Eighth Army Commander
The day after Kim Chang-ryong, head of the Counter Intelligence Corps, had come knocking at the gates of the 7th Infantry Division and gone away again, a helicopter carrying the commander of the Eighth Army was settling onto the division's field.
Major General Martin watched it come in and muttered to himself.
"Airborne, so of course he likes dropping in out of the sky..."
Maxwell Taylor, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, stepped down from the helicopter with his face set hard. The moment he returned Major General Martin's salute, he demanded, anger plain in his voice:
"Just what do you think you're doing?"
"We're having a little friction with the Korean Army."
"A little friction?"
Maxwell Taylor was already sour. Gyeongmudae had been hammering Eighth Army headquarters without letup, demanding that the Koreans be released.
"Listen to me, General Martin. The reason I came all the way out here—"
He jabbed a finger at Martin's chest, then swallowed the rest. The photographers had their cameras trained on him.
"Who are those people?" Commander Taylor asked under his breath.
"Newspaper reporters, sir."
"Reporters? What are reporters doing inside the post?"
"They're covering the Koreans under my protection."
Commander Taylor leaned in until his face was nearly at Major General Martin's ear, as though he had something of real consequence to say.
"You're truly going through with this...?"
"Meet the Koreans first. Then we can talk."
"I meet Koreans every single day until I'm sick to death of it, man. Every time the president of Korea sees me, all I ever get out of him is pukchin, pukchin!"
What Syngman Rhee pressed on Taylor at every meeting was the northward advance—bukjin. Taylor had heard it until the words were driven into his ears like nails. Martin laughed as if he'd just been told a fine joke.
"Ha ha ha ha!"
Click. Click. Click.
The photographers did not miss the division commander breaking into a bright smile at something the army commander had said. At a glance, the two of them looked to be on the best of terms.
"Let's step inside."
Martin showed Commander Taylor into his office. General Kim Hong-il was already there, waiting for him.
"A pleasure, Commander Taylor."
"A pleasure, General Kim Hong-il."
They shook hands. Taylor, who had come to command of the Eighth Army after serving as superintendent of West Point, knew Kim Hong-il well. Until not long ago the general had himself been superintendent of the Korean Military Academy, and had since retired.
"You're prepared to vouch for the Korean in question?"
"Of course. He left a distinct mark upon my life."
The stern, flint-faced Kim Hong-il spoke with absolute certainty, and Taylor nodded. He knew the man's character. Kim Hong-il was as unbending as a stalk of bamboo. At the height of the Korean War, Korea's young generals had leaned on the Americans and bowed to every word they were given. General Kim Hong-il had been different. When he disagreed, he refused American orders to their faces and was perfectly willing to oppose them outright.
To that man, Taylor put the question.
"What sort of man was he?"
"The sort who snapped a Japanese colonel's neck with one hand and rode back with the body slung from his horse."
"Is that so?"
Kim Hong-il produced a photograph he had sent for, from his home all the way to Dongducheon. It showed himself and Jang Ma-ryang in the uniforms of the Nationalist Chinese Army. In the faded black-and-white print, the two of them stood side by side, smiling.
"I see. You fought the Japanese together in China."
"A man like that does not change. He has not the slightest interest in communism. On the contrary—he fought the communists to the very end and withdrew to Taiwan alongside Chiang Kai-shek."
"And you'll vouch for the other one as well?"
"Is that man not already plain in the Korean records? An orphan. He went away as a refugee and came back."
The men themselves looked clean enough, Taylor thought. The only trouble was that they stood suspected of being communists. The three of them settled onto the sofa and began.
"Major General Martin, how do you intend to settle this?"
"I have no intention of handing those Koreans over to the Korean Army."
"Then how do you mean to keep hold of them?"
"If I have to, I'll take every last one of them to the United States."
Commander Taylor could not help a laugh at Will Martin's answer.
"Ah, yes. You could, at that. That would be one way..."
He knew perfectly well that Will Martin was desperate, with his promotion to lieutenant general hanging just ahead of him. Desperation, though, would not solve this. The interior of a U.S. post was protected as though it were American soil, but everything beyond the wire was Korea.
"I'll make civilian employees of the U.S. forces out of all six hundred of them. In the case of an American civilian employee, excepting crimes against the United States, or crimes against another member of the force or another civilian employee..."
"I know. Even if the Korean authorities hold the primary right to exercise jurisdiction, we can compel them to waive it. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"
Commander Taylor knew the statute Major General Martin was rattling off by heart. He had it by heart himself.
"Yes, sir. Anyone subject to the military law of the United States is entirely our responsibility."
Commander Taylor's head began to ache all over again. Tell Martin to hand the Koreans over, and he would be standing in the way of a subordinate's promotion. Refuse the Korean government's request, and he would have the president of Korea nagging at him.
"Turn them over to the Korean Army. There's no other way."
It was the solution he had brought with him.
"I can't, sir. If I do that, everyone in the village dies."
"Who said all of them? Just the two—Mr. Lee and Jang."
"Then you're telling me to let a Korean court-martial make me a general who colluded with the enemy!"
Martin flared, unable to accept it.
"Commander Taylor. If only for Major General Martin's future, please do not send those two men before a court-martial."
General Kim Hong-il added his own plea. Taylor understood how both of them felt, but he was dealing with a nation, and he cut the request short.
"Who said turn them over as defendants? The Counter Intelligence Corps says it wants the two of them as reference witnesses."
"Reference witnesses?"
"That's right. Not suspects. Reference witnesses."
"If they're reference witnesses and not suspects, doesn't that make them the victims?"
"Right. They're offering to treat them as victims. The Counter Intelligence Corps is."
At the unexpected offer, Major General Martin's face cleared. General Kim Hong-il was glad as well that Ma-ryang and Ki-jo had been drawn back from the threshold of death. A moment later, though, he laid his misgivings before Commander Taylor.
"Commander Taylor, you must not trust this man Kim Chang-ryong of the Counter Intelligence Corps. If he is suddenly changing suspects into reference witnesses, he has some scheme in mind. He has been notorious for years for fabricating cases."
Kim Hong-il told him how Kim Chang-ryong had once seized men passing with a funeral bier on their shoulders, branded them spies, and killed them on the claim that there were firearms inside the coffin. There had, of course, been no firearms in the coffin. The guns were placed there afterward.
"When the two of them are questioned as reference witnesses, Eighth Army headquarters will bring pressure to bear for their safety. We'll have them registered as civilian employees, just as Major General Martin proposes, and we'll make it plain that if any harm comes to them, support for the Korean Army will be cut off."
"That does put my mind somewhat at ease..."
Kim Hong-il nodded. In those days the Korean Army was a force that could scarcely have stood without American aid. There was not even money to feed and clothe the soldiers. More precisely, the U.S. Department of Defense sent the funds appropriated for support of the Korean Army, and Eighth Army headquarters sat in the middle of the pipeline. Let the Eighth Army choose to meddle—declaring that Korea had no need of a given thing, or that the quantities coming in were excessive—and Korea had no choice but to swallow the loss whole. The Korean Army could ask for hand grenades and receive nothing but a heap of canteens. What Commander Taylor had just promised amounted, in the end, to the gravest threat that could be leveled at the Korean Army.
Major General Martin was grateful for the promise that Ma-ryang and Ki-jo would be permitted to take status as civilian employees of the U.S. forces.
"Whom is Korea's counterintelligence service trying to catch, that it means to use these two men to do it?"
"Well... as to that..."
Commander Taylor scratched lightly at his head, then answered.
"General Paik Sun-yup. The Army Chief of Staff."
At his words, both Martin and Kim Hong-il started.
"Why him...?"
Kim Hong-il was not on particularly good terms with Paik Sun-yup, but he did not like the thought of a nation's sitting Chief of Staff being framed, and perhaps dying at Kim Chang-ryong's hands.
"You know it well enough yourself, don't you, General Kim? The factional fighting inside the Korean Army."
Men out of the Japanese Army, men out of the Manchukuo Army, men out of the Nationalist Chinese Army; the Texas faction from Pyongan Province, the Alaska faction from Hamgyong Province, and the Yeongnam faction besides. Kim Hong-il remembered being classed himself as a Nationalist Chinese Army man and hearing every sort of thing said of him for it.
"Major General Martin, you see that those two are properly dressed in U.S. Army uniforms. And if the Korean Army says it means to investigate, you hand them over."
At Commander Taylor's words, the division commander held his silence.
"Well? What is it with you?"
"I will not send the two of them off this base."
"What did you say?"
"They can take the Counter Intelligence Corps' questioning inside the wire. They're reference witnesses. They aren't required to present themselves at an investigative agency, are they?"
"Are you...?"
Defying my orders? The words rose and died on his tongue. He would not lose face in front of a former Korean general, and so he lowered his voice.
"Aren't you worrying more than you need to?"
"I don't trust that man Kim Chang-ryong."
"Commander Taylor, neither do I. Ask the Counter Intelligence Corps to do it that way. Tell them that if those are not the terms, we will not accept."
Maxwell Taylor rubbed his forehead.
Korea. I am truly sick to death of this country.
"Very well. In return, you will cooperate with the Korean Counter Intelligence Corps to the fullest."
"Understood, sir."
Only then did Martin smile, satisfied at last. He brought out a gift for his superior.
"What's that?"
"A portrait of you, General."
Taylor looked at the portrait of himself that Martin held out, and a sound of genuine admiration escaped him.
"Oh... the painting is remarkable! Thank you. But who did it?"
"A Korean painter in Happy Village, sir. He did the whole thing from nothing but a photograph."
"Happy Village?"
"Yes, sir. A village inside the base where we've gathered the Koreans. The reporters are there now, covering it."
"The people from that village your unit took on as a sister community?"
"Yes. Eundae-ri will be a fine anti-communist village, and a Christian one. With the help of our 7th Division, it will only prosper from here."
"Remarkable. Is every last person in the village a Christian?"
"Yes, sir. It's the kind of village you'd be hard pressed to find even in rural America these days."
Martin was saying precisely what he and Ki-jo had arranged between them beforehand.
"I'd like to see that."
"There's also to be a wedding between a Korean woman and an American soldier."
"A wedding?"
"Yes, sir. We'd like to ask you to officiate."
"Come now. You'd ask an army commander to officiate a wedding? The man's your soldier—you do it yourself, you're the division commander. Or have the chaplain see to it."
Taylor declined.
"Sir, the private who means to marry her is named Roberts Stillman..."
Taylor took it for an ordinary name. What he heard next changed his mind.
"The soldier's father is named Vincent Stillman..."
Commander Taylor gazed at Martin for a long moment, then asked:
"W-wait a minute. Stillman... that Stillman...?"
Martin smiled and nodded.