I just couldn’t stop myself. I yelled, “You’re wrong!”

She yelled back, “I don’t care what you think! Or what the evidence shows! From now on, our client was framed. Someone else killed that kid and made it look like Thomas did it.”

I kept shaking my head. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Have you discussed this with our client?”

“No. I don’t intend to, either. Not yet, anyway. And don’t any of you reveal this to him. I’ll have your ass if you do.”

“You don’t think that presents a slight ethics problem?”

“Drummond, he’s withholding from us. Why should we have any problem withholding from him?”

Unless we dove at each other and got our hands wrapped firmly around each other’s throats, our conversation had reached a typically inelegant conclusion. But rather than commit murder in the presence of so many witnesses, I angrily stormed out and headed off to dinner. I went back to my room, picked up the phone, and barked at room service to send up a rare steak and an overcooked potato. I was in the mood for a red-blooded, manly meal. I consumed it alone, so I could stew in solitary self-pity. I chewed every bite like I had a grudge against it.

Carlson was wrong. Worse, though, I had a terrible premonition I knew why. The woman wasn’t stupid, right? Nor was she professionally incompetent, right?

What I figured was this: Whitehall was now a symbol for all those antigay activists trying to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell.” If he got off on a technicality or because the prosecutor was too inept to prove his case “beyond a reasonable doubt,” then Whitehall would go free, but that would only whip the antigay factions into an even more frothful fury. They’d portray it as a hideous injustice piled on top of an even more hideous crime.

Carlson’s first loyalty wasn’t to her client; it was to the movement that hired her, that made her famous, that signed her paycheck. Plus she was a fanatic. As Keith had quoted, sometimes you just have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Carlson or the folks who hired her had obviously decided Whitehall was a breakable egg. The only way to get their money’s worth was to go for broke. To undo the damage done by this case they had to prove Whitehall was innocent. It was all or nothing. Any other outcome and Whitehall would be turned into the eternal poster child for why gays have no place in the military.

There was one tiny insurmountable problem with that, though. It didn’t look like he was the least bit innocent. And if we lost, Whitehall was facing the death sentence.

Apparently, from Carlson’s point of view this was a reconcilable technicality. Not from mine.

CHAPTER 7

The South Koreans made their call at ten o’clock that evening. They waived jurisdiction. Not pretrial confinement, only jurisdiction. Whitehall was to be transferred from the Yongsan Holding Facility to the Seoul High Security Prison at ten o’clock the next morning.

And when it came to the matter of punishment, if I guessed right, what the Koreans intended was to wait and see how the sentence came out. If Whitehall got death, they’d probably be shrewdly generous and allow us to yank the electric switch and fry him. If he got life, he’d spend the rest of his pitiful days and years in a South Korean prison.

Janson called to inform me of this. He didn’t call Katherine, or Keith, or any of the rest of the covey. Just me. There was a subtle message there – I just didn’t know what it was.

However, I immediately called Katherine to inform her of our extreme good fortune. A woman’s voice answered. I had no idea who she was, and I asked to speak with Katherine. She said “okay,” then I heard the two of them giggling. It sounded like that flirty kind of giggle you hear when two folks get interrupted in the midst of some heavy petting.

Katherine coldly acknowledged the news and hung up. No “Gee thanks, Sean, I can’t begin to tell you what a great job you did in the minister’s office.” Not even the most grudging acknowledgment that I’d saved her bacon – just “okay,” click. She was either as mad at me as I was at her, or she couldn’t wait to get back to her girlfriend.

I was getting undressed when there was a knock at the door. I expected to see the maid coming to turn down my sheets and place a couple of those little chocolate tasties by my bedside. It wasn’t a maid, though: not unless maids are late-middle-aged Caucasian males wearing trench coats who are in the habit of peeking searchingly down both sides of the hallway before they shoulder past you.

“Buzz Mercer,” he announced, sticking out a hand.

I didn’t feel any particular need to introduce myself, so I said, “Nice to meet you. You sure you’ve got the right room?”

“Oh yeah, Drummond,” he said, with a man-eating grin. “You and I gotta have a short talk.”

“Would you care for a seat?” I asked.

He went over and fell into the chair. He was a nondescript-looking type, with a squarish, unassuming face, a tight butch cut, clear-rimmed glasses, and what I guess you’d call a sardonic grin pasted on his lower face. Not his upper face, though. His eyes were too intense to be anything but somber.

He said, “I’m the station chief.”

“Great,” I remarked. What else do you say to a man who’s just identified himself as the head of the CIA for all of Korea?

“Have a seat,” he ordered, so I did.

“I thought about asking you to come to our facility, but finally decided this’d be better. You and I are probably going to have a few chats over the next few weeks. It would be best for all concerned if nobody knows about it.”

You remember when I warned you I’m a bit impulsive?

I put a steely expression on my face and snarled, “Look, buddy, get this straight right away. You picked me ’cause I’m the only Army guy on the defense team. Not to mention the only hetero. Good thinking, except I’m not going to expose a single damned thing about this case. Not to you… not to anybody.”

He seemed halfheartedly amused. “Settle down, Drummond. That’s not what this is about. I’ve discussed this with General Spears. He agrees that this is the right way to handle this.”

“Handle what?” I asked, blinking wildly a few times, since in a matter of a few brief seconds I’d already managed to make a complete horse’s ass out of myself. This wasn’t a novel experience by any means, but humiliation is one of those things that doesn’t go down more smoothly with practice.

“This is classified. Don’t discuss it with anybody. Not even the rest of your defense team… no… make that particularly with the rest of your defense team. Got that?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, here’s how it is. This case is attracting attention in the wrong quarters.”

“You mean in the South Korean government?”

“Right country, wrong prefix. There are folks in Pyongyang who get copies of the Seoul Herald within hours after it hits the newsstands. They watch our television news, listen to our radios, even read those half-assed tabloids about Martians in the White House. They know what movie star’s screwin’ what movie star this week, and the latest fad diet that’ll help you lose forty pounds overnight. Kim Jong Il and his boys are well aware of what’s going on down here.”

I nodded right along. Given the rift our case was making in the alliance, of course North Korea was following it attentively. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but of course they were.

He bent toward me. “Do you have any idea how many agents North Korea has down here?”

“No.”

“I got news for you. We don’t, either. Nor do the South Koreans. It’s a lot, though. We know, for instance, that they left plenty of sleeper agents here in 1950, when MacArthur and his boys kicked their asses out of the south. And we know they’ve been recruiting more, and adding to them ever since. Some folks believe they might only have ten to twenty thousand agents. Others believe they have a few hundred thousand.”