But Choi did get the car door closed. So he prepared the way for the second contingency. The Secretary’s security detail, if they ever saw Choi, assumed he was on their side. He was holding up his police shield as he shot the security guards and cleared the way for the kid with the grenade to jump on top of the Secretary and blow them both to pieces. Ballistic tests proved that the bullets that killed three of the Secretary’s security detail came from Choi’s pistol.

As it was, the suicide bomber killed another four people and wounded nine more. It was lucky for the Secretary that I’d fired my shot up from the ground, because that sent the bomber flying backward into the crowd and made the grenade roll backward out of his hand, so some other hapless souls ended up absorbing the explosion and shrapnel meant for him.

As for the suicide bomber, he was a senior at Kwangju University about 120 miles south of Seoul. He was as South Korean as they come. He was born and raised in the city of Kwangju, the capital city of a South Korean province that was known as a virulent hotbed of antigovernment and anti-American sentiments. Twenty-two years before, his father, as well as many other citizens of Kwangju, had been killed by South Korean troops who were brutally suppressing a huge revolt in the city. Korean lore had it that the troops who went into the city to suppress the revolt were there at the behest and encouragement of the American military command. It wasn’t true, because they had actually been sent in by an angry, ambitious military dictator, who afterward distorted the facts to deflect the blame away from himself. But the myth persisted. The kid had been very active in campus antigovernment groups. He was known around the school as a hothead and a fanatical anti-American.

He was the perfect cutout. Which was exactly why Choi picked him. Had he killed the Secretary of State, and had Choi simply vanished back into the crowd and made his escape, it would’ve looked like a South Korean extremist had assassinated a key American government official right on the steps of South Korea’s presidential palace.

The kid had probably never met Choi. He probably never even knew he was working for the North Koreans. Most likely he was recruited by someone in the campus movement, was told what to do, was provided with the hand grenade, and his hatred drove him on from there. On the outside chance he survived to be interrogated, the world still would’ve been convinced the Secretary of State was murdered by an angry South Korean. And it would’ve been true.

And Lord knows what would have happened to the already egregiously wounded alliance after that.

As for Choi, he never made his getaway. He choked to death right where Allie chopped him. You think about life and its many coincidences. Allie’s being at the Blue House, and her having the presence of mind to rush to the point of confrontation, knock the gun away, and kill Choi, was simply amazing. It was what you might call an act of God, to let Allie be his hand of retribution. They found Choi there when they were cleaning up the bodies, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, blood still dribbling out of his throat onto the cement. I had no regrets about that.

What I had regrets about was the South Korean cop who saw me pick up a pistol and shoot someone. That was that first popping sound I told you about. That was the bullet that entered my back next to my lower spine and pinned me to the concrete like a grounded fish.

That was the one that turned out the lights inside my head.

CHAPTER 46

See if you can guess the first face I saw when I came to?

It was deja vu all over again, as they say. Doc Bridges and I were right back where we were the last time I saw him. I was flat on my back in a hospital bed, inside the same room even, and he was standing beside the bed taking my pulse and making some notes on a clipboard. I’ll bet it was even the same clipboard.

I said something like, “Oh Christ,” and he chuckled.

Then he said, “Hey, you’re a hero again.”

He held a newspaper in front of my face. It was the Herald Tribune. The boldface title line was “The Unlucky Hero.”

Some cynical reporter had gotten a real gas out of the fact that the guy who saved the life of the Secretary of State, and maybe the whole alliance, was shot by a Korean cop for his troubles.

Where was the outrage?, I asked myself.

Doc Bridges took the newspaper away, then held a finger in front of my eyes and we did the “follow this with your pupils” routine again.

In a very clinical tone, he said, “The bullet passed within millimeters of your spine. You’re lucky.”

“How lucky?”

He was reading something off a chart. “It missed your spine, didn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“I could see you’ve been shot before, so you know the drill. You’ll be in a wheelchair for a while, then you’ll use a cane. But after some physical therapy, you’ll be almost normal.”

I suppose I should’ve been relieved, but if you’ve ever spent any time in physical therapy, you know that’s not something you eagerly anticipate. And Army hospitals are to physical therapy what Nazi death camps were to racial harmony in Europe.

I groaned. “Almost normal? What’s that mean?”

He chuckled to himself. “You weren’t exactly normal in the first place. I’m not a miracle worker. Don’t expect me to turn out improved products.”

This is another of those old jokes doctors find funny. No wonder the hospital staff kept this guy hidden at the rear of the hospital, as far from humanity as they could get him.

He put the clipboard on its hook and said, “There’s another lady who’s been waiting outside for you. In fact, she’s the one who made me come in here and wake you up. I tried telling her you need your rest, and she said she knew what you needed better than I do.”

“What’s she look like?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“She’s been giving me hell since you got here. She told me if I lost you, she’d break my neck. She meant it, too. Very frightening.”

He spun around and walked out. A moment later the door slammed back open and in stomped the living typhoon herself: the one and only Imelda Pepperfield.

She looked at me, then huffed and puffed a couple of times.

I said, “You know you’re not supposed to be here?”

“ ’Course I know that.”

I tried to frown, but I smiled.

“It hurt?” she asked.

“Not a bit,” I candidly admitted. “I think I’ve got enough drugs pumping through my veins, you could reach over and rip off one of my arms and I wouldn’t feel a thing.”

She nodded a few times, then she said, “You done damned good, Major.”

Now, if you know anything about Imelda Pepperfield, you know praise coming from her lips is like water pouring from a rock. In other words, it don’t happen often. And when it does, don’t act shy or aw-shucksy. Relish the moment.

I was beaming like a little idiot, and she actually reached over and patted me on the head. I was like a cat getting its back stroked by a proud master.

She scooched her butt onto the side of my bed. “You been recused,” she said, confirming what I already knew.

“There were some conflicts,” I replied, obviously unable to explain what had really happened, even to Imelda. She, unlike me, was still a member of Katherine’s staff, so I couldn’t risk compromising her.

“Trial starts tomorrow,” she told me.

“You mean today’s Monday already?”

“Uh-huh. You were so drugged up, you slept through Saturday and Sunday.”

I stared at the far wall, and whatever satisfaction I felt about being a hero and all that suddenly evaporated.

She said, “I went and visited with Cap’n Whitehall.”

“Really?”

“Seems somebody got him addicted to hamburgers and beer, so he was havin’ withdrawal.”