by Brian Haig
Also, Bales and his buddies had beaten me to a pulp. And like I mentioned earlier, I’m a vindictive guy.
Besides, I’m so stubborn I’m stupid. Anybody who knows me will tell you that.
Tommy said, “I, uh-”
But before he could finish the thought, Katherine suddenly erupted. “Don’t listen to him, Thomas!” She was glaring at me through a pair of blazing green eyes. “This isn’t about Thomas, is it? This is about Georgetown, right?” She spun and looked back at Whitehall. “He’s never forgiven me for being number one in the class. He came in second and he’s never gotten over it. Don’t listen to him. This isn’t about you. It’s about him trying to outdo me. Don’t listen to him.”
Whitehall’s eyes were roving from her face to mine. And mine was exploding with surprise.
“God, you gotta be kidding,” I blurted.
I mean, it was true she’d beaten me out – by one-tenth of a decimal of a hundredth of a point. By such an infinitesimal fraction the law school actually had to recompute both our grade points something like ten times. They actually had to go back and retotal three years’ worth of exams and papers and moot courts. Know what the spread was? Katherine got one more multiple-choice answer right than I did. That’s right – one lousy question. No kidding. And you know the worst part? She probably guessed on that one question: one lousy throw of a dart in a pitch-dark room.
Did that give me the gripes? Well, yeah, actually it did. At the time, anyway. I mean, had it been Wilson Holbridge Struthers III, the guy who lived in the library, the guy everybody agreed was the biggest legal geek who ever haunted the halls of Georgetown Law, I could’ve lived with that. It wasn’t, though. Struthers limped in at third place. It was Katherine Carlson. Of all people.
I took three deep breaths. I wasn’t going to let her provoke me. I was going to keep my cool and reason through this. Georgetown law school was a long time ago. Whitehall had said at the start that he wanted to make the tough choices, and, well, he was getting his chance. Maybe not the way he’d envisioned, but I had at least warned him it could come down to this.
With as much calmness as I could muster, I said, “I still wouldn’t take the deal.”
And Katherine contemptuously snapped, “Look, Thomas, you won’t have a death sentence hanging over your head. And let me tell you, getting a death sentence overturned is almost impossible these days. The courts have lost their patience with death sentence appeals. I’m no expert on it but I’ve done some research. Only one in twelve gets overturned. Plus, even the civil courts are accelerating death sentences, and this is a military court. These uniformed stooges could give you a chair appointment a year, maybe even six months from now.”
Thomas said, “Both of you, stop this right now.”
Katherine and I looked at each other in surprise.
His face was perfectly calm. “It has nothing to do with either of you. I won’t plead.”
Katherine said, “Why, Thomas?”
“Because I’m innocent. Because my love for No wasn’t wrong or evil. Because I won’t.”
He and Katherine stared at each other a long time. It was one of those moments where electricity flowed through the air, where words would only have gotten in the way. Finally Katherine got up and started shaking the cage and yelling for the guard.
The big goon showed up, weaving back and forth, and it was pretty damned obvious he’d broken into the goodies. He was so drunk he kept diddling with the keys. Finally he got the door open and Katherine stormed out.
I looked at Tommy. “I guess I have to go.”
“Yeah, sure. Keep me informed, will you?”
I assured him I would before I solemnly shook his hand. Then I walked out. I walked slowly. I was in no hurry to catch up with Katherine.
It was a long, tense car ride back to base.
CHAPTER 33
At two o’clock in the morning, there was another knock on my door. I rolled out of bed and hobbled over, again checked the peephole to make sure there wasn’t somebody on the other side who wanted to hurt me. Like another bruise was going to make any discernible difference at this point. Silly me.
Carol Kim and a shadowy figure I couldn’t make out were standing on the other side, so I opened it. The other person was Buzz Mercer, looking tired and perplexed.
I was wearing nothing but my Army-issue OD green battle shorts, so I demurely grabbed a fluffy white robe from the closet and escorted my visitors to the pair of chairs by the window. I fell onto the bed.
“Did you get it?” I asked, which was a fairly stupid question, because what else would they be doing in my room at this hour?
Carol opened a valise and withdrew a series of color photographs, maybe thirty in all.
“Look through these,” she said, handing me the stack. “Are any of them the person you’re talking about?”
The first few were the wrong figures. They were standing upright, but the reason was because they were frozen with fear or confusion or shock. You could see that on their faces, in their stances, in their auras. The fifth one was the man I wanted. The CIA techies probably figured that out from his pose, because the next six shots were all of him.
It wasn’t until I got to the fifth photo that the techies had somehow amplified, or contorted, or tantalized enough pixels to make his face recognizable. I had to fight a sudden gleeful feeling. There he was, hands on hips, and although the expression on his face was still murky, from the cant of his head and the lift of his chin he appeared to be surveying the crowd, the way a proud farmer might look out over a field of newly ripened wheat. Except what Inspector Choi was admiring was a full-blown massacre.
I pulled out the photo and held it up for Kim and Mercer to see.
“That’s him.”
“Who’s he?” Mercer asked, correctly perceiving from my expression that I knew the bastard.
“Chief Inspector Choi of the Itaewon Police Precinct. He was in charge of the Lee murder investigation. He was the first one at the murder scene, and he teamed up with Chief Michael Bales, of CID, to break the case.”
Mercer and Kim began studying the photograph more earnestly.
I couldn’t resist adding, “He’s also one of the bastards who kicked the shit out of me.”
Carol said, “So what is this photo supposed to prove? Admittedly, he looks a little odd standing there, but so what?”
It was a good question. The mere fact that Choi was attentively watching the massacre unfold meant nothing by itself. Maybe he was just a cold-blooded bastard who found it entertaining. Nor was there anything compelling about the fact that the shooter I’d chased had glanced over in Choi’s direction before he dropped his weapon. The shooter could’ve been looking at any of two dozen other people. Maybe he was just working a crick out of the back of his neck.
I said, “Well, here’s the interesting part. When I was first arrested and, ah… interviewed, Choi claimed there was only one shooter, the one who got away. He claimed the police officer I chased down had not been involved in the shooting.”
Mercer was studying Choi’s photo. He said, “He had to know about your shooter. Hell, he’s only about a hundred feet from the guy. He probably heard the expended rounds hitting the cement, much less the bullets going off.”
“That’s right,” I said. “So why was he trying to make a case against me for murdering a guy he knew was a shooter? Hell, the dead cop was from his precinct. He knew him on sight.”
Mercer, who had a pretty quick mind, said, “Because he’s trying to cover something up. Because he’s connected to the shooters and he didn’t want the connection revealed.”
“Okay, good. Broaden the scenario. Choi’s the chief inspector in the Itaewon precinct. Lee was murdered inside his precinct and Choi’s one of the two head investigators. He and his brother-in-law, Bales, tie all the ribbons and bows to make it look like Whitehall did it. Remember Keith Merritt, the guy who’s in a coma? Well, the attempt on his life was made inside the Itaewon precinct, and Cho
i and his boys are the ones who investigated and claimed they couldn’t find any witnesses. I mean, Merritt was tossed from a very busy street corner. Surely somebody saw it. Finally, the one shooter we know about was a cop from that same precinct house. I’d be willing to bet the other one was, too.”
From the look on her face, even Carol was getting it.
I said, “You know the other thing that’s really screwy?”
“What’s that?” Mercer asked.
“The cop I chased down, when he thought I had him cornered, he stuffed his pistol inside his mouth and blew off the back of his head. That’s pretty extreme behavior, isn’t it? What kind of a guy would do that?”
Mercer nodded. “A North Korean.”
Remember when I mentioned that North Korean submarine that got grounded a couple of years back? What happened was, once the sub was grounded, the entire crew of fifteen sailors and some ten or so commandos all evacuated and made it to shore. The sailors submissively lined up in single file, then the commandos walked down the line and shot each of them in the head. Then the commandos split up and tried to escape back to North Korea, since they knew their mission, whatever it was, had been bungled and compromised. What ensued was a wild few weeks while the entire ROK Army tried to hunt them down and kill them. Several of the North Koreans put up a good fight and killed a number of South Korean soldiers. The funny thing was, not one North Korean commando was captured. One or two disappeared, but the others either died fighting or killed themselves.
In fact, there’s a long and ghastly history of North Korean agents and saboteurs killing themselves to avoid capture and interrogation. That’s the frightening thing about North Korea. It’s not a nation. It’s the world’s biggest cult, bigger than that Jones group, or that one in Africa, or that one in Waco, where everybody’s willing to do suicidal things for the cause.
Buzz Mercer was rocking back and forth in his chair as he considered the possibilities. For him, the CIA guy in charge of the whole peninsula, it was a disaster. I’d spent the past day pondering it in its full glory, but I was still bowled over.
Here’s what I guessed: Choi and at least some of the coppers in the precinct were North Korean operatives. And what a fantastic place to spy from. Itaewon is the one place in South Korea where nearly every American soldier and foreign tourist comes to visit. It’s the foreigner’s shopping mecca, and it’s also the exotic fleshpot that caters to the lustful yens of non-Koreans. It’s right outside the main gate of the headquarters that commands the entire Korean-American alliance, the headquarters where war plans are drawn up, where every bit of intelligence collected against the North Koreans is brought for scrutiny, where the assessments of the alliance’s military strengths and weaknesses are analyzed and reanalyzed in the never-ending way that soldiers do.
Say, for example, Major John Smith from the intelligence center decides to sneak away from his wife one night for a bit of secretive muff-diving. Choi and his boys have spotters outside the brothels: When Smith has sated his loins and paid his bill, they pick him up and take him to the station for a little grilling. They can ruin his career and bust up his family, or they can trade favors.
Or maybe it’s Congressman Smith who has come to Korea for a little official fact-finding tour, and some harmless, wanton fun on the side. Or maybe it’s Sergeant Smith, the clerk for Colonel Jones, the operations officer in charge of war planning. The possibilities are both endless and boggling.
And the blackmail didn’t have to be limited to the sex trade. Maybe it’s an arrest for shoplifting. Maybe it’s blackmarketing. Maybe it’s a drunken brawl. Every crime committed by an American inside Itaewon would be reported immediately to the Itaewon station. Hell, the target doesn’t even have to commit a crime. Maybe it’s just something Choi and his boys trump up to entrap some particularly juicy target, rather than the random targets of opportunity who walk willy-nilly through their precinct doors every day.
Obviously such an opportunity presented itself in the person of Thomas Whitehall, who was renting an apartment so he could have a private enclave to meet his male lover, who just happened to be the son of the South Korean defense minister.
Mercer’s eyes suddenly lost their normally granular look and became wide and intense.
I said, “Think about it. Choi sees an opportunity that’s much juicier than running blackmail schemes and collecting intelligence. He sees a chance to burn down the entire alliance. He ignites the fire by murdering Lee and framing an American officer. He tosses on a thousand-gallon can of high-octane gasoline by massacring a bunch of Americans right outside the gates of Yongsan Garrison, right in front of twenty news cameras. He even shoots some of the reporters, just to spur their outrage.”
Carol finally got it. She dropped her valise and said, “Oh my God.”
Then I admitted, “Of course, I’m just surmising. I mean, there’s maybe two or three other possible explanations. And believe me, I’ve tried to think them all through. But see if you can conceive of another that fits every angle.”
“You really believe this?” Mercer asked. “I mean, you’re not just blowing up some big conspiracy balloon to get your client off?”
“Hey, I’m a lawyer. Of course I am.”
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 w
as 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.
