The Stillman Family
On the way to the division commander's office, Ki-jo turned over what he remembered of General Maxwell D. Taylor, commander of the Eighth Army.
The man was a hero of the Second World War. As commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division—the outfit the drama Band of Brothers would make famous—he had taken part in the Normandy landings and become the first Allied general to set foot on French soil. After the war he had followed the elite track, and in 1953 he succeeded General Van Fleet as commander of the Eighth Army.
The road ahead of him was bright. Once his tour in Korea was finished, he would go home the following year to become Chief of Staff of the Army. In 1962, under the Kennedy administration, he would rise to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in 1964 he would take up his post as United States Ambassador to South Vietnam. He was to play a crucial part in the widening of the Vietnam War. Kennedy, it was said, had trusted Maxwell Taylor deeply, and had judged him diligent, possessed of a true intellect, and diplomatic.
Perhaps the most successful American soldier I will ever meet...
Ki-jo counted the meeting an important one. Even so, Kennedy's verdict on the man caught in his mind.
Diplomatic.
The word meant that the face a man showed and the heart he kept could be entirely different things. He would have to be careful from the very start.
When he stepped into the division commander's office, the Eighth Army commander was seated on the sofa. In the flesh the impression was ordinary enough—a gentle countenance, a lean frame. Maxwell Taylor's blue eyes flicked over him.
"Pay your respects. This is the commander of the Eighth Army."
Major General Martin made the introduction.
"Good to meet you, Mr. Lee. Have a seat."
Ki-jo had barely sat down before Taylor put out his hand, and the two of them shook.
"I saw the piece about you in Stars and Stripes. You've done a great deal of good."
Praise, from the very first moment of a first meeting. Was it because Ki-jo already knew how thoroughly diplomatic the man was? He did not simply take the compliment at face value.
"I only did what needed doing."
A modest beginning, safe and unremarkable. Commander Taylor only raised the pitch of his praise.
"It isn't the sort of thing a man brushes off so lightly. If you'd been an American soldier, you'd have a Bronze Star on your chest already. Isn't that right, Martin?"
"Yes, sir."
Martin was quick to second him.
"I heard from Division Commander Martin about the plan to support the village of Eundae-ri. Is there anything you'd like to ask of me? I can't pin a medal on you for what you've done, but I can offer support in the name of the Eighth Army."
Support from the Eighth Army itself? That would be of an entirely different order from anything the 7th Division could give. The U.S. Eighth Army was richer than the Republic of Korea. Even so, Ki-jo did not let himself be glad.
Is he sounding me out?
The commander's friendly manner only made him draw the reins of his caution tighter.
This is no place for me to be collecting rewards.
He himself had done nothing wrong, and yet Major General Martin's road to promotion had very nearly been blocked all the same. To angle for gain here, he judged, would be absurd.
"There is nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No, sir. Nothing at all."
Maxwell Taylor studied him with open curiosity. Never before had he seen a Korean who wanted nothing from an American offering a reward.
"Truly nothing?"
"My only wish is that Major General Martin suffer no disadvantage whatsoever in his personnel record."
"Is that so?"
Taylor glanced at Martin and let a faint smile cross his face. This Ki-jo was unlike any Korean he had dealt with. The men who hovered about the headquarters at Yongsan, hungry for a connection with him, would have filled more than ten truckloads.
I invite him into a cave of gold, and he won't so much as carry off a stone bowl. Is that it?
Taylor decided to watch him a little longer. There were Koreans, after all, who refused a kindness at the first offer out of face, only to accept it afterward.
"Then you're saying you'd be content with nothing more than the pump the 7th Division has already promised Eundae-ri?"
"Yes. That the 7th Division has formed a sister tie with my village means, in effect, that the village will be kept safe. As village head of Eundae-ri, I consider that the greatest benefit of all."
What is this? Is the boy really twenty-five?
Maxwell Taylor was so taken aback that he had to swallow a laugh. A man of barely twenty-five, running a business and speaking for a whole village, and he could be this composed—this free of greed? After Taylor had opened by pouring praise over him? For the moment he gave Lee Ki-jo fifty points out of a hundred. Interesting, even encouraging; but there was still more he needed to learn about the man.
"Mr. Lee, may I ask what sort of offer you've had from Corporal Roberts Stillman?"
Roberts Stillman? Ki-jo had received nothing from him, and he wanted nothing. When he shook his head and said there was nothing at all, Commander Taylor broke into a rumbling laugh.
"Mr. Lee is a man without greed. Isn't he, Martin?"
Martin laughed with him. The commander leaned a little closer.
"Look here, Mr. Lee. You don't know a thing about the Stillman family?"
"No, sir. I don't."
"Just as I thought."
Commander Taylor nodded and turned to Major General Martin.
"Martin, tell Mr. Lee what you know."
Martin explained the house of Stillman.
"President Lee, have you ever heard the names Rockefeller and Carnegie?"
"Yes. An oil magnate and a steel magnate, as I understand it."
"That's right. You know them well. But do you suppose men like that were rich when they first went into business?"
"They wouldn't have been. Not at the start."
"Exactly. They grew because someone put up the capital behind them. The man who backed both of them was James Stillman."
Ki-jo began to see who Roberts Stillman was.
"An American banker. He poured astronomical sums into oil, steel, and shipping, and he helped bring the American economy into flower. Without that man's money, there would have been no Rockefeller."
"Then James Stillman is..."
"Corporal Roberts Stillman's grandfather. Roberts is a late-born child of James Stillman's eldest son."
So that was it. He thought he understood, now, why Roberts had kept telling him to speak if there was anything he wanted.
"His grandfather built the largest oil tanker in the world, too. What's more formidable still is that the family brought down a government in Mexico."
"A nation, you mean?"
"That's right. They backed a Mexican coup in earnest and saw it succeed. Texans, I suppose—openhanded, and not the sort to do things by halves."
Ki-jo had known nothing whatsoever of the Stillman family. They were a house scarcely known in Korea, and not even he, who had prepared with such care for his return to the past, could have foreseen a thing like this.
When Major General Martin had finished, Commander Taylor tapped Ki-jo on the shoulder and spoke as if letting him in on something.
"When Corporal Roberts comes back from his marriage leave, have a good talk with him."
"What do you mean, sir?"
The puzzled tone caught Commander Taylor slightly off guard.
"You saved his life. Don't you think he'll want to make you a generous gift?"
He smiled, bright and easy. Ki-jo might have smiled with him. He did not.
"To be frank, I feel as though I have come here for no good reason."
"What?"
Major General Martin started at the answer.
"And why is that?"
Commander Taylor wanted to know as well.
"I had hoped Roberts was an ordinary American man. But when the son of a family that grand brings an Asian woman home from Korea, how do you suppose his parents will look at her? I do not believe they will look kindly."
Neither Martin nor Taylor could readily answer him. Such things were, after all, a fact of American society. Taylor had been thinking of nothing beyond the link to the Stillman family that might be forged through the wedding's officiant, and the words left a faint prick of unease.
A brief silence followed what Ki-jo had said.
Maxwell Taylor had been certain that a promise of Eighth Army support, together with the story of Corporal Roberts's house, would set the young man leaping for joy. No—at the very least he had expected those eyes to light, even if the face above them stayed carefully governed. And yet here the fellow stood, a whole vine of good fortune dropped in his lap, fretting over someone else's days to come.
Is this one truly twenty-five?
Dumbfounded all over again, Commander Taylor gave him another thirty points.
"Hm. Ahem."
Taylor cleared his throat and tipped Martin a look, and Martin took it up.
"The reason the commander called you here was to tell you what you must do from now on."
He relayed Commander Taylor's instruction. Ki-jo and Ma-ryang were to cooperate, in their capacity as civilian employees of the 7th Division, with the Counter Intelligence Corps' witness inquiry. Hearing it, Ki-jo understood that this was the best course open to them.
"Understood, General. I will do everything in my power not to become a burden on the 7th Division or the U.S. Eighth Army."
To that even answer, Martin spoke as if to comfort him. He was beginning to look on the much younger Ki-jo almost as a nephew.
"You've done nothing wrong. We know what sort of man this Kim Chang-ryong is. You simply walked into a trap."
"I know. Even so, I can only be sorry for having laid so troublesome a matter before the two of you."
Well, now. Just listen to the way this fellow answers.
Taylor gave him another ten points. Ninety in all—a score that conferred the standing of a Korean one could trust.
"I've said all I have to say. You may go."
Ki-jo rose, bowed to Martin and to Taylor, and left the office.
After he was gone, an awkward silence settled over the room where the two generals remained. Ki-jo's reaction had been so far from anything they expected that neither of them had a word ready.
"A remarkably humane young man."
Taylor spoke first.
"I'd thought the same, but seeing him this time, he seems even deeper than I realized."
Taylor gave a dry, empty laugh.
"Did that fellow say he wanted in on the 7th Division construction?"
"Yes, sir. He did."
"Is he qualified to take the work?"
"He said he would form a consortium with Hyundai Construction and enter the bidding."
"Hyundai? Isn't that the firm that handled construction for our forces during the war?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then his qualifications are more than sufficient."
"Yes. Which is why I mention it. I'm thinking of concluding an invited contract with his company."
"You want to give him an invited contract?"
Taylor was startled.
"Look here, Martin. These days the Pentagon is pinching pennies, and they're being very particular about sole-source awards."
"It would be sole-source, yes. But his qualifications are solid enough that even if the Pentagon audits us later, I don't believe we'd be cited."
"That may well be... Even so, run the contract as a bid for now. I'm saying this because I worry for you more than for myself. I'll see that the scoring is weighted in his favor."
"Thank you, General."
And so the two of them came to an agreement. They had met a kind of man rarely encountered in Korea, and though it had left them a little off balance, they could feel the peculiar appeal Lee Ki-jo gave off.
Composure, and a depth of consideration. It was the bearing of a man who had already lived a long life.
"I'd better be getting back to headquarters myself."
As Taylor rose, Martin stood with him. The commander clapped him on the shoulder.
"Don't worry. Rest easy. Korea's Minister of National Defense will have passed our warning along to President Rhee."
"Thank you for settling it."
"Listen. The next time something like this happens, you call me directly. I nearly jumped when General Van Fleet telephoned—I'll have you know."
Color rose in Martin's face. It was gratitude that General Van Fleet had not forgotten him and had placed the call, and shame at having gone over his immediate superior to reach a senior officer already retired.
"I was afraid of becoming a burden to you, sir, so I contacted my old commander. My classmate, Brigadier General Ralph Zwicker, stood up for a subordinate who'd been branded a communist, and then..."
"Yes, I heard about that. And that's why you skipped over me, still on active duty, and went to an old superior who'd already retired. These days that McCarthy has his hands on the Army itself, and it has me in a thoroughly foul mood."
Commander Taylor burned at the thought of Joseph McCarthy, the man whipping up McCarthyism.
"The gall of it, painting the Army as Reds. Word is that before long President Eisenhower is going to land one squarely on that man. How furious must a president who came up through the Army be, watching his own service branded communist? Bear with it a little longer."
Taylor patted Martin's shoulder once more. Then, with his hand on the office doorknob, he spoke again—for all the world like a principal at morning assembly.
"Oh, and about the support for the village where Lee Ki-jo lives. See that they get some pesticide and fertilizer as well. The war will have ruined a good deal of the soil."
"The 7th Division's budget won't cover it, General."
"All right. Then pay for it out of the Eighth Army's civil assistance funds. Order the pesticide and fertilizer from Japan. Korea can't make that sort of thing."
"Thank you, General."
Martin offered the thanks in Ki-jo's place.
Having refused every offer the Eighth Army commander had made, Ki-jo walked back with a heavy step.
Should I at least have asked him to buy us fertilizer?
That was the honest truth of what he felt. If he had begun telling Commander Taylor what he wanted, there would have been no end to it.
No. The first judgment was the right one. If I'd reached for anything in there, it would only have worked against me...
He shook off the lingering regret and trudged on toward the reception hall.
The bride and groom had already gone, but Ki-jo's family remained, waiting for him. The moment he appeared, Soon-young came running.
"Brother-in-law! I asked Roberts to buy us a ship, and he says he really will!"
"What?"
She caught his hand tight.
"Roberts asked if there was anything I wanted. So I said, one of those big ships that come into Busan Harbor—buy us one of those. And he said he would!"
Watching Soon-young all but bounce where she stood, Ki-jo smiled with quiet pleasure.
Just what I'd expect of my sister-in-law...
It was thanks to Soon-young, who carried a great fortune with her, that the favor of the Stillman family would not slip through his fingers.