An Unexpected Meeting
Ki-jo walked the whole road to Seoul with Ma-ryang, and along the way he heard a great deal about the man. Jang Ma-ryang was from Onsong, in North Hamgyong Province.
This was how he described the place.
"Come the summer solstice, sun's up around four in the morning. Doesn't set till nine at night."
Onsong, by his account, was that kind of place. Ma-ryang, who swore there wasn't a job he hadn't put his hand to, said that even after liberation he had drifted through China for a long while.
"Manchuria, Peking, Tsingtao, Nanking, Shanghai... Went clear on to Chungking. Saw Master Baekbeom there."
"Master Kim Gu? Baekbeom?"
"Aye. Looked me over and asked if I'd join the fight for independence. Told him straight I wouldn't."
"He must have been disappointed... Why didn't you? I should think you'd have done well at it."
"Didn't want to die at it. Simple as that."
Ma-ryang was a simple man, and his mind ran straight. Caught full in the Sino-Japanese War and left to wander China, he put his lot in a few plain words.
"Everywhere I fled, them Japanese soldiers came right after me. Hard going. After a while I figured maybe the bastards came to China just to catch me."
"Could be. Ha ha."
Ki-jo laughed the tale of hardship off. It seemed kinder to them both that way.
"Last of it, I followed the Nationalist army clear to Taiwan. Happened before I knew what I was about. Scraped up a boat from Taiwan to Japan, came into Busan—and that same day the war broke. Wanted to go home. Couldn't."
He had married at fifteen, fathered a son, gone off to Manchuria for a brief spell of work, and been swept up in the storm. He was thirty-three now.
"Don't know how sixteen years passed. Boy was two when I walked out. Now we wouldn't know each other's faces."
After that he kept his mouth shut for a long while. Another ten minutes of walking brought Dongdaemun into view in the distance, half its roof blown away.
"We've reached Seoul," Ki-jo said.
The moment they stood before the gate, Ma-ryang spoke.
"I'll sell the opium and be back. Chief, you wait here."
"You're going to sell it in front of the city gate?"
"Think I'd do a thing like that? Got to go up there."
He pointed to the buildings on the rise around Dongdaemun. Hospitals crowded the neighborhood of the East Gate.
"You're selling opium to hospitals?"
"Aye. Saw it in China. Hospitals short on painkillers and anesthetics. War hits, those run out first, and they won't have been stocked again. Not yet."
If the opium was bound for hospital wards as pain medicine, Ki-jo didn't think he would be in the way.
"I'll come with you."
"Dull work... Stay here and watch the folk."
There were people enough around Dongdaemun, but Ki-jo declined and followed him out.
Ma-ryang sized up each hospital from the street, broke off a fitting quantity of opium, and went in and came out, over and over. Every time, cash was clenched in his fist. When he had made a full circuit of the district, he said his piece.
"On to Jongno."
This time they made the rounds of the pharmacies along Jongno. More opium left those shops in bulk than had left the hospitals. It was just after the war: people were hurting in every fashion, medicine was scarce, and there seemed no shortage of customers hunting opium. Even so a good deal remained, and Ki-jo and Ma-ryang went around the traditional herbal shops as well.
Luck was with them at the third shop. A big-eared herbal doctor examined the quality and spoke to the two of them.
"Quality's good. I'll buy the whole of it."
Ma-ryang set what remained on the scale, and the doctor, plainly satisfied, paid the asking price without a haggle.
"Could you look in again around this time next year?"
"I'll think on it."
At that the big-eared doctor pressed him.
"From here on, don't peddle it all over. Sell to me alone. I'll take every bit, and I'll pay you well."
The bargain done, Ki-jo and Ma-ryang filled their stomachs at a seolleongtang house on Jongno, a shop that served rich ox-bone soup. A bundle of cash sat at Ma-ryang's feet.
They say there's money in opium... I never imagined it would sell like this.
Ki-jo emptied his bowl and turned to him.
"Let's go to Myeongdong."
"Myeongdong? What for..."
"I mean to have a suit made for you."
Ma-ryang wanted none of it. Ki-jo dragged him there anyway, walked into the tailor's that looked the finest of the lot, and ordered a suit in the latest fashion, cut from the very best cloth, with no argument about the matter. A short tailor fetched the highest chair in the place, rose onto his toes, and ran a tape over Ma-ryang. He was taking the trouser length when a solid, well-built gentleman stepped in off the street and addressed him.
"You the one who's been selling medicine up and down Jongno?"
Ki-jo's heart lurched. A plainclothes detective?
"Who's asking?"
Ma-ryang, still under the tape, didn't so much as turn his head.
"Step outside with me. Quiet. My elder brother wants a look at your face."
"That so?"
He answered flatly, flicked a finger against the tailor—whose hands had gone still—and told him to finish the measuring. Only when the work was done did he turn.
"Let's go. I want a look at that elder brother of yours myself."
Through the shop window Ki-jo saw six or seven men posted outside, and his stomach knotted. He drew Ma-ryang close and dropped his voice.
"If you can help it, don't fight. Should they ask for a cut, give it gladly. We've already got more money than we can use."
"It's nothing. Handled plenty of punks like them back in China."
They don't look like ordinary punks...
Ki-jo caught the confident man by the arm.
"Even so, we've walked onto another man's turf. We ought to show some respect."
"I'll judge whether they're the sort that rate it. Don't you worry. Have a cup of tea and wait."
Ma-ryang told the tailor to bring tea, then followed the man out. A moment later the tailor set down a cup of coffee instead. Ki-jo was blowing across the surface, trying to settle his nerves, when the little bell on the door gave a bright jingle. He looked up, saw Ma-ryang coming back in, and put the cup down in a hurry.
"You saw him already?"
"Ah. Well. Only took a minute..."
The hedging wasn't like him, and Ki-jo didn't trust it. He opened the door and looked out. Not far from the shop, eight men lay sprawled in the street.
This is a hell of a mess...
He went quickly to the tailor, asked the price of the suit, and paid in cash, saying he would come for it much later and that it should be kept safe. The tailor, guessing how matters stood, was hurriedly writing out a claim ticket when the bell on the door shuddered and rang again. Ki-jo saw the man's face twist and turned.
Ma-ryang was already watching the figure coming through the door. A gentleman with his fedora pulled low and black leather gloves on his hands stood blocking the entrance. He was not especially tall, but he was wide, thick through the chest and through the back. He did not top Ma-ryang, yet he looked to stand somewhere around a hundred and seventy-six centimeters—hardly a short man in the nineteen-fifties. More than his size, the air around him was something else entirely. A heavy pressure came off him, and tension showed in the line of Ma-ryang's back.
"You're the man?"
He took off his hat and showed his face. Above small, sharp eyes, his eyebrows stood out, neat and clean as a single stroke laid down with a brush.
"Seems so."
Ma-ryang's voice had less ease in it than usual. If the two of them collided, it would end badly. Ki-jo hurried to put himself between them, offered the stranger a deep bow, and spoke first.
"Sir, forgive me for addressing you at a first meeting. For the men who were hurt, we'll gladly cover the cost of treatment..."
"Never mind the doctor's bills. I'll have a word, and then I'll go."
He spoke gently enough to Ki-jo, but those sharp eyes never left Ma-ryang.
"Shall we sit a moment?"
"All right."
Ma-ryang's answer was short. The two of them sat facing each other at a table to one side of the shop, and the tailor, unasked, set a cup of hot coffee before each man. For a time neither spoke. They hardly seemed to breathe. The eyes they turned on one another were the eyes of a beast taking the measure of another beast that had stepped inside its ground.
Even so, Ki-jo could read Ma-ryang's look. He would fight if he had to, but he did not want to throw a punch just yet. The other man seemed to read it too, and introduced himself.
"Jang Ma-ryang."
Kim Doo-han's hand rose first. Ma-ryang took it, and as they shook he said his piece.
"Sorry about that. Looked like it was going to drag on. Couldn't be bothered, so I just..."
"That was the reason? Because you couldn't be bothered, you put down eight of my little brothers in a blink? And alone?"
Kim Doo-han threw his head back in a great booming laugh. When he had laughed his fill, he took out cigarettes, offered one to Jang Ma-ryang, and the two of them smoked. He sent a stream of smoke into the air, then asked.
"Speak plain. Whose man are you working under, right now?"
At the question, Jang Ma-ryang's head turned slowly toward Ki-jo.
Both gazes fell on him at once, and for an instant Ki-jo thought his heart had stopped. It was the feeling of walking a mountain path alone in the deep of the night and coming face to face with two tigers.