The Wandering Ghost (35 page)

Ernie slipped Colonel Alcott’s .45 from its holster and handed it to me. I took out the magazine, dropped it into my pocket, and placed the weapon atop the safe. I also picked up the weapons of the two MPs and performed the same ritual.

Then Ernie pulled back the slide on his own .45 and stuck the muzzle into Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott’s ear.

“Open it,” Ernie growled.

Colonel Alcott dropped to his knees and started fiddling with the combination.

We weren’t worried about a search warrant.

If we’d gone back to 8th Army and asked for one, the provost marshal would’ve either denied the request immediately or he would’ve passed it to the 8th Army chief of staff and, if the request wasn’t killed there, it would be passed on to the 8th Army JAG, where the entire idea of searching the quarters of a field-grade officer would be endlessly debated. Even if the request was finally approved, there would so much gossip around headquarters that the division commander and members of his staff would hear about it. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and Colonel Alcott would have plenty of time to destroy, or hide, any incriminating information he might have in his safe. This is the way the game is played in the military. If you’re a peon, you never hear what headquarters is planning. You’re squashed before you know what hit you. If you’re a field grade officer and a player, someone will spill the information to someone at happy hour at the 8th Army Officers’ Club and the word will get back to you. You’ll have time to take steps to ensure nothing untoward is revealed. Why does the 8th Army commander put up with this? He doesn’t always. Sometime he wants
everything
kept secret, and he makes damn sure that it stays secret. But other times it’s much less embarrassing to his command if the alleged evildoers are warned in advance. The bad behavior stops, and the command’s reputation remains unsullied.

It was true that anything Ernie and I found in the safe would be unusable in a formal prosecution but we knew there was no way we’d ever be able to obtain anything from that safe that would be so usable. Certainly not by requesting a search warrant.

But we were forcing Colonel Alcott at gunpoint to open his own safe, to protect ourselves, mainly, but also to protect Corporal Jill Matthewson.

If Ernie and I couldn’t prove that we had a good reason for everything we’d done, we’d be court-martialed. And Jill’s fate hardly beared thinking of. So the suspense was killing me. If there was no evidence of black-marketing in that safe, then there’d have been no motive for murder and attemped murder and Ernie and I could say goodbye to freedom.

When the safe popped open, Ernie grabbed Colonel Alcott roughly by the arm and waltzed him over to the bed against the far wall and told him to sit down and not to move. I reached into the safe.

Letters from home. From his wife back at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Photos of his kids in high-school graduation garb. Pornography. Magazines of the raunchiest kind. Personnel files of fellow field-grade officers. Apparently, Alcott fancied himself a later-day J. Edgar Hoover: Collect dirt on everyone; use it to protect yourself. And then I found it. A ledger. Dates, dollar signs, a description of the type of property: television sets, tape recorders, stereo amps, wristwatches, cameras. All prime black market material. And then an amount in
won
, usually two or three times the original value. And a section for expenditures: hall rental, catered food, musicians, dancers, occasionally even hired transportation. They’d held mafia meetings not only at the WVOW Hall but also at
kisaeng
houses here in the Eastern Corridor.

There was also money in the safe. Stacks of greenback twenties. Fifties and hundreds were monitored by 8th Army Finance, so twenties were safer. And stacks of ten thousand
won
notes. With the exchange rate at about five hundred
won
per dollar, each note was worth about the same as a U.S. twenty. I counted the bills, even wrote down some of the serial numbers in my notebook. I left everything in the safe as I’d found it, except the ledger, which I kept. For leverage. With the ledger, we could embarrass 2nd Division—and therefore 8th Army—if we had to. Maybe send it to a newspaper reporter, or maybe a congressman. Maybe the same congressman who’d made the original inquiry about Jill Matthewson.

I tucked the black market ledger under my arm.

“Thank you, Colonel,” I told Alcott. “We’d appreciate it if you’d remain here a few minutes. My partner and I are going to escort Corporal Matthewson back to Seoul. We don’t expect to be harassed. And we don’t expect our progress to be impeded in any way. Otherwise this information will be made public rather than being handled through internal channels. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Alcott said. “I understand that Fred Bufford was right. You’re up here to smear the Division. To make us look bad.”

“You did a pretty good job of that,” Ernie replied, “all by yourself.”

Alcott’s red face seemed to flush even redder.

“You don’t understand the pressures I’ve been under,” he told us. “You do your jobs and take your piddly promotions, but you don’t know what it is to go for serious rank in this man’s army.”

Colonel Alcott started to rise from the bed but Ernie shoved him back down.

“You don’t understand,” Alcott continued, “what it is to have a full-bird colonel or a general officer tell you ‘I don’t care how you do it, just do it.’ And to know that everything you’ve worked for, everything you’ve hoped to provide for your family, rides on whether or not you’re able to give him what he wants. You can sit back and sneer and pass judgment on me because you’re not in competition for the big promotions. You don’t know what it is to have some pervert base your efficiency report on whether or not he has four girls or five girls at some
kisaeng
house. About him telling you what some air force colonel bragged about at the Officers’ Club in Seoul, and how he works hard and he should rate at least as much as some zoomie. You don’t know what it’s like to do your job day in and day out without a flaw and still be expected to cater to the whims of every officer appointed above you. You can act superior but you’re not serious players. In fact, you two are
nothing
.”

“Maybe,” Ernie replied. “But we’ll be something as long as we have this ledger.” He held his .45 pointed at Alcott’s forehead. “
Anyonghikeiseiyo
.” Stay in peace.

We stalked out the broken front door.

The pontoon vehicle was still being untangled from the concertina wire and chain link barriers that had been created when it knocked down the main gate leading to Camp Casey. Ernie and I retied our white bandannas with Chon Un-suk’s name printed in red and were accepted again by the rioters. The hot dog stand had been completely demolished and the mob had turned its attention to a PX bakery that was similarly being systematically torn apart. The KNPs, meanwhile, retreated across the MSR. Two or three hundred protestors had set up a makeshift barrier of overturned military vehicles and lumber from the old MP shack in front of what had been the Camp Casey main gate. I spotted the KCIA man who called himself Agent Sohn, standing across the street behind the KNP ranks, conferring with KNP brass. They were on the radio, almost certainly requesting reinforcements.

The MPs in front of the Provost Marshal’s Office, like the 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn, were bracing themselves for an assault. Probably they’d notified the Division headquarters—on the move-out alert somewhere north of here—by field radio. Almost certainly some units had been ordered to return to Camp Casey to protect the base camp. These protestors were having a jolly old time, but both Ernie and I knew that as soon as reinforcements arrived, they’d be hammered.

I climbed atop the cab of a quarter-ton truck, searching for Jill Matthewson, but I couldn’t spot her. A large crowd of protestors still held vigil outside the main gate and many of them had cameras. Both film and still shots were being taken of virtually everything that happened. But this incident would only make the evening news if the Korean government allowed it to make the evening news. You could bet they wouldn’t.

The pontoon boat rolled right at me.

I jumped off the truck. Ernie and I ran off to the side, to the shade beneath a clump of pine trees. Then we realized where the ponderous vehicle was headed.

Ernie said it. “PMO!”

The whale-like vehicle was rumbling toward the MPs preparing to make their last stand in front of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshall’s Office. As it rolled, the pontoon picked up speed. Five, then ten, then fifteen miles per hour. That much weight moving at that much speed represented an enormous force. The amphibious pontoon vehicle rounded a little stand of pine trees and turned right, into the PMO parking lot. From behind their makeshift barricades, the MPs opened fire. Rounds spattered off the wooden sides of the oncoming vehicle; some pinged off the edge of the cabin where the driver crouched. The pontoon veered left and headed straight toward the giant MP.

The big pink face of the MP statue with its wide blue eyes seemed momentarily shocked, even offended. I knew it was my imagination, but I could have sworn that the fatigue-clad statue puffed out its giant chest, as if to say
How dare you?
and then held its outraged stance until the prow of the huge pontoon slammed into its web-belted gut. Then it bent forward at the waist. The pontoon vehicle kept rolling inexorably forward and the giant U.S. Army MP cracked and tumbled backward under the onslaught, its big helmeted skull crashing onto the ground, almost reaching the MPs behind sandbags who ran screaming from the flying splinters. Still, the pontoon vehicle kept rolling. It smashed through the barricade, MPs scattered every which way, and finally it crashed into the front Quonset hut of the Provost Marshal’s Office. With dust and debris flying everywhere the big vehicle ground to a halt. Some MPs kept firing. Some of them cried out, trapped beneath the rubble.

The little driver’s cab popped open and two people climbed out: One of them was a Korean officer. A colonel. The other was Corporal Jill Matthewson.

They hopped onto the blacktop and ran back toward the front gate. Once there, the ROK colonel tried to rally the rioters. He climbed up on the same quarter-ton truck I’d stood on briefly and shouted at them to listen. The looters stopped and gathered round. Jill stood next to him atop the truck, breathing heavily, her right hand resting on the butt of her .45.

This had to be Colonel Han Kuk-chei, the one she’d met at the Forest of Seven Clouds. The one who’d helped her escape from Bufford and Weatherwax.

Colonel Han continued shouting orders. He wanted the barricades facing the KNPs reinforced and he wanted a new barricade set up between the protestors and the American MPs back at the now half-demolished Provost Marshal’s Office. His plan was to claim a section of Camp Casey as sovereign Korean territory, and to set up a court and to retry—in absentia—the two men who’d run down Chon Un-suk. The crowd, both inside and outside the compound, cheered at the proposal and dozens if not hundreds of the peaceful protestors still waiting patiently outside the walls of Camp Casey started to raise their banners and march through the smashed main gate onto the camp proper.

Ernie and I stood amongst the pine trees, partially hidden from the main action by a clump of greenery.

“They’re nuts,” Ernie said.

“Absolutely. But how are we going to bust through all these people and try to talk some sense to Jill?”

“You can forget it. Whatever’s between her and that Colonel Han, she’s hooked. She ain’t going nowhere.”

“It’ll be a lot more dangerous here in a few minutes.”

“You and I know it,” Ernie replied. “Colonel Han knows it, maybe Jill knows it, but I don’t think most of these protestors know it.”

I was still perspiring, breathing hard, trying to remain calm, trying to think of what to do next. And then I felt it. Cold steel on the back of my neck.

“Freeze, soldier,” a voice said. Low, husky, a voice I recognized.

Ernie started to move but the same voice told him if he tried anything funny, his partner’s head would be blown off. Both of us raised our hands. Then the man slipped Colonel Alcott’s ledger out of my grip, tucked it under his own arm, and told me to turn around.

I did.

Sergeant First Class Otis glared at us, his .45 aimed right at the center of my chest.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said, “but I will if I have to.”

Then from behind him, the slide of a .45 clanged, metal on metal.

“No, you won’t, Otis,” someone said. “Not if you want to live through this mess.”

Jill Matthewson crouched behind a broken forearm of the giant MP, her .45 pointed directly at the back of Otis’s head. Perspiration poured off his forehead.

“You killed him,” Jill said, still crouched behind the forearm of the giant MP.

“I didn’t,” Otis protested. Most of his attention was on her but the barrel of his .45 was still aimed at my chest. I wished he’d turn that thing away. Standing next to me, Ernie’s eyes were darting to and fro. He was about to do something. I prayed that he wouldn’t. Even a reflexive twitch on Sergeant Otis’s part would mean that a .45 slug moving at a jillion miles per hour would crack through my sternum and slam into my heart.

“Weatherwax told me what happened,” Jill said. “You were the one who threw Marv Druwood off that building.”

“Weatherwax wasn’t even there,” Otis replied. “He doesn’t know shit. Druwood was angry, that was true. He knew why you left. He knew most of it. Because you were pissed about the black-marketing and you were pissed about what the asshole officers did to your friend, that stripper. And so he was mad at the world. And drunk. And taking swings at everyone. Even me. I backed away from him, toward the edge of the roof, but only because I had nowhere else to go. It was either that or let him bust me in the chops. I should’ve been more careful, I admit that. I should’ve punched his lights out and then he would’ve had a headache the next morning, but he’d still be alive. But I felt sorry for him. I didn’t want to hurt him.”