Buddha's Money (9 page)

10

AFTER FLASHING MY EIGHTH ARMY CID BADGE, I PLEADED WITH the KNPs not to arrest Herman. They took us to the Mukyo-dong Police Station, unlocked Herman's handcuffs, and made him sign a statement accepting full blame for the incident. What finally convinced them not to arrest him, however, was that the victim, Lady Ahn, had disappeared without filing a complaint.

When we left the police station, Ernie bopped Herman on the head. "Why don't you learn to act like a civilized human being, Herman? Always attacking people. What are you, some kind of a caveman?"

Talk about the critic being guilty of the crime.

Standing on the busy sidewalk, Herman seemed oblivious to the sting of Ernie's knuckles. Flesh crinkled on his sloping forehead. "What'll we do now?"

"We'll find Lady Ahn," I said.

"How?" Herman asked. "I don't have any way to contact her."

"She found you once, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"Then
we
can find
her."

Herman looked up at Emie, puzzled. Ernie slapped Herman on the shoulder. "Believe him," he said. "George Sueño can sniff out a kimchi jar in a field of garlic. He's Mexico's answer to Sherlock Holmes. Maybe not a very good answer, but an answer nevertheless."

Herman stared at Ernie, still confused.

The drizzle turned into a steady patter. I grabbed Herman's arm and walked him toward the jeep.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To meet some of your partners in crime," I answered, "and ask them a few questions."

WE SPENT THE AFTERNOON IN DOWNTOWN SEOUL, TALKING TO various antique dealers. The way I figured it, when Lady Ahn went looking for an American who would be able to ship a valuable antique to the States, she would've talked to Korean businessmen in the trade. The only ones able to guide her to the right man. Namely, Herman the German.

Once we found the dealer who had tipped her off to Herman, we could backtrack from there.

If we found her, I could get a better handle on what was so valuable about the skull. Once I understood that, I might be able to understand what would bring men thousands of miles from Mongolia to Korea to lay claim to a piece of carved jade. And why. And knowing why could lead to us finding them.

First I had to know more about Herman's business. He was reluctant to tell us—a couple of CID agents—since his business was mainly illegal. After Ernie rapped him on the skull a couple of times, however, he opened up.

Herman and Slicky Girl Nam had been running a thriving black market business for years. Buy the duty-free goods in the PX and the commissary on-post, sell it to the Koreans off-post. Double your money. But that hadn't been enough.

In Itaewon, a lot of shops catering to international tourists had started to spring up over the last few years. The shops specialized in name-brand products—-sneakers and jackets and blue jeans—that were produced here but shipped overseas to be sold at inflated prices. Since Itaewon purchased factory-direct, the goods cost about half what you'd pay for them in America or in Europe. Itaewon also specialized in brassware, handcrafted leather goods, and, more to the point, antiques.

In recent years, so many ancient chests and vases and statuettes had disappeared from Korean estates that the government had started to clamp down. Many shipments were turned back, the owners fined—even jailed. Certain items, such as handcrafted celadon vases, couldn't be shipped out of the country at all. The translucent green pottery was considered irreplaceable and as such, a treasured national artifact.

But household goods shipped out of the country by United States military and diplomatic personnel were never inspected by ROK customs personnel. Only by GIs deputized as U.S. Customs agents. For the most part, these inspectors were either incompetent, lazy, corrupt, or all three. And they definitely weren't worried about stopping Korean national treasures from leaving Korea.

Therefore, if you wanted to ship a valuable antique out of the country, placing it in a GI's household goods shipment was the safest—and cheapest—way to go.

That's where Herman came in.

Somewhere along the line some smart Korean antique dealer had contacted him and asked him to set up an outbound shipment. Herman had agreed, contacted a GI on his way out of the country, and a price was set for him to ship the item in his household goods. Later, the Korean dealer would have somebody in the States contact the GI and retrieve the smuggled item—and ship it on to the ultimate buyer in the States or Europe or Saudi Arabia.

Everybody made out. The GI was paid for his trouble, half in cash up front, half when the shipment arrived in the States. Herman raked off a percentage. And the antique dealer didn't have to worry about being arrested by the Korean Ministry of the Interior.

Word spread. If you wanted something shipped out of country, Herman the German was the man to contact.

Through the overcast monsoon afternoon, Ernie and Herman and I moved from antique dealer to antique dealer. Ernie usually waited in the jeep, since parking in downtown Seoul is mostly impossible. Herman and I talked to the dealer. Seeing if he'd sent any referrals Herman's way lately. Describing Lady Ahn as a last resort.

After twelve joints, we'd found nothing.

"You have a hell of a thriving business," Ernie told Herman.

Herman gazed through the rain-smeared windshield of the jeep. "A guy's got to eat."

Ernie glanced at Herman's belly. "You're getting plenty of that done."

No matter how you insulted him, Herman never responded. His watery blue eyes stared straight ahead. His expression stayed worried.

The gray sky darkened as if someone had pulled a shade. The rain fell harder. Herman guided us to another antique shop and Ernie stopped in front, waving with his free arm for the honking cabs behind us to pass.

"This is the last one," Herman said.

"Good," Ernie said. "We still have time to make Happy Hour."

"No way," I said. "We have an ancient jade skull to find and not much time to find it. Sobriety could prove useful."

Ernie groaned, flicking his wrist for us to hurry. "Make it quick, will you?"

Herman and I clambered out of the jeep, crossed the sidewalk bobbing with umbrellas, and pushed through a beaded curtain into the cool confines of a dimly lit shop.

At first I thought he was one of the statues. A long-faced man, wrinkles sagging from limp cheeks. He wore a jade-colored tunic, gray pantaloons, and soft-soled cloth shoes.

Then the statue opened his mouth and said,
"Oso-oseiyo"—
please come in.

Herman came right to the point. "You send somebody to talk to me, Papa San? A woman?"

The old dealer gazed back and forth between us, his face calm, almost smiling.

"Yes," he said. "I did. A beautiful woman."

Bingo! I stepped forward. "Why did she want to talk to Herman?"

The old man turned away from me, upset by my passion.

"Kulsei,"
he said. It's that way.

I stepped back, lowered my voice. I didn't want to frighten him into silence.

"We've lost contact with this woman," I told him. "That's all. We're just trying to find out why she wanted to talk to Herman in the first place."

Maybe my English was too complicated for him, maybe he just wanted time to think. But when he didn't respond right away I repeated what I had told him in Korean.

He turned back to me, his face somewhat offended, and spoke in clear English.

"She told me she wanted to talk to an American. An American who can send something Stateside."

"Did she tell you what she wanted to ship?"

"No."

For once Herman seemed to grasp the situation. The old man was clamming up, not sure whether I was a cop or if Herman wanted him to talk to me or what. Herman opened his big fists and spread his fingers.

"Where is she now, Papa San? I need to talk to her. It's important."

The old man studied Herman.

'You don't want to talk to her."

"Yes, I do."

The old man shook his head. "No. She is a dangerous woman."

At the corners of Herman's mouth, drool started to bubble.

The old man shuffled over to a glass counter filled with intricately painted porcelain artifacts.

"First, I no want tell her about my friend." He pointed at Herman. "But she told me she would go to police. Tell them I do black market with Americans." He shrugged his narrow shoulders. "So I told her about this man."

I still didn't see it. "What makes you think she's dangerous?"

"The way she talks."

I waited.

"She's from the south. She has . . . how you say?
Ssaturi"

"An accent," I said.

"Yes. But more than that." The old antique dealer looked at me, his eyes defiant, daring me to laugh. "This woman," he said, "is a
yangban."

The
yangban.
The educated Confucian elite of the country. The landowners. The people who for centuries had been the only class who could read and write and therefore ran the politics and economics and cultural life of Korea.

"You're afraid of this woman because she's a
yangban?"
I asked.

The old man chortled at that. "No. f am
yangban
also. She's more than that."

"Then what is she?"

"She is Sung
Cho."

It didn't compute. "You mean
Yi Cho,"
I said. From a prominent family of the Yi dynasty, the dynasty that had ruled Korea for over five centuries.

The old man waved a withered hand. "No.
Sung Cho."
From the Sung dynasty.

"In China?"

He nodded.

For a moment I thought he was kidding me. The dynasty of the Sung emperors in southern China had been overthrown by the Mongols more than seven hundred years ago.

I let that sink in. In 1911 the Japanese had deposed the last king of the Korean Yi dynasty. The Crown Prince was taken against his will to Japan and forced to marry a Japanese woman. Later, he renounced any claim to the throne, and when Korea became a republic in 1945 the issue of nobility was long dead and buried. Maybe it was odd, in this day and age, to be worried about nobility. But that some people would still claim royal blood didn't seem strange to me. Every other person with a foreign accent in the United States claims to be related to a king or a count or a rajah.

"All right," I said. "So this woman has some blood from the rulers of an old Chinese dynasty. What's the big deal?"

The old man let his head sag. "You don't understand."

"Then explain it to me."

"Some people haven't given up." The leather of his neck quivered and he sat down on a stool. "They still think they can get it all back."

"Get what back?"

"The Dragon Throne. They think they can overthrow the Communists in Beijing and seat someone of royal blood on the Dragon Throne of China."

BACK IN THE JEEP, ERNIE WAS PISSED THAT WE WEREN'T GOING to Happy Hour. But the old antique dealer had given us the name of the
yoguan—
the Korean inn—where Lady Ahn had been staying. We had to check it out. And check it out now.

"It's in the Sodae-mun District," I told Ernie. "It'll only take a minute."

"Damn," Ernie muttered. "All the hors d'oeuvres will be gone."

He jammed the jeep in gear and the wheels swished through the wet streets.

For over four thousand years, Korea had been a separate country, at least by Western standards. What wasn't widely understood was that throughout that time, sometimes to a greater or a lesser extent, Korea had snuggled beneath the protective wing of the Chinese emperor. Although the Korean monarch ruled his kingdom without interference, Korean foreign policy always was conducted while looking over the royal shoulder for the approval or disapproval of the emperor sitting on the Dragon Throne of China. Even in official documents, Korea proclaimed itself a "little brother" of China. Their relationship was a filial one. The subordinate to the superior.

To give this relationship concrete form, the Korean king, every year, sent a convoy of dignitaries to the Dragon Throne in the Forbidden City in Beijing. The dignitaries presented tribute to the Chinese emperor consisting of thousands of
taels'
worth of magnificent goods.

During much of the Yi dynasty, before 1911, the Koreans were probably as independent as they'd ever been. But this was because of the growing power in the Far East of Japan and Russia. And the weakness of the Chinese Empire, which was being carved up by foreign powers and ravaged by the scourge of opium.

When the antique dealer had told us that Lady Ahn was from nobility that predated the Yi dynasty, he was speaking of traditions that were ancient indeed.

THE WOODEN STAIRS CREAKED AS HERMAN AND I WALKED UP the short flight of steps that led to the Beik Hua Yoguan, the Inn of the White Flower.

Immaculate varnished floors and railings led to a small foyer with a vase of white peonies and a display with a black-and-white photo of someone's ancestor in traditional dress. The odors of incense and ammonia wrestled in the dust-speckled air. We found the owner squatting on the vinyl floor, scrubbing nonexistent dirt with a
kullei,
a thick hand towel. She was a husky woman, with black hair tied back by a white bandanna. People spent their lives in places like this. Scrubbing floors, changing bedding, suffering obnoxious customers. This woman looked as if she had. Rising easily, she gazed calmly at Herman and me.