by Brian Haig
Anyway, he said, “Okay, Major. As you’re probably aware, we have a gigantic spy problem here in South Korea. In the U.S., you generally have two kinds of spies. You have foreign nationals. They enter with foreign passports and then set up business. Most often they operate out of embassies, or the UN headquarters in New York, or some other international institution that gives them a cover. They’re fairly easy for your FBI to target and watch. Then you have the occasional citizen who betrays your country – in the case of American traitors, most often for money. Those are the type who’re considerably more difficult to target.”
I couldn’t resist. “You mean like that Korean-American analyst who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency who was on your payroll?”
“Of course, he wasn’t working for us,” Kim said, maintaining his perfect smile. “But somebody like him would fit a spy’s profile. He had ethnic sympathy toward South Korea. He had money difficulties. He had sums of money entering his bank accounts that he couldn’t legally account for. I can certainly see where your counterintelligence services would suspect he was one of ours.”
Then his smile got a little wider. “Of course, he wasn’t. We’d never spy on our closest ally.”
He and Mercer chuckled merrily at this, like this was all part of the game. Their game.
“Anyway,” Kim turned back to me. “Our problems are much more severe. Northerners and southerners, we’re all Koreans. We speak the same language, look alike, dress alike, share the same culture. Millions of southerners were either refugees or descendants of refugees who fled North Korea when the Korean War broke out. Many southerners have families in North Korea. They’re vulnerable to all kinds of entrapments. Then there are the infiltrators. For fifty years they’ve been coming in, some by submarine, some simply sneaking across the DMZ. Lately, though, the North Koreans have gotten more sophisticated.”
“Like how?” I asked.
“Well, let’s take your friend Choi.”
“Okay, let’s take Choi.”
“According to our records, Choi Lee Min was born in the city of Chicago in the United States, the son of two South Koreans who immigrated in the year 1953. His parents were killed in a car accident in 1970, leaving him an orphan. He returned to Korea when he was seventeen, which is not uncommon. Many Korean expatriates have difficulties assimilating in their new countries, and eventually return. He dropped his American citizenship, attended his final two years of high school here in Seoul, got excellent scores on the national exams, and went to Seoul National University. This is our Harvard. At SNU he finished near the top of his class and could have fulfilled any dream when he graduated. Oddly enough, he chose to take the police exam. Believe me, that had to be a first for an SNU graduate. He could’ve waltzed into the executive ranks of Hyundai, or Daewoo, or any prestigious chaebol.”
“So he used to be an American citizen?” I asked.
Kim shrugged. “Maybe he was. As I mentioned, the North Koreans have gotten very cagey. They know we run rigorous background checks on any citizen being considered for a sensitive position, so they’ve become much more creative at fabricating foolproof legends. Maybe Choi’s parents were North Korean sleepers they planted in Chicago forty years ago. Or maybe Choi never set foot in Chicago.”
“He sure as hell seemed like he’d spent some time in America to me.”
Kim glanced at Mercer again, and Mercer nodded that it was okay to let me in on another little secret, too.
“We suspect the North Koreans have a secret camp for molding agents to appear to be Korean-Americans. The candidates enter this camp as babies and never set foot out of it afterward, until they take up duties as agents. They eat American food, are taught in replicated American classrooms, even watch American TV on satellite cable. An American author named DeMille wrote a novel called The Charm School, a fictional account of such a camp in the Soviet Union. We believe the North Koreans actually have such a place.”
“And you think Choi might be a graduate?”
Mercer said, “Look, Drummond, we’re not even sure the place exists. Over the years, we’ve heard rumors from a couple of high-level defectors. Supposedly it’s staffed by some of the American POWs who were never returned after the war ended. Of course, some of these damned defectors’ll tell you any goddamned thing. Who knows?”
I said, “Okay, so Choi looks like a guy who reverse-immigrated back to Korea when he was seventeen. What about his sister, Bales’s wife?”
Kim scratched his head. “What sister?”
I said, “Chief Warrant Officer Michael Bales is the CID officer who worked the Whitehall case with Choi. He’s supposed to be married to Choi’s sister.”
Kim lifted up a folder and glanced through it, searching for something. He said, “We have no record of a sister.”
“So who’s Bales’s wife?”
Mercer said, “We’ll do some checking.”
Then I said, “So what’s with this screening you mentioned?”
Kim said, “Our biggest problem is that before 1945 we were under Japanese rule and were administered by Japanese civil servants. In the last days of the Second World War, they destroyed their files, effectively eradicating our historical record of citizenry. Then between 1950 and 1953, thousands of our villages and cities were destroyed, and with them, even many of our municipal and regional records were lost. Millions of people lost their homes. There were massive internal migrations and millions of northerners fleeing south. The entire Korean race was on the move. It was like our country was stirred in a huge mixing bowl.”
Mercer said, “That’s why it’s so damned hard to figure out who’s workin’ for who down here.”
Kim nodded that this was so. “About three years ago, we developed a computer program to help us sift through large populations. We call it the Communist Screening Program, or COMESPRO. Admittedly not a very elegant name, but it works. The program employs special profiles to tell us who we might want to examine more closely, much like the one your immigration service employs to screen for likely drug mules at your customs points. For example, if we can’t trace a citizen’s family back three generations, it sends up a flag. If the citizen immigrated from a third country, that’s another flag.”
I said, “Then wouldn’t Choi have popped up on your program?”
“Yes, except we’ve only used it to screen our armed forces and intelligence services, some of our more sensitive ministries, and our foreign service. We frankly hadn’t considered using it on our police forces. They’re not involved in national security, so why should we?”
I pointed at the stacks of folders. “Is that what happened when you screened everybody who works at the Itaewon station?”
He pointed at the larger stack. “These were the ones COMESPRO screened out.” Then he pointed at the smaller stack. “These are the ones we would call suspect profiles. There are twenty-two in all.”
So I said, “Then you could have a big nest of spies in the precinct house?”
Kim smiled condescendingly. “I don’t want to sound dubious, Major, but a fifth of all populations we screen come up as suspects. There’s nothing unusual about these numbers. A lot of these aren’t going to pan out… probably none. Besides, we’ve never had anything like that before. Spies and agents operate in singles. They may be part of a larger cell, perhaps under a single controller, but they’re quarantined from one another. It’s good spycraft. If one gets caught, he can’t compromise the others, because he doesn’t know who they are. The controller usually has an alert system in place in the event one of his people is picked up, and a well-planned escape route he uses at the first sign of trouble.”
“So you think I’m barking up the wrong tree?”
“Frankly, it’s wildly implausible. You have a client you want to vindicate. Your imagination is in overdrive.”
I looked over at Mercer. “What about you?”
Buzz looked up at his counterpart. “There’s something here, Kim. Might not be as big a
nd dramatic as Drummond thinks, but it’s something.”
Kim gave us both a skeptical shrug. I wondered what he really thought. The thing is, the South Koreans would find it awfully shameful if it turned out one of their police stations was riddled with North Korean termites. Of course, maybe this was my “ overdrive” imagination at work again.
Anyway, Mercer looked at his KCIA ally and said, “Look, we’re gonna try a little bait-and-flush here. What I need your guys to do is lock down the escape hatches.” He handed Kim a photograph of Michael Bales that had been retrieved from Bales’s personnel file earlier that morning.
“This is Michael Bales,” Mercer continued. “If he tries to take a plane or ship out of Korea, I want him stopped. He’s a smart boy. He’s also a trained cop. He might be wearing a disguise and he might have a false passport, so have your guys alter this photo to show what he’d look like with a beard or mustache, or dressed as a woman, or with glasses and his hair dyed blond. I know all us White folks look alike to you Koreans, so make sure you distribute composites of what he’d look like if he took precautions. This is a no-fuck-it-up, Kim. Don’t let me down.”
Kim nodded. “No problem.” He picked up his stacks of folders and prepared to leave.
Mercer said, “One other thing. Can your people put a watch on Choi?”
Kim smiled graciously. “Consider it done, Buzz.”
“Good. If we break this thing, I’ll make sure my boss back in Langley tells your boss here you were the man who broke it. I was mystified by some funny things going on, so I went to you for help, and you figured it all out.”
Kim smiled even more broadly. “That would be very kind of you, Buzz.”
Then the two of them shook hands and Kim left. I had to give Mercer credit. As embarrassing as it would be for the Koreans to discover this spy ring working right under their noses, it would be doubly humiliating if the credit went to the Americans. This way, the Koreans could save some face. And this way, Kim had a strong personal incentive to help us in every way he could.
CHAPTER 35
I stopped by the judge’s front office to pick up the list of potential court-martial board members. Then I went to the hair parlor for a brief visit so Katherine wouldn’t think I’d been kidnapped, or maybe murdered and buried in some grove of woods. That’s probably what she was hoping happened, so why not show my face and disappoint her?
The place was a hive of wild activity. The trial was set to start in less than twenty hours, and Katherine, Allie, Imelda, and all her worthy assistants were going through the last-minute frantic sweats any well-oiled law office goes through before the big show.
A stack of neatly typed motions lay on a table, and I shook my head as I stopped and riffled through them. Katherine obviously planned on filing them with the judge at 1559 hours, one minute before closing time. It didn’t matter that Carruthers had warned her – Katherine was intent on pissing him off with a juggernaut of last-second requests for judgments. She couldn’t resist. Eight years of legal habit wasn’t going to be washed away just because some judge threatened to rip off her head and “poop” down the cavity.
When I stuck my head in her office she was chattering with somebody on the phone. She looked anxious but lovely. She glanced up and shot me the bird. It wasn’t a casual gesture. She meant it.
I then went over to Allie’s side office. I said, “How’s things?”
She gave me a surprisingly cold look. “Where have you been? We’re up to our ass and could use help.”
I grinned. “I’ve been running around checking some last-minute details.”
“Like what?”
“I spent the better part of the morning waiting at the judge’s office for the list of potential board members.”
“Did you get it?”
I nodded. “Longest damn list I ever saw. There are nearly eighty officers on it. They’re obviously planning on losing a lot of members to voir dire challenges. They’re probably right. Considering the nature of the crimes, a lot of these guys are going to admit they’re so emotionally repulsed they can’t make detached judgments.”
Allie said, “But out of eighty officers, we should at least be able to find ten fair men and women.”
“The problem is I never saw a list packed with so many infantry officers.”
She said, “So?” in a tone that betrayed her naivete about the Army. See, all Army officers aren’t exactly interchangeable parts.
I said, “Look, the Army has some twenty-six different branches. There’s lawyers like me, doctors, supply guys, maintenance guys, finance guys, and on and on. The more the job sounds like a normal civilian job, the higher your chance the guy holding it thinks like a civilian. The only difference between them and some guy you’ll find on the street is they have to wear funny clothes to work every day.”
“But infantry guys are different?”
“Very different. They’re the Jesuits of the Army. They love discipline and they love to impose it. We JAG officers usually try to purge as many of them off a board as we can.”
Allie said, “So we’ll challenge them all off.”
And I said, “Of the first thirty names on the list, two thirds are infantry. They’ve stacked it. We’d be lucky to whittle them down to half the board.”
I felt a presence behind me. I turned around and Katherine was standing there.
She’d been eavesdropping. Her face was frigid. She said, “Well, you’re the asshole who talked our client out of the deal. Still think it’s such a great idea, Drummond? Still think you gave our client the best legal advice?”
“My two cents had no effect. He never had any intention of taking the deal.”
She stared at me. “That’s not what I asked. Do you still think you gave him the best legal advice?”
“I don’t know if it was the best legal advice, but it was my best advice.”
Her face was cold and hard. She was trying to stare me down, but I wasn’t about to let her humble me. This was what psychologists call transference. She was teed off at her client, and because I’d agreed with him, and I happened to be a handy target, she was spewing her anger at me.
She pointed a finger in my face. “Be in my office at three this afternoon with your strategy for the voir dire. That’s supposed to be your area of expertise. I want a survey of the potential board members and detailed lists of challenges and questions.”
“Okay.”
Her finger was still pointed at my face. “And keep your nose out of everything else. From here on, your duties are confined to advising me on matters of military law. You will no longer converse with our client. You will not meet with the judge. You will no longer participate in our strategy reviews. Take one step outside those boundaries and I’ll have you removed from our team. Is that clear?”
“That’s clear.”
She stomped into her office. I looked at Allie; she refused to meet my eyes. From the look of things, Katherine and her staff had made some decisions about me in my absence. I was no longer a trusted member of the team. Maybe I never had been a trusted member of the team.
I took my board list and limped away. I mean, I could have stayed and argued with Katherine, but what would be the point? Besides, this made things easier. I could dedicate my time to catching Bales without worrying about the trial.
I went straight back to my hotel room and went through the motions of developing a game plan for the voir dire. Having spent eight years screening potential boards, this was a fairly straightforward task. First, circle the names of officers who look like they might be favorable to the defense – in this case, women, minorities, and officers who work in the softer branches, in that exact order. Then put arrows next to the people you want to get thrown off. Target the infantry guys first; go after the higher ranks particularly, because the longer an officer serves, the more likely he or she is to buy into the culture and its hoary little peccadillos.
Then start developing the normal sequence of questions, like
, “Have you read any newspaper articles or seen any TV news shows about this case that have left you predisposed or prejudiced in any way?” You’ve got to ask that question even though it can be a two-edged sword. It can eliminate as many sympathetic jurists as hard-nosed ones. Then you get to the questions only an experienced Army attorney would know to ask. “Have you ever punished a soldier for homosexuality?” Because Whitehall was a captain, all the potential board members were at least captains, and in the case of all those infantry officers, that meant they’d all held command positions. A fair number would’ve had troops who committed homosexual infractions they would’ve had to pass judgments on. I doubted many would publicly admit they’d gone soft on them. We’d get rid of a few infantry officers on that one.
I thought up a nice kicker:“Have you ever kissed or fondled another male?” Ask any average guy that question and you’ll get a fairly negative response. Ask a high-testosterone guy – like an Airborne, Ranger, or infantry stud – and you’ll get a nasty snarl, a derisive snort, and a very repugnant denial. In short, an inadvertent display of homophobic prejudice of the type that will wipe some more infantry officers off the board.
I added a few more of these sly stilettos, then considered my job done. I called Mercer and told him I was on my way. The early warning was because of the Korean cops who’d been following me. When I passed through the gate into the other half of Yongsan, where Mercer’s office was located, he had guys in the guardshack to block the cops from following me.
I then hobbled back to the CIA complex. The place was as busy as an ant’s nest. There were more spooks than I could count. Mercer must’ve brought in reinforcements, maybe from other offices around the peninsula, maybe from Japan. The agents seemed to be organized into seven or eight teams. Several of them stood directing pointers at stand-up easels and talking quietly to various groups. The air crackled with seriousness and tension.
