Free The Iron Sickle by Martin Limon

and all the resources of the Korean law enforcement establishment at our disposal, the investigation would go wherever it went, regardless of whetherColonel Brace wanted it to go there or not. The whole face-saving cover story of the man with the iron sickle being a North Korean agent might be blown sky high.
    Colonel Brace shifted in his seat. Here it comes, I thought, as he began to speak in a deeper, more authoritative voice. “Now that one of our MPs has been killed, we’re pulling all our agents off other cases. We’re going to find this guy, and we’re going to find him immediately. Is that understood?”
    Ernie and I nodded.
    Blood had rushed up from beneath Colonel Brace’s tight collar and reddened his ears. “You might be working with the Korean National Police, temporarily, but you are first and foremost soldiers in the Eighth United States Army. Is that understood?”
    Ernie and I nodded again.
    “You’ll turn in progress reports to Staff Sergeant Riley by close of business each and every day. Is
that
understood?”
    We nodded again.
    “All right, now get out there, and get me some results.”
    I would’ve been happy to get out of there, but Ernie knew the Provost Marshal was over a barrel. The decision to assign us temporarily to the Korean National Police had been made above his pay grade and now was our chance.
    “How about our expense account?” Ernie said.
    “What about it?” Colonel Brace asked.
    When working an investigation, we were allowed to turn in receipts to reclaim expenses of up to fifty dollars a month.
    “How about upping it to a hundred a month?” Ernie asked. “Each.”
    Colonel Brace frowned.
    “We’ll be in downtown Seoul,” Ernie continued, “working with Mr. Kill. Things are expensive down there.”
    “You’ll be wherever the killer is,” Colonel Brace said.
    “Yes, sir,” Ernie replied, “but if we let the KNPs pay for everything, Eighth Army loses face.”
    Colonel Brace continued frowning and shuffling through paperwork until finally he said, “Okay, approved. Tell Riley.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    We saluted and turned toward the door. Before we reached it, Colonel Brace said, “One more thing. Don’t think that because you’ve received sponsorship from someone high up in the Korean government that you can go around me. All reports come through me and me alone. No contact with anyone outside the chain of command.”
    “Yes, sir,” we said in unison. As quickly as we could, we escaped from his office.
    Out in the hallway, Ernie asked, “What in the hell did you do to us, Sueño? Pissing off the Provost Marshal like that?”
    “I didn’t do anything.”
    “This Mr. Kill thinks highly of you. That’s why he asked for you.”
    “He asked for you, too.”
    “Only because he knows you’re no good without me.”
    I barked a laugh.
    “You know it’s true,” Ernie said.
    No one else could watch my back like Ernie. And I watched his. It was the way we worked.
    In the admin office, Ernie told Staff Sergeant Riley about the increase in our monthly expense account.
    “Getting over again, eh Bascom?”
    “We’ll be hobnobbing with the elite,” Ernie said. “Got to keep up appearances.”
    “You? The elite? This I’ve got to see.”
    “Just keep the money flowing, Riley. Me and Sueño, we’ll take care of the inter-governmental diplomacy.”
    “You better watch your ass, Bascom,” Riley said, “or one of those big dogs will bite it off.”
    The KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul was a seven-story monolith with a horseshoe-shaped driveway. Ernie and I pulled up in his jeep. Two young cops, their blue uniforms sharply pressed, blew their whistles and snapped a white-gloved salute. They would’ve opened the doors for us but the jeep didn’t have any doors, just an open-sided canvas roof. One of the cops promised to watch over the jeep, but Ernie waited as he parked it a few yards away from the entrance. Satisfied, we pushed through the big glass double