The Line

by Martin Limon

  “An M16?” he said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. We might need some serious firepower.”

  -27-

  “Joint Security Area,” Palinki said. “That’s the same as Panmunjom, where the North Koreans are?”

  “Right,” I told him.

  “I never been up there. North Korean tough guys, huh?”

  “Supposedly,” Ernie said, “they’re trained to break bricks with their bare hands.”

  “Tough guys,” Palinki said.

  Ernie swerved through traffic as we passed the city limits of Munsan on our left. Up ahead, the sign for Jayu Tari, the Freedom Bridge, loomed.

  Corporal June Muencher was quiet. When I glanced into the backseat of the jeep, I noticed she was pinching the tips of her short fingernails together.

  “How about you, Muencher?” I asked. “Ever been to the JSA?”

  “First time.” She clutched the M16 across her lap.

  “It’s exciting,” I said.

  “I’ll bet.”

  After being stopped at the ROK Army checkpoint and showing our dispatch, we rolled onto Freedom Bridge and crossed the rushing expanse of the Imjin River. Once back on solid ground, we followed the two-lane blacktop north toward the Demilitarized Zone.

  “So who we going to bust?” Palinki asked, leaning forward like a kid on his way to an amusement park.

  I told him. “A black marketeer,” I said, “like any other.” I turned toward Corporal Muencher. “You’ve arrested plenty of them.”

  “Yes, in the last couple weeks under the instruction of Sergeant Bascom.”

  “Well, it will be the same up here. We find the goods, hopefully catch the culprits in the act of transferring them, and we make the bust.”

  “The only thing out of the ordinary,” Ernie said, “is that we’ll be surrounded by armed Communist soldiers who hate our guts.”

  Muencher punched him on the shoulder. “You’re always so negative.”

  Ernie looked at me. “She’s getting to know me.”

  We rolled beneath the wooden arch that read united nations command joint security area. One of the gate guards gave us a curious look, but after checking our emergency dispatch, waved us through. After we passed, he rotated the handle on his field phone.

  “In a few seconds, Brunmeyer will know we’re here,” Ernie said.

  “But with a MAC meeting just starting, he won’t have time to do anything about it.”

  A line of polished military sedans sat in the parking area. Ahead, a small group of officers in Class A uniforms marched toward the central meeting room. Even from this distance, I spotted the beefy shoulders of Colonel Peele, the Executive Officer of the Military Armistice Commission, his head so polished that it shone.

  Near the long narrow building that housed the MAC meeting room, an armed guard stopped us, holding out his hand. He wore a black armband that said sergeant of the guard.

  “Colonel Brunmeyer’s orders,” he told us. “No visitors during the MAC meeting.”

  I showed him my badge. “We’re here on police business.”

  “I don’t care what business you’re on,” he said. “You can’t interrupt the meeting.”

  The officers on the South Korean side had already entered the building. On the North Korean side, a boxy sedan pulled up, soldiers in brown uniforms smartly opened the doors, and military officers wearing round-brimmed hats two sizes too large for them climbed out. All of them were weighed down with enough medals on their chests to sink a battleship. They marched through the door on the northern side of the meeting room.

  “We don’t want to interrupt,” I told the sergeant of the guard, “but this has to be served.” I pulled out an official-looking document titled Notice of Summary Indictment that Riley had fixed up for me. Before he could study it in too much detail, I slipped it back into my pocket. “Tell you what. We’ll wait until the meeting’s over. Where’s the break room? We could use a cup of hot coffee.”

  “Over there,” he said, pointing toward a long Quonset hut. “But it’s locked right now.”

  “If you open it,” I told him, “we’ll stay there during the meeting, out of your hair, and present this to Colonel Brunmeyer when it’s over.”

  The sergeant of the guard paused, seeming unsure.

  “Hey,” Ernie said. “We’ll keep a low profile. The Chief of Staff won’t mind us waiting until the meeting’s over.”

  Finally, the guard said, “Okay, come on.”

  At a trot, he led us two buildings down to the locked door. He pulled out a ring of keys, popped the lock, and told us to stay inside until he gave us the word.

  “Not to worry,” Ernie told him.

  It was your typical military break room, with a flat, wooden picnic-style table in the center and a counter with a hot-water urn beneath a small cupboard. Plenty of sugar packets and soluble creamer and economy-sized jars of Folgers Freeze Dried Crystals. Inside a small refrigerator were sodas and a punctured tin of canned milk.

  “Not much here,” Ernie said, opening and closing the cupboards. He found an old pistol belt and a torn pair of wet-weather-gear suspenders. The break room only occupied half of the building. A door led to the northern side, but it was padlocked shut.

  “I wonder what’s on the other side,” Ernie said.

  I pointed to the bottom of the door. “The MDL runs right here.”

  “The MDL?” Muencher asked.

  “The Military Demarcation Line,” Palinki answered. “The one that divides North and South Korea.”

  “So if we went through that door,” Muencher said, “we’d be in North Korea.”

  “Yes. Although the entire JSA is theoretically open to both sides.”

  Palinki shuddered, his shoulders hulking. “I don’t wanna go in no North Korea.”

  “Aren’t you curious?” Muencher asked him.

  “No way. Not about these things.”

  “It’s not about curiosity,” I said. “It’s about a murder.”

  “What do you expect to find?” Muencher asked.

  “We won’t know until we look,” Ernie told her.

  “Maestro,” I said, motioning with a flourish for Ernie to pick the lock. From his jacket pocket, he pulled out the special tools that he kept rolled in an old piece of felt. He knelt and I shone my flashlight on the lock to give him extra light. I’d asked Ernie a few times where he’d picked up these skills, but he’d been tight-lipped about it, mumbling something about a locksmith academy on the outskirts of Detroit where he’d grown up. Wherever he’d learned the art, it came in handy in our line of work. Five minutes later, the lock popped open and Ernie turned the handle. With a creak, the door swung open. The room was dark but seemed to be filled to the rafters with rectangular bulk. We stepped into the shadow.

  “No cobwebs,” I said.

  “No. But plenty of dust.”

  With so many enlisted soldiers up at the JSA on both the North and South Korean sides, it seemed odd to me that such a room would’ve been left in this state of uncleanliness. I switched on my flashlight. Dust layered the floor and grime coated the woodwork.

  “Guess no one brings work details in here,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Ernie wiped his hand on a nearby cardboard box. It came away clean. “But these all look new. Probably stored here for no more than a few days.”

  We stepped farther inside as I played the beam of the flashlight across the boxes.

  “God,” Ernie said slowly, reading the labels. “There’s so much stuff. It’s like being in the commissary warehouse. Or the PX.”

  Cases of liquor: Johnny Walker Black, Old Grand-Dad, Tanqueray Gin, Courvoisier Cognac. Flatter boxes marked Spam, Folgers, Dole, and C&H pure cane sugar. Closer to the far door, stacked almost to the rafters, were boxes of Kool menthol cigarettes, filtered.


  “Pallets full of this shit,” Ernie said. We gazed at the wooden platforms on the cement floor. “No way the GIs stationed here could consume all this.”

  We checked the far door on the North Korean side. “Locked from the outside,” I said.

  “Let’s go take a look,” Ernie said.

  “They’ll see us.”

  “So? You told me you’ve already gone through the ration control records. The number of LOAs submitted by Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer and the volume of crap he’s purchased out of the Commissary and the PX is huge. There is no way that he or his soldiers could’ve eaten, smoked, or drank all that on their own. You nailed it, Sueño. This is the answer to our case. This secret warehouse with a front door accessible only to the North Koreans, it makes sense. Brunmeyer’s been funneling US-made goods into the back door of this warehouse and the North Koreans have been taking them out the front.”

  “But why?” Muencher asked.

  “Why else?” Ernie said. “To make a buck.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “He’s a Lieutenant Colonel, a single man making good pay, on his way to becoming full colonel and likely general someday. Even if he made ten or twenty thousand dollars per year on this deal, after a two-year tour he’d barely clear enough for a down payment on a house. Would that really be worth it to him?”

  “People have sold their souls for less,” Ernie responded.

  “There has to be more,” I said. “More than just the money.” Then I paused. “It’s possible he wasn’t even making money.”

  “What?” Muencher said.

  Palinki waved his arms. “All this Spam, he don’t make money?”

  “I mean, maybe Brunmeyer wasn’t selling this stuff to the North Koreans. Maybe he was paying for it out of his own pocket and just giving it to them.”

  “Are you nuts?” Ernie said. “Why would he do that?”

  “Yeah,” Muencher asked. “Why would anyone do that?”

  I turned slowly in the center of the small warehouse, taking it all in. With the light bleeding in from the break room, Palinki and Muencher cast long shadows.

  “For peace,” I said.

  “A piece of what?” Ernie asked.

  “Not a piece. Just peace.” Ernie stared at me like I’d gone mad, but I continued. “Being the commander of the JSA US contingent is a prestigious job. Brunmeyer was handpicked by the Pentagon. What did he need more than anything to make colonel and have a running start on getting pinned with his first star? A successful tour here at the JSA. No issues. Nobody shot, nobody killed, nobody beaten up and put in a coma. Hard to do with the North Koreans because they’re volatile and don’t want peace. They’ve been looking for confrontation—their propaganda machine thrives on one incident after another. So how do you handle guys like that?” I paused, waiting for an answer. No one had it. “What’s the best way to keep the peace in any situation?”

  “Cooperation,” Muencher said.

  “Sure. But the North Koreans hate our guts. Their regime is built around the fact that their people have to be constantly prepared for war because of the bloodthirsty American soldiers occupying the southern half of the peninsula. Soldiers who they believe are ready at any moment to attack their peace-loving homeland.”

  “You sound like the guy on the loudspeaker.”

  “Yes. It’s the justification for putting up with austerity and the oppression imposed on them by Kim Il-sung.”

  “So we’ll never have peace at the JSA,” Ernie said.

  “Not unless we buy it.”

  Ernie glanced at the imported liquor and the salted pork in cans and the brightly colored fruit cocktail. “This is stuff no one can buy in North Korea,” he said.

  “Precisely. But can you imagine if Brunmeyer’s North Korean counterpart had access to goods like these? Think of how many generals above him could be paid off. How many Communist Party apparatchiks he could bribe.”

  “So Brunmeyer wasn’t black marketeering at all,” Ernie said. “He was shelling out goods purchased with his own hard-earned dollars in order to bribe Junior Lieutenant Kwon into preventing any major incidents.”

  “And Kwon was low man on the totem pole,” I said. “Just the conduit. If he tried to black-market this stuff on his own, he’d risk being caught and charged with treason against the revolution—and the Great Leader himself. You can bet he passed this stuff up the line to his superior officers.”

  We stood silent, gazing around the room filled with bounty from the American and European manufacturing cornucopia. What I didn’t tell them was that I’d realized how the gampei fit into this. No time for that now.

  “So what’s our next move?” Ernie asked.

  “Like you said, we technically have enough evidence to make a case. But Eighth Army won’t be happy about it. JAG will blow holes in our theory three ways from Sunday.”

  “What we need,” Ernie said, “is to catch somebody in flagrante delicto.”

  His favorite new term. I was sure he’d learned it from Strange.

  There were no windows in the warehouse, but Muencher held up her hand for quiet. We stood still, hardly breathing. And then we heard it. Footsteps. A small contingent of North Korean soldiers marching in our direction. I hoped they’d keep going, but they stopped at the front door on the North Korean side of the warehouse. Orders were shouted. A pause as metal slid into metal. We’d started to back away, but we were too late. The door burst open, sunlight streamed in, and two North Korean guards pointed the business ends of AK-47 automatic rifles at us.

  “Chong-ji!” a voice shouted. “Halt!”

  Lieutenant Kwon pushed past the two men, waving his pistol in our direction. “Thieves!” he shouted.

  I stood perfectly still, hoping we could talk our way out of this. Instead, Palinki fired his .45.

  -28-

  The bullet exploded into the splintered rafter above Lieutenant Kwon’s head. Ernie and I both leapt for cover. The AK-47s started spraying the small room with bullets. Glass exploded and the sweet smell of spilled liquor permeated the air. Muencher crouched by the open doorway and popped off her own burst of rounds. Lieutenant Kwon and the two riflemen stumbled backward. As they did, the door swung shut behind them.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ernie shouted.

  I didn’t argue.

  Within seconds, we were out of the warehouse and back in the break room.

  “Anybody hurt?”

  Palinki patted his giant body. “I’m okay.”

  “Me too,” Muencher said.

  Palinki leading the way, we exited and made our way toward the main meeting room of the Military Armistice Commission. As a determined cop, he knew exactly what our next objective was: Arrest JSA Commander Lieutenant Colonel Rudolph M. Brunmeyer. The problem was, there was a contingent of JSA guards who had other ideas. The sergeant of the guard blocked our path. “Dammit! I knew I shouldn’t have let you into the break room.”

  “We were attacked,” Palinki told him.

  “I heard,” he said. “And so did everybody else. The whole damn place is on alert.” Soldiers crouched behind whatever cover they could find, every one of them with their pistols pulled and aimed toward North Korea. “We’re evacuating the MAC building.”

  American and South Korean officers in Class A uniforms, paperwork in their hands or loosely stuffed into briefcases, filed out the southern side of the MAC meeting room. On the northern side, the boxy sedan had pulled up again and Communist soldiers were using their bodies to shield the high-ranking officers who were crouching and hurrying north toward safety.

  Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer stood near the rear door on the south, waving the MAC Commission officers toward the safety of a line of armed guards. One of the last officers to emerge was Colonel Peele. He squinted into the sunlight as saliva bubbled on puffed lips.

&n
bsp; “What kind of operation you running here, Brunmeyer?”

  Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer stiffened and stood at the position of attention.

  Colonel Peele continued. “Didn’t I give you specific orders to maintain the peace up here? How the hell are we going to get anything done with these goddamn Commies if you can’t keep people from shooting at each other every five minutes?”

  Ernie stood next to me. “Asshole didn’t even ask if anyone was hurt.”

  I leaned toward him and whispered, “Time for us to make our move.”

  He nodded, understanding what I wanted him to do. He pulled a fresh stick of ginseng gum and stuck it in his mouth, then stepped forward to the sergeant of the guard.

  “Why you letting the brass go first?” Ernie asked. “What are we, chopped liver?”

  “We’ll be moving you out in an orderly manner.”

  “Orderly my ass,” Ernie said. “You’re not leaving me behind.”

  He tried to step past the sergeant of the guard, but the big man grabbed him, and then they were wrestling. While the other guards turned their attention to Ernie, I slipped past the melee and walked toward the bulky back of Colonel Peele, who was still waving his fat forefinger in front of Brunmeyer’s nose.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I told him, stepping between the two men. “Police business.”

  I turned to Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer. “You’re under arrest for transference of rationed items to unauthorized individuals. And for aiding and abetting the enemy. Step over here, Colonel, and place both hands against the wall.”

  Brunmeyer stared at me, flabbergasted. “Transference? Aiding and abetting? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

  Although they knew who I was, I flashed my badge to both men, just to make it official. “Against the wall!” I shouted. When he didn’t move, I shoved him and he resisted. I’d anticipated it and placed him in a reverse hammerlock before throwing him to the ground. As I handcuffed his wrists behind the small of his back, a half-dozen soldiers surrounded me. The sergeant of the guard, apparently through with Ernie, pointed his .45 directly at my head.