Читать книгу Pot Shards: Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House, and the Two Koreas - Donald P. Gregg - Страница 3

His hair was glossy, his handshake firm and dry, his glance hard and inquisitive. The few seconds in which I had his full attention left me with an indelible impression. That was John F. Kennedy at the White House, 1962, talking about counterinsurgency and the Vietnam War.

The CIA officer’s hair and eyelashes were burned away, his skin was charred, but his eyes were open and his blistered lips moved. “This is what I’ve been looking for, a cool place, me with my clothes off, and beautiful ladies all around.” A white phosphorous grenade had fatally burned the CIA officer. The scene was a U.S. Army hospital, Vietnam, 1971.

“I know how things work around here,” said Ambassador Philip Habib. “They are going to kill him, but they may wait until they hear something from me. If you can tell me who has him and where he is by tomorrow morning, we may be able to keep him alive.” The ambassador was describing the kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung. South Korea, August 1973.

Fragments of memory have persisted through the vagaries of time, like shards of pottery broken long ago. They are reminders of things from the all-but-forgotten past. When I was U.S. ambassador to South Korea, I would often stop my armored car at construction sites in Seoul to prowl around freshly broken ground, looking for ancient pot shards newly exposed. I have boxes of shards thus collected that can never be reconnected to what once was whole. I also have a vivid collection of memories that I will try to string together to create the narrative of this book.

I remember waking up one night long ago, a small boy filled with the fear of dying. I cried out and my parents heard me and came into my room. I was still snuffling, but they comforted me enough so that I asked through my tears if I would live to see the year 2000.

They assured me that I would, and I asked how old I would be when that date came. They told me that I would be 72 years old. That seemed so reassuringly far off in the future that I was able to fall back into sleep.

It is now well more than fourteen years into the twenty-first century, and I realize that if I am ever to “connect the dots” of my memory, I had better get started now.

So I shall begin.