The Iron Sickle (7 page)

I stared up at the darkness. The half moon hovered overhead, surveying the silence. I turned and headed downhill. When I reached the MSR, I looked both ways, but there was no need. At this hour, because of the midnight-to-four curfew, all traffic had ceased. The walk back to the compound was slightly less than a mile. I put one combat boot in front of the other.

The façade of the Hamilton Hotel leered in front of me. I passed it and glanced down the narrow lanes leading off the MSR. No signs of life. In this area even the street lamps seemed to have died. I heard the scratch-like scurrying of vermin getting out of my way but they were too fast for me; I didn’t see them. I half expected one of the military jeeps of the Korean National Police curfew patrol to loom out of the darkness but they didn’t. It was an eerie feeling, like being the last person on earth, but I knew I wasn’t. This area of town, like the rest of Seoul, would be crammed with people during the day; people buying and selling and driving and walking and shouting. The people were still here but they were indoors. Quiet. As if hiding from some great beast of the night. And then I heard it.

A cough, down one of the alleys. I stopped, stood silently for a moment, listening. When the cough wasn’t repeated, I stepped forward and peered up the incline. Two-story cement block buildings lined the road. Farther uphill, brick walls surrounded homes with tiled roofs turned up at the edges like blackbirds ready for flight. Just beyond the overhang of a small store, a thick telephone pole rose from the cobbled street. Behind it, I saw movement. Someone was standing there, purposely hidden. Why would anyone be out at this hour? And why hide?

I checked to make sure my flashlight was in my pocket. When we’d left the compound earlier this evening, neither Ernie nor I had time to
stop at the arms room and check out a weapon. But I probably wouldn’t need one. Chances were this was just some husband who came home too late and was locked outside of his home by his wife. Or maybe it was a drunk who was afraid of being caught by the curfew police.

Or it could be the man with the iron sickle.

I stepped into the alley. Off to the side, I noticed a wooden crate of empty beer bottles of the Oriental Brewery. Thick, heavy things, a liter each. I grabbed one and held it in my right hand. Then I started uphill, holding my flashlight in my left, ready to click it on.

Whoever was standing behind the pole hadn’t moved. Maybe they didn’t realize I’d spotted them. I continued uphill, thinking about Mr. C. Winston Barretsford, the man who’d been brutally murdered right in his office, and Corporal Rickey Collingsworth, a young soldier barely out of his teens who’d had his life cut short.

I wished Ernie were there to back me up.

Suddenly, whoever had been lurking behind the telephone pole stepped out into the roadway, someone dressed all in black.

He was twenty yards above me, uphill at a steep incline, still too far away for me to charge. Too far away for me to reach him before he had a chance to whip out whatever he was holding beneath his overcoat. He stood perfectly still, staring at me, but in the dark shadow I couldn’t make out his eyes or any facial features. I was thinking of what I would do if he came at me, maybe throw the beer bottle at him. Then, unexpectedly, he took an awkward, tilting step forward.

I held the bottle loosely in my hand, ready to wing it at him as soon as he came within range. I also pulled out the flashlight, ready to use that, too. I stepped toward him, angling for position in the narrow road and hoping for enough space to maneuver and to avoid the slashing iron of his curved blade.

Instead of continuing toward me, the man in black swiveled and disappeared into the dark mouth of an even narrower pedestrian walkway. I knew where it would lead. Back into the maze of walls and hooches that made every neighborhood in Seoul an indecipherable labyrinth. If he reached those impenetrable catacombs, I’d lose him. I shouted and started to run. It was too dark to be sure, but I thought the man had tightened his hold on the front of his coat and glanced back at me just before he stepped into the narrow walkway.

When I reached the opening, I stopped for a moment and stared into the darkness. He was already gone. Somewhere off in the distance, one pale bulb shone. The path ended about twenty yards in and then forked. I ran in, glanced to the right, and saw nothing, so I turned left and climbed uphill.

The pathway narrowed. I was forced to turn sideways in order to slide through. Spider webs at the top of the walls hung down and brushed against my ears. I swiped them away. Finally, the lane emerged onto a slightly wider passageway illuminated by a streetlamp. I walked toward the pale light, asking myself what in the hell I was doing. I wasn’t armed, I was alone, nobody knew I was up here, and the man with the iron sickle was clearly leading me into some sort of ambush.
Situated the way I was, there was no way he could get at me. I’d see him before he could attack, and much of his advantage with the sickle would be nullified by the close quarters. He wouldn’t be able to swing it effectively, and he certainly didn’t have the element of surprise he had at the 8th Army Claims Office or outside of the
pochang macha
. Still, I had no idea what he was planning. Maybe nothing. Maybe he was just trying to get away. Maybe this wasn’t even the same man, although he fit all the descriptions. It was too late to go back; I wasn’t even sure I could find my way back to the MSR. So I plowed forward.

At last the path spilled out onto a street I knew. It was broad, two lanes, and ran parallel to the MSR over a row of hills that eventually led to a high-rent district on the edge of Namsan Mountain. I glanced up and down the dark street. Nothing. Nothing, that is, except for a three-wheeled pickup truck, locked and parked for the night, and next to that a pushcart. I knelt so I could see beneath the truck. No feet lurking. I raised myself and started to walk forward, and then I heard it: footsteps emerging from an alley to my right, an alley so narrow and so well hidden by shadow I hadn’t noticed it.

Quickly, I backed toward the pushcart. I swiveled to search for the source of the footsteps but at the same time, fifty yards downhill, a pair of headlights appeared around a curve in the road. They were moving fast. The engine roared, and within seconds the headlights shone directly into my eyes, blinding me. I backed away from the mouth of the alley where I’d heard the footsteps, covering my eyes with my hand. Then the beam of the headlights swirled, and I saw him frozen in a brilliant tableau, staring directly at me—a face with a mangled lower lip, a face contorted with hatred. Held across the long black overcoat like a scepter, the
naht
, the short-handled sickle with the wickedly curved blade.

And then the alley went dark and the man was gone, disappearing in an instant. The driver of the vehicle stepped on the gas, making his
engine roar. The headlights swung back toward me. I ducked behind the pickup truck, but it was too late. Whoever was driving pulled up on the far side of the truck, brakes squealed, and a door opened then slammed shut.

“Hold it right there!” An American MP appeared around the rear of the truck. He held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.

I froze, averting my eyes toward the alleyway.

He stared at me for a moment. “Sueño?” he asked.

I nodded.

“What the hell you doing up here?”

I didn’t answer, considering whether or not to call for backup and try to cordon off the neighborhood and maybe trap the man with the iron sickle. But it was too late. Such an effort would take at least a half hour to set up. He had too much of a head start and the catacombs of Seoul were vast. Instead, I sighed and answered the MP’s question. “It’s a long story.”

“Better be a good one. The Staff Duty Officer has a case of the big ass.”

“So do I,” I said. “Do you mind helping me check out that alley?”

I pointed to where I’d seen the man with the iron sickle. He aimed his flashlight. It was empty now, nothing but ancient brick and string-like cobwebs.

“You spot something down there?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

He followed me into the maze. We spent a half hour chasing our tails. No sign of anything.

“What the hell are we looking for?” the MP asked.

I could’ve told him I saw the man with the iron sickle but I’m not sure he would’ve believed me. Every MP craves glory. If I claimed to have seen the most wanted man in 8th Army and had no evidence to back it up, I would be thought of as either hallucinating or, more
likely, making up stories to make myself seem important. And I’d be asked the most embarrassing question of all: why didn’t you take him down?

“Forget it,” I said. “I thought I saw something. Guess I was mistaken.”

We returned to the compound.

“Abandoning your post,” the Staff Duty Officer said. “Absent without leave. Disobeying a general order. Need I go on?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“A call came in just before midnight,” I told him, “an MP under attack, bleeding, no one else was available.”

“Burrows and Slabem were on call.”

“By the time we got through to them and woke them up and they got dressed and found their vehicle and drove out to the ville, whatever was happening would’ve been all over.”

“It was all over when you got there,” he told me.

Not quite. The Korean MP was still alive and on his way to the hospital, and, as I found out later, the man with the iron sickle was still haunting the area. But instead of explaining, I kept quiet. When a military officer is angry, proving to him he’s wrong just makes matters worse.

First Lieutenant Wilson was the 8th Army Staff Duty Officer for the evening. A leather armband designating him as such was strapped around his left shoulder. He kept rubbing his forehead and pushing his garrison cap backward over his cropped hair, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“The Provost Marshal has been informed,” he told me. “Burrows and Slabem are out there right now at the Itaewon Police Station.”

“Waiting for the police report,” I said.

He studied me, suspicious of the insolence in my voice. “That’s their job,” he told me.

At their core, the Korean National Police are a political organization; their main reason for existence is to support the military dictatorship of President Park Chung-hee. Despite this fact, the honchos of 8th Army allow the KNPs to translate their own police reports into English. That’s what CID agents Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem were waiting for now, the KNP English translation of the police report concerning the attack at the
pochang macha
. I doubted either Burrows or Slabem could read even one word of Korean. In the past, I’d gone to the trouble of comparing the Korean version of a KNP police report to the English version. Often the English version was watered down even more than the Korean version. Important information was left out in an effort not to upset 8th Army or in any way damage the special relationship between the US and Korea.

I considered explaining all this to Lieutenant Wilson, explaining the need for first hand information, the need for American cops capable of interviewing Korean witnesses, but I was too tired to go into it. Instead, I said, “Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Wilson pushed his cap back even further and rubbed his furrowed brow. “I’ll let the Provost Marshal decide what to do with you. For now, I want you to finish your shift as sergeant of the guard.” He checked his watch. “Two more hours until morning chow. I expect you out there, on patrol, until then. When you’re properly relieved, report back here to the desk sergeant. He’ll log you out.”

Lieutenant Wilson asked me if I understood what he’d just told me, and I said I did. He was treating me like an idiot, and maybe there was some justification. In the army an experienced NCO who risks reprimand in order to do the right thing is suspected of either not understanding the situation or, more likely, of having gone mad.

I was starving by the time I was relieved from guard duty, but instead of making a beeline to the chow hall, I went back to Itaewon to search for Ernie. When I reached Miss Ju’s hooch, I knew I must’ve found Ernie because the sliding latticework door in front of her room was hanging halfway out of its frame.

“Ernie?” I said, rapping on the edge of the wooden porch. A bleary-eyed Korean woman peered out from behind strips of shredded oil paper that had once been part of the door. She realized who I was and her eyes popped open. She raised her knee and stomped behind her at something. A man grunted. Ernie.

I reached into the hooch, sliding forward on my knees, and shook him.

“Reveille,” I said. “The Provost Marshal wants to talk to us at zero eight hundred.”

Ernie sat up and rubbed his eyes. As he got dressed, Miss Ju said, “You owe me money!”

“Money?” Ernie repeated in mock outrage. “I thought you
rubba
me too muchey.”

She slipped on a robe and stood leaning against the broken door as Ernie slid into his trouser and tucked in his shirt. “Not that,” she said. “Last night you come here, you punch Bobby, you break door. You gotta
pay
!”