Marines reached the shore. Zimmerman motioned for two of the Marines following him to go around him and into the houses nearest to the wharf.
Moments later, they came out of the houses, one of them making a thumbs-up gesture.
“Okay, you can stand up,” McCoy said, slung his Garand over his back, and started down the ladder.
When he was on the wharf, and had turned toward the houses, he saw Major Kim, armed with a carbine, trotting down it, almost at the shore. One of his national policemen was right behind him, and as McCoy trotted toward shore, another ran past him.
Kim introduced the old man to McCoy as the village chief, and McCoy as the officer commanding. The old man didn’t seem at all surprised that McCoy spoke Korean.
The old man told them that no North Koreans had been to Tokchok-kundo since Kim had last been there, and that he had seen no indication that the small garrisons on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do had been reinforced with either men or heavier weapons.
“Okay, Ernie,” McCoy ordered, “let’s get the stuff off the boat.”
The old man turned suddenly and walked, or trotted, as fast as he could on his stilted shoes toward the houses, and went inside first one of them, and then two others. Immediately, people, men, women, and children, came out of the house and started down the wharf toward the Wind of Good Fortune, obviously to help carry whatever the Wind of Good Fortune held ashore. Then he came back to McCoy, Kim, and Zimmerman.
“Do you speak English?” McCoy asked, surprised.
The old man looked at him without comprehension.
“You were speaking Korean,” Major Kim said, with a smile.
McCoy saw Jeanette kneeling on the wharf, taking pictures of the Koreans.
I didn’t tell her she could come ashore, just that she could stand up. But I should have known what she would do.
“First priority, Ernie, is to get the SCR-300 on the air.”
Major Kim asked the old man if the generator was running, and where it was.
The generator was running, or would be, if there was fuel. And he pointed to a small stone, thatch-roofed building. McCoy saw that there was a small electrical network coming out of it, with one wire leading to several of the houses and another leading out to the wharf.
McCoy walked to the building and went inside, with Kim following him. There was a small, diesel-powered generator. McCoy saw that it had been made in Germany. And there was room to set up the SCR-300, and he said so.
“I’ll have them bring it here,” Kim said.
“And then I think we should see if the mayor can see anything on the aerial photos we may have missed,” McCoy said. “And see about finding someplace my people can stay. I don’t like the idea of them being at the water’s edge—too easy to see if somebody comes calling.”
“There’s several houses up the hill,” Kim said.
“Let’s have a look at those. We can have the mayor look at the photos there.”
The houses on the hill had two advantages. They were within range of the Marines’ weapons should the North Koreans decide to have a look at Tokchok-kundo, but they were far enough away so that Marines wearing Korean clothing could probably pass for Koreans.
And one disadvantage. They had been placed where they were to facilitate the drying of fish on racks fastened to their thatched roofs.
What the hell, after a day, they’ll probably not even notice the smell.
The houses were made of stone, basically round structures, with small rooms with straight walls leading off them. In the center structure were platforms apparently used as beds against the outer wall. There was a place for a fire in the middle, apparently used both for cooking and to heat the floors and the platforms in winter. They were at once simple and sophisticated.
McCoy had been in similar huts on the mainland during the winter, and had never been able to figure out how the heating system worked.
A bare lightbulb—one of three strung over the platforms—glowed red for a moment and then shone brightly, signaling that the generator was now up and running. McCoy laid out the aerial photographs on the platform, and told the old man he would be grateful if he would look at them.
Surprising McCoy not at all, the war correspondent of the Chicago Tribune came into the house as the old man was looking at the aerial photographs.