Air Force Eagles (35 page)

More than a little angry, he barked, "Well, what you're saying is that you want me to take the decision out of your hands, to force myself on you. It would ease your conscience."

She blushed. He was exactly right, and it was horrible—
she
was horrible.

"Well, I won't. I put in my time in the last war; I'm not going to poach on someone's wife in this one." Then, in a kinder tone, "Don't worry about me, and don't worry about my love life—I'll tell you straight out that I'm no monk."

She knew that and it hurt, and she was angry with herself because it did.

He drove another block, then pulled over to the curb. Reflexively, each of them leaned back in the corner of their seat, as far apart as the Cadillac's body would permit.

"Saundra, here's the real scoop on what I believe. I think fate plays a hand in situations like this. If we're supposed to get together, we will; if we're not, we won't. In the meantime, I'm going to see to it that your business is a big success. You know what I mean by 'big success'? I mean you're going to be a millionaire, have a house in Beverly Hills, have a house in Europe, drive Cadillacs."

She shook her head. "I don't need all that. And you've already done too much."

"Hardly. Just look in the next issue of
OBSIDIAN.
I'm running a full-page blowup of that little advertisement you sent me. I've got my promotion people developing five more. I'll run another one every month for six months. At the end of that time, I'll start charging you full rates—and you'll be able to pay me."

He'd left her that evening turbulent with emotion, a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. She wanted her business to succeed, and Fred Peterson could make that happen. She hadn't betrayed John, and although she knew she had been vulnerable, and that a lesser man than Fred would have taken advantage of her, it made her want him all the more.

Three weeks after they'd watched USC slip by Wisconsin, 7 to 0, Saundra took a day off to take stock of her very complex life, her growing depression—and her growing guilt. She was increasingly attracted to Fred and wanted to spend every minute with him, just to enjoy the strength of his personality. It was not how the wife of a missing pilot should behave.

Eisenhower's inauguration day gave her a perfect excuse for a holiday. She found it impossible not to like Eisenhower's irrepressible grin, irresistible even in the grainy black and white of television. Unfortunately he didn't say the thing she wanted most to hear, that the war in Korea would be over soon. He'd gone there as he had promised, but he hadn't returned with a solution.

Later the same day, she'd driven out to George Air Force Base and talked to Bones's old squadron commander. He was immensely sympathetic and gave her the honest opinion she had asked for.

"It looks like Bones and Dave Menard, his wingman, were jumped by a flight of MiGs. Menard was driven off. The last time he saw Bones, he was diving straight for the ground, smoke pouring from his aircraft. Then the next day, Menard was killed in an accident."

She knew at once what it meant. John had always said he'd go across the Yalu to get the MiGs if he had to. Except that they had gotten him.

She thanked him and went away unwilling to believe the worst. On the long drive back she realized how lucky she was that Fred had not taken advantage of her; she was now totally convinced that if she were faithful to John, he would come back. The only thing important to her was John's survival; when he came back, she would forget about her business, forget about Fred, and just take care of him, make him well again. And she would not even think what might happen if he didn't return.

*

Manpo, Korea/February 28, 1953

Marshall knew he was dying, and he was not afraid. Contrary to his fears, as his bodily strength declined, his willpower increased. He had recently been shifted to Manpo—he never knew why the switches were made, or why new interrogators came on duty. Detained momentarily in an outer room, he was shocked at the sight of himself in the first mirror he's seen in all of North Korea.

The mirror, old, cracked, and tarnished, was a metaphor for both Korea and his appearance. He had known he had lost weight, but the reflection was of a corpse—protruding cheekbones, werewolf eyes sunk back in his skull, lips split like cracked ice, his hair almost completely gray. Marshall felt pain at this squandering of his youth and health, yet took a bitter satisfaction that as bad as he looked he still lived and could still fight back.

He tried to detach himself from his suffering by making a military contest of his starvation. He would lie on the dirt floor and imagine wonderful meals—steaks and lobsters, and always when he was feeling homesick, neckbones, sauerkraut, and Bavarian dumplings. Then he would marshal the imaginary nourishment, an army of calories, and march it to different parts of his body. He always sent most of it to his brain, where he had identified a little compartment called "will." The neckbones always went to will because he needed strength to battle the man he hated. He prayed all day, reciting every prayer his father had taught him. Each night he prayed for a painful death for Choi. His father hadn't taught him that, but he would understand.

Now he was waiting for the thirty-fourth day of his latest round of interrogations to begin. The hut was just like every other one he'd been thrown in, walls of mud-packed cornstalks, no furniture, not even a straw mat on the floor. A few rough boards supported a thatched roof where he could always hear and often see rats running. As he thought of Choi he flexed his muscles, making them work against themselves, trying to stay strong enough to deal with his enemy. All the vicious processes of his imprisonment—the traveling about, the starvation, the freezing cold, the questions—had been distilled into one evil constant: Colonel Choi. Hating Choi kept him alive. He even took a perverse pleasure in the endurance of his pain, for it proved that Choi had not yet won completely.

Almost two weeks elapsed before the furor of his hoax about the Japanese divisions had finally died away, and now Choi was back with his bamboo stick and his blustering threats.

Marshall wanted to use his remaining strength to get him. He'd toyed with the idea of taking a gun from the guard, but he knew he was too weak to overpower anyone, and there were always three or four in the room next to him. But there had to be a way.

Alan Burkett, muffled as usual in wonderful warm clothes, had visited him two weeks before, bringing some cigarettes and chocolate wrapped in an old handkerchief. Burkett had also given him an American government issue ballpoint pen and a small notebook, telling him to write down his impressions of his captivity. He said that he would return in three weeks with some other treats, to pick up the notes.

That evening, on the way back from the slit-trench—he had a bowel movement only every six or seven days now—he found a dead rat, frozen stiff. He picked it up and stuffed it in his jacket, thinking of it first as food, then realizing that this rat was a way of striking at another one. When he entered his cell, he shoved the rat into a hole eroded in the mud wall where it would stay frozen.

The next four nights he squatted on the floor, using the dim light flowing under the shoji screen that separated his cell from the guard shack. With a splinter of plastic broken from the ballpoint pen, he carefully worked individual threads from the fabric of his cotton jacket. So cold that he had to put his filthy fingers in his mouth to warm them, Marshall wound the threads into slender cords and made a tiny parachute harness complete with shroud lines.

He spread Burkett's dirty handkerchief out on the floor, frozen slate-hard. Bearing down on the ballpoint pen, he carefully marked the handkerchief usaf on both sides, then drew a single large skull and crossbones in the middle. Then, for sentiment's sake, in the corner where the shroud line attached, he drew a tiny picture of Banjo, the dog Saundra had when they'd married. Next, he tied the harness around the frozen rat to make him a stiff, four-legged parachutist.

His artistic skills hadn't deserted him; even the printing looked authentic. The next time Choi asked him if he had conducted biological warfare, he would give it to him. It would be better than a cup of tea down his pants.

The next morning he was on his feet before the kicks, and the two guards marched him through the morning darkness to the interrogation center across the street. A fit of common sense took hold, and he tossed his labor of a week, the paratrooper rat, into an ox-drawn cart lumbering past.

The center was another mud hut, lacking a window. Like many of the huts it had newspapers pasted to the walls, including a few London
Daily Workers.
Even though they were old and spouted the Communist line, they offered him a diversion as he waited the customary thirty minutes while the interrogators assembled and discussed the forthcoming session. He was glad that he'd thrown the rat away—Choi might have beaten him to death on the spot. But just planning the joke had been worthwhile, sustaining his courage for a few days.

The interrogation process went on, implacable, interminable—question, translation, answer, translation, threat; question, translation, answer, translation, threat. He was weary, unable to summon the strength even surreptitiously to massage his folded arms with his suppurating hands.

At midday, there was an unexpected break. When the interrogators left for their luncheon, instead of being left guarded in the room with nothing to eat or drink, Bones was ushered into the adjacent building. Alan Burkett, engulfed in his uniform of argyle sweater and baggy brown pants, sat at a table loaded with food.

"Sit down, Captain Marshall, and join me for lunch."

Bones couldn't believe his eyes—there was rice, some boiled meat, fish roe, and dried squid. He wanted to fling himself onto the table, face down in the bowl, but he forced himself to sit down slowly and to wait. He knew he had to pace himself or he'd throw up.

"Have some tea, Captain. I thought you might like to be brought up to date on the peace talks."

Marshall nodded his head as he took the first spoonful of rice, letting it fill his mouth with a heavenly warmth and comfort, as different from chook as champagne from sewage. Like vibrations from a tuning fork, whole symphonies of sensation radiated from the rice. Lost in unbelievable pleasure, he sat perfectly still, his eyes closed and growing moist as Burkett went on, "Are you aware that peace talks were resumed at Panmunjom?"

Marshall slipped a piece of meat in his mouth—dog, probably, but he didn't care. The flavor welled over his tongue, and he could feel strength funneling into him like sunlight down a well, suffusing his pores, his veins, his nerves, his marrow.

In twenty minutes it was all gone; with each bite Marshall felt strength return and resolve wilt; instead of pacing himself, he stuffed everything in sight into his mouth.

Burkett was pleasant about it, eating little, and presenting Marshall tidbits from his side of the table. Marshall took the cigarette he offered, saving it to bribe a guard.

After a few sips of tea and some preliminary throat-clearing, Burkett assumed a grave-digger's air. "I'm afraid I have to tell you that you are in serious trouble, Captain Marshall."

Made reckless by the food, Marshall said, "I'm dying of starvation, being beaten senseless, and you tell me I'm in serious trouble? I've had more food at this one meal than I've had in the last three months. I'm living on chook—that rhymes with puke! Look at this!"' With a groan, he pulled his leg and lifted his swollen pustulant foot level with the table's edge.

Burkett gagged. He looked away, lit a cigarette, then went on.

"No, I'm quite serious. The North Korean government has formally charged the United Nations with conducting germ warfare. They already have confessions, as you know. If you don't confess today, I can tell you that you will be dead in forty-eight hours."

The single meal had allowed fear as well as hope to creep back, and Marshall felt his stomach go into spasm.

"I won't confess. Let them shoot me."

"They won't shoot you, nothing so pleasant. But they will kill you, and it's absolutely pointless. The North Korean government wouldn't make a formal accusation like this unless they had proof. I believe them. If you sign a confession, they'll see that your wife and family are notified that you are alive, and when the war is over, you'll go home."

With a sweep of his arm, he plopped a canvas-wrapped object on the table. He pulled at the folds to reveal Marshall's rat, still stiff in his parachute.

"Look at this, they found it in a cart at the inspection point."

Marshall kept his face impassive, trying to see if Choi was really taken in or if this was just a prelude to a beating. The whole thing was ludicrous; they could not possibly take it seriously. Then with a dawning horror he realized that the Koreans were so cut off from the world, so terribly impoverished, that even an educated man like Choi could see only the symbolism, the fulfillment of his dialectic, overlooking the sheer stupidity of the concept.