Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 33

At two o’clock in the morning, there was another knock on my door. I rolled out of bed and hobbled over, again checked the peephole to make sure there wasn’t somebody on the other side who wanted to hurt me. Like another bruise was going to make any discernible difference at this point. Silly me.

Carol Kim and a shadowy figure I couldn’t make out were standing on the other side, so I opened it. The other person was Buzz Mercer, looking tired and perplexed.

I was wearing nothing but my Army-issue OD green battle shorts, so I demurely grabbed a fluffy white robe from the closet and escorted my visitors to the pair of chairs by the window. I fell onto the bed.

“Did you get it?” I asked, which was a fairly stupid question, because what else would they be doing in my room at this hour?

Carol opened a valise and withdrew a series of color photographs, maybe thirty in all.

“Look through these,” she said, handing me the stack. “Are any of them the person you’re talking about?”

The first few were the wrong figures. They were standing upright, but the reason was because they were frozen with fear or confusion or shock. You could see that on their faces, in their stances, in their auras. The fifth one was the man I wanted. The CIA techies probably figured that out from his pose, because the next six shots were all of him.

It wasn’t until I got to the fifth photo that the techies had somehow amplified, or contorted, or tantalized enough pixels to make his face recognizable. I had to fight a sudden gleeful feeling. There he was, hands on hips, and although the expression on his face was still murky, from the cant of his head and the lift of his chin he appeared to be surveying the crowd, the way a proud farmer might look out over a field of newly ripened wheat. Except what Inspector Choi was admiring was a full-blown massacre.

I pulled out the photo and held it up for Kim and Mercer to see.

“That’s him.”

“Who’s he?” Mercer asked, correctly perceiving from my expression that I knew the bastard.

“Chief Inspector Choi of the Itaewon Police Precinct. He was in charge of the Lee murder investigation. He was the first one at the murder scene, and he teamed up with Chief Michael Bales, of CID, to break the case.”

Mercer and Kim began studying the photograph more earnestly.

I couldn’t resist adding, “He’s also one of the bastards who kicked the shit out of me.”

Carol said, “So what is this photo supposed to prove? Admittedly, he looks a little odd standing there, but so what?”

It was a good question. The mere fact that Choi was attentively watching the massacre unfold meant nothing by itself. Maybe he was just a cold-blooded bastard who found it entertaining. Nor was there anything compelling about the fact that the shooter I’d chased had glanced over in Choi’s direction before he dropped his weapon. The shooter could’ve been looking at any of two dozen other people. Maybe he was just working a crick out of the back of his neck.

I said, “Well, here’s the interesting part. When I was first arrested and, ah… interviewed, Choi claimed there was only one shooter, the one who got away. He claimed the police officer I chased down had not been involved in the shooting.”

Mercer was studying Choi’s photo. He said, “He had to know about your shooter. Hell, he’s only about a hundred feet from the guy. He probably heard the expended rounds hitting the cement, much less the bullets going off.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So why was he trying to make a case against me for murdering a guy he knew was a shooter? Hell, the dead cop was from his precinct. He knew him on sight.”

Mercer, who had a pretty quick mind, said, “Because he’s trying to cover something up. Because he’s connected to the shooters and he didn’t want the connection revealed.”

“Okay, good. Broaden the scenario. Choi’s the chief inspector in the Itaewon precinct. Lee was murdered inside his precinct and Choi’s one of the two head investigators. He and his brother-in-law, Bales, tie all the ribbons and bows to make it look like Whitehall did it. Remember Keith Merritt, the guy who’s in a coma? Well, the attempt on his life was made inside the Itaewon precinct, and Choi and his boys are the ones who investigated and claimed they couldn’t find any witnesses. I mean, Merritt was tossed from a very busy street corner. Surely somebody saw it. Finally, the one shooter we know about was a cop from that same precinct house. I’d be willing to bet the other one was, too.”

From the look on her face, even Carol was getting it.

I said, “You know the other thing that’s really screwy?”

“What’s that?” Mercer asked.

“The cop I chased down, when he thought I had him cornered, he stuffed his pistol inside his mouth and blew off the back of his head. That’s pretty extreme behavior, isn’t it? What kind of a guy would do that?”

Mercer nodded. “A North Korean.”

Remember when I mentioned that North Korean submarine that got grounded a couple of years back? What happened was, once the sub was grounded, the entire crew of fifteen sailors and some ten or so commandos all evacuated and made it to shore. The sailors submissively lined up in single file, then the commandos walked down the line and shot each of them in the head. Then the commandos split up and tried to escape back to North Korea, since they knew their mission, whatever it was, had been bungled and compromised. What ensued was a wild few weeks while the entire ROK Army tried to hunt them down and kill them. Several of the North Koreans put up a good fight and killed a number of South Korean soldiers. The funny thing was, not one North Korean commando was captured. One or two disappeared, but the others either died fighting or killed themselves.

In fact, there’s a long and ghastly history of North Korean agents and saboteurs killing themselves to avoid capture and interrogation. That’s the frightening thing about North Korea. It’s not a nation. It’s the world’s biggest cult, bigger than that Jones group, or that one in Africa, or that one in Waco, where everybody’s willing to do suicidal things for the cause.

Buzz Mercer was rocking back and forth in his chair as he considered the possibilities. For him, the CIA guy in charge of the whole peninsula, it was a disaster. I’d spent the past day pondering it in its full glory, but I was still bowled over.

Here’s what I guessed: Choi and at least some of the coppers in the precinct were North Korean operatives. And what a fantastic place to spy from. Itaewon is the one place in South Korea where nearly every American soldier and foreign tourist comes to visit. It’s the foreigner’s shopping mecca, and it’s also the exotic fleshpot that caters to the lustful yens of non-Koreans. It’s right outside the main gate of the headquarters that commands the entire Korean-American alliance, the headquarters where war plans are drawn up, where every bit of intelligence collected against the North Koreans is brought for scrutiny, where the assessments of the alliance’s military strengths and weaknesses are analyzed and reanalyzed in the never-ending way that soldiers do.

Say, for example, Major John Smith from the intelligence center decides to sneak away from his wife one night for a bit of secretive muff-diving. Choi and his boys have spotters outside the brothels: When Smith has sated his loins and paid his bill, they pick him up and take him to the station for a little grilling. They can ruin his career and bust up his family, or they can trade favors.

Or maybe it’s Congressman Smith who has come to Korea for a little official fact-finding tour, and some harmless, wanton fun on the side. Or maybe it’s Sergeant Smith, the clerk for Colonel Jones, the operations officer in charge of war planning. The possibilities are both endless and boggling.

And the blackmail didn’t have to be limited to the sex trade. Maybe it’s an arrest for shoplifting. Maybe it’s blackmarketing. Maybe it’s a drunken brawl. Every crime committed by an American inside Itaewon would be reported immediately to the Itaewon station. Hell, the target doesn’t even have to commit a crime. Maybe it’s just something Choi and his boys trump up to entrap some particularly juicy target, rather than the random targets of opportunity who walk willy-nilly through their precinct doors every day.

Obviously such an opportunity presented itself in the person of Thomas Whitehall, who was renting an apartment so he could have a private enclave to meet his male lover, who just happened to be the son of the South Korean defense minister.

Mercer’s eyes suddenly lost their normally granular look and became wide and intense.

I said, “Think about it. Choi sees an opportunity that’s much juicier than running blackmail schemes and collecting intelligence. He sees a chance to burn down the entire alliance. He ignites the fire by murdering Lee and framing an American officer. He tosses on a thousand-gallon can of high-octane gasoline by massacring a bunch of Americans right outside the gates of Yongsan Garrison, right in front of twenty news cameras. He even shoots some of the reporters, just to spur their outrage.”

Carol finally got it. She dropped her valise and said, “Oh my God.”

Then I admitted, “Of course, I’m just surmising. I mean, there’s maybe two or three other possible explanations. And believe me, I’ve tried to think them all through. But see if you can conceive of another that fits every angle.”

“You really believe this?” Mercer asked. “I mean, you’re not just blowing up some big conspiracy balloon to get your client off?”

“Hey, I’m a lawyer. Of course I am.”