This particular tale turned up in a search through the Korea Files. We had been looking for something about that strange Cyprus trip to insert in the manuscript for the book about Congressional Travel. Instead, we found ourselves seated at one of the battered stools at the Hamilton Hotel’s street front bar in Seoul, Republic of Korea. There is a book in those files, or at least a digitized version of one that had originally been typed on an old Smith-Corona machine on another continent. It was written in 1981, which is a long time ago in a place far away. It is also still tinged with an element of danger, or at least the potential for it. A heavily-armed former opponent was only 50-clicks north of where we sat, and there were interests in constant motion.

I had become the beneficiary of a bonus tour in Asia after two years on Midway (CV-41) with Fighter Squadron One Five One. The accidents of the Navy assignment process meant that most first-tour orders were allocated at three years. Midway was considered a “hardship” tour, and thus only two years in length. To make up the difference, I found myself with a set of one-year orders to US Forces Korea where I became something known as an “Indications & Warnings Officer.”

We were sitting at the Hamilton Hotel’s street-front bar up the hill from the Yongsan Garrison in Seoul’s Itae-wan shopping district. This was late afternoon, a time I discovered was the traditional break between Day and Eve shifts for those down in the Bunker. I was fresh and sober, heading in for the transitional shift between Days and the long slog into evening. It seemed logical to do part of the turn-over outside the Headquarters compound, though timing and activity levels on the Border had their own unique rhythms.

Terry needed some help. He had briefly slumped head-first on the bar. His shift had worn him down and a couple chilled beverages brought inadvertent sleep.

I needed to be moving along since I was in uniform with places to go and duty to do. I arose from the stool and decided to make a stop in the head to off-load some of the beer. I was standing next to Jim when he leaned over. “One thing about that cross-border operation I was telling you about….”

“Say Jim, if there was a place in all of Korea less secure that this one, I don’t know where it is.” I waved at the false ceiling above the line of urinals.

“Quite right. Good show.” We wandered back to the bar. Captain Terry had roused himself and was staring blankly into space. He was clearly overwhelmed at this juncture. I was nearly late for work, or really early for the next day. It was a situation in constant motion so I bade him farewell and plodded back out onto the street.

That week did not feature memorable watch shifts. It passed as they all do, interminable minutes slowly accumulating to eight hours and then forty or fifty; afternoon fading into darkness and brightening later. Hearing the National Anthems of the Republic play on the television mounted in the upper corner of the low concrete ceiling. Our Homeland was far away at 0200 sharp when the television went dead for the night. No flaps, no shooting incidents, no unidentified personnel in the DMZ, no infiltrations, tunnel activity or naval excursions by the NK Forward Guard-ships were noted.

Quiet as a tomb. The hours dragged, as Staff Sergeant McCarron swept the steep concrete stairs that led up from the old Japanese bunker where we sat in front of the maps behind their clear plexiglass sliding panels. I smoked at the desk, gazing across the gray carpet at the wall-length illuminated charts of North Korea.

The watch always ends, eventually, and this was no exception. I turned over responsibility to my relief in record time (“Nothing Significant to Report- NSTR. All clear in the Fourth-Third-First-and-Second-Corps-areas. See you, I’m outta here!”) and slouched back over to the Hooch to sleep away the morning. The skies were clear and the light breeze refreshing. It was a pity to have to waste daylight asleep.

Some hours later I awoke with the characteristic feeling: disorientation, thirsty, and out of sorts. The body is designed to work in daylight and then sleep at night. The body never really gets used to shift work, or at least mine doesn’t. Some people seem to thrive on it. We have senior NCOs who had been doing this for entire careers. For me, though, the revenge of the body is cumulative and subtle. You cannot work around the clock once a week for long and not end up with a sort of constant fatigue, a short temper, and the continuing hallucination that you are living in a military dictatorship surrounded by foreigners jabbering in an unintelligible language.

Or maybe I was living in Seoul.

Four cups of coffee and a look at four pages of news in the Stars and Stripes brought me to a truce with this Monday. It was actually marvelous weather, and after administering myself a mental kick in the ass, I managed to slump out of the hooch and into the brilliant Korean afternoon. I blinked like a mole and put on my sunglasses. I needed to run a couple day-time errands before reporting to work, cash and tobacco related, and to prolong the inevitable, I walked that long way to work. First was a detour past the Embassy Club on Post to get folding money. Then up the back hill past the General Officer’s quarters, and down into Korea again. I decided to cut through the alleys of lower Itae-won.

This was before the subway was complete, and with construction underway you cannot go from “Point A” to “Point B.” You have to take a line of bearing on a known structure to ensure accurate passage. In this case, the twin spires of the Mosque were the most visible. That became a known factor to plug into the feet, wandering down narrow alleys, around blind corners, into dead ends. Once in a while you could encounter authentic Korean families hunched over cook-fires and kimchi-pots. I found a worn set of steep stone steps, climbed them, and found myself directly across the street from the Hamilton’s Bar. The rich golden sun was slanting across the carts selling cuttlefish and sea slugs and vendors selling roast chestnuts.

I found Army Major Jim ensconced at the Adam Bar off the lobby, studying a tall bottle of Crown Lager (“a headache in every bottle!”) He was not on shift work and deemed a couple hours in the afternoon at the Adam’s battered bar a worthy place to conduct business. We plunged immediately into recap of the previous evening’s discussions; the Fall of Empires, weird towns in forgotten countries (“Phu Bai is O.K.!”) and unregenerate armies of lost wars.

“Well if you were up in Chang Mai at that time, you must have stopped to watch the public hangings.” I said. “I heard that was always a big drawing card on the weekends.”

“Oh yes, absolutely. When we could get out, mind you. We were operating against what was left of the original 10th Kuomantang Army that controlled the Golden Triangle. Mostly on the Burma side, if you tell.”

“Pity about Burma. Always wanted to go there. Rangoon was one of the great posts.”

“Oh my, yes. But not now. Just depressing. They have completely eradicated the Buddhist ethic, you know. Like old Marxist China. Just the husk is left and that is falling down, too.”

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to know a Special Forces type named Lt. Col. M. ______ would you? He was active up there.”

“No, not there. I knew him somewhere else.”

“Leopoldville?”

“Well, er, the Congo was a strange thing, wasn’t it. But I say, I was thinking about what you said yesterday about our friends … that large organization….”

“Yeah.” The conversation was getting cryptic by now. I knew that he didn’t want to talk about the Congo, about who we had running around Katanga Province to ensure that the revolutionaries did not get the rich copper deposits away from Anaconda and the other companies. But suddenly the KCIA was involved.

I wondered what Jim was actually doing in the ROK, and more, why he wanted to talk to me. The wheels within wheels began to rotate around. He claimed to be working for the Army Veterinary Corps, which controls all food distribution for the U.S. Armed Forces. He claimed to be a Brit but wore an American uniform. He had a long story about Korean assignments, so I couldn’t tell if he was a Counter-intel spook. Veterinary had access to all the Services, because they inspected the food, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force.

So, if you were eating food, as many of us did, Jim had access to your Command. I suddenly hoped that he was working for us.

“Well, frankly, old chap, I believe that my young friend is one of them.”

“Huh?” I said cleverly.

“Well, you see, she had a bit of a problem with English last night, remember?” That had been a moment when I was on the opposite end of how I felt now- “getting off shift” was considerably different than “going in” for the transition hours from day-to-night. Eves were useful, since we were off-shift and free before the nightly general military curfew.

“Yeah. Poor thing, she didn’t seem to be enjoying the little gab-fest that much.”

“On the contrary. I imagine she is off filing her report right now. You weren’t around at 0400 this morning when her English became quite fluent. Remarkable characteristic.”

Well, that was a point to ponder. But I’m just a working stiff here and may have wandered into something operational. And it appears to be an operation conducted to large extent by drunks. Makes you thankful that ignorance is such bliss. I could see why they (Who?) would be keeping an eye on Jim, but now I had got myself written up on their dossiers as well.

“So, she dashed off this morning. No charge for services rendered. Another anomaly. She knows quite well that I am only staying for three days. I have been many places and rarely seen such enthusiasm strictly pour l’amour. Except for the only fully-rated female helicopter pilot in the Vietnamese Air Force…”

That story went on for some minutes and somehow we got over to Gen. Kriangask Chamanand, who had just been shit-canned as the Thai Prime Minister. I had the opportunity to see him when I was in Bangkok the last time, so we analyzed the situation in my other favorite Asian Nation for a while. I asked him about one of the characters I had met there, a Hungarian expatriate and restaurateur named Nick Yarow. He had really put on the dog for the Fleet when we rolled in. He was very happy to see us.

“Nick? Oh sure. Sort of General Collector for the Bloc powers. Nice enough chap. Ran a nice restaurant on the side.”

“That explains a lot of things. The last time I saw him was from the back of his green Cadillac when he gave me a lift down to Pattaya Beach from Bangkok.”

“Oh yes. I should think he was glad to see the Fleet. Pretty lean times for an agent after the American pull-out, don’t you know.” Jim looked up. The KCIA had arrived with a swish of silk skirt. She sat down and Jim ordered reinforcements. He gave me a broad wink. “Hello, my dear. Do you still love me?” The KCIA laughed and then gravely shook hands with me. The bottles began to pile up amid a series of half-references to assorted spookery. At length we discussed a change of venue. I suggested a few quick drinks in the Sky Room of the Shilla hotel, renowned as Seoul’s finest and most expensive hotel.

The KCIA was horrified. Whether it was because the bugging equipment was not adequate at that location, or because the local controller would not be able to keep track of her. “Shi-la OH-tel? she said. “I no hear of same.”

“Patent nonsense, Jim. The Shilla is famous. It sounds like just the place for us.”

“Right ho! Jolly good idea. Off we go!”

“No, no” said the KCIA. “Can no go Shilla.”

“It’s alright my dear. We promise to get you back to an approved location long before curfew. We will never tell anyone that you sold out and can no longer be trusted.”

“Jim, why you say that?” She looked worried.

I threw some money on the bar and we stumbled out; one young Spook, one active Mata Hari, and the last flower of the British Empire singing “Waltzing Matilda.” Mata looked embarrassed. There was a fortuitous cab waiting in front. We sped through the evening streets past the brooding bulk of Namsan Mountain where the Tower poked up at the bright stars. Within minutes we were piling out at the Shilla. The KCIA now looked resigned to the affair and her English improved.

I suppose it is possible that she was just a hooker, and Jim was just a drunk, and I was just crazy.

That’s where the adventure began to go off the rails. In fact, it got kind of spooky. Part of that happened back over in Japan, where Navy interests took precedence over the Army ones. And that meant the Veterinary Corps connection- the one that watched where all the food was going- was a useful tool for keeping things neatly balanced in situational awareness.

See, everything requires balance. The North Koreans have known that for a long time. They just launched a new ICBM to demonstrate resolve or capability. Or something.

The Chinese are flying around Taiwan this morning. Some pundits say they are preparing for a confrontation next year, the one in which we have a national election. There could be some coincidental activity. Thinking back, I am just pleased that the Hamilton Bar is no longer in walking distance, and I will not be spending the night under concrete with Spooks of unknown provenance.

Except for Sergeant First Class Volsko, of course. But he didn’t hang out at the Hamilton when his shift was done. That is another story…

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