The Iron Sickle

by Martin Limon

I slowed her down and made her start from the beginning. She did.

  Just before sundown, the mama-san had bought them all bowls of noodles in the local village, and after dark they’d carried their blankets and a thermos of warm tea out into the brush on the far side of the perimeter of the 8th Army encampment. They sent two girls at a time to linger near the concertina wire and call for GIs to join them in the brush. When a GI worked up the courage to wriggle through the wire, he would disappear with the chosen girl and another girl would take her place. So it would go through the night; the mama-san collecting the money, the girls lying on the blankets, pulling up their skirts, and spreading their legs for the smelly Americans.

  Except this night it was different. Early in the evening, before they’d laid out their blankets or sipped on their first cup of green tea, a “kind gentleman” arrived.

  “Why do you say he was kind?” I asked.

  “Because he smiled at me,” she said. “And because he gave me this.”

  She reached into the pocket of her miniskirt and pulled out a coin. I asked her if I could examine it, and she said yes. It was bronze. I twisted it in my fingers and shone the flashlight on it. It was an old coin, from the Chosun Dynasty, according to the inscription. On it was a picture of Queen Min, one of the last members of the royal family to resist the plans of the Japanese Emperor to colonize her country.

  “She was a brave woman,” I said, handing the coin back to her.

  “Yes. And the kind gentleman told me to be brave.”

  “Did he give you anything else?”

  “Yes,” Miss Shin replied. “He gave me that.”

  She pointed to the iron sickle, which Ernie had wrapped in plastic and placed on a metal stool.

  -11-

  The murdered GIs were identified as Specialist Four Anthony Ertagglia of Queens, New York, and Private First Class Roosevelt Hargis of Mobile, Alabama. Back in the Command tent there was zero sympathy for the fact that Ernie and I had been up all night. As soon as we arrived, we were badgered for as many answers as we could give in our depleted state. Eventually, Ernie took over the jawboning and I was given some time to type out my report. I slipped away and sat at a wooden field table with a Remington typewriter, rolled a sheet of paper into the carriage, and got all the facts down while everything was fresh in my mind—or as fresh as could be expected under the circumstances.

  Miss Shin Myong-ok had told us the man she called the “kind gentleman” had appeared out of the weeds on the far side of the encampment.

  “Did anyone else see him approach you?” I asked.

  She didn’t think so.

  He’d been very polite to the mama-san and even bowed to her. She’d made a place for him on the largest blanket, and they’d sat and Miss Shin had been the one to serve him tea from the large thermos.

  “Did you ever share your tea with GIs?” I asked.

  “Never,” she replied, shocked at the idea.

  The mama-san thought at first that he was the type of Korean man who liked to partake of the charms of GI business girls. Mostly, the girls who hung out with American GIs were shunned for fraternizing so shamelessly with foreigners, but there were always a few perverts around who craved forbidden fruit. As it turned out, that wasn’t what he had in mind. What he wanted, he said, was help in approaching a couple of Americans who worked in the signal truck atop the hill. He had a business proposition he wanted to make to them. He was vague about what the proposition was, but he implied that it had to do with the valuable equipment in the truck, equipment not available in Korea. He wanted to purchase it from the Americans for cash and, although he didn’t say so, it was obvious to Miss Shin and the mama-san that he’d sell the equipment on the black market at a huge mark up. Everyone would profit. The GIs could claim the equipment had been stolen and the American military would replace it. However, due to military security, he couldn’t get near the American GIs to make this very sensible business proposition. That’s where Miss Shin came in.

  He offered the mama-san enough money to cover Miss Shin’s earnings for the entire evening. Her job would be to accompany him to the top of the hill and approach the Americans. With her pleasing smile and the help of a couple of bottles of soju, she would gain access to the truck and then ease the way for the gentleman to join the party.

  According to Miss Shin, the mama-san didn’t believe a word of it. She believed the man was up to no good, but on the other hand he was offering cash, twice as much as Miss Shin could’ve expected to earn in one evening. The mama-san accepted. Miss Shin had no choice but to go.

  I asked her if she thought this man might hurt her.

  No, she didn’t think so, because he appeared to be such a kind gentleman.

  I asked her if she thought the mama-san cared one way or the other if she was hurt or not.

  She lowered her eyes and wouldn’t answer.

  These girls are literally purchased from poor farm families. The mama-san and the other girls in the group then become their new family. As in all Confucian families, the young owe unquestioning obedience to their elders. The elders, in turn, are required to make wise decisions on the behalf of the young. To hear it suggested that in her “family” this sense of responsibility ran only one way filled Miss Shin with shame.

  The climb up the hill had been grueling. When they finally reached the top, the kind gentleman had been very solicitous to her and fetched her water to wash up. He encouraged her to walk alone the last few yards to the signal truck. He handed her the brown sack with the two bottles of soju and told her to bow and smile and when she gained entry to the truck to open the door after twenty minutes or so. He’d be waiting outside.

  “He promised me extra money,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For getting inside and for opening the door for him.”

  “Did he want you to tell the Americans he was there?”

  “No. He was very clear about that. His entrance into the truck had to be a surprise. He told me not to worry about that part. He would take care of everything.”

  “Did he?”

  Again, she lowered her head.

  By mid-afternoon, Mr. Kill, the Chief Homicide detective of the Korean National Police, had arrived at 8th Army Headquarters South, as had Major Rhee Mi-sook of the ROK Army. Major Rhee commanded a lot of GI attention in her exquisitely tailored fatigues as she strutted down the metal slat walkways lain in the mud. The Provost Marshal entered into a private conference with her, then, separately, did the same with Mr. Kill. Both of them wanted a copy of my report and access to the signal truck, which they were provided. Neither Ernie nor I were allowed to talk to either of them as the Provost Marshal wanted to handle this sensitive issue himself. Eighth Army was both embarrassed and enraged that two American GIs had been murdered right under our noses. There was even some whispering that the CG was considering relieving Colonel Brace as 8th Army Provost Marshal. But that was just talk. Nothing official had come down.

  Both Major Rhee of the ROK Army and Mr. Kill of the Korean National Police inquired as to why the two lead CID agents on the case, me and Ernie, were pulling guard duty rather than continuing our investigation. At least, that’s the word I got from Riley. The Provost Marshal would have never told us such a thing directly.

  The reason we’d been put on guard duty was that the entire 8th Army was on move out alert. That meant, in military parlance, that everybody was required to participate. Everyone had to check out a rifle from the arms room, pack up their field gear, pitch in to hoist portable equipment onto the back of trucks, and be prepared, for once in our rear-echelon lives, to act like soldiers. The very few people excepted from this team effort were excused only because they were next in line on the duty roster—Staff Officer at the headquarters, medics at the emergency room, a skeleton crew back at the 8th Army Commo Center, and a handful of MPs assigned to physical security around Yongsan Compound. Other than that, no matter how important your regular job at 8th Army headqua
rters might be, you were doing the duffel bag drag and heading for the field along with every other swinging dick assigned to the command. No exceptions. And if the 8th Army Commander and the 8th Army Chief of Staff and the 8th Army Provost Marshal had to go, then a low ranking schmuck like a CID investigative agent was definitely going. For 8th Army to have allowed Ernie and me to stay behind and continue with the investigation would’ve been tantamount, in their minds, to admitting that our jobs were more important than theirs. This would never happen in a hierarchical military organization. That is, until the man with the iron sickle struck again.

  That’s when the 8th Army honchos were overruled. The special relationship between the Republic of Korea and the Unites States was in danger, and the 8th Army Commander better do something about it. The word came down from on high; maybe from the Ambassador, more likely from the US Army Pacific Commander himself: get your people out there and arrest the man with the iron sickle.

  What the Provost Marshal did in response was send Ernie and me back to Seoul, with specific orders to cooperate with both the ROK Army and the Korean National Police to capture or otherwise put out of commission the man who was causing so much disruption.

  Or, as he put it, to “Pop a cap into the son of a bitch.”

  Ernie and I were booked a ride on the next thing smoking. In this case, it turned out to be an empty fuel truck headed for Seoul. Ernie and I sat up front with the driver, our duffel bags stored in a narrow compartment behind the seats.

  “Free at last,” Ernie said.

  “Free to have our butts busted if we don’t find this guy.”

  “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Sueño.”

  Ernie never worried about anything, not that I could tell. I admired him for it because I was a constant bundle of anxieties; anxieties he never failed to tease me about.

  “Why do you think the Provost Marshal wouldn’t let us talk to Mr. Kill?” he asked.

  “Because Eighth Army had already lost enough face. The PM didn’t want to make it worse by letting a VIP talk to a couple of enlisted pukes.”

  “And Major Rhee?”

  “He wanted her all to himself.”

  “They all do.” As soon as she’d arrived, the Chief of Staff and half the officers who worked for him found time to join in the conference.

  We were heading back to the world of electricity, hot showers, clean clothes, and chow you didn’t have to spoon out of a can. That was good enough to make Ernie happy.

  Me, I was happy about that part, too, but I was still thinking about Specialist Four Anthony Ertagglia and Private First Class Roosevelt Hargis and what they looked like when we stumbled over their bodies in that signal truck. Blood everywhere. Grey tubes sticking out of their necks. And I was thinking about what the Chief of Staff was going to say when he wrote to their next of kin. I hoped he’d be able to say that the man who murdered their son or their husband or their brother was under arrest and rotting in a Korean prison.

  Either that or rotting in hell.

  I decided that as soon as we arrived on Yongsan Compound, I’d head straight for the Military Police arms room and exchange this unwieldy M-16 for a .45 automatic. Whatever it entailed, the work we would be doing in the next few days, or maybe the next few hours, wouldn’t be done from a secure distance. It would be up close and personal. Of that much, at least, I was sure.

  The 8th Army Staff Duty Officer was Major Woolword. We knew him briefly because he’d appeared on the MP blotter reports a few times for being drunk on duty. The only reason he hadn’t been kicked out of the service with a bad conduct discharge was because the 8th Army Chief of Staff had a soft spot for him. They’d served together in the same unit in the Korean War. Woolword still had a few months to go until he could retire at his full rank of major. Knowing he was useless, the honchos had moved him up on the duty roster and left him behind at the almost deserted 8th Army headquarters in Seoul. He was being assisted by an efficient Staff Duty NCO by the name of Ervin, whose main job was to make sure that Major Woolword stayed sober. The third soldier assigned to staff duty was a KATUSA driver. KATUSA stood for Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, and they were usually rich Korean kids whose parents paid for a cushy assignment for them during their mandatory three-year tour in the military.

  Ernie and I waited outside 8th Army headquarters until Sergeant First Class Ervin left the building for evening chow. When he was two blocks down the road he turned left, heading toward the 8th Army mess hall. We’d already been there to catch some chow ourselves. The usual waitress service was cancelled, and only two cooks manned the shorter-than-normal serving line. But they had a grill turned on, the chow was hot, and the coffee was steaming.

  Ernie and I emerged from the bushes and approached the main door of the 8th Army headquarters building, flashing our badges to the two security guards. We were back in civilian clothes, but not the coat and tie normally required. Since there was no one around to keep an eye on us, we’d changed into our running the ville outfits: blue jeans, sneakers, a long-sleeve shirt with collar, and a nylon jacket with fire-breathing dragons embroidered on the back.

  Major Woolword sat at his desk watching the Armed Forces Korea Network on a portable television. Some sort of game show, a rerun from about ten years ago. He looked up as we entered. In the corner, the KATUSA driver put down a Korean comic book, looking guilty.

  Ernie and I came to the position of attention in front of Major Woolword’s desk and saluted. We knew he liked being treated with respect rather than as the hopeless drunk he really was. Ervin wouldn’t be gone long, so I got right to the point.

  “We need the keys, Major, to the Office of the Secretariat, SOFA Committee.”

  I knew he was confused by the acronyms but his sagging, wrinkled face tried to look serious. And sober.

  “Keys,” he growled. “What for?”

  “An investigation, sir,” Ernie said, trying to appear as obsequious as possible, which wasn’t easy for him. “The Chief of Staff sent us to check out some files, and he told us to talk to you personally.”

  “Fred? How is the old son of a bitch?”

  “Fine, sir. And he speaks very highly of you.”

  “He ought to. I pulled his butt out of enough trouble. Did I ever tell you about the fire fight we ran into down near Gongchang-ni?”

  We had to find the keys and get what we needed quick, before Ervin came back from chow. Nobody could enter a secure building and take classified files without express written permission. We’d considered coming back at night and actually breaking into the SOFA office, but that would be too risky. Korean security guards periodically patrol the halls at night, and the fact that the files had been stolen would be obvious once 8th Army returned from the field. Better to take them clean. Even copy them if we had time. What we were hoping for was to befuddle Major Woolword’s booze-fogged mind.

  I interrupted his reveries. “I’ll find it in the key box myself,” I told him.

  “Sure,” Major Woolword said. “Right over there.”

  Ernie leaned toward him. “You were in command of an infantry unit, sir?”

  “No,” Woolword replied. “Not infantry, a supply unit. But believe-you-me, in those days when the Pusan Perimeter was collapsing all around us, everybody was an infantry soldier.”

  “Even the Chief of Staff?”

  “You bet. But he got caught with his pants down.” Woolword started to laugh. In short order, his laughter turned to coughing, and he bent over, grabbed a metal trash can, and spit phlegm so hard it sounded like a BB ringing a bell.

  I knew where the Staff Duty Officer’s key box was from pulling night duty. The idea was that every set of keys for doors and filing cabinets was numbered and listed in a log book, and a spare copy was kept in the Staff Duty Officer’s key box. That way, in an emergency, authorized personnel could gain access to any nook or cranny in the vast 8th Army headquarters. I opened the door and fumbled through the huge wall-mounted cabinet. Some of th
e keys were laid on the lowest shelf, not hanging from a peg as they should be. Others were obviously out of place. The box probably hadn’t been inventoried in quite some time. Not reassuring. I scanned the five typed pages of log, found the SOFA Committee, and located a ring of keys on the correct peg. Quickly, I stuffed it into my pocket.

  So far so good. I hoped Ervin was a slow eater.

  As I walked past Major Woolwoord’s desk, I flashed Ernie the thumbs up sign. He’d keep him talking. I’d try to find the file Strange had called the Bogus Claims Register.

  According to Miss Shin, Specialist Ertagglia and Private Hargis hadn’t been interested in the soju, but they’d definitely been interested in her. She smiled and bowed, and they’d let her in, allowed her to sit on one of the stools, and even offered her some of the C-rations they were sharing. Fruit cocktail in a green can, she told me. They had a canvas cot wedged into the back of the van and that’s where she figured she’d end up, but for the moment they were happy to have somebody ooh and aah as they slipped on earphones and dialed knobs and went through their usual communications routine. The boys seemed to be maneuvering about who would be first with Miss Shin, and they hadn’t even worked their way around to offering her money yet when, after she figured twenty minutes had elapsed, she’d opened the door.

  “He was different,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “He seemed taller. Bigger. He stood up so straight. And for the first time I saw the sickle in his hand. He didn’t hesitate. He pushed past me, and swung the sickle first at the dark one.”

  “Hargis?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know their names. The GI was surprised, his mouth open when the blade slashed across his throat.” She covered her eyes with her hands.

  “Did you scream?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. So did the other GI, the white one. He tried to reach for something, something behind the blinking equipment, but his earphones jerked his head back, and he stumbled over one of the stools, and before he could grab whatever he was trying to grab, the man leapt over the dark one and sliced the blade across the white one’s throat.” She covered her eyes again. “I tried not to look. There was blood everywhere, and then he dragged me off the stool and pulled me outside. I fell down the steps. That’s when I hurt my arm.” She cradled her elbow. “I thought he would kill me, too. I kept trying to hide my throat.”