Mortal Allies

“That’s it,” he sheepishly replied.

I politely thanked him for his time, then stood up and got ready to leave. He sat calmly, and I’ll give him credit for this – he didn’t appear the least bit smug or elated. He had every right to be, but he didn’t show it. It’s a damned good feeling to be sitting on top of an airtight case.

It’s awfully damned depressing when you’re on the other side.

CHAPTER 16

The red message light was blinking incessantly when I returned to my room. I punched in the code and Edwin Gilderstone’s voice angrily shrieked to call him right away.

It was after midnight in New York, but Gilderstone sounded way too alert and poised to have been sleeping. I said, “Hi, Ed, it’s Drummond.”

He instantly screamed, “You lying bastard!”

“That’s me,” I admitted, though I was sure my parents would’ve sternly objected to my conceding that second point.

“You promised this was just between us.”

“And so it is, Ed. I haven’t said a word to anyone, not even my co-counsels. What’s the problem?”

“The problem? What’s the damned problem? I’m being followed.”

“Followed by who?”

“I don’t know. When people are trailing you, they don’t walk up and say,‘Hi, I’m John Smith from CID and I’ll be following you the next few days,’ do they?”

“So you think it’s CID?” I asked.

“I just told you I don’t know who they are. Aren’t you listening?”

“I’m listening, Ed. I’m just trying to sort through this. What makes you think you’re being followed?”

There was a brief pause and I could hear him draw in a deep breath, like he was trying to compose himself. “This morning, I went to the Post Exchange to buy toiletries, and as I left the academic hall a gray sedan pulled in behind me. It followed me the whole way to the PX. Later, when I went out for lunch, the same gray sedan followed me again.”

“Ed, I don’t mean to be argumentative, but couldn’t it just be a coincidence? West Point’s not New York City. It’s a small community, right? It really wouldn’t be odd to have the same car going to the same place you’re going to twice in the same day.”

“Drummond,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I warned you before, don’t condescend to me. Of course I considered that. Except the same gray sedan is parked halfway down the block right now. It’s one o’clock in the morning. I see two heads silhouetted every time another car passes.”

I supposed he had a point. “So you’re being followed. What makes you think I’ve got something to do with it?”

“Come on, Drummond. Yesterday you called to talk about Whitehall.”

“Look, I told you I wouldn’t say anything. I haven’t. I have no idea why you’re being followed. Maybe you brought it on yourself. Maybe it’s some guy you had an affair with and he’s still pining for you.”

That brought on a nasty chuckle. “Fuck off, Drummond.”

“Okay,” I conceded. “But I haven’t uttered a peep to anybody.”

We chatted a moment longer, him still accusing, and me maintaining my innocence. We finally hung up on each other.

Of course I had something to do with his being followed. My mind turned to that snarling son of a bitch with the colonel’s leaves named Menkle, from the registrar’s office. He knew I’d spoken with Gilderstone. Maybe he sicced somebody on him.

But what was the point of trailing Gilderstone? And if the followers were pros, they would never have been sloppy enough to get spotted, especially by a rank amateur. Unless they were either bungling amateurs themselves, or they were pros who meant to be seen. Assuming they were pros, why would they do that? To harass him, of course. But why harass some old gay who was on the verge of retirement anyway? Spite? Or were they trying to muzzle him?

I rolled that one around the noggin for a while and had a sudden impulse. I pulled my pocketknife from my pocket and pried open the ear and mouthpiece on my telephone. It was the only other possibility I could think of.

I was in such a hurry, I trashed the hotel’s phone so badly I was going to have to add it to my room bill.

I wasn’t worried about that, though. What I was really worried about was the little tiny black thing, hardly bigger than a ladybug, that was stuck inside the earpiece.

During my time with the outfit, I’d had instruction on electronic listening and tracking devices. I wasn’t an expert by any means, and the technology had changed radically the past seven or eight years, what with miniaturization and digitization and whatnot, but I still recognized a listening device when I saw one.

I sat and fingered it and felt angry and befuddled. That son of a bitch Mercer and his whiz-girl Carol Kim.

I went to the window and peeked out at the parking lot. It was filled with cars, but I knew which one to look for, and sure as hell, there was a gray Aries four-door sedan parked near the back of the lot.

I guess I looked pretty pissed off, because the guy wearing sunglasses in the passenger’s seat next to Carol Kim spotted me coming, tapped her hurriedly on the shoulder, and she quickly started the engine. She backed out so hard she rammed into the bumper of the car behind her. There was a hard crunch and red and yellow glass cascaded onto the tarmac, but she didn’t pause or hesitate. She spun the wheel hard to the right and peeled away. All I had a chance to do was kick the side of the car as it sped by.

It was a pretty dumb thing to do. Not only was it infantile, but it hurt like hell and sent me flying back on my ass. I scraped up my hands pretty good, not to mention my butt, and thank God I wore Army jump boots or I probably would’ve broken at least a few toes. I limped and cursed the whole way back to the hotel, back up in the elevator, and into my room.

I went through everything. I took the pictures off the walls, unscrewed the lightbulbs, checked under the bed, searched my clothes in the closet. I found two more bugs, but there could’ve been dozens more.

When had they done it? Had they known from my reservation which room I’d get and planted them before I arrived? Or had they broken in afterward? Maybe one of the maids did the dirty work.

So how much damage was done? Had I said or listened to anything that would harm my client? Nothing overly alarming popped out, but if you put everything together, you could draw some fairly strong conclusions about where I was trying to go with the defense. But then that was different from where Katherine and her crew were trying to go, so maybe it wasn’t all that damaging.

On the other hand, maybe I wasn’t the only member of the defense team being bugged. And if I were the prosecutor and could get inside the head of the defense team, I’d have a field day. A guy with Eddie Golden’s murderous dexterity would do even better.

I wanted to call Katherine and warn her, but the damn phone was trashed on the side table. I raced up to the HOMOS building, walked briskly through the main office, and stuck my head inside Katherine’s office.

For once she wasn’t chatting on the phone, because there were three civilians hunched over her desk. They were studying a big map. They all looked perfectly normal, but the mood in the room seemed conspirational, so I assumed they were from the big contingent of protesters pouring into Seoul.

I politely said, “Excuse me, Katherine, we need to have a word. In private, if you please.”

She shot me an exasperated look that quickly changed to a resigned look, then said to her friends, “Could you all please excuse us a moment?”

To which I replied, “We need to have this talk outside.”

No doubt she anticipated I wanted to either apologize for my earlier transgressions or launch another blistering attack on her. She followed me into the parking lot and over to the big oak tree where she’d so recently