Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 41

Here’s how the rest of the morning went. A number of Agency and military police cars raced around the base for hours trying to locate and collect the suspects Carol and I had immediately identified to Mercer.

Three suspects, it quickly turned out, had been reassigned out of Korea, so they weren’t in imminent danger, although Mercer still took the precaution of sending messages to their new commands to have them taken into protective custody until everything got sorted out. He’d made enough mistakes. He wasn’t taking chances.

A fourth suspect was on leave somewhere in Korea. Since we couldn’t find him, there was no particular reason to expect the North Koreans could, either. An all-points bulletin was sent through American and Korean channels to apprehend him on sight.

Suspects five through eight were picked up without incident, including Piranha Lips, who was literally dragged out of his office with two members of his legal staff watching. What I would’ve given to observe that glorious moment.

The ninth suspect, the protocol officer, was the unlucky one. He was found alone at his kitchen table with a big wound in his head dribbling cranial fluid all over his breakfast.

Nobody had a clue how it happened. Nobody saw anybody enter his quarters. Nobody heard the sound of a shot. Probably the gun was silenced. Probably the assassin was a pro. The captain’s skin was still warm and the blood was still moist, so the MPs who broke into his quarters guessed he’d been executed no more than an hour to thirty minutes before they arrived.

It was ten o’clock in the morning and I was having all this pointedly explained to me by Buzz Mercer himself. I would describe his demeanor as partly pleased, since he was arresting a bunch of suspected traitors, and thus was recouping some of the prior day’s humiliations. The other, much larger part of him, was annoyed, since I’d cued the North Koreans that we were on to them, making an already chaotic situation even more snarled.

The two other guys who were having this explained to them were General Spears and Brandewaite, who were seated just to my left. And if Buzz Mercer looked agitated, Spears seemed deathly worried, while Brandewaite looked ready to leap off a cliff. I wished he would.

“Jesus Christ, what a disaster,” he kept mumbling over and over.

Mercer was saying, “Of course, at this stage we don’t know how bad it is. Let me remind you, the eight men we have in custody, or are still trying to apprehend, are only suspects. We’re bringing them in for their own protection. And for questioning, of course.”

Brandewaite sniffed once or twice. “And when will we know more?”

“Can’t really say,” Mercer told him.

He said it in a breezy, deflective manner that gave me the impression there was no love lost between the two men. No surprise there, I thought. Brandewaite was the quintessential immaculately coifed, oily, narcissistic man of the nineties. Mercer was more of a crew-cutted, austere, meat-and-potatoes throwback to the fifties. Spies and diplomats; if you threw them both in a blender, you’d get something poisonous.

For my part, I was trying to blend into the woodwork, because the room was filled with powerful men who had no particular reason to think highly of me right at that moment.

Spears’s eyes kept glancing over from beneath those eaglelike, fierce brows. I wondered what he was thinking. On the other hand, maybe I didn’t want to know.

Mercer went on. “Anyway, right now we’re busy collecting legal counsels for all of them.”

“Did they all ask for lawyers?” Spears asked.

“Nope. We automatically provide it. We don’t want any procedural shit to come back and bite us in the ass down the road.”

Brandewaite said, “How stupid. You’ll slow the whole thing down.” He looked spitefully at me. “Once the lawyers get there they’ll all clam up.”

Mercer impatiently said, “Look, you stick to what you know, and I’ll stick to what I know.”

Brandewaite pointed a manicured finger in his face. “Right now, Mercer, you’ve got a bunch of American military officers in custody and one dead body. Don’t lecture me. Get results and get them fast.”

They went back and forth like that for a while and I found myself wondering about the Navy captain who got shot in the head. Why him? I mean, whoever was eavesdropping out in that parking lot overheard Carol and me mention the name of every one of the suspects. Probably some weren’t going to pan out. There’d be perfectly good explanations why their names weren’t in Bales’s file, or why Choi dropped the charges. But I was pretty sure there’d be no good explanations for at least three or four others. They were simply caught in Choi’s web.

So why only the Navy captain? Carol had notified Mercer of our concerns at 5:20, and the MPs had burst into the captain’s quarters at 6:36, which meant he could have been murdered as early as 6:00. In other words, as soon as the North Koreans learned what we’d figured out, they dispatched an assassin to bump him off. Mack Janson wasn’t arrested till 8:30. Another suspect wasn’t picked up till 9:00.

Did that mean I was wrong? That the others weren’t guilty? That the captain was the only fish who ended up in Choi’s net? Or were the others just too hard for the North Koreans to get to? Or was there something more here?

As much as I didn’t want to emerge from the woodwork, I said, “Hey, Mr. Mercer, why do you think they knocked off this Navy captain?”

Mercer and Brandewaite were into each other’s faces, so it took him a second to tear his attention away. “What?”

“That Navy captain?”

“Elmore. Harold Elmore.”

“Yeah, right… Harold Elmore. Why do you think they popped him? I mean, if I’ve got this figured right, they had two or three hours to kill some more, right? Why’d they rush right over and clip Elmore? Why just him?”

Mercer’s lips curled inward. “Damned if I know. Of all the suspects on the list, Elmore is in unquestionably the least sensitive position.”

I said, “You knew him, right, General?”

Spears said, “Damned right I knew him. Harry was my protocol officer. I saw him every day. He briefed me every morning. We get lots of important visitors and Harry handled all of them. Before this morning I would’ve found this impossible to believe.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Harry was a damned good man. A Naval Academy grad, twenty-five years of good service, hardworking, honest, reliable.”

I gave him a respectful shrug. “Right, sir. And one night he went to a bar and had one drink too many. The next thing he knew he was driving home and there was a hard bump on his fender and a young mother was cartwheeling over the top of his car. Then he found himself in a foreign police station, being told he was gonna be charged with manslaughter and DUI, and he might be facing twenty years in a prison.”

Mercer said, “What was his access to plans and sensitive information?”

Spears looked puzzled. “He was cleared for Top Secret, but limited to whatever he needed to know. In Harry’s case it wasn’t much.”

I asked, “Did he sit in on briefings on war plans, or sensitive intelligence, that kind of thing?”

“Not routinely, no. Uh, actually, he might have sat in on some. Particularly if he assigned himself as the escort officer for some particularly important visitor.”

Brandewaite asked, “You mean, like a senator?”

“We don’t brief senators on war plans. Say the Secretary of Defense, or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They get over here a few times a year. Even the President was here last year.”

We fell quiet a moment.

Spears broke the silence. “Harry always handled the big ones himself. I never associated anything with that. I always thought Harry was just… well, taking responsibility for the tougher ones.”

That’s exactly what it was, I thought. Elmore’s guests were privy to the most sensitive knowledge. He could sit in the back of the room at the heftiest briefings and report back to Choi. He’d be the last person anyone would suspect because his position was so drab and perfunctory. He was the only person in the room who came as a coatholder, a petty, unimportant escort, the guy who was there to make sure the VIP got from this briefing to the next on time.

Was that why the North Koreans hooked him? Why they took him out?

I said, “Was there something he knew that made him special?”

Brandewaite said, “Maybe he was the only traitor. Maybe the others are innocent. Maybe that’s why they killed only him.”

As much as Spears, Mercer, and even I would’ve liked that to be true, Brandewaite was blowing smoke. I had this picture in my head of a policeman walking into a courtyard and coming upon Janson with his pants down, trying to remove the drawers from some poor little tyke. It was a sickening thought. Add that to Janson’s manipulations in the Whitehall case and Elmore definitely wasn’t the only one.

Mercer said, “Probably he was also useful for telling Choi when big VIPs were in town. Like some powerful senator or general. Elmore maybe even knew what their personal peccadillos were.”

Spears said, “Damn it, Buzz, we don’t run an escort service for the command’s guests.”

“I know that, General. What I mean is, some of these guys get here, and it’s a week away from Mama and the screaming kids, and they’re on the other side of the world, and ah hell, who’s gonna know if they run out and get a little Oriental nookie? I mean, who’d know, right? Well, Elmore and his guys would probably know. They talk to the VIP’s security guys. Maybe they provide him with the car and driver.”

I said, “I’ll bet that’s right. Maybe he was pimping targets for Choi to blackmail. Maybe the North Koreans eliminated him so he wouldn’t compromise somebody. Maybe they’re trying to protect some priceless asset. Maybe several.”

It was a fairly ugly thought, and you could see it register on everybody’s faces. But it did make chilling sense. If Elmore was trolling for Choi, he’d be able to identify others on Choi’s roll. That could justify an immediate execution. That could mark him for special consideration.

“Jesus,” Brandewaite muttered. “I hope to God this doesn’t get any bigger. This is sickening.”

Mercer, enjoying his discomfort, twisted it in. “Oh yeah, it’s gonna get bigger. I won’t be surprised if it reaches inside your embassy.”

The look Brandewaite gave him would’ve boiled cucumbers.

We talked for a few more desultory minutes, until it was obvious we weren’t making headway, and Spears and Brandewaite both had important phone calls to make to their respective bosses in Washington about the disaster unfolding around them. They got up and left.

Mercer went to get a fresh cup of coffee and this time he even brought me one. Either he was feeling sorry for me, or we were getting to be buddies.

Ah, how silly of me. He was CIA. He felt sorry for me, obviously.

“So what do you think, Drummond?” he asked. “They torched Elmore ’cause he knew too much?”

“No question of that,” I admitted.

“Hard to feel sympathy for the son of a bitch. He was betraying his own country, for God’s sakes. They spared him the anguish of getting caught.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I admitted, taking a sip.

He studied me over the lip of his cup. “You got enough to get Whitehall off now?”

I put my hand up in the air, palm down, and wiggled it back and forth. “How much will you allow me to enter into evidence?”

“Not a word. There’s reporters climbing all over the place. I’m putting a lid on this so tight folks’ll be suffocating.”

“Then I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on Whitehall.”

I yawned. Having not slept in about forty hours, I was exhausted. All the adrenaline rush of the past few hours had dribbled away and left me an empty hulk.

“Jesus,” Mercer finally muttered, “you look like crap. Go to bed.”

I gave him a grim smile. “You mean I’ve done enough damage today?”

“Damage? Drummond, you’re a walking earthquake. I can’t wait till this goddamn trial’s over and you get your overdestructive ass off my peninsula.”

I smiled and got up. “You think Bales and Choi are long gone?”

“Hell yeah. Maybe they climbed on some North Korean fishing trawler or submarine. Maybe they had a private plane stashed somewhere that flew them out under radar.”

“Too bad,” I said, thinking of what that would mean to Whitehall’s defense. Not to mention what it would mean to Katherine, who was expecting me to come up with the goods. If those goods were just getting settled into a hotel in Pyongyang, they were out of my reach.

“Yeah,” the spymaster said. “Very fuckin’ too bad.”