Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 14

I went to the hair parlor to see Katherine. Bedlam reigned: Phones were ringing, the clerks were jumping around taking messages, referring calls, scribbling and passing notes. The amazon and the grump were hunched over the fax machine frenziedly shoving papers through the slot and looking like a pair of hens with their tails on fire.

I ignored them and even Imelda, who glowered at me as I walked by. I guess she was pissed that I’d cold-shouldered her these past few days. Hey, what the hell? She’d betrayed me, right? She’d chosen her lot. Didn’t she know they were all gay?

Anyway, I went straight into Katherine’s office. She was on the phone; she shot me a distracted look and kept right on talking. I planted myself in the chair in front of her desk. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Finally she hung up. “Well?”

“I’ve got some very bad news.”

“This isn’t about the religious delegation, is it?” She waved a dismissive hand through the air.

“You mean you already know about them?” I asked, surprised.

“Drummond, I knew about them five days ago. I knew about them before they even walked into the Pentagon to get briefed.”

I got instantly suspicious. “Bullshit. How?”

“OGMM. They keep me informed of things I need to know.”

“Is that so?”

She leaned back in her chair and ran a hand through that long, luxurious hair of hers, as she apparently weighed whether or not I was worthy to be entrusted with this knowledge.

“This stays between us, right?”

This was Katherine Carlson. Before I agreed to anything so open-ended, I said, “It doesn’t involve breaking any laws, does it?”

“Come on, Drummond. If I was breaking laws, think I’d admit it? To you, of all people?”

She had a good point. I simply shrugged.

She leaned toward me. “Do you have any idea what OGMM does? How it works? What it is?”

I didn’t, actually, though I wasn’t going to admit that. Not to Miss Always Number One in the Class, anyway. “Of course I know,” I said with a facial expression and arm gesture intended to imply supreme confidence. “It’s one of those nonprofits that gets oodles of money from guilty-feeling rich liberals and gays, right?”

“Partly right. From a funding angle, anyway. But OGMM’s unique from other gay rights groups. It was formed by gay service-members themselves. It was set up as a secret organization – secret in existence and secret in membership. Put simply, its purpose is to protect gays who want to serve their country without having their rights violated.”

“Only it’s not secret any longer, right?”

“Its existence isn’t, no. It came out of the closet in ’91 when the big debate erupted. However, the identities of its members remain closely guarded. Since all the active members are on active or reserve duty, they can hardly afford to be identified as card-carrying members without betraying their orientation. Then there’s the inactive rolls made up of veterans.”

“So how big is it?”

She smiled. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Four hundred thousand members. Give or take a few.”

“Did I hear that right?”

“That’s right, Drummond. Most are veterans, sort of like a gay VFW, if you will. Some go all the way back to the days before the Second World War. The oldest living member served in World War One.”

“And how many are still on duty?”

“About twenty-five thousand at the latest count.”

It suddenly struck me what I was hearing. “You’re telling me… what? You’ve got twenty-five thousand gays on duty right now? And these people… they, uh, they keep OGMM informed of things?”

She looked like the Cheshire cat who’d just swallowed the Cheshire canary. “You’d be surprised what we know and how quickly we learn it. We even have generals and admirals on the rolls. A few in very important positions, too. Last time I checked, about seven thousand of the active members are officers.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was fantastic – like having an army of twenty-five thousand spies in uniform. You’d never know if you were talking with one, or sitting next to one in a meeting, or standing beside one at a Pentagon urinal – even in the general officers’ latrine, apparently. They were invisible.

“This is outrageous,” I blurted. “It’s a large-scale conspiracy. I mean, it’s espionage on an almost unimaginable scale,” because, really, that was what it sounded like.

“Don’t be overdramatic, Drummond. These people aren’t giving OGMM the details of the global war plan. Nothing they disclose is classified. They simply call OGMM whenever they see or overhear something that infringes on their rights. They’re not disloyal, either. They’re completely loyal to their own sexuality, and they’re convinced they’re defending the Constitution they’ve sworn to defend. They are, too, believe me.”

“But they’re breaking the law,” I stammered.

“Yeah? Name a law they’re violating.”

I needed a moment to consider that one. I mean, there was something horribly wrong about this. I just knew there was – there had to be. I searched my memory banks of laws and precedents. I spent probably twenty seconds doing that while she sat and watched me with a look of amusement. As far as I could tell, though, she was right – if they weren’t exposing classified information, they weren’t breaking any laws.

Then it hit me.

“Aha!” I said, convinced I’d just found the fatal wrinkle in her argument. “How about when they have to list what organizations they belong to? Every single recruit has to admit that on the recruiting questionnaire. And to get a security clearance you’ve got to do it again.”

“Good point,” she said. “Except that since it’s public knowledge that OGMM is composed of gay people, that means the mere admission they belong to OGMM is synonymous to admitting they’re gay, right?”

“So?”

“And under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ it’s illegal to ask, right?”

“But they are being asked, Carlson. That’s the point. And if they don’t list it, they’re lying on an official questionnaire. That’s breaking the law.”

“Come on, Drummond – I thought you were a lawyer. What happens if you try to enforce an unconstitutional law? It’s the same as no law at all, right?”

I weakly countered, “That’s circuitous logic.”

And she smiled. “Circuitous logic? So? Isn’t that what law is all about? It’s the perfect catch-22. We didn’t invent it. We’re simply taking advantage of it.”

I was still hung up on my misgivings about this, but as much as I hated to admit it, she did seem to have a point. It was exactly the kind of clever loophole lawyers are hired to find.

“Okay,” I grumbled, not willing to verbally acknowledge her victory, and therefore struggling to move on. “So OGMM called and warned you about these preachers?”

“There’s a clerk in the outer office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who happens to be one of his most trusted assistants. He considers her like a daughter. She’s been with him since he was a brigadier general. His heart would break if he knew she was a lesbian.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“It’s the truth,” she said, smiling. “She was the one who actually typed up the memo that asked the Chief of Staff of the Army to meet with these preachers and invite them over here in the first place.”

My mind was reeling. This was a lot to take in. Finally I said, “So what do you think about these preachers?”

If I didn’t mention it before, one of the scariest things about Carlson is how incredibly fast she shifts moods. Before I could blink an eye, her smile vanished and was replaced by a snarling war mask.

“They’re the most dangerous threat we’ve faced yet.”

“Huh?” I was completely taken aback. “You’ve got to be kidding. Some bunch of overweight old southern hicks. How much damage can they do?”

I had misgivings about them, too, but the most dangerous threat we’d faced yet? Give me a break.

She leaned back in her chair and assumed this slightly superior air. “Look, Drummond, I know you find this difficult to accept, but we’re engaged in a war. It’s like the civil rights struggle of the fifties and sixties. These preachers, they’re the most potent weapon the bigots and homophobes possess. They’re the atomic weapons of the antigay side.”

I gave her a disbelieving look like I just knew she was overstating things. Because she was. Plus I knew it would piss her off. And it did.

She wagged an angry finger in my face. “Don’t you dare give me that look. I’m not exaggerating. They preach the worst kind of intolerance. They preach that homosexuals are sinful perverts, unnatural creatures, depraved seducers. They’re no different than the Catholic priests of the medieval era ordering their followers to burn witches and unbelievers at the stake. How can people listen to them? Just look how often they’ve been proven wrong – Galileo, Columbus, Scopes. Why do people believe them? If any other institution had been proven wrong on so many fundamental questions, it would be a laughingstock. It’s astonishing.”

“Katherine,” I said, in a deliberately condescending way, “you’re way too rabid on this. Like it’s some kind of no-holds-barred war. It ain’t to me. I’m a lawyer. We’ll probably lose, and if we do, I’ll just drink a beer, and maybe feel bad for a day or so, then start getting ready for the next court case.”

Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a bit, but her response was way out of proportion. It seemed I’d really whacked her unfunny bone, because she looked at me like I was the lowest thing she ever saw. Every bit of angelicism fled from her features. She actually turned this deep, dark shade of red, like there was a fire burning beneath her skin.

“Get out!” she said, coldly, controlled, but clearly on the verge of screaming.

I shrugged nervously. “Hey, don’t take it personally.”

“Get out, right now! I don’t want to see your face.”

I momentarily considered defying her, but one of the things I’ve learned in life is that when a woman’s angry at you, neither logic nor reason have a chance of prevailing. Like a vacuum sucks air from a room, a woman’s fury sucks every bit of rationality from a situation. I therefore did the only wise thing I could. I swiftly got lost.

It didn’t help that Imelda grazed me with another sizzling look when I passed by. Grumpy and the amazon stared at me, too, and they didn’t look real pleased to see me, either.

I suddenly realized something here. I was sexually stranded, isolated, alone. I was the only straight lawyer, for one thing. I was also the only male left on the defense team. Well, there was Keith, but he was in a coma (which I vaguely envied), so that left only me.

I went back to my room and turned on CNN again. I was sort of idly watching out of the corner of my eye while I relaxed on the bed and tried to think through my next step, when I caught a quick glimpse of Michael T. Barrone, one of those flashy, thirtysomething megabillionaires who’d made more money than God by being one of the early Internet pioneers. I don’t know why, because megabillionaires normally bore me to tears, but I turned up the sound.

“That’s right,” Barrone was saying to some hidden interviewer. “I did contribute the money. And I’ll keep contributing money until they tell me it’s enough.”

The interviewer’s voice said, “You’re a businessman, Mr. Barrone. And right now, this is a very unpopular cause. The Southern Religious Leaders Conference is calling for a boycott against your company. Aren’t you afraid it will harm your business?”

Barrone’s face got very steely. “The hell with my business. OGMM asked me for the money, and I’m only too damned pleased to give it to them. What’s happening here is wrong. I’ve got gay employees… Everybody does. I’m putting my money where my principles are.”

Then Michael Barrone evaporated into thin air, replaced by a shot of several hundred Americans in the cavernous lobby of what looked to me to be the Shilla Hotel, one of the swankest inns in all of Korea.

A female voice, struggling to sound dramatic, was saying, “And so, three more planeloads of gay activists arrived in Seoul today, adding to the three that landed last night, and three more are expected tomorrow, adding a new twist to what has already proven to be the most dramatic military court case in many decades. This is Sandra Milken, reporting live in Seoul.”

I fell back hard and cursed loudly. The effect was lost, because Carlson couldn’t hear me, and the cursing was directed entirely at her.

She wanted a cultural war, and by God she was going to have one. This had to be her idea, her response to all these preachers. And believe me, it was a fantastically awful idea.

You don’t import a few hundred angry, screaming American homosexuals to Korea, of all places, and expect things to work out. She was courting the worst kind of calamity and grief.