by Brian Haig
It was already seven, so I killed thirty minutes spit-shining my boots, combing my hair, and meticulously pressing every square inch of my uniform. Although actually that’s not true; that’s what I should’ve been doing if I was an earnest, ambitious officer. Instead I watched some inane Sunday morning sitcom before ambling over to the big cheese’s office.
The same colonel was seated at his desk, only this time he was the one wearing civilian clothes and I was the one in uniform, because it was Sunday morning.
Remembering our last tepid encounter, I ripped off a salute. It was an awesome salute, too. It left a smoke trail in the air. The most incurably fussy drill sergeant would’ve swooned.
I said, “Major Drummond reporting as ordered, sir.”
I said it loud and crisply, too, and just knew the man would be impressed as all get out. West Pointers are so damned easy to please.
He shook his head and gave me a scowl ugly enough to melt tulips. “Drummond, you’re a lawyer, right?”
“Yes sir. JAG Corps all the way, sir. Hoo Rah!” I popped off. I was Johnny Gung-ho this early Sunday morning.
“Then you should know that when inside a building, you don’t salute a higher officer who is not in uniform.”
My hand was still stuck to my forehead, and I all of a sudden started scratching a non-itch over my right eye.
I was frostily instructed to go to the general’s door and knock twice. The colonel even quizzed me to make sure I understood it was knock twice – not once, not three times, but twice. He was a real sweetheart. We were getting along famously.
Spears glanced up from some papers after I knocked twice, not once, not three times. I walked straight to his desk and noticed he also was wearing mufti on this grand Sunday morning.
Knowing military etiquette like I did, I merely nodded and politely said, “Good morning, General.”
He pushed aside his reading materials, got up, and walked around his desk. “Please, sit down,” he said, gesturing at a couch group near the door.
We quickly positioned ourselves so I was sitting across from him, while he eased into his chair, hoisted up his trouser leg, and studied me.
After a moment, he said, “How’s it going?”
“Fine, General. Couldn’t be better,” I lied.
He awarded me a nice grin. “We’ve got a long week ahead. The judge arrives tomorrow. Press people have been flying in by the planeload. By Wednesday there’ll be more reporters in Korea than soldiers.”
“It’s the big show,” I said, which was a needless remark, obviously, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“You ever handled a case this big, Drummond?”
“Like this? No sir.”
“You feel like you’re under a lot of pressure?”
“Like a bicycle tire that’s been placed on a ten-wheeler.”
He chuckled briefly. “And how’s your client doing?”
“Could be worse, General. Not a lot, but could be worse.”
He nodded. “Korean prisons aren’t for the fainthearted. But they’re good people, you know. The Koreans. This is my third tour over here. I was here as a new lieutenant, back in the early sixties. And I commanded my brigade here, back in the late eighties. It’s miraculous what the Koreans have accomplished. Really miraculous. They’re incredible people.”
“Yes sir, they’re admirable folks.”
Then came a quiet lapse, because we’d obviously exhausted the let’s-pretend-we’re-comfortable-with-each-other chitchat and it was time to tend to the nuts and bolts. Whatever that was.
He went right for the jugular. “Drummond, I have to tell you, I’ve been very unhappy with the way your defense team has conducted itself. And I mean, very unhappy.”
“Anything specifically?” I asked. Like I didn’t know.
“Start with Miss Carlson’s infomercials. I told you I didn’t want this case carried to the press. This is not the time to be fanning the flames.”
In my most humble tone, I said, “Look, General, telling a civilian defense attorney not to prattle to the press is like telling an addict not to go near a needle. It’s compulsive. They can’t stop themselves. It’s also perfectly ethical.”
I had the sense this was a throwaway conversational point, because I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, plus his face suddenly got more grave, or suggestive, or something.
“Then let me tell you what I really don’t appreciate. Your visit to Minister Lee’s home.”
“I have an obligation to my client to follow every avenue to prove his innocence. I wasn’t there for a social call or to harass them.”
I wasn’t going to disclose any more than that, because the existence of the apartment key in No’s possession was the only surprise we had for the prosecution. Besides, it was none of Spears’s business.
But, like I mentioned before, the general has these grittily intense eyes, and he was giving me a full-up dose. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat.
He said, “Did you know I served with Minister Lee in Vietnam?”
I shook my head. How the hell would I know that?
His expression altered a little, maybe even softened. “I spent six months as the American liaison to the ROK First Infantry Division where Lee was a battalion commander. Most Americans don’t even realize Korean troops were in Vietnam. But the ROKs, you know, they earned a reputation as tough fighters. The Vietcong were scared to death of them, so the ROKs didn’t see as much fighting as most American units. The Vietcong made an effort to avoid them.”
“I’ve heard stories,” I said, which was true. And they weren’t pretty stories, either. Maybe they were exaggerations, but there were rumors of South Korean troops collecting ears for trophies and putting Vietcong heads on stakes to discourage sympathizers. On the other hand, maybe they weren’t exaggerations.
Anyway, Spears stared out the window, caught up in his reverie. “One day an ROK battalion was on a sweep, and before they knew it, they were attacked by two full brigades of North Vietnamese regulars. They were outnumbered nearly ten to one. What we guessed later was the North Vietnamese wanted to show the Vietcong, who were all southerners, that the ROKs could be beaten. Or maybe they wanted to try to knock the ROKs out of the war by inflicting a bloody defeat on them. They sure as hell weren’t happy that another Asian country was involved in their war. Anyway, the battle developed quickly. I flew in on a helicopter and landed at the battalion command bunker maybe twenty minutes after it began. Lee was the battalion commander. You probably guessed that?”
I nodded again.
“The ROKs didn’t fight like Americans. They didn’t have fleets of jets and helicopters and thousands of tubes of artillery. They didn’t rely on all that firepower. They just slugged it out, soldier to soldier, and the North Vietnamese knew that, so they threw everything they had at them. God, I never saw such a fierce, desperate fight.”
“So what happened, General?”
“Usually, in battle, there are pauses and lulls as the two sides regroup or stalemate, then go at it again. Not that time. It was one long, relentless attack. Lee’s troops were formed in a hasty perimeter, and several times the North Vietnamese broke through. There were bands of North Vietnamese running around inside the perimeter, shooting and throwing grenades. Some had bombs strapped to their bodies, trying to get to the command bunker. The North Vietnamese were smart that way. They knew that if they killed the head the body would follow. Within ten minutes after I’d flown in, I wondered what the hell I’d gotten into.”
He turned away from the window and stared back at me. But I didn’t have the feeling he was actually looking at me. His mind was in another place, another time.
“It was an inferno. I saw Lee rush out and kill three men with an entrenching tool. Can you imagine? He’d emptied his pistol so he literally ran at three armed men with nothing but a short shovel. That’s how desperate the fighting was. It took three hours for the ROK division to borrow some helicopters from a
nearby American division and bring in reinforcements. A quarter of Lee’s men were dead. The medevac helicopters spent four hours pulling out the wounded. There were maybe four or five hundred North Vietnamese corpses strewn around, from outside the perimeter to the assault teams that made it inside.”
I said, “I heard he was a great soldier.”
He shook his head. “Great? No, great’s not an adequate word. I knew your father, too, Drummond. Did you know that? Now, your father, he was a great soldier. A real bastard to work for, I hear, but a great soldier. Lee was more than that. I saw two of his officers throw themselves in front of bullets to protect him. Think anybody would’ve thrown themselves in front of your father to save him?”
Knowing my father as I did, I could see people shoving him in the way of bullets to save themselves. I mean, I love and adore my father, but the man has some serious warts.
The general had made his point, so he continued. “If there was any chance in hell your client was innocent, I’d have no problem with what you did. Hell, I’d lead the assault on Lee’s door. I’d help ransack his attic. But Whitehall’s guilty. A thorough Article 32 investigation was conducted before I recommended this court-martial. I’ve never seen a more airtight case.”
An Article 32 investigation is the military’s version of what would be called a grand jury in the civilian world, only instead of a closed jury, the Army appoints a major or a lieutenant colonel to determine if there’s enough evidence and grounds to convene a court-martial.
Anyway, I opened my lips and started to say something, but he sliced his arm through the air for me to keep my mouth shut. He was one of those daunting men who, even in civilian clothes, had an air of authority that brooked no disagreement.
“I’ve checked on you, Drummond. Everybody says you’re a damned good lawyer and an ethical officer. So ask yourself this. We offered you a deal where you’d save your client’s life in exchange for avoiding the character assassination of one of the finest men I’ve ever met. What’s the point of destroying Lee’s reputation, and maybe this alliance, just to try to keep a murderer out of jail? You’ve got plenty of courtroom experience, right? How do you gauge your odds in this case? This wouldn’t even be a Pyrrhic victory; it would be a Pyrrhic defeat. Your client’s the one who created this situation, not us. How far are you willing to go? How much damage are you willing to inflict in his name?”
These were profoundly worthy questions, and it was obvious the general was well-grounded in the kind of ethical issues that bedevil us lawyers. The problem was there was a new fly in the ointment.
I tried to keep my voice and eyes steady. “General, my client is innocent.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious. He was framed.”
He closed his eyes, a sign of weary resignation.
Finally his lids came apart and he frowned at me with an expression of bottomless disappointment. “So that’s how you’re going to play it?”
“General, that’s how I have to play it.”
He abruptly stood up, so I stood up, too. He just stared at me until I got tired of being stared at and headed for his door.
“Drummond?” he called before I made it out.
I turned around and faced him.
“Just be sure you can still look yourself in the mirror when this is done.”
I nodded and left.
I have to tell you that among the many mischaracterizations perpetrated by the media and Hollywood is the one that depicts Army generals as plump, cigar-chomping, ego-inflated morons who are so busy spit-shining their own asses they can barely find their way to the eighteenth hole of the golf course. There’re some of those, to be sure, and if Spears’s legal adviser ever made general there’d be one more. But General Spears was more redolent of the larger breed – serious, thoughtful, sharply intelligent, the kind of person you just can’t help respecting. The kind of person you want to respect you, too.
Spears had commanded a unit in the Gulf War that tore the hell out of two of Saddam’s best divisions, and, although he was unaware of it, I was there, and I witnessed it, and he was a hell of a soldier. And he was now sitting on top of an explosive situation. With less than a few minutes’ warning, he could be entangled in the biggest war to hit the planet since World War Two.
The worst of it was, I possessed not a single shred of evidence that Thomas Whitehall was innocent. I had a hunch. And as anyone in the legal profession will tell you, when you act on a hunch it’s like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the cylinder. And Spears was right; when this was over, I’d better be able to look in a mirror and not have it shatter.
CHAPTER 24
What Katherine figured was that she would kill two birds with one stone. Colonel Barry Carruthers, the military judge assigned to our case, was set to arrive on a military flight at 7:00 A.M. at Osan Air Base. This much Katherine knew because it was widely reported on the news.
Katherine would have preferred to meet him at the ramp as he walked off the plane, but because he was landing at a military air base, there was no way in hell she’d be able to get her associates through the strictly controlled gates. She therefore calculated the time it would take to get the judge by military convoy up to Yongsan Garrison.
She arranged her welcoming party to meet and greet Barry Carruthers right outside the main gate at exactly 8:10 A.M. And at 8:10 exactly seven buses, two or three dozen taxis, and a few people on bicycles suddenly appeared. Then, after about a minute of people rushing off their conveyances and getting organized, there they were, 620 practitioners of backwards love, most dressed normally, but a select few making a statement with flamboyant outfits.
Right beside them, in front of God and country and some dozen film crews, stood yours truly struggling not to look as uneasy and abashed as I felt. I was in uniform, too. I knew I was going to pay for it, but hey, in for a nickel, in for a dollar.
I was there because Imelda’s sharp criticisms guilted me into it. I was there because I wanted my client to know I was unconditionally committed to his defense. I was there because I wanted Katherine to trust me and let me in on her secrets. I was there because I prayed Katherine was right, that maybe we could gull the Army into cutting a better deal for Tommy Whitehall.
At least she’d done the wise thing and gotten a legal permit. She’d applied through the Seoul mayor’s office using a false name, and under the guise we wanted to publicly welcome the judge. This was technically true, at least depending on your definition of the word “welcome.” Since even the Korean papers had been describing Colonel Barry Carruthers as a Judge Roy Bean kind of guy – the last of the great hanging judges – I think the Koreans were fairly delighted at the idea of an American welcoming party, so they put all the appropriate stamps on Katherine’s request and even promised to provide security.
That’s why there were about two dozen Korean riot police in blue suits, wearing those spiffy shielded helmets and holding black batons behind their body shields. The shields looked badly scratched and dented, because one thing a Korean riot policeman gets plenty of is on-the-job practice.
I could barely imagine what the police were thinking when they spotted us, because there’d sure as hell never been a demonstration like this in the history of the Republic of Korea. The officer in charge of the platoon was on the radio, red-faced and screaming frantically at somebody on the other end, no doubt trying to inform the city officials that this wasn’t a welcoming party after all, but a demonstration, and, hey, you’ll never guess what kind of people are here.
So we locked arms and waited. The camera crewmen were all taking a particular interest in me, since after all, I was the only person in uniform in this crowd. I looked anxiously at my watch. I hoped Carruthers’s convoy didn’t have a radio, or, if it did, that nobody had thought to call and recommend they divert to a different entry point onto post. If that happened, we’d look like a bunch of dopes.
What worried me th
e most, though, was what would happen when the South Koreans came to a decision about how to handle us. The Koreans, like most Asians, aren’t known for speedy decisions, because they have to go through that mutual consultation crap that’s a cultural imperative for them.
They can surprise you, though. And I wasn’t all that optimistic about how that might turn out. The city of Seoul has something like one hundred thousand riot police, as well as fleets of gray, caged buses parked at strategic locations around the city. And they have radios, and when there’s the first sign of trouble they send up smoke signals and converge with lightning speed on a single point. Katherine had 620 unarmed civilians, about half of whom were women, although some looked fit enough to fend for themselves.
Anyway, I was still calculating the odds of disaster when six of those big caged gray buses came careening down the road from the Itaewon district. And tucked right in the middle of them were two U.S. Army humvees and a black Kia sedan, no doubt containing the hanging judge himself, Barry Carruthers.
The first bus kept moving toward us, although it slowed down considerably, and I could see a Korean in the front hollering something into a radio, no doubt asking for instructions. Apparently he got some, because he turned and yelled at the driver, and the vehicle ground noisily to a halt. Another long minute passed as the guy with the radio kept yipping at somebody.
Katherine breathlessly asked me what was going on. Like I should know. Face it, she had a great deal more experience on this end of protests than I did. She’d probably been in dozens of them, whereas I was a stone-cold virgin.
Then the door of the first bus swung open and riot policemen poured out. A few seconds later the other five buses emptied, until there were what seemed to be two hundred or so blue-uniformed troops, pulling down their riot visors, forming into lines, stretching their muscles, and moving toward us.
As this was occurring a number of blue-and-white Korean police cars began arriving at the scene. Within two minutes, there were about fifteen or twenty cars skewed at various angles across the road. Several dozen policemen were milling around, scratching their heads and wondering what to do.
