CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Wednesday, 1:15 A.M., the DMZ

Gregory Donald was met at the cargo bay of the TWA plane by a representative of the airline and by the Deputy Chief of Mission, both of whom saw to the customs paperwork and loading of the coffin onto the 727. Only when the plane was airborne, and Donald had gently touched his lips to the tip of a finger and pressed it to the sky, did he turn and board the Bell Iroquois.

The helicopter made the trip from the airstrip in Seoul to the DMZ in just over fifteen minutes. Donald was met at the landing field by a jeep, which escorted him to the headquarters of General M. J. Schneider.

Donald was looking forward to the reunion. In his eventful life, Donald had met a few people who were arguably insane, but Schneider was the only one who wore four stars. A Depression baby who was literally left on the doorstep of the Adventurer's Club in Manhattan, Schneider had always fancied that his mother was returning to the scene of the crime and his father was a renowned hunter or explorer. He certainly had a build straight out of H. Rider Haggard: six-foot-three, lantern jaw, broad shoulders, and Mr. Olympia waist. He was adopted by a couple who lived and worked in the garment district, and enlisted when he was eighteen, just in time to fight in Korea. He was one of the first advisers into Vietnam, one of the last American soldiers to leave, and returned to Korea in 1976 when his daughter Cindy was killed in a skiing accident. At sixty-five, he still had what Donald once described as that "last Texican at the Alamo look": ready, willing, and able to go down fighting.

Schneider was a fitting counterpart to the North's General "Hair-trigger" Hong-koo, and worked surprisingly well with ROK's General Sam, with whom he co-commanded the Joint U.S./South Korean Forces here. Whereas Schneider was a man of flavorful language who believed in throwing everything he had at a problem, including tactical nuclear weapons, Sam was a cool, reserved fifty-two-year-old who favored dialogue and sabotage to head-to-head action. This being South Korea, Sam had to sign off on any military action; but the Sinophobic Schneider scared the North Koreans, a role Donald had always felt he cherished and played to the hilt.

It was ironic, Donald thought as he entered the General's headquarters, a small wooden structure consisting of three offices and a bedroom, set on the south side of the compound. The two of them-- Schneider and Gregory-- couldn't be more unalike, yet they'd always seemed to "fit" together better than matched socks. Maybe it was because they were contemporaries who had come up through hard times, through back-to-back-to-back wars, or maybe Schneider was right when he'd called it the Laurel and Hardy syndrome: the diplomats made the fine messes, then the army had to go in and clean them up.

The General was on the phone when Donald arrived, and waved him in. After brushing off his dusty seat, Donald sat on a white leather sofa along one wall. Schneider was a stickler for clean.