signed her paycheck. Plus she was a fanatic. As Keith had quoted, sometimes you just have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Carlson or the folks who hired her had obviously decided Whitehall was a breakable egg. The only way to get their money’s worth was to go for broke. To undo the damage done by this case they had to prove Whitehall was innocent. It was all or nothing. Any other outcome and Whitehall would be turned into the eternal poster child for why gays have no place in the military.
There was one tiny insurmountable problem with that, though. It didn’t look like he was the least bit innocent. And if we lost, Whitehall was facing the death sentence.
Apparently, from Carlson’s point of view this was a reconcilable technicality. Not from mine.
CHAPTER 7
The South Koreans made their call at ten o’clock that evening. They waived jurisdiction. Not pretrial confinement, only jurisdiction. Whitehall was to be transferred from the Yongsan Holding Facility to the Seoul High Security Prison at ten o’clock the next morning.
And when it came to the matter of punishment, if I guessed right, what the Koreans intended was to wait and see how the sentence came out. If Whitehall got death, they’d probably be shrewdly generous and allow us to yank the electric switch and fry him. If he got life, he’d spend the rest of his pitiful days and years in a South Korean prison.
Janson called to inform me of this. He didn’t call Katherine, or Keith, or any of the rest of the covey. Just me. There was a subtle message there – I just didn’t know what it was.
However, I immediately called Katherine to inform her of our extreme good fortune. A woman’s voice answered. I had no idea who she was, and I asked to speak with Katherine. She said “okay,” then I heard the two of them giggling. It sounded like that flirty kind of giggle you hear when two folks get interrupted in the midst of some heavy petting.
Katherine coldly acknowledged the news and hung up. No “Gee thanks, Sean, I can’t begin to tell you what a great job you did in the minister’s office.” Not even the most grudging acknowledgment that I’d saved her bacon – just “okay,” click. She was either as mad at me as I was at her, or she couldn’t wait to get back to her girlfriend.
I was getting undressed when there was a knock at the door. I expected to see the maid coming to turn down my sheets and place a couple of those little chocolate tasties by my bedside. It wasn’t a maid, though: not unless maids are late-middle-aged Caucasian males wearing trench coats who are in the habit of peeking searchingly down both sides of the hallway before they shoulder past you.
“Buzz Mercer,” he announced, sticking out a hand.
I didn’t feel any particular need to introduce myself, so I said, “Nice to meet you. You sure you’ve got the right room?”
“Oh yeah, Drummond,” he said, with a man-eating grin. “You and I gotta have a short talk.”
“Would you care for a seat?” I asked.
He went over and fell into the chair. He was a nondescript-looking type, with a squarish, unassuming face, a tight butch cut, clear-rimmed glasses, and what I guess you’d call a sardonic grin pasted on his lower face. Not his upper face, though. His eyes were too intense to be anything but somber.
He said, “I’m the station chief.”
“Great,” I remarked. What else do you say to a man who’s just identified himself as the head of the CIA for all of Korea?
“Have a seat,” he ordered, so I did.
“I thought about asking you to come to our facility, but finally decided this’d be better. You and I are probably going to have a few chats over the next few weeks. It would be best for all concerned if nobody knows about it.”
You remember when I warned you I’m a bit impulsive?
I put a steely expression on my face and snarled, “Look, buddy, get this straight right away. You picked me ’cause I’m the only Army guy on the defense team. Not to mention the only hetero. Good thinking, except I’m not going to expose a single damned thing about this case. Not to you… not to anybody.”
He seemed halfheartedly amused. “Settle down, Drummond. That’s not what this is about. I’ve discussed this with General Spears. He agrees that this is the right way to handle this.”
“Handle what?” I asked, blinking wildly a few times, since in a matter of a few brief seconds I’d already managed to make a complete horse’s ass out of myself. This wasn’t a novel experience by any means, but humiliation is one of those things that doesn’t go down more smoothly with practice.
“This is classified. Don’t discuss it with anybody. Not even the rest of your defense team… no… make that
“Sure.”
“Okay, here’s how it is. This case is attracting attention in the wrong quarters.”
“You mean in the South Korean government?”
“Right country, wrong prefix. There are folks in Pyongyang who get copies of the
I nodded right along. Given the rift our case was making in the alliance, of course North Korea was following it attentively. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but of course they were.
He bent toward me. “Do you have any idea how many agents North Korea has down here?”
“No.”
“I got news for you. We don’t, either. Nor do the South Koreans. It’s a lot, though. We know, for instance, that they left plenty of sleeper agents here in 1950, when MacArthur and his boys kicked their asses out of the south. And we know they’ve been recruiting more, and adding to them ever since. Some folks believe they might only have ten to twenty thousand agents. Others believe they have a few hundred thousand.”
“That’s a lot of agents,” I said, because sometimes it helps to restate the obvious, if for no other reason than to show you’re a conscientious listener.
“Yeah, it’s a lot.” He nodded, re-restating what I’d just restated, I guess to prove we were both conscientious listeners. “We’ve also noticed a step-up in North Korean infiltrations over the past two weeks. And we pick up the occasional radio intercept from North Korean cells here back to their controllers up north. That traffic’s picked up these past two weeks. Normally that’s a very grim sign that somebody’s planning something.”
“This is obviously not good,” I said.
“We don’t know yet. It’s pretty damned obvious that how this thing goes down might well decide the fate of the alliance. Maybe the South Koreans are just blustering about throwing us Meegooks off the peninsula… or maybe they’re not. But if I were a bigwig in North Korean intelligence, I’d sure as hell be sniffing around to see which way it goes. Quite possibly what they’re doing is increasing their reconnaissance, just in the event we get thrown off the peninsula and they decide to attack.”
“So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked, which was the response I was sure he expected.
“Maybe nothing. Then again, maybe a lot.”
“Have we been mentioned in some of this radio traffic?”
“There’ve been a few mentions, but we’re not certain what they mean. See, the North Koreans know we listen in, and they’re well aware of our sophistication at code-breaking, so they take precautions. They develop all kinds of ridiculous code names and circular puzzles to throw us off.”
“But you must’ve developed some kind of opinion, or theory, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Not really,” he said. “But ever since that September 11 thing, we always play it safe better than sorry. Maybe your defense team’s completely in the clear, maybe not. But if we come up with anything, we’d like to use you as our conduit. Of course, we’d like you to treat the information with the sensitivity it deserves. We sure as hell can’t approach Carlson and her freak show directly.”
