The Solution
When Kijo stepped down from the jeep in front of Danseongsa, the Jongno Faction men blocking the alley opened a way for him.
He had already heard the whole story on the drive over. He walked into the alley and spoke to Kim Doo-han.
"Assemblyman Kim, I'll take my brother-in-law with me. I'll trust you with whatever follows."
The moment Kijo appeared, the knot in Doo-han loosened. Kijo didn't ask him a single question. He moved with the calm of a man who already knew everything.
"I'll leave Brother Ma-ryang in your care, Mr. Lee."
Doo-han said it without quite managing to meet Ma-ryang's eyes.
"Let's go."
Kijo led him out of the alley, put him in the jeep, and turned not toward the office but toward home.
"I'm sorry, Brother. He pulled a pistol, and my body went before I could think."
"It's all right. That can happen. You did well."
Kijo said it easily, eyes on the road.
"I played it off in front of Kim Doo-han, but I think this could get big."
Ma-ryang came out with it plainly. All he had meant to do was needle Lim Hwa-soo a little, stir up some petty trouble, and fall just far enough to slip out of Kim Doo-han's good graces. He hadn't counted on Lim Hwa-soo drawing a gun.
"We got off easy, then. You nearly caught a bullet."
"But the Dongdaemun gang may come after me."
"They won't. Put it out of your mind."
Still watching the road, Kijo turned a small smile on him. His face was that of a man who had already prepared for everything.
They pulled up in front of the house. Kijo left the engine running.
"Take Soon-young and stay in Busan for a while."
"Busan?"
Ma-ryang stared at him. The face was calm, as if there were nothing in the world to fear, and yet it seemed to Ma-ryang that Kijo, too, thought him in danger — that he meant to pack him off to safety, the way Kim Doo-han had.
"Why Busan..."
"There's a brother I know down there. His name is Oh Yang-soo. He runs lighters in the harbor. Tell him I sent you and he'll look after you. Stay at his place a few days, then come back up."
Kijo took out his notebook and wrote down the address.
"Brother, I won't go to Busan."
If he left Seoul, he feared the Dongdaemun gang's revenge would turn on Kijo instead. Better the knife find him than anyone else. That was why he refused.
"Don't dig your heels in. Go down. If you don't, you'll miss something big."
"What?"
Miss something big. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
"You're sending me because you're afraid Lee Jeong-jae will come after me. Isn't that it?"
"Revenge?"
Kijo's eyes went wide.
"Revenge, nothing. Lee Jeong-jae will never lay a hand on Kim Doo-han. He won't touch you either. I told you to go to Busan because of this."
He drew a letter from inside his coat. It was written in English, so he relayed it himself.
"It's from Hee-ja's husband, Roberts Stillman. He says he's sending the gift your wife asked for. A ship comes into Busan tomorrow."
"A ship?"
"Yes. Go down with your wife and register it. It's a gift for you, so of course you ought to be the owner."
"What kind of ship did he send?"
"Well, he calls it a freighter. How big it is, I couldn't tell you. Something his father's bank was holding as collateral, he says. The price isn't anything much, so we're to take it and not feel obliged."
The tension went out of Ma-ryang all at once. It was so absurd a laugh escaped him.
"Ha..."
Kijo burst out laughing with him.
"Ha ha ha. Isn't life something? We can't see an inch in front of our noses. Who would have thought that saving an American soldier under the bridge on the Hantan River would come back to you like this?"
Ma-ryang tucked into his coat the note he had been about to hand back, then checked once more.
"Brother, if I leave for Busan, there really won't be any trouble?"
"I told you, nothing will happen. Your job is to take delivery of the ship and ask Brother Oh Yang-soo to serve as her captain. The shipping company is already registered. The letter came a week ago."
Ma-ryang looked at that unruffled calm with something close to awe. At first he had called him Brother only because family rank demanded it. But the further they went, the more this Kijo — eight years his junior — felt like an elder brother. Not a near one, either. The kind of big brother who had you by ten years and more.
"I understand, Brother."
He bowed his head as he answered, and Kijo held out a fist.
Ma-ryang had no idea what the gesture meant, and it showed.
"Make a fist yourself, and tap mine. Lightly."
Ma-ryang did as he was told. Kijo broke into a wide grin.
"It's an American greeting. Something men do, casual, when they've pulled a thing off together."
"Ah... yes."
Kijo had just offered him a greeting that would not become the fashion for decades yet. Doing as he was told eased Ma-ryang's mind, if only a little.
"Oh — and what did Kim Doo-han say to you?"
"He told me to get out of the Jongno Faction."
"Perfect!"
Kijo held out his fist again, and Ma-ryang, carefully this time, touched it with his own.
"The Jongno man who came to fetch me earlier was worried sick about you. How did you win the members over?"
"I played hwatu with them — flower cards — and made sure I lost. You told me to win the hearts of Kim Doo-han's men, so..."
"Did you, now. Well done! Here."
Kijo offered his fist once more, and this time Ma-ryang met it without a hitch.
"Kim Doo-han's Jongno Faction is going to come apart. The men will remain, though, taken in by one crew or another. You've made good terms with them, so your standing with the other gangs shouldn't be bad from here on."
Ma-ryang was moved by the way Kijo turned everything he had done to the good. Neither his own father nor General Kim Hong-il, the man he had fought beside in China, had ever poured praise over him like this no matter what he did. Drenched in it, Ma-ryang flushed red to the ears.
"Now go get Soon-young."
Ma-ryang climbed out. Kijo got down as well and watched his back as he went into the house, a pang of tenderness in his chest. The man had worked so hard not to lose the trust of the rank and file, while looking just short of the mark in Kim Doo-han's eyes.
A moment later Soon-young came out with Ma-ryang's hand in hers, her face bright, and made straight for Kijo.
"Brother-in-law! They sent a ship from America?"
"They did. All right if we register it in your husband's name?"
"Of course! Brother-in-law, it's the ship that's going to add years to our Ma-ryang's life. It has to be in his name."
"Ha ha, all right. Enjoy the drive with your husband. It's a long way, so rub his shoulders now and then. Go on."
"I will. Hee hee."
Soon-young climbed into the passenger seat, and Ma-ryang took the wheel. Kijo stepped up beside her and drew five one-thousand-hwan notes from his wallet.
"Before you leave Seoul, stop by Pungguk Confectionery and pick up some sweets. The children at the house you'll be imposing on in Busan are mad for them."
"All this money, just for cookies?"
"You'll want something good to eat on the way to Busan, too."
"Thank you, Brother-in-law. And for giving us a vacation besides."
"It isn't a vacation."
"This is so a vacation. What else would a vacation be? A trip to Busan with my husband — we'll go and have a wonderful time!"
Soon-young was radiant. She had trailed after Kijo devotedly even before the marriage, and he remembered her as a girl, tagging along without a shred of tact on his outings with Sunrye and cadging whatever tasted good. She felt less like a sister-in-law than a daughter.
"Brother, we'll go and come back safe."
Somewhere along the way, Ma-ryang's face had brightened too.
The engine bellowed. Kijo watched the jeep dwindle down the road for a long while, then spoke to himself.
"All right. Time to clean up after Ma-ryang."
The first place he went was Jongno Police Station. He walked in and asked for Inspector Kwak Jae-seong. There was no inspector by that name at Jongno.
"There's no one called Kwak Jae-seong here..."
The officer dealing with him cocked his head. When Kijo described the man, the officer leaned over and whispered to the one beside him.
"Could you perhaps mean Senior Inspector Kwak Young-joo, of the Gyeongmudae police?"
So that was it.
Kijo was sure of him now. Kwak Jae-seong had been an alias, and the man was no ordinary intelligence detective. He belonged to the Gyeongmudae police — higher, and far more powerful — which was to say, the presidential security detail. All the better.
From the start, Kijo had meant to reach Lim Hwa-soo's sworn brother, Kwak Young-joo, through the intelligence man who called himself Kwak Jae-seong. Now he could sit down and go straight to terms, with no explanation required.
He had Jongno Police Station put a call through to Gyeongmudae, and before long the man who had worn the name Kwak Jae-seong arrived in his own jeep. Kwak Young-joo himself. The officers of the station treated him with a scrupulous courtesy that proved his weight.
"You have something to say to me?"
"Yes. It's pressing."
"Then let us step outside. This is hardly the place for official business."
Kwak Young-joo's humor had a flavor all its own. Kijo took him to Myeongwolgwan — an excellent place, as it happened, for an official conversation.
When guests of that rank arrived, Lee Seong-ryong showed them to the finest private room in the house. She also sent in two gisaeng no one had called for. One of them was Mi-hyang.
Kijo had no liking for her, but the look Kwak Young-joo turned on her burned hot enough that he seated her at the man's side. The moment she settled close beside him, Kwak's face brightened, pleased, and he asked,
"So what is it you mean to say? Information on the gangsters, perhaps?"
Gangsters? As if the man weren't already hand in glove with the Dongdaemun crew, with the doings of every thug in Seoul gathered up besides.
Kwak Young-joo, a son of Icheon in Gyeonggi Province, was especially close to Lee Jeong-jae — another Icheon man, and one who had planted himself as a gangster of the Liberal Party. He was just as close to the underboss, Lim Hwa-soo. Shrewd in the handling of men, Lim, three years the younger, had taken to calling Kwak brother, and the two of them met two or three times a week to drink and take their pleasures. The odds were high that word of Ma-ryang beating Lim Hwa-soo had already reached a man like that. It had happened on Jongno 3-ga, the busiest stretch in the city, and right in front of Danseongsa, a famous theater at that. In a later age, footage of Kim Doo-han thrashing Lim Hwa-soo would have gone up on the internet in real time, and the whole nation would have known. Kwak Young-joo's eyes and ears had surely already filed their reports.
Kijo drew the gift box he had brought out from under the table. When he opened the lacquered case, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a single golden toad caught the light.
"Oh my! What is this?"
Mi-hyang, seated across from them, asked it with her eyes sparkling.
A bribe. What else? Kijo had no intention of getting through the 1950s without them. He had set this one aside as defense, against the chance that Ma-ryang might trip over the election laws in campaign season, or be hauled into a police station on some other account. If a bribe would save his family, he would have paid any sum on earth.
Kwak Young-joo dragged his eyes off the golden toad. All that remained was to tell the story without vulgarity, so the man accepting it would not be put to shame.
"A toad that lived in my house went out into the world and conducted itself as it pleased. By way of apology, I should like to present you with a fellow made in that scamp's likeness. I ask you to look upon it with a kindly eye."
Kijo dipped his head, and Kwak Young-joo laughed, a dry heh heh.
"Well now, President Lee, I am disappointed. I came only to hear what you had to say, and here you are startling a man in this fashion. Heh heh."
There was neither disappointment nor surprise in the voice. Then Mi-hyang, at his side, slipped in.
"Oh my... so the toad at President Lee's house wasn't the fortune-bringing kind, I take it?"
She laughed, slipping her arm through Kwak Young-joo's.
Ah, maddening. And yet her hands moved with practiced ease. She lifted the gift box and set it down beside Kwak Young-joo. Irritating as she was, she was quick-eyed and clever. What Kijo wanted, and what Young-joo wanted, she did for them herself.
"And is there nothing further? Do the fist-gangs heed the police these days? It is a world in which every man lives as he pleases. I, too, am one who serves those above him. I rather suspect this is settled only when we have satisfied men more powerful than I..."
Spoken like a man who had drunk brotherhood with gangsters and, with Syngman Rhee's favor at his back, put his hand into trials, into the naming of ministers, even into postings in the army. He wanted a great deal.
So he was asking for something bigger. Something that wasn't a thing you could hold?
Kijo already had it ready. The golden toad had been nothing but oil to loosen the talk. The moment had come to lay out what Kwak Young-joo wanted.