MIST LACED WITH SALT RUSHED IN FROM THE SEA, slapping the warm flesh of my face and waking me up with each step we took down the dark streets.
I wasn’t sure if it was a dream I had or just some sort of sudden brainstorm. Whatever it was, it pushed its way up from my unconscious and screamed at me to get up and do something! Ernie was still grumbling, so as we emerged from the alley and turned down Texas Street, I started to explain.
“It’s always bothered me,” I said, “Strange’s accusation that somebody’d been tampering with classified documents. And right there in J-two, at the same time that Whitcomb was stealing office equipment. But it didn’t seem logical. Whitcomb was a petty crook, not some sort of foreign agent. And even if he had been an agent, why steal a typewriter?
“Maybe Strange and his buddies are just hysterical, I thought. They get together, exchange suspicions, and work each other up into a frenzy. But still the coincidence bugged me.”
Ernie snorted through his nose, head down, not saying anything. We walked quickly past the shuttered shops and nightclubs.
“Remember the note Miss Ku gave us?” I said. “There was something in there about ‘I haven’t told anybody yet’or something like that. As if whoever wrote the note knew something incriminating about Whitcomb. What would anyone know that was incriminating?
“At first I thought it was that Whitcomb was messing with an innocent girl. Well, that’s out now.’ But there’s something else the person who wrote the note might’ve known. He might’ve known about the only real crime Whitcomb committed. Namely, that he stole typewriters. How would he know that? If he was a fence, he might know, but a fence would be making money from Whitcomb—he wouldn’t be threatening him. So maybe it was somebody who was there when he stole the typewriters. Somebody who caught him red-handed.”
“Why wouldn’t he have turned Whitcomb in?”
Ernie was starting to wake up now. We reached the end of the row of dark nightclubs and started down the long slope that led to the pier. A few shadows were clustered on the quay. Sailors waiting for the next launch to take them out to the Kitty Hawk. In the distance the harbor was pitch-black. Shrouded by mist. I could see nothing.
“He wouldn’t turn Whitcomb in,” I said, “because he was there in the J-two office in the middle of the night for no good reason himself.”
“He was the one after the classified documents,” Ernie said. “Whitcomb’s killer.”
“Exactly. And he stumbled into Whitcomb.”
“And Whitcomb wouldn’t realize right away that he was talking to another thief, because the man was American, maybe even dressed in a military uniform. He would’ve bluffed Whitcomb into thinking that he was straight.”
“So when Whitcomb received the note, he thought the guy wanted to deal somehow. Maybe get in on his action. Maybe even open the door to richer hunting grounds.”
“And instead he wanted to gut him and leave him for the rats.”
“Right,” I said.
“And this man was Shipton?”
“Right again.”
“And Shipton wanted to kill him because Whitcomb was the only person living who could link him to the theft of those classified documents. Why didn’t Shipton just kill him in the J-two office?”
“Might not’ve had a chance. Whitcomb would’ve been nervous, on guard, backing away. Killing him then might’ve attracted too much attention, proved there was another man there that night.”
“So he used Miss Ku to get in touch with us and hand the note to Whitcomb.” Ernie nodded his head in thought. “But why us?”
“Shipton wanted somebody official to contact Whitcomb, to add to the threat, make it more likely that he’d show up. And do you know of any other CID agents who hold court daily in Itaewon?”
“Just us.”
“Besides, if he had us involved in some way, he figured we couldn’t pursue the case wholeheartedly.”
“He had that wrong.”
“Yes, he did.”
Three sailors emerged from an alley, laughing and exchanging lewd stories. Ernie and I slowed to let them get a few yards ahead of us.
Ernie furrowed his brow. “But Shipton has already shown us that he has no trouble slipping on and off military compounds. Why wouldn’t he just kill Whitcomb himself? Why involve us and Miss Ku?”
“You saw how Whitcomb lived. In a barracks with a dozen other men. They sleep together, shower together, eat chow together. Even run the ville and pick up girls together. Getting Whitcomb alone would be Shipton’s main problem.”
“But the meeting in Namdaemun involved his thievery operation, so Whitcomb wasn’t sharing that with any of his pals.”
“Right. So he’d come alone.”
“But why kill him at all? Whitcomb was just a longnose slicky boy. He wasn’t likely to blow the whistle on Shipton. He probably didn’t even know his name.”
“But he saw his face.”
“So?”
“You’d be right if this was just one thief spotting another. But Shipton was after military secrets. And for those to have any value, you have to sell them to somebody who can use them.”
“Like the North Koreans?”
“Yes. And they wouldn’t want to jeopardize a guy with as much potential to steal prime information for them as Shipton.”
“So maybe the North Koreans ordered Shipton to kill Whitcomb.”
“Maybe. And they probably have big plans for Shipton. Very big plans.”
“If they have such big plans for him, why are they allowing him to black-market?”
“After he committed the first murders, of his Korean fiancee and her boyfriend, he was living on the lam. Black market was a natural way for him to support himself. It’s easy money. He probably grew to like it.”
“So maybe the North Koreans don’t even know he’s black-marketing.”
“Maybe not. Or if they do, they don’t want to force him to stop and piss him off.
“He’s arrogant.”
“Wouldn’t you be? After evading everybody these last few months?”
“But it can’t last forever.”
“That’s why I think he’s building up to a big score.”
“Hit the big one and then slip out of the country with the loot?”
“That could be it.”
“I’m glad you figured all this out, George,” Ernie said, “but I still don’t know what we’re doing up this early.”
“Going to the Kitty Hawk.”
“To the Kitty Hawk? What in the hell for?”
“Classified documents,” I said. “You forget, Ernie. That’s what Shipton was after at J-two. That’s what he’ll be after here.”
“Why go after such a difficult target when he’s been doing so well on the army compounds?”
“That part I haven’t figured out yet. Unless it has something to do with the tunnels Strange told me about.”
“Tunnels and an aircraft carrier? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. But the Kitty Hawk is a mother lode of classified information. Shipton and his North Korean handlers will see it as a gold mine too good to pass up.”
“And he was a squid himself. He’ll know his way around.”
“Right.”
“So maybe you’re right and he’ll go after Top Secret info while they’re in port. But how the hell are we going to get on the ship?”
“Bogart. Like we usually do.”
“Yeah,” Ernie said. “But usually we don’t do it before breakfast.”
A crowd of sailors had gathered at the pier, laughing and playing grab-ass and talking about the Korean girls in the bars last night. Ernie and I stayed close to them, trying to blend in, which wasn’t too hard because the guys with overnight liberty could wear civilian clothes and were dressed pretty much like us.
Deep in the mist a steady churning grew. The sailors moved toward a metal gangway. We moved with them.
With a final roar of its engine, a large flat launch with the U.S. flag waving at its tail edged expertly up to the bottom of the slippery steps. Sailors filed down. There was a little shoving, but we shoved back, and found ourselves sitting on one of the hard benches of the launch.
Luckily nobody tried to talk to us and Ernie and I stared grimly forward; two sailors too hung over to bother messing with this early in the morning.
As the engines fired up and we moved away from the quay, I felt the rolling swell of the sea beneath the metal hull. It was invigorating. I liked it right away and decided I felt at home on the sea, although I’d never been in a boat before. Except for one time. During a summer program sponsored by the County of Los Angeles, when they’d taken me and a lot of other orphans to Pacific Ocean Park. We rode around the pier and back. I got seasick. Where I grew up, in East L.A., there wasn’t much opportunity to earn your sea legs.
The little launch plowed through the waves but we could only see about twenty yards to our front. The impenetrable curtain of mist seemed to recede before us, and the faster we moved the faster it ran away.
Twenty minutes later a huge metal wall appeared without warning in the center of the sea. Sailors started to shuffle in their seats and I realized that the wall must be the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. The launch moved down the wall until it found another metal staircase, this one leading up to a hatch in the hull. Light poured out of the opening and was diffused into a golden haze by the millions of airborne droplets of seawater.
Beneath the ladder, the sailors secured the launch with hooks on the ends of chains, and one by one we clambered off the rocking platform and climbed the stairwell. I went first. Ernie right behind me.
At the top of the stairs we finally met the inevitable: officialdom.
I had been watching the sailors above me. Each flashed his identification card and gave a halfhearted salute to the navy chief in his crisp white uniform. When it was my turn I mimicked the sailors as well as I could, trying to act as bored and as hung over as everybody else. The chief hardly looked at me. I stepped past him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ernie going through the same motions. He took a step away from the chief, and then a gravelly voice erupted through the morning stillness.
“Where the hell did you get that army jacket?”
Emie stopped. I turned.
The chief was talking about the dark blue nylon jacket Ernie wore. Mine just had a map of Korea with a dragon coiled around it. Ernie’s had a map of the Korean Peninsula, too, but instead of a dragon he had a dagger stabbing through the heart of Seoul, dripping blood. Beneath was the embroidered statement, “I’ve already done my time in hell,” and the dates of Ernie’s first tour in country.
Sailors only spend a few days here, not twelve months.
Ernie grinned at the chief. “Stole it off a drunken dogface.”
A howl of laughter went up from the squids behind us. The chief laughed too.
“All right!” the chief said, waving us on through.
Ernie caught up with me as we walked down a long metal corridor.
“Quick thinking, Ernie.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “It’s true. I did steal it off a drunken dogface.”
I didn’t bother to ask for details.
Actually, I had no idea where we were going. The Kitty Hawk seemed immense; loaded with armaments and aircraft and big enough to house three thousand sailors. We passed a barber shop and a room with a fat color TV in it, and in the distance I smelled the usual aromas of a military chow hall in the morning. Coffee, bacon, sizzling sausage.
“I haven’t had a decent breakfast since we left Seoul,” Ernie said.
“No time.”
“So where are we going?”
“We have to find the bridge.”
“What bridge?”
“That’s where the captain is and probably where they keep all the classified documents.”
“Watch your head!”
A thick metal pipe ran across the roof of the passageway as if someone had set it there as a booby trap. I ducked beneath it.
We found a ladder and climbed. And kept climbing until I started ‘to smell salt air again. Suddenly there was dark sky above me and we stepped out on the metal deck.
At the railing, the mist had started to lift. Out to sea a band of deep blue lit the horizon. A crescent moon sat slightly above, as if overseeing the impending sunrise. Toward land, the lights of Pusan twinkled on, one by one.
I took a deep breath of the fresh air and held it.
“Maybe I joined the wrong service,” I told Ernie.
“You?” Ernie said. “A squid? Floating for months at a time? You couldn’t stand it.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Light filtered through huge plate glass windows in the metal superstructure looming above us. Behind them, shadows scurried.
We wandered below deck, peeking in offices, until I saw a tired-looking sailor slumped behind a desk.
“Who handles classified documents?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?”
I slipped out my badge and flopped it open.
“Investigative Services,” I said.
I was stretching the truth a bit. Naval Investigative Services was the navy’s equivalent of the army’s Criminal Investigation Division. No sense advertising that soldiers were aboard the Kitty Hawk. You might as well tell them they’d been infected with the bubonic plague.
He barely glanced at the badge.
“This must be about Harrelson,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I tried to hide my surprise. “What’s the status?”
“Still in sick bay. Whoever did it cracked his skull wide open.”
“Will he live?”
He lifted his hand and rocked it from side to side. “They’re not sure yet.”
“What did the guy get?”
“How in the fuck should I know? They don’t tell me shit.”
“But Harrelson worked with classified documents, didn’t he?”
“Damn right. That’s why Chief Longo is so pissed.”
“Longo’s in charge of classified documents?”
“In charge of security for the whole ship.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Down to the next ladder, one deck above. The office is marked.”
“Thanks.”
We left the clerk, found the ladder, climbed upstairs, and wandered the hall until we found an office with the stenciled letters: Security.
It was a roomy office, with six desks and a dozen filing cabinets. A heavyset man was on the phone. He wore the uniform of a chief. A group of sailors milled about, trying to look busy. Everyone seemed upset.
“Yes, sir. Yes.”
The chief slammed down the phone. I walked toward him.
“Chief Longo?”
He checked us out, letting his eyes linger on our wrinkled blue jeans.
“Yeah?”
I pulled out my badge and the identification behind its plastic holder and barely opened it, asking the question as I did. “How’s Harrelson?”
“Stable. That’s about the best they can say.” He scowled.
“I’m Investigator Sueño. This is my partner, Investigator Bascom.”
Ernie nodded slightly.
“So fast?” The scowl hadn’t left his face.
“We happened to be in the area. I need a rundown of the type of documents that were compromised.”
The chief rubbed his forehead and eyes with a big hairy paw. The man was obviously exhausted. Good.
“You know you need clearance, even an investigator needs clearance, before I can discuss weaponry.”
Weaponry! What the hell was Shipton after? I took a chance. “Only if it’s nuclear,” I said firmly.
The chief snapped, “What the fuck do you think I’m talking about?”
He looked around, as if suddenly realizing that he’d shouted.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that Harrelson was a good kid.” He shook his head glumly. “Right here on the Hawk.”
“Did anybody get a look at the perpetrator?”
“Nobody. I doubt even that Harrelson did. The blow came from behind. It was twenty-three hundred hours, maybe he wasn’t as alert as he should’ve been. The guy broke into the classified locker.”
“But only went after the documents concerning weaponry?”
“That’s what it looks like so far. Jesus, I don’t know. I think we’d better go talk to the captain.” The chief rubbed his eyes again. “So you guys just happened to be in the area.” He was looking at Ernie. “What detachment are you with?”
“Seoul.”
His big hand stopped rubbing. “Seoul? There isn’t a Naval Investigative Detachment in Seoul.”
“Temporary duty,” I said. “From the Philippines.”
“They sent a whole detachment on temporary duty from the Philippines?”
“Listen,” Ernie said. “You got a head around here? We been wandering around the ship and all I’ve had so far this morning is coffee. My eyes are about to turn yellow.”
“Sure. Down the hallway.”
Ernie took a step toward the door.
“I got to piss like a racehorse myself,” I said. “Be right back, Chief.”
He grunted and picked up the phone again.
When we reached the hallway, voices drifted after us.
“Those guys can’t be navy,” somebody said. “Did you see those jackets?”
“Naval Investigation didn’t say nothing about agents arriving this soon.”
We strode quickly toward the ladder and slid down it without touching any rungs.
“When those squids realize we’re army,” Ernie said, “we’ll be in a world of shit.”
“And we have too much to do to sit in a brig until it gets sorted out.”
“Shipton could be on his way to the PX right now.”
Somehow I doubted that, not here in Pusan. It would be too risky so soon after hitting the Kitty Hawk. But we didn’t have time to argue the fine points.
We kept dropping down ladders and sprinting down hallways, not caring anymore who saw us or what they thought. When we finally reached the hatch in the side of the hull, a launch was shoving off.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hold that boat!”
“Aren’t you supposed to say ‘belay’or something like that?” Ernie said.
That Ernie, always a stickler for the right word. The chief at the gangplank made a hand signal that held the boat.
“All right, you two,” he said, frowning. “You’re lucky I held it. Let’s see your liberty chits.”
I pulled out my CID identification.
“We don’t need liberty chits,” I said. “We’re Criminal Investigation agents and we’re on a case, Chief. A man’s life could be at stake.”
The chief stared at all the stamps and squiggles and officialese in my leather wallet. Ernie opened his badge, too, and slammed it shut impatiently. The chief was surprised, but too much of a lifer to want to fight all that documentation.
“Army?” he said. “What are you doing on the Kitty Hawk?”
“You don’t have a need-to-know!” Ernie snapped.
We scurried down the ladder and climbed aboard the launch. It pulled away and the startled face of the chief receded and grew blurry in the mist. About thirty yards out, a siren sounded aboard the ship.
“Step on it, Smitty,” one of the sailors said to the helmsman. “Get us ashore before they cancel liberty or some such shit.”
Smitty nodded and the engine roared.