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pushed back her Stetson. “You don’t look like much,” she said.
    “Kinda scrawny,” another added, “but you’ll have to do.”
    They broke into raucous laughter.
    After making us swear that we wouldn’t leave before the show ended, Marnie Orville led her Country Western All Stars out on stage. One of them strapped on a guitar, and two more took up positions behind an electric bass and a steel guitar, respectively. Finally, a woman with straight long blonde hair sat behind the drum set. Marnie, the tallest and most voluptuous of the five women, fiddled with the keyboard, glanced at her fellow musicians, and nodded to the Korean man standing next to hemp ropes on pulleys. As he pulled back the curtains, spotlights were switched on out front and Marnie stomped her boot. Electric amps hummed and the band clanged to life, belting out some country tune that I’d never heard before.
    The G.I.s in the audience leaped to their feet, roaring their approval. Ernie covered his ears. He stepped toward me and shouted in my ear.
    “Why’d you promise all that to her?” he asked.
    “I was being coerced. I had to get them out on stage,” I shouted back.
    “Now we’re her slaves.”
    I shrugged. “Weren’t we anyway?”
    He crossed his arms and frowned at the five women gyrating before us. “Hayseed heaven,” he said.
    “You stay here,” I told Ernie, “keep an eye on the girls and their equipment.”
    “What do you think I’m doing?” Ernie asked.
    I worked my way backstage and then out behind the Officers’ Club, where the van and the equipment truck were parked. Four Korean men—two drivers and two men to load and unload the equipment—squatted between the vehicles, smoking and murmuring among themselves. A flood lamp illuminated the scene. As I approached, they stopped smoking and stared at me above glowing embers.
    “ Anyonghaseiyo ,” I said. Are you at peace?
    The men nodded, bemused by my use of the Korean language. As I continued using their native tongue, their eyes grew wider and then they were smiling. In a few minutes, we were old pals. The eldest driver and leader of the group was named Mr. Shin. He offered me a cigarette, which I politely refused, and then he started telling me about their adventures of the last few days, driving five white women from their hotel in Seoul to the nether regions near the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea.
    I listened, not asking any questions, taking it in.
    Inside the Camp Stanley Officers’ Club, guitars continued to clang, women shouted, men roared.
    A half hour later, the music subsided and Ernie and I joined the band in their dressing room. I pulled out my notebook, sat on a stool, and started to ask them about the complaints they had alerted us to. Before we could finish, their break was up and they returned to the stage. G.I.s were already clapping their hands and stomping their feet again. When the curtain opened, the audience, on cue, went mad.
    Ernie stayed backstage while I returned to Mr. Shin and the loading crew. After the final set, Ernie emerged from the back of the Camp Stanley Officers’ Club. He pulled me aside.
    “They want me to take them to a nightclub,” he told me.
    “Who?”
    “Marnie and the other girls.”
    “We’re calling her Marnie now? Not Miss Orville?”
    Ernie ignored the remark.
    “What about the time?” I asked. We had only an hour and a half until the midnight curfew, equipment to inventory and load, and a long ride back to Seoul.
    “They’re counting on me,” Ernie said, “to work something out.”
    “We could get in trouble behind this,” I said.
    Ernie grinned. “Trouble I can handle. Especially when it’s packed in tight blue jeans.”

3
    B y the next morning, Staff Sergeant Riley had already collected much of the information I’d asked him to collect concerning the Blue Train rapist. He shoved the printouts across his desk. I sipped on my coffee and started going over