Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 37

The look on Eddie’s face when he saw Allie enter Carruthers’s office made it worth the trip. He got to his feet like a good boy when the introductions were made, but for once the smooth bastard was running a little short of charismatic polish.

Eddie’s shorter than I am, and Allie’s taller than me, so she positively loomed over him. He stared up at her in shock. Also, Eddie’s one of those guys who spends a lot of time in the gym buffing up for the opposite sex, but Allie nearly forced him to his knees when they shook hands. She made it seem effortless, but you could literally hear the knuckles and bones in Eddie’s hand cracking. He had tears in his eyes when she let go.

I actually caught Eddie wiping his hands after he shook with her, and that really pissed me off. Allie saw it, too, and the look on her face reminded me of the way she’d glanced at me the first time I’d met her, that first night in Katherine’s hotel room. I can’t say I was real proud of that.

As for Carruthers, he never blinked an eye. He treated Allie respectfully, like the smart, upright, hardworking attorney she was. My estimation of him bounced up a few more notches.

He gruffly told us to have seats. He spent a moment overviewing the situation, noting that the trial was set to convene in sixteen hours and that some four hundred international journalists were now in country. They were lounging around every bar in Seoul, eagerly waiting to broadcast this intriguing and momentous trial to every breakfast table and living room in the world. He noted that all the appropriate preparations had been made. A special detachment of MPs had been flown over from the States to provide security. Army officers from peacekeeping and military assistance outposts had been plucked from the remotest corners of the globe in hopes of collecting a large enough assemblage of potential board members who weren’t tainted by the blizzard of publicity that attended this case. He noted the case was being heralded as the trial of the century, bigger than O.J.’s even, because so much seemed to weigh on the outcome; because some ghastly crimes had been committed; because the fate of an entire alliance stood on the brink; because important laws stood to be changed.

Eddie squirmed in his seat, because what Carruthers was not too faintly intimating was that a postponement at this stage was unthinkable.

Then Carruthers searched each of our faces and concluded, “All that notwithstanding, Major Golden has asked for a postponement.”

Katherine immediately barked, “On what grounds?”

Eddie said, “On the grounds that two key prosecution witnesses have mysteriously disappeared.”

Katherine shook her head like he had to be kidding. “I don’t get it. Two police officers have disappeared? I mean, please.”

Eddie shot forward in his seat. “I’m sure it’s just some silly mix-up. And I’m sure they’ll turn up within the next few days. All I’m asking for is an extension till Tuesday to get this straightened out.”

Katherine said, “And if they haven’t turned up by Tuesday?”

“Then I’ll go with what I’ve got.”

“I don’t see why you can’t go with you’ve got now.”

“Because the state’s case has been adversely affected by unforeseen circumstances. They were the two lead investigators, for God’s sake.”

“That’s your problem,” Katherine shot back. “You’re responsible for the accountability of your witnesses. I can’t help it if you misplaced them.”

I was enjoying this immensely. It wasn’t often that Eddie had to operate from a disadvantage. Come to think of it, I’d never even seen him at the fringe of anything remotely discomforting. Till now. He was actually sweating.

But Carruthers barked, “Stop the fencing. This isn’t the time to play lawyer games. Miss Carlson, can you live with the extension?”

Katherine coldly said, “Two days ago, after fifteen protesters were brutally slaughtered, I requested a postponement. Golden argued that a full-blown massacre was too insignificant.”

“I’m aware of that,” Carruthers said, which he surely was, since he ultimately was the one who made the decision not to reschedule. “But he didn’t argue that it was insignificant. He argued it was irrelevant. Remember the distinction.”

“All right,” Katherine said, inching forward in her own seat. “I’ll talk relevance. I’ve got an innocent client who’s already spent nearly two weeks in a hellhole the Koreans call a prison. He’s been beaten, mentally abused, isolated, fed only water and rice. The decision to put him there was made by our government. I don’t see why he should be subjected to another day of torture because the prosecutor can’t produce his witnesses.”

Eddie defiantly mumbled, “He won’t be hurt by another few days.”

Carruthers was starting to grind his teeth impatiently. His voice got real prickly. “Miss Carlson, I asked whether a postponement would create significant problems for your defense. Not your client, your defense.”

This was the moment when I decided to intervene. “Your Honor, could I have a private moment with my co-counsels?” I asked.

Katherine gave me a mystified look.

Eddie gave me a hopeful, pleading look.

Carruthers nodded. “The conference room is down the hallway to the left. Five minutes?”

Ordinarily, if you put three lawyers together in a room, five days wouldn’t be enough. But I said, “Five minutes would be fine.”

Then Katherine, Allie, and I filed out the door and down the hall. The moment the door closed, Katherine spun and faced me.

“What the hell’s this about?”

“We might want to think this through.”

“I have,” Katherine said, quite firmly. “That little bastard hasn’t given us a single break. Screw him.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“And there’s some other way?”

I backed away and leaned against the wall. My eyes roamed across both their faces. “Say we start tomorrow morning. How sure are we we’ll win?”

They were both attorneys and the answer to that was obvious.

Allie ran a hand through her spiky hair. “No trial’s ever a sure thing.”

And I calmly responded, “The first rule of law.”

Allie said, “He’ll have to reconstruct. He’ll have to use substitutes. There’s about ten other Korean police officers on his witness list and he has the two military policemen who first went to the scene. He has the pathologist and the lock specialist. They can fill in a lot of the gaps.”

And Katherine said, “And if we give him till Tuesday, he’ll use every minute to rebuild his case around those other witnesses. If we force him into court tomorrow, he’ll be disorganized and behind the curve.”

I rubbed my chin. “Yeah, that’s true.”

Katherine was now looking at me curiously. “But…?”

“Look, nobody wants to cream Eddie worse than me. I’ve got two of his damn baseball bats in my closet.”

“But…?” Katherine asked again.

“But I know Eddie. He might look like a mess today, but he won’t by tomorrow. Believe me. We don’t call him Fast Eddie for nothing. An ego like his won’t stay down long. In fact, when he comes to his senses and realizes he’s got two dirty cops on his hands, he’ll recognize his case is now less vulnerable.”

Allie said, “He’d have to be pretty good to pull that off.”

“Allie, he’s not just pretty good, he’s the best the Army’s got.”

She nodded.

Then I said, “But what if we could get the murder, rape, and necrophilia charges thrown out before the trial?”

“That’s a silly question,” Katherine said. Then she tilted her head sideways. “How?”

“Two days will buy us time to look into Choi’s and Bales’s activities. We know they’re rotten. What if we can prove that?”

Katherine was chewing on her lip. She was the lead counsel, so ultimately this was her decision. She stared at me hard. You could almost see her wheels spinning with the possibilities.

“Drummond, no bluster. Can you come up with something? And I mean before trial.”

“I hope I can. No guarantees.”

There was a long, tense, awkward moment. All this was easy for me to say, but I didn’t want to be in Katherine’s shoes. Despite what I’d argued, if we went to trial in the morning, Eddie might be so tipsy he’d never recover. On the other hand, the opening day would mostly be spent on voir dire, and maybe opening statements. Then Eddie would have Saturday and Sunday to replan his case. Really, we weren’t giving him much.

On the other hand, this was Fast Eddie we were talking about, and what would be one day for anybody else would be like two weeks for him. And what if I couldn’t dig up anything more on Bales and Choi? What if all they’d left behind was a cloud of dust?

Katherine looked at Allie and she was nodding her head – reluctantly, but she was nodding.

Then Katherine nodded, too. She didn’t look pleased, or confident, or satisfied, but her head was bobbing.

We trooped back into the judge’s office two minutes ahead of schedule. Eddie was slumped down in his chair, prepared for the worst. We all knew that Carruthers didn’t need it, but he badly wanted Katherine’s assent to the postponement. Otherwise she’d run to the press and kick up holy hell – and an army of her journalist friends had flown over here, and Korea is not exactly a tourist haven, and they were all ready for the show to begin. Grumpy journalists are everybody’s worst nightmare.

It just would be much neater for all concerned if she went along and agreed.

Katherine sat in her chair and gave Eddie a withering look.

“Well?” Carruthers asked.

“Okay, Your Honor.”

“Okay?” Eddie asked, flabbergasted. I doubted if he ever once in his entire legal career had cut anybody an inch of slack. He’s the kind of guy who probably went to the executions of the men he helped convict. Eddie’s that way. Believe me.

Katherine said, “That’s what I said, Golden. You’re getting your two days.”

I could see that Eddie wanted almost more than anything to say something sharp and nasty back, just to balance the ledger, except Katherine had a grip on his short hairs, so discretion stilled his tongue.

Carruthers said, “All right then, Major, you’ve got until 0800 hours Tuesday to locate your witnesses. Miss Carlson, the court thanks you for your equanimity.”

Then we all got up and left. When we got outside, Katherine loitered by the door and asked Allie to go ahead. We gave her a minute to get beyond earshot.

Then Katherine said, “What the hell have you got up your sleeve?”

I held up my hands. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t try to run a scam on me, Drummond. I know you.”

“Me? A scam?”

Her stare hardened. “You do have something going, don’t you? The only reason I agreed to this was because I assume you’ve got something. Some lead, something.”

I shook my head. “Actually, no. I don’t have a thing.”

Katherine’s big green eyes suddenly got bigger. “Look, Drummond, I just made the biggest decision of my legal career because of you. The biggest decision of my life. You have no idea how important this is to me.”

“Why’d you ask for me to be your co-counsel?” I asked.

“Honestly?”

“No, lie and say it’s because I’m so damned good-looking and sexy.”

She sort of half smiled. “It wasn’t that, believe me.”

“See,” I said. “You’ve got your secrets and I’ve got mine.”

Her half smile disappeared. She gave me a very steady look. “Let me make this clear. I just gave that son of a bitch two more days. I let you talk me into that.”

I nodded.

She continued. “That means you’ve got two days to come up with something. You’ve got two days to give me something that proves Thomas Whitehall didn’t murder and rape Lee. If you fail to do that, I’ll find some way to ruin the rest of your life. You won’t be able to hide from me. I’ll track you down and make your life miserable. Is that clear?”

I looked carefully into her eyes, and there was not the slightest doubt in my mind she meant every word of it. Without another word she walked away and left me standing on the hot cement, wondering what in the hell I should do next. Not that I was afraid of her or anything, but I suddenly felt desperate to come up with something. Something quick, too, because when I claimed I wasn’t afraid of her, I might’ve been exaggerating a little bit… or a lot.

I went back to Mercer’s office. He was seated behind his desk with the usual cup of coffee attached to his lips. As much coffee as that man drank, he probably had brown liquid flowing through his veins. If you took his java away, he’d probably deflate like a big balloon with a hole in it.

He looked astoundingly unhappy.

I said, “Hey, boss, what’s happening?”

That “boss” thing was my sly way of intimating I wanted to do some more work for him.

He didn’t seem to catch it. He grumbled something about how Choi and Bales seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Actually, they had disappeared in Seoul, which ain’t exactly thin air, if you ask me. It’s a sprawling metropolis with some fifteen million people and at least that many rabbit warrens and pigeonholes they could’ve run into. They might not even be in Seoul anymore. Hell, they might not be within a thousand miles of Korea.

I said, “Choi’s probably got a million places to hide.”

Mercer took another sip of coffee. He looked wrung out, and it wasn’t hard to guess he’d gotten reamed pretty good for letting Bales slip away. He could at least pin the Choi screwup on Kim and the KCIA, but that’s like saying you’re only responsible for sinking the lower decks of the Titanic; some other guy let the upper decks slip under the waves.

The way spooks like to handle these things is to catch the spies. Then they like to vigorously interrogate them and gauge how much damage was done, and where, and how. Otherwise you have to assume the worst, and respond accordingly. The worst in this case was hugely ugly. The entire defense plan for South Korea might’ve been compromised and therefore needed to be rewritten. Thousands of units might have to be moved, minefields relocated, port security plans rebuilt, etcetera, etcetera. Millions of men and women would have to be retrained to execute a new plan. It could take years and many billions of dollars.

Still, that left the larger question of who Bales and Choi might’ve blackmailed and turned. Hundreds of people worked in sensitive jobs in the huge alliance headquarters. Choi had been in business nearly twenty years, and even if he’d only cherry-picked one sucker every year, that left a big army of informants. And just because Choi had hightailed it didn’t mean his moles were out of business. The plumbers couldn’t do their work if they didn’t know where the leaks were.

Mercer looked like he’d had all this explained to him in painful detail by somebody with a real loud, brassy voice. I felt sorry for him.

No, actually that’s not true. I’d brought him the breakthrough and he’d let the rats slip from his grasp. He should’ve arrested Bales and Choi right away. Maybe he should’ve had thirty cars tail Bales to the airport, or put a man in Bales’s trunk. He took a gamble and he lost.

Anyway, I said, “Has anybody figured out what happened?”

He shrugged. “What we guess was there was another car and some accomplices waiting for Bales in the tunnel. We haven’t got a clue who the guy was who drove his car out of the tunnel. He didn’t have any ID, but he obviously worked for Choi. I guess that was plan B. As for Choi, he somehow figured he was being followed. After Bales called him, he must’ve taken precautions. Maybe he had some of his own people tail him and they detected the KCIA guys.”

“He didn’t waste a minute. He’s really good,” I remarked, which was as revoltingly obvious as anything I’d ever muttered in my life.

“Yeah,” Mercer said, looking even more glum.

I hooked my cane on the front of his desk and fell into a chair. “You’ve got people going through their offices and homes?”

“Yeah.”

“What about Bales’s wife?”

“Carol arrested her at the luncheon. That’s the only fuckin’ thing that went right.”

“Where’s she now?”

“The KCIA’s got her.”

“What? You turned her over?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?” I asked. “You arrested her on a military base. She’s a military wife. You have jurisdiction.”

His eyes shifted a little, like this wasn’t something he was particularly proud to admit. “ ’Cause the KCIA has a bit more latitude than we do.”

That was a nice way of saying that the KCIA could rip her fingernails out and flood her veins with truth serums.

I wasn’t passing any judgments, though. I might’ve done the same thing if I were in his shoes. Hell, I might’ve done the same thing if I was in my shoes. Lots of innocent folks had been murdered, and Bales’s wife was probably somehow connected to it.

“Besides,” he continued, “they know how to handle North Korean stooges better than we do.”

“Is there some trick to that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Ah, yeah. They’re a breed apart. Know how Carol took her down?”

“How?”

“Drugged her tea. The second she saw her getting drowsy, she slipped up behind her and jammed a steel plate in her mouth so she couldn’t bite down, while two other agents rushed over, threw ropes around her body, and pinned her in place.”

“Sounds pretty extreme.”

“There’s a reason for it. Lots of these North Koreans have those poison pellets inside a tooth. No shit. Remember that KAL plane that got a bomb planted on it by a North Korean couple? The KCIA caught them, but the guy reached up, twisted a molar, and plunk! The bastard was dead before he hit the floor.”

“Think the KCIA’ll get her to talk?”

“Depends how tough she is. Usually they start getting results within seventy-two hours.”

“That’s too long, though, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Choi and Bales will assume she’s been taken. They’ll hide someplace she can’t compromise. They’ll alter their plans.”

I rubbed my chin and gave him a full dose of the look people say makes me look just like a Lebanese rug merchant. “So, you got any ideas?”

He shrugged. “Maybe Bales’s wife will tell us something helpful. Maybe we’ll find something searching through their belongings.”

“You don’t sound hopeful.”

“I’m not. These guys were trained agents.”

“Choi maybe was. Bales wasn’t.”

He looked over his coffee mug. “You got something you wanna share?”

I kept rubbing my chin. “I thought maybe if I joined in the search, I might catch something you’ll miss.”

Mercer was no dummy. “You mean you’d like to go through their shit and see if you can find something to get Whitehall off.”

I smiled. “I suppose if I came upon something that helped my client, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. He’d obviously had a hell of a day. “Look, Drummond, you wanna go through their crap, just say so. I owe you, and I always pay my debts. Feel free.”

“Could you loan me Carol Kim?”

“Think I’d let you go through their shit without somebody looking over your shoulder? Take her.”

He had a good point. I started to get up.

“One other thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Remember when Bales called Choi?”

“Of course.”

“Think back. Remember what he said just before they talked about that plan B thing?”

“He wanted to know about his wife?”

“Nah, after that.”

“I don’t remember anything after that,” I admitted.

“Bales asked him about phase 3.”

“What in the hell’s phase 3?”

Mercer looked sadder than any man I ever saw. “That’s what we’d like to know.”