I looked carefully into her eyes, and there was not the slightest doubt in my mind she meant every word of it. Without another word she walked away and left me standing on the hot cement, wondering what in the hell I should do next. Not that I was afraid of her or anything, but I suddenly felt desperate to come up with something. Something quick, too, because when I claimed I wasn’t afraid of her, I might’ve been exaggerating a little bit… or a lot.

I went back to Mercer’s office. He was seated behind his desk with the usual cup of coffee attached to his lips. As much coffee as that man drank, he probably had brown liquid flowing through his veins. If you took his java away, he’d probably deflate like a big balloon with a hole in it.

He looked astoundingly unhappy.

I said, “Hey, boss, what’s happening?”

That “boss” thing was my sly way of intimating I wanted to do some more work for him.

He didn’t seem to catch it. He grumbled something about how Choi and Bales seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Actually, they had disappeared in Seoul, which ain’t exactly thin air, if you ask me. It’s a sprawling metropolis with some fifteen million people and at least that many rabbit warrens and pigeonholes they could’ve run into. They might not even be in Seoul anymore. Hell, they might not be within a thousand miles of Korea.

I said, “Choi’s probably got a million places to hide.”

Mercer took another sip of coffee. He looked wrung out, and it wasn’t hard to guess he’d gotten reamed pretty good for letting Bales slip away. He could at least pin the Choi screwup on Kim and the KCIA, but that’s like saying you’re only responsible for sinking the lower decks of the Titanic; some other guy let the upper decks slip under the waves.

The way spooks like to handle these things is to catch the spies. Then they like to vigorously interrogate them and gauge how much damage was done, and where, and how. Otherwise you have to assume the worst, and respond accordingly. The worst in this case was hugely ugly. The entire defense plan for South Korea might’ve been compromised and therefore needed to be rewritten. Thousands of units might have to be moved, minefields relocated, port security plans rebuilt, etcetera, etcetera. Millions of men and women would have to be retrained to execute a new plan. It could take years and many billions of dollars.

Still, that left the larger question of who Bales and Choi might’ve blackmailed and turned. Hundreds of people worked in sensitive jobs in the huge alliance headquarters. Choi had been in business nearly twenty years, and even if he’d only cherry-picked one sucker every year, that left a big army of informants. And just because Choi had hightailed it didn’t mean his moles were out of business. The plumbers couldn’t do their work if they didn’t know where the leaks were.

Mercer looked like he’d had all this explained to him in painful detail by somebody with a real loud, brassy voice. I felt sorry for him.

No, actually that’s not true. I’d brought him the breakthrough and he’d let the rats slip from his grasp. He should’ve arrested Bales and Choi right away. Maybe he should’ve had thirty cars tail Bales to the airport, or put a man in Bales’s trunk. He took a gamble and he lost.

Anyway, I said, “Has anybody figured out what happened?”

He shrugged. “What we guess was there was another car and some accomplices waiting for Bales in the tunnel. We haven’t got a clue who the guy was who drove his car out of the tunnel. He didn’t have any ID, but he obviously worked for Choi. I guess that was plan B. As for Choi, he somehow figured he was being followed. After Bales called him, he must’ve taken precautions. Maybe he had some of his own people tail him and they detected the KCIA guys.”

“He didn’t waste a minute. He’s really good,” I remarked, which was as revoltingly obvious as anything I’d ever muttered in my life.

“Yeah,” Mercer said, looking even more glum.

I hooked my cane on the front of his desk and fell into a chair. “You’ve got people going through their offices and homes?”

“Yeah.”

“What about Bales’s wife?”

“Carol arrested her at the luncheon. That’s the only fuckin’ thing that went right.”

“Where’s she now?”

“The KCIA’s got her.”

“What? You turned her over?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?” I asked. “You arrested her on a military base. She’s a military wife. You have jurisdiction.”

His eyes shifted a little, like this wasn’t something he was particularly proud to admit. “ ’Cause the KCIA has a bit more latitude than we do.”

That was a nice way of saying that the KCIA could rip her fingernails out and flood her veins with truth serums.

I wasn’t passing any judgments, though. I might’ve done the same thing if I were in his shoes. Hell, I might’ve done the same thing if I was in my shoes. Lots of innocent folks had been murdered, and Bales’s wife was probably somehow connected to it.

“Besides,” he continued, “they know how to handle North Korean stooges better than we do.”

“Is there some trick to that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Ah, yeah. They’re a breed apart. Know how Carol took her down?”

“How?”

“Drugged her tea. The second she saw her getting drowsy, she slipped up behind her and jammed a steel plate in her mouth so she couldn’t bite down, while two other agents rushed over, threw ropes around her body, and pinned her in place.”

“Sounds pretty extreme.”

“There’s a reason for it. Lots of these North Koreans have those poison pellets inside a tooth. No shit. Remember that KAL plane that got a bomb planted on it by a North Korean couple? The KCIA caught them, but the guy reached up, twisted a molar, and plunk! The bastard was dead before he hit the floor.”

“Think the KCIA’ll get her to talk?”

“Depends how tough she is. Usually they start getting results within seventy-two hours.”

“That’s too long, though, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Choi and Bales will assume she’s been taken. They’ll hide someplace she can’t compromise. They’ll alter their plans.”

I rubbed my chin and gave him a full dose of the look people say makes me look just like a Lebanese rug merchant. “So, you got any ideas?”

He shrugged. “Maybe Bales’s wife will tell us something helpful. Maybe we’ll find something searching through their belongings.”

“You don’t sound hopeful.”

“I’m not. These guys were trained agents.”

“Choi maybe was. Bales wasn’t.”

He looked over his coffee mug. “You got something you wanna share?”

I kept rubbing my chin. “I thought maybe if I joined in the search, I might catch something you’ll miss.”

Mercer was no dummy. “You mean you’d like to go through their shit and see if you can find something to get Whitehall off.”

I smiled. “I suppose if I came upon something that helped my client, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. He’d obviously had a hell of a day. “Look, Drummond, you wanna go through their crap, just say so. I owe you, and I always pay my debts. Feel free.”

“Could you loan me Carol Kim?”

“Think I’d let you go through their shit without somebody looking over your shoulder? Take her.”

He had a good point. I started to get up.

“One other thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Remember when Bales called Choi?”

“Of course.”

“Think back. Remember what he said just before they talked about that plan B thing?”

“He wanted to know about his wife?”

“Nah, after that.”

“I don’t remember anything after that,” I admitted.

“Bales asked him about phase 3.”

“What in the hell’s phase 3?”

Mercer looked sadder than any man I ever saw. “That’s what we’d like to know.”