The object in war is a better state of peace. Hence it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire.
Victory in the true sense implies that the state of peace, and of one’s people, is better after the war than before. Victory in this sense is only possible if a quick result can be gained or if a long effort can be economically proportioned to the national resources. The end must be adjusted to the means.
—B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy
THE DISC TURNS out to be written in UNIX. It is, I am told, an incredibly complex and ingenious program for editing on multiple screens at once. Probably ten screens. It is similar to Edit-Droid, which is the Lucasfilm editing system, but a lot more powerful. The disc is not the actual command program; it is the plain text printout of the commands. It’s interesting to film people because it actually gives the names of the sources, where in the film, by time code, the clips are, and how long they last. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for Teddy to have it. Or not have it. All it shows is that someone with a sophisticated editing system is making a montage of war movies. If you get all those movies together, you could figure out what the montage might have looked like. At least a few minutes’ worth, anyway.
So that does nothing for us. Which brings me back to the joke about Sergeant Kim’s dojo and ROK.
When Kim first opens up, it’s right after Vietnam and there are a lot of crazies around who are into martial arts. On the edge, over the edge, out of control. Because Kim is who he is—he has this military reputation—these types gravitate toward his dojo. Koreans are hardworking, business-oriented people. They figure out what customers want and give it to them.
Most civilians, most normal people, who want to learn martial arts, they don’t want to be practicing with some gonzo vet who might snap into a combat flashback. At the same time, Kim does not want to lose any part of the market. You can see that—he’s got that section where he sells all the martial-arts equipment, and he’s always telling his students they’ll do better if they eat Korean food, and he sends them next door to his nephew’s fish store and Korean grocery, and whenever he hears about some way that another dojo is getting more customers, Kim does it too. Like the self-defense-for-women thing. So what Kim does, to keep the crazies who see martial arts more as unarmed combat than as a future Olympic sport, but to get them out of the way, he opens a special room upstairs.
Let me explain it this way. ROK is sort of a pun. You don’t expect Sergeant Kim to have much of a sense of humor, but he does. ROK is Republic of Killers. That’s what you have to be to be a member. You have to have killed somebody. Preferably hand-to-hand.
It’s not as intense as it sounds. Though it’s intense enough. Killing someone in the war, that counts. That’s where most of us did it. In combat. It’s a club of killers, not of murderers.
This, of course, is what Kim is telling me when he puts me on the mat with Hawk. Here are people outside the loop of U. Sec. and RepCo who will do anything. It is from ROK that I can recruit backup. I have been expecting this time to come and I have, in fact, picked out some guys who I think will be good and will help. There is Hawk, who I have told you about. Paul Dressier is an accountant and ex-Green Beret, working on a divorce, so he is full of rage and a need to commit justice and if he can’t, injustice will do. Dennis O’Leary, a one-eyed gaffer who gets less work than he should because he once argued about a pair of seats at a screening that had been held for guests of David Geffen. Bruno, the plumber, and Jorge, the grocer. Depending on what happens, maybe more. Plus, there is Steve and his son. Also, if we end up going up against Sakuro Juzo and his Ninja, I think Kim will come out. Behind the money making and the drinking and the grousing is the best soldier that I have ever known. Including the best of the VC and the NVA.
Steve and his son travel with us. Hawk and O’Leary, who just got off a nonunion picture, travel separately and meet us at Maggie’s house in Napa. Not far from John Lincoln Beagle’s vineyard, where, as all Hollywood knows, he is attempting a reconciliation with Jacqueline Conroy in the hopes of being able to live a family life and keep his son.
Maggie has acres and acres. The vines, staked out in rows, travel in lines over the hills and follow the contours. It makes me realize a whole other level of her wealth and the wealth of the world that I have entered into. The master bedroom, which is on the second floor, has a large window. There’s a fat white moon that shines into our room. In the middle of the night I say to her, “Do you have a father or a brother around somewhere?”
“Why’s that?”
“Doing what we’re doing, the way we’re doing it, you’re going to get fat and round one day soon. Then someone, like a father or brother, they’re supposed to come round with a shotgun, make me marry you.”
“That’s the only way you’d marry me?”
“It wouldn’t look like I was marrying you for your money.”
“Umm, that’s nice,” she says. She holds me tight.
Later I unwrap her arms from around me and slip out of bed. I go downstairs to the other end of the house, where the guest rooms are. Hawk and O’Leary are waiting for me. They’re dressed in camouflage khaki and brown. We darken our faces and go out.