Mortal Allies sd-2

by Brian Haig

  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.”

  CHAPTER 42

  The way the law works, the defense and the prosecution start each case with a tug-of-war on pretrial discoveries. The first real skirmishes of any criminal trial are battles of discovery, which is simply everything you can learn about the crime, the evidence, and the witnesses. You like to learn about these things before the trial begins because it tells you how to mold your strategy. It also keeps you from getting embarrassed and having your case completely trashed by surprises during the trial. Like maybe the prosecutor walks into court with a videotape you didn’t know existed that shows your client shooting a kneeling victim in the head, and all of a sudden your claim of self-defense has a gaping hole in it.

  The prosecution, because it works for the state, has ready access to everything the police have, and that’s a fairly telling advantage. The law recognizes that advantage and offsets it by allowing the defense great latitude in learning what the prosecution knows. The prosecution actually has to provide advance notification to the defense of every witness and piece of evidence it intends to produce in court.

  There was a time when the courts were so libertarian that defense attorneys had nearly a one-way street. In other words, the prosecutor had to empty the contents of his briefcase, whereas defense counsels only had to share limited knowledge with the prosecutor. Those were the good old days to be a defense attorney. That was before Ronald Reagan and George Bush reigned for twelve straight years and the Supreme Court got a strong injection of conservative steroids.

  These days, the exchange of notification and shared evidence is nearly equal. The whole idea is to keep either side from monopolizing critical knowledge and unfairly bushwhacking the other in the courtroom.

  All this is by way of explaining why Eddie submitted a motion to Carruthers about me. Like I’ve said several times, when it comes to matters of the law, Eddie has few equals.

  The gist of the matter was that Eddie demanded to know my role in the disappearance of his two key witnesses. He somehow found out I’d been beaten while under their custody, and he wanted to know if I’d pursued a vendetta against them. What he was suggesting was that I might’ve crossed over the line of serving as a defense counsel and become personally implicated in the case.

  The law has some fairly quirky rules about the relationship of attorneys to anybody else in a courtroom. Say, for example, either counsel is married to, or sleeping with, the judge, or the jury chairman, then somebody’s expected to recuse themselves. Those are ludicrously self-evident examples, but there are many others that are more slithery. For example, if a defense attorney becomes privy to knowledge about key opposition witnesses by working with a government investigatory agency, that also might imply a need for recusal or disqualification.

  Eddie had no direct knowledge about my activities except his gut instinct, but in this case his washboard tummy was reliable. So he fired a well-placed shot in the dark.

  How did I learn this? Because there was a big red sticker pasted on the door to my hotel room when I got back. The handwriting was Katherine’s. It said, “My room! Immediately!!”

  Her chilling reception spoke volumes. She opened the door, fixed me with a frosty frown, tossed Eddie’s motion in my face, then spun around and walked over to a chair by the window. She fell into it and waited.

  I read it. His suspicions were vague, and some of the details were salaciously off base, but Eddie’s query was inclusive enough that I was in big trouble. In a nutshell, he wanted to know if I was in any way involved in the flight of his two key witnesses. That was broad. That was too broad to wiggle out of.

  The truth was I’d probably crossed some line. I hadn’t meant to. I’d been unintentionally drawn much deeper into the CIA’s counterespionage activities than I’d expected, and along the way, I’d become a player.

  “Well?” Katherine asked, once I’d digested the motion.

  “Well, well,” I evasively replied. I could feel my face redden. I hoped my bruises and scabs kept it hidden.

  The room got colder. “Do we have a problem here?”

  “We could,” I admitted.

  “Tell me about it,” she demanded. She had the right to know.

  But I couldn’t sate her highly warranted curiosity. Everything involved in the Bales-Choi case was classified. If I told her a word and suddenly journalists started showing up on Mercer’s doorstep, I’d be looking at prison time.

  I said, “I can’t.”

  She looked quite angry. “The hell you can’t, Drummond. You’re my co-counsel. You work for me on this case. I have every right to know what you’ve been doing.”

  “All the more reason I can’t. If I share my knowledge with you, I’ll infect you. You’ll be just as much at risk as I am of being disqualified.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was true. If I informed
her what I’d learned about Bales and Choi by working with the CIA and the KCIA, she’d share in the fruits of my efforts.

  Right now, everybody on the defense team partook of the common suspicion that the Itaewon precinct was rotten. They also shared the unproven conjecture that Choi and Bales were fixing cases and framing our client. Their motive, though, was still a mystery. Maybe it was anti-Americanism, like I’d suggested in one strategy review. Maybe it was antigay hysteria, like Allie had suggested. Maybe they were taking money or trying to drive up their conviction rates. Maybe they were just a couple of homicidal, sadistic maniacs out to create havoc and have a good time.

  I was the only one who knew their real motive, and that put me in a box. I couldn’t disclose that motive in court, and with Eddie’s motion I couldn’t even hint at it to Katherine without subjecting her to the same risk of disqualification.

  But like I already said, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “Are you admitting involvement in implicating activities?”

  “I’m not admitting anything.”

  We traded cold fish eyes for a long-drawn-out moment.

  Then Katherine stiffly said, “We have an appointment to meet with Carruthers and Golden in one hour.”

  And I said, “Forget about it. I’ll have a private conversation with Carruthers. One way or another I’ll get it resolved.”

  “Be that as it may. Do I need to prepare a consent for substitution of counsel?”

  “It’s probably not a bad idea,” I was unhappily forced to admit.

  I awkwardly continued. “There’s one or two really good lawyers here on the peninsula. I know a guy down in Pusan. He’s a crackerjack. You’d like him. If you want, I’ll make some calls, see if he’s free.”

  While I was still babbling, she stood up and walked over to her desk. She turned her back on me and picked up some papers that she started to read through. “Call me with the name by three this afternoon so I can submit the consent before close of business. Now, please leave.”

  I was being summarily dismissed.

  I didn’t move, while she tried to pretend I was already gone. I knew she was mad about this legal thing, but I’m not a completely clueless oaf. That phone call to my room early that morning was butting its ugly head into this.

  But just like this legal imbroglio, I couldn’t admit my real relationship with Carol Kim. I couldn’t very well say, “Hey look, she was a CIA agent and the two of us were busy breaking up the biggest spy ring in our country’s history.” Even if she believed me, Mercer would have my balls.

  What I should’ve done was let it drop. I should’ve sneaked out with my tail between my legs. But for some funny reason, I didn’t want to.

  I shuffled my feet and coughed. “Hey, about this morning…”

  At first she didn’t answer, like she hadn’t heard me speak.

  Not until it was apparent I wasn’t just going to slink away did she murmur, “What about this morning?”

  “You called my room around five.”

  “Did I?” she asked, motionless.

  “It wasn’t what you think.”

  She still had her back turned and was reading through her papers. “I didn’t think anything. I don’t even remember calling.”

  “Come on. I was in the shower. A woman answered,” I filled in the blanks, unnecessarily of course. But a hurt woman can play games, and you just have to march along with the flow. That’s a primary rule of life.

  “Umhumm,” she mumbled, her voice rising on that “humm” part, like, How could it possibly have been anything different from what she thought?

  “Katherine, the woman was a business colleague. It was a uh, a business meeting.”

  Her back was still turned, and I’m a perceptive guy, so I took that as a poor harbinger. Maybe I should’ve explained this some other way. That “business” word was the type of adjective that can be open to nasty misinterpretation. After all, what kind of business is conducted in a hotel room at five in the morning?

  I said, “Sure, it sounds a little odd that I was taking a shower with a woman in my room. I can see where you might get the wrong impression. But I’d been up all night. I needed a shower.”

  “Get out,” she mumbled.

  That being “up all night” phrase, I suddenly realized, was another ambiguous choice on my part. Maybe I should have specified I was awake all night. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.

  “Look, I, uh-”

  She spun around and pointed her tiny hand at the door. “I said get out. I mean get out.”

  Her face had icicles hanging off it.

  I left.

  And I did the only other thing I could. I walked to the judge’s office. I told his long-nosed secretary I needed to see him in private, and she haughtily ordered me to sit and wait. So I sat and waited.

  Finally she pushed her snooty nose in the air and told me to go in.

  The office was dark again and I wondered if that had anything to do with his moods. You know, like bright on a cheery day; dark when he was in the mood to kill somebody.

  I stuck my head in and said, “Good morning, Your Honor. I need to have a private word with you.”

  He said, “Come in and have a seat.”

  I fell into the chair across from his desk, and a huge explosion of air escaped from my lungs. If you think I was nervous, you’re right. Confessing in a dark, screened-off booth to a faceless Catholic priest whose job it is to forgive you, well, that’s one thing. Confessing to the hanging judge, eye-to-eye, in the privacy of his chambers, that’s another damned thing altogether. I was reminded of that old drill sergeant’s warning that God doesn’t get to exact his punishments till the Army’s done with you.

  He examined my face. “Drummond, you look even worse than you did yesterday. You’ve got to stop burning the candle at both ends. Get some sleep, boy.”

  I was beginning to get tired of everybody I saw these days telling me I looked like crap. It can start to wear on you.

  Anyway, I said, “I think I’ve got a problem. Carlson gave me a copy of Golden’s motion.”

  He held up a big, beefy hand. “We shouldn’t be discussing this without the two lead attorneys present. The motion has been filed.”

  I gave him a pinched grin. “I know all that. Can we have another of those mano-to-mano chats?”

  He leaned back into his big chair, and I’d like to say he looked receptive, or at least amused. He didn’t.

  So I launched in anyway. “I’m talking theoretically here. Suppose you had an attorney involved in a criminal case. Then all of a sudden, it started to look like an espionage case. Suppose that attorney was approached by a very secret American agency and asked to share some knowledge. Is that crossing a boundary?”

  His expression began to change. He leaned forward in his chair and the lines on his face deepened. All the lines – the ones on his forehead, around his lips, even the ones next to his ears.

  “The sharing of knowledge of itself does not violate any legal ethics. As long as you don’t breach attorney-client privilege.”

  “Nope, no breaches in that regard. But say things got a little deeper. Say people start getting murdered. The lawyer decides he has to do more than merely provide information.”

  “If he can help stop the killings, he has a moral imperative to do that. He has to help.”

  “Yes, but before he knows it, he’s helping that secret government agency hunt down spies. And it happens that two of those spies are actually key government witnesses.”

  To say I had Carruthers’s attention would be an understatement. His head was canted at an odd angle like he was experiencing difficulty breathing.

  “Bales and Choi?” he asked.

  “Please, Your Honor,” I reminded him. “We’re only talking theories right now.”

  “Okay. Theoretically, that could pose serious problems. How much did this attorney learn in the course of this effort?”

  I inadvertently sighed
. “He learned a lot. He learned that the two witnesses were at the center of a massive spy ring. He even helped chase them off.”

  “So he learned things relevant to the case?”

  “A great deal. He developed a reasonable theory that his client was framed by this spy ring. The problem is, even if he could prove it – which he can’t – he still can’t introduce anything into direct evidence. This is all still theoretical, of course, but that secret government agency warned him there’s a lid on all information.”

  Carruthers was shaking his big head back and forth and rolling his eyes. “Has this mythical attorney shared any of this knowledge with his co-counsels? Any at all?”

  “No sir. There have been firewalls. Because the attorney was involved in classified matters, and his co-counsels are all civilians, he’s kept them completely in the dark.”

  “Holy shit,” Carruthers said. And frankly, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “the prosecutor has now submitted a motion for discovery that would force our mythical counselor to admit he gained pertinent knowledge by working with a key government agency. It’s obviously knowledge he can’t share with the prosecution.”

  Carruthers snorted once or twice, pushed himself up from the chair, fell back down, then ran his stubby fingers across his eyes and forehead. He stared at his desk a long time. I stared at the floor and didn’t say anything, either. I’d said enough already.

  He finally concluded, “Our theoretical attorney must recuse himself.”

  “The problem with that,” I said, “is that it would severely penalize his client. The law is intended to be fair, and it would be criminally unfair.”

  “Be that as it may, our attorney has relevant knowledge unfairly gained. If, through remarkable willpower, he did not employ that knowledge in court, the effect would be the same as though he had recused himself. He would still be denying his client the value of what he’d learned.”