by Brian Haig
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.
I drew a few curious stares. I knocked on Mercer’s door and he yelled for me to enter. He was talking on that souped-up cell phone again, and he automatically dropped his voice to a whisper. Pretty damned silly, if you ask me. I fell into a seat and waited till he finished.
That didn’t take long. “You ready for the big time?” he asked.
“As ready as I’m going to be.”
“Carol’s with Bales’s wife right now.”
We’d still been trying to figure out how to lure Bales’s wife out of their Army quarters when I’d left Mercer to go see Katherine. The whole operation depended on Mrs. Bales being gone from their house.
I was curious. “How’d you arrange it?”
“We had the wife of the colonel in charge of the MP brigade invite her to an impromptu luncheon. Carol’s there as a waitress. The luncheon ends at two, so we’ve only got an hour.”
I said I was ready to get to it, so Mercer led me out. The second we got outside the door, he yelled at everybody to go get into their positions, and, as we say in the Army, asses and elbows flew all over the place.
It took me ten minutes to limp over to the MP station. I went right up to the desk sergeant and said I needed to see Chief Bales. He got on the intercom, informed Bales he had a visitor, then pointed at a hallway and told me to go straight to the sixth office on the left. I told him I knew my way, and he went back to doing whatever he was doing.
Bales barely looked up when I entered. He didn’t stand or offer to shake. He merely gave me a distracted, unwelcoming look.
I said, “I need to have a few words with you.”
He pointed at the wooden chair in front of his desk. He leaned back in his seat and stroked his chin and rotated his head, partly annoyed and partly curious. Probably he figured I was making some last-ditch effort to finagle some piece of information about the Whitehall case. Or maybe I was here to bitch about my beating and make a few threats.
I said, “Whitehall’s trial starts tomorrow.”
“So I hear.”
I glanced down at my watch. The big hand was between 12:04 and 12:05. The telephones in Itaewon were scheduled to be shut down at 12:05 on the dot. Buzz’s friend Kim had arranged it. For thirty minutes, the entire Itaewon telephone grid was going to be disconnected. Like I said earlier, the KCIA could do things the CIA only dreams about.
I looked up and said, “You know the odd thing?”
He smiled. “What’s the odd thing?”
“Well, it’s having all these crimes occur in Itaewon. I mean, there’s Lee’s murder, then the attempted murder of Keith Merritt, then the slaughter outside the gate. And who’s in charge of all those investigations? Choi from the Korean side, and you from the American side.”
“Yeah, well, when you’re the best, you get the tough ones.”
“I guess you do.”
“Comes with the territory,” he said, brushing back his hair, like he really meant it.
“Must keep you pretty busy.”
“I stay up with it.”
“So it seems, Chief. You know, I even went back and reviewed the record of those cases you and Choi handled together. That’s the beauty of computerized records. Just enter a couple of names and the computer does all your work for you. Hell, before this, it would’ve taken three paralegals a month to collect all that data. Isn’t the modern age just wonderful?”
He placed his elbows on his desk, suddenly much more interested in what I had to say.
I continued. “How’s it work? Does Choi call you every time something intriguing happens over there? Christ, for five years, you’ve led the station in case closure rates.”
“I get my assignments from the brass, just like every other CID agent here. I can’t help it if my closure rate’s higher than the other guys. Maybe it’s luck of the draw. Maybe I just work it harder.”
I shook my head. “Come on, Chief, there has to be more to it. Your closure rate’s over eighty percent. Four out of five. I doubt there’s another CID agent in the world who comes anywhere near that. Hell, a CID agent’s considered a golden cow if he gets fifty percent. You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.”
He smiled impatiently. “What’s the matter, Major? Do you actually have a problem with a detective who solves his cases?”
“Well, that’s the other thing. Nearly eighty percent of your investigations were in Itaewon.”
“What’s so mysterious? I’ve been here five years. I’ve developed good sources, an army of snitches, and I know my way around. I’ve got a great rapport with the Itaewon precinct. The command knows it, so they throw a lot of that stuff my way.”
“What gives you such great rapport with the Itaewon precinct? Is it because you’re married to Choi’s sister?”
“It helps,” he said, still smiling.
“Well, that’s the other odd thing I wanted to ask you about. I ran a background check on Chief Inspector Choi Lee Min also. Born in Chicago in 1954, emigrated back to Korea in 1971, attended Seoul National University, where he graduated at the top of his class. A very impressive guy.”
“Yes, he is.”
“A guy like him had the world at his feet. He could be sitting in one of those gleaming towers downtown making millions. He could be trading on the bourse. But he chose police work, of all things.”
“Choi’s not motivated by money. Like you said, he’s quite a guy.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said offhandedly. “Only problem is, he didn’t have a sister.”
Bales’s elbows flew off the desk and he fell back in his chair, like this was the most comical thing he’d ever heard.
He actually chuckled. “I don’t know who ran the check, but you better go back and start over. My wife was born in Chicago in 1962. She and her brother lived together until 1970, when their parents were killed.”
I scratched my head and looked baffled. “Your wife’s maiden name is Lee Jin May, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Born in Chicago?”
“That’s right.”
“There’s no record of any Lee Jin May born in any hospital in Chicago between the years 1957 and 1970. For that matter, there’s no record of a Choi Lee Min born in any Chicago hospital, either.”
This was true. Mercer had asked the FBI to run a quick background check, and they had so far been unable to find any trace of Choi or his sister.
Bales came back forward and looked angry. “Maybe they were born at home. Maybe they used a midwife. Did you think of that? Their parents were poor immigrants struggling to survive. I’ve never asked Jin May, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Ah, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, like, Oops, gee, stupid me.
“Well, you had no fucking business going through my background anyway. Or my wife’s. What the hell’s going on? Do I need to fil
e a complaint against you?”
“No, no need to do that,” I assured.
He instantly became conciliatory. “Look, I know we’ve got this little problem between us. I don’t blame you for being sore. Don’t take it personally, though.”
I gave him a full grin, so he had a bird’s-eye view of the gap where I used to have a tooth. “Me? Take it personally?”
“Look, I’m sorry if things got a little rough back at the station. We thought you’d murdered an innocent cop. You know how us cops are when one of our own gets it. I’m not making an excuse, but I’m sorry, all right?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said with a full dose of insincerity, although frankly the intonation was wasted because we both knew there wasn’t any chance in hell I’d forgive him.
Then I abruptly got up to leave. I got to the door, then turned around like I’d just been struck with an afterthought.
I slapped my forehead. “Hey, one more thing.”
The overconfident prick actually gave me his Dudley Do-Right grin. “Sure, how can I help you, Major?”
“That thing about your wife. I’m sorry if I overreacted, but when I got curious about not finding her birth records, or her brother’s, I called the CIA station here and asked them to look into it. They’ve got smart guys, though. I’m sure they’ll figure out she and her brother were born at home.”
I wished I’d thought to bring a camera. You had to see his face.
I left the MP station, then walked two blocks to a gray government sedan that was waiting next to the curb. Mercer was seated in the front. I climbed in the back, next to one of his guys.
A radio was on the dashboard and a speaker was connected to it so we could hear what was happening inside Bales’s office. Early that morning, one of Mercer’s guys had gained entry and wired the office for sound, so Mercer had overheard every word of our conversation. He absently held up a thumb. His attention, though, was focused on the sounds coming from the speaker. My role in this affair was to give Bales an intimation of trouble to come, just enough of a whiff to put him in motion.
We listened for a while as Bales talked to somebody, probably an MP, about some details of a case they were working. He sounded impatient and curt, and was transparently struggling to hurry the MP along. Then we heard the sound of a door closing, then Bales dialing a number. One of the bugs was planted in the earpiece of Bales’s phone. We could hear every sound coming through his receiver. What we heard at that moment was that scratchy, hissy noise phones make when the lines are out of service. He tried the number again, then slammed down the receiver, hard.
Half a minute of silence passed. We could hear him breathing. Full, huffy breaths. We heard him pick up the phone and dial again. We heard the hissy sound again. We heard him dial another number.
It rang about three times, then the voice of an answering machine said, “Hello, this is the Bales residence. We are out right now, but please—”
We heard Bales punch in two numbers to code his home answering machine, then we heard Choi’s voice say, “Michael, take every precaution. Escape right away. American intelligence has us in their net. Change your identification and escape.”
The voice came from a tape on Bales’s answering machine in his quarters. And it actually was Choi’s voice. The message had been cut and stitched together from the conversation Carol had had with Choi earlier that morning. As soon as Bales’s wife had been lured out of their quarters, Mercer’s techs had called and played their tape.
Bales hung up the phone, more softly this time, and we could hear his chair creak, probably from him leaning back into it and trying to catch his breath. We heard him open a drawer, and then the sounds of things being moved around. He was searching for something.
Then he picked up the phone and dialed another number. Only this time, the real Choi answered. It had to be a cell phone number. We should have considered that, but we hadn’t.
“Choi, it’s me,” Bales said.
“Yes, Michael, what is it?”
“I got your message. What the hell’s going on?”
“What message?”
“The one you left on my answering machine.”
“I didn’t leave you any message.”
There was a moment of stunned, bewildered silence. Mercer turned around and we both smiled. The whole thing might be going south on us, but there’s still something perversely satisfying when you hear the bad guys getting tangled up in your web.
Sounding frantic, Bales said, “God damn it, Choi, I had that asshole lawyer in here a few minutes ago telling me he stumbled onto the fact you and Jin May weren’t from Chicago. He said he couldn’t find your hospital birth records, so he turned it over to the CIA. Then I heard your voice on my machine telling me to run. I know your fucking voice, Choi. It was you.”
Choi calmly said, “Michael, stay cool. I didn’t call you. Somebody’s playing games with us.”
“Right.”
Then Choi said, “Remember plan B?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Use it.”
“What about Jin May?”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She was in the house when I left this morning. But she didn’t answer when I called. That bitch could be shopping at the PX for all I know. Or they could already have her.”
“That bitch,” he’d called her. It didn’t sound like Mr. and Mrs. Bales were what you might term a blissfully married couple.
Finally, sounding strained, Choi said, “Don’t worry about her. I’ll see if I can find her, but if she gets caught she knows what she’s doing. Just get moving.”
Then Bales said, “What about phase 3? Is it still—”
“Michael, get moving.”
“Okay, okay,” Bales said, then they both hung up. Three seconds later, we heard the sounds of Bales getting up from his desk, then pacing across his office, then his door opening and closing.
Michael Bales was now on the run, but not before he’d called his buddy Choi, which was something we’d hoped to avoid. We wanted Bales on his own, isolated, without resources, confused about what had happened to Choi. Frantic men make stupid mistakes and that’s how we wanted him. Now we had to worry about plan B, whatever the hell that was.
The only good thing about the call was that it almost certainly confirmed I was right. What we had sounded like a full-blown espionage ring.
Mercer’s driver put the car in gear and we raced straight back to the CIA office complex. We rushed inside to the communications console that had been hastily set up in the large room outside Mercer’s office.
Five communicators were huddled around the console, each with headsets on, each taking reports or coordinating actions among Mercer’s field teams. The CIA might not have been able to figure out when the Soviet Union was falling, but it looked like they ran a first-class surveillance operation.
I stood and watched. I was impressed. A tracking device connected to a GPS satellite had been planted on Bales’s car, and there was a large electronic map display on the wall. You could see this little red light moving steadily away from Yongsan, toward the international airport located about forty minutes’ drive from Seoul’s city center. There must’ve been three or four chase cars following along with him, because progress reports kept coming in to the radio operators at the console.
One of Mercer’s guys handed him a cup of coffee and he stood sipping from it as he proudly surveyed the operation. I went and found myself a cup, too, then found a chair, because my damaged and dented body was tired of standing up.
The basic idea was to let Bales get to the airport, buy a ticket and make his way to the departure gate, then arrest him. The original plan hadn’t envisioned Bales calling Choi and thus had been built on the premise that there would be no evidence of his involvement in the plot. But Bales was a soldier; if he bought a ticket and attempted to flee, he was trying to desert, and that would put a nail in his coffin. Even now, he could make up some excuse about why
he called Choi, but he couldn’t do the same about trying to flee from Korea.
I thought it was a bit extravagant, and frankly didn’t see why they didn’t just arrest him, but Mercer insisted it was critical to have something tangible to hang on Bales. The first step in breaking a traitor is forcing him to implicate himself. Mercer was the spymaster; what the hell did I know? Besides, it wasn’t my business.
About thirty minutes passed. After a while, surveillance operations get tedious, because all you’re doing is following a car, and you can get lulled into complacency. I don’t know if that’s what caused it, but suddenly the radio operators started screaming into their mikes and Mercer looked like somebody had stuck a burning match into his shoe.
What we quickly pieced together was that Bales had driven into a long tunnel. The chase cars didn’t want to stay too close to him, because they didn’t want to make him suspicious. When his car emerged from the tunnel, they followed him as usual, which meant that every three minutes a chase car passed his auto to get a visual on the driver. The first pass after the car came out of the tunnel, it was no longer Bales driving. It was a Korean.
Mercer yanked a microphone away from a communicator and screamed at his chase teams to force the car to pull over. They did. The Korean driver immediately jumped out. He leaped directly in front of a passing car and was splattered all over the roadside.
CHAPTER 36
You know that old saw about how when things get bad, they almost always get worse? Without hesitating, Mercer picked up the phone and called Kim, his KCIA partner. He hastily explained what happened and told him to pick up Choi immediately. Kim calmly explained that everything was under control, that Choi and three of his fellow cops were at that moment having lunch inside a kimchi restaurant in the heart of Itaewon. A KCIA agent had followed them inside, and four more agents were planted outside, observing the front of the restaurant. Good, Mercer told him. Don’t waste another minute. Send them in to get him.
