Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 43

It took three minutes to type the letter. All it said was “I, Major Sean Drummond, request to be recused from the case of Captain Thomas Whitehall.”

Nothing dramatic or elegant because, frankly, the law frowns on anything that smacks of passion or lavishness. I scrawled my signature at the bottom, and then called Imelda and had her send up one of her assistants to deliver it. The moment she was gone, I fell into bed.

It’s amazing how quickly I was out. You’d think I’d roil around on the sheets and agonize over my situation, but I was too exhausted. I was in a coma about thirty seconds after my head hit the pillow. And I slept like a log.

At least, until the phone rang. This was at 6:00 P.M., maybe seven hours after I went out. I lifted it up and heard the voice of Major General Clapper, the chief of the JAG Corps.

“Drummond, that you?” he asked.

“Hello, General, it’s me,” I replied, of course recognizing his voice.

“I just got word that you were recused.”

“Uh… yeah,” I mumbled, still hazy.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No, General. It’ll have to wait till I get back to Washington. That or we’ll have to talk on a secure line.”

“Okay, we’ll wait. When can you get back here?”

“As soon as you tell me to be there, although a day or two of grace would be sorely appreciated. I, uh, I got a little beat-up, and shot, too, and I haven’t gotten much sleep the past four or five days.”

He said, “Hell, it’s Friday anyway. Can you be out of there Sunday night?”

“I’ll make the reservation tonight.”

There was a long pause, then, “Sean?”

“Yes sir?”

“I got a long message about you from General Spears.”

This was the last thing I needed. On top of everything, now the theater commander was sending hate mail to my boss. I saw what was left of my career flash by. Let me tell you, it was a very brief flash.

Clapper said, “He said you performed brilliantly, and that the nation owes you a huge debt. I don’t know what you did out there, but you should feel proud.”

If I could only have gotten my breath back, I’d have said, “Ah shucks, it was nothing, really.”

But Clapper didn’t wait to hear anything. He said he’d see me Monday in his office and hung up.

I got up and called room service and told them send up a rare steak, some potatoes, and a bottle of wine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d treated myself to an evening of quiet relaxation, and in my wallowing self-pity, I was convinced I deserved it.

I took a long, hot shower and shaved, and when I walked out, the room service kid was knocking on the door. I took my tray, paid him, and settled down in front of the TV set.

I flipped it on, ate, watched CNN spill through its thirty-minute roundup, watched it do its thirty-minute roundup again, and realized that nothing dramatic had changed in the world in the past hour. For want of anything else to watch, I flipped to a Korean channel.

It can be fun watching a foreign newscaster move his or her lips even when you don’t have a clue what they’re saying. You stare at the picture that flashes up behind them, or at the short news clip, and you try to imagine the narration. It’s like buying cartoons with all the pictures, only there are no captions inside the bubbles. You get to invent those yourself.

First I watched a story that showed a bunch of babies stuffed in cribs in a big room that was probably an orphanage. In all likelihood the real story was some scandal about mistreated, neglected orphans, but I wasn’t in the mood for that.

I imagined the newscaster saying, “Today Bill Gates, the American capitalist, announced he is giving an inheritance of one billion dollars to each of these babies. The line of people who’ve rushed to the doors of the orphanage to seek a child to adopt stretches all the way to China. The airports and seaports are crowded with more prospective parents coming from around the world to get their child.”

That’s a nice story with a happy ending, right?

Next came a news clip of a bunch of gloomy-looking striking workers wearing white masks over their faces, all sitting down in front of a big, thirty-chimneyed plant. Then it cut to an attractive young female reporter holding a microphone in front of her mouth.

This one? Probably she was talking about how these workers were struggling to get a dollar-an-hour increase so they could feed their families, and the plant executives were bringing in cops and scabs to teach them a lesson.

That just wouldn’t do. I imagined her saying, “The chairman of Lipto Motors today agreed with his striking workers that it was shameful he should be making two hundred million dollars a year. He therefore offered to take all his personal wealth, as well as that of all other company executives, and place it in a large pool to be distributed among the workers who actually make the cars.”

I’m not a socialist, but I liked that ending.

The next clip was live, and it showed the American Secretary of State walking from a big black car with two U.S. flags flying off the front, through two lines of South Korean soldiers in spanky-looking dress uniforms, and into the side entrance of the South Korean Blue House, which, if you don’t know, is their version of the American White House. And right next to the man himself was my old buddy Arthur Brandewaite, chatting him up and trying to look natty and consequential for the cameras.

The newscaster started moving his lips, only I wasn’t paying attention. I hadn’t realized the Secretary of State was still here. I thought he’d done the normal butterfly routine of flying in for consultations, then a news conference or two, then off to the next trouble spot. I mean, how long can big diplomats yammer on about some court case or even a massacre? Don’t they run out of things to say? Plus, if you stay in one place for a day or two, pretty soon there’s gonna be a disaster somewhere else in the world that completely eclipses this one, and off you go.

Next flashed up a picture of an American naval officer with four gold captain’s stripes on his sleeve. There were some Hangul stick figures underneath his picture, probably the dates of his life. I surmised this was Harry Elmore and the media had been fed some phony story about his death, like maybe he was slain in a burglary gone wrong. Harry wasn’t a bad-looking guy. The photo was recent because of his captain’s stripes. There he was, sincere-looking blue eyes, a strong chin, a mouth that looked like it used to smile a lot.

Who would’ve thought? The poor bastard didn’t even have an important job. Why would Choi be interested in him? A protocol officer? I’m an expert on the American military, and until Spears mentioned that Elmore sometimes snuck into important briefings, I never would’ve imagined he had access to anything the least bit sensitive or important. Hell, Spears himself didn’t picture it until he was forced to think about it.

How did Choi know? Did Bales tell him? How in the hell could some lowly warrant officer who worked in CID know that angle, when even Elmore’s own four-star boss didn’t appreciate how much access his man had?

That’s when it hit me. It was the one thing we’d overlooked.

I leaned over and dialed the number Buzz Mercer gave me so I wouldn’t have to go through General Spears’s henchman anymore.

Mercer’s droll voice answered, “Yes?”

“It’s me, Drummond. I need to see you right away.”

I could hear him sigh. “Drummond, it’s late and I’m exhausted. Can’t it wait?”

I said, “Yeah, sure, I guess it could. If you’re willing to let Choi and his goons kill the Secretary of State right here in your backyard.”