“How’s that?” I asked, since I still hadn’t glanced at a newspaper in three weeks and therefore hadn’t the foggiest notion what was happening.

“The Republicans are pushing a bill through Congress to overturn the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. They’re saying Whitehall, Moran, and Jackson prove it doesn’t work. You know who asked them to push the bill?”

“Who?”

“South Korea’s ambassador. Publicly, too. It was couched like this: Get the homosexuals out of your military or we’ll throw your troops out of Korea.”

“You think they mean it?”

“We know they mean it. Go review a few weeks of newspaper and magazine articles. Once you get current, then call me back.”

This was a very polished brush-off, only I wasn’t done with my business. I quickly said, “I, uh, I need a favor.”

“Favor?” he asked in a very halfhearted tone. Not “Gee, Sean, considering the nasty briar patch I’ve thrown you into, whatever you want.” I should’ve realized right then that I was swimming in quicksand.

“I want Sergeant First Class Imelda Pepperfield flown over here right away. And I want her to bring her pick of assistants.”

There was this fairly long pause; this long, nauseating pause.

“That, uh… I’m afraid that’s not really a very good idea.”

“How come?” I dumbly asked.

“It really isn’t a good idea to militarize the defense team. Whitehall made a deliberate choice to rely on civilian attorneys and, frankly, it was astonishingly convenient. You get my meaning here, don’t you?”

Yeah, I sure as hell did get his meaning, didn’t I. The Army was exceedingly pleased to be relieved of the distasteful responsibility of defending Whitehall. Win, lose, or draw, there weren’t going to be any happy endings here, and it was vastly preferable to have some wild-eyed civilian lefties arguing on his behalf. You didn’t have to look under the table to get the message being sent to me, either: stay well-hidden behind Carlson’s skirts.

So I lied. “Look, General, I’m just a messenger boy. Carlson ordered me to pass this request. She said to tell you to either get Pepperfield over here, or she’ll call some of her press buddies and say you’re trying to sandbag her defense.”

“Bullshit. She’s never heard of Pepperfield.”

“Well, I, uh, I let the cat out of the bag. Of course, I had no idea until a second ago that you didn’t want to green up the defense team.”

He said okay, or he snarled okay, or he shot the word out from his lips like a bullet. Then he hung up, much harder than was necessary. Not that he had more right to be peeved than I did, since I now had a pretty clear inkling where I stood.

I was working for a lesbian who had rotten memories of me, not to mention a satchelcase packed with hidden agendas on how she intended to employ me. The chief of the JAG Corps who’d assigned me to this case wanted me to sandbag my co-counsel, and thereby my client, whom I’d never met – although given the crime he’d apparently committed, I didn’t want to meet him.

All in all, a vile situation.

Fortunately, though, I’m afflicted with a short attention span. I lay down on the bed and got comfortable. I thought of Bermuda and that Swedish stewardess; although from a strictly technical standpoint, she hadn’t really been Swedish, since she was from the Bronx and had one of those Italian names. And she wasn’t really a stewardess, either, but a secretary at some advertising agency, out prowling for a good time. Well, I’m a good time. In fact, I’m a damned good time. And if you could ignore her Bronx twang, and the big, puffy hairdo, you could force yourself to believe she had some Swedish blood in her. I mean, those Europeans were always invading one another, weren’t they? Who knows how much crossbreeding occurred?

Okay, it’s a stretch, but sometimes when it comes to the opposite sex you have to let your imagination paper over the rough spots.

I dozed off with a happy smile.

CHAPTER 4

The phone rang at 6:00 A.M. I lifted it up and Katherine said, “Get down here right away. We’ve got a big problem.”

I spitefully took a nice long shower, shaved in languorous slow motion, took forever to put on my uniform and tie my boots, then watched TV for ten leisurely minutes. The thing about life is, you’ve got to take your cheap victories where you find them.

Allie the amazon answered the door again, only this time it was just her and Katherine and Maria in the room. Maria again had a pouty frown on her face.

“Hey, what’s happening?” I said to Allie, trying to sound hip, because she was really hard to look at early in the morning, and it was either act hip or vomit all over the floor.

She looked down at me like I was the one who was tall and gangly. “Hey, Katherine, he’s back.”

I smiled nicely and tried to think up a wisecrack but nothing particular came to mind. Or actually, lots of particular things came to mind, only I didn’t want to create any irreparable rifts this early in the game.

“Attila, what took you so long?” Katherine barked from across the room.

“What’s going on?” I yelled back, spitefully refusing to answer.

Katherine walked across the room until she was right in front of me. “I’ve just been notified the South Koreans are taking jurisdiction over our case. They want Whitehall turned over to their custody.”

“Who notified you?”

“Spears’s legal adviser.”

“He would know,” I drolly observed.

“Can they do it?”

“This is South Korea. They can do any damned thing they want. Do they have the legal basis? Well, that’s another story.”

I smelled the aroma of coffee and my nostrils twitched. Katherine pointed at an urn in the corner. I went and got a cup, using the time to think.

“Look,” I said, “here’s how it works. When we have troops stationed on foreign soil, we first sign something called a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, as we commonly call it, that sets up how these things are supposed to be handled. Of course, we have a SOFA agreement with the government of South Korea. What it stipulates is that anytime an American soldier commits a crime, we get to try them.”

“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.”