Mortal Allies

by Brian Haig

  She broke into an impish grin. “Isn’t this exciting?” she asked. In all seriousness, too.

  “No, it’s not exciting. See, exciting is a vacation in Bermuda, living in a cottage only a ten-minute walk from Horseshoe Bay. Exciting is lying on a beach and having no cares in the world. Exciting is wondering which girl’s skimpy bikini top is gonna get washed off by the next big wave. Those were all things I was doing until thirty hours ago.”

  “What would you call this, then?”

  “May I be candid?”

  “Within limits,” she carefully replied. Like I said earlier, the woman wasn’t dumb.

  “Completely absurd. You’ve got a client who’s probably guilty as hell. You’ve got a political agenda that never was popular, and your client has probably set it back a few centuries. And you’ve got an axe to grind with me.”

  The grin left her face and she turned around and went over to sit in a chair by the window. It struck me she was buying time to think about how to address all that. Then she spun and looked out the window at all the twinkling lights off in the distance.

  She lightly said, “You’ve got two out of three correct.”

  “Which two? The guilty client? The political agenda? Or the axe to grind?”

  She ignored my question. “Lighten up, Attila. When I got here ten days ago, they assigned a local as my co-counsel. I didn’t like him, so I fired him and asked for you.”

  “What didn’t you like about him?”

  “He was a homophobic bigot, for one thing, so my assistants didn’t trust him. He was dumb, for a second thing. Third, he was the kind of spit-shined, pants-pressed, salute-himself-in-the-mirror type your JAG Corps has in too great abundance. This is going to be a tough case. I can’t afford an unthinking automaton on my team.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “To say it charitably, you and I never hit it off too good.”

  I was still looking at the back of her head.

  “At least I know you,” she said.

  “Then what? Is this one of those ‘devil you know’ things?”

  She nodded. “If you want to put it that way.”

  “Well, I’ve got a few problems that have to be ironed out or this isn’t going to work. Actually it won’t work anyway, but here it is. First, don’t you ever dress me down in public again. You have a problem with me, muzzle it till we’re in private. This isn’t the law school library, and I’m a professional officer. Two, I’m no token. You want a token, I’ll get on the phone right now and have the Army send you one.”

  She slowly twisted around in her chair and faced me. There was an odd glint in her eye. It didn’t fit right with somebody who was being told where to get off. I should’ve wondered about that. I was just too pumped up on my own vinegar to stop myself.

  “If you’re not a token, what are you?”

  “I carry my weight. I get jobs just like the rest of your team. Only I’m different. I’ve got a law degree and eight years of courtroom experience under my belt. Also, I’m an expert at military law.”

  The corners of her lips cracked upward a tiny bit. “And what gives you the impression the others aren’t attorneys?”

  “You mean—”

  “Keith was third in his class at Yale Law. Maria and Allie attended UVA Law together. They weren’t top of their class, but they’re no slouches.”

  Rather than choke on my own tongue, which was what I felt like doing, I saw an opportunity here. “Then you don’t have any paralegals or legal assistants?”

  “Not yet,” she admitted. “But OGMM’s working to rectify that as we speak.”

  “Tell ’em to stop.”

  “No, I won’t tell them to stop. We’ve got only two weeks till court. We’ve got work and motions backing up. I can’t afford to have Keith or Allie or Maria wasting any more of their time on simple clerical chores.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “I’ve got the perfect legal aide who’ll handpick three or four of the best assistants in the business.”

  “Look, Attila, no offense, but I’ve seen the quality of legal work your uniformed stooges perform. I can’t afford that. Not on this case.”

  “You owe me,” I said, literally stamping my foot like a three-year-old, suddenly desperate to win this argument.

  “I don’t owe you shit. I asked for you, but that doesn’t mean I owe you any damned thing.”

  “Wrong there,” I said, pushing an accusatory finger at her face. “You ruined my Bermuda vacation. You got any idea how hard it is to get a beach bungalow in May?”

  She started to say something, so I took a step toward her, forcing her to lean back. “Also, I’d just met this very fetching Swedish stewardess. And things were going real well, too, if you get my thrust. You got any idea how hard it is to find a real live Swedish stewardess in Bermuda?”

  A disgusted look came to her face, because she obviously didn’t want to hear about my sex life. That is, unless my Swedish stewardess happened to be bisexual, in which case, well, maybe an exception could be made.

  “And another thing,” I threw in, before she could say no. “This is an Army base in Korea, seven thousand miles from home. It’s not like cases you might’ve tried back in the States, where the moment you step outside the gates you’re on your own turf. You’re stranded here. You’re going to need someone who knows their way around the Army. It’s the simple things like getting a car from the motor pool, getting copiers, making travel arrangements.”

  She was getting tired of listening to me, but I was speaking so emphatically she just knew I’d keep quarreling all night if I didn’t get my way.

  “When can you have him here?” she asked, not yet committed, but giving a little ground.

  “Probably within twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty-four hours, huh?” she asked, looking suddenly thoughtful. Then her expression changed to a threatening snarl. “If I agree to this, he better be damned good.”

  “She. And she’s fantastic, trust me.”

  She said okay, and I left relishing my one small victory. If I had to endure Katherine’s legal freak show, I’d at least have a few trusted aides by my side. Allies. Normal folks. Well, normal compared to what OGMM was likely to provide, and after one good look at Katherine’s crack attorney team, I didn’t want to even hypothesize what OGMM’s paralegals and legal assistants might be like.

  I got all the way back to my room and was still feeling smug and self-congratulatory when it hit me. I wanted to kick myself in the ass, only I’m not double-jointed enough. Katherine had just picked my pocket. She’d picked it clean, too.

  That’s why she’d been goading and ridiculing me from that opening moment in Spears’s office. Being her co-counsel, I could just go along for the ride. All I was legally obligated to do was offer her timely advice when it was called for, advice limited essentially to the peculiarities of military law. A token was what she’d called it. Well, to be perfectly precise, that’s exactly what I was being paid to be.

  And frankly, it was a safe harbor, as sailors are wont to say. It would keep me out of the way of the political crossfire, which, frankly, wouldn’t hurt my career any. I had this lurking suspicion the Army wasn’t apt to be real grateful toward any officer who threw his heart and soul into defending Captain Whitehall.

  What she’d just managed to pull off was to get me to commit myself to her team. She knew from past experience exactly how to twist my noodles, and she’d adroitly done just that. I’d been sucker-punched.

  The intriguing question was why she thought she needed me. She was the one with eight years’ experience in gay cases. She should know every devilish twist and turn on the subject. And the same with that trio she’d brought along with her. But maybe they lacked experience with murder cases. Maybe that’s why she needed me. Or maybe she knew her defense was hopeless and was grabbing at straws, any straw, even me.

  Well, anyway, retribution was on the way. I
n less than twenty-four hours, Sergeant First Class Imelda Pepperfield was going to climb off an airplane and stomp her way into town. Just wait till she got a look at Katherine and her crew. The thought almost made me drool. This was the same Imelda Pepperfield who could shatter bricks with her tiny, beady eyes. She’d have them all spit-shining their shoes and begging for mercy. Hell, she’d probably get them all to turn straight.

  I immediately got on the phone and called the Pentagon. An ice-cold voice answered, “General Clapper’s office.”

  “Major Drummond here,” I said. “Could I speak with General Clapper, please?”

  “Hold for a moment,” came the stiff reply.

  I twiddled my thumbs for nearly five minutes before a warm, friendly voice said, “Sean, Sean, how are you?”

  The voice was too friendly by half. Slick try, but I wasn’t born yesterday.

  “Why’d you do this to me?” I moaned as pitifully as I could, because the central motive of this call was to load so much guilt on Clapper’s shoulders that he’d do anything for me.

  “It wasn’t me, Sean. You were requested. By name.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten me into? I’m one of five co-counsels. You should see the others.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve seen photos of Carlson. She doesn’t look so bad.”

  “Don’t be fooled by her exterior. Her interior belongs in the crocodile pond, except the other crocs won’t have her.”

  He chuckled some more. It was one of those phony, don’t-tell-me-your-problems, I’ve-got-enough-of-my-own chuckles. “Look, Sean, I needed to put a good man in there anyway. Someone tough, someone who can handle themselves under fierce pressure. When she asked for you, it made perfect sense.”

  Now I was getting the old muzzle-him-with-compliments act. Clapper wasn’t pulling any punches today.

  “Look, General, I’ll admit I’m just coming up to speed, but this thing’s dynamite. Spears did a tap dance on my ass this afternoon. I’ve already waded through two riots over here.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware of the situation over there. It’s nearly as bad over here.”

  “How’s that?” I asked, since I still hadn’t glanced at a newspaper in three weeks and therefore hadn’t the foggiest notion what was happening.

  “The Republicans are pushing a bill through Congress to overturn the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. They’re saying Whitehall, Moran, and Jackson prove it doesn’t work. You know who asked them to push the bill?”

  “Who?”

  “South Korea’s ambassador. Publicly, too. It was couched like this: Get the homosexuals out of your military or we’ll throw your troops out of Korea.”

  “You think they mean it?”

  “We know they mean it. Go review a few weeks of newspaper and magazine articles. Once you get current, then call me back.”

  This was a very polished brush-off, only I wasn’t done with my business. I quickly said, “I, uh, I need a favor.”

  “Favor?” he asked in a very halfhearted tone. Not “Gee, Sean, considering the nasty briar patch I’ve thrown you into, whatever you want.” I should’ve realized right then that I was swimming in quicksand.

  “I want Sergeant First Class Imelda Pepperfield flown over here right away. And I want her to bring her pick of assistants.”

  There was this fairly long pause; this long, nauseating pause.

  “That, uh . . . I’m afraid that’s not really a very good idea.”

  “How come?” I dumbly asked.

  “It really isn’t a good idea to militarize the defense team. Whitehall made a deliberate choice to rely on civilian attorneys and, frankly, it was astonishingly convenient. You get my meaning here, don’t you?”

  Yeah, I sure as hell did get his meaning, didn’t I. The Army was exceedingly pleased to be relieved of the distasteful responsibility of defending Whitehall. Win, lose, or draw, there weren’t going to be any happy endings here, and it was vastly preferable to have some wild-eyed civilian lefties arguing on his behalf. You didn’t have to look under the table to get the message being sent to me, either: stay well-hidden behind Carlson’s skirts.

  So I lied. “Look, General, I’m just a messenger boy. Carlson ordered me to pass this request. She said to tell you to either get Pepperfield over here, or she’ll call some of her press buddies and say you’re trying to sandbag her defense.”

  “Bullshit. She’s never heard of Pepperfield.”

  “Well, I, uh, I let the cat out of the bag. Of course, I had no idea until a second ago that you didn’t want to green up the defense team.”

  He said okay, or he snarled okay, or he shot the word out from his lips like a bullet. Then he hung up, much harder than was necessary. Not that he had more right to be peeved than I did, since I now had a pretty clear inkling where I stood.

  I was working for a lesbian who had rotten memories of me, not to mention a satchelcase packed with hidden agendas on how she intended to employ me. The chief of the JAG Corps who’d assigned me to this case wanted me to sandbag my co-counsel, and thereby my client, whom I’d never met — although given the crime he’d apparently committed, I didn’t want to meet him.

  All in all, a vile situation.

  Fortunately, though, I’m afflicted with a short attention span. I lay down on the bed and got comfortable. I thought of Bermuda and that Swedish stewardess; although from a strictly technical standpoint, she hadn’t really been Swedish, since she was from the Bronx and had one of those Italian names. And she wasn’t really a stewardess, either, but a secretary at some advertising agency, out prowling for a good time. Well, I’m a good time. In fact, I’m a damned good time. And if you could ignore her Bronx twang, and the big, puffy hairdo, you could force yourself to believe she had some Swedish blood in her. I mean, those Europeans were always invading one another, weren’t they? Who knows how much crossbreeding occurred?

  Okay, it’s a stretch, but sometimes when it comes to the opposite sex you have to let your imagination paper over the rough spots.

  I dozed off with a happy smile.

  CHAPTER 4

  The phone rang at 6:00 A.M. I lifted it up and Katherine said, “Get down here right away. We’ve got a big problem.”

  I spitefully took a nice long shower, shaved in languorous slow motion, took forever to put on my uniform and tie my boots, then watched TV for ten leisurely minutes. The thing about life is, you’ve got to take your cheap victories where you find them.

  Allie the amazon answered the door again, only this time it was just her and Katherine and Maria in the room. Maria again had a pouty frown on her face.

  “Hey, what’s happening?” I said to Allie, trying to sound hip, because she was really hard to look at early in the morning, and it was either act hip or vomit all over the floor.

  She looked down at me like I was the one who was tall and gangly. “Hey, Katherine, he’s back.”

  I smiled nicely and tried to think up a wisecrack but nothing particular came to mind. Or actually, lots of particular things came to mind, only I didn’t want to create any irreparable rifts this early in the game.

  “Attila, what took you so long?” Katherine barked from across the room.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled back, spitefully refusing to answer.

  Katherine walked across the room until she was right in front of me. “I’ve just been notified the South Koreans are taking jurisdiction over our case. They want Whitehall turned over to their custody.”

  “Who notified you?”

  “Spears’s legal adviser.”

  “He would know,” I drolly observed.

  “Can they do it?”

  “This is South Korea. They can do any damned thing they want. Do they have the legal basis? Well, that’s another story.”

  I smelled the aroma of coffee and my nostrils twitched. Katherine pointed at an urn in the corner. I went and got a cup, using the time to think.

  “Look,” I said, “here’s how it
works. When we have troops stationed on foreign soil, we first sign something called a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, as we commonly call it, that sets up how these things are supposed to be handled. Of course, we have a SOFA agreement with the government of South Korea. What it stipulates is that anytime an American soldier commits a crime, we get to try them.”

  “So they can’t do this?” she announced, or asked, or prayed.

  “Well, here’s where it gets itchy. The crime was committed off base in Itaewon. The victim was a South Korean citizen. He was wearing an American Army uniform and was serving in an American unit, because he was a Katusa. But he was still South Korean. And it was a particularly nasty crime and the Korean people are obviously very annoyed.”

  “So what? Tough shit,” Allie said. “A diplomatic agreement’s a legal document, right?”

  “True, but the SOFA agreement has been a source of great aggravation and controversy over here. It even had to be amended a few years ago, because the South Koreans are fed up with all the crimes American soldiers have committed over the past four or five decades.”

  “Amended how?”

  “We still have the right to try the accused. However, the issue of pretrial confinement is now negotiable. Also, once there’s a conviction, we now have to bargain with the South Korean Ministry of Justice over who gets to punish the criminal.”

  Allie said, “So I was right, then. They have no right to try Whitehall.”

  “Partly right. The South Koreans don’t like our legal system one bit. They think we give way too much leeway and protection to the accused. They think we’re too procedural. To their way of logic, it’s incomprehensible that a criminal could get off just because somebody failed to read him his rights, or some piece of evidence got contaminated, or someone on the jury had a bellyache and voted impulsively. They apparently don’t want those risks in this case.”