The Last Hidden Piece
"How did you know American remains were buried here?"
Ki-jo answered Martin with nothing but a limited truth.
"Someone told me."
"Who?"
"All I know is that he was an old man who used to live around here. He said that during the war an American unit was caught in a landslide on the slopes of Gaemisan."
"So that was it..."
Martin nodded.
The last hidden piece still concealed in the Yeoncheon country was an American transport column buried by a landslide. The unit under that slope had been pushing fuel up to the front during the Korean War. Ki-jo had known he might find them there because of the studying he had done before his return. Preparing to come back, he had pored over the local history of Yeoncheon and the country around it—the ground that was to be his base—and he had not spared the trouble of going there himself to gather what the old locals remembered. That labor had borne fruit.
What had caught his eye was the testimony of a single old man, set down in no record anywhere.
"There was a narrow road running from Baegui-ri through to Pocheon, but a landslide took it out during the war... Then—was it 1955?—there was a tremendous explosion where the slide had come down. Boom! Something blew, one blast after another, and the foot of the mountain went up in flames. There wasn't even a fire brigade in those days. Who was going to fuss over a fire in the hills? We just waited for it to burn itself out... Only it burned for a week. The ground just kept on burning. For a week the whole district reeked of burning oil..."
"A whole week?"
"That's right. And I'm the only one left who remembers it..."
It was a peculiar story.
Once the field inquiry was done and he had come home, Ki-jo went straight to the website of the U.S. Army Center of Military History and dug through the war record of the country around Baegui-ri. At last he found the thread.
In 1951, with Chinese forces in the war, the UN army was driven back and pushed south of the Han. The so-called January Fourth Retreat. After that, Chinese and UN troops traded ground back and forth along the central front, and in the midst of it there was a record of a large American transport unit that had vanished. The official account had written the entire missing unit off as MIA—missing in action. The site also listed the matériel that had disappeared with the men: an enormous quantity of fuel, enough for use at division scale.
Ki-jo's conclusion was that drums of oil had been buried there in great number. U.S. Air Force records offered grounds to support the inference. A flight of B-29s had been sent to rescue an American transport column surrounded by Chinese troops in a gorge. The bombing was meant to suppress the Chinese attacking from the heights, but the valley was narrow, and the Korean mountains of that time were bare, as they always were. Worse, the bombers had sortied just after the monsoon rains ended. With the ground softened by days of rain, a heavy bombardment stood a strong chance of bringing the mountain down.
Earth pouring off the slope had buried the trucks strung out along the narrow haul road, and the Americans with them. Afterward the ground fell to the Chinese, and any rescue of the column was beyond dreaming. A pity—but the soldiers of that transport were forgotten just the same.
The column's existence came to light only years later. After the Korean War ended, people flocked to the places where the fighting had been fiercest, scavenging abandoned American equipment and spent casings to sell. The explosion near Baegui-ri, and the fire that burned on for a week, seemed to have started when someone digging there for American stores set off an unexploded shell. Had that someone been lucky, he might have unearthed what lay underground, made a fortune, and recovered the dead as well. He had not been that lucky.
Ki-jo stepped close to Martin and lowered his voice.
"General, if anyone asks, I searched this ground on your orders."
"What are you saying?"
Martin was puzzled.
"No matter who asks, that is how I will answer. I would ask you to say the same."
Martin understood him well enough. Having found the American remains at Baegui-ri, Ki-jo meant to turn the whole of the credit over to him. Conscience kept Martin from agreeing so easily.
Out of the earth of Baegui-ri had come American remains, trucks, and drums, all in relatively sound condition—fully one hundred and twenty bodies, fifty-eight trucks, and eight hundred and eighty drums. They were well preserved. Like dinosaurs turned to fossils by a sudden burial, they had been swallowed by the landslide and left intact.
Was he being told to take an extraordinary find like this for himself?
Standing there, Martin could not bring himself to accept.
A few days later, a large repatriation ceremony for American remains, hosted jointly by Korea and the United States, was held at Yeouido Airport. Leading figures of both countries attended, and honor guards of the two armies, together with American transport aircraft, filled the field. General Taylor, commander of the Eighth Army, and Major General Martin sat side by side on the platform. President Syngman Rhee's speech in Korean was dragging tediously on, and the two of them began to talk.
"...Lee Ki-jo found those remains? That fellow?"
General Taylor asked it, startled.
"Yes. He found them, and then he turned the entire credit over to me."
"Hm."
Taylor cleared his throat and dropped his voice.
"Just as well. Better that you take it. It'll help your promotion. The report's gone all the way to the White House."
As if to prove the point, American television correspondents stationed in Japan had flown over to Korea and were covering the scene. It was the first large-scale recovery and repatriation of American remains since the war, and the press was deeply interested.
"Did that fellow Lee Ki-jo turn down a reward again this time?"
"Yes. He only asked whether he might take the trucks and drums that came up with the remains."
"Then just give them to him. Not as if they're anything we can use."
"I told him to take them, sir."
"Good."
Commander Taylor glanced for a moment at the white back of Syngman Rhee's head—the President still in the midst of his address—and went on.
"That fellow Lee Ki-jo is a peculiar one. Last time he saved American lives. This time he finds the remains and lets dead soldiers sleep in peace."
"He's a good man."
"He is. I've seen all sorts in Korea, but I think I'll remember him clearly. He leaves a deep impression."
Taylor looked around and asked,
"Lee Ki-jo didn't come?"
"I asked him to come with me, but he refused outright, so I couldn't bring him. I think he declined because he was the one who found them first, and he didn't want to draw the press."
"Yes. I read his interview in Stars and Stripes. Said you'd commissioned Cheongsan Development to search the area."
"I feel uneasy. As if I took the credit out from under him."
When Martin spoke his mind, Taylor shook his head.
"No. Reading that interview, I'd say he meant to give you the credit from the start. Think of that young man as one of your own."
"One of my men, sir?"
"Yes. In war, when a subordinate distinguishes himself, that becomes the general's achievement. You've been to war. You know. The soldiers do the fighting, and the generals get the promotions. Don't let it sit too heavy on you."
At that, Martin's mind lightened a little.
"Would it be all right to do something for a subordinate who passed the credit up to his superior?"
"Of course. If he needs help, he'll say so. I don't think Lee Ki-jo will ask for anything unreasonable. When he does, see that you grant it."
"Thank you for the advice, sir."
"What we said today stays between the two of us. There's a rumor the President means to decorate you over this before long."
"Truly?"
Taylor gave a light pat to the back of the startled Martin.
For a major general on the verge of promotion to lieutenant general, a presidential citation was no small thing. Taylor expected Martin would make lieutenant general without difficulty. When the people around a man took it upon themselves to help and push him upward, there was no way he would fail to rise.
Syngman Rhee's speech ended, and the turn came for the American ambassador. Taylor shifted his gaze to the transports parked on the field. He wanted this tedious ceremony over quickly, so the young soldiers who had lost their lives in Korea might return, at last, to their families' arms.
While the repatriation was underway at Yeouido Airport, Ki-jo was at the Cheongsan plant. He was absent from the field because he was busy disposing of the enormous stores unearthed at Baegui-ri. Indifferent to honor and to fame, and fond of what was practical, he was doing the work that was his to do. He stood watching the mechanics, frantic as they tore down and serviced fifty-eight American trucks.
"Hey! Chief Kim! What's the idea, parking a Toyota right next to a GMC? We'll mix them up!"
"Number the good ones on the hood, best first! One means the best!"
The mechanics were all in high spirits. The mere sight of the trucks packing the yard in front of the shop seemed to lift them, and Ki-jo felt the same. Even the ones crumpled by rocks that had come down in the slide put him in a good mood.
They had washed the buried trucks down to the insides of the engines and gone over them, and the verdict was that fully twenty-three could be put to use. The remaining thirty-five would become parts, or donate frames to reinforce other trucks, and any engine still sound could be pulled and used as a power plant. With that, Ki-jo at a stroke held a fleet to surpass Hanjin's.
Every time he looked at them he could hardly believe it. The last hidden piece he had found outran anything he had imagined. And had he gained only trucks? He had dug thinking he would count himself lucky to salvage a few drums of oil, and what came back to him was fully six hundred and thirty-two drums packed to the brim. In liters, that was well over a hundred thousand—more than twenty-six thousand gallons.
At that scale it was fairer to call Cheongsan a hauler than a brick concern. A large maintenance shop and a great store of gasoline: it could well be called the finest transport outfit in the Republic of Korea.
He was watching the hardworking mechanics with quiet satisfaction when Seong Dae-ik came over. At the Cheongsan plant, no one knew Ki-jo's course better than Dae-ik. Whenever Ki-jo signed with the Yeongdeungpo Brickworks or with Hanjin, he passed the terms along and told him to enter them in the books.
"Sir, wouldn't it be all right to break the contract with Hanjin? Or fulfill it for exactly one month, and then refuse to extend it."
At that, Ki-jo smiled faintly. Dae-ik would be saying it because they no longer needed to borrow Hanjin's strength to haul brick across the whole of Seoul.
"We can't do that, Dae-ik."
He said it gently, but Dae-ik's face said he did not understand, and he would not let the point go.
"I know you mean to keep faith, sir. But the contract with Hanjin doesn't particularly profit Cheongsan."
"That isn't so, Dae-ik. Hanjin may be the smaller house for now, but we must not cast them aside lightly."
Even with the ground turned in his favor, Ki-jo harbored no other intention. He meant to carry the contract with Hanjin through, without condition. Working hand in hand with them would, over the long run, lay a foothold for entering the American military cargo business—and that business was far larger than construction on the bases. Base work was a one-time job. Hauling would continue for as long as American forces remained in Korea.
To be chosen as a cargo carrier for the U.S. military, a firm had to pass an exacting review. And why would it not? No one could carelessly pick the company that would move the supplies their own soldiers were to eat, wear, and use in safety—nor the ammunition and weapons a war required. It had to be a firm one could trust with one's back, a trust on the order of an allied army. A company with no record was not so much as glanced at. There had to be an institution to stand guarantor, and because costly weapons would ride as well, the damages for a failed delivery were staggering.
To pass standards as narrow as a camel through the eye of a needle, they would have to work beside Hanjin for a long time and build a record. And was it only a record? Working with them, a man could gather the know-how of moving matériel by watching over the shoulder. Whatever the trade, it always held more hidden craft than the surface showed. He would not slit the belly of the goose that laid golden eggs for the sake of the profit in front of him.
"Dae-ik. Who do you think will end up the richest man in this country?"
The question came out of nowhere, and Dae-ik was flustered.
"I... I couldn't say..."
Ki-jo knew the answer. He did not let it past his lips. The highest taxpayer of the 1960s would be neither Lee Byung-chull nor Chung Ju-yung. It would be Cho Choong-hoon of Hanjin. That was how large the American cargo business was, and once the Vietnam War got fully underway in 1963, its scale would swell to something astronomical.
"Sir, is there a reason you insist on staying in partnership with Hanjin even while we take a loss?"
"There is. It's the man himself—President Cho Choong-hoon."
"The man himself?"
"Yes. You'll understand when you meet him later. He is no ordinary person."
Above all, the decisive reason Ki-jo would not let go of Cho Choong-hoon's hand was the connections the man possessed. Not yet—but in the years ahead, Cho would build very wide and very deep ties with Americans in uniform. The effort he put into those relationships was something Ki-jo could not lightly presume to imitate.
He would buy a Mercedes on purpose and come and go through the American posts to catch their eye, and for a decade and more he would invite their officers into his home and entertain them with first-class hotel cooking. Not once would he speak of business, or ask a favor. He would simply remain a good friend. Rather, when they left Korea—when keeping them close no longer profited him—he would grieve the parting, press armfuls of gifts on them and on their families, and send them off. The American officers he bound to himself that way numbered more than a thousand.
Ki-jo had no confidence he could spend himself so devotedly, so vigorously, on friendships with the American military. It was a method one might understand and still not dare to follow. For a man a little reserved by nature, it was work that did not suit him to begin with.
In later years those officers, bound by such ties, would aid Cho's ventures in Vietnam and lift him, through the sixties, to the place of the richest man in Korea. Ki-jo had no thought of betraying him, nor of wedging himself unasked into the man's affairs. He would rather stay close, and make a friend of him.
"Dae-ik. Let's have a look at the fuel yard. I want to see whether that roof is coming along."
He took Dae-ik out to the yard where six hundred and thirty-two drums were stacked. Twenty-five trucks, and a hundred thousand liters of fuel. While he fought his war for market share in Seoul, the means to deliver brick to his rivals' very doorstep, at almost no cost in freight, lay in his own back yard.
Ki-jo was not afraid of opening hostilities with the Big Five.
Then, all at once, something he had forgotten came back to him.
Wait—the coal!
The last piece of the puzzle that would finish the Cheongsan plant's edge over its rivals was still buried in Incheon.