A Dangerous Man
April 19, 1961.
Kijo set his work aside and left the company to attend the first-anniversary ceremony of the April 19 Revolution.
In a black suit, he walked from Sejong-ro, where the office stood, all the way to Dongdaemun, where the memorial was being held. The memories of that day flickered past him like a revolving lantern.
In this life he had seen April 19 for what it truly was. He had lived through it in his own flesh and been forced to carry the anger and the grief. In his previous life he had worked the docks and never witnessed it himself, so last year's uprising had been, for all practical purposes, the first he had ever known. The memory of shouldering a student who had been shot, carrying him to the hospital, and then sitting in the street soaked in blood dug into his heart and would not let go.
Walking from Jongno to Dongdaemun, he thought of the young people cut down in the flower of their youth and wished that politicians would never again kill their own.
When he reached the baseball field at Seoul Stadium and saw the students gathering in their thousands, his eyes clouded for no reason he could name. He had come early. He climbed to the very back of the stands, looked down, and sank into a heavy thought.
Would the young people who had lived through April 19 soon collide with yet another despair?
He hoped that those who would take power in this life might look at the world with a different bearing, and different eyes, than they had in the history he remembered.
The first anniversary of April 19, hosted by thirty universities and one hundred and two high schools across Seoul and sponsored by the city, proceeded in solemn quiet. Tens of thousands filled the grounds—President Yun Bo-seon, Prime Minister Chang Myon, representatives of the three branches of government, the foreign envoys stationed in Korea, and the bereaved families—gathered under a single wish: to honor the spirit of the revolution. But no one there could answer why the students had had to die.
Kwak Young-joo, Hong Jin-gi, and the rest had said they had done it to protect the president. Not a soul in that crowd believed Syngman Rhee's life had been worth more than the students'.
Through the hush of the ceremony, the university students who had marched honored their dead friends with silent tears, while parents who had lost sons and daughters could not hold themselves upright for remembering their children's faces. Every time Kijo saw it, he lifted his handkerchief to his eyes.
When the ceremony ended in that same quiet, he walked out of the stadium and made his slow way back toward the company. Before going in, he stopped by the house.
The Central Intelligence Committee jeep that had been watching the front was gone. He stepped through the gate and glanced at the house next door. Kim Jong-pil was not home either. On the day set for the rising, he would be somewhere secret, preparing the revolution.
But nothing would happen today. The student uprising and the disorderly demonstrations the coup plotters had counted on would not come. The streets of Seoul would stay calmer, and more reverent, than they had been in a long time.
Kijo returned to the company and sat down at his desk. Grateful that there was still a place he was meant to keep, he began to work.
He had not been at it long when Hyun-kyung knocked and came in from the secretarial office.
"Sir, the Eighth Army called. They'd like you to come in to the compound."
Kijo looked at her and smiled.
He remembered the winter of '55, when she had come shivering to the Cheongsan office in a single thin coat. He could still see her wolfing down the sweet potato he had handed her, as if she had been starving. Now she was a solid mid-career professional, and a mother. Han-su, the man she had married, had found his footing too, and as a father he lived more diligently than before. Whenever Kijo looked at the two of them, a quiet pride ached in his chest.
"All right."
When he answered, Hyun-kyung asked, "You seem to be in a good mood, sir."
"Do I?"
He realized he had been wearing a father's smile while he looked at her. Somewhere in the heart of a man who had lived to ninety and come back, an old man still sat, and whenever he saw the young he found them lovely and wanted to do something for them. He set that old man aside for a moment, rose from his chair, and said, "We'll call the official business done for today. If anyone comes looking, tell them I can't see them."
"Yes, sir."
After Hyun-kyung left, Kijo dressed and went out. If Hausman was summoning him at a time like this, it was bound to be something important.
He passed the main gate of the U.S. Eighth Army and went to Hausman's office, and the moment he stepped inside Hausman put a question to him.
"Been to a funeral?"
It was the black suit.
"I attended the April 19 memorial."
"Ah, right. That was today."
Insensitive to Korea's pain, Hausman explained why he had called.
"Section Chief Lee over on Namsan—Lee Hu-rak—got in touch with me. Says he wants to sit down and talk with you. I told him you were my man, and it looks like he got shy about summoning you himself. Ha ha ha."
Kijo smiled at him.
"This fellow Lee Hu-rak is coming here. He wants a quiet word with you, just the two of you. That all right? If it rubs you the wrong way, feel free to refuse."
"It's fine."
"Good. I'll set a room aside. You two talk."
Until Lee Hu-rak arrived, Hausman drank tea with Kijo and talked. He spoke of Vietnam as well. If the Asian story of the 1950s had been fixed on the Korean Peninsula, this time the eyes were turning to Indochina.
"These days Vietnam is burning hot. Those damned Reds are stirring up South Vietnam. If Vietnam goes, Laos and Cambodia go with it in one shot."
The domino theory that had been in fashion through the 1950s was still a working theory of the Cold War in 1961.
"Way I see it, free-world troops ought to go in early and wipe the communists out, root and branch. From what I hear, those South Vietnamese army bastards are utterly incompetent. They haven't got the poison the Korean army has. A country like that will never hold the way Korea did."
Hausman wore the look of a man recalling the past, as if he were remembering how he and the Korean army had put down the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion.
"It was really something then. The moment the suppression troops showed up, a whole village disappearing was nothing. If you want to catch Reds, that's the only way."
Kijo closed his eyes for a moment and decided, as far as he could, not to think about Hausman's past.
"Six divisions into Vietnam and we could sweep the Reds clean."
Hausman was putting too much faith in American power. In the middle of talking about Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, he suddenly asked, "Back when you were a little squirt—you saw General Taylor, the Eighth Army commander, didn't you?"
He was bringing up something from seven years ago.
"Yes. He was a good man."
"Right. That gentleman will probably be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs around next year. He's stepped down from Army Chief of Staff and is resting for a bit, but the word is Kennedy likes him quite a lot."
When Hausman brought up Maxwell Taylor and spoke Kennedy's name, his face tightened just slightly.
Kijo knew that General Maxwell Taylor would rise to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis alongside Kennedy, shape America's early policy in the Vietnam War, and later take up his post as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Their connection had been a chance one, but the man was headed for an extraordinary career.
They were still talking of this and that when Lee Hu-rak came in. Hausman chatted with him as well, then gave them an office.
Kijo went with him into a small empty room. Lee Hu-rak offered a cigarette with a familiar smile. Kijo took it, and they began to talk.
At first they only mentioned the April 19 anniversary and traded remarks about how the world was turning. Kijo kept his face calm, but inside he was drawn tight. He could guess why Lee Hu-rak wanted this conversation.
The Central Intelligence Committee had parked jeeps not only in front of Kim Jong-pil's house but in front of Park Chung-hee's as well—a bold warning.
An unspoken warning.
In front of Park Chung-hee's house there was not only a jeep. An intelligence agent disguised as a roasted-sweet-potato vendor had been watching too. Park had noticed, protested, and once even had the vendor pulled off the street. Worse, Lee Hu-rak already knew everything—the preliminary coup meeting on April 7, and the fact that they had set April 19 as the day of the rising.
"I hope it didn't offend you, my asking for a private meeting like this."
"Not at all."
Kijo looked at him with an easy gaze. Encouraged, Lee Hu-rak began, little by little, to come to the point.
"The reason I asked you here in such a hurry, President Lee, is the man who moved in next door. Mr. Kim Jong-pil."
Kijo deliberately put on a look of not understanding. Seeing it, Lee Hu-rak wore the expression of a man who had expected as much.
"It may seem out of nowhere, but the Central Intelligence Committee is tracking the movements of subversive elements."
"Subversive elements?"
"Yes. For a time the military purification movement was in fashion inside the army. We've judged that their intentions were not pure."
When Kijo feigned surprise, Lee Hu-rak laughed.
"Hard to believe, isn't it? Ha ha. Intelligence agencies have a habit of taking even small things seriously. That's how you keep a gap from opening in national security."
He drew long on his cigarette and went on.
"We suspect Lieutenant Colonel Kim Jong-pil."
Kijo answered as if turning the point back on him.
"As I understand it, Lieutenant Colonel Kim has been out of the service for some time."
Lee Hu-rak smiled at the question.
"Even so, he still keeps up a lively exchange with officers on active duty."
Kijo nodded. He figured they had already learned that he himself had helped Kim Jong-pil move.
"I don't know if I ought to ask this, but I was curious why you let Mr. Kim have the house on a jeonse."
Lee Hu-rak was keeping a careful manner, but he was asking everything he wanted to ask.
Kijo had done nothing they could easily pick at. Hausman had vouched for him as his own man, and he had cooperated actively in sending Cheongsan's technicians, bound for West Germany, through the Central Intelligence Committee for screening. Even so, he tried always to be careful. Lee Hu-rak was working now to block Park Chung-hee's coup, and yet within a year he would be pressed tight to Park's side. After that he would serve Park with blind loyalty and even come to be called the second man in the regime. Whatever Kijo said to him now was certain to reach Park's ears. One sentence passed along wrong, and not only his own safety but his family's might be impossible to guarantee.
"My wife and Mrs. Kim are close friends. I heard things were hard for them lately, and the house next door happened to be empty, so I let it on a jeonse—a lump-sum key-money lease."
"Ah, so that's how it was. Ha ha ha."
Lee Hu-rak laughed as if he understood perfectly. Then he asked again at once.
"I hate to say something else that might offend you, but I've also heard you've been to Major General Park Chung-hee's house a few times..."
He wet his lips and went on.
"If what I'm saying has put you out in any way..."
"Not at all, Director. Not in the least."
Kijo explained the visits calmly.
"When Typhoon Sarah tore through Busan, I sent trucks to support the Second Logistics Command. He was grateful for that and invited me to his home. And another time my wife gave them a bottle of sesame oil as a gift. In return he called me over and presented me with a crock of jeotgal, salted fermented seafood."
At the talk of sesame oil and jeotgal, Lee Hu-rak laughed out loud.
"Is that so. I understand. Ha ha ha."
Kijo laughed with him.
"Then, as for helping Mr. Kim move..."
"It was a Sunday and I happened to be home, so I lent a hand. That's all."
"I see. Ha ha ha."
Watching him laugh, Kijo was certain Lee Hu-rak had already opened a file on him. His first tie to Park Chung-hee had been too strong. In 1954 he had given testimony in court that could save Park's life, and that alone was enough to put him in the file of people around Park. If something strange were written in that file, harm would surely follow. Even if it were not Lee Hu-rak, someone in intelligence could read the file and carry the words to Park.
Kijo moved to defend himself.
"Director Lee. Mr. Kim Jong-pil is my neighbor, and Major General Park is a man I met through a good connection. I don't know why you're saying these things to me, but I have no intention whatsoever of informing on either of them."
For Kijo, that was the best thing he could say. It was how he protected himself and his family.
Lee Hu-rak jumped as if stung and denied it.
"In—inform? Ha ha ha. Th-that's not what I—the th-thing I meant to say was..."
Kijo had come on stronger than he expected, and Lee Hu-rak broke into a nervous sweat. His stammer grew worse.
"Wh-what we talked about t-today—I'd ask you not to mention it to anyone for the time being. I th-think there was some m-misunderstanding."
He began hastily to change his story. He claimed he had only been worried that Major General Park might be using his position to demand money or apply improper pressure. He soothed Kijo by saying the Central Intelligence Committee—expanded and reorganized out of the Army Counterintelligence Corps, the CIC—was also charged with inspecting military discipline.
Kijo apologized in turn.
"I think I heard your words the wrong way, Director. I'm truly sorry."
That was how he closed the conversation. A misunderstanding on both sides.
Lee Hu-rak laughed and turned the subject with practiced ease. They talked another ten minutes or so, then came out of the office smiling at each other.
When they returned to Hausman, he asked, "Already finished?"
"Yes, Advisor."
Lee Hu-rak answered with a smile.
"You two are a pair of dull fellows. If that was all, you could have done it over the phone. I don't know what scheme the two of you cooked up behind my back, but you're going to pay me for the room."
"How about a round of golf? The course at the 7th Division in Dongducheon is quite modest, and pretty."
At that, Kijo and Hausman exchanged a look.
"He built that."
Hausman said it, pointing at Kijo. Lee Hu-rak put on an exaggerated face.
"Did he? I thought the course had a sense of loyalty, just like President Lee."
"A golf course with loyalty? That's a new one on me. Kijo, do you have any idea what the director means?"
Kijo shrugged. The three men laughed together.
He thought Lee Hu-rak had pretended not to know about the 7th Division course on purpose, the better to flatter him. For the time being, Lee Hu-rak was a man who had to be handled with extreme care. A single line he wrote in a report could ruin everything.