Seoul, South Korea
Chapter 7
There was nothing about the man's appearance to make anyone in the small, noisy restaurant give him a second glance, which was the way he preferred it. Hanging among his wardrobe at home was the blue uniform and gold-braided cap of an officer in the Korean National Police. As a homicide investigator, it was something reserved for formal occasions, which were occasions he would as soon do without. At the moment he was dressed in blue jeans and a black leather jacket. A compactly built man, slight of stature, wearing round, metal-framed glasses, he slowly rubbed the tips of two slender fingers over a slightly receding hairline. It was an idle gesture, as he felt more concern for his waistline than his hairline. Past forty, he was into the years when many of his contemporaries had begun an unwanted expansion around the middle. But fat, he assured himself with no little annoyance, was the last thing he was likely to get from the chapchae they served around here. He'd be damned lucky to find any lean, for that matter. He took his chopsticks and stirred the vegetables and noodles in the metal bowl, looking for the bits of beef that should have been there. He would have had better luck searching a grassy field for a missing rifle cartridge.
Up the flight of stairs behind him, noontime crowds jostled their way through the mass of open-air stalls known as the Namdaemun sijang, or Great South Gate Market. It was named for the short section of stone wall, capped by an ancient wooden structure with double eaves, that stood in the center of a nearby five-way intersection. The Great South Gate had been designated as South Korea's National Treasure No. 1. But its namesake market appeared to be more treasured by the throngs of shoppers who gained new vigor from the early October chill in the air. Full of the exhuberance that Koreans are famous for, they picked at and haggled over everything from hot red peppers to cold brass and copper cookware.
Captain Yun Yu-sop gave a solemn shake of his head to dismiss a smiling waitress who paused to inquire if he cared for anything else. After twenty-one years of service in the Seoul Metropolitan Police Bureau, Yun's outlook had become a bit jaded. The foibles of mankind had left him little to smile about, particularly with the most troubling investigation of his career weighing heavily on his mind. Until recent months, his star had been on the ascendancy. Now his place in the firmament seemed to be heading the way of the setting sun.
For a moment, he shifted his attention to a couple eating at a small table against the opposite wall. The girl was a thin slip of a thing with long, stringy bangs. He recognized the boy as Ma Tuk-bom, a notorious leader in the student demonstrations that plagued the city with the regularity of a horde of locusts. During the past year, Yun had observed how the green-uniformed combat police had appeared curiously restrained, allowing the demonstrations to build in size. Leaders like Ma Tuk-bom were permitted to remain free, fomenting ever more vocal demonstrations filled with chants of "Down with the Government!" and "Americans Go Home!" Then a faction of the ruling party had unexpectedly split off, charging that the previous election had been rigged, and demanded a new vote for president. Suddenly the students were out in force, demonstrating "for" something. The embattled government finally agreed to a new plebiscite. In a whirlwind campaign, the newly formed Democratic Unity Party, calling for unification of the peninsula, one of the students' cherished goals, and a reduction of outside influence, swept to victory in a landslide.
Word in the bureau grapevine said the combat police restraint had been ordered by a certain individual within what became the inner circle of the new Democratic Unity Party. His sources identified the man as Han Sun-shin, a former colonel in the ROK Army, an older man, a contemporary of the new president, Kwak Sung-kyo. Han was now head of the NSP, the Agency for National Security Planning.
When it was reorganized from the old KCIA in 1980, the NSP was supposed to have been toned down from the excesses of its embarrassing past. The new constitution included provisions against coerced confessions and torture, but Yun was not convinced this prohibition was being followed. In any event, he had never approved of the NSP's methods of operation. He would happily have gathered evidence on some of their more outrageous acts, but he knew of no public prosecutor bold enough to press the charges. Anyway, the NSP was a political organ. He was a law enforcement officer, not a politician.
He cleared his mind of all such distracting thoughts and stabbed at his chapchae, staring into the shiny bowl as if it were a crystal ball. He could use one right now. This investigation would drive him gray if it didn't get him fired first. In the Korean justice system, it was intended that a police investigator work under the supervision of a public prosecutor, who would evaluate the evidence he gathered. The prosecutor could request warrants or decline further pursuit of the investigation. Because of the heavy caseload, it was impossible for the prosecutors to monitor every case. But they had authority to intervene whenever they desired, and Yun's investigation was important enough that he was under the microscope. He glanced at his watch. In one hour he was to appear at the prosecutor's office to review his two troubling homicide cases.
Without a further glance at Ma and his skinny girlfriend, Yun paid for his chapchae and walked back up the steps to the crowded street. He picked his way across, dodging between slow-moving trucks and carts. At the next corner he sniffed at the not-so-delicte aroma of fish, squid and eel, and pressed on, unconcerned with all the trade going on about him. He was not on a shopping spree. Not a normal one, at any rate. Besides all the mountains of food and merchandise, the market provided a place to acquire less tangible commodities, such as various personal services, and information. Yun was shopping for the latter.
He strolled along one of the crowded alleyways, too narrow for a normal street. It would accommodate little more than a three-wheeled motorcycle. The buildings had narrow openings that accommodated the market stalls. Yun stepped into one that displayed cartons of red berries, oranges, tangerines, bananas, pineapples, kumquats, the apple-shaped Korean pears, and an assortment of melons. The stall extended back a good fifteen to twenty feet inside the building. An older woman with straight black hair pulled to the back of her head and knotted and a bright-faced young girl with silken tresses tended the stacks of fruit. Squatting on his haunches in the half-darkness at the rear was an elderly man with a scraggly white mustache and goatee. He wore a wide-brimmed white hat and puffed slowly as he lit a long-stemmed pipe.
Captain Yun stopped in front of the old man and bowed. "The oranges look full and juicy," he said.
The lines in the old merchant's face seemed as deep as the valleys that criss-crossed the country's mountainous spine. He took his time with the pipe. Finally pulling it from his mouth, he puckered his lips and said, "Trucked in fresh from Cheju-do. Been a good year for fruit. Lots of rain, lots of sunshine. You want some oranges?"
Hunched down beside him, Yun nodded. "I might take a dozen. Tong-shin likes to keep oranges around."
"You should bring your wife here to shop more often. She is a lovely flower."
He was a smooth operator, Yun reflected. "She'll do," he said.
"And how is your son?"
That was a subject capable of bringing a smile to Yun's normally dour face. "The boy is fine. Boy?" He chuckled. "I guess I shouldn't call him a boy anymore. He's a man. Taller than me. Probably smarter, too, but I'll never tell him that." Se-jin had recently completed four years at the National Police College and received his commission as a lieutenant in the Seoul Police Bureau. He had made his father proud.
The old man raised an eyebrow. "These days the young ones get too smart too soon. But smart is not wise. Wisdom comes with this." He pulled at his sparse white hair.
His name was Chon. This was only one of a dozen stalls he owned, but he had started out here many years ago and this was where he preferred to spend most of his time. Before the day was over, however, he would circulate among the others, asking questions and picking up the observations, gossip and street talk garnered by each location. Information was a good cash c
rop, and it also provided insurance against interference from the authorities. Captain Yun Yu-sop knew not all of Chon's customers were so decent and straightforward.
In the Korean way of doing business, small-talk was an essential ingredient in launching any kind of deal. Yun waited patiently for the old man to exhaust the niceties before he got down to what he had come for.
"Have you learned anything about the man I described for you?" Yun asked.
Chon puffed at his pipe. "Possibly. There was a man here for a short time. You said early September, I believe. Two days before the Pyongyang bombing?"
Yun nodded.
"He left that day for Beijing. The basic description fits him, but for the mustache and long hair." Chon shrugged. "They say he changes his face like I might change my shirt."
Beijing, Yun thought. Interesting. "Do you know if he has any identifying marks? Tatoos? Scars? Anything I could sink my teeth into?"
"A scar, I'm told. On the palm of his right hand. It runs diagonally from the base of the index finger."
"A knife wound, perhaps?" Yun glanced at his watch. He had only a few minutes left.
"Most likely. They say it doesn't bother him, though. He's left-handed."
Left-handed. That was an angle he could get a fix on. Korea was said to have fewer left-handed people than any other country. Why, he had no idea. But it was one of those seemingly inconsequential facts that he had read and retained for future use. Knowledge of the arcane was one of his specialties. "Does he have a reputation as a killer?"
"I would call him a professional assassin. He's apparently available for other kinds of tasks, however, at a rather exhorbitant price. The NSP probably has a file on him. They have more than likely used his services."
Yun looked at the old man hopefully. "Does he have a name?"
Chon smiled. "Most of us have names, don't we?" Then his smile faded. "This information required great risk to obtain, my friend. Great difficulty. I'm afraid the oranges will be rather expensive today."
"Anything within reason."
"He goes by the name of Hwang Sang-sol. Works out of Hong Kong."
Hong Kong. Even more interesting. Yun toyed with the piece of paper in his pocket, looking at the old merchant thoughtfully, eyes narrowed. Should he show it to Chon? It was a piece of evidence he had a funny feeling about. He had made a conscious decision to leave it out of his official report. He was not sure exactly why. It was not something he would normally do. He had only showed it to a few colleagues around the Namdaemun Police Station, where he was assigned to the Detective Division. He hadn't bothered telling them he had found it on the body of the most recent murder victim, one of the two cases he had been assigned under Prosecutor Park. Anyway, no one professed any idea of what significance it might have. None of them, however, possessed the storehouse of knowledge Chon had acquired through countless years of living by his wits while dealing with some of the most unsavory characters to inhabit the city's shadows.
"You have something else that worries you," said Chon. It was a statement, not a question.
He was accustomed to the old man's mind-reading act. Of course, it was really an ability to read people's moods. A finely developed nunchi, the Koreans called it. A highly sensitive set of psychological antennae. "Yes," Yun said. "The problem is I don't want it spread around the streets where this came from." He took out the piece of paper, about four inches square. On it was drawn a box with the word poksu written inside. "I'd like you to make a few selective inquiries. Very casual. Does it mean anything to anybody?"
Chon stroked his goatee as he stared at the symbol. "Vengeance, or payback," he murmured. He pondered it for a moment with dreamy eyes. "It stirs something in the back of my mind. Something from many, many years ago. Too many years ago." He shrugged. "My memory has grown rusty. I'll see what I can learn, or remember."
Chapter 8
A rotund man in his mid-thirties, Park Sang-muk had been a public prosecutor for more than a dozen years. It was not the greatest job in the world for a lawyer, but the pay was decent and you didn't have to vie with other attorneys for clients. He was one of the more capable prosecutors, no doubt due to his insistence on being provided with every relevant fact in a case, no matter what effort was required to obtain it. Somebody else's effort, that is.
He was not noted as an energetic person, except when it came to actions that might endear himself to his superiors, especially the Minister of Justice. He sat behind a large desk covered with neat piles of documents, the more pressing ones stacked closer at hand. He pulled a cigarette from a pack of Turtle Ships, a Korean filter tip, lit it and took a deep drag as he looked down at the sheet of paper that had just been laid before him.
Koreans traditionally shied away from open confrontations in public. They would rather give an ambiguous answer than risk offending someone with a purely negative reply. But in the privacy of his office, Park saw no reason to allow Captain Yun Yu-sop to save face.
"You have two important cases open," he said in a slow cadence, his impassive gaze fixed on Yun, "one dating back to March, the other from early last month. They involve cold-blooded murders of two prominent businessmen of this fair city. One a relative of the new president. As head of the task forces on these cases, you bear the brunt of responsibility for them."
Since former President Roh Tae-woo had launched his War Against Crime in 1990, the Korean National Police had attacked cases like these with a massive show of force—a task force ranging from twenty-five to sixty officers, headed normally by a police superintendent. Park knew that based on knowledge, age and experience, Yun should have been at least a superintendent, one rank beyond captain, and probably head of the Detective Division of his station. He might even have been a senior superintendent and chief of the station, but the perversity of his nature had held him back. The Confucian tradition, which governed most interpersonal relations in Korea, put the emphasis on "we," on the group. That was why business negotiations moved so slowly. Decisions were normally made on a collective basis. But Yun Yu-sop was an individualist. He had expressed contempt for the task force concept, claiming it a waste of manpower, an attempt to solve cases by sheer weight of numbers. Because of his reputation as one of Seoul's top homicide investigators, however, he was put in charge of task forces on the two cases Park was concerned with. But he had insisted on a minimum number of officers.
"The great Yun would do the job with a small group," Park said with heavy sarcasm. "So where are the results? Do you have any idea of the damnable pressure I'm getting over these cases? Here I expected something from you that would point a finger at the perpetrators of these despicable crimes. But what do I get?" He placed the cigarette on a brass ashtray shaped like a dragon's head and lifted the paper from his desk, waving it as though about to toss it aside. "I get a silly list of names and dates, that's what. People killed in accidents, missing persons."
"A list that may have great significance," Yun said. "In pursuing the investigation of the two homicides, I came across something very mysterious, something with the earmarks of a puzzling conspiracy."
Park took a deep puff on the cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward Yun, as if trying to emulate the dragon on the ashtray. "Something very mysterious, a puzzling conspiracy," he repeated, his face twisted in contempt. "Those are terms that imply doubts and uncertainties. Am I confused, Captain, or isn't your job to bring me answers, not questions?"
Yun shifted uncomfortably in his chair, tilting his head to one side as the cloud of smoke dissipated in front of him. In an even voice, he said, "Let me try to tie it together for you."
The prosecutor leaned back in his chair. "Please do."
"You will probably remember most of these incidents. The first two on the list were killed in a single-engine light plane crash last January. Chi was the editor of Koryo Ilbo who strongly supported the American presence in Korea. The pilot was a Colonel Kim of the ROK Air Force. Both men were conservationists. They had planned to fly
over the area between Mt. Soraksan and Mt. Odaesan, looking for illegal logging activities they had received reports about. Naturally, they were flying at very low altitude. About the time they reached the mountains, Colonel Kim reported a drop in oil pressure. There were no good landing sites to the west, so he decided to try making it to the east coast. His next report, a few minutes later, said the engine had failed and he was looking for a place to crash-land in the mountains. When a search party found the plane, it had been strictly a crash, not a landing. Both men dead."
"I trust you're going to tell me what caused the oil pressure drop?" Park sniffed derisively, reaching for his pack of Turtle Ships.
"The investigators' report said an oil line had severed, letting the oil leak out. They speculated that a connection might have been loosened by vibration and finally came apart. But maintenance records showed the engine had undergone a complete inspection only a week before. The mechanics who did the inspection told me they tightened every connection. I asked if it was possible someone could have tampered with the engine. They said anything was possible."
"So you assumed foul play, naturally?"
Yun cleared his throat. "I accepted the possibility of foul play." He hurried on as Park lit another cigarette. "Toward the end of January, an influential member of the National Assembly disappeared while on a business trip to Pusan. He was seen arriving there on Korean Air. His business appointment was at a petroleum refinery, but he took a taxi to a shopping center on Chungmu Street. At that point, his trail becomes blurred. One report said he was seen entering a car near the shopping center. Another claimed he was seen going into the Hotel Commodore. Whatever move he made, he disappeared as completely as the flame from a candle. He hasn't been heard from since."
The Poksu Conspiracy (Post Cold War Political Thriller Book 2) Page 5