Mortal Allies

him, but necessity is the mother of moral corruption.

“Did, uh, did he say who the note was from?” he stammered.

“Uh, no,” I improvised. “And it was written in Hangul. Whitehall can’t read Korean.”

The minister exchanged more words in Korean with his wife, and she nodded a few times, but except for a mild crinkling around her eyes and mouth, I couldn’t tell how she was reacting.

They stood up. “Please follow me,” the minister said.

We walked back inside with the bodyguard staying tightly behind me. He was as well-trained as a Doberman.

We crossed through the living room and ended up in a hall where there were three or four doorways. The minister and his wife walked slowly and laboriously. This was clearly a journey they didn’t want to make. It smelled slightly musty, as if the corridor hadn’t been used lately.

They opened the second door on the left and walked in ahead of me. The instant I crossed the threshold I felt as though I’d entered a sauna of depression. The room was much more like an American boy’s room than a Korean’s. It was completely out of character with the Asian atmosphere of the rest of the home. Instead of a traditional Korean sleeping mat, there was a double bed made of pine. Instead of scrolls or soaring birds, there were posters of rock stars and sports stars, mostly Western ones. The room was orderly to the point of sparseness. The inhabitant had been a meticulously neat person. That detail, at least, didn’t match any American boy’s room I’d ever seen.

Mrs. Lee was staring at the bed, her face melting, the sharpness retreating. Her shoulders sagged. The minister reached over and squeezed her arm, not a common sight in Korea, where men normally show no public affection toward their wives. Toward their mistresses perhaps; never their wives.

A box was on the desk. It was taped and tagged, and had not been opened. It contained the personal possessions that had been returned, a fact I easily surmised since Minister Lee stared at it a long, difficult moment before he pointed his finger. “Please, you go through it.”

I broke the seal and pried open the lid. Inside was some money, all in Korean currency, a wallet, and some keys. There was also a rosary, a silver cross on a chain, a stack of letters wrapped with a rubber band, and two Army medals.

I flipped through the letters. They were written in Korean and all had the same sticklike symbols for a return address – from No’s parents, I guessed. I didn’t open the envelopes, just looked to see if there were any free papers stuck between them. I riffled through the wallet and found more cash. There were charge cards and photographs of Minister Lee and his wife and another of a strikingly beautiful girl. Camouflage, I figured, just like the picture cadet Whitehall kept on his desk.

Minister Lee was watching me closely, and I could swear he was holding his breath. His wife’s eyes were on the empty bed. I could hear her sniffle occasionally.

I stared intently at the key ring. There were six keys. Three looked like car keys. The others were made of brass and were about the same size and make as the key to Whitehall’s apartment I’d already collected from the Taejom apartment management company. I pivoted my torso to block their view while I reached a hand into my pocket and withdrew the key I had obtained. The bodyguard watched my every move like a hawk. The minister looked past my shoulder into space.

I handed the packet of letters to the minister. “Could you please look through these? I assume they’re from you, but I can’t read Hangul. Are there any here from anybody else?”

He took the letters and stripped off the rubber band. He began looking through to make sure all the return addresses were his own. While he did so, I turned my back and carefully lifted the key ring out of the box. I began pressing the real key against the three brass ones on the ring. The last one seemed a perfect match. I stared down at it. Every edge, every cut, every indentation was the same.

I heard the minister say, “They are from my wife and me. Have you found anything else?”

“Uh, no sir,” I said, dropping the keys and turning around to face him. “I don’t see any notes here. Nothing like the paper my client said might be present.”

“This is everything we received,” he assured me, sounding half relieved, and half something else.

“Well, I’m sorry I bothered you.”

We stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, neither of us knowing what to say next. I had the feeling the minister wanted to talk to me, to say something. His eyes were fixed on his son’s desk. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His lips opened and closed a few times. Whatever he was struggling to get out was a gut-twister.

“Is there something you want to speak to me about?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a long time. His mind was very far away. His expression suddenly changed.

“I… uh, I… uh, do you believe Captain Whitehall is innocent?”

A good defense attorney would instantly say, “Yes, of course my client’s innocent. This whole thing’s a rotten sham and he should be released right away.” Only I didn’t want to lie to this man and his wife. Misery has a way of stripping off all vestiges of power and conceit. He didn’t look like a mighty minister in my eyes; he was only one more sad man who’d suffered a bottomless loss. And besides, he’d demonstrated a streak of fairness I knew I wouldn’t have had the character to show.

“Truthfully, I don’t know. He says he is innocent, but the evidence is not in his favor. As a member of his defense team, I owe him every benefit of the doubt. It’s my sworn obligation.”

He accepted that with a polite nod that I took as a benediction of forgiveness for my role in this despicable affair. He grasped his wife’s hand and gently led her from their dead son’s room. The bodyguard let them pass, then stepped swiftly in front of the doorway. I avoided his eyes for nearly a minute, until he finally spun around and led me back to the front door. I let myself out and he coldly watched while I trooped down the street and climbed into my sedan.

Whitehall had told the truth; No did have a copy of the key. Unfortunately, No still had that key when he died. Nobody had used it to gain entry to the apartment. No was murdered by someone who was inside that apartment when the front door was locked. Of course, there was still evidentiary relevance to the key – if we wanted to use it for that purpose – to persuade the board that No and Whitehall had been lovers.

I can’t say I felt real good about that. Actually, that’s putting too fine an edge. I felt like an utter cad. I felt like the kind of rodent that eats human dung. I had gained entry to the Lees’ home on a contrived pretext so I could find proof their son was a homosexual. The minister struck me as a remarkably honorable man, and even a dimwit could see his wife’s heart ached horribly – and I now possessed the means to expose their son in the most shameful way to a nation that believes homosexuality is a huge depravity.

The worst part was, it wouldn’t do a damn thing to get Whitehall off. No had still been murdered and sodomized. So Katherine and I could destroy the memory of Lee No Tae, and by extension the reputation of his family, and for what?

As we drove through the streets, I couldn’t shake the feeling the minister wanted to tell me something important. I don’t think he really cared whether I considered Whitehall guilty or innocent. Maybe he saw me checking that key, figured out what I was up to, and was on the verge of telling me what a piece of nasty garbage I am. Only he ultimately decided not to waste his breath because it would only lower him to my plane.

CHAPTER 20

I knew we were back in Yongsan Garrison because every street corner held a grinning clergyman handing out literature to everybody who passed. The preachers’ brigade was all decked out in clerical garb, and in a few places gaggles of clean-cut soldiers and their wives were huddled around listening earnestly to whatever drivel the holy men were putting out. The American culture war had arrived full force in Korea.

There was a long table in the middle of the lobby, and my new friend Preacher Prick stood sternly behind it, overseeing three other preachers who were seated like a royal triumvirate, with high stacks of holy literature piled around them. He gave me a mealy look and I shot him a surly salute.

I went to my room and called Katherine in her office and asked her to meet me in the bar. She said she needed thirty minutes, so I decided to occupy myself watching CNN.

Another of those odious talk shows was on. There were four obnoxious, noisy journalists crowded around a