Chapter Thirty-Six.
Yo Byung-tae arrived in the little town of Yonch'on without any more trouble. He soon found the bakery where he was to deliver the sacks of grain. As the bakers' boys were unloading the cart, he slipped away into the town to find the place that his uncle had described, where he could hand over the little velvet pouch that he had concealed under his clothing for the entire journey. As he walked through the streets, he started to become uneasy at the lack of people out, and about. Everything looked all right, but the streets were empty. He walked on, nervously glancing about; but there was nothing to see.
He found the place that his uncle had described, at the northern end of the main thoroughfare. The door to the mud-brick house was ajar. Tentatively, Yo Byung-tae peered around the door. The place looked deserted. This was very strange. Where was everyone? He stepped inside and looked around. Nothing... no one. As he turned to leave, a series of shots rang out from somewhere at the rear of the building.
Yo Byung-tae froze. A shadow fell across the floor from outside the door, and a large North Korean soldier looked in and saw him. Yo Byung-tae tried to run... but his legs wouldn't work. His fingers scrabbled for the pass that the Corporal at the check-point had authorised. He held it out to the soldier in the mustard-brown uniform, but it was thrust aside. Steely fingers grabbed him and dragged him outside... round to the back yard of the building. Three more soldiers were standing there. A soldier with wide, red-edged shoulder boards with a central red stripe and three silver stars was shouting at an old man kneeling in front of him. There were four bodies lying in the dust by the high back wall of the yard.
Yo Byung-tae heard the words "anti-party behaviour" and "collaborating in cross-border assaults." The old man seemed to be pleading. The man with the three silver stars put his shiny boot on the old man's shoulder and pushed him to the ground. He then drew his pistol, aimed it almost nonchalantly, and shot the man in the head. As the body lay twitching with a fountain of blood spurting into the air, the man with the silver stars turned and stared at Yo Byung-tae.
He cocked his pistol and strode across the yard. Stopping in front of the trembling boy, he glanced at the soldier holding him in his trap-like grip.
'Another baby dissident?'
The soldier nodded.
Sangwi... Captain Kim Rae-won, the man with the three silver stars, raised his pistol, and, forcing Yo Byung-tae's head down, so that he was staring at the ground; shot the boy in the back of the head with the same indifference that a man would use to swat an annoying fly. He jammed the pistol back into his belt holster; shoved the lifeless body with his toe, and a little velvet pouch fell out of the boy's blood-splattered smock. Sangwi Kim Rae-won bent down and picked it up. He peered inside and a smile appeared on his brutal face. Tucking the little pouch into his tunic pocket, he snapped an order and the four soldiers followed him out of the yard as the soil by the back wall slowly began turning red.
As they clambered aboard the ex-Soviet Lend-Lease Dodge 4x4, Carryall Command car, the old clock on the abandoned Mission building struck five. It had been a good day hunting down "dissidents" who had been denounced as being sympathetic to the South. The Great Leader had ordered that all stumbling blocks to his proposed "Great Vision to resist U.S. Aggression and save Korea" were nullified; and The Great Vision was gathering momentum. As the command car drove away from Yonch'on, a torn news-sheet fluttered in the dust raised by its passing. The date on the news-sheet was Wednesday, 17th May, 1950.
In Seoul, at the Hotel Bando; the reports coming in from the border were not conclusive to a feeling of confidence and wellbeing. Reports of troop build-ups north of the Thirty-eighth parallel were being received on almost an hourly basis. North Korean aircraft sightings close to the border were becoming more frequent... the Seoul Bureau reported, yet again, that the North’s invasion of South Korea was likely to occur very soon; and still. Washington did nothing. The bureau was painstakingly following its remit of responsibility to monitor and report troop movements in the North, but it seemed that no one was listening.
General Willoughby, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence in Washington was not particularly well-liked within the Washington intelligence community, and so, they chose to ignore his warnings. Compounding this; they had an inherent distrust of Oriental agents and sources, and held the belief that the South Koreans were prone to raising the alarm unnecessarily. Consequently, the increasing flood of reports led to faulty evaluation and distribution of these reports and prevented them from reaching the right people; seriously detracting from the significance of the information they contained.
The withdrawal of the last American forces from Korea, as well as Kim Il Sung's conviction that the U.S. would not intervene, had convinced the North Koreans to attempt to unify the country by force. The Soviets, led by Stalin; and the Chinese, led by Mao Tse- Tung, concurred with both Kim's judgement about the United States and his plans to unify the country by force. Time was running out for Washington.
There had been a significant redeployment of South Korean troops northward toward the Thirty-eighth parallel in the early months of 1950, after the southern guerrillas appeared to have been crushed. The northern army were being redeployed southward, but at least one third of the strength of RoKA was not aware of the impending invasion and was not mobilized to fight. It was a disaster waiting to happen.
The signals coming across Charlotte's desk on the fifth floor of the Bando were becoming more ominous by the day. If any were from Max, there was no way of knowing. He had not been issued with an identity code. Even more ominous was the knowledge that Syngman Rhee, first president of South Korea; and widely regarded as an anti-Communist and a right-wing strongman, was militantly for the unification of Korea, and agitating for not only a direct American defence of the RoK, but vehemently advocating an attack on the North. Rhee had angered Foggy Bottom in Washington by pretending to be the official "Envoy Extraordinary" of a "Korean Provisional Government" that never actually ever governed any Koreans; and as a consequence, was kept at arm's length.
The latest intelligence from the South Korean observers on the border, without need for analysis, provided clear descriptions of the KPA's preparations for invasion. Civilians were being systematically removed from the border areas, all transport capabilities were being restricted for military use only; and ominously, reports were coming in of movements of infantry and armour towards the border area.
Then, in the afternoon of Wednesday, June 7th, came the report of an event that settled the matter conclusively, as far as Charlotte and her analysts were concerned. The day previously, a signal recalling all East Asian senior Soviet diplomats back to Moscow for "consultations" was intercepted. The inference was plain. The North was poised to strike at the South.
Charlotte immediately ordered a re-analysis of the preceding three months' intelligence to establish if there was anything that the Seoul Bureau had overlooked.
What they eventually found was revealing when analysed from a different perspective. Hidden in obscure reference material used to collate the primary subject matter of the intercepted signals from the North were ambiguous intimations that Pyongyang had made a decision to escalate the civil conflict to the level of conventional warfare many months before June 1950, having tired of the indecisive guerrilla struggle in the south, and perhaps, hoping to seize on a southern provocation comparable to the many cross-border skirmishes of the previous year; thereby, fully discrediting and unseating the Rhee régime.
Charlotte immediately took the analysis to Andrew Thompson. He studied it for some minutes; his face set in an impassive mask, then dropped the document onto his desk and looked up at her.
'How the hell did you miss this, Mckenna?'
She stared at him.
'I didn't... and 'nor did my linguists. Your analysts just didn't read between the lines. They've only been playing at spooks for weeks now. You should have seen this coming in your position as Head of Bureau. You know they've been demoralised for weeks over the fact that Washington's been paying virtually no attention to the reports we've been sending. So don't even think about trying to take a dump on my people.'
Andrew Thompson stared at her, quite taken aback. She stood there, hands on hips; pink-cheeked, her bright blue eyes flashing. The first thought to come into his head was that she was magnificent. Max Segal was a lucky bastard. Then Head of Station took over.
'Who the hell d'you think you are talking to Mckenna? Coming in here, claws out, hissing and spitting like some goddamned Rocky Mountain wildcat!'
He saw her eyes change. Now, they suddenly became cold... cold as ice. She studied him for longer than he found comfortable, then she spoke. Her voice was quiet; and the tone made him suddenly shiver.
If you'd listened to us and reported what we were uncovering instead of following the goddamned "article of faith" within the Far Eastern Command that MacArthur keeps repeating; "That no Asian troops can stand up to American military might without being annihilated," then perhaps Washington would have listened. You've hit the skids on this one, Andrew, so don't you dare go blaming my people.'
Now it was Thompson who turned pink.
'That's enough, Mckenna. You've just shot your bolt! You're done here. Go and pack. You're on the next flight out of here to Tokyo. I'm transferring you the Document Research Section.'
As she stalked out of his office and slammed the door, Andrew Thompson sat down behind his desk and exhaled loudly. Damn! She was a feisty one!... But it had worked. It was a hard act to pull off; he really hated having to behave as though she'd made him really pissed with her.
At the briefing prior to Max going north; Thompson had promised him that he would get Charlotte safely out of Korea if thing looked as though they were about to turn to shit. Tokyo was, by far the safest place for her, and the big CIA base set up under cover of the US Army Far Eastern Command in Japan, titled the "Document Research Section"... (DRS) was about the safest possible place in Tokyo. Her linguistic skills would be much appreciated there. He opened her file and wrote across the transfer page:
December 12.1950.
Transfer of this Officer Approved as Principal Asset for DRS.
Recommend Promotion to Staff Officer with Rank of Major.
The Bureau car dropped Charlotte at the Kimpo Airfield operations block at 2pm on Tuesday afternoon. She only had light luggage, and had left Max's belongings in their suite at the Bando for when he returned from the North. It appeared that they were in the process of shutting the airfield down. It was the same sort of controlled chaos that she had seen at Föhrenweg back in Berlin when they were closing up the Berlin Operations Base.
After a few cursory procedures, a young airman carrying her bags escorted her out to what appeared to be a civilian-registered, twin-engined Beechcraft Expeditor sitting on the hard standing with its engines ticking over. He placed her bags into the fuselage and held out his hand to help her up the low steps built into the interior face of the port side entrance door. She smiled, and entered the fuselage as he closed to door behind her. The cabin was set out as an eight seater... four seats either side slightly staggered left to right. A familiar voice came from the front of the aircraft...
'Come on up here, Honey...
And Josie Pullen's head appeared round the divider bulkhead between the cockpit and the cabin.
Charlotte gasped.
'Josie! What in the hell are you doing here?'
Josie Pullen hadn't changed at all. She was even still wearing her old flying jacket embellished with the WASPs blue "Fifinella" badge. She grinned.
'You mean other than playing hotel detective for Uncle Sam? I move about the whole EAC area in this bird doing all manner of things. This Beech is a CAT hack belonging to what they think is the Chinese "Civil Air Transport" airline... Its first pilots were veterans of Claire Chennault's World War II Flying Tigers; but the agency bought it outright a couple of months ago, and since then, we have supported covert U.S. operations all over South-east Asia; mainly to friendlies under the Mutual Defense Assistance Act.' The missions are all volunteer work, but we get ten dollars per hour plus bonus; so I suppose you could say that we are Uncle Sam's mercenaries.'
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Charlotte raised her eyebrows.
'But isn't that risky?'
Josie laughed,
'Riskier than flying a fort in ten/ten overcast on the snowball run? No this is a milk-run. This old lady has uprated Pratt and Whitney's and a long-range tank... plus one or two other little tricks.'
Charlotte nodded.
'But I thought you girls were black-balled from flying in theatre.'
Josie grinned again.
'Washington thinks we are! But my pop taught me to fly on a Beech 18... one of the earlier versions of this old lady. We used to do the South American runs between us... so a few Korean throttle jockeys are no real problem; and besides which; I am a certificated instructor on these Beeches for our other pilots.'
Charlotte gave a wry grin.
'Well. I'm being sent to Tokyo for chewing out my boss in Seoul.
Josie smiled.
That's what you think, Honey. You're being moved out of harm's way on the direct order of Washington. That's why I'm here to extract you. They need you in Japan.
Charlotte stared at her.
But the huge row I had with Andrew Thompson...
Josie grinned.
'Yeah; damned fine actor isn't he? They gave him a clean sheet to decide how to go about moving you. They want you out, right now, so that the North will never be able to get to you, and through you, find out what your partner Max is doing up there in the north.
She smiled.
'And that's why they sent your own private aerial taxi cab. So; it's time to move. D'you want to sit up front or be a lady of leisure back there?'
Charlotte smiled again.
'I'll stay up here if it's OK with you.'
Josie nodded.
'Fine. Now buckle up and let's go.'
She released the brakes, pushed the twin throttle levers forward, and taxied out to the runway. Turning into the wind, she glanced at Charlotte.
'OK. Ready?'
Charlotte nodded. Josie pushed the throttles fully forward and began her take-off, aiming for another strip of concrete, seven- hundred-miles to the South-east at the Atsugi Air Force Base on Honshu, the largest island of Japan.
Josie Pullen brought the Beechcraft in over the Sea of Japan at eight-thousand-feet, just north of the city of Kanazawa; crossing the coast above the Kahoku-gata Lagoon. As she made a course correction onto her final heading down towards the Kofu valley, she glanced at Charlotte.
'Not too long now. You're quiet, Honey, and maybe a little sad?'
Charlotte nodded. She had just experienced the first faint stirrings of the infant she carried. It was no more than a flutter; certainly nothing that could be called a first kick. She had no idea when she would see Max again, and whether the infant would ever see its father. But, she mustn't think like that. She smiled sadly.
'Yes, I'm worried about leaving Max behind.'
Josie smiled supportively.
'I'm sure he will be allright and will join you here in Japan before long, when his mission is completed.'
Charlotte nodded.
'Yes, I'm sure you're right.'
Josie pointed ahead.
There! The Sagami River. Were only about two miles out from Atsugi Air Force Base. You'll like Japan.'
Charlotte smiled.
'I'm sure I will. I just wish he was here with me.'
04.00 Hrs, Korean Standard Time. Sunday, June 25th, 1950.
In the blustery, rainy darkness; North Korean artillery and mortars opened fire on the Republic of Korea Army positions south of the thirty-eighth Parallel; the line then serving as the border between the two countries.
Russian-built T34 tanks surged forward along a one hundred and fifty mile front on the Onjin Peninsula and breached the Thirty-eighth parallel. The South Korean 12th Regiment defending the border panicked, and were routed as a ninety thousand strong Mustard-brown uniformed horde of seven assault infantry divisions swept into South Korean territory. The RoKA 7th Division collapsed at Cholwon and opened the path for the North Korean tanks racing toward Seoul, following the ancient invasion route down the Uijongbu Corridor.
Overhead, Russian-made YAK-9P fighters, attack bombers and YAK trainer aircraft began strafing the City of Seoul.
09.00 Hrs. Sunday, June 25th, 1950.
John Muccio, the US ambassador to South Korea cabled the State Dept...
"An all-out offensive against the Republic of Korea has begun."
In spite of all the warnings received from the CIA Bureau, Seoul, it had now taken the U.S. and South Korean governments five full hours to realise what was occurring at the Thirty-eighth parallel.
10.00 Hrs. Sunday, June 25th, 1950.
In Washington, General. Bradley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, heard about the invasion from a Press reporter. The general informed his chiefs of staff...
"I am of the opinion that South Korea will not fall in the present attack unless the Russians actively participate in the operation. Therefore, if Korea falls, we may want to recommend even stronger action in the case of Formosa in order to offset the effect of the fall of South Korea on the rest of East Asia."
11.00 Hrs. Sunday, June 25th, 1950.
North Korea announced a formal declaration of war claiming that RoK forces on the Ongjin Peninsula had attacked North Korea in the Haeju area and their declaration of war was in response to this attack. This claim was untrue.
Monday, June 26, 1950.
U.S. Ambassador Muccio ordered the evacuation of all American civilians. Some seven hundred Americans were loaded onto a Norwegian fertilizer ship at Inchon and transported to safety.
Tuesday, June 27, 1950.
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul was evacuated and the personnel and their families were flown out from Kimpo Airfield in spite of the presence of North Korean aircraft in the vicinity.
A general panic gripped the Seoul citizens and tens of thousands of refugees clogged all roads leading south. RoKA engineers blew the Han River Bridge at approximately 02:15 a.m. trapping the bulk of three RoKA divisions fighting on the outskirts, plus RoKA Headquarters and KMAG personnel still in Seoul. Somewhere between five and eight hundred people, both civilian & military, were killed in the explosion.
09.15 Hrs. Friday, June 30, 1950.
Colonel "Konstantin Sharansky" sat behind the desk in his office in the main Administration building of No. 2 KPA Officers School, Pyongyang, and studied the report that his adjutant had just passed to him. It detailed the progression of the North Korean forces towards Seoul, and predicted the imminent fall of the city.
He pondered the information for a few minutes, and then picked up the handset of the telephone on his desk.
'Lieutenant Jang; have my car prepared. I am going to drive down to the Kaesŏng area command to see how things are going.'
He replaced the handset and glanced at his watch. About ten minutes to get the extraction code off. He picked up the handset again and dialled a number.
'Wireless room? This is Colonel Sharansky. I'm on my way down to send a priority signal to Moscow. Have everyone without proper authority removed.'
He replaced the handset once again; checked his Makarov PM pistol, pulled on his visor cap, and left his office.
The Wireless room was two floors down. The young soldier standing guard at the door heard his footsteps approaching and snapped to attention. The Colonel returned a salute and entered the room. As he had instructed; the room was empty except for the Wireless operator, who stood and invited the Colonel to sit in his chair in front of the short and long-wave transmitters. The Colonel removed his green and red-banded cap, and put on the set of headphones. He nodded to the operator, who obediently stepped back far enough not to be able to observe the wavelength. It was, after all, secret.
Max... for it was Max; spun the tuning dial to the specified wave-length that he had been given. A few minute adjustments and the static cleared. The operator was pointedly ignoring what the Colonel was doing. Max rested his thumb and forefinger on the sturdy Russian-made, bakelite telegraph key and sent the specified code-word... "Bomzj"... "Homeless."
He repeated this three times as agreed, then spun the tuning dial again to obscure the frequency, and switched off the transmitter. He rose from the chair and nodded to the operator, who inclined his head in a subtle bow. Max unhurriedly climbed the two staircases and emerged into the courtyard. His GAZ saloon was waiting for him with his adjutant standing by the driver's door.
Max nodded and climbed into the driving seat. Closing the car door, he glanced at Jang.
'I should be back in three, or four days. In the meantime, you are authorised to action any important issues that cross my desk.'
Jang drew himself up to attention.
'It will be done, Comrade Colonel. I am honoured.'
Max nodded; engaged gear and drove out of the courtyard, with Jang beaming proudly as the car disappeared.
Max drove away from the Officers School compound and headed out through the city to Highway One... to travel down to Kaesŏng as he had intimated... just in case anyone was tailing him to confirm his movements. If there was a tail; they would only follow him to the city limits. However; once out on the open highway, he would drive down as far as the little town of Hŭkkyo; then take the minor road down to the river at the little settlement of Inam on the opposite bank a little way downstream from the wharf at Sep'o. This was the pre-arranged extraction location. It was about twenty-five-kilometres down to Hŭkkyo, and the Army security forces were out searching for those peasant soldiers who preferred farming to fighting, so he needed to stay sharp. He smiled grimly as he accelerated the GAZ saloon up to ninety Kmh.
Two kilometres south of Toksang, Max was relaxing. There had been no tail, and the junction at Hŭkkyo was only a few kilometres further on. Within an hour he would be on his way down the Taedong River. Would Charlotte now be safely in Japan? Probably. Andrew Thompson would have made sure that she would have been on the first available flight out as soon as the reports of the North Korean invasion came in.
Two-thousand-metres above and to the rear of the speeding saloon, So-wi... Second Lieutenant, Choi Seung-won spotted a movement on the road below. He was the last, surviving pilot of his RoKAF flight. His patrol had been jumped by a swarm of YAK 9s and he had barely avoided being shot down. All his comrades were gone... but they had all only been given time for one check-ride in their tired, ex-tow-ships airplanes at the American 36th Fighter Bomber Squadron at Itazuke Air Base in Japan, and were then sent straight back into the thick of it in Korea.
The car below could only be the enemy. With luck, it would be a fucking Russian. He pushed his F51D Mustang fighter over into a shallow dive and shoved the throttle open. The car was still speeding down the highway towards the town in the distance.
Choi flicked on his Mustang's K14 gyro computing gun sight. The target grew ever larger in the sighting ring reflected on the glass reflector sighting panel. He estimated that the car was doing about ninety, and adjusted the gun sight reticle ring. When the target was in the ring, the guns were aimed to where the target would be when the bullets reached the targeted range. The bastard would drive straight into the hail of bullets. Slamming the throttle through the emergency gate he sent the mustang into a screaming ground-attack dive and pressed the firing button of his six, fifty-caliber machine-guns.
Sangwi... Captain Kim Rae-won came down through the Chosan valley with his squad of killers mopping up behind the main thrust of the advance. Any wounded stragglers were forced to their feet with blows from rifle butts and directed back to the front. Those too weak or injured to respond were executed with a bullet in the head. Those who were discovered hiding were subjected to beatings, ideological ridicule, and Kim's trademark execution. The victim would be forced to kneel and plead; Kim would put his boot on the victim's shoulder, push him to the ground, and shoot him in the back of the head.
The squad crossed the Imjin River at the ford to the north of the little Choksong settlement then headed south-west. There were so many corpses strewn round this area. The North Koreans had run into a desperate last stand by the South Korean defenders, who fought until they were overwhelmed by the North Korean armour. No-one was still alive on, or by the road; much to the disappointment of Kim. He ordered his squad to move on.... then, he heard a thin groan from the direction of the smelly little Nullori stream that ran parallel to the road. With a mean smile, Kim strode down through the blood-stained grass; stepping over bodies and body parts. Then he saw his prey... an almost dead, young South Korean Army private, whose uniform was soaked in blood. It looked as though he had almost been cut in half by a burst of machine gun fire.
Kim grinned. One less Imperialist lackey. Hardly worth a bullet... but it was satisfying seeing their brain matter spraying around. He bent down to turn the young soldier over... he enjoyed seeing the expression on their faces as they realised what their fate was to be. Lifting the young soldier's shoulder with the toe of his boot, he heard three sharp, consecutive metallic clicks. He stared down. Three grenade safety-pin rings were staked into the ground under the soldier's body. As Kim had raised the soldier, the pins had been pulled. The little bastard had booby-trapped himself! He scarcely had time to form this thought, and certainly not enough time to begin to move before the three grenades exploded at his feet. Two were standard fragmentation types, but the third was a white phosphorus grenade.
Kim simply disappeared in a dense cloud of choking white smoke. His screams were terrible. The fragmentation grenades ripped his chest and belly open to the splattering, white-hot phosphorus particles. Shrieking, he leapt into the stream, beating frantically at himself with his blistering hands as the burning phosphorus blobs melted the flesh all the way down to the bone.
Where his melting flesh became submerged; the phosphorus spluttered and extinguished... but it was on his face and in his hair; sputtering and flaring as he raised his head in an involuntary instinct to avoid drowning. The squad corporal rushed across to the bank of the stream appalled at the sight of the convulsing, shrieking, smoking "thing" thrashing wildly in the turbid waters in front of him. He dragged out his pistol and put three shots into what had once been Sangwi Kim Rae-won's head, turned, and was violently sick.
As the squad moved on, the smouldering corpse continued to burn where the water of the stream didn't cover it. Had they remained at the stream; the more acutely observant of the squad might have seen a red object slip out of the charring remains of the Captain's uniform and sink to the bottom of the stream.
Kim had carried the Garnet he had taken from the young boy that he had executed in little town of Yonch'on, as a talisman; following the widely-held superstition in the East that such a gem bestowed immunity to injury upon its wearer and was also believed to attract the energy and influence of the Sun... a superstition that had now been singularly disproven.
The gemstone that some called "The Red Horseman" lay on the bed of an insignificant little stream with a tiny pinprick of light flickering briefly in the depths of its blood-red heart as it nestled beneath the disintegrating carcass of its latest victim.
Here, it would remain... waiting, as the peninsula they had once called "The Land of the Morning Calm" descended into the grinding savagery of an ugly war that would last for three terrible, bloody years and cost four million military and civilian casualties.
Here, it would remain... waiting for the next opportunity to unleash its malignant influence upon Humanity.