by Brian Haig
Katherine said, “That’s what I said, Golden. You’re getting your two days.”
I could see that Eddie wanted almost more than anything to say something sharp and nasty back, just to balance the ledger, except Katherine had a grip on his short hairs, so discretion stilled his tongue.
Carruthers said, “All right then, Major, you’ve got until 0800 hours Tuesday to locate your witnesses. Miss Carlson, the court thanks you for your equanimity.”
Then we all got up and left. When we got outside, Katherine loitered by the door and asked Allie to go ahead. We gave her a minute to get beyond earshot.
Then Katherine said, “What the hell have you got up your sleeve?”
I held up my hands. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t try to run a scam on me, Drummond. I know you.”
“Me? A scam?”
Her stare hardened. “You do have something going, don’t you? The only reason I agreed to this was because I assume you’ve got something. Some lead, something.”
I shook my head. “Actually, no. I don’t have a thing.”
Katherine’s big green eyes suddenly got bigger. “Look, Drummond, I just made the biggest decision of my legal career because of you. The biggest decision of my life. You have no idea how important this is to me.”
“Why’d you ask for me to be your co-counsel?” I asked.
“Honestly?”
“No, lie and say it’s because I’m so damned good-looking and sexy.”
She sort of half smiled. “It wasn’t that, believe me.”
“See,” I said. “You’ve got your secrets and I’ve got mine.”
Her half smile disappeared. She gave me a very steady look. “Let me make this clear. I just gave that son of a bitch two more days. I let you talk me into that.”
I nodded.
She continued. “That means you’ve got two days to come up with something. You’ve got two days to give me something that proves Thomas Whitehall didn’t murder and rape Lee. If you fail to do that, I’ll find some way to ruin the rest of your life. You won’t be able to hide from me. I’ll track you down and make your life miserable. Is that clear?”
I looked carefully into her eyes, and there was not the slightest doubt in my mind she meant every word of it. Without another word she walked away and left me standing on the hot cement, wondering what in the hell I should do next. Not that I was afraid of her or anything, but I suddenly felt desperate to come up with something. Something quick, too, because when I claimed I wasn’t afraid of her, I might’ve been exaggerating a little bit… or a lot.
I went back to Mercer’s office. He was seated behind his desk with the usual cup of coffee attached to his lips. As much coffee as that man drank, he probably had brown liquid flowing through his veins. If you took his java away, he’d probably deflate like a big balloon with a hole in it.
He looked astoundingly unhappy.
I said, “Hey, boss, what’s happening?”
That “boss” thing was my sly way of intimating I wanted to do some more work for him.
He didn’t seem to catch it. He grumbled something about how Choi and Bales seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Actually, they had disappeared in Seoul, which ain’t exactly thin air, if you ask me. It’s a sprawling metropolis with some fifteen million people and at least that many rabbit warrens and pigeonholes they could’ve run into. They might not even be in Seoul anymore. Hell, they might not be within a thousand miles of Korea.
I said, “Choi’s probably got a million places to hide.”
Mercer took another sip of coffee. He looked wrung out, and it wasn’t hard to guess he’d gotten reamed pretty good for letting Bales slip away. He could at least pin the Choi screwup on Kim and the KCIA, but that’s like saying you’re only responsible for sinking the lower decks of the Titanic; some other guy let the upper decks slip under the waves.
The way spooks like to handle these things is to catch the spies. Then they like to vigorously interrogate them and gauge how much damage was done, and where, and how. Otherwise you have to assume the worst, and respond accordingly. The worst in this case was hugely ugly. The entire defense plan for South Korea might’ve been compromised and therefore needed to be rewritten. Thousands of units might have to be moved, minefields relocated, port security plans rebuilt, etcetera, etcetera. Millions of men and women would have to be retrained to execute a new plan. It could take years and many billions of dollars.
Still, that left the larger question of who Bales and Choi might’ve blackmailed and turned. Hundreds of people worked in sensitive jobs in the huge alliance headquarters. Choi had been in business nearly twenty years, and even if he’d only cherry-picked one sucker every year, that left a big army of informants. And just because Choi had hightailed it didn’t mean his moles were out of business. The plumbers couldn’t do their work if they didn’t know where the leaks were.
Mercer looked like he’d had all this explained to him in painful detail by somebody with a real loud, brassy voice. I felt sorry for him.
No, actually that’s not true. I’d brought him the breakthrough and he’d let the rats slip from his grasp. He should’ve arrested Bales and Choi right away. Maybe he should’ve had thirty cars tail Bales to the airport, or put a man in Bales’s trunk. He took a gamble and he lost.
Anyway, I said, “Has anybody figured out what happened?”
He shrugged. “What we guess was there was another car and some accomplices waiting for Bales in the tunnel. We haven’t got a clue who the guy was who drove his car out of the tunnel. He didn’t have any ID, but he obviously worked for Choi. I guess that was plan B. As for Choi, he somehow figured he was being followed. After Bales called him, he must’ve taken precautions. Maybe he had some of his own people tail him and they detected the KCIA guys.”
“He didn’t waste a minute. He’s really good,” I remarked, which was as revoltingly obvious as anything I’d ever muttered in my life.
“Yeah,” Mercer said, looking even more glum.
I hooked my cane on the front of his desk and fell into a chair. “You’ve got people going through their offices and homes?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Bales’s wife?”
“Carol arrested her at the luncheon. That’s the only fuckin’ thing that went right.”
“Where’s she now?”
“The KCIA’s got her.”
“What? You turned her over?”
“Yeah.”
“How come?” I asked. “You arrested her on a military base. She’s a military wife. You have jurisdiction.”
His eyes shifted a little, like this wasn’t something he was particularly proud to admit. “ ’Cause the KCIA has a bit more latitude than we do.”
That was a nice way of saying that the KCIA could rip her fingernails out and flood her veins with truth serums.
I wasn’t passing any judgments, though. I might’ve done the same thing if I were in his shoes. Hell, I might’ve done the same thing if I was in my shoes. Lots of innocent folks had been murdered, and Bales’s wife was probably somehow connected to it.
“Besides,” he continued, “they know how to handle North Korean stooges better than we do.”
“Is there some trick to that?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Ah, yeah. They’re a breed apart. Know how Carol took her down?”
“How?”
“Drugged her tea. The second she saw her getting drowsy, she slipped up behind her and jammed a steel plate in her mouth so she couldn’t bite down, while two other agents rushed over, threw ropes around her body, and pinned her in place.”
“Sounds pretty extreme.”
“There’s a reason for it. Lots of these North Koreans have those poison pellets inside a tooth. No shit. Remember that KAL plane that got a bomb planted on it by a North Korean couple? The KCIA caught them, but the guy reached up, twisted a molar, and plunk! The bastard was dead before he hit the floor.”
“Think the KCIA’ll get her to talk?”
“Depends how tough she is. Usually they start getting results within seventy-two hours.”
“That’s too long, though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Choi and Bales will assume she’s been taken. They’ll hide someplace she can’t compromise. They’ll alter their plans.”
I rubbed my chin and gave him a full dose of the look people say makes me look just like a Lebanese rug merchant. “So, you got any ideas?”
He shrugged. “Maybe Bales’s wife will tell us something helpful. Maybe we’ll find something searching through their belongings.”
“You don’t sound hopeful.”
“I’m not. These guys were trained agents.”
“Choi maybe was. Bales wasn’t.”
He looked over his coffee mug. “You got something you wanna share?”
I kept rubbing my chin. “I thought maybe if I joined in the search, I might catch something you’ll miss.”
Mercer was no dummy. “You mean you’d like to go through their shit and see if you can find something to get Whitehall off.”
I smiled. “I suppose if I came upon something that helped my client, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. He’d obviously had a hell of a day. “Look, Drummond, you wanna go through their crap, just say so. I owe you, and I always pay my debts. Feel free.”
“Could you loan me Carol Kim?”
“Think I’d let you go through their shit without somebody looking over your shoulder? Take her.”
He had a good point. I started to get up.
“One other thing,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Remember when Bales called Choi?”
“Of course.”
“Think back. Remember what he said just before they talked about that plan B thing?”
“He wanted to know about his wife?”
“Nah, after that.”
“I don’t remember anything after that,” I admitted.
“Bales asked him about phase 3.”
“What in the hell’s phase 3?”
Mercer looked sadder than any man I ever saw. “That’s what we’d like to know.”
CHAPTER 38
I asked Mercer to have Carol meet me at the snack bar on base. I hadn’t eaten since the day before, and it looked like another long night ahead. I was halfway through my second overcooked burger and was noisily slurping a watery chocolate milkshake when Carol walked in.
How could I tell? Because when she entered, the snack bar was jammed with soldiers loudly bitching about what a lousy week they’d had, or making empty boasts about how they were going to get laid this Friday night, when suddenly everything came to a stop. The room just froze – the opposite effect of throwing a pebble into a still pond. See, Carol wasn’t bad in ye olde looks department, but she wasn’t any great shakes either – only these troops had been penned up on base ever since Whitehall’s arrest, and anything with boobs that walked upright looked damned good to them at that moment.
There was an almost universal gasp of surprise when she wafted across the room and landed at my table. I still looked pretty ravaged from the beatings. And when a hundred or so young minds think exactly the same thought, at exactly the same moment, the psychic echo can be almost deafening: Jesus, what’s she doing with that busted-up hulk? Friggin’ officers get all the luck.
I looked around the room and proudly acknowledged their universal envy, because I’m a guy, and guys don’t really care if jealousy is built on a false foundation. At least I don’t. I take it anywhere I can get it.
“Congratulations on capturing Mrs. Bales,” I said, after she’d sat down.
“Thanks,” she offhandedly responded, like, You know, no big thing; just another day in a secret agent’s life. Not even worth an entry in my diary.
“Hungry?” I asked, munching away on my burger.
She looked at the burger with disgust. “No, I, uh, I’ll get something else to eat. Later.”
“You sure? It might be a long night.”
She was still staring at the greasy thing in my fist. “Quite sure.”
“Okay, have it your way. Here’s what I’d like to do. Can you get me in to see Bales’s wife?”
“If you’d like. Why?”
“Curiosity. I just want to see what she looks like.”
“All right.”
“Then I’d like to spend some time going through Bales’s and Choi’s investigation files.”
“They’ve already been taken from their offices. Bales’s files are at our facility. Choi’s are with the KCIA.”
“But you can get ’em?”
“I suppose. There are a lot of them, though. Box after box filled with them. We could spend all night.”
“I got nothing better to do.”
“I guess I don’t, either,” she sighed, not the least bit happy about that.
“Good,” I said, noisily licking some ketchup off my fingers. “Let’s get moving.”
Then, just as I was standing up, my legs suddenly buckled. If I hadn’t grabbed the corner of the table I would’ve done a free fall onto the floor. Carol rushed around the table and took hold of my shoulders, helping me straighten up.
“Are you all right?”
I shook my head a few times. “I don’t know. Must be the beatings. My body… uh, it’s not working right.”
“We don’t have to do this tonight. We can reschedule.”
“No, it has to be tonight. Please.”
I bravely tried taking another step and my legs buckled again.
So she slipped her arm around my waist, and I put an arm around her shoulder and let her lead me out. After one or two steps, I straightened. Every eye in the room was on us. A hundred disgruntled young faces looked like they’d kill their own mothers to be me.
I’m so slick, sometimes I’m ashamed of myself. But like I said, I’ll take it any way I can get it.
It took thirty minutes to get to the KCIA. It was a nondescript, blocklike gray building located on a busy street. You’d probably pass right by it, except it was the only building I ever saw that had no windows on the first three floors. They started on the fourth floor, and even those were small, pinched, scrawny-looking things.
Carol showed a guard her Agency ID, and she was allowed to enter a gated area and park. Then we left the car and went to the front entrance, where two fairly competent-looking guards took her CIA identification card, called a number, chattered in Korean for a few seconds, then gave us both plastic laminated passes with clips on the back.
Carol seemed to know where she was going, because she led me down a series of halls and up two flights of stairs and into a side office. There were about six men in dark silk suits lounging around drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, quietly bullshitting. They seemed to recognize Carol.
She jabbered in Korean for a few minutes, occasionally putting a finger to her lips in a fretful motion, like a sign of concern. Her manner seemed more reserved, almost subservient, in the presence of Korean men.
One of the men finally stood up and led us through two sets of doors and into another room filled with cigarette smoke. A Korean gentleman was hunched over a table, suit jacket on the back of his chair, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up. It was Mr. Kim, Mercer’s KCIA counterpart.
He got up. Carol bowed and made no effort to shake hands. She was reverting to Korean protocols. Then Kim looked at me and stuck out his hand. “Major Drummond, it’s good to see you again.”
“My pleasure,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He grimaced painfully. “It’s not been the best of days.”
I couldn’t resist. “Yeah, that was some screwup this afternoon, wasn’t it?”
“That bastard murdered one of my men. He cut his throat like a pig’s.”
I gathered Mr. Kim was no longer dubious about my overheated imagination.
“So how’s your prisoner?” I asked.
> “She’s going to be tough.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s had good training. She hasn’t said a word.”
I wasn’t going to tell him, but when I was in the outfit, I’d had some training in interrogation myself. Only mine was always on the receiving end, because the outfit did most of its work inside the bad guys’ territory and was therefore justifiably concerned about our ability to withstand torture and interrogation. Some sadist figured that practice makes perfect, and they gave us lots of it. I therefore consider myself something of an expert in interrogation methods – strictly from the victim’s end of things, of course.
I said, “What are you doing to her?”
“Actually, we don’t use physical techniques. Everybody believes we do, and frankly we encourage the perception.” He lifted his shoulders a little. “It heightens the anxiety of our subjects. The truth is, we prefer sleep deprivation.”
I grinned. Sleep deprivation doesn’t get quick results like yanking out a few fingernails might, but it’s much more effective, because once a prisoner breaks, they break all the way. I know. In training, I’d had it tried on me once. I ended up babbling like a baby.
“Can I see her?”
He shrugged. “If you’d like. Just don’t talk to her.”
We entered a room off to the side. The walls and floors were thickly padded in some solid white material. The padding wasn’t for bouncing bodies off of, but was super-thick sound insulation. The lights in the ceiling were huge and very high-powered. The light was pure white and spectacularly bright, so bright it hurt your eyes and forced you to blink a lot, although even then it penetrated through your lids.
A woman was seated in a chair with her back turned to us. There were white straps completely immobilizing her, so she couldn’t move a limb or even her head. There was some kind of eye halter strapped around her head that forced her eyelids to stay open, which after a while gets pretty painful because the eyeballs get dry and sore. Even the chair was painted white. In fact, the only color in the room was the flesh tone of her skin. She was entirely naked. She’d been stripped and left nude to add to her humiliation and sense of vulnerability. The monochromatic whiteness was done to amplify the effects of her sleep deprivation. To multiply her humiliation, they would keep feeding her liquids and foods, so she peed and shat all over herself.