The Shadow of Arms by Hwang Sok-Yong

you’ll be letting it grow long anyway. You’re to play the role of a civilian technician employed by the US Army. If you’re ever smelled out as a soldier, all your work is fucked.”
    Yong Kyu took off his jungle fatigues, tattered and soaked with sweat and mud.
    â€œPut your helmet and rifle in the locker over there.”
    Opening the locker Yong Kyu saw a number of rifles covered in a thick coat of dust. “Is the duty always unarmed?” he asked.
    â€œBuy yourself a .38 revolver.”
    â€œBuy a gun?”
    Blue Jacket Kang snickered at Yong Kyu’s puzzlement. “Think it’s better to pack a dumbbell-sized .45, do you? There’s nothing you can’t get at the market. You can get one for twenty bucks. I suppose I could hand mine down to you, but I’m taking it home with me. It’ll be my tough luck if it’s found and confiscated at entry.”
    For the first time in six months, Yong Kyu looked at himself in a full-length mirror. He saw a stranger. The cheeks were sunken, the skin tanned dark brown, and there was not an ounce of tenderness in the eyes. So skinny and dark he looked like a man from South Asia. Too tall for a Vietnamese, too dark for a Korean. Looked more like a Filipino, he thought. As he shaved, Blue Jacket Kang kept on babbling.
    â€œEveryone here thinks only about himself. Watch out and trust nobody. After all, it’s the lowest rank that takes the blame.”
    Yong Kyu turned off the electric shaver. “What did you say?”
    â€œIf you’re replacing me, you’ll probably be a market inspector.”
    â€œMarket?”
    â€œRight. The Da Nang marketplace is the biggest black market in central Vietnam. Market intelligence is more important than information on tactical movements. When you get sick and tired of writing up reports, that’s when you start feeling disgusted. Headquarters will assign you to different fountainheads of black market supply so you can familiarize yourself with the distribution channels of the economy. Once you get acclimated, you’ll be living deep among the merchants and dealers. Don’t ever forget the advice of your predecessor. I mean, don’t waste your time opening up your textbook of ethics. We’re in a dump here. You’re up to your neck in filth. If you swim in it, you’ll survive. But if you struggle, you’ll get sucked down deeper and deeper and you’ll drown.”
    â€œI’ll do as I’m ordered.”
    Blue Jacket Kang stuck his head into the bathroom and shouted, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do as told. Our duty is limited duty. Our position here is different than that of the American army or the Vietnamese army. An order on a grand scale moves step by step, and if you write in your report that it wasn’t like that, what you saw was like this, what you heard was like that and the result of your investigation was such and such, and so forth, you’ll be the one getting into a jam. I’ll give you an example. You know the commander of the Vietnamese First Army, General Liam, don’t you?”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œThree stars. He may become a cabinet member, you never know. He has a villa out on the North Cape, overlooking the Monkey Mountain. It serves as the safest warehouse for black market dealings. Now, do you know what the American bastards do?”
    Blue Jacket Kang tried to drive his point home. “You see, we’ll just serve our time, go back home, and forget all about this. There’s no business greater than a war. Those American bastards, they have all kinds of teams formed solely for economic operations, concentrating only on black market dealings. Those few crates of TVs and refrigerators we think of as loot as we carry them off are drops of water in the ocean. Never dig deep, never assume you’re in the know.”
    Yong Kyu listened absent-mindedly. Noticing the vacant look