“That’s a lot of agents,” I said, because sometimes it helps to restate the obvious, if for no other reason than to show you’re a conscientious listener.
“Yeah, it’s a lot.” He nodded, re-restating what I’d just restated, I guess to prove we were both conscientious listeners. “We’ve also noticed a step-up in North Korean infiltrations over the past two weeks. And we pick up the occasional radio intercept from North Korean cells here back to their controllers up north. That traffic’s picked up these past two weeks. Normally that’s a very grim sign that somebody’s planning something.”
“This is obviously not good,” I said.
“We don’t know yet. It’s pretty damned obvious that how this thing goes down might well decide the fate of the alliance. Maybe the South Koreans are just blustering about throwing us Meegooks off the peninsula… or maybe they’re not. But if I were a bigwig in North Korean intelligence, I’d sure as hell be sniffing around to see which way it goes. Quite possibly what they’re doing is increasing their reconnaissance, just in the event we get thrown off the peninsula and they decide to attack.”
“So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked, which was the response I was sure he expected.
“Maybe nothing. Then again, maybe a lot.”
“Have we been mentioned in some of this radio traffic?”
“There’ve been a few mentions, but we’re not certain what they mean. See, the North Koreans know we listen in, and they’re well aware of our sophistication at code-breaking, so they take precautions. They develop all kinds of ridiculous code names and circular puzzles to throw us off.”
“But you must’ve developed some kind of opinion, or theory, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Not really,” he said. “But ever since that September 11 thing, we always play it safe better than sorry. Maybe your defense team’s completely in the clear, maybe not. But if we come up with anything, we’d like to use you as our conduit. Of course, we’d like you to treat the information with the sensitivity it deserves. We sure as hell can’t approach Carlson and her freak show directly.”
He was right about that. The intelligence he was referring to was probably gathered through the most sensitive means available, and Katherine hadn’t shown herself to be someone the U.S. government should entrust with such deep dark secrets.
He stood up and started walking for the door. “Anything more comes up, I’ll keep you informed.”
“Anything specific you expect me to do at this point?” I asked.
He had the door open and was just walking out. “Nope.” Then the door shut behind him.
It was, all in all, a completely dopey conversation. He’d said something, and he’d said nothing. If I was the really suspicious sort, I might think he was probing to see if I was amenable to becoming his stooge, and I’d scared him off, so he’d resorted to that little cover story about North Koreans. That might sound fairly paranoid to most folks, but most folks haven’t spent as much time around spooks as I have. They lie to their own mothers just for practice.
If nothing else, this little tete-a-tete had made me suddenly aware of the importance the U.S. government was placing on our efforts to defend Whitehall. Face it, they’d be stupid to be complacent. Carlson was a ruthless fanatic, and fate had just handed her the power to take a meat cleaver to the alliance. Those folks back in Washington probably wanted her watched like a hawk.
I got a lousy night’s sleep. I kept trying to recall my Swedish stewardess with the Bronx twang and Italian name, but time and distance were rapidly diffusing her into a foggy ghost. Instead, a smallish woman with long, dark hair, an angelic face, and emerald-like eyes kept mulishly butting her way into my head. I knew I wasn’t having desirous thoughts, because I’ve never been a sucker for unrequited lust. I like my fantasies reciprocated.
When I awoke in the morning I felt grizzly and raw. I opened the blinds to explore the day.
Back when I was in law school, there was this professor named Maladroit who taught legal ethics. I’m not making this up, either. His name was Harold Maladroit III; a great name for a barrister, if you think about it. Anyway, poor old Maladroit didn’t put a whole lot of Sturm und Drang into his teachings, if you know what I mean. He normally arrived fifteen minutes late, shuffling into the classroom like it was the last place on earth he wanted to be. But he was actually a very brilliant and accomplished jurist.
He’d occasionally present us with case studies that were so waterlogged with ambivalence they made your head ache. I stared out the window at the skyline of downtown Seoul and got to thinking about one particular case.
The way Maladroit presented it, a private attorney had gotten a call from a man accused of murdering and then eating twelve people. He went and interviewed the accused, and to his vast surprise discovered a handsome young man, well-dressed, well-groomed, apparently well-educated, cultured, and almost impossibly likable. The attorney was astonished. He was also cautious. They spent five hours talking, because it took that long for the attorney to convince himself he was chatting with somebody far too sane and morally anchored to have committed such outlandishly heinous crimes. The attorney of course agreed to represent him.
The trial date was set for six months hence, and the attorney and his client used every minute of it to build their defense. They worked doggedly, becoming very close, achieving, if not a father-to-son relationship, then something not far from it. The most damning evidence against the accused man was a collection of tiny shards of bones that had been found in the old coal furnace in his cellar. The accused man swore the bones were those of Jackie, his beloved beagle, who’d died about two months before the police came. He’d considered taking the corpse to a pet cemetery, but in an effort to be thrifty decided he’d simply cremate the remains himself. This was before DNA testing, and successive medical tests ended up deadlocked: The bones could’ve been human, or they could’ve been a dog’s.
The attorney believed his client. He put all his considerable legal brilliance into the case. He labored fifteen-hour days, ignored his other clients, borrowed money from the bank to keep his practice going, and worked solely, completely, singly on this case. It became his obsession. He gambled dangerously with his financial future. He traded his entire client base for this one man, this one trial.
The day before the trial opened, the attorney and his client went through their preparations one final time. The attorney was so utterly convinced of his client’s innocence, and was so sure of the fine, wholesome impression he’d make with the jury, that he decided to take a great legal risk. He decided to put his client on the stand. They were rehearsing his testimony when they got to the part where the attorney asked his client about the tiny bone shards in the furnace.
“Oh, those,” the client said with the kind of infectious chuckle the lawyer was sure would warm the hearts of even the most hardhearted jury. “See, I had a dog named Max. A cute little schnauzer, a real great dog. I loved him dearly. He died and so I cremated him.”
The lawyer was gifted, or in this case cursed, with a fly-trap memory. Six months before, his client had told him the dog was named Jackie, only now the name was Max. And before the dog was a beagle; now it was a schnauzer. For the first time, he had grave doubts. If the story about the dog wasn’t true, maybe nothing else was true, either.
He lost a great deal of sleep over the following week. The trial progressed. The prosecutor threw his best punches and the defense lawyer counterattacked with a vengeance. He was superbly prepared. He had a convincing rebuttal for everything. He poked holes of doubt every which way.