Mortal Allies (55 page)

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.”

“True,” I admitted.

“And if he did exploit that knowledge — if I even suspected he was exploiting that knowledge — I would have to declare a mistrial and seek to have him disbarred.”

I miserably said, “I’ll have my letter on your desk before noon.”

“Good. That would be the proper thing to do. And I am hereby announcing a judge’s restraining order that under no conditions are you to have any further contact with Miss Carlson and her team. If I find out you’ve been within a hundred yards of each other, I’ll be forced to declare a mistrial, and I’ll personally appoint the new counsel for Whitehall. Is that clear?”

I said, “Yes, Your Honor. Could you please notify Carlson?”

He nodded.

“And can you tell her I recommend Captain Kip Goins as my substitute?”

I stood up and started to make my way to the door.

“Drummond,” Carruthers said.

I looked over my shoulder. “Yes sir.”

“I’m sorry it turned out this way. I truly am. I was actually looking forward to having you in my court. I don’t know why, but I had the sense it was going to be very entertaining.”

“Well, some other day, maybe.”

He nodded and I left. I couldn’t remember feeling more downtrodden or frustrated. I had a client I knew was innocent, a co-counsel whose affection and trust I’d lost, and I’d just spent two of the hardest, most painful weeks of my life for nothing.

I
t took three minutes to type the letter. All it said was “I, Major Sean Drummond, request to be recused from the case of Captain Thomas Whitehall.”

Nothing dramatic or elegant because, frankly, the law frowns on anything that smacks of passion or lavishness. I scrawled my signature at the bottom, and then called Imelda and had her send up one of her assistants to deliver it. The moment she was gone, I fell into bed.

It’s amazing how quickly I was out. You’d think I’d roil around on the sheets and agonize over my situation, but I was too exhausted. I was in a coma about thirty seconds after my head hit the pillow. And I slept like a log.

At least, until the phone rang. This was at 6:00 P.M., maybe seven hours after I went out. I lifted it up and heard the voice of Major General Clapper, the chief of the JAG Corps.

“Drummond, that you?” he asked.

“Hello, General, it’s me,” I replied, of course recognizing his voice.

“I just got word that you were recused.”

“Uh . . . yeah,” I mumbled, still hazy.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No, General. It’ll have to wait till I get back to Washington. That or we’ll have to talk on a secure line.”

“Okay, we’ll wait. When can you get back here?”

“As soon as you tell me to be there, although a day or two of grace would be sorely appreciated. I, uh, I got a little beat-up, and shot, too, and I haven’t gotten much sleep the past four or five days.”

He said, “Hell, it’s Friday anyway. Can you be out of there Sunday night?”

“I’ll make the reservation tonight.”

There was a long pause, then, “Sean?”

“Yes sir?”

“I got a long message about you from General Spears.”

This was the last thing I needed. On top of everything, now the theater commander was sending hate mail to my boss. I saw what was left of my career flash by. Let me tell you, it was a very brief flash.

Clapper said, “He said you performed brilliantly, and that the nation owes you a huge debt. I don’t know what you did out there, but you should feel proud.”

If I could only have gotten my breath back, I’d have said, “Ah shucks, it was nothing, really.”

But Clapper didn’t wait to hear anything. He said he’d see me Monday in his office and hung up.

I got up and called room service and told them send up a rare steak, some potatoes, and a bottle of wine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d treated myself to an evening of quiet relaxation, and in my wallowing self-pity, I was convinced I deserved it.

I took a long, hot shower and shaved, and when I walked out, the room service kid was knocking on the door. I took my tray, paid him, and settled down in front of the TV set.

I flipped it on, ate, watched CNN spill through its thirty-minute roundup, watched it do its thirty-minute roundup again, and realized that nothing dramatic had changed in the world in the past hour. For want of anything else to watch, I flipped to a Korean channel.

It can be fun watching a foreign newscaster move his or her lips even when you don’t have a clue what they’re saying. You stare at the picture that flashes up behind them, or at the short news clip, and you try to imagine the narration. It’s like buying cartoons with all the pictures, only there are no captions inside the bubbles. You get to invent those yourself.

First I watched a story that showed a bunch of babies stuffed in cribs in a big room that was probably an orphanage. In all likelihood the real story was some scandal about mistreated, neglected orphans, but I wasn’t in the mood for that.

I imagined the newscaster saying, “Today Bill Gates, the American capitalist, announced he is giving an inheritance of one billion dollars to each of these babies. The line of people who’ve rushed to the doors of the orphanage to seek a child to adopt stretches all the way to China. The airports and seaports are crowded with more prospective parents coming from around the world to get their child.”

That’s a nice story with a happy ending, right?

Next came a news clip of a bunch of gloomy-looking striking workers wearing white masks over their faces, all sitting down in front of a big, thirty-chimneyed plant. Then it cut to an attractive young female reporter holding a microphone in front of her mouth.

This one? Probably she was talking about how these workers were struggling to get a dollar-an-hour increase so they could feed their families, and the plant executives were bringing in cops and scabs to teach them a lesson.

That just wouldn’t do. I imagined her saying, “The chairman of Lipto Motors today agreed with his striking workers that it was shameful he should be making two hundred million dollars a year. He therefore offered to take all his personal wealth, as well as that of all other company executives, and place it in a large pool to be distributed among the workers who actually make the cars.”

I’m not a socialist, but I liked that ending.

The next clip was live, and it showed the American Secretary of State walking from a big black car with two U.S. flags flying off the front, through two lines of South Korean soldiers in spanky-looking dress uniforms, and into the side entrance of the South Korean Blue House, which, if you don’t know, is their version of the American White House. And right next to the man himself was my old buddy Arthur Brandewaite, chatting him up and trying to look natty and consequential for the cameras.

The newscaster started moving his lips, only I wasn’t paying attention. I hadn’t realized the Secretary of State was still here. I thought he’d done the normal butterfly routine of flying in for consultations, then a news conference or two, then off to the next trouble spot. I mean, how long can big diplomats yammer on about some court case or even a massacre? Don’t they run out of things to say? Plus, if you stay in one place for a day or two, pretty soon there’s gonna be a disaster somewhere else in the world that completely eclipses this one, and off you go.

Next flashed up a picture of an American naval officer with four gold captain’s stripes on his sleeve. There were some Hangul stick figures underneath his picture, probably the dates of his life. I surmised this was Harry Elmore and the media had been fed some phony story about his death, like maybe he was slain in a burglary gone wrong. Harry wasn’t a bad-looking guy. The photo was recent because of his captain’s stripes. There he was, sincere-looking blue eyes, a strong chin, a mouth that looked like it used to smile a lot.

Who would’ve thought? The poor bastard didn’t even have an important job. Why would Choi be interested in him? A protocol officer? I’m an expert on the American military, and until Spears mentioned that Elmore sometimes snuck into important briefings, I never would’ve imagined he had access to anything the least bit sensitive or important. Hell, Spears himself didn’t picture it until he was forced to think about it.

How did Choi know? Did Bales tell him? How in the hell could some lowly warrant officer who worked in CID know that angle, when even Elmore’s own four-star boss didn’t appreciate how much access his man had?

That’s when it hit me. It was the one thing we’d overlooked.

I leaned over and dialed the number Buzz Mercer gave me so I wouldn’t have to go through General Spears’s henchman anymore.

Mercer’s droll voice answered, “Yes?”

“It’s me, Drummond. I need to see you right away.”

I could hear him sigh. “Drummond, it’s late and I’m exhausted. Can’t it wait?”

I said, “Yeah, sure, I guess it could. If you’re willing to let Choi and his goons kill the Secretary of State right here in your backyard.”

T
he problem was, we didn’t know who or what we were looking for. We didn’t really even know if he, or she, or they, would be there. Worse, I was the only one even remotely confident anybody would be there.

I think Mercer and Carol Kim were simply humoring me because I’d been so forceful and insistent. Or maybe they figured I’d been right on too many other things to ignore. When your horse wins the first two of the trifecta, you have a tendency to bet on it again.

So there we were with five of Buzz’s spook buddies, wandering through the crowd outside the Blue House, trying hopelessly to see if we could detect anybody who didn’t look like he or she should be there.

The problem was that
nobody
looked like they should be there. Or
everybody
looked like they should be there. Take your pick.

Some of them were Korean government bureaucrats who were there because the Korean president’s staff ordered them to come and make the Secretary of State feel like he was so damned popular people would stay out on the streets late at night to catch sight of him. And there were gazillions of reporters. Since the Whitehall trial was postponed, most of them were there to convince their networks or newspapers or magazines they were still finding honest ways to earn their pay. Then there were the genuinely curious idiots whose lives were so dull they’d go anywhere and wait forever to catch a fleeting glimpse of a real-life celebrity.

One of those curious idiots was about six foot three and had spiky hair, which you couldn’t miss because she towered over most of the crowd. I was surprised to see Allie mixed in with the rest of them, because she’d never struck me as the stargazing type. Maybe she’d just been passing by and decided to see what the commotion was about.

The Secretary of State was inside having dinner with the president of South Korea because the Secretary was scheduled to depart Korea the next morning. According to what Buzz had found out, they were supposed to finish their dinner at 9:15, then the Secretary of State was supposed to be driven by motorcade to the house of Minister of Defense Lee Jung Kim. There he would express condolences and apologies on behalf of the President of the United States, and all the American people, over the tragic death of Lee’s son.

None of this was particularly difficult information to come by, since his final day’s schedule had been published in the South Korean newspapers. See, the Secretary of State wanted the South Korean people to know what he was doing. He wanted cameras and newspeople cluttered at his every stop. He wanted the world to see the third highest official in the executive branch dining amicably with the South Korean president on his final day, as though a serious breach in relations had been miraculously healed. He wanted the South Korean people to see him make the very Asian gesture of stopping by to apologize and pay respects to the bereaved mother and father.