Business Is Business (2)
"Orders came down from above to treat Hanjin and CS as separate companies. Ranked on that basis, CS came in first and Hanjin second."
Cho Choong-hoon could not get his gaping mouth to close. Lee Ki-jo had not seen this trouble coming either.
Before the regression, when he had studied the past, he had learned that Choong-hoon's connections inside the U.S. military ran deep, and that those connections had carried straight through the Vietnam War and made the man a Vietnam War chaebol. Now, all at once, the measure of evaluation had turned against him.
For a moment none of the three knew what to say. Mac wore a troubled face, perhaps out of his friendship with Choong-hoon, and Choong-hoon himself seemed to have nothing to offer — he had leaned on Cheongsan for nearly the whole of this beer haul. Ki-jo, for his part, had only just come from promising the man a partnership, and he could not simply be glad.
"If you treat the two companies as separate, what actually changes?"
"In truth, not a great deal. Our policy of giving the transport to the top-ranked firm stays the same. The only thing that has changed is that we intend to regard Hanjin and CS as separate companies."
Major McCullinsky, watching Choong-hoon's face, did not speak the whole of the truth.
In the end, isn't he saying they'll sign an exclusive contract with Cheongsan?
In that room, the only man who could speak without a burden on him was Ki-jo. Standing in for Choong-hoon — who kept glancing his way and could not bring himself to protest as he should — he took Hanjin's side.
"CS and Hanjin formed a consortium to take part in transport for the U.S. military. To turn around now and treat the two companies as separate is no different from fraud. If that was the plan, you should have told us from the start not to form a consortium."
When Ki-jo defended Hanjin's position in a hard voice, confusion crossed Mac's face — the look of a man wondering why the winner was the one complaining, when it was Hanjin that had lost.
"I'm sorry. These are orders from above. There's nothing I can do."
When McCullinsky tried to slip behind the shield of his superior's orders, Ki-jo drove him harder.
"Who is that superior? I'll meet him myself and ask him why."
Choong-hoon could not hide how tangled he felt. He was grateful that Ki-jo would fight for him, and yet the man was protesting with an exclusive contract already within reach. Could he himself have done the same?
"Hey, Ki-jo. That's enough... that's enough now..."
Taking it for something Ki-jo was doing on his account, Choong-hoon tried to stop him.
"No, hyung. What ought to be pressed ought to be pressed. Didn't you tell me that's how a man has to be in front of the Americans?"
"I did..."
The face Ki-jo was showing was the very face Choong-hoon usually showed himself, and he had nothing left to say.
"Mr. Lee, you can speak only with me. I'm the officer responsible."
McCullinsky drew the line. Ki-jo drew a document from the inner pocket of his suit and handed it over. Mac read it and asked.
"This is a letter of recommendation, isn't it? From Major General Will Martin, who finished his tour not long ago..."
"That's right. Please pass it to your superior. If it's General Martin's recommendation, surely he can spare me ten minutes of conversation."
Watching Ki-jo hold out the letter and declare that he would protest Cheongsan's being raised to sole first place, Choong-hoon and Major McCullinsky lost the power of speech.
"Look, Ki-jo. A recommendation letter isn't used that way..."
Even in the midst of it, Choong-hoon felt sorry for him. So did McCullinsky.
"The purpose of submitting a recommendation is merely ten minutes with my superior?"
Ki-jo nodded.
Major Mac lifted the receiver and telephoned his superior. Once he had explained the situation, that superior — a lieutenant colonel — came into the cramped office to take hold of it. He read Ki-jo's letter first, then offered his hand.
"Lieutenant Colonel Neil, commander of the transportation battalion. You wanted to speak with me?"
American officers did not sit at their ease and wait for a subordinate's report. If grasping a situation required it, they came without hesitation into a subordinate's office, bent on seizing the ground.
"There's no one in Korea of higher rank than I. Colonel Deckerman is the senior responsible officer, and he's in Japan."
The Eighth Army Transportation Command was in Japan.
"A pleasure to meet you. I'm Lee Ki-jo of CS Transport. I want to know why the contract changed."
"I see. Let me explain."
Lieutenant Colonel Neil perched on the edge of Major McCullinsky's desk and laid the matter out.
"A directive came down from Transportation Command ordering us to consolidate the firms entrusted with transport inside Korea into a single company. It was an order that didn't exist before the contract. All we did, in keeping with it, was separate Hanjin and CS and evaluate them."
"Then you're saying Hanjin can't take part in the transport?"
"The contract has to be with CS, first of all. Whether CS subcontracts to Hanjin after that isn't something we involve ourselves in. What matters is that if any problem arises, CS, as the contracting party, has to bear responsibility for all of it."
"I understand."
At Neil's words, relief passed over Choong-hoon's face. There was something more Ki-jo wanted to know.
"Why did an order like that come down?"
"To make the locus of responsibility plain. In a consortium, if a transport accident occurs, each side can shove the blame onto the other. The aim is to keep that kind of quarrel from arising in the first place."
At the lieutenant colonel's explanation, Ki-jo and Choong-hoon nodded.
"Are you satisfied now?"
"Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Neil."
Ki-jo offered his hand.
"Then shall we sign the contract?"
Lieutenant Colonel Neil said it with a smile.
Ki-jo went over the contract with the U.S. Army line by line, then signed. Having obtained consent for photographs, he took a picture with the camera he had brought. Four men stood gathered in the narrow office, smiling brightly into the lens. A clerk from the administrative section came in to take the photograph, and the office grew tighter still, but all four of them wore satisfied faces.
When the contract was done and Ki-jo and Choong-hoon were about to leave, the clerk who had taken the picture came running out to the parking lot.
"Mr. Lee, Lieutenant Colonel Neil says he has something to tell you."
Ki-jo, on the point of getting into the car, looked at Choong-hoon.
"Go on. Seems there's still something left to say."
Ki-jo asked his leave and went into Lieutenant Colonel Neil's office. Neil seated him on the sofa.
"I'm curious why you protested even after being selected as the exclusive contractor. Was it out of regard for your partner — a show you put on because you were conscious of him?"
In Neil's expression Ki-jo felt nothing but plain curiosity. Perhaps because the exclusive contract had set his heart at ease, it occurred to him that he might speak honestly to an American lieutenant colonel — the true mind of a man who had come back to live once more.
"No. It was so I wouldn't leave a regret behind."
"A regret...?"
Neil tilted his head.
Neil laughed at that.
"Doesn't everyone live their last life?"
"They do..."
Ki-jo laughed too.
"What kind of regret do you mean? Were you afraid you'd lose a friendship over money? Even so, thinking of the sums you're going to earn from here on, that couldn't have been easy."
Ki-jo granted that part of what he said was true. But the reason he had protested to the end ran deeper.
"A long time ago — that is, a very long time ago..."
He called up the doctor he had met in his first life. During the evacuation, Yeongsu's fever had climbed and climbed, and they had turned back from the Han River to seek that doctor out. The man had treated Yeongsu without taking a fee.
"Though when I consider my age, it isn't even so long ago as all that."
Ki-jo smiled and quietly corrected himself.
"During the war, there was a doctor who saved my son when the boy was about to die. We were too poor then to be in any position to pay, and he treated him without accepting money."
"Hm..."
Lieutenant Colonel Neil stroked his chin and nodded.
"After the war ended, I went looking for that doctor, meaning to repay the fee."
"Did you meet him?"
"No..."
In the eleventh life, and in this twelfth and last, he had never found that old doctor. The doctor had been dead in the eleventh life, and dead again in the twelfth. There was no miracle of the kind that had come with Kim Seogwang — dead in the eleventh life, alive to be met in the twelfth.
"You must have been sorry."
Ki-jo nodded, then spoke.
"These days I earn money past any comparison with then. Money is a strange thing. Earn and earn, and it still feels short, and the more you earn, the more uses appear for it."
Neil nodded along with him.
"Every time that happens, I think of that doctor. Earn your money like a human being, and when the time comes that you have to take a loss, keep to the duty a human being owes. That's the thought."
The face of the doctor who had saved Yeongsu rose before him, and with it Sunrye's, gone white with the fear that their son would die, and Yeongsu's own, from the day he had carried the boy into the river to cool the fever. Ki-jo closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
Neil seemed to feel something in those eyes. He set a cigarette between his lips and offered one to Ki-jo as well. The two of them smoked and kept a brief silence. Still smoking, Neil asked.
"Is your son well now?"
"Yes. Every day he runs the neighborhood with his friends."
Ki-jo smiled, happy.
"My questions are all answered. And take this recommendation back with you. The next time you use General Martin's letter, use it in a way that profits you."
Neil returned the letter. Ki-jo had the sense that giving it back had been the reason he was summoned in the first place. He shook the lieutenant colonel's hand, left the office, and headed for the parking lot.
Choong-hoon, waiting there, broke into a bright smile the moment he saw him. He had looked on Ki-jo as a younger brother before, but that familiarity had grown stronger still. Uneasy under the weight of the gaze, Ki-jo turned his eyes slightly aside.
"Did the talk finish well?"
"Yes. I got the recommendation back."
He held the letter up and gave it a shake.
"See? I told you a recommendation isn't used that way!"
Choong-hoon said it, laughing freely.
When Ki-jo opened the passenger door and moved to sit, Choong-hoon blocked it, then held out the keys to the Mercedes.
"From now on, you drive this car."
"Me?"
"Yes. The man who took exclusive transport rights off the U.S. Army, rattling around in some shabby jeep — what good is that? Take them!"
Choong-hoon forced the keys into his hand. He pushed Ki-jo by the back, sat him against his will in the driver's seat, then hurried around to the passenger side and dropped in.
"I'm the president of your subcontractor now. What good is it if the subcontractor rides a finer car than the man who holds the prime?"
The face that called itself the head of a subcontracting firm was bright without limit.
"What would I do with a Mercedes, hyung? I like the jeep."
"Come now — then what does that make me? You stood up for me like that in front of the Americans, and you're telling me to sit quiet?"
"Even so, you don't have to give me the car. Didn't you and I already promise to put our backs into this partnership?"
"Well, now. Are you going to be that stubborn? Then I won't subcontract for Cheongsan at all — I'll go haul carbide up in Gangwon!"
Choong-hoon delivered the line with an exaggerated face, then held out his hand.
"I'm counting on you from here on."
Ki-jo took the hand he offered. Gripping it tight and shaking it, Choong-hoon spoke.
"I'll tell you what I wonder. Whether Mr. Koo and Mr. Heo over at Lucky Chemical can partner any better than we can. We came late to partnership compared with those men — so let's see if we can last longer!"
"Understood, hyung. But where is the gearshift on this car?"
The Mercedes, which he was driving for the first time, felt strange to him.
"Ah, it's right there beside the wheel. Yes — that's the gear."
Ki-jo started the engine, worked the clutch and the gear, and eased the car slowly forward.
"Drive it hard, my friend! No need to baby it just because it's a Mercedes. A car only listens when its master drives it hard! Show it plain what sort of man its new owner is! Ha ha ha!"
Choong-hoon looked to be in the finest of moods. To Ki-jo, the way he poured out gratitude and apology through an exaggerated face and laughter made him seem like a child.