Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 31

So here’s where we were.

Two key witnesses were lying; one had been tortured, and both had been coerced into false statements. I figured the lie in their testimony was that part about hearing Whitehall and Lee fighting that night.

Another key witness, Michael Bales, was also lying. He’d beaten the crap out of Jackson to build his case.

Lee No Tae had a key to the lover’s nest, although Eddie wasn’t going to have great difficulty inventing a plausible alibi. He’d probably argue that Whitehall was smart enough to plant the key in Lee’s pocket after he murdered him.

We didn’t know how anybody could’ve broken into the apartment and killed Lee. Unless the police were lying. Unless the lock expert did a sham job. Unless there was a full-blown police conspiracy that extended even beyond the Itaewon station.

We knew our client was being expertly framed. We didn’t know by who, for what, or how, which are not insignificant questions. We suspected an entire police precinct, and unless we could show insurmountable proof of that, we’d be laughed out of the courtroom.

I called Colonel Carruthers and told him what we’d discovered. I told him about the discrepancy. I told him about the JAG log and about the fact that Jackson and Moran were lying about who advised who to confess, and when they first sought counsel.

He listened politely. He thanked me for calling. He informed me we had nothing compelling. I already knew that. He told me to stay with it. He said the inconsistency was curious. I already knew that, too.

As soon as I hung up, Allie grabbed my arm and tugged me into a side room. Actually, that’s an understatement. She nearly yanked my arm out of its socket, and I yelped as I catapulted through the doorway.

“Ouch!” I said, giving her a menacing glare.

“Don’t be such a wimp.”

“But that hurt,” I complained. And it did. It hurt a lot, partly because I was already beat-up and shot, and partly because she was strong as an ox. It struck me that if Allie wanted to wipe the floor with me, she probably could. Even if I were in top form, she’d probably tear me to pieces.

She ignored my suffering. “How did it go?”

“Not good,” I admitted. “Moran and Jackson walked on each other a bit, but it’s nothing Golden can’t repair with a little careful coaching. We’re still nowhere.”

Her face melted into a mask of deep unhappiness, which looked quite odd – one, because she had that kind of face; and two, because I’d only seen her expressions range between anger and disdain. No, that’s not true, because I’d also seen her gaze affectionately at Maria, so this new expression reminded me how very agonizing this case had become for her. She’d lost her lover, maybe in a way not directly related to Whitehall’s guilt or innocence, but clearly on behalf of the cause. Proving Whitehall’s innocence was now the only way she could salvage her loss.

While she seemed like the last kind of woman you’d feel pity for, I did. I just couldn’t think of anything helpful to say.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m plain out of ideas.”

She stewed on that a moment. She said, “What about the films of the massacre? Why don’t we study those?”

“For what? The whole world’s already looked at them a few hundred times and nobody’s seen anything worth talking about.”

“It can’t hurt.”

I didn’t want to waste my time, but I also didn’t want to disappoint her. “You know it’s a long shot?”

“We’re into any kind of shot, aren’t we?”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I dumbly nodded. Allie then called the local ABC affiliate and actually sounded quite charming and maybe even sexy as she sweet-talked some guy into letting us come over and view the film. It was quite odd hearing her sound so girlish and flirty, but it worked.

But just wait till the guy on the other end of the line actually got an eyeful of the woman behind the voice.

The studio was located on the twelfth floor of a huge, gleaming new high-rise on Namdung Plaza. We took the elevator up, and the Koreans who rode up with us stared curiously at Allie, who was about two feet taller than any of them, but would’ve been a sight even if she were two feet shorter.

Then they glared at me, I think because they suspected she was the one who’d beaten me to a pulp.

From their faces, you could picture what they were thinking. Americans! Such an odd people. How did they ever get so rich? So successful? So powerful?

Good questions, actually. I’ve often asked them myself.

Anyway, a skinny guy in jeans and a raggedy T-shirt met us in the lobby of the tiny studio. He stared at Allie in sheer shock, and it was immediately obvious he was the one she’d sweet-talked. Allie winked at me, and I had to work hard to suppress a laugh, because until this moment I hadn’t thought of her as a woman, with feminine wiles and some of the necessary skills in the battle between the sexes. At least the two sexes.

The guy said his name was Harry Menker. He was the cameraman who’d captured the massacre on tape, and he was very proud of this. He spent a moment reliving how he’d dared shot and shell to get the film that was aired by just about every network in the world. He bitched for a moment about how he got no royalties for that, because he worked for the network, and the network pocketed all the profits from his daring.

Allie and I listened patiently and cooed sympathetically. It was his film. He led us to a room in the back he called the review room. Two technicians awaited. The film was loaded and ready. They told us to sit, then they dimmed the lights.

Harry helpfully explained, “What you saw on TV were clips. We cut out the particularly gory scenes, you know, like bodies getting blown away, the sounds of people cursing. What you’re about to see is the full, uncut version.”

I glanced at Allie and she smiled back triumphantly. The trip might be worth our time after all.

The first five minutes were switchbacks from the protesters to the riot police. I was prominently on display a few times. Harry said, “We were surprised to see an Army guy there. In uniform, no less. You got balls.”

Then we heard the recording of the first shot and the camera went crazy. We stared at flashes of tarmac, of feet, of legs. The camera was being jerked and swung around so hard, it was enough to give you vertigo. You could hear Harry’s frantic voice on the tape: “Shit… crap… oh Jesus.”

Harry slid down in his seat a little. “I… uh, I got scared.”

I said, “Me too.”

As if on cue, I was on the big screen. I was shoving people aside, and bodies were flying everywhere, not from my shoves, but because most of the bodies around me were being shot and knocked over. I hadn’t realized how close I came to being hit.

“Oh my God,” Allie murmured, and I felt her hand grip my arm so hard I almost groaned.

She must’ve seen something, so I said, “Could you stop the film? Run it back to when the shooting started. Run it in slow motion.”

So they did. Then they did it again.

“You’re friggin’ lucky to be sittin’ here, man,” said Harry the cameraman.

He was right. The shooter was aiming at me from his opening shot. There was no question of it. He was trying to hit me. The people being struck by bullets around me were simply the by-product of his lousy marksmanship.

But what I didn’t notice until the third replay was what Allie had observed in a single glance. The protester directly to my rear deliberately shoved me forward, right into the ranks of the riot police. She’d had her head turned to the left so she saw the two people beside me get hit, and she sensed the next shot would hit me, so she just reached forward and shoved me. She was such a tiny thing, it’s amazing she could muster enough force to drive me off my feet. But she did. And she saved my life, and deliberately exposed herself to the bullet meant for me.

I watched for the third time as her head exploded in a shower of blood. It was Maria, of course.

I turned and looked helplessly at Allie. Her chest was heaving and tears were streaming down her cheeks. She was moaning from pain and loss. I felt something deep inside my chest get thick and sour.

I put an arm over her shoulder. Her being so much bigger than me, and the way she looked, we must’ve seemed a very strange-looking couple. Harry and his two assistants watched us until they recognized that Allie and I were terrifically affected by something. They froze the projector and diplomatically slid out of the room.

I finally said, “Allie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

She didn’t answer. She just sat and cried and moaned, and I felt as miserable as I could ever remember being in my whole life. Or maybe miserable is the wrong word. Maybe what I felt was shame and inadequacy. Maria had owed me nothing. No, actually she’d owed me less than nothing. From the moment I’d laid eyes on her, I’d judged her and ignored her, which, if you think about it, is maybe the worst form of disdain there is.

You always read stories about heroes who save people’s lives, where they recount what they were thinking and how they felt in that fleeting instant when they did something unbelievably courageous. What you never read is what it feels like to be the one who gets saved, particularly when your savior dies. So I’ll tell you what it feels like. It makes you feel so guilty you want to rip your own heart out of your chest.

Somehow, I guess Allie sensed that, because she slipped her long arm across my shoulder and pulled me toward her. And that’s how we sat for the next few minutes, neither able to say a word, sitting in mutual misery, her because of her loss, and me because I wished more than anything I could trade places with Maria, even as I was guiltily content that I couldn’t.

Allie finally withdrew her arm, stood up, and went to retrieve Harry and his boys. They flipped the projector back on and we grimly returned to our viewing.

There was one sequence where I quickly bent over to pick up the riot baton. On the film, the second I leaned over to get that baton, three more protesters right behind me got their heads blown open like splattering melons. If I hadn’t bent over, the bullets would’ve hit me.

Harry said, “Wow! Man, look at that.”

So the cameraman replayed the scene in slow motion twice more, until I was tired of watching people die from bullets meant for me.

“Move on,” I barked.

The next sequence showed me sprinting toward the shooter. I looked damned good, too, if I do say. Allie even reached over and squeezed my arm, I guess to make me feel better.

Harry had focused his lens on me, so the figures around me were blurry and unfocused. I saw myself swing the baton and knock the cop on his noggin, then bend over and steal his pistol. I thought I saw something else, too, though it didn’t register.

I was running up the hill at the shooter, and I relived that moment where he yanked that magazine out of his vest. Then I noticed something else. He glanced over to his right. Then he looked back at me and dropped his weapon.

I made them replay that moment of decision five or six more times. The more I studied it, the more apparent it got. There wasn’t anything aimless in that sideways glance. The shooter was looking at somebody off to his right. He was searching for instructions. He was looking at his boss, or his lookout.

Then I remembered that I’d noticed something earlier in the film. I said, “Take it back to the point where I’d just emerged from the crowd. Slow motion again.”

So they did. Probably they thought I was reveling in my moment of glory. Truth be known, I’m not above such things.

This time, though, I stopped looking at myself and saw it more clearly. The figure was foggy and blurry, but there was something about him, something odd.

“Take it back and freeze it when I say freeze.”

It was impossible to be sure. The film was too out of focus. The figure was twenty, maybe thirty yards from me. What made him appear out of place was this: He was standing perfectly upright. He wasn’t diving for the ground, or running, or anything. He was standing with his hands on his hips, a pose of command. He was located at almost exactly the spot the shooter had looked for his signal.

I turned to Harry. “Can I have a copy of the film?”

He said, “Sure, man.”

So Allie and I collected the film, and then I took her hand and we left.

When we got outside Allie said, “What did you see?”

I felt bad about it, since reviewing the film was her idea, but I had no choice. “Nothing.”

She looked at me in disbelief. “Nothing? Why’d you ask for the film?”

“Hell, who knows? I guess so I’ll always remember how Maria saved my life.”

Constructing that particular alibi made me a real louse, but I knew it would end any further curiosity on Allie’s part, because really, how could she argue with that?

She smiled grimly and nodded, and we returned to base, me wondering about that figure in the film, her reliving the nightmarish sight of the woman she loved getting struck in the head by that bullet.

Back at the office, I furtively stepped outside and used a cell phone to call Spears’s office. I told my favorite colonel I needed to see Mercer and I needed to see him right away. I gave him my number, and he said okay and hung up.

I stood under a shady tree for three minutes before my cell phone rang.

He said, “Drummond, Mercer here.”

I said, “I need to see you. It’s important.”

“I’m busy. How important?”

“Damned important.”

“All right. We’re gonna have to be tricky about this. You’re being watched.”

“By who?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you later. Go down to the Post Exchange. Loiter around by the jewelry counter and we’ll take it from there.”

I grabbed my cane and told Imelda I’d be back in an hour. Then I hobbled over to the Post Exchange. The PX just happened to be the one support facility located on the other half of Yongsan, and I worked up a good sweat, cursing at Mercer as I hobbled around on that cane. The blast of air-conditioning as I entered the building nearly made me kiss the floor. I went to the jewelry counter and looked at watches. When I finally glanced up, the ruthlessly coldhearted Miss Kim was perusing some earrings on the other side of the glass counters.

She held up a pair, shook her head, and then moved off toward the stereo section. I slowly followed her. She stood studying a gargantuan-size pair of Infinity tower speakers until a guy walked by her, she glanced at him, and he nodded. Then she hooked a finger in my direction for me to follow her.

I have to tell you I thought all this cloak-and-dagger stuff was simply hilarious. These people probably run Geiger counters over toilet seats before they take a squat. She led me through some doors and into the warehouse in the back.

We walked around stacks of boxes and cabinets, until we turned a corner and ran right into Buzz Mercer.

I said, “You moonlighting as a warehouseman on government time?”

“Heh-heh,” he said, although I had the impression he didn’t really think it was funny. Maybe it wasn’t. “You got two trailers on you, Drummond. They didn’t come inside, although if you’re in here too long, they might get suspicious. And make sure you buy something before you leave – you know, for authenticity.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“We’re not sure. We took their photos this morning. We’re checking them with our friends over at the Korean CIA at this moment. In fact, the reason we diverted you all the way over here was so we could make them pass through the post gate. We had a man there checking their IDs as they came through. Maybe we’ll have a better idea soon.”

As he spoke I could see his eyes inspecting my damage. Some of the bruises I was sporting had started to yellow around the edges, so I was sort of a walking kaleidoscope of colors. He didn’t seem too distressed by my condition.

I reached inside my trouser pocket and withdrew the videocassette tape Harry had given me. I handed it to him. “This is an uncut ABC tape of the massacre. You got people who can enhance it? Maybe clear up some of the blurring where the camera’s not focused properly?”

“Depends how many color pixels the camera caught.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. There’s a point in the film where I’m running out of the crowd, going after one of the two shooters. Then there’s a point where the shooter pauses to draw a new magazine.”

He wearily said, “We all know about that, Drummond. It’s been on all the TV news shows.”

“Right. Here’s the thing, though. Study the shooter just before he makes the decision to drop his weapon and hightail it. He looks over to his right.”

His interest perked up. “Okay, so there’s a spotter, or somebody else who was there.”

“Right. I think I passed right by him. I think he’s in the film. He’s standing perfectly upright, as calm as can be. Everybody else is either hitting the concrete or moving in confusion. Not this guy. He’s watching. He’s composed. That’s what I want you to check.”

Mercer took the videocassette tape. “Who do you think he is?”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

“Okay, we’ll give it a try.”

“How long?”

“Hard to say. Won’t take us long to compress and code this and send it back to Langley by satellite. It’s two in the morning there, though. They’ll have to roust some techies out of bed and get ’em to work.”

“It’s worth it,” I told him. “Trust me.”

“Yeah? Tell me more, Drummond.”

“Not yet. Get a clear picture of this guy.”

At that instant, Mercer’s cell phone rang. He pulled it up to his ear and turned away from me, so he could murmur and whisper with whatever spook buddy was on the other end. It was a brief conversation.

He put the phone back in his pocket and looked at me. “The guys following you are Korean cops. I guess they’re trying to keep an eye on you because of all the trouble you’ve been causing.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

It was Wednesday afternoon. The trial opened Friday morning. We had thirty-six hours left. I hoped I wasn’t imagining things. I hoped the CIA’s techies could find enough color pixels to get a reasonable picture of this guy. I hoped he wasn’t just some guy who turned out to be deaf and blind and was standing perfectly still only because he didn’t have a clue what was going on. What I really hoped was that he didn’t turn out to be a tree.