station. The desk sergeant also didn’t know who Merritt was, but he dutifully listed the news in his log. That’s why we weren’t notified until seven o’clock the next morning.
Now the bad news. Keith was in the ICU, unconscious, and the doctors were wringing their hands and mumbling fretful things. His skull was fractured, one kidney had been punctured by a broken rib, one leg and one arm were shattered into multiple pieces, and the doctors were still trying to trace the source, or sources, of a flood of internal bleeding.
I learned this via a very hysterical call from Katherine. I rushed straight to her room. The door was ajar so I walked in. Allie and Katherine were huddled in a corner, hugging each other and sobbing pitifully. Maria sat at the desk, her face looking like it had twenty-pound weights dragging at the corners of her eyes and lips. I idly wondered if Allie was switch-hitting on Maria. The room had the air of a funeral parlor.
“He might die,” Katherine said, looking up at me.
“Uh-huh.” I gravely nodded.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stayed quiet. I knew what was going through their heads. None of us had any real idea what had happened, but the timing and coincidence were too damned close. You couldn’t escape the thought.
Finally, Katherine said, “Are these bastards that barbaric?”
I said, “Maybe.”
I hadn’t confirmed anything, but I’d equivocated enough to make them realize they’d been underestimating the risks.
I said, “Have your pictures been on Korean television?”
“We did a few interviews before you arrived,” Katherine sulkily responded.
“All of you? Did you all get your faces in front of the camera? Maybe in the local papers, too?”
“That’s right,” said Allie, releasing Katherine and walking over to stand beside Maria. “We were on TV and in the newspapers. So what?”
“Then don’t draw any hasty conclusions.”
“What that’s supposed to mean?”Allie asked in her typically defiant way.
“I mean it could have been somebody working for the South Korean government. They’ve got a couple of supersecret agencies responsible for internal security that have reputations for being pretty thuggish. Or it could’ve been someone else.”
Katherine spun around; her face was bitterly scrunched up. “Who else could it possibly have been? Don’t bullshit me, Drummond. It’s obvious who did it.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “By parading yourselves in front of the media so much, you painted bull’s-eyes on your chests.”
“Bull’s-eyes for who?”Allie asked.
“One of those anti-American student groups you always see rioting on TV. Or some group of South Korean soldiers who’re pissed off at having one of their brothers in arms murdered and raped. The one thing we’re not short of over here’s enemies.”
“Drummond, you are so full of shit,” Katherine said, with a positively barbaric stare.
“No, I ain’t. Now, I’m going to give you a little lecture. Maybe my timing sucks, but you better listen to me, for once.”
Katherine slunk over from her corner and I finally had all their undivided attention.
“Korea,” I explained, “is technically a nation at war. I’m not saying South Koreans are perfect, but they’re pretty damned good people. There’s an army of some three million men just twenty-five miles from where we’re sitting. There’s North Korean infiltrators and agents running all over this country. Only a few years ago, a North Korean sub got grounded on a sandbar off the eastern shore and out spilled ten commandos. Remember that incident? It was all over the news the entire week it took the South Koreans to chase them down and kill them. The only reason they were detected was because the sub commander screwed up and got his boat beached. Any of you want to hazard a guess at how many other boats and subs have landed agents and commandos that
Maria had a disbelieving grimace, or maybe it was just her natural facial set, but when her lips came apart I cut her off with a quick slice of my arm through the air.
“Don’t talk. Listen,” I rudely ordered. “These people have been living like this since 1953. You got any idea what that’s like? Every year, there’s ambushes and shootouts on that border. This hotel room we’re sitting in is within artillery range of North Korea’s guns. In a split second this whole country could get pulverized. That has an effect on your psyche. This ain’t like America. Stop thinking it is.”
Katherine said, “Nothing justifies this!”
“I’m not justifying any damned thing,” I told her with a stern glare. “Stop being so damned argumentative. Listen. And for God’s sakes, don’t go holding another of your idiotic press conferences and start blaming the South Korean government. Maybe they did it; maybe not. Hell, it might’ve just been some band of pickpockets, and he caught ’em, so they tossed him.”
“You know better!” she said.
“I don’t
I got up and stood over Katherine. She was looking at me like she’d pay anything for a ticket to my funeral.
“This isn’t the United States, Carlson. Remember what that big goon warned you yesterday? Learn to respect the rules around here. It goes better for everybody.”
She started to open her lips and I held up my hand. “Look, I’ll see what I can find out. Just don’t hold another meeting with your press buddies while I’m gone. And skip those sessions with NBC and ABC I heard you planning yesterday. They won’t do any good for our client, not to mention our health.”
I left them in the room to stew. I can’t say I was friends with Keith, since I barely knew him, but on general principles alone I was just as shocked and furious about what happened to him as they were, and I sure as hell hoped he wouldn’t die. The problem was Katherine and her buddies had no idea what they were messing with here. I’d tried to warn them. They hadn’t listened. Thomas Whitehall, guilty or innocent, was a symbol for all kinds of extremist groups with fiery views, and when you’re standing next to a lightning rod, don’t act surprised when a stray thunderbolt lands in your lap.
When I got back to my room, I called Spears’s office and told that colonel with the world’s snappiest salute that I needed to meet with Buzz Mercer. He said okay and hung up.
Twelve minutes later, the phone rang. It was a woman’s voice. She told me to hurry downstairs and wait by the entrance of the hotel. So I did.
When I walked outside, a gray sedan was already idling under the entrance and a Korean woman stepped out. She peered around till she spotted me, then waved for me to come over.
“You’re Drummond, right?” she asked when I got within earshot.
“That’s me,” I admitted.
“Please get in.”
I climbed in, then briefly studied the cut of her jib. She was slender, conservatively dressed, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, and was somewhat attractive, but in a buttoned-down, stern, wintry sort of way. Her hair was cut short and was clearly unstyled. She wore gold wire-rimmed glasses that made her look like an academic who’d somehow gotten lost outside the ivory tower.
“So what’s your name?” I asked, wondering who the hell she was.
“I’m Kim Song Moon. My friends call me Carol.”
“Carol? How does Kim Song Moon get you to Carol?”
“It doesn’t,” she admitted. “I’m American. My real name is Carol Kim. Here in Korea, I use Kim Song Moon.”
“No kidding? And you’re with that same company that employs Buzz Mercer?”
“Buzz is my boss.”
“Let me guess. You were raised in California, went to Stanford, or maybe Berkeley, got recruited there, and
