“Yes, that too. Steel fillings, shoddy, coarse work.”
He seemed impressed that I would know to ask that. The one thing Communist spymasters nearly always overlook when they’re building camouflage for their spies is how truly lousy the dental work is in their own societies. If this woman had been born and bred in Chicago, she’d have silver or porcelain fillings and the work would reflect the level of craftsmanship demanded by a vain society that likes even repaired teeth to look like jewelry.
I leaned against the wall. “Why do you think North Korea would send a female agent that looks like her down here to work with Bales and Choi? And why would they position her in Bales’s house?”
“That’s what we’re hoping she’ll tell us.”
I glanced over at Carol, who was seated at the table playing the demure Korean girl who knew her place in this macho society.
“Did you hear her speak?” I asked her.
“I stood over her shoulder and listened to her most of the luncheon.”
“What’s her English like?”
“Excellent. Native quality, in fact. So were her manners. She used the fork and knife, even though the other American wives were using chopsticks. I thought that was interesting.”
I looked at Mr. Kim. “Maybe she’s one of those kids who were raised in that American village you mentioned?”
“Maybe.”
I turned back to Carol. “Any other thoughts?”
“I think it’s strange that she didn’t arrive here until five years ago.”
“Yeah, a little after Bales got assigned here.”
Kim quickly suggested, “A honeypot?”
“The timing would fit, I guess,” I admitted.
She certainly had the exquisite looks and body to be a honeypot, which to those uninitiated in the wormy arts of espionage is a woman who is used to lure a target into an affair, like bait, to entangle the target in an embarrassing predicament that can be exploited for blackmail.
Then I said, “But Bales wasn’t married back then, was he? And he wasn’t in a sensitive position with a high security clearance and access to valuable information?”
That seemed to obviate the way most honeypot ploys work. If the target is married and engaging in an affair, that makes him vulnerable. If the target has an important job and knows lots of important secrets, at some point the bad guys deliberately let him know the girl he’s sleeping with is a foreign agent, and that can also make him vulnerable to blackmail. Bales fell into neither category. If the bad guys told his bosses he was sleeping with a North Korean spy, his bosses would simply shrug and say, “Yeah, what’s she look like? Is she a great lay?”
I said, “You know, the other intriguing thing was the way Bales referred to her when he called Choi this afternoon. He called her a bitch. And when Choi told him to forget about her and run, he didn’t argue or sound the least bit upset. Doesn’t sound like much of a marriage.”
The other two were nodding, because the prisoner tied to that white chair was gaining significance. And an added layer of mystery.
But I had an advantage over them. I’d been thinking about Michael Bales for many days. And I had met him under several different sets of circumstances, so I had a greater window into his dark nature than they did.
I said, “How do you think Choi got Bales on his side in the first place?” I looked over at Carol. “Did your people have the FBI run a check on him?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
She looked at a wall and began reciting the facts. She had the lawyer’s gift of great recall, and it came pouring out crisp and factual.
“Bales was born in Warrenton, Nebraska, where his father owns a dairy farm. He joined the Army in 1987 when he was eighteen, right after graduating from high school. He enlisted in the MPs, did well, and made warrant. Never previously married, no money problems surfaced, no bad habits. He’s been background-checked for his secret clearance and there were no signs of trouble. The checkers talked to some of his old teachers and schoolmates, and one former girlfriend. Everybody said he was a great guy, honest, reliable, an all-American boy. No previous arrests, no scandals.”
I said, “So here’s a guy who gets to Korea five years ago with an impeccable record and a great future ahead, then suddenly he decides to start working for North Korea. Doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Kim said, “Money. It’s easy to hide it. When it comes to Americans, always follow the money.”
You might think he’d watched too many American movies and was starting to sound like a grade-B actor. Or you might say to yourself that he was a foreigner, so what the hell did he know. But you have to remember that Kim’s agency had recruited its share of American traitors – both discovered and undiscovered – so he did have a certain claim to expertise.
I looked at my watch; it was after 11:00 P.M. I nodded at Carol and she got the message, so she stood up and began getting ready to leave.
I turned to Kim. “Thanks. If we come up with anything we’ll call.”
He said, “I hope you do,” then sat back down.
I had the impression his punishment for letting Choi murder one of his men and slip away was to sit here and wait until the gorgeous, tough-looking lady in the other room finally started babbling. In other words, he was also sentenced to sleep deprivation.
Now that I’d looked at her, and at him, my money was on her.
CHAPTER 39
There were probably many ways to approach this, but I persuaded Carol to have some minions deliver the boxes filled with Bales’s and Choi’s case files to my hotel room in the Dragon Hill Lodge. Somehow I didn’t think it was my charm that persuaded her. It would be midnight by the time we got back to base, and she still hadn’t eaten, and Korean restaurants close early. The hotel at least offered room service.
Besides, I had the impression she wasn’t the least bit afraid my manly charisma would make her swoon and end up in my bed. So why not do our work in a comfortable hotel room instead of some musty office?
Three-fifths of the boxes were stuffed with Choi’s files. They were written in Hangul, which posed an intractable problem for me, because the only Korean character I recognized was the one that meant “homosexual,” since I’d seen it written on so many signs lately. Thus Carol. Her job was to rummage through Choi’s files.
I waited till she got off the phone to room service before I explained what I hoped to accomplish. I wanted her to rifle through Choi’s files and pull aside every crime sheet that dealt with an American committing a felony, witnessing a crime, or in any way being involved in aiding or abetting a crime in Itaewon. Don’t bother to read them, I told her. Sift them out and place them in a pile. And nothing older than three years ago. And be sure to write the subjects’ names and ranks in English on the cover sheets.
I dug through Bales’s files. The good thing about being a highly experienced criminal attorney was that I’d spent eight years looking at crime sheets. You do develop a certain expertise. You know which data sections are substantively important and which are filled with meaningless procedural details. You know which pages to flip to immediately and which to ignore.
The other thing was that Bales was highly organized, precise, and not the least bit wordy. I recalled that from his statements in the Whitehall packet, and the same characteristics were evident on his crime sheets. Too bad he was rotten right down to his skivvies. Other than that, he was a dream cop.
I ruled out any crimes committed by anybody lower than a major. Not that lieutenants and sergeants and privates aren’t possibly traitorous, or in vitally sensitive positions, because the clerk to the general in charge of operations sees almost everything his boss sees. I just couldn’t be bothered at this stage. Somebody else could sift through later and see if any of those crime sheets were worth investigating more thoroughly.
