by Martin Limon
Occasional flashes of light glinted from between the wood-and-brick walls that lined the top of the cliff. I increased my speed, plowing ahead for what must’ve been at least a mile. Abruptly the pathway ended, or at least it appeared to end. It curved sharply up the muddy incline. There was nowhere else to go, so I clambered uphill, following as the path squeezed between the walls and fed into a stinking pedestrian alleyway, barely wide enough for my shoulders. The ground was layered with mud except for a narrow center channel lined in flagstone. Waste flowed freely through the channel, gurgling beneath my feet.
Eight-foot-high walls loomed above the alleyway. Behind them, all was quiet. It was probably close to midnight by now, but this was more than just the silence of exhaustion in a working neighborhood. It was as still as death. So far, that’s what this country seemed like to me. Like death.
I ran my hands along either side of the narrow walkway, stepping widely to avoid the central gutter. I passed alleys between buildings that were even narrower than the one I was on, veering off at odd angles to the right and the left. The only light left now was the glimmer of the overhead three-quarter moon.
Finally, the alley ended, merging into an open area paved in a circular array of old-fashioned cobblestones, which surrounded a naked elm tree bracketed by flat wooden benches. I knelt in the mouth of the alleyway, catching my breath, studying the darkness. Across the little plaza, candlelight shone through a crack in the walls, golden beams bobbing like mischievous imps. The electricity in this area had probably been switched off by the local authorities-a routine practice to conserve energy, according to my briefers in Seoul. I stared up at the stars, bright among drifting clouds. No one followed me anymore. Where were the running footsteps I’d heard before? I listened for what must have been two minutes. Nothing.
I thought about the message on the warehouse floor. There had only been one pathway along the river’s edge and only one way to climb back up to ground level. It led here, to this spot. Whoever had left the message for me was the same person who’d lit that candle across the plaza. I was certain of it. I stared at the flickering light, appreciating the fact that someone in this vast wilderness of death had lit a candle for me, and enjoying the sensation of sweat pooling beneath my coat. But the night was growing colder. Soon I would begin to shiver. The light on the far side of the cobblestones portended warmth and safety.
Just as I was about to stand up and step out into the open, I heard footsteps. Rapid. Too rapid for me to react. Shadows appeared at the far end of the clearing. I crouched back into darkness. Demons of the night, maybe a dozen, filtered across the cobblestones.
I suddenly became aware of something behind me. Back some thirty yards, where this pathway opened onto the muddy cliff, I heard heavy breathing, and cursing.
Only seconds ago, I’d been counting on being saved. Now I was trapped.
No time to think. I retreated back down the alley, away from the central clearing. Ahead of me, along the main path, I heard sloshing. The cursing had stopped but the breathing was still audible. Whoever they were, they were only a few yards off in the darkness, moving toward me. I had no choice. I slipped sideways into one of the cracks between the buildings and sidled my way north, moving as quickly as I could without making noise.
Spiderwebs and moth cadavers hung from rafters. I shuffled along the narrow opening, which became even narrower, the moss-smeared walls in front and behind pushing in on me. Just as I was about to be hopelessly wedged in, the building in front of me ended and another, slightly wider lane emerged. I ducked into it, holding still for a moment, listening, not breathing. I couldn’t be sure because the sound reverberated off oddly juxtaposed walls, but I believed the footsteps passed the narrow crack and continued toward the central square. Still, I dared not go back there. I edged my way along these brick-and-stone walls, occasionally passing a window boarded up with ancient wood. The alleyway turned and turned again and finally widened. A slippery brick pathway opened in front of me, lined with a sturdy metal railing. Below me, water surged through a cement channel, narrow enough for me to hop across, moving downhill toward the Taedong River.
Behind me, someone shouted.
They’d realized I’d slipped away. In a matter of seconds, they’d be searching between the buildings. Toward the river, the pathway along the edge of the narrow channel hit another building. A dead end. In the other direction, the pathway wound out of sight but led, I believed, back toward the central square. Someone would be waiting for me there. Once again, I was trapped. For a brief moment, I considered leaping into the water and taking my chances plunging downstream. But who knew what tunnels or grates or underground reservoirs loomed between me and the open river? Frantically, I searched my surroundings. Then I saw it. An indentation in the wall on the far side of the channel, large enough for a man. If I managed to make it over there, I’d be spotted easily. Was there a similar opening on this side?
The footsteps and heavy breathing were louder now. Someone was making his way down the same narrow crack I’d just traversed. I climbed over the metal railing, lowered myself, and searched the cement on my side of the channel. About ten yards downstream, I saw it. A recessed opening, directly across from the one on the far side, probably designed to anchor a footbridge or a sluiceway yet to be constructed. I pulled myself toward it, hand over hand. When my feet reached the recessed ledge, I fought for purchase, but only my toes balanced on the slippery lip. If I didn’t lower myself flush up against the cement wall of the channel, I’d plunge backward into the river. Luckily, the wall angled forward slightly.
Loud cursing above gave me courage. I let go of the railing, and hugging the smooth cement in front of me, lowered myself straight down until I could reach inside the opening. I was tilting backward and grabbed frantically for a handhold. Just as I was about to fall, my fingertips found jutting stone. Holding all my weight by straining digits, I managed to pull myself slowly into the narrow opening.
The sound of footsteps exploded onto the brick walkway above. I curled myself into a ball and prayed they hadn’t seen me. More shouts. Men cursing, trotting up and down the pathway. Then, after the sounds of a thorough search, more shouted orders and a pack of them headed off, away from the river, back toward the open central square.
All was quiet. Still, I waited. I knew better than to expose myself too quickly, before I was sure no one was up there. I lay curled in a fetal position for what seemed a long time, listening. Finally, a comet streaked through the air and hit the rushing water, sizzling. A flaming cigarette butt. Someone coughed directly above me. More coughing, more spitting, and then a silvery stream of glowing water rushed down directly in front of me, steaming and splashing into the canal.
Not water, I decided.
The sentry above me was taking a leak.
After an hour, the sentry left. When I was sure there hadn’t been any coughing or soaring cigarette butts in a long time, I peeked out of my cubbyhole. Moving slowly, I managed to twist myself out of the opening and sidle up the slippery cement. I pulled myself up the metal railing onto dry land.
I felt a sense of triumph. They’d searched for me but they hadn’t found me. I retraced my steps, listening at every intersection.
Back at the edge of the plaza, all was quiet. I waited ten minutes until I was certain there was no movement before stepping out of the alley. When I was halfway across the plaza, beneath the branches of the withered elm, someone off to my left shouted. Before I could react, armed men poured out of dark apertures. An electric torch sliced the night, shining brutally into my face. I raised my hands to cover my eyes. Heavy boots tromped toward me and soon I was surrounded. One of the men shoved me back toward the elm tree and others grabbed my arms. Within seconds they’d cinched my wrists behind my back with a wire cord. I cursed myself for being so careless. Before anyone could say anything, a man wearing a full-brimmed cap with a gold-backed red star in the center pushed his way toward me.
The beam of t
he flashlight was lowered. In front of me stood Commander Koh, the man who had led the boarding party on the Star of Tirana this morning and the man in charge of the Port of Nampo. How had he become aware of me so quickly? Had Zarkos talked? Once they’d taken the young sailor into custody, he’d have been so frightened he would have told them anything, traded any tidbit of information, no matter how inconsequential, to regain his freedom. I was the odd duck aboard the Star of Tirana. He’d have told them about me. It was only natural. Still, I had my cover story and I was determined to stick to it.
Commander Koh raised a cigarette to his lips, his eyes narrowing. He didn’t ask me anything, he just stared.
Finally, he stepped back. As he did so, another man armed with a rifle sprang forward. Before I could prepare myself, the butt of his AK-47 slammed into my stomach. My knees gave way and, finding nothing to break my fall, I tumbled headfirst to the ground. My tied arms prevented me from clutching my stomach, but I brought my knees up as far as I could in a vain effort to ease the pain. In seconds, I was vomiting my dinner onto the cobbled ground: komtang, coarse brown rice, and three glasses of barley tea. I must’ve passed out briefly because when I came to I heard a roar, as if the Minotaur of Greek legend had entered our stone ring.
Doctor Yong In-ja was the most exciting woman I’d ever met.
“A bookworm,” was my CID partner Ernie Bascom’s opinion. But Ernie didn’t have much time for the intellectual side of life. He was too busy living, which for him included fighting, drinking, and chasing women, not necessarily in that order. To him, a book was a waste of precious time, time when he could be carousing.
We’d met Doc Yong because she was the chief of the Itaewon branch of the Yongsan District Public Health Service. As such she was in constant contact with the “business girls” who serviced the American GIs-young, impoverished women from the countryside of South Korea who gathered in Itaewon, the red-light district of Seoul. The business girls were constantly appearing on the Eighth Army blotter report-victims of rape, robbery, assault. These reports were routine, and Doctor Yong In-ja at the medical clinic often received the complaints first and passed them on to us.
Doc Yong was the most intelligent person I’d ever met. Through thick-lensed glasses, her serious dark eyes sized you up as soon as you were fortunate enough to step into her realm. I fell for her probably the first time I met her, and I felt awkward around her, but I wasn’t able to get to know her until we worked on a murder case together. It was a cold case dating back twenty years, to just after the end of the Korean War. We’d become close, very close. When it was over, she had to flee to the homeland of her ancestors, to North Korea. I wasn’t sure, but I had indications that she was pregnant at the time. So when I received the message, months later, I realized that it was her calling me to join her.
She was smart enough to know that in order for the Eighth Army brass to release me, and to risk having an American soldier enter communist North Korea, they had to have an incentive. That’s what the ancient manuscript was all about. It had supposedly been written in the fifteenth century under the reign of Sejong Daewang, the Great King Sejong. It told the story of a chase for a man who had been considered dangerous by the authorities at the time. This “wild man” was extremely resourceful and managed to elude his pursuers on horseback by entering a network of caves in the Kwangju Mountains. Upon entering the caves, the officials discovered a network of tunnels that took them much farther than they imagined, beneath what in modern times is known as the Korean DMZ. Some scholars thought the manuscript was a myth. Now, by hiring a merchant sailor to contact me in the port city of Pusan and place a wrinkled fragment of the ancient parchment in my hands, Doc Yong had offered physical proof, confirmed by experts, that the narrative actually did exist. All this was lovely from a historian’s perspective, but to the military, the manuscript had a much greater importance. Specifically, it offered a ready-made pathway beneath the Demilitarized Zone. The honchos at Eighth Army had swallowed the bait whole. And since Doc Yong had further insisted, through the merchant marine who relayed her instructions, that I was the only messenger she would trust, I was selected for the mission. In order to provide the remainder of the manuscript and the information it provided, Doc Yong wanted something in return. What that was, we weren’t quite sure yet, but Eighth Army seemed ready to pay a very high price.
“There’s not much time,” Major Bulward told me. “When the rice paddies freeze, the terrain near the DMZ will become solid and therefore passable for the North Korean armored battalions. Tanks, personnel carriers, self-propelled guns-they’ll find traction on the ice and won’t have to worry about getting bogged down in mud. This winter, after the snows come, that’s when the North Koreans will attack.”
Kim Il-sung had publicly and repeatedly vowed to reunify Korea before he retired. Eighth Army believed him. The time for that to happen was now. This winter.
Here in Nampo, the leaves were off the trees. Cold winds were already blowing out of Manchuria. Soon, Old Man Winter would rouse himself from his snowy home in Siberia, lumber across the Asian landmass, and find his way into the long-suffering peninsula known as Frozen Chosun. He’d bring with him ice and snow and, it was believed, war.
I was still doubled over from the butt of the AK-47 that had been rammed into my gut. Commander Koh still puffed on his cigarette, studying me as if I were some sort of vermin that had to be stomped into submission. But even he seemed startled by the roar that emanated from the man in a brown felt army uniform who stood at the edge of the plaza. What he said was incomprehensible, but he left no doubt that he was enraged. The man was enormous for a Korean. He stormed across the plaza, shoving armed soldiers out of the way, and within seconds he stood toe-to-toe with Commander Koh.
“Weikurei!” he bellowed. What the hell are you doing?
The voice was as deep and as full-throated as any voice I’d ever heard. His bulging cheeks turned red and shook as he spoke, spittle erupting from moist lips. He leaned so close to Commander Koh that their noses touched.
Like Commander Koh, the enraged man wore a cap with a gold-backed red star in the center, but his was a soft cap, the cap of a workingman. He also wore the ubiquitous broach with a picture of the smiling face of the Great Leader pinned to his chest. Something dangled from a lanyard around the big man’s neck, flickering in the light of nervous torches: a photograph, apparently of this man, standing next to and shaking the hand of the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung himself. It was the type of photo that in the West we’d have tacked to the wall of our office.
Commander Koh held his own. He squinted up at the taller man, pointing at me, hollering back that I had escaped from the Port of Nampo and therefore I was his prisoner.
The bigger man’s eyes bulged, and, like a great torrent unleashed, words rushed out of his mouth, washing away any argument Commander Koh was trying to make. The big man pointed at me, waggling his forefinger. He was shouting that it was ludicrous beyond belief that Command Koh should think that he in any way had any jurisdiction here, outside of the port, or any reason in the great wide world to be arresting a man who was clearly the responsibility of the People’s Police of the City of Nampo.
Or at least that’s what I thought he said. The words came out so fast and furious, tumbling over one another; they were like a crowd in a burning theater rushing for the exits.
Commander Koh protested.
The big man leaned into him until their foreheads touched, shoving the rattled Commander backward even further, screaming at the top of his lungs. He would brook no argument. I don’t believe I’d ever seen a person so outraged. In America, we would’ve long since been exchanging blows, or gunshots.
Koreans believe that throwing a punch reflects poorly on the person who throws it. The person who does such an uncouth thing reveals himself to be an uneducated oaf and his victim wins the argument, at least in the public mind, by default. The greatest fear, much greater than the fear of physical harm, was the fear
of losing face.
Gradually, the big man’s argument concerning jurisdiction seemed to be gaining traction. Between shouts, Commander Koh looked pensive, probably calculating the cost of defying this man-whoever he was-and comparing it to the cost of backing down and returning to his little fiefdom at the Port of Nampo.
The bigger man sensed Koh’s wavering and pressed his advantage, shouting louder than ever, waving his arms, his face turning so beet red that I expected him at any moment to keel over. But the big man maintained his footing and Commander Koh turned his face, now staring at me kneeling on the ground, then staring at his men, who, still clutching their automatic weapons, shuffled their feet nervously across the cobbled stones.
Finally, Commander Koh threw up his arms.
“Kurom,” he said. So be it. “If that’s the way you want it, take him. Take him! He’s your problem now. Just, whatever you do, don’t return him to us.” Commander Koh waved his hand in front of the big man’s face. “We don’t want him.”
For once, the big man remained passive.
Commander Koh swiveled and bellowed at his men. “What are you doing? Have you no military discipline? Form your ranks! Stand straight like soldiers. Let’s go! Get moving!”
Commander Koh, his back to the bigger man, maintained an air of scholarly dignity. Without looking back, he followed his troops into one of the larger alleys. In seconds, their footsteps faded in muddy lanes.
The big man, still breathing heavily, stood with his arms akimbo, the redness in his face ebbing. I dared not move. Finally, he turned and looked at me.
“Iro-nah!” he said. Get up!