Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 34

At 7:00 A.M., I sat in Mercer’s office as Carol dialed the Itaewon precinct station. Her phone was connected to a speaker so Mercer and I and a few other agents could overhear the conversation. Carol identified herself as Moon Song Johnson and asked to speak directly with Chief Inspector Choi.

He came on and she chattered away, sounding like a scatterbrained Korean-American housewife, saying she was married to a very important American Army colonel on post, saying she’d met Michael Bales and his wife, Choi’s sister, through local acquaintances, and that Bales had once told her that if she ever had any problems in Itaewon, well, then she should feel free to call his brother-in-law.

Well, she did have a problem, she complained. A big problem. She’d been in Itaewon shopping the day before when some louse cut the straps on her purse and ran off with it. For the next five minutes Choi asked her the standard whens, wheres, and hows; from the sound of it, checking the blocks from a standard police questionnaire.

Then Carol started crying. She moaned for a while about all the vitally important things inside her purse, from her military ID to her passport, and how ruined her life would be if she didn’t get them back. Choi kept assuring her he’d do his best. He insisted he had a strong grip on his precinct. It was all a matter of intelligence, he told her, and he had very good intelligence. He’d put out word to the local merchants and he’d know if the thief tried to use her charge cards or identification. Carol asked him if maybe it was an American who might’ve stolen it, since, after all, her wonderful husband notwithstanding, Americans are such uncultivated, lawless bastards. Choi admitted that Americans are certainly a depraved and crooked race, but said he doubted they’d commit such a crime off base, because the punishment for getting caught would be so much worse than being caught on base. Should she call the Post Exchange and Commissary to warn them?, Carol asked. Yes, he assured her. Call and warn them. Take every precaution. Ask them to watch for your ID and credit cards. She asked if he thought the criminal would escape his net. No, he assured her, he didn’t think the criminal would escape. It might take time, but if the thief used anything from her purse, then Choi’s many sources would notify him.

Carol thanked him and asked if she should check with Bales on the progress. Yes, please, Choi politely replied, check with Michael.

My estimation of Carol Kim increased. In a seven-minute conversation, she’d pried all the right words out of Choi’s lips. One of the men leaning against the walls immediately slipped the tape out of the recorder and dashed off with it.

Next, a Korean in civilian clothes was ushered in. He seemed to know everybody in the office except me, so Mercer introduced us. His name was Kim-something-something, like nearly every third Korean you meet. He was Mercer’s counterpart in the KCIA, the Korean version of our Agency, only there’re some fairly gaping differences, since the KCIA isn’t hamstrung by restrictions concerning domestic operations, nor is it held back by millions of human rights regulations. For example, if the KCIA wants to kidnap you and bust your kneecaps to get answers, it can do that.

Kim had a stack of dossiers tucked under his arm. He looked wrinkled and disheveled as though he’d been pulled out of bed by a frantic phone call. Which he had. By Buzz Mercer.

The files under his arm were the personnel dossiers of the 110 cops assigned to the Itaewon precinct. He set them down on Mercer’s desk, dividing them into two neat stacks – one big, containing about eighty or ninety folders; the second smaller, containing twenty to thirty files.

He looked at Mercer. “We ran these through COMESPRO. This is how it came out.”

His English was flawless. There was not even a hint of an accent, which was not uncommon for those Koreans selected for important jobs where they were supposed to interface with Americans fairly frequently. The Koreans choose folks who sound just like Americans, gnarled idioms and all. They do this not just because they’re hospitable folks, which they are, but because Americans tend to be much more loose-lipped when they’re around folks who sound just like them. This is an advantage in intelligence work particularly.

Anyway, Mercer nodded that he understood what Kim was talking about, which he most likely did, because he’d probably been through this a hundred times before. I, on the other hand, had nary a clue what Mr. Kim was talking about. I coughed once or twice to get his attention.

“Excuse me,” I finally said, “what in the hell is this COMESPRO? Could you tell me what you’re talking about?”

Kim looked over at Mercer, who nodded, which I guess was the cue it was okay to let me in on this little secret. He gave me a smug smile and I was instantly reminded of my sixth-grade teacher, an arrogant schmuck who spent his life surrounded by twelve-year-olds and therefore thought he was the world’s smartest guy. Spooks often remind me of him, regardless of their nationality. Since they know all kinds of dark, fluttery things us normal folks don’t, they have this slightly stuck-up, superior attitude. It’s one of those knowledge-is-power things, I guess.

Anyway, he said, “Okay, Major. As you’re probably aware, we have a gigantic spy problem here in South Korea. In the U.S., you generally have two kinds of spies. You have foreign nationals. They enter with foreign passports and then set up business. Most often they operate out of embassies, or the UN headquarters in New York, or some other international institution that gives them a cover. They’re fairly easy for your FBI to target and watch. Then you have the occasional citizen who betrays your country – in the case of American traitors, most often for money. Those are the type who’re considerably more difficult to target.”

I couldn’t resist. “You mean like that Korean-American analyst who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency who was on your payroll?”

“Of course, he wasn’t working for us,” Kim said, maintaining his perfect smile. “But somebody like him would fit a spy’s profile. He had ethnic sympathy toward South Korea. He had money difficulties. He had sums of money entering his bank accounts that he couldn’t legally account for. I can certainly see where your counterintelligence services would suspect he was one of ours.”

Then his smile got a little wider. “Of course, he wasn’t. We’d never spy on our closest ally.”

He and Mercer chuckled merrily at this, like this was all part of the game. Their game.

“Anyway,” Kim turned back to me. “Our problems are much more severe. Northerners and southerners, we’re all Koreans. We speak the same language, look alike, dress alike, share the same culture. Millions of southerners were either refugees or descendants of refugees who fled North Korea when the Korean War broke out. Many southerners have families in North Korea. They’re vulnerable to all kinds of entrapments. Then there are the infiltrators. For fifty years they’ve been coming in, some by submarine, some simply sneaking across the DMZ. Lately, though, the North Koreans have gotten more sophisticated.”

“Like how?” I asked.

“Well, let’s take your friend Choi.”

“Okay, let’s take Choi.”

“According to our records, Choi Lee Min was born in the city of Chicago in the United States, the son of two South Koreans who immigrated in the year 1953. His parents were killed in a car accident in 1970, leaving him an orphan. He returned to Korea when he was seventeen, which is not uncommon. Many Korean expatriates have difficulties assimilating in their new countries, and eventually return. He dropped his American citizenship, attended his final two years of high school here in Seoul, got excellent scores on the national exams, and went to Seoul National University. This is our Harvard. At SNU he finished near the top of his class and could have fulfilled any dream when he graduated. Oddly enough, he chose to take the police exam. Believe me, that had to be a first for an SNU graduate. He could’ve waltzed into the executive ranks of Hyundai, or Daewoo, or any prestigious chaebol.”

“So he used to be an American citizen?” I asked.

Kim shrugged. “Maybe he was. As I mentioned, the North Koreans have gotten very cagey. They know we run rigorous background checks on any citizen being considered for a sensitive position, so they’ve become much more creative at fabricating foolproof legends. Maybe Choi’s parents were North Korean sleepers they planted in Chicago forty years ago. Or maybe Choi never set foot in Chicago.”

“He sure as hell seemed like he’d spent some time in America to me.”

Kim glanced at Mercer again, and Mercer nodded that it was okay to let me in on another little secret, too.

“We suspect the North Koreans have a secret camp for molding agents to appear to be Korean-Americans. The candidates enter this camp as babies and never set foot out of it afterward, until they take up duties as agents. They eat American food, are taught in replicated American classrooms, even watch American TV on satellite cable. An American author named DeMille wrote a novel called The Charm School, a fictional account of such a camp in the Soviet Union. We believe the North Koreans actually have such a place.”

“And you think Choi might be a graduate?”

Mercer said, “Look, Drummond, we’re not even sure the place exists. Over the years, we’ve heard rumors from a couple of high-level defectors. Supposedly it’s staffed by some of the American POWs who were never returned after the war ended. Of course, some of these damned defectors’ll tell you any goddamned thing. Who knows?”

I said, “Okay, so Choi looks like a guy who reverse-immigrated back to Korea when he was seventeen. What about his sister, Bales’s wife?”

Kim scratched his head. “What sister?”

I said, “Chief Warrant Officer Michael Bales is the CID officer who worked the Whitehall case with Choi. He’s supposed to be married to Choi’s sister.”

Kim lifted up a folder and glanced through it, searching for something. He said, “We have no record of a sister.”

“So who’s Bales’s wife?”

Mercer said, “We’ll do some checking.”

Then I said, “So what’s with this screening you mentioned?”

Kim said, “Our biggest problem is that before 1945 we were under Japanese rule and were administered by Japanese civil servants. In the last days of the Second World War, they destroyed their files, effectively eradicating our historical record of citizenry. Then between 1950 and 1953, thousands of our villages and cities were destroyed, and with them, even many of our municipal and regional records were lost. Millions of people lost their homes. There were massive internal migrations and millions of northerners fleeing south. The entire Korean race was on the move. It was like our country was stirred in a huge mixing bowl.”

Mercer said, “That’s why it’s so damned hard to figure out who’s workin’ for who down here.”

Kim nodded that this was so. “About three years ago, we developed a computer program to help us sift through large populations. We call it the Communist Screening Program, or COMESPRO. Admittedly not a very elegant name, but it works. The program employs special profiles to tell us who we might want to examine more closely, much like the one your immigration service employs to screen for likely drug mules at your customs points. For example, if we can’t trace a citizen’s family back three generations, it sends up a flag. If the citizen immigrated from a third country, that’s another flag.”

I said, “Then wouldn’t Choi have popped up on your program?”

“Yes, except we’ve only used it to screen our armed forces and intelligence services, some of our more sensitive ministries, and our foreign service. We frankly hadn’t considered using it on our police forces. They’re not involved in national security, so why should we?”

I pointed at the stacks of folders. “Is that what happened when you screened everybody who works at the Itaewon station?”

He pointed at the larger stack. “These were the ones COMESPRO screened out.” Then he pointed at the smaller stack. “These are the ones we would call suspect profiles. There are twenty-two in all.”

So I said, “Then you could have a big nest of spies in the precinct house?”

Kim smiled condescendingly. “I don’t want to sound dubious, Major, but a fifth of all populations we screen come up as suspects. There’s nothing unusual about these numbers. A lot of these aren’t going to pan out… probably none. Besides, we’ve never had anything like that before. Spies and agents operate in singles. They may be part of a larger cell, perhaps under a single controller, but they’re quarantined from one another. It’s good spycraft. If one gets caught, he can’t compromise the others, because he doesn’t know who they are. The controller usually has an alert system in place in the event one of his people is picked up, and a well-planned escape route he uses at the first sign of trouble.”

“So you think I’m barking up the wrong tree?”

“Frankly, it’s wildly implausible. You have a client you want to vindicate. Your imagination is in overdrive.”

I looked over at Mercer. “What about you?”

Buzz looked up at his counterpart. “There’s something here, Kim. Might not be as big and dramatic as Drummond thinks, but it’s something.”

Kim gave us both a skeptical shrug. I wondered what he really thought. The thing is, the South Koreans would find it awfully shameful if it turned out one of their police stations was riddled with North Korean termites. Of course, maybe this was my “ overdrive” imagination at work again.

Anyway, Mercer looked at his KCIA ally and said, “Look, we’re gonna try a little bait-and-flush here. What I need your guys to do is lock down the escape hatches.” He handed Kim a photograph of Michael Bales that had been retrieved from Bales’s personnel file earlier that morning.

“This is Michael Bales,” Mercer continued. “If he tries to take a plane or ship out of Korea, I want him stopped. He’s a smart boy. He’s also a trained cop. He might be wearing a disguise and he might have a false passport, so have your guys alter this photo to show what he’d look like with a beard or mustache, or dressed as a woman, or with glasses and his hair dyed blond. I know all us White folks look alike to you Koreans, so make sure you distribute composites of what he’d look like if he took precautions. This is a no-fuck-it-up, Kim. Don’t let me down.”

Kim nodded. “No problem.” He picked up his stacks of folders and prepared to leave.

Mercer said, “One other thing. Can your people put a watch on Choi?”

Kim smiled graciously. “Consider it done, Buzz.”

“Good. If we break this thing, I’ll make sure my boss back in Langley tells your boss here you were the man who broke it. I was mystified by some funny things going on, so I went to you for help, and you figured it all out.”

Kim smiled even more broadly. “That would be very kind of you, Buzz.”

Then the two of them shook hands and Kim left. I had to give Mercer credit. As embarrassing as it would be for the Koreans to discover this spy ring working right under their noses, it would be doubly humiliating if the credit went to the Americans. This way, the Koreans could save some face. And this way, Kim had a strong personal incentive to help us in every way he could.