Mortal Allies (6 page)

“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.”

Katherine stroked her chin. “So what’s their legal system like?”

“From a defense perspective, Dante’s inferno. A system designed by victims, for victims. To them, a trial is a search for truth and justice. And sometimes they go about finding it in some pretty ugly ways. South Korean gendarmes and prosecutors can get pretty rough, if you get my meaning. There’s this hilarious joke about the Korean who really wanted to sign the confession, only he couldn’t, because all his fingers were broken. But you probably don’t want to hear that joke right now.”

Allie’s big nose stuck out about two inches. “We’ll just tell them to blow it out their ass. We’ve got this SOFA shit on our side, right? They can’t have him. It’s that simple.”

I replied, “Very eloquently stated, but it’s not that easy. It’s their country, so like it or not, we’re walking on eggshells.”

Katherine began pacing across the room. She took small, measured, deliberate steps, because it wasn’t a real big room, but also because she was that way. Very calculating, very shrewd.

“Do you have any suggestions?” she finally asked me.

“Sure. Arrange an immediate meeting with Spears’s legal adviser and the ambassador. Except, if I heard right, the ambassador’s in a hospital in Hawaii. So maybe the embassy chargé instead.”

“What for?”

“Mainly to hear what they’ve got to say.”

“Anything else we should do?” Katherine asked.

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Have a big breakfast. It’s going to be a long day.”

She and Allie and Maria didn’t want to eat a big breakfast, or any breakfast, which I can’t say displeased me all that much. I therefore went downstairs and ate alone. I stopped in the convenience shop first and picked up the newspapers for the past two days. These were issues of the
Stars and Stripes
, an overseas military newspaper that included excerpts from stateside Associated Press stories and lots of local news articles written by a regional staff based in Japan.

Updates on the Lee murder case filled the front pages of both days’ papers. As Clapper had warned, the case was every bit as much a lightning rod in Washington as in Seoul. Not only were the Republicans trying to usher through a bill to overturn the “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise, but a consortium of angry Southern Baptist fundamentalists were mustering a march on Washington to protest the godless policies of the President who had opened up the military to gays.

I was just finishing my second cup of coffee when Katherine and Keith swooped down. Keith looked handsomer than ever in a superbly tailored worsted gray flannel suit, with a silk handkerchief stuck out of his coat pocket that perfectly matched his necktie. He looked like one of the models you see in all those catchy men’s fashion magazines Army guys don’t subscribe to. Our fashion world is prescribed in tedious detail by something called a regulation that doesn’t leave you the least bit curious about what lapel cuts or tie widths are in vogue this year.

Katherine looked frantic. “We’ve got an appointment at the embassy in thirty minutes.”

“Have fun,” I mumbled, whipping the paper back up in front of my face.

She and Keith kept standing there, and I knew damn well what was going through Katherine’s mind. She wasn’t about to beg me to come along, but hey, she was way over her head on this.

I wasn’t over my head. I was swimming in my own métier, as the saying has it. But I also wasn’t about to come along — unless, that is, she did beg me. I can be real churlish that way.

She said, “Attila, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to tag along.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured, hibernating behind my paper.

“You know, this might be a fairly interesting session.”

“Bet so,” I idly mumbled.

“Come on, Attila. You coming?”

“I haven’t done the crossword yet,” I remarked indifferently.

Another moment passed. I heard Keith whisper something in her ear.

“Attila,
please
come,” she said.

“Hey, Moonbeam, my name’s not Attila,” I replied, pointing down at my nametag. Keith’s eyebrow shot up in the air at that one. He looked questionably at Katherine as though to say, Moonbeam? Then he smiled, because really, as monikers go, it fit.

She ignored him and said, “Okay, Major . . . Major Drummond . . . Sean. Please come.”

I put down my paper with an exaggerated sigh. “Be happy to. If you think I would be helpful, that is.” I looked up into her beautiful face and could see this was getting excruciatingly painful for her.

Her big green eyes got narrow and pointy, and her cute little lips shrank. “It could be helpful,” she said, with no effort to disguise her resentment.

“I’m sorry. Was that
could
be helpful? Or
would
be helpful?”

“It, uh . . . it
would
be helpful. Okay?”

I could tell I’d extracted about as much humility from her as I was likely to get. On this round, anyway.

“And how were you planning to get to the embassy?” I asked.

“I thought we’d take a taxi.”

“Won’t work,” I told her.

“And why not?”

“Because we’d never get there. Just a minute.”

I went to a phone by the hostess’s table. I dialed the operator and asked her to immediately put me through to the MP station. A desk sergeant with a brusque, uncompromising voice answered. I told him to connect me to the shift commander.

An only slightly more reasonable voice came on the line. “Captain Bittlesby.”

“Bittlesby, this is Major Drummond, co-counsel for Captain Whitehall.”

“Yes sir.”

“My other two co-counsels and I need to be transported and escorted to the American embassy. Immediately.”

“Is this trip authorized?” he wearily asked.

“Authorized by who?”

“By Major General Conley, General Spears’s chief of staff.”

“This just came up. There isn’t time for that.”

Sounding a little too happy, he said, “Too bad, then. Without Conley’s signature, nobody leaves base.”

I said, “Listen, Captain, we’ve got an appointment in twenty-eight minutes to meet with the acting ambassador. You could take that for authorization. Or, if you’d like, I’ll tell the ambassador, ‘Gee, I’m sorry, Captain Bittlesby says we can’t come.’ Then I’ll call the
New York Times
and tell ’em some captain named Bittlesby is trying to sabotage Whitehall’s defense.”

The thing with the Army is that a little bit of the right kind of coercion goes a long way. Soldiers don’t like to get crossways with diplomats. What they like even less is having to explain to their prickly bosses how they made it onto the front page of a nationally read newspaper in a distinctly unfavorable light.

Bittlesby said, “You wouldn’t really do that, would you?” He wasn’t really asking. He was taking the first grudging step in a full-scale retreat.

“Twenty-seven minutes, Captain.”

“Where are you?”

“We’ll be at the front entry of the Dragon Hill Lodge in thirty seconds.”

Half a minute later, Katherine, Keith, and I stood at the hotel’s entrance as three humvees with flashing yellow lights careened around the corner. Katherine looked at me and I shrugged nicely. It was the kind of taunting gesture meant to say, “Pretty cool, huh? Think you could’ve pulled it off?”

The first and last humvees were loaded to the gills with military policemen in riot gear. The middle one contained only a driver, also in riot gear.

I swiftly moved to the rear door of the middle humvee, yanked it open, and held it for Katherine. They don’t call us officers and gentlemen for nothing. But before I could react, Keith swiftly walked over and climbed in, brushing my arm softly and saying, “Thanks, sweetie.”

Katherine chuckled and climbed in the front seat. That left me to join Keith in the back. I could’ve strangled her.

By the time we got to the gate, it seemed apparent that the MPs had radioed ahead, because a platoon of South Korean riot police in blue uniforms were already shoving and hammering protesters aside to make a path for our convoy to get through.

Lots of angry, sullen faces glared at us as we passed through the crowd. It didn’t leave you with the impression you were among friends.

The ride to the embassy took just shy of thirty-five minutes. At the gate, once again, a platoon of South Korean troops in blue uniforms with riot shields and batons were beating a wedge through more protesters.

We dismounted at the front entrance and the young lieutenant in charge of the convoy came over. I told him to wait till we were done, and with excruciating politeness he said he would. Bittlesby must’ve warned him I was a righteous prick.

After a security check we took an elevator to the fourth floor and walked into the ambassador’s outer office. The secretary had a long, droopy face and a long, narrow nose, and she looked at us like we were stray dogs who’d come to crap on her lawn. She lifted the receiver, pushed a button, and announced we were here. Then with a dismissive wave, she signaled us to enter the door to the left of her desk.

Two men were seated on gold silk couches in the corner of the regal-looking office. They stood as we entered. I might’ve been imagining things, but their faces looked vaguely guilty, or slightly embarrassed, or mildly entertained, or maybe all three.

One had the eagle of a full colonel on his collar. “Janson” was written on his nametag. He was in his mid-fifties, with short, tightly cropped gray stubble on his head, tough, distrustful eyes, and lips that were too big and wide for his narrow face. Like the lips on a piranha. He wore JAG brass on his other collar, of course, since he was the legal adviser to General Spears. He didn’t look like a lawyer, though. He had the aspect of a high school disciplinarian who accidentally got a law degree and still resented it.

The other guy looked exactly like what he was supposed to be: a diplomat — a particular kind of diplomat, though. I mean, they’re not all vanilla ice cream, and he was the type I guessed I wasn’t going to like a lot. Maybe late forties, with black hair that was blow-dried back in the currently fashionable style, and that should’ve had at least a few wisps of gray but mysteriously didn’t. He had a chiseled, lined face, dark, piercing eyes, and an imperious curl on his lips. There was a gold Harvard ring on his left hand, but no wedding band. He was either single or advertising his availability.

“Welcome,” he announced, acting falsely warm as his eyes took our measure. They skipped past me in a millisecond, paused briefly to envy the cut of Keith’s suit, then feasted for a long, lusty moment on Katherine. Heh-heh, little did he know. He’d have better luck with Keith.

“I’m Arthur Brandewaite, the acting ambassador. This is Colonel Mack Janson, General Spears’s legal adviser. Please,” he said, with a smooth flourish of his arm in the direction of the two couches. That flourish-of-the-arm thing was so profusely elegant I figured he must practice it in front of the mirror.

We all trooped over. Brandewaite and Janson sat back down on their couch, and the three of us scrunched up together and faced them.

“So,” Brandewaite said, “Colonel Janson tells me you’ve already gotten the news. We’re all so terribly sorry about this, but . . .” He brought up his hands in a helpless gesture.

Katherine, with a very belligerent motion of her own, said, “Why are you sorry? We’re not turning my client over. Period! End of statement! He won’t be tried in a Korean court.”

Brandewaite glanced at Janson, an impatient, testy glance, like, What’s this? Did you fail to deliver the full text of the message?

Then he turned back to Katherine and started shaking his head in contrived consternation. “Miss Carlson, it seems there’s some kind of mistake here. The South Korean government didn’t
ask
us to turn over Whitehall. They
demanded
he be turned over by close of business today. We are, after all, guests in their country.”

Katherine said, “I don’t care. My client has rights and you have a Status of Forces Agreement that obligates you to ensure he’s tried in an American military court. In case you’ve forgotten, he’s not only a soldier, he’s a taxpayer and therefore your employer. He’s not being turned over.”

Janson was glaring spitefully at me, because obviously someone had explained that inconvenient little Status of Forces Agreement thing to Katherine. And, uh . . . well, I guess I did appear to be the most likely candidate.

“Miss Carlson,” Brandewaite said with a tone of condescending patience, “I certainly understand your position. I even share your sympathies. However,” he continued, making that “however” sound deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon, “when one international party says it will no longer honor a diplomatic agreement, there’s nothing we can do.”