But Carruthers barked, “Stop the fencing. This isn’t the time to play lawyer games. Miss Carlson, can you live with the extension?”

Katherine coldly said, “Two days ago, after fifteen protesters were brutally slaughtered, I requested a postponement. Golden argued that a full-blown massacre was too insignificant.”

“I’m aware of that,” Carruthers said, which he surely was, since he ultimately was the one who made the decision not to reschedule. “But he didn’t argue that it was insignificant. He argued it was irrelevant. Remember the distinction.”

“All right,” Katherine said, inching forward in her own seat. “I’ll talk relevance. I’ve got an innocent client who’s already spent nearly two weeks in a hellhole the Koreans call a prison. He’s been beaten, mentally abused, isolated, fed only water and rice. The decision to put him there was made by our government. I don’t see why he should be subjected to another day of torture because the prosecutor can’t produce his witnesses.”

Eddie defiantly mumbled, “He won’t be hurt by another few days.”

Carruthers was starting to grind his teeth impatiently. His voice got real prickly. “Miss Carlson, I asked whether a postponement would create significant problems for your defense. Not your client, your defense.”

This was the moment when I decided to intervene. “Your Honor, could I have a private moment with my co-counsels?” I asked.

Katherine gave me a mystified look.

Eddie gave me a hopeful, pleading look.

Carruthers nodded. “The conference room is down the hallway to the left. Five minutes?”

Ordinarily, if you put three lawyers together in a room, five days wouldn’t be enough. But I said, “Five minutes would be fine.”

Then Katherine, Allie, and I filed out the door and down the hall. The moment the door closed, Katherine spun and faced me.

“What the hell’s this about?”

“We might want to think this through.”

“I have,” Katherine said, quite firmly. “That little bastard hasn’t given us a single break. Screw him.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“And there’s some other way?”

I backed away and leaned against the wall. My eyes roamed across both their faces. “Say we start tomorrow morning. How sure are we we’ll win?”

They were both attorneys and the answer to that was obvious.

Allie ran a hand through her spiky hair. “No trial’s ever a sure thing.”

And I calmly responded, “The first rule of law.”

Allie said, “He’ll have to reconstruct. He’ll have to use substitutes. There’s about ten other Korean police officers on his witness list and he has the two military policemen who first went to the scene. He has the pathologist and the lock specialist. They can fill in a lot of the gaps.”

And Katherine said, “And if we give him till Tuesday, he’ll use every minute to rebuild his case around those other witnesses. If we force him into court tomorrow, he’ll be disorganized and behind the curve.”

I rubbed my chin. “Yeah, that’s true.”

Katherine was now looking at me curiously. “But…?”

“Look, nobody wants to cream Eddie worse than me. I’ve got two of his damn baseball bats in my closet.”

“But…?” Katherine asked again.

“But I know Eddie. He might look like a mess today, but he won’t by tomorrow. Believe me. We don’t call him Fast Eddie for nothing. An ego like his won’t stay down long. In fact, when he comes to his senses and realizes he’s got two dirty cops on his hands, he’ll recognize his case is now less vulnerable.”

Allie said, “He’d have to be pretty good to pull that off.”

“Allie, he’s not just pretty good, he’s the best the Army’s got.”

She nodded.

Then I said, “But what if we could get the murder, rape, and necrophilia charges thrown out before the trial?”

“That’s a silly question,” Katherine said. Then she tilted her head sideways. “How?”

“Two days will buy us time to look into Choi’s and Bales’s activities. We know they’re rotten. What if we can prove that?”

Katherine was chewing on her lip. She was the lead counsel, so ultimately this was her decision. She stared at me hard. You could almost see her wheels spinning with the possibilities.

“Drummond, no bluster. Can you come up with something? And I mean before trial.”

“I hope I can. No guarantees.”

There was a long, tense, awkward moment. All this was easy for me to say, but I didn’t want to be in Katherine’s shoes. Despite what I’d argued, if we went to trial in the morning, Eddie might be so tipsy he’d never recover. On the other hand, the opening day would mostly be spent on voir dire, and maybe opening statements. Then Eddie would have Saturday and Sunday to replan his case. Really, we weren’t giving him much.

On the other hand, this was Fast Eddie we were talking about, and what would be one day for anybody else would be like two weeks for him. And what if I couldn’t dig up anything more on Bales and Choi? What if all they’d left behind was a cloud of dust?

Katherine looked at Allie and she was nodding her head – reluctantly, but she was nodding.

Then Katherine nodded, too. She didn’t look pleased, or confident, or satisfied, but her head was bobbing.

We trooped back into the judge’s office two minutes ahead of schedule. Eddie was slumped down in his chair, prepared for the worst. We all knew that Carruthers didn’t need it, but he badly wanted Katherine’s assent to the postponement. Otherwise she’d run to the press and kick up holy hell – and an army of her journalist friends had flown over here, and Korea is not exactly a tourist haven, and they were all ready for the show to begin. Grumpy journalists are everybody’s worst nightmare.

It just would be much neater for all concerned if she went along and agreed.

Katherine sat in her chair and gave Eddie a withering look.

“Well?” Carruthers asked.

“Okay, Your Honor.”

“Okay?” Eddie asked, flabbergasted. I doubted if he ever once in his entire legal career had cut anybody an inch of slack. He’s the kind of guy who probably went to the executions of the men he helped convict. Eddie’s that way. Believe me.

Katherine said, “That’s what I said, Golden. You’re getting your two days.”

I could see that Eddie wanted almost more than anything to say something sharp and nasty back, just to balance the ledger, except Katherine had a grip on his short hairs, so discretion stilled his tongue.

Carruthers said, “All right then, Major, you’ve got until 0800 hours Tuesday to locate your witnesses. Miss Carlson, the court thanks you for your equanimity.”

Then we all got up and left. When we got outside, Katherine loitered by the door and asked Allie to go ahead. We gave her a minute to get beyond earshot.

Then Katherine said, “What the hell have you got up your sleeve?”

I held up my hands. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t try to run a scam on me, Drummond. I know you.”

“Me? A scam?”

Her stare hardened. “You do have something going, don’t you? The only reason I agreed to this was because I assume you’ve got something. Some lead, something.”

I shook my head. “Actually, no. I don’t have a thing.”

Katherine’s big green eyes suddenly got bigger. “Look, Drummond, I just made the biggest decision of my legal career because of you. The biggest decision of my life. You have no idea how important this is to me.”

“Why’d you ask for me to be your co-counsel?” I asked.

“Honestly?”

“No, lie and say it’s because I’m so damned good-looking and sexy.”

She sort of half smiled. “It wasn’t that, believe me.”

“See,” I said. “You’ve got your secrets and I’ve got mine.”

Her half smile disappeared. She gave me a very steady look. “Let me make this clear. I just gave that son of a bitch two more days. I let you talk me into that.”

I nodded.

She continued. “That means you’ve got two days to come up with something. You’ve got two days to give me something that proves Thomas Whitehall didn’t murder and rape Lee. If you fail to do that, I’ll find some way to ruin the rest of your life. You won’t be able to hide from me. I’ll track you down and make your life miserable. Is that clear?”