight of the KNP office and padlocked the steering wheel to the chain welded to the metal floor. I woke Captain Prevault, and she looked around groggily.

“Chow time,” I said.

She rubbed her eyes and climbed out of the backseat. As we walked toward the eatery, she did her best to wipe the sleep from her eyes and straighten her hair. Once she had it properly arranged, she pulled her field cap down low.

“Do you think they’ll know I’m a woman?” she asked.

“I think they’ll figure it out,” I told her. Even though she was shapeless in her fatigues and combat boots, Ernie and I still towered over her.

The glass in the sliding door was smeared with steam, and when I slid it open and ducked through, the clatter of metal bowls, wooden chopsticks, and porcelain cups stopped abruptly. All eyes turned toward me. I was used to this, and I was not going to let it stop me. The aroma of onions and garlic and hot peppers bubbling in a huge vat alongside chunks of beef made my mouth water. Unfortunately, all of the small tables were taken, but I stood my ground. A woman who I figured to be either the proprietress or a waitress glanced at me and then looked away, as if I represented a problem she hoped would go away on its own. Ernie and then Captain Prevault bumped in behind me.

“No place to sit?” Captain Prevault asked.

“Not yet,” I replied.

Ernie scanned the room. There were fewer than a dozen customers there, most of them workmen wearing jackets, at least three of them the drivers of the cabs parked outside. Ernie spotted a table that was round and big enough for the three of us. Only one man sat there. Ernie took a couple of steps forward and motioned to him. The man was studiously ignoring us, his nose buried in his soup.
Ernie slipped through the crowd and wrapped his knuckles loudly on the round table. The man looked up from his soup, startled.

Ernie pointed outside. “You drive
kimchi
cab?” The man stared at him with blank surprise so Ernie mimicked both hands turning a steering wheel. “You drive?” he asked. “Outside?”

The man shook his head negatively and turned back to his soup. Another man rose from a smaller table near the wall and stepped up to Ernie, smiling and motioning toward one of the cabs outside and nodding and pointing at his own nose.

“You?” Ernie said. “You’re the driver?”

The man nodded, smiling broadly, sensing a cash-paying fare. Ernie patted him on the back and put his arm halfway around the man’s shoulders and then motioned to me and Captain Prevault. “Come on over here,” he said. “This is the
ajjoshi
who drives the cab.” We walked over, not sure what Ernie was up to. When we approached, Ernie swiveled away from the smiling driver and grabbed the mostly empty bowl and cup and spoon and chopsticks that had sat on his small table and lifted them over to the larger round table. Ernie motioned for me and Captain Prevault to sit at the small table he had just cleared. We did. Then Ernie motioned to the driver and together they sat down at the larger round table, joining the morose man who glared at their intrusion.

We waited and within a couple of minutes the rotund middle-aged woman who I believed to be the proprietress approached us, a worried look on her face. When I greeted her in Korean and asked her what they served, she visibly relaxed. In fact she was so relieved we wouldn’t have to wrestle with sign language that she started speaking faster than I could follow. I asked her to slow down and she did. It turned out they had
komtang
, sliced beef in noodle broth, and since you could usually rely on that to be edible wherever you went I ordered a bowl for myself, as did Ernie and Captain Prevault. Ernie also ordered
a chilled bottle of Sunny-tan orange drink. Captain Prevault and I stuck to barley tea.

The morose man got up and left, so we all slid over to the larger table. This time the driver grabbed the bowl and chopsticks the man had left behind and shoved them out of the way. Now we were comfortable and the driver beamed with joy at having stumbled into such august company. Captain Prevault nodded at him and smiled occasionally, adding to his glee.

“
Yoja i-eyo
?” he asked me. Is she a woman?

Koreans are more frank than Americans about matters of sex.

“Yes,” I told him. “A woman soldier.”

“She’s not very pretty,” he told me.

I translated none of this until Captain Prevault, still smiling, asked me what he said.

“He said this is the first time he’s ever seen a female American soldier.”

She smiled back at him and nodded.

The steaming metal bowls of
komtang
arrived along with an array of small dishes: rice, cabbage
kimchi
, and
muu-maleingi
, dried turnip slices. We wolfed down the soup and the rice and the cabbage
kimchi
, but when Ernie tried one of the slices of dried turnip he spit it out on the table.

“What the hell is this?”

I told him.

“Who would want to dry a turnip?” he asked. “Isn’t it tasteless enough to begin with?”

Captain Prevault tried the
muu-maleingi
, chewed thoroughly and said, “Not bad.”

Ernie frowned.

When we were done, I paid the proprietress and we left. The driver followed us outside. He scurried in front of us, reached his cab,
and popped open the back door, waving with his hand for Captain Prevault to enter first.

Ernie waved his open palm at the driver.

“No need there, papa-san. I drivey jeep. You
arra
? Jeep.”

When we breezed past the driver, his face soured. Placing his hands on his hips he walked after us a few paces. When we turned the corner, he was right behind us. Ernie leaned into the open door of the jeep and popped open the padlock. As we started to climb in, the driver screamed at Ernie.

“Okay, okay,” Ernie said, continuing to wave his open palm in the irate man’s face. “So you lost your seat at the chop house. Tough shit. Life’s a bitch.”

Ernie offered the man a stick of ginseng gum. When he refused to accept it, Ernie groaned and pulled out a thousand
-won
note, two bucks. This the driver accepted. He bowed and smiled. As we drove away, the man stared after us, hands on his hips.

The Simkok-sa Buddhist Monastery sat on a craggy granite cliff surrounded by rolling grey clouds. The roads were treacherous, slippery with mud, and Captain Prevault and I held on for dear life during the entire ride. Ernie, however, seemed to be having a wonderful time, zooming around curbs, downshifting up inclines, slamming on brakes, steering into skids, acting as if the entire rock-hewn road had been especially designed for his driving pleasure. When we finally pulled into the gravel clearing in front of the main gate of the temple, Ernie turned off the engine and Captain Prevault and I climbed out to pay homage, at last, to solid ground.

Together, we walked to the edge of the cliff. Somber mist billowed gently between the distant peaks of the Taebaek Range.

Captain Prevault inhaled deeply. “It’s beautiful up here,” she said. “And the air is so clear.”

Most of these monasteries had been here for centuries. Some of them predated the Chosun Dynasty, their founding stretching back to an ancient time when Buddhism had been ascendant in the politics and cultural life of Korea, before the first king of the Chosun Dynasty established Confucianism as the official state religion. The strict precepts of Confucius had long ago taken control of Korean social structure, and although they were still revered by the people, Buddhist monks were definitely not the dominant power anymore.

“Why are we starting here?” Captain Prevault asked me.

“My experience has been that these monasteries are the repositories of local knowledge and local history.”

“What about the Korean National Police? Like that KNP station we passed in Im-dang?”

I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her about the feuding I suspected between the KNPs and the ROK Army. Instead I just said, “The Korean National Police in some areas of the country are seen not as law enforcement but rather as arms of the occupying government.”

“I thought Pak Chung-hee was popular.”

“He is, in Seoul. Out here, not so much.”

Ernie was checking the oil in the jeep. I suspected if we waited long enough a delegation would emerge from the Simkok-sa Monastery, and I was not disappointed. The big wooden doors beneath the crimson arch creaked like bones and then popped open. Two men walked out, both bald, both wearing saffron robes.

Captain Prevault and I stepped forward and bowed to the men. They bowed in return. The level of education in Buddhist monasteries is very high and more often than not when I’d encountered monks here in Korea they could always produce at least one of their number who could speak English.

“Good morning,” one of the monks said. “Welcome to Simkok Temple.”

He was a youngish man, thin but strong, maybe in his late thirties. The monk next to him was considerably older, with blue pouches beneath sad eyes.

“Thank you,” I said. I pulled out my identification and handed it to him. He glanced at it and handed it back. “I am Agent Sueño from Eighth Army headquarters in Seoul.” I introduced Captain Prevault as a military psychiatrist and Ernie as my assistant. He wouldn’t have liked that but he was out of earshot, still fussing with the jeep, content to let me handle the boring parts of our job.

I told the men about the young woman we called Miss Sim, how she’d been abducted from the home for the criminally insane and how we were anxious to find her. We also told them about the man and the woman who had abducted her.

“Why would Americans be interested?” he asked. “The crime, as I understand it, involves three Korean citizens.”

I agreed. Then I went on to explain about the man with the iron sickle, the Americans who had been murdered and why I believed the man had been systematically leading us to this area of the Taebaek Mountains.

“The Lost Echo,” the monk repeated. “Very poetic.”

“Yes. Have you heard of it?”

“I haven’t.” He turned to the older man and they conversed for a while until the younger man said, “Excuse us,” and the two of them walked away. Captain Prevault and I waited, out of earshot.