The Nine-Tailed Fox

by Martin Limon

  I examined the clamps around his wrists and ankles. Not padlocked, but apparently hammered to fit securely. I straightened up and backed away, keeping my eyes warily on Gui-mul. “What about the other one?”

  Moon Guang-song shrugged. “He’s gone now.”

  “Gone where?”

  She nodded toward the Yellow Sea.

  So Corporal Holdren was a corpse floating in the Yellow Sea, just as Werkowski had been. I glanced back at Shirkey, prostrate on the stone platform. “Please, let him go,” I told the gumiho. “This isn’t right.”

  “Not right?” she said, eyes blazing. “How dare you tell me what’s not right?”

  Gui-mul shifted his stance, keeping his distance from me, holding the lamp out with his left hand and with his right hand gripping the hilt of his sword.

  “Please,” I said, “cut him loose.”

  “Never hachi!” she screamed. Never happen. GI slang that she must’ve picked up from the business girls in the GI villages she’d been visiting.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “Money?”

  “Money?” She was incredulous. “You think I’d take money for what GIs have done to me?”

  I paused. This wasn’t just about the loss of her child. Bok-su’s murder was the final straw, but she had been forced to cater to her mother’s killer for decades, sinking into madness as she was exposed to her father’s derision. And now she had the means at her disposal—money, hired muscle, a strong, skilled guard who was faithful to her, a vehicle, a massive seaside estate in which to hide—to execute her desired revenge. But her father was no longer here to accept his punishment, so American GIs had taken his place. A GI had once betrayed her, so his fellow GIs would pay the price. She’d been selective, relying on her apparent access to SOFA complaints to determine which GIs were deserving of torture and murder. Whether she’d bought access through the SOFA committee or a different conduit, I couldn’t say. But, based on how much she knew about me, I guessed the Sea Dragon Triad had spies placed very centrally within 8th Army.

  Spies serving a vigilante, gone completely off the rails.

  “Okay,” I said. “Not money. So what do you want?”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “You know about the crimes that GIs commit,” she said. “You see the women they hurt. All you need to do is tell me. Tell me and the Sea Dragons; we’ll take care of it. Soon, GIs will stop hurting women.”

  When I hesitated, she continued.

  “I’ll pay you well,” she said. “And I’ll let you go—I know you didn’t do the things in that report. You’re not the same as your fellow soldiers.”

  The phony report Riley and I had run through Smitty. She’d already seen it, but her inside knowledge was so sophisticated, she’d known it was bogus. She must’ve gathered intelligence on me, realizing how dissatisfied I was with the madness of 8th Imperial Army. She’d figured she might be able to exploit my disaffection. She’d assumed that within military law enforcement, I was the weakest link in the chain, the most likely to betray the command.

  I pretended to consider her proposal in order to buy time. What Riley had said about me not fitting into the military involuntarily replayed itself in my mind.

  By now, Gui-mul had shifted his position to completely block the sepulcher’s entrance. Looking around this ugly, cold place, I saw no weapons with which to defend myself. Bare hands against a skillfully employed sword in a small, sealed-off space. Little chance of escape. I had to keep her talking.

  “What was this tomb built for?”

  “My father’s burial,” she said.

  “Is he still here?” I asked.

  “No. I pulled his body out and tossed it into the Yellow Sea, where it belongs,” she said.

  “And in here,” I said, motioning toward the tiny box on the bier. “This is your son?”

  She stepped toward the casket and gently laid her hand on it. “Yes. Bok-su,” she said, tears starting to stream down her face.

  Her pregnancy and abandonment, the murder of her child—it was a horrible story, and I did sympathize with her, having been separated from my own son due to circumstances beyond my control. But then I looked over at Shirkey, emaciated and chained to unforgiving stone. I remembered Werkowski’s corpse, floating in the concertina wire. And the spot on the back of his skull, rubbed raw from laying on the same stone platform, his head scraping against it. The wound to his chest through his heart, rising to exit from his back that perfectly fit the dimensions of Gui-mul’s curved sword.

  If I was going to escape from the gumiho and, more importantly, be the cop I had sworn to be, I had to save her last surviving victim. Despite what these GIs might’ve done, she didn’t have the right to take the law into her own hands.

  Moon Guang-song and I stared down at the tiny casket. My only true weapon was surprise. I reached out as if to touch the small casket. Before she could protest, I’d lifted the tiny coffin from its pedestal and hurled it at Gui-mul. The top of the coffin swung open, and a tightly wrapped bundle fell out.

  The startled bodyguard stumbled backward out of the entrance in horror, eventually tripping and falling, the lantern slipping from his grasp and shattering, its flame extinguished by the rain.

  Moon Guang-song screamed, rushing to pick up the casket and its contents. I burst outside and headed straight for Gui-mul, who was still struggling to regain his footing. Night had fallen, and the overcast sky was thick with angry gray clouds that had rolled in from the Yellow Sea, wind and rain whipping themselves into a frenzy. With any luck, the guards on the surrounding hills wouldn’t be able to spot us.

  I put the guard in a chokehold and grabbed his knife before he could retaliate. He struggled against me for nearly a full minute before going unconscious.

  When I looked back up, the gumiho was gone, along with her child’s corpse. The coffin I’d thrown at Gui-mul earlier lay in pieces on the ground. Shirkey was still chained to his stone platform, unmoving except for shallow breathing.

  Putting the gumiho out of my mind, I unhooked the key ring from Gui-mul’s belt and began testing rusty keys on Shirkey’s shackles. He groaned, seeming to regain consciousness.

  “Where are Werkowski and Holdren?” I asked, despite knowing Werkowski was dead. I hoped he might be able to give me new information. And I hoped against hope that the gumiho had been lying to me about Holdren, and that I could somehow return him to Camp Kyle.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “The two GIs taken before you,” I told him. “They were here, too. Probably not at the same time.”

  With a great wrenching of iron, one of the cuffs snapped open, freeing his right wrist. I moved on to his left.

  “Who?” he repeated.

  I explained again. Finally, he responded, “They were taken away.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  Feebly, he shook his head. “Don’t know.”

  “Was it just one man or two?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Two,” he said.

  “Were they locked in here with you?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “First one, then the other.”

  So the gumiho had let them die of hunger and thirst next to her lost child until she found their replacements. I wondered if, given time, I would have been the next in chains, or if I would’ve been spared, given that I hadn’t committed the same crimes as the others. It was unsettling that the gumiho knew me better than 8th Army did—how much more I aspired to than military rank, and where the fissures in my loyalty were, and what she had to do to pry them open. I tried not to think about what would happen if those cracks widened, or whether Moon Guang-song might one day be able to exploit them completely.

  I had opened the first ankle chain and only had one more leg to free. Before I started on it, I listened carefully. A great whooshing sound entered the chambe
r. I panicked for a moment, thinking the gumiho had come back with a weapon, or her guard had awoken. But then I realized it was rain, blowing in from the Yellow Sea.

  I went back to unlocking the last shackle.

  Agent Ernie Bascom searched the barracks, the 8th Army Snack Bar, the Post Library, and everywhere else he thought Agent George Sueño might be found. Finally, he gave up and drove to downtown Seoul to show Mr. Kill George’s note. After brief deliberation, they decided that they’d pay a visit to Yonsei University.

  The two of them walked through the leafy campus, led by Officer Oh, whose job was to stop students and ask for directions. Ernie, meanwhile, smiled and waved to each passing gaggle of female coeds, who tittered and walked on arm-in-arm. They located Professor Fulton in his office in the Humanities Building, speaking quietly with a couple of colleagues while going through papers at his desk. Fulton was a tall, thin man with a wispy brown goatee that made him look like a young Lenin. He didn’t seem surprised by Ernie’s appearance, though he looked a bit puzzled at the KNP’s presence.

  Officer Oh went over and whispered something to Professor Fulton. He glanced at Ernie and Mr. Kill, and the group stepped outside into the hallway.

  Unafraid, he faced Mr. Kill and Ernie. “I’m told this is important.”

  “It is,” Ernie said, inviting Mr. Kill to take over the questioning.

  At first, Fulton claimed ignorance of the leak. But under Kill’s withering interrogation, he revealed that a law firm in Inchon had offered him an “honorarium” for information on SOFA accusations.

  “For their clients,” Fulton said. “The ones who aren’t properly represented. They track them down and offer pro bono assistance in their claims against Eighth Army. It’s a worthy cause.”

  “What do you mean, not ‘properly represented’?” Ernie asked.

  Professor Fulton spread his fingers. “This firm has a specialized knowledge of the Eighth Army claims process.”

  “So they have inside connections,” Ernie said.

  Fulton shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Easy work for you,” Ernie said.

  “It’s honest work,” Fulton replied. “These victims deserve competent representation.”

  “And you deserve an honorarium.”

  “I donate all of it to the Women’s Power Coalition. Someone has to strike back when you consider all the sexist mayhem the American military is perpetrating on the women of Korea.”

  “I’m sure you don’t keep a penny,” Ernie said.

  Fulton raised himself up and replied, “I don’t, in fact.”

  Mr. Kill pulled Ernie away.

  Out of earshot, he said, “Three things. The Sea Dragons are based in Inchon. Sergeant Werkowski’s body was discovered off the nearby coast. And a law firm there is the one buying information on SOFA charges.”

  “We need to go there,” Ernie said, “and talk to the Sea Dragons. The ones who are still around, anyway.”

  “Yes. And if whoever is behind this has taken Agent Sueño, we don’t have much time.”

  “He could end up like Werkowski,” Ernie said.

  “Yes.”

  Ernie checked his watch. “I can be out there in an hour. Two, with backup.”

  “We’ll meet at the Inchon KNP headquarters.”

  Before they parted, Mr. Kill said, “Bring as many men as you can. But don’t make this official yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid the culprits might be given advance warning.”

  Ernie understood. There were plenty of bureaucrats within 8th Army and the Korean National Police who were willing to sell information. Until he and Mr. Kill had pinpointed exactly who this gumiho was and who was facilitating her crime spree, it was best to hold close what little information they had.

  Mr. Kill gave a quick command to Officer Oh, who nodded vigorously. The pair of them stepped toward Professor Fulton, who by now was back at his desk arranging his papers. When Officer Oh placed him under arrest, he didn’t resist, apparently expecting the handcuffs before they were snapped on.

  Speechless, the other professors in the office waved goodbye to Fulton as he was hustled away by the all-business Officer Oh.

  Once he was back at 8th Army CID, Ernie checked in with Staff Sergeant Riley.

  “I’ve called everybody I know,” Riley told him. “Still no sign of Sueño.”

  Getting permission to drive out to Inchon with a real MP patrol would take too long, and the request might even be denied. So Ernie took matters into his own hands. He asked Palinki to turn the keys of the arms room over to his second-in-command and make the trip with him and Staff Sergeant Riley.

  “Back on the street?” Palinki asked. “Busting heads, enforcing the law? You got it, brudda!”

  The big man set down the M60 machine gun he’d been working on, cleaned off his fingers with solvent, and was armed and ready in five minutes.

  -20-

  The last chain holding Shirkey to the stone platform groaned and fell open. I lifted his back so he was sitting up for the first time in days.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  He put his feet on the ground and tilted himself forward. He was about to crumble, but I caught him and held him upright. Together we’d started hobbling toward the door when I realized this would take too long.

  “Here,” I said, crouching. “Get onto my back.”

  I used a fireman’s carry. Shirkey wasn’t a big man and had lost weight in the last few days. It was easy enough to lift him off the platform. After a half mile or so of slogging through mud, I knew he would feel a hell of a lot heavier, but we had to get out of here.

  Balancing his weight across my shoulders, I pushed open the stone door of the tomb.

  Outside, the driver was still out cold. A massive deluge was coming down. There was little difference between the sky and the sea below. I waded uphill away from the cliff until I reached the rise overlooking the main house. At the bottom of the slope shone a few lights. If she hadn’t fled already, the gumiho would be down there. I needed to get ahold of the keys to the sedan—the only car I’d seen on the compound thus far—so Shirkey and I could get out of here.

  Halfway down the ridge, headlights glistened through the rain. A convoy of vehicles was winding up the long driveway to the estate. I knelt behind a large rock, allowing Shirkey to slide off my shoulders and sit in the wet grass beside me.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  His eyes were closed.

  “In those cars,” I said.

  “Her boys,” he whispered. “They came out there once to see us. Smoking and laughing.”

  So she’d called backup. I wondered if there was any way to escape without a confrontation, which meant on foot without a vehicle. Up north, toward the road, there was nothing but farmland until Inchon. And down south, more farmland. We could hide, but they could easily fan out and find us in the morning.

  “Come on,” I said, lifting Shirkey back onto my shoulders. I kept far to the right of the big house, and we made our way into a small orchard of pear trees. After a half mile or so, I set him down again, this time into a thicket of untended brush. When I stood up, he said, “Where are you going?”

  “To steal a car,” I said.

  “When will you be back?”

  “Can’t say for sure.”

  I found a half-rotted pear, tore off and threw away the most rotten chunk, and let the rain wash off some of the dirt.

  “Here,” I said.

  “I can’t eat nothing.”

  “You have to,” I told him. “Take one small bite, chew it thoroughly, and then when you’re ready, do another.”

  He reached out and took the pear. “If you don’t come back,” he said, “I’ll understand.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’
m coming back.”

  I walked off, staying within the shadows. As I approached the main house, I blessed the rain for the decreased visibility. Lightning flashed, and I saw two of the Sea Dragons smoking in the closest of the five sedans lined up out front. I suspected they were supposed to be outside of the car, pacing the perimeter of the property on lookout for us, but they didn’t seem to be operating under much discipline. I figured that the gumiho’s growing obsession with revenge had probably left her little time for disciplining her father’s arrogant gangsters.

  Lack of discipline in an enemy was always a good thing.

  I crawled through the mud until I was behind the car. I grabbed a large rock, crouched down, and waited, rain pelting the back of my head.

  They finished their cigarettes and climbed out of the car. Without surveying their surroundings, they sprinted through the downpour toward the overhanging roof in front of the main building. When the driver ran past, I reached out, grabbed him around the throat, and struck him with the rock. He fell like a sack of wet millet, out cold. I dragged him behind the sedan until he was safely hidden and grabbed the keys from his pocket.

  The one who’d been in the passenger seat, once safe under the overhang, turned around and looked back, surprised that his partner wasn’t there. He called out.

  “Ni gan shemma?” he said. I couldn’t speak Chinese, but guessed he was asking after what his partner was doing.

  When he took a few steps closer, I moved out of hiding and leapt at him with my full weight. He fell backward, and I landed squarely on him, jamming my elbow into his ribs. A great whoosh of air erupted from his lungs, and I used the same rock as before to knock him out cold. Worried that I might’ve gone too far, I double-checked that they were still breathing—all clear. I dragged both unconscious bodies behind a nearby bush and ran back to where I’d left Shirkey.