Mortal Allies

Allie said, “He’d have to be pretty good to pull that off.”

“Allie, he’s not just pretty good, he’s the best the Army’s got.”

She nodded.

Then I said, “But what if we could get the murder, rape, and necrophilia charges thrown out before the trial?”

“That’s a silly question,” Katherine said. Then she tilted her head sideways. “How?”

“Two days will buy us time to look into Choi’s and Bales’s activities. We know they’re rotten. What if we can prove that?”

Katherine was chewing on her lip. She was the lead counsel, so ultimately this was her decision. She stared at me hard. You could almost see her wheels spinning with the possibilities.

“Drummond, no bluster. Can you come up with something? And I mean before trial.”

“I hope I can. No guarantees.”

There was a long, tense, awkward moment. All this was easy for me to say, but I didn’t want to be in Katherine’s shoes. Despite what I’d argued, if we went to trial in the morning, Eddie might be so tipsy he’d never recover. On the other hand, the opening day would mostly be spent on voir dire, and maybe opening statements. Then Eddie would have Saturday and Sunday to replan his case. Really, we weren’t giving him much.

On the other hand, this was Fast Eddie we were talking about, and what would be one day for anybody else would be like two weeks for him. And what if I couldn’t dig up anything more on Bales and Choi? What if all they’d left behind was a cloud of dust?

Katherine looked at Allie and she was nodding her head – reluctantly, but she was nodding.

Then Katherine nodded, too. She didn’t look pleased, or confident, or satisfied, but her head was bobbing.

We trooped back into the judge’s office two minutes ahead of schedule. Eddie was slumped down in his chair, prepared for the worst. We all knew that Carruthers didn’t need it, but he badly wanted Katherine’s assent to the postponement. Otherwise she’d run to the press and kick up holy hell – and an army of her journalist friends had flown over here, and Korea is not exactly a tourist haven, and they were all ready for the show to begin. Grumpy journalists are everybody’s worst nightmare.

It just would be much neater for all concerned if she went along and agreed.

Katherine sat in her chair and gave Eddie a withering look.

“Well?” Carruthers asked.

“Okay, Your Honor.”

“Okay?” Eddie asked, flabbergasted. I doubted if he ever once in his entire legal career had cut anybody an inch of slack. He’s the kind of guy who probably went to the executions of the men he helped convict. Eddie’s that way. Believe me.

Katherine said, “That’s what I said, Golden. You’re getting your two days.”

I could see that Eddie wanted almost more than anything to say something sharp and nasty back, just to balance the ledger, except Katherine had a grip on his short hairs, so discretion stilled his tongue.

Carruthers said, “All right then, Major, you’ve got until 0800 hours Tuesday to locate your witnesses. Miss Carlson, the court thanks you for your equanimity.”

Then we all got up and left. When we got outside, Katherine loitered by the door and asked Allie to go ahead. We gave her a minute to get beyond earshot.

Then Katherine said, “What the hell have you got up your sleeve?”

I held up my hands. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t try to run a scam on me, Drummond. I know you.”

“Me? A scam?”

Her stare hardened. “You do have something going, don’t you? The only reason I agreed to this was because I assume you’ve got something. Some lead, something.”

I shook my head. “Actually, no. I don’t have a thing.”

Katherine’s big green eyes suddenly got bigger. “Look, Drummond, I just made the biggest decision of my legal career because of you. The biggest decision of my life. You have no idea how important this is to me.”

“Why’d you ask for me to be your co-counsel?” I asked.

“Honestly?”

“No, lie and say it’s because I’m so damned good-looking and sexy.”

She sort of half smiled. “It wasn’t that, believe me.”

“See,” I said. “You’ve got your secrets and I’ve got mine.”

Her half smile disappeared. She gave me a very steady look. “Let me make this clear. I just gave that son of a bitch two more days. I let you talk me into that.”

I nodded.

She continued. “That means you’ve got two days to come up with something. You’ve got two days to give me something that proves Thomas Whitehall didn’t murder and rape Lee. If you fail to do that, I’ll find some way to ruin the rest of your life. You won’t be able to hide from me. I’ll track you down and make your life miserable. Is that clear?”

I looked carefully into her eyes, and there was not the slightest doubt in my mind she meant every word of it. Without another word she walked away and left me standing on the hot cement, wondering what in the hell I should do next. Not that I was afraid of her or anything, but I suddenly felt desperate to come up with something. Something quick, too, because when I claimed I wasn’t afraid of her, I might’ve been exaggerating a little bit… or a lot.

I went back to Mercer’s office. He was seated behind his desk with the usual cup of coffee attached to his lips. As much coffee as that man drank, he probably had brown liquid flowing through his veins. If you took his java away, he’d probably deflate like a big balloon with a hole in it.

He looked astoundingly unhappy.

I said, “Hey, boss, what’s happening?”

That “boss” thing was my sly way of intimating I wanted to do some more work for him.

He didn’t seem to catch it. He grumbled something about how Choi and Bales seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Actually, they had disappeared in Seoul, which ain’t exactly thin air, if you ask me. It’s a sprawling metropolis with some fifteen million people and at least that many rabbit warrens and pigeonholes they could’ve run into. They might not even be in Seoul anymore. Hell, they might not be within a thousand miles of Korea.

I said, “Choi’s probably got a million places to hide.”

Mercer took another sip of coffee. He looked wrung out, and it wasn’t hard to guess he’d gotten reamed pretty good for letting Bales slip away. He could at least pin the Choi screwup on Kim and the KCIA, but that’s like saying you’re only responsible for sinking the lower decks of the Titanic; some other guy let the upper decks slip under the waves.

The way spooks like to handle these things is to catch the spies. Then they like to vigorously interrogate them and gauge how much damage was done, and where, and how. Otherwise you have to assume the worst, and respond accordingly. The worst in this case was hugely ugly. The entire defense plan for South Korea might’ve been compromised and therefore needed to be rewritten. Thousands of units might have to be moved, minefields relocated, port security plans rebuilt, etcetera, etcetera. Millions of men and women would have to be retrained to execute a new plan. It could take years and many billions of dollars.

Still, that left the larger question of who Bales and Choi might’ve blackmailed and turned. Hundreds of people worked in sensitive jobs in the huge alliance headquarters. Choi had been in business nearly twenty years, and even if he’d only cherry-picked one sucker every year, that left a big army of informants. And just because Choi had hightailed it didn’t mean his moles were out of business. The plumbers couldn’t do their work if they didn’t know where the leaks were.

Mercer looked like he’d had all this explained to him in painful detail by somebody with a real loud, brassy voice. I felt sorry for him.

No, actually that’s not true. I’d brought him the breakthrough and he’d let the rats slip from his grasp. He should’ve arrested Bales and Choi right away. Maybe he should’ve had thirty cars tail Bales to the airport, or put a man in Bales’s trunk. He took a gamble and he lost.

Anyway, I said, “Has anybody figured out what happened?”