Roger Crossland - Red Ice

The next morning, Sato showed the talents that had earned him a Ginza letterhead. Immediately, with a flurry of accusations, he put the police on the defensive. Furthermore, it developed that he had considerable political clout with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His coup de grâce was suggesting deportation as a solution. That jewel of an alternative could save face for everyone.

“To where? Who would accept them? They’re bound to be the focus of an international incident wherever they go,” Horikawa stammered.

I waved Sato over for a whispering session. Then he turned to the two officials. “I believe the Republic of Korea would react favorably to a visit from a small anticommunist veterans group.”

The chief inspector looked bored, and Horikawa exasperated. Again I was led to my cell.

Twenty-four hours later, Sato—using the contacts I had suggested—secured our informal deportation from Japan. Horikawa told us in very strong terms that we would never again be granted visas in any sequence that would allow us to assemble in Japan as a group. When pressed, he did admit that as many as four of us could enter Japan during a given period without sanction. And of course, Matsuma maintained his Japanese citizenship. They couldn’t touch him.

It had been a close call, too close. Our schedule was thrown completely out of kilter. But Korea had been our next stop. What really disturbed me was the uneasy realization that someone—Ackert, perhaps—was determined to stop us and had upped the ante. Each passing day increased our vulnerability.

The walls of the police station seemed suffocatingly close… but never as close as the walls of a Soviet prison would be.

The KCIA put us in isolation immediately upon our arrival in Korea. They quartered us in a hermetically sealed farm village on the eastern coast. For everyone but myself, there would be no further communication with the outside world until we returned from Siberia.

The village complex consisted of several tiled-roof, one-story structures surrounded by rice fields that gradually acquired, with distance, the energy to bunch up into a rugged mountain chain. Our new home had none of the resort charm of our Hokkaido quarters; it was clearly an often-used staging area whose buildings were nothing more than glorified barracks. Our common opinion might have been prejudiced by our lack of freedom. Korean soldiers carrying submachine guns waved at us whenever our maneuvers brought us near the fence that surrounded the village fields—but they carried submachine guns just the same. The mature, rational view was that they were protecting us from ourselves, but there was little comfort in it. Even the occasional evening movie—black and white, in Korean, with subtitles—heightened the dismal sense of isolation. At least our turncoat could not make contact with his parent agency.

Keiko delighted in being the only female among the eleven visitors. The troops adopted her wholeheartedly. She was easier on the eyes than any of them were, and she made the whole setup seem more routine.

Keiko was mesmerized by the Koreans. “Korean people eat with chopsticks,” she observed with great gravity one day.

“Well, what did you expect? Doesn’t everyone in the Orient?”

“I was always told they ate with their hands,” she responded confidentially.

The Japanese and the Koreans were Asia’s eternal Hat-fields and McCoys. Neither nation gave the other much credit. No Korean women ever entered the complex, and despite her growing respect for the Koreans, she was pleased.

Late the second evening, after a long day’s workout with the kayaks, two Mercedes trucks arrived with the equipment Heyer had requisitioned. I ordered everyone out into the crisp night air to unload the ordnance and equipment.

Chief Puckins led the working party, which sorted and stored the gear. “Now here we have,” Wickersham started to lecture in grandiose style, “one AK-47, with Chinese markings and a spike bayonet, sometimes called a Type-56 assault rifle. Designed by Kalashnikov, it is gas operated, and carries a thirty-round magazine….”

They broke open another box.

“And here is a Type 67 light machine gun, also Chicom. Well, well… gas operated, and belt fed with a range of eight hundred meters…. Now here’s a delight. A Dragunov SVD sniper rifle with both Chinese and Soviet markings and a convenient little four-power sight, integral range finder, and infrared night-sight accessories.

“My, my, isn’t this interesting, boys and girls. White camouflage over-uniforms and fur hats with big red stars on the front. Considered very chic in Shanghai.”

The troops’ eyes were opening wider and wider. The back of the truck was cloudy from the vapor of their breaths.

“B-b-botha’s beard, what’s this all about?” stammered Kruger, who could restrain himself no more. “Are we doing a rem-m-make of Mao’s Long March?”

“Close, very close,” I replied.

Puckins stepped forward. He threw his arms to the heavens in mock despair.

Keiko gradually assumed the role of cruise director. She participated in training swims. She demanded better food from the KCIA support section and finagled mulberry-paper watercolors out of the guards to brighten our quarters. Irrepressible, she unearthed obscure holidays for us to celebrate at the evening meal. There were special “guest” chefs. Chamonix and Alvarez presided with great success. Kruger and Lutjens’s contributions were utter disasters. She even cajoled Gurung into cooking up a Nepalese meal.

We normally broke from training an hour or two before the evening meal. The small makeshift galley had the only tables and chairs and the best lighting, so everyone gravitated there.

In back, Alvarez was cooking something with beans. To one side, Dravit was poring over schedules and equipment lists. At two joined tables, Lutjens was loudly losing at cards with Puckins. The German kampfschwimmer carried on as if he were at Monte Carlo and the croupier had miscounted his chips. Redoubtable, Chamonix sat in a corner with a book, alone as usual.

“M-m-mama-san, could you stitch up this…?” Kruger started, pulling at his wispy mustache.

“Mama-san? Who you call mama-san?” she responded, her eyes narrowing. She gave a defiant pistonlike flick to her hips. “Mama-san to wa nan da, kisama! I don’t remember ever wiping your nose for you, you with the Okinawa stone-dog face. But maybe I flatten it for you, if you call me “mama-san” one mo’ time. I look old enough to you to be a mama-san?”

“No. No, mum. Actually you l-l-look like a first-class bird, too young to be a commanding officer’s girl…,” the Afrikaner backpedaled.

“ Ara ma! So now you think I look like teenie-bopper, ne ? Fresh from the cradle, no wisdom, no character.” She whipped her French braid from one shoulder to the other.

“Hey, Kruger, you got the chart for…” Wickersham bellowed as he stormed through the door and into the line of fire.

“You, Petty Officer Wick’sham. This walrus face call me ‘mama-san.’”

“Uh… hum… er… uh-oh. Kruger, you can’t address Shirahama-san that way,” he offered, shifting his heavy shoulders uncomfortably.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t resist the compulsion to be evenhanded. “Then again, Shirahama-san, we’re a pretty small group and he can’t very well go around addressing you as… as…”

His words had run ahead of his thoughts. He fished futilely for a way to complete the sentence.

“Miss Kosong Perimeter, ja ?” Lutjens proposed, gleefully adding fuel to the fire.

“Miss Kosong Perimeter,” Wickersham echoed with as pleasing a smile as he could muster with his bridge out. Wickersham could be devastatingly charming. It wasn’t going to help him today.