As You Wish

"I read His Excellency the President's ninth statement, the one he released yesterday, with the deepest admiration."

Ki-jo opened on that, invoking the address of Syngman Rhee's that had run in every paper that morning. From March ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through May the president would issue no fewer than eleven statements on the election, each a lecture to the nation—with the vote drawing near—on the sort of man they ought to choose and the sort they must not. In any later age it would have been unthinkable, but in the 1950s a president could speak of meddling in an election as freely as he pleased. He had only to stay just short of the line where the brazenness of it turned shameful.

"Every statement of his has been admirable. What was it in this one that moved you?"

"His saying that this election must hold out some hope of making the National Assembly worthy of the name."

"You saw it true. This Assembly matters more than any that came before it. That's why he put it so."

Kwak Young-joo delivered the line with a show of solemn weight. Ki-jo could have groaned. The performance was pathetic.

Syngman Rhee was burning up. Eighty years old, he meant to force the Third-Term Constitutional Amendment through this Third National Assembly and remain president until the day he died, and to that end he had turned the police of the entire country loose on every species of fraud. Officers summoned villagers to the station and made them write down whom they intended to vote for—a canvass taken before a single ballot was cast. At the candidates' joint policy rallies, opposition men were set upon and left bleeding, and the police who ought to have stopped it simply abandoned the grounds. The force itself was leading the stolen election, and the men directing that force sat in the police bureau at Gyeongmudae, where Kwak Young-joo kept his place.

Kwak would know well enough how the wind was blowing for the Jongno-eul seat. As history had originally run, Kim Doo-han had been neck and neck with the man in second, and they had been content to watch. This time was different. Kwak would already have the feel of it: Kim Doo-han was going to win, and win cleanly. Ki-jo had a gift that fit the moment.

"The Liberal Party will be hard put to take two-thirds of the seats in this Third Assembly."

He had the nerve to say it to Kwak Young-joo's face—the very man bent on handing the Liberals a landslide, stolen election or no.

"What did you say?"

Kwak flung aside even the courtesy of a title and flared.

Flare all you like. You know it as well as I do. That was why the police were rampaging in every corner of the country. Every paper could run its exposé of the fraud, and still the lawbreaking went on, because the tide of the race was that badly against them. Ki-jo knew that for all the labors of policemen and gangsters, the Liberal Party would come away with 114 seats—56 percent. A full ten points short of the two-thirds, 66 percent or better, required to pass an amendment. They had scraped together even those 114 only because the police had thrown themselves in body and soul. Little by little the people were growing sick of the Rhee regime. Kwak would know that too.

Time, then, to offer him a way out?

Ki-jo spoke.

"Don't they say that when the sky falls, there isn't always a hole to crawl out through?"

"A hole? You got a fondness for holes? You and that brother-in-law of yours are the ones who'd better find a hole to crawl out of alive."

Kwak's tongue grew coarser still.

That damned mouth. Tsk. Small wonder the man would be sentenced to death before a revolutionary tribunal after the May 16 military coup. Quick-tempered as he was, Kwak Young-joo would go down with Syngman Rhee in the wake of the April 19 Revolution. Tried in the days right after, he got off with a short term. But once Park Chung-hee took power and hauled him back into court, Kwak was condemned to die and vanished like dew on the execution ground. There was even a rumor as to why. At the very height of his sway, risen all the way to chief of presidential security under Rhee, he had meddled in military appointments and gone about declaring that Park Chung-hee—a divorced man—had no business being promoted.

Knowing the fate that waited for him, Ki-jo clicked his tongue inwardly and went on.

"Allow me to offer a solution."

"A solution? What does a nobody like you know, sticking his nose in? A fellow who scoops mud out of a river and stamps it into bricks..."

The man has no notion of enough.

Having dealt with Kwak Young-joo in the flesh, Ki-jo found it easy to believe the talk that Park Chung-hee had seen the death sentence laid on him. Yes—he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠made his money selling bricks. But he was no ordinary man. He let the venom pass and held out a sheet of paper with names written on it.

Kwak snatched the list in one hand. As he read, his eyes went perfectly round.

"Th-this... what is this?"

What do you think it is? The men who will win seats in this election for the Third National Assembly—and among them, the independents your people will later bully and coax into the Liberal Party. Ki-jo had set down every name he remembered. Twenty-three independent candidates in all, and Kim Doo-han's was among them.

"How did you come to know a thing like this?"

The color had drained from Kwak's face. The list was the same one the police had drawn up by throwing their entire intelligence net over the likely winners.

"I had the candidates' birth charts read by a famous fortune-teller. A man named Baek Un-hak."

It was a lie, but it must have sounded plausible enough. Dumbfounded as he looked, Kwak did not fly into a rage and call the thing nonsense.

"Baek Un-hak? Who's that?"

If anything, he was interested.

Baek Un-hak was a real man. A fortnight before Park Chung-hee launched the May 16 coup, or so the story went, Kim Jong-pil had gone with a friend in business to have his fortune told, and had been struck speechless when Baek told him ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the revolution would succeed and he need not fret. Afterward it was said the fortune-teller sat at Lee Byung-chull's elbow through Samsung's interviews of new hires, drawing a salary for his counsel—though the man seemed never to have read his own fate, for in 1979, at fifty-three, he dropped dead of a heart attack. Even had he known, fate being fate, he could not have turned it aside.

"Oh my. That Baek Un-hak?"

Mi-hyang broke in all at once, as if the name were an old acquaintance.

"You know him?"

Kwak asked it with a grave face.

"Of course. He tells fortunes at the Taepyeong Inn in Jongno 5-ga. I was there only a few days ago."

"Any good?"

"He reads them well. He told me I ought to meet a man from a place where the rice grows thick."

As she said it, she turned a meaningful look on Young-joo and Ki-jo both. Kwak's hometown was Icheon, which in the old days had sent tribute rice up to the king, and Ki-jo himself was raising rice on a great scale out at Eundae-ri. Taking the words as meant for him alone, Kwak cleared his throat and composed his face. Then he found a pretext to fault Ki-jo.

"I got a little hot just now. You were the one speaking rough."

Mi-hyang came to the rescue of the abashed man.

"President Lee has always talked like someone with no warmth in him. Thinks he's the only one who amounts to anything."

She shot a glare at Ki-jo, who would not so much as turn her way, and took her small revenge.

"Mm. He does seem that sort of fellow. Ahem."

Kwak slipped the list into his inner pocket as he spoke.

"So. What is it you mean to do with these names?"

"Once they're elected, win those men over first. Do that, and you'll succeed nearly every time. That's how you fill out the quorum to pass the amendment."

"Come now. A young fellow, talking so freely of things he doesn't understand. Here—take a drink from me first."

He thrust the bottle at Ki-jo, working hard to hide the face of a man who had just struck gold. Ki-jo received the pour in both hands.

"Anyway, I'll see that business with your brother-in-law is handled properly. A toad wanders off from home, doesn't know the ways of the world, and crawls into another man's sauce jar. These things happen, don't they? Ha ha."

"Thank you, Inspector."

Ki-jo smiled and drank it off.

It was the first time since his return that he had put a hand to politics. But as with Kim Doo-han, he had only let happen what was going to happen in any case. The Liberal Party's third-term amendment would come to pass regardless. They would woo the independent lawmakers and still fall a single vote short—and then commit that infamous piece of arithmetic, the Rounding Amendment.

At any rate, Kwak Young-joo had been sick with worry, certain he could not win two-thirds of the seats this time. Hearing Ki-jo's scheme, he brightened as if he had been granted absolution. Like a man whose aching tooth had at last come out, he made much of Mi-hyang at his side and drank on with Ki-jo.

After Kwak had been sent home, Ki-jo let out a long breath. He was settling the cost of the banquet with the manager when Mi-hyang drifted up, soft as a spring breeze.

"Is Baek Un-hak really that uncanny?"

Ki-jo did not lift his eyes from the bills he was counting.

"So they tell me."

"Is that so? Then I suppose I ought to go see him."

He hardly knew what to say to that. She had never set foot in the place, and yet a little while ago she had spun one smooth lie after another right at Kwak Young-joo's elbow. She was Myeongwolgwan's ace, and no ordinary woman.

"Won't you have one more drink with me before you go?"

She asked it with a look that meant more than the words.

Ki-jo finished the count, passed the money to the manager, and only then answered.

"No."

He walked out of Myeongwolgwan without once looking back.

When he was gone, Mi-hyang sighed and complained to the manager.

"Manager, I don't think I'm as popular as I used to be. How can a man be so heartless when all I did was ask him for a drink?"

"That's not it at all, Miss Mi-hyang. Think of the business you bring through the door. Popularity proves itself in money, and yours climbs by the day."

Even that did nothing for her mood. All the while Ki-jo had been handling Kwak Young-joo she had helped him so quietly it hardly showed, and he had not offered so much as a word of thanks. She could not imagine where she had gone wrong.

She had no idea that the perfume she wore only made him recoil the more.

The matter of Jang Ma-ryang beating Lim Hwa-soo senseless was allowed to pass in silence. The police buried the case, not least because Lim had drawn a pistol in broad daylight in the heart of Jongno. The Jongno faction could hardly go boasting of it either. Let the story blow up and it would mean war with the Dongdaemun gang on the spot, so they sealed every mouth. Lee Jeong-jae, warned by Kwak Young-joo not to make an issue of it, did his own soothing of Lim Hwa-soo.

Lim had come to in the hospital after a single day, and Lee told him he had not gone down under the fist of some nameless giant of the Jongno crew, but under Kim Doo-han's famous finishing blow. Lim, whose memory of that day had vanished entire, accepted it for the time being, and even after he learned the truth he kept utterly silent. He was remaking himself into the fist that ruled the entertainment world, and for the sake of his face he buried that black chapter without a trace.

Having quieted the whole affair with a single golden toad, Ki-jo waited for Jang Ma-ryang to come back. Down in Busan, Ma-ryang had taken delivery of a twelve-thousand-ton freighter and brought Oh Yang-soo on as the first captain of Cheongsan Shipping. Ki-jo had spoken with Yang-soo by telephone as well. The foundation of the line was laid. All that remained was for Ma-ryang to return with one guest.

A few days later Ma-ryang and his wife came back from Busan with a man in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the rear seat of the jeep. It was Park Hee-ja's elder brother, Park Hee-jun. Ki-jo welcomed him; he had seen the man once, at Hee-ja's wedding.

"How do you do? A pleasure."

"A pleasure, President Lee."

Hee-jun was glad of him too. He had come to Korea to deliver a gift from Roberts, and he might fairly be called the proxy of Hee-ja and Roberts both. He passed along their thanks in their place. Ki-jo showed him into a private room off the office, and there they talked, with Ma-ryang and his wife beside them.

"How have you been getting on in America?"

"The country's so vast, and so full of everything, that for a while I felt I'd walked into a dream. Might have been the time difference, mind you. Day and night run backward from Korea. Haha."

Hee-ja's brother seemed a bright-natured man.

"And your family—everyone in good health?"

"Yes. Getting along fine, nothing the matter."

"Hee-ja and Roberts as well?"

"Of course. She and my brother-in-law are happy as can be. Haha."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Ki-jo had worried that the Roberts household might look down on Hee-ja's people, and one care slipped from his shoulders.

"Not long ago my brother-in-law left the service and started helping with his parents' affairs."

"Did he?"

From the way Hee-jun told it, Roberts, the youngest, had come into a bank in the American West. His older brothers had inherited banks in the East and in the middle of the country, while Roberts, the least grasping of the three, had been given a rather smaller house out west by comparison. Ki-jo's own reckoning ran the other way. Through the 1950s American trade still moved chiefly along the eastern seaboard, face to face with Europe, but that would not last. The Asia-Pacific—Japan above all—was bound to grow at a furious pace, and the goods crossing the Pacific would swell beyond measure. Let Roberts use his head, and the opening would not be hard to take. Word that the man was in California left Ki-jo thoroughly satisfied.

As they talked of this and that, he noticed how easily Ma-ryang and Hee-jun sat with each other.

"Forgive my asking, but how old are you?"

"The same age as your brother-in-law. Imsul year. Year of the Dog."

Another of the Imsul year? Jang Ma-ryang, Kim Seogwang, Oh Yang-soo—all three of them born under that same sign. The dogs of the Imsul year had always fit Ki-jo. He was wondering whether he might not get on just as well with Park Hee-jun when the man asked,

"I'd like to do some business tied to Korea. You wouldn't happen to have a good idea?"

Sure enough. Ki-jo and the men of the Imsul year understood one another.