by Martin Limon
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. He knelt beside me.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was calm. Very calm. As if he’d just completed some important job. And he had turned into the kind gentleman again, the one I’d known before, waiting for me to recover from my hysterics.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. I had no choice. I didn’t want him to kill me, too.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked him why he had killed them. He said they deserved it for what they’d done.”
“Did he explain what they’d done?”
“No. He told me he had to leave. He told me to wait there and someone would come. If it was a Korean, I should ask for their help. If it was an American, I should run because they would surely kill me. Then he did an odd thing.”
“What was that?”
“He wiped the blade in the grass and turned the handle of the sickle toward me and offered it to me.”
“You took it?”
“I had no choice.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want him to use it on me.”
“Did he say why he wanted you to have the sickle?”
“Yes. He said it was made in Korea. A traditional instrument used by our ancestors. If I used it with a pure heart, my ancestors would give me strength, and I would never be hurt.”
“And that’s why you used it on me?”
“I was frightened.”
“So was I.”
She looked away.
There were about a dozen keys on the large metal ring. I went through them quickly and opened the front door of the Status of Forces Committee Office of the Secretariat. I listened for footsteps down the hall. None. I closed the door behind me and used the flashlight sparingly, keeping it pointed to the floor. There was a reception area in front with some chairs and a small desk and behind that another room with another handful of desks. Off to the right a door opened into a conference room with seating for about a dozen. The office of the director was locked. I fumbled through the keys again and opened it. No file cabinets, only a desk bigger than all the others and a few leather chairs in front with a mahogany coffee table. To the left, ominously, was an unmarked door covered with an iron grate.
I looked through the keys. Only one was long with an unusual shape. I tried that first. The heavy door swung open. I stepped inside, feeling I was far enough from the outer hallway to switch on the overhead light. A row of filing cabinets, all of them padlocked with an iron rod running through the metal handles of the drawers from the top to the bottom.
Which one?
I stooped and studied the labels. Numerical—the Army filing system, with numbers assigned to broad subjects like security or logistics or personnel. At the end of each fiscal year, most files were retired, placed in cardboard boxes, and retained on site for five years. After that, if protocol was followed, they were to be shipped to the main Army Records Center in St. Louis. The idea was that an entire history of US Army activities could be recreated by these well-maintained records. I stared down the long row. Where was the file I was after?
What had Strange called it? The Bogus Claims File.
Shuffling through the keys again, I unlocked the cabinet containing the security files. I slid it open. Rows of manila folders, each affixed with a typed label. I riffled through them. Nothing saying “bogus.” Maybe that’s not what they called it, not officially anyway. I searched through the other subject titles to see if anything matched. Nothing. Then it dawned on me. If 8th Army never wanted this file to see the light of day, and if they never wanted a permanent record made of it, then they wouldn’t keep it here. I was looking in the wrong place.
I left the room, relocking the door, and stepped behind the big desk. There it was. A small two-drawer cabinet made out of wood, not the government-issue grey metal like the other filing cabinets, but something more fancy, like maybe somebody had bought it out of the PX at their own expense. This one had a wooden peg in the top handle that said PRIVATE.
Again I fumbled with keys. None of them worked. It figured. If the officer in charge of the Status of Forces Committee Secretariat wanted to keep something away from prying eyes, he’d keep the keys himself.
I searched the desk, pulling open desk drawers and ignoring photographs, personal letters, a shoe shine kit, and the electric razor in the bottom drawer. Again nothing. I pulled out each desk drawer, looking under it. On the third one I found it, taped to the bottom with brown tape almost the same color as the desk. I ripped the key free, replaced the drawers, and tried it in the cabinet. It popped open. I pulled out the top drawer. I had just found the letter B when I heard voices outside and footsteps approaching down the hallway. Did they know I was in here? I couldn’t be sure. Nothing I could do about it now. I tried to ignore the rapidly approaching footsteps and concentrate on what I was doing. I was too close now to stop. I kept searching, and then I found it, exactly as Strange had predicted. A file marked: BOGUS CLAIMS, CONFIDENTIAL, EYES ONLY (DO NOT COPY).
My original plan was to copy the information and replace the file. That wasn’t going to work this time.
I pulled the file out. It was thin, thinner than I would’ve imagined. I relocked the cabinet, tossed the key in the top desk drawer, stood up, and stuffed the file inside my pants snug against my back. I tightened my belt to make sure the file didn’t fall.
Outside, the footsteps came closer. Subconsciously, I checked the .45 in my shoulder holster. Then I pulled my hand away. These people weren’t my enemies.
I walked around the large desk and reached for the door knob, pausing to listen. There was an argument of some sort. One voice was Major Woolword’s. Whose the other was, I couldn’t say, but I’d soon find out. I opened the door and stepped outside.
“Hold it right there!”
A black Sergeant First Class in pressed fatigues was crouching and holding a .45 automatic with both hands, pointing it straight at me. An overhead fluorescent bulb had been switched on and ambient light glimmered off a neatly trimmed mustache and a nametag that said “Ervin.”
I raised my hands to my side, slowly.
“There’s no need for this,” Major Woolword said.
“The Major’s right,” I said. “No need.”
I was working on keeping my voice steady. The gaping maw of the barrel of the .45 mesmerized me, a black hole trying to suck me in. Where the hell was Ernie? And then I heard his voice, down the hallway. Shouting. More footsteps and then two MPs were barreling toward us, Ernie at their lead.
“Hold it, Ervin,” Ernie said. “Put the gun away.”
When Sergeant Ervin saw the MPs he straightened up and, much to my relief, lowered the .45. Everyone was shouting at once. Apparently, as soon as Ervin returned from chow and the KATUSA driver told him that Major Woolword had allowed me to take some keys, he’d pitched a fit. Ernie told him to can it but couldn’t stop Ervin from pressing the alarm button on his desk, which alerted the MPs. When they arrived, Ernie did his best to head them off by explaining we were on official business, and while he was doing that, Ervin grabbed his weapon and, with Major Woolword in tow, made a beeline for the SOFA Office. Actually, he was just doing his job. Ernie and I had no business rifling through files without the express permission of the Chief of Staff or his designated representative. Our ace in the hole was Major Woolword. If he admitted Sergeant Ervin was correct and we weren’t supposed to be doing what we were doing, then he would look like the incompetent he was. Luckily, his exaggerated sense of pride kicked in.
“Hold on now, Sergeant Ervin. I authorized these men access to the SOFA Secretariat, and I believe my authority holds sway here.”
“No it does not, sir,” Ervin replied. “The Staff Duty Officer isn’t allowed to grant access to any of the offices in Eighth Army without the express permission of the Chief of Staff.”
“Fred? I’ll call him. I’m sure he’ll back up my judgment on this one.”<
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Ervin believed Major Woolword had been snookered, but he also realized the good Major wasn’t going to back down. Ervin grumbled about making an entry in his log, and I believed he would, and I also knew that by tomorrow morning the Provost Marshal would be aware of the entire incident. He’d want an explanation. One he wouldn’t get, not from me, because Ernie and I would be incommunicado by then. I handed the keys back to Major Woolword. He snatched them from my hand.
“Thanks for your cooperation,” I said.
Ernie saluted Major Woolword, who snapped to attention and returned the salute smartly. As we left, the MPs and Sergeant Ervin were still bickering amongst themselves.
“You think Major Woolword will sneak out now for a drink?” Ernie asked.
“After all this,” I said, “who could blame him?”
We knew we didn’t have much time. Cooler heads than Major Woolword would soon realize what we were after; namely, the Bogus Claims File. They’d be worried sick over what we’d do with the information and they probably would put out an all points bulletin for the MPs to take us into custody. What we’d done was illegal. We’d pilfered a personal file. Even though I hoped it would provide us with important leads, we hadn’t properly requested permission to search the files. Worse, we threatened to blow a hole a mile wide in the façade of integrity of the honchos of the 8th United States Army. Claims against the military are required to be adjudicated in an open and legally prescribed manner. To suppress claims was illegal under both US law and the Status of Forces Agreement. But in this case, the SOFA Committee itself had been the ones to illegally suppress certain claims they deemed too dangerous. Since the SOFA Committee is composed of both US and Republic of Korea officers, not only was the American side guilty of a cover up, but so were the ROKs.
Great. Now they’d both be pissed.
Ernie and I sat in a Bachelor Officer Quarters day room reading the file.
“Christ,” Ernie said. “We did all this?”
The file contained allegations of various types of mayhem that ranged from negligent to sadistic. For example, a three-year-old was run over and killed by a military convoy transporting top secret material up to Camp Page in the mountains near Chunchon. The convoy consisted of four huge trucks with canvas-covered cargo on flat-bed trailers. The fact that this claim was suppressed didn’t surprise me. It was widely rumored that nuclear-tipped tactical missiles were deployed near Chunchon. Of course, the 8th Army denied that rumor, so this case had been filed away. Whoever lost their three-year-old was just out of luck.
Other claims had to do with secret maneuvers, special forces units on clandestine missions on or near the Demilitarized Zone or down south near coastal areas. One of the things that makes Korea different from the States is there are civilians everywhere. In the States we have huge military reservations in the badlands of Texas, in Oklahoma, in the deserts of Nevada and Arizona and California, places where civilians aren’t found—unless they’re an old sourdough with a burro. The military can pop off armaments with impunity. Korea, on the other hand, is an ancient country and every bit of arable land has long since been occupied. And since the devastation of the Korean War people have been so poor they’ve been willing to venture into live-fire exercises to collect the spent brass from bullets and artillery shells in order to sell it to metal dealers. When kids are hurt this way, it usually results in a claim being filed, but not when the exercise is classified. Not when its object is to violate the cease fire agreement between North and South Korea and infiltrate areas north of the MDL, the military demarcation line. Then the claim is crushed.
The file was composed of typed onionskin, stamped FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. There were probably a dozen sheets. Not much when you considered more than twenty years of military operations. Especially when you compared them to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of claims that had been processed.
As I read each sheet I handed them to Ernie. He soon tired of the exercise. “They got anything to drink around here?”
Ernie wandered down the hallway toward the kitchen. The BOQ was completely deserted. All of the officers were probably in the field at 8th Army Headquarters South. Ernie returned in short order.
“Nothing in the refrigerator but this.” With a thumb and forefinger he held up a cup of yogurt, glaring at it with lip-curled disgust. “Not even one freaking bottle of beer. This is a female BOQ, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Captain Prevault lives here.”
Ernie tossed the yogurt into the trash, making the metal can clang. “So you were hoping to see your girlfriend,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “I just thought her room would be a good place to leave the file. Here,” I said, handing him one of the onionskins, “look at this.”
Ernie grabbed the sheet and read it quickly. Then he whistled. “Damn. When did this happen?”
“The date’s up top there.”
He studied it. “During the Korean War.”
“Right. But the claim wasn’t filed until almost ten years after.”
“Why’d they wait so long?”
“Good question. Another good question is why did Eighth Army bury the claim?”
Ernie handed the sheet back to me. “You are so naïve. Do you think they’re going to admit to this?”
“They didn’t do it. It was done during the war, by an isolated unit surrounded by the enemy. All bets were off.”
“In your opinion. Try selling that back in the States.”
Ernie was right. The public back in the United States would never understand such a thing. And at a higher level, the US government would never want to hand a propaganda coup to their Communist enemies behind the Bamboo Curtain. I pulled out my notepad and copied all the facts I needed off the Report of Claim. Then I ripped out a sheet of paper and wrote a note to Captain Prevault, asking her to keep the file in a safe place until we could discuss it. I placed all the onionskins, along with my note, back into the manila folder, then walked down the hallway to her room and slid it beneath her door.
Outside the BOQ, from the slightly elevated terrain of Yongsan Compound South Post, the bright lights of downtown Seoul glittered in the distance.
“What now?” Ernie asked.
The evening was still young, not even twenty-one-hundred hours.
“After what I just read,” Ernie continued, “a drink would do me good.”
“Then let’s do some more work at the same time.”
“Like where?”
“I’m armed now,” I said, patting the .45 under my jacket. “And I have back up. Namely you.”
“Who do you want to kill?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody. But maybe we should pay another visit to Madame Hoh, the beauteous gisaeng house owner in Mia-ri.”
“Sounds good,” Ernie said. “Booze and beautiful women. Just the kind of work I like.”
And just the kind of thing, I thought, to take our minds off the report we’d just read. It was stomach churning and unbelievable. Americans wouldn’t stoop to something so low, would they? Would anyone ever be so desperate? This crime was not a part of modern warfare, or at least I hadn’t thought it was.
When we hopped in the jeep Ernie drove faster than usual, zigzagging madly through the swerving Seoul traffic, following the signs past the Seoul Train Station, beyond the Great South Gate, around the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin and finally through the narrow roads that led toward the bright lights of Mia-ri. We were both quiet on the drive, trying not to think of what we could not stop thinking about: a crime as old as humanity itself.
Cannibalism.
-12-
We parked the jeep near a pochang macha. I half expected to see Mrs. Lee, the owner from the Itaewon pochang macha, when I peeked through the hanging flaps. Instead, I saw a startled Korean man with a square face and a wispy beard, and I offered him a thousand won if he kept an eye on our jeep. He readily agreed and pocketed the money like Houdini palming a playing card.
Mia-ri seem
ed more lively than ever. Maybe it was the contrast to what we’d seen in the signal truck and what we’d read in the Bogus Claims File, but Ernie was about as animated as I’ve ever seen him, which was plenty animated. He kept stopping as we trudged up the narrow road, grabbing hold of the heavily made-up young women in the clinging silk gowns, wrapping his arm around their slender waists, cooing into their ears. They laughed and toyed with him, happy to see a young GI but at the same time wary; being warned off by their mama-sans in favor of large groups of businessmen in suits.
“Tone oopshi,” one of the old mama-sans went so far as to say. He doesn’t have money.
Still, the girls liked Ernie and his playful attitude—they weren’t much more than kids themselves—and he seemed to have an ample supply of ginseng gum, which he handed out to the red-tipped fingers of the laughing young prostitutes. I kept him moving up the hill. Finally, we stopped at a stand that had a supply of Jinro soju bottles, and Ernie bought a half-liter. The vendor popped the top off and Ernie downed about a fourth of the fiery rice liquor on the first swallow. He gasped and handed the bottle to me. I wiped off the lip and took a modest sip. My throat convulsed. Rotten stuff. I handed the bottle back to Ernie. He took another large swig.
“Easy, pal,” I said. “We have a long night.”
“Maybe you have a long night. I’m going to have a drunk one.”
Ernie always acted like the things we saw didn’t faze him. He would hold everything at bay for a while but finally, as if a dam broke, he’d go on a bender. If he was going to get drunk tonight there was nothing I could do to stop him. Besides, now that I’d managed to hold down the shot of soju I’d taken, it was starting to warm my stomach and feel pretty good. I took the bottle from Ernie and held it a little longer this time.