The Nine-Tailed Fox

by Martin Limon

  Even in my drunken state, I knew a trap when I saw one. And that if I stepped into that sedan, I might never get back out. Not in one piece, anyway. But I also believed that I was being offered a chance to find out who had murdered Sergeant Werkowski and, more importantly, whether or not Corporal Holdren and Specialist Shirkey were still alive.

  I thought about what I had to lose. As Staff Sergeant Riley had so obligingly pointed out, I had never fit into the Army, anyway. Though I’d committed my life to the service, I would always be an odd duck. Leah Prevault, meanwhile, had all but forgotten about me. The only thing that set me apart from my fellow soldiers was my work—my ability to solve cases. And here I was, being offered the chance to find out why three American GIs had been taken. An opportunity potentially unlike any other I’d ever be offered.

  Unsteadily, I stepped forward. When I was very close, I nodded to her, and the nod somehow turned into a bow. When I straightened up, she smiled and motioned again with her hand.

  Time to step through the looking glass.

  With a deep breath, I ducked through the door and into the back seat of the sedan.

  Silently, she took the seat beside me, smelling sweetly but subtly of roses. The driver shut the door, ran around the vehicle, and resumed his position behind the steering wheel. He started the engine, backed up, and drove carefully down the main drag of Itaewon, avoiding drunks and swerving around half-naked business girls.

  We turned left at the Main Supply Route, heading for the outskirts of the city. Within minutes, we’d crossed the Third Han River Bridge, turned right, and followed the moonlight on the water stretching west toward the Yellow Sea. With her cool palm, the gumiho patted the back of my hand, reassuring me that I’d done the right thing. She smiled again, and I sighed and leaned back in the soft leather seat.

  “Chak-hei,” she said. Well done.

  And then, as if a great weight had just fallen from my shoulders, I slept.

  -17-

  Sunlight filtered through a curtain of hanging bamboo slats. The translucent wood swayed in the cool breeze. I sat up. Beneath me lay an inch-thick sleeping mat, swaddled in linen. Rumpled in a heap next to me was a silk comforter, embroidered with a Siberian crane rising from the reeds, angled wings flapping.

  My stomach heaved. I opened my mouth, and a loud burp emerged. Bile bubbled angrily halfway up my throat, then subsided. My head throbbed, but gently, as if being squeezed by giant hands covered in cotton gloves. The sharpest pain, I knew from experience, would come later.

  My lower abdomen felt distended—a goatskin brimming with wine. Cautiously, I crawled toward the porcelain chamber pot and lifted the top. After relieving myself, I replaced the lid.

  I looked around; there was no sign of another person having slept here. No strands of long black hair, no sweet smell of perfume. Apparently, I’d been dumped here alone. I searched for my clothes. They weren’t hanging from nails pounded into the wall, as they would be in a cheap yoguan—a Korean inn. Instead, there were varnished hand-carved pegs screwed into similarly varnished stanchions. But none of them held my clothes. Even more worrisome was my missing wallet and 8th Army CID badge.

  Still in only my underpants and T-shirt, I began to search the room. The antique wooden furniture had drawers and cabinets full of linens and extra bedding. One drawer held the loose pantaloons and silk vest of hanbok, traditional clothing for a Korean gentleman. I shuffled along the immaculate floor toward the oil-paper-covered door and slid it open. No one outside—just a long, polished wooden hallway.

  “Yoboseiyo?” I called, not wanting to holler yet.

  Silence. A long, deep silence. For a moment, I felt as if I’d been transported back in time to the Middle Ages, when fewer people roamed the earth and a man’s voice could carry off into eternity. Impatiently, I shrugged off such thoughts and slid the door shut.

  I stood and tried on the hanbok. To my surprise, it was large enough to fit just about perfectly. I tied the belts and fastened the buttons. Thus outfitted, I took a deep breath, stepped toward the door, opened it, and walked out.

  The wooden planks squeaked beneath my feet.

  It was a giant traditional Korean house, the type lived in during the Chosun Dynasty by either royalty or by the yangban—the educated elite. Of course, to sustain themselves, the yangban generally had more than just education. They owned the land that everyone else was forced to work on.

  The house appeared to be square-shaped. In the center past the mosquito screens, I spotted a garden, and I thought I heard water running. Maybe a fountain sat amidst the greenery. Back here, where I was wandering, there were at least two dozen small rooms, each with paneling that could probably be shifted to combine spaces. I thought of the old drawings I’d seen of Korean musicians sitting at one end of a long rectangular hall, rows of low tables lined up before them. People in brightly dyed silk robes sat on cushions, clapping with the music, eating, drinking, and generally having a wonderful time. At least, as wonderful a time one could have before the age of electricity.

  A deep ping reverberated down the hallway. A single note on a stringed instrument, perhaps a zither. A higher note followed, then a few more in rapid succession, flowing into a rising scale that stopped on a prolonged vibrato. I hurried toward the music; at least I wasn’t alone in this huge mansion.

  My feet flapped on wood as I hurtled down the narrow hallway. Suddenly, a figure blocked my path. Startled, I came to an abrupt halt, realizing as I did so that he had a foot-long steel knife in his right hand.

  The gumiho’s driver.

  I could see his pockmarked face clearly now. One eye was swollen almost completely shut. On the left side of his mouth, the lips were mangled, as if burned until they’d turned to crisps, and on his face were dozens of small craters that looked as if they’d been made by tiny asteroids. It was probably all from one horrific accident that had ruined his face forever. I suspected it may not have been such a great face to begin with; his head was small and square, his nose flat, and his ears pulled back as if stapled to his skull. He wore a traditional silk cap over his hair, as well as a silk blouse and pantaloons. His long, thin knife gleamed even in the dim light, appearing sharp enough to cut cleanly through ice.

  The welcome of last night had disappeared. Spite shone out of his dark eyes; he looked like he wanted to cut out my spleen and feed it to me for breakfast. I wasn’t sure how I’d engendered such hatred, but if he was about to shove that knife into me, I didn’t want his last memory of me to be one of a helpless fool. I held completely still, thinking frantically about whether anything I’d seen so far could be used as a weapon. Nothing but sliding doors and smoothly varnished floors.

  He let his breath out slowly, softly hissing like a viper in its death throes.

  Down the hallway, the music stopped. Just as quickly as he’d appeared, the driver stepped back into the doorway he’d emerged from and disappeared.

  Hesitantly, I took a step forward. When he didn’t return, I proceeded down the hallway toward where I thought the music had come from. I could barely resist the urge to look back.

  At the end of the hall, double sliding doors to the left opened into the largest room I’d seen in the house thus far. The rafters were high, and on a raised dais against the far wall was the gumiho. She sat on a flat cushion, legs folded beneath a huge, flowing blue silk skirt.

  She was beautiful, with flowers and jeweled pins punctuating her waves of lush black hair. Behind her was a painting of snarling dragons that swam through a foamy sea, as other creatures did their best to scurry out of the way. Across her skirt lay a flat, stringed bass zither I knew to be called a komungo.

  She pointed toward the square cushion below the dais and said, “Anjuseiyo,” the polite but familiar way of offering a seat. I crossed my ankles and lowered myself to the cushion as elegantly as I could, falling the last few inches. She pretended not to notice.r />
  She clapped her hands, and in seconds a young maid in a plain white vest and purple-hued cotton skirt came in with a short four-legged table and set it in front of me. She then placed a porcelain pot of hot tea carefully atop it. Using both hands, she poured the steaming concoction into a handleless cup. I thanked her, but she gave no acknowledgement that she’d heard me and backed out of the room as soon as she was done. I lifted the cup with two hands and gestured toward the gumiho. She nodded in response and said, “Duhseiyo.” Please partake.

  I did. The tea slid down into my roiling stomach, warming its lining. Soon, the caffeine would take effect and my recovery would start. In my short life, I’d been through so many hangovers that I knew exactly how each part of my anatomy would make its way back to health. In the Army, almost everybody drank—booze was cheap and provided abundantly in the enlisted clubs, officers clubs, snack bars, bowling alleys, Class VI liquor stores, and even vending machines in the barracks, which were always well stocked and could be counted on to pop out endless cans of cold Falstaff. Functional alcoholism was about the only thing I could think of on which Ernie and I were fully aligned with 8th Army.

  The gumiho set her zither aside and peered at me. “Sueño,” she said. “What does it mean?” She must’ve gotten my name off of my ID card or my badge.

  “Dream,” I replied. “Or sleep.”

  “Kum-ul kuhyo,” she said in Korean. Which meant “to dream.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a good name,” she replied. Her English was clear and precisely pronounced; I concluded that money must have bought her a top-notch education. “Mine is Moon Guang-song.”

  I was surprised she’d revealed her first name; it was something Koreans rarely did, especially upon first meeting. I wondered if this boded poorly for me. I didn’t have any backup, no one knew where I was, and I wasn’t armed.

  A long silence followed. Apparently, it was my turn to talk. I had to find out how Sergeant Werkowski had been murdered, and hopefully locate two still-living GIs, while somehow preserving my own safety. I decided to lay everything on the table, if only to forestall the inevitable moment of truth.

  “At Camp Kyle,” I said, “north of Uijongbu. Do you know what the barmaids there call you?”

  “No. What?”

  “Gumiho.”

  She smiled. “They called me that?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, she was laughing, patting her silk-clad knee. “Oh, that’s good.”

  “Yes. And in Pusan, they thought you were old-fashioned. Too high-class to be seen with an American GI.”

  She stopped laughing and stared vacantly at me. For the first time, I looked directly into her eyes. They were a deep, lustrous brown, and just slightly crossed. It gave her an air of concentration. And it was slightly unsettling, as if you couldn’t be certain which part of your soul she was peering into. I pressed on.

  “There was a young American soldier near Camp Kyle,” I told her, “named Werkowski. You took him in your sedan, probably the same one we were in last night, which was driven by the man in the hallway—the blacksmith.”

  She tilted her head. “Blacksmith?”

  “Daejang jang-i,” I said.

  She shook her head. “His burns are from the war. A white powder.”

  During the Korean War, there was one likely culprit. “White phosphorous?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Some groups considered white phosphorous a chemical weapon, and therefore a breach of international treaties. The US used it anyway—liberally. In Basic Training, they’d taught us all about the powder. It burns the skin upon contact, and left to its own devices, will sizzle a hole right down to the bone. And it sticks to the flesh. The only way to get rid of it, we’d been told, was to use our bayonets to carve it from our bodies.

  I heard a slight movement from behind one of the walls; was her guard here, listening to us discuss his past? I moved back to the subject of the missing GIs.

  “A week later, you traveled to Pusan and met another GI named Shirkey. He tried to force you into the Cheil Yoguan, but you resisted. The two of you argued loudly. The proprietor locked you out, and you took him with you.”

  I pictured the KNPs finding Shirkey’s dog tag near the Pusan-to-Seoul Highway, a hundred miles north of where he had gone missing and thirty miles east of where we sat.

  The gumiho sat in silence, her fingers idly strumming the strings of her zither.

  “And the third soldier missing. Corporal Holdren, from ASCOM City. Did you take him, too?”

  She sighed a long, drawn-out breath. “Why would I do any of these things?”

  “That’s what I’d like you to tell me.”

  “And why should I?”

  I took a guess. “You want someone to know. Especially Eighth Army. And America.”

  She frowned. “Why should I care what America thinks? I’ve built myself a place of refuge, completely removed from the modern world. You have no idea what it costs to try to preserve traditional art and music.” Her fingers rested across the strings of the komungo, but didn’t pluck them. “I know about your interest in our language, our culture.” When I didn’t answer, she sat back up and said, “But you’re just another soldier.”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied. “And I want to know why you did it. Why would you kill Werkowski?”

  She clutched the strings of the komungo so tightly, I thought they might snap. “You dare to ask me that?” For a moment, I thought she might hurl the zither at me. Instead, she carefully set it aside and turned back to me, muttering, “Sangnom sikki!”—a rather unladylike insult about being born of a base lout.

  Then she rose from the dais in one graceful move and floated toward me in her silk gown like an enormous blue flower. I rose to meet her, and when she reached me, her right hand swung upward in a broad arc and slapped me across the face.

  Surprised, I staggered backward, hit the small table, and overturned it. Porcelain shattered and tea splashed, flooding across the immaculately polished wood-slat floor. The bodyguard burst through the door, knife still in hand. The gumiho nodded to him before sliding open one of the side doors to exit, and he launched himself toward me. I reached for the edge of the low table, and at the last second swung it in front of me like a wooden shield.

  The knife slammed into the varnish, the table shuddered, and to my surprise, its sharp tip sliced through the thick top as if it were a sheet of plywood. Cold steel slid toward me. Still clutching the table legs with both hands, I twisted it to slow the knife’s progress. Just before reaching my neck, the blade stopped, its handle hitting the wood.

  I used all my weight to wrench the table to my left, then leapt forward and planted a kick between the guard’s legs. He buckled over in pain, and I shoved him backward. As he struggled to regain his balance, I sprinted past him through the open sliding door into the hallway.

  At top speed, I covered the length of the house, spotting a short passageway that led toward the kitchen. Two women, hair covered by white bandanas, stared at me in fear. I pushed past them, involuntarily feeling hunger as I nearly knocked over pots and pans and a steaming bowl of bean curd soup. I emerged onto a long lawn that sloped toward a rise about fifty yards away.

  I ran uphill, bare feet slapping atop a flagstone walkway and then giving way to cool grass that stabbed at my soles. Off to my left, past a line of birch trees and up near the top of the rise, sat a squat stone building. To my right, a tall stone fence.

  In a few seconds, I reached the top of the ridge and stopped. A dead end. Worse than that, a cliff. A hundred feet below, roiling surf pounded against jagged rocks. I turned and looked back. Climbing uphill steadily was the stout driver, still holding his knife, which looked no worse for wear after its encounter with the table. Behind him, skirt held in front of her, tottered the gumiho.

  Movement c
aught my attention on another rise about two hundred yards away, on the far side of the house. A man knelt in a firing position, aiming a rifle directly at me. Keeping my hands to my side and visible, I glanced around in a slow arc, spotting an armed guard every hundred yards or so around the perimeter of the small valley that cradled the gumiho’s estate.

  So much for my fantasy of escape.

  My pursuers plodded uphill steadily. I was trapped, they knew it. I supposed they didn’t expect me to leap off the cliff and onto the rocks below, or they didn’t care much if I did.

  I studied my surroundings more thoroughly. On my right now was the stout stone building, looking as if it could withstand any typhoon the Yellow Sea might hurl its way. Off to my far left, maybe ten miles away and partially obscured by mist, stood the Inchon skyline. From here, the giant mechanical cranes at the Port of Inchon looked small, like bent chopsticks, and the hulls of merchant ships resembled torn sheets of dried seaweed.

  My heart pounding, I stared out at the magnificent vista, breathing in salt air for a moment. If escape was impossible, I could at least study my surroundings and commit every detail to memory, in case any of it turned out to be of use. I turned back toward the gumiho’s palatial home. It sat on a level plane carved into a gentle slope. About a mile beyond the edge of the estate were farms: fields of cabbage and Korean radishes, and beyond that, rice paddies. At the farthest edge of one of the muddy fields, a small boy rode the back of an ox.

  The gumiho and her bodyguard were almost on me now. I searched my surroundings for something I could use as a weapon—maybe a tree branch, or a large rock. But neither would be much good against that wicked knife. Black-and-white magpies flitted between the trees.

  If only I could fly.

  The bodyguard stopped just below the top of the ridge. Motioning for him to hold, the gumiho stepped past him, her skirt and loose silk sleeves billowing in the wind.

  I considered making a mad dash for the gumiho, grabbing her by the neck, and threatening to toss her off the edge of the cliff if her bodyguard didn’t back off. As if reading my thoughts, he took two steps closer to her.