Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 19

Koreans can be infuriatingly bureaucratic when it suits them, which just happens to be most of the time. They can also cut through the crap when they want to, and my request to meet with Minister of Defense Lee Jung Kim and his wife in their home got approved within hours.

It obviously required Minister Lee himself to make that happen. Although we’d met only briefly – and on unfortunate terms – he didn’t know me from Adam… or Kim… or whomever. I assumed he granted my request out of curiosity, or because he wanted the opportunity to box my ears, both because I’d been so curt to him and because I was helping defend the man who’d so cruelly slain his son.

At six o’clock in the evening, I was standing gingerly in my starchiest battle dress and my most sparkling boots, dead center on the floor mat in front of his door. The home was made of musty red brick and was larger than most Korean houses, particularly ones inside the city limits, although it would’ve seemed tiny and ordinary in any middle-class American neighborhood. Koreans have this thing against flaunting wealth, so they tend to live unpretentiously, except when it comes to cars and TVs. They’re nuts for Mercedeses and Sonys.

Having been inside a few Korean houses in my day, I took the cultural precaution of bending over and halfway unlacing my boots, so I could smoothly step out of them. It’s one of those Asian things, and I’m a worldly guy, so I know the drill.

I rang the bell, and a sharp-looking Korean Army major with a holstered.38-caliber pistol on his hip opened the door. He wore the Korean Army version of battle dress, and I guessed by the muscular, sinewy look of him he’d probably been handpicked from the Special Warfare Command, which is one of the toughest, deadliest outfits in the world. The guy could probably crack ten bricks with the bridge of his nose. I also noticed he was wearing his combat boots inside the house. I observed this right after I saw him staring curiously at my untied, mostly unlaced boots.

I said, “Hi, I’m Major Sean Drummond. I have a six o’clock appointment to meet with Minister and Mrs. Lee.”

In fluent English, he said, “I know who you are. I advise you to tie your boots, so you don’t look stupid.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I mumbled, bending over and lacing my boots as fast as my nimble hands could manage. Nothing like making the right first impression, I always say.

“Follow me,” he said when I was done.

Like many Korean homes, this one was dimly lit inside and sparsely littered with old Korean chests and bric-a-brac. The walls were spotted with scrolls, and paintings of mountains, and more of those flying cranes. The Lee family tastes ran toward Korean traditional.

The major led me down a hallway and through the living room to a covered porch tucked off the dining room. I could see two old people seated and sipping tea.

The major stepped aside to let me proceed. Following me in, he stayed close behind me like a good bodyguard. This is what comes from living in a country known for its frequent coups and attempted coups, not to mention the occasional terrorist attack by the bad guys up north.

Minister Lee stood up and crossed over to shake my hand. His face was grave and unsmiling, but curious. He courteously said, “Welcome to my home. May I introduce my wife.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lee,” I said, bowing in her direction and calling her Mrs. Lee, even though Korean wives almost never share their husband’s name. I knew she wouldn’t mind, though. Koreans have long since learned that Westerners, and Americans in particular, are too inconsiderate to learn their customs, so they politely ignore our bad manners.

I said, “Minister Lee, I apologize for what I said in the minister of justice’s office last week. I had no idea who you were.”

He nodded.

“Also, please allow me to express my condolences for the death of your son. I’ve learned a great deal about him. He was a remarkable young man. I can only imagine how terrible this loss is for you both.”

Again he nodded. Then, the diplomatic necessities obviously concluded, he waved for me to sit across from him and his wife. I stole a glance at her while I arranged my trousers. She was small and slender, delicate-looking, and although she was in her mid-sixties, you could see the traces of astonishing beauty. A noble beauty. Her features looked carved, and although there was an aging puffiness around her eyes, they still reminded me of a pair of big dusky black pearls.

She was demurely studying me right back, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what she was thinking. I knew what my mother would be thinking had it been me that ended up with a web belt around my throat, and the defender of the son of a bitch who did that to me was seated on her back porch.

Mrs. Lee, however, graciously rose and leaned across the small coffee table that separated us. She placed a small green porcelain cup in front of me, then filled it with pale, watery tea from a small, discolored, badly dented teapot. Had it been my mother, the tea would’ve been laced with strychnine.

“What an interesting teapot,” I mentioned in an attempt to break the ice. “A family heirloom?”

The minister answered for her. “My father gave me the pot when I entered the army in 1951. He was a poor man. He made it with his own hands before he was murdered by the North Koreans. I carried it with me my whole career, through two wars, even during my years in prison.”

I leaned forward and studied the teapot more closely while he said, “So what did you wish to see us about, Major?”

I looked up at him. “Sir, did the hospital return your son’s possessions after his death?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like your permission to search them. I have no right to ask, and if you say no, I’ll certainly understand. However, I’m sure you want the right man convicted for your son’s murder. Your son’s belongings might hold an important clue.”

Most folks would’ve told me to hit the street and don’t let the door hit me in the ass. I was banking on the same streak of fairness Minister Lee had shown in the justice minister’s office. On the other hand, I braced myself for a typhoon of anger.

He studied me with an intrigued glance. “May I ask what you’re searching for?”

Well, we got past the typhoon, but this was the tricky part. I, of course, came here to see if I could discover whether the key to Whitehall’s apartment was still in No’s possession when he died. The problem was, as far as the minister, his wife, and everybody else was concerned, Lee No Tae wasn’t gay, and he certainly wasn’t having an affair with Whitehall – he was an unsuspecting, gullible hetero who’d been lured to a party where he got brutally beaten, murdered, and raped.

I couldn’t very well admit I was looking for the key to the romantic hideaway where Lee No Tae went to make love with the man he supposedly wasn’t having an affair with.

“Well, sir,” I said as convincingly as I could, “my client claims there might have been some evidence in No’s possession that would vindicate him.”

“And how can that be?”

“Because we believe my client was framed for your son’s death.”

I watched his reaction, because I figured that if the South Koreans were the ones tapping my phones and bugging my room, he’d already know damn well we were preparing to claim Whitehall was framed.

If he wasn’t surprised, he fooled me. His neck reared back, his forehead crinkled, and his lips twisted in a funny way. He was either an ace actor or was genuinely unaware. Of course, no man was likely to rise to the atmospheric heights of minister of defense unless he was fairly skilled at deception. Especially in the capital of Korea, where intrigue’s an everyday sport.

Then he spoke in rapid-fire Korean to his wife, who nodded and looked instantly distressed.

He turned back to me. “What might have been in No’s possession that could help Captain Whitehall?”

“A slip of paper. Our client claims your son showed him a note that night. A death threat.”

I made this up on the fly, but the minister’s face became instantly alarmed. He stared at the floor, and the alarm changed to dread. I could literally see the blood rush from his face. I felt even more miserable about lying to 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.