WHEN the hot washup for the first half of the exercise broke, Dan went into the bathroom down the hall. A white-jacketed attendant bowed. He was checking his uniform in the mirror when Leakham pushed through the door. Their gazes met, but the commodore’s slipped aside as if greased. Leakham cleared his throat and went into a stall.
Dan was waiting by the sink, arms crossed, when he came out again. “Commander,” Leakham muttered, still not meeting his eyes as he washed his hands.
“What exactly is your problem with the Koreans, Commodore? Or is it a problem with me?”
The big man’s cheeks flushed. He twisted the faucet savagely. “If you read your message traffic, you know the problem. Commander.”
“Yes sir, I believe I do. The problem is your accusations are inaccurate. The ROKN needed a course correction on their safe distances. Commodore Jung and I applied it. Then smoothed things over with San Francisco’s CO. There was no reason to kick it upstairs. If you’d had the courtesy to ask me, I’d have been happy to set you straight. Without me you wouldn’t have an exercise.”
The fair face flamed. Dan guessed he hadn’t heard that kind of language from an O-5 in a while. “Set me straight? Without you, Lenson, I’d have a better exercise. These people need a tight rein. They don’t want to learn. Want to charge off on their own. No regard for safety.”
“That’s because sonar conditions out there suck. Mixing, no layer, heavy biologicals, a lot of reverberation. They had to get in close to get contact—”
“Don’t tell me what sonar conditions are! If you want to disagree with my conclusions, take it up with your home command. With Todd Mullaly—a personal friend of mine, by the way. But I don’t owe you any explanations. Or any apologies, Commander.” Leakham flicked water off his fingers and looked past Dan, holding them up. The Korean attendant, carefully poker-faced, handed him a towel.
Dan stepped up close. Right in his face. “The thing is, Commodore, you do. There was no good reason for you to send that message. And there was no reason at all to throw mud about my relations with Jung. That’s what really burns my ass! So: what was the real reason, Commodore? Or would you rather I just punched you in the fucking nose here and now?”
Leakham blinked at him, and for a moment Dan saw fear. But just then the door opened, and the other attendees streamed in. Hwang looked from Leakham to Dan with a curious expression. Leakham took advantage of the interruption to push past, throwing the used towel at the attendant.
Back in the conference room the last of the pastries were disappearing. Dan got himself a reheat on the coffee and stood scowling, waiting for it to cool enough to drink. He still hadn’t heard back from TAG about Leakham’s accusations. He still didn’t know what kind of bug was up the guy’s ass.
The exercise was half over, though, and so far he’d held it together. The data was going in the logs. As long as they had that, the tapes in the 19 boxes could re-create every rudder order, every search tactic, every constructive “torpedo firing.” And now the safety rules were being observed. He tried to convince himself that none of the rest—U.S. politics, Korean politics, whatever the Chinese were up to, whatever Leakham was up to—was his concern.
The TAG guys had congregated by the sandwich buffet. Dan exchanged a few words with an Australian skipper, then drifted in their direction. He hadn’t seen Carpenter or Wenck or Oberg since the exercise started, as they’d been aboard the other ships. “Hi Rit, Don. Everything okay on your end?”
“Data’s going down. Yes, sir.”
“Yes sir, taped backups, Xeroxes on all the logs. We’ll get them on their way back today.”
“Good. Everything okay where you live, Teddy?”
Oberg stood like a bear on skates. He looked out of place with the blond ponytail, the startlingly blue eyes, more like a surfer or some kind of Hollywood producer than a military guy. His biceps didn’t belong on a producer, though. He smiled dreamily, looking past Dan like some dangerous predator that avoided confrontation. “Yes sir, Commander. Everything’s going real fine. Monty’s already got my data package.”
O’Quinn stood silent a few paces distant, nursing a soda. Dan nodded to him. “Joe. Feeling better now?”
“Sure,” the retired captain said.
“Rit ‘n’ me are going downtown after this. Down to Texas Street,” Wenck said eagerly. “Want to come?”
“I’d better touch base with the commodore. Jung, I mean.” He looked around but didn’t see the Korean.
Henrickson said, “He’s having dinner with Leakham and that female captain.”
Dan was confused, not recalling any female captain in the exercise, until the analyst added, “The little one with the black hair.”
“Just the right size to—” Carpenter started, then fell silent as Dan turned his gaze to him.
“What’s that, Rit?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Monty, you mean Captain Owens? Carol Owens. She’s the naval attache.”
“Well, they’re getting together for dinner.”
Dan wondered if he should try to join them, then decided to let the four-stripers have their private party. Of the three, he was pretty sure Jung and Owens were on his side. If he had a side. He didn’t as far as the political issue went, whether the U.S. should withdraw or not. He’d come to admire the hardworking, gung ho Koreans, but that didn’t mean he’d slant the outcome of the SATRYE. He didn’t believe in abandoning an ally. But the U.S. couldn’t do everything. At some point, its friends had to shoulder their own burden. Whether this was the time or not he was willing to leave to those who were getting paid to make those decisions. Like the civilian appointees he’d worked for back at the National Security Council.
Though their decisions had seemed to have more to do with domestic politics than anything resembling a national strategy.
He blinked, becoming aware they were waiting on his answer. “What?”
“Texas Street?” Henrickson prompted. “International Market? Whaddya say? Be nice to get out and walk.”
Dan tilted his wrist, checked his Seiko, feeling the tension in his legs from too long cooped up aboard ship. “Oh—sure. Just give me a couple minutes to shower and change. No showers aboard Chung Nam.”
Carpenter shuffled his feet. “I, uh, I got somebody to see. Maybe catch you guys down on the street.”
“You still after that Korean girl, Rit?” Henrickson asked him.
“What if I am?”
“Better watch it,” Henrickson warned him. Dan looked at the former submariner too. He considered taking him aside, then remembered: Carpenter wasn’t in the military anymore. He didn’t need a big-brother act. The contractor waved and faded.
“Meet you in the lobby, then? Sir?”
“You got it,” Dan said. “And I told you: just call me Dan.”
O’QUINN suggested a taxi, but Dan and the younger techs wanted to walk. O’Quinn grumbled and said he’d see them down there, he was taking a cab. “Come on, Joe, walk with us,” Dan told him. “We’ve been cooped up for a week. Get some fresh air.” But O’Quinn shook his head and stayed behind, looking back and forth along the street in front of the hotel.
Oberg said he wanted to get in a weight workout at the hotel gym. So that left three of them. Dan, Wenck, and Henrickson rolled downhill through narrow streets that Henrickson seemed to know, though Dan lost his bearings quickly.
He thought again how Asian Pusan looked compared to the capital. Tiny stores, tiny homes, warrens of walls behind which invisible radios blared and invisible children shouted. Street vendors hawked fresh fish, cooked fish, pickled fish, salt fish, fish spitted on sharpened sticks. The Americans didn’t get a second glance from the swarms they moved among.
The streets leveled and widened as they neared the water. Past the train station the smell of the sea, or at least of the fish market, grew stronger. Henrickson pointed out a sign that read Texas Street. “Named after—you got it—USS Texas.”
Down here the streets were for pedestrians only. They looked into Chinese restaurants, companion bars, massage parlors, questionable-looking “barbershops,” soju joints. Sweating little men in cheap rayon shirts piloted rattling carts jammed with racks of clothing and boxes of microwave ovens and toasters and fans and toys past them on the asphalt, forcing them to step aside or be run down. A lot of the neon was in English, but the newest signs were all in Cyrillic.
Gradually Dan realized that the pasty, scruffy-looking Europeans pushing carts, setting out displays, and calling to them as they passed, trying to shill them into karaoke bars and storefronts glittering with cheap jewelry, were Russians. The pale women looking down from second-story windows in lingerie or lopsided bridesmaid dresses, or parading the street in skintight pants or leather slit skirts, bra tops, and fuck-me shoes, were Slavic, not Asian. Dan swiveled, checking their six, looking for MPs or the blue-and-gold armbands of the shore patrol. Only a single black man in an NFL cap who might or might not be military.
He blinked, trying to process it: American sleaze and decadence being replaced by Russian. Was that progress? Or some obscure form of conquest from below?
“Where are we meeting Joe?”
“Meet him?” Wenck drew his head back and bulged his eyes. ”Meet him?”
“He said he was going to catch up with us.”
They exchanged glances. “Old Joe doesn’t go out steaming much,” Monty said. “He just said that to get you off his back. He’s back at the hotel, curled up with one of his science fiction books and a nice fifth of gin.”
“Hey, you guys.”
Dan and the others turned. It was Carpenter, accompanied by two girls. Beside Dan Donnie Wenck breathed, “Oh, man.”
Dan had to second that. The girl beside the stocky ex-submariner was slim and young, with legs so long under the midthigh skirt you couldn’t look away, and flawless skin. Her eyes were bigger than they ought to be, like a manga heroine’s. She couldn’t be over eighteen, though on her cork-soled platforms she teetered above Carpenter.
“This here’s the guy in charge,” Carpenter told her, speaking loudly and spacing his words. “Dan Lenson. Dan, this is Lee Yung-Chul. Teaches English at Pusan U.”
Dan doubted that. Henrickson’s version, that she was a college student, rang truer. As he shook her limp cool fingers Carpenter reached behind her. He dragged another girl forward, neither as tall nor as impeccably beautiful, but sexy enough in her way. And even, Dan guessed, younger. “And this here’s a friend of hers. Chang Joon-Yung.”
“Wow,” Wenck said again, flinching and jerking nervously. “Hi! I’m Donnie.”
“Monty,” said Henrickson. Both men smiled at her, but Chang wasn’t looking at them. She was smiling through long lavender- and cherry-tinted hair, up at Dan.
“How do you do,” she said in a soft voice that came clearly through the hubbub of Korean and Russian around them. Dan swallowed, looking at her pale slightly chubby legs. The slit skirt wasn’t as short as those of the hookers, but it made her look more vulnerable and thus that much more seductive. The freckles across the top of her breasts looked strangely regular. He leaned in, trying not to stare but failing. They weren’t freckles. They were some sort of de-cal, or maybe applied with a felt-tip marker….
Four men chose that moment to push between them. They were unshaven, sloppily dressed, so drunken they reeled. Too unexpectedly for anyone to stop him, one made a sweeping and regal flourish in the air that ended with his arm thrown around Chang’s shoulders. She pushed it off with a look of disgust.
Henrickson shouted at them in a sudden torrent of Russian so violent heads snapped their way all along the street. The drunks hesitated. Then one said something in a low voice to the others. They about-faced raggedly and lurched off.
“Well done, Monty,” Dan told him. “Where’d you learn to speak Russian like that?”
“Oh, you pick it up.”
“Uh-uh. What’d you just tell them?”
“I said these girls were, uh, ours, and they’d do better down at the Club Havana.” Henrickson looked down the alley thoughtfully. “They’re starting to call this Russian Street now.”
“I can see why. I thought we’d see more troops here. Ours, I mean.”
“They stay close to base these days. The girls won’t have much to do with them anymore. Rather snuggle up to the rich Koreans, or even the Japanese.”
The girls turned back to them, and Henrickson changed tack instantly. “Where you guys headed? Want to get something to eat? Or go to a blowfish restaurant?” They made faces, simultaneously, and Dan revised their ages downward again. But Wenck joined in, he couldn’t keep his eyes off them, and they didn’t seem to mind; Carpenter’s girl clearly loved the attention.
Finally they nodded reluctantly. Dan coughed into his fist and said he needed to log on to TAG and get his traffic, make sure everything was coming on okay on that end. Maybe he’d split early and catch them back at the hotel.
They didn’t seem sorry to see him go.
WHEN they were out of sight, instead of going back to the hotel he doubled back to the bazaar area and did some shopping. He found silk scarves for Blair. Got his daughter a lacquered box she might find a use for in her dorm room. He noticed the familiar logo of a Baskin-Robbins and stopped in for rocky road, but his stomach wasn’t feeling that great and he threw it away unfinished. He felt bloated and uneasy. The uphill back to the hotel was steeper than he’d noticed coming down. He should get out and run a couple of miles before dark.
The thought of a workout improved his mood, which had grown dark after seeing the Korean girls and the available flesh all along the red-light street. And the whole inexplicable thing with Leakham. He was starting to put together what the guy had insinuated in his message, that he and Jung were getting it on together, with the fact that a couple of senior officers he knew were gay. One of them had once been his commanding officer. Cabals, countercabals. He’d hoped it wouldn’t all follow him out here, but it looked like he’d hoped in vain.
He changed in his room and went out again. He warmed up and stretched in the parking circle, ignoring the looks of the valets and lobby staff, then shook the tension out of his shoulders and headed out.
He went uphill at first so it’d be easier to find his way back. The streets steepened till he was puffing. His wind wasn’t as good as when he’d been able to run every day. Then the buildings ended. The hillside became a wooded park. He slowed at the top and jogged broad, quiet paths shaded by tall, perfectly straight trees he couldn’t identify—their leaves looked like beeches’ but their bark didn’t—swerving to avoid elderly couples and strolling lovers. He got a pretty good run in, and when he got back as dusk fell he was sweating and felt less logy.
He was jogging in place in the lobby, waiting for the elevator, when someone plucked at his soaked shorts and giggled. He turned to see the younger girl smiling up through her ridiculously colored bangs.
“Uh—Hi! What are you doing here?”
“We all come back hotel.”
“Uh-huh. Where’s Rit? And Lee?”
“Lee up with Rit. Don-ee and Mont-ee are in the bar. Then I saw you.” She rubbed the fabric of his shorts between thumb and forefinger and made a face. “Wet.”
“I was out running…. You say your friend’s with Rit?”
“They went to his room.”
“I bet they did.” Dan scrubbed a hand over his face, wondering exactly how old Lee was, what the legal age was in Korea, what would happen to Rit Carpenter if they got busted bare-ass in a hotel room. He regretted now he hadn’t taken a more proactive role. He still wasn’t sure how old these girls were. They could be fifteen. They could be fourteen. TAG was a military command, even if it was supported by contractor personnel. If Carpenter got himself in the papers, it’d embarrass the country just as much as if he were still in uniform.
Meanwhile Chang was running her hand down the inside of his leg. He was afraid he liked it. “I like practice English,” she murmured. “You will talk to me? In your room?”
“No. Sorry. I don’t really have time. Maybe Bonnie could help you with that—”
“He sounds funny. Can’t we talk?”
She smelled like candy. He swallowed and looked away. “I really need to do some things on the computer. Thanks, but I’d better not.”
He craned toward the dining room, wishing Henrickson would come out looking for her, or better, Wenck would—the South Carolinian was closer to her age. Single, too. Why had she attached herself to him? He couldn’t help looking down her blouse. No, they weren’t freckles. Damn it! He suddenly realized his erection was clearly molded by the damp thin nylon shell of the shorts. And the hell of it was, she couldn’t be any older than his own daughter.
She laughed, turned to put herself between him and the corridor, took a grip on his handle, and squeezed. “You are afraid of me? Why? I am just little girl.”
“Let go of that! That’s pretty much the problem. By the way—I’m married. So’s Rit, actually.” He glanced toward the elevator. Third floor and coming down. “Does your friend know that?”
“I don’t think matters to her.” She looked at the elevator too, and a mischievous smile tugged at her lips. She squeezed again, then bent him as if she were working a slot machine. It didn’t feel too great, but the thought kept suggesting itself that it might be nice to teach her what did. “What floor your room is on?”
“Look, you seem like a nice person. A very beautiful girl. But I just can’t,” he told her in his firmest Dad voice. “Go find somebody your own age and have a good time.” He patted her arm and got hold of her wrist and peeled her fingers off his dick.
The doors pinged and slid open at last. He got on quickly and jabbed the button with the “close” symbol on it. They slid shut on her pouting lips, her saucy ass as she whipped around and flounced off, flipping up her skirt behind her to show him peppermint-striped panties.
HE was wondering if that had been the right decision, half sorry he’d turned her away, as he got his key out of where he’d tied it into his shoe and let himself into his room. Shit, if Leakham got wind of that, the bastard would know he was gay. His erection wasn’t going away. He fingered it through the nylon as he kicked off his running shoes. Time for a shower, all right.
Then he noticed it was already running, a hollow roar behind the thin partition. He smelled the hot water.
He froze as the door clicked shut behind him. Was he in the wrong room? That was his hanging bag on the rack. His uniform cap on the side table. His case with the Compaq and power supply brick. This was his room.
So who was in the shower?
Just at that moment the water went off. He frowned. Tapped at the door, then tried the knob.
The air was opaque with steam. Suddenly he knew who it was. The other girl. Yung-Chul. They were double-teaming him. And he was giving way. Those legs. He couldn’t resist those legs. He coughed into his fist, feeling his stomach go light, noting as if from far away as his last inhibition or scruple snapped from “on” to “off” like the last binary “fire inhibit” signal in a launching system. He was good to go.
“Uh—Miss Lee?” he said.
His wife slid open the frosted glass. She glanced up and started, then blinked back at him, her hair stuck wetly to her cheek, eyes slightly vague, slightly myopic without her contacts.
“Blair! What the hell are you doing here?”
She laughed. “What a great expression! You should see your face!”
“Well, I’m—I’m flabbergasted. You never said anything about coming to Korea.”
“They needed an official body for the events tomorrow. Naturally I had to volunteer.” She narrowed her eyes as she stepped carefully over the rim of the tub onto the wet slick tile, steadying herself on his shoulder. “Hand me that towel, will you? What was that you said?”
“When?”
“When you opened the door. What did you say?”
“What did I say? Uh—I forget. I just wondered who was in my shower. Events tomorrow? What events tomorrow?”
She gave him a hot damp kiss and told him the next day was the annual commemoration of the Korean War. “Nine a.m., at the International Cemetery. The ambassador will speak, and the Korean MOD.
I’m representing DoD. Wear your uniform, you can represent the U.S. Navy.”
“Sounds good to me. We’re not getting under way till the day after. Last I heard, and considering the weather east of Japan, it might be longer than that.” He ran his lips along the side of her neck. Her damp short hair tickled his nose. His erection had shifted gears, but it was still on the same interstate. His hand slid up under the towel, up smooth damp skin into an even smoother slickness that parted before a probing finger. “Good shower?”
“Great shower,” she said. “Ow… ow. But do me a favor and just file those nails a little, okay? I’ll give you an emery stick.” She scrubbed at her face, then rummaged through the cabinet over the sink.
“What are you looking for?”
“Just seeing who else left her mascara. You know what they say about sailors in foreign ports.”
He kept his face bland. “Sorry. One woman’s all I can handle.”
She loosened the towel, eyeing him. “Miss me?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“Just checking. The indicator pointer looks like the answer’s yes, though.”
“Come over here and I’ll show you the reading up close.”
“Oh, no,” she said, and reached back to turn the shower on again. “You’re all sweaty, and I am not going to rub up against that. Get over here. And let’s see what a little soap and hot water can do.”
With a whisper of cotton, the towel hit the floor.
She soaped him up thoroughly: chest, armpits, his neck, his hair. Her nipples were already erect and he ducked his head to kiss them, one after the other, nipping gently and circling them with his tongue. Her fingers circled him and he closed his eyes. He pressed against her slick belly.
Her fingers went away and soaped down his back. They moved in slow circles. Then they came around his hips and met beneath his balls and slowly closed where another woman’s had only minutes before.
He lost it. Cornered her against the tile, lifted her leg to curl around his back and he was in her, like that, starting to thrust, just gone. Just not really there anymore and at the same time never more there. Out of fucking control he thought vaguely, but actually he wasn’t thinking at all. The shower drilled down into his skull and it was like fucking under a waterfall.
She said into his ear, the breath whuffing out of her as he drove in, “Well now. That little… problem we used to have… all gone away is it?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have enough computing capacity left to generate words and choose among them. He was all the way in and he came back out as slowly as he could. Then he went back in for more.
He felt like he was made out of cast iron still hot inside. There was a narrow place and he went all the way through it. He saw white thighs beneath a slit leather skirt. He saw calves swelling against the tightly laced straps of cork-soled platforms. Soap burned at the corners of his eyes. He came out as slowly as he could and went all the way in. The narrow place was parting. It tightened and then parted again.
A crack snapped through the universe and he went in again. There was nothing beyond it, no thought, no consciousness, no self, no existence. She put her head back against the green and white tile. She reached around him with both hands and pulled him into her. She had fingernails too. The shower roared on his skull like fuel-fed flames. The violet rubber mat with flowers molded into it squeaked and skidded down toward the foot of the tub as their feet thrust against it.
She almost always came before he did but this time it was an awfully close race.
THEY lay on the bed sweating with the air-conditioning on full and blowing over them. Her leg was thrown over him and she lay with her head on his chest. His hand moved over her hair, over and over. It was shorter than he remembered it. She looked bled out in the cruel light. Her eyes were closed tight as if she didn’t want to see. They didn’t say much, just little words that didn’t have much meaning in them.
When he stirred against her again she gave a muffled chuckle. She breathed her warm breath down onto him again and then lowered her head and took him in, all the way.
The crack opened again and this time it was lined with livid lightning. The nothing wasn’t waiting on the other side this time. Instead it was an all-obliterating something he couldn’t look at directly because it was too hot and too bright. He went into it and became it for maybe a thousandth of a second. It was like being eaten by a nuclear fireball. And just for that moment he thought he glimpsed something. But after that thousandth of a second then another and maybe one more the white hotness bloomed out, cooling with expansion, fading to fiery yellow, orange, dull red, fading but still incredibly hot and powerful. The shock wave rolled out over his body. It hit the roof of his brain and his toes and rolled back. It gathered again at the center and pulsed one last time as she shifted her hips and sat up and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
A frown gathered between her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw them.” He rolled away from her, to the far side of the bed. “That must have been what they saw. Just as it hit.”
“You’re talking about the Horn?”
He took several deep breaths and didn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?” she said again. Then her voice came closer. He felt her fingers on his cheeks and turned his head away. “Are you crying? Damn. Don’t be ashamed, Dan. I’d say it’s long past time.”
LATER, after another shower, they dressed and went down for dinner. He kept an eye peeled for Asian Lolitas, but neither was in evidence. He didn’t see the other Taggers either. Except O’Quinn, who was leaning against the desk, talking to the clerk. The bar was filled with Japanese businessmen. Their wives were in the gift shop bargaining shrilly over Korean vases painted with sunflowers and carved jade translucent as wax and delicate lacquered boxes full of nothing. He sat across from her in the restaurant, feeling like the boxes.
Blair looked more tired than he’d ever seen her. He didn’t think it was the sex. She ate like a wolf, exclaiming over the Korean dishes Dan had gotten his fill of already. He had a steak. They caught up on the rezoning issue on the street in Arlington where they lived, and on the new front porch and renovations to the upstairs bathroom. She always had six projects going, along with the business of the assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel. Dan considered himself a hard worker, but he was in awe of how wide her span of control and attention extended.
“How’s things working out at TAG?” she said, moving on from the renovations. “Is that far enough away from DC?”
“I was there a total of forty-eight hours. Met the CO. That’s about it. He cut me orders and I was on my way.” He cut the steak carefully. Took a bite. Not a trace of kimchi flavor. No radishes. He sighed. “Anybody miss me?”
“People call. Reporters. They leave numbers. I don’t call back.” She tried something Dan could have told her was loaded with enough garlic to clear out every vampire south of the DMZ, and closed her eyes in bliss. “Ooh, this is so good. And how about you? Are you happy with it… careerwise?”
“Well, it’s not exactly the usual postcommand tour. The kind you want in your jacket when it’s promotion-board time.”
“It isn’t? It’s bad?”
“It’s not bad. Just out of the… mainstream. For a surface-line type.”
“Refining tactics is out of the mainstream?”
“It’d take too long to explain.”
“Well, where should you be? At this point? I just wish you had a law degree. We’d get you in the secretary’s office. I could get you taken on at Test and Evaluation. No, better yet, Modeling and Simulation. They’re looking for operators, we’re planning a huge effort there—”
“Where I should be as far as the Navy’s concerned is on a headquarters staff. Maybe SURFLANT. Then a major command tour.”
“Didn’t the White House count for that? The staff thing.”
“Some would say so,” he said carefully. “Some wouldn’t. As far as a promotion board goes, I’d say it’d hurt more than it’d help. With the way the president’s cutting the active forces. It would’ve been better if I’d gone right to another command, I mean another ship command, instead of TAG. I’d be in the running for a squadron after that.”
“Surely they can’t blame you for that. Just for being on his staff.”
“They can for being married to one of his appointees,” Dan told her.
A dangerous storm-light glittered. “Well, anytime you don’t want to be—”
“Take it easy! I’m teasing. You’ve always been more concerned about my career than I have, anyway. It’ll take care of itself.”
“A career never ‘takes care of itself.’ Yours especially.” Her lips set. “All you’ve done for the Navy, all your decorations. Are you going to make O-6?”
“I don’t really know. And frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a—”
“I’ll ask some questions. Find out what’s going on.”
He sucked air. “Blair, please do not involve yourself in my career. The single worst thing you can do for me is start screwing around with that. No matter how subtle you think you are. And I never did things ‘for the Navy.’ If I ever did anything beyond the call, it was for the people who worked for me, or because somebody had to do it and I happened to have the watch. Anybody else in my shoes would have done exactly the same.”
She shrugged. Was this his night for making women pout? He tried to change the subject. “Anything new from the investigation? The attempted assassination?”
“Actually that’s getting to be old news. Attention moves on fast… So, how’s the SATYRE going? I don’t hear much from Korea. That’s the Far Eastern desk.”
He’d thought about how to bring it up over the steak, and decided finally just to come right out with it. But first he looked around to make sure no one was listening at the other tables. They didn’t seem to be. “Well, the word is the administration’s considering more force reductions.”
She didn’t look up. “We’re always looking at those. We BRAC’d the shit out of the stateside establishment. You remember I spent practically all year before last on that.”
“Yeah.”
“Now it’s time to look overseas. We just spend way, far too much on these garrisons. We’ve got to transform. Having tens of thousands of guys sitting on their cans, basically stationary targets—that doesn’t deter anymore. You know there’s a hundred and five separate U.S. bases and installations in South Korea?”
“Huh. That many?”
“If we could get that down to twenty, we’d save serious money. Reduce our friction with the local population too. Whenever one of these kids goes apeshit—well, you just can’t leave young troops in the middle of a population like this.” She told him a horror story about a rape-murder the year before by a soldier from Camp Casey. “Every time that happens, the leftist students organize demonstrations. Sooner or later Seoul’s going to do something about it. Then we won’t have the choice. They’ll hand us our walking papers. Just like the Japanese, in Okinawa. In some ways we’re our own worst enemy.”
“Guess we don’t see much of that side of it in the Navy,” he admitted.
“I guess you don’t.”
“Still, they’ve got to balance that against the threat. At least with that infrastructure, you’ve got surge capacity. You can ramp up, reinforce, mount a major counteroffensive.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Maybe her answer wasn’t meant to be dismissive but that’s what he heard in her tone. Instead of reacting with his first impulse, he took the last bite of his steak and chewed. Remembering a dark, echoing, musty-smelling hull. The steady hiss of compressed air. The smells of burned powder and hot blood. And the contorted face of a fanatical believer.
“You know… these people are facing real enemies. I’m not sure they always remember that, back in DC.”
She glanced up. “Which means what? The president’s going to throw them to the wolves?”
“I doubt he’d do that. It’s just that—”
“We’re facing challenges all along the arc of crisis. If we try to maintain forces anywhere we can be attacked, guess what? We’ll go as broke as the Soviet Union did. That’s not a winning strategy.” She dabbed at her lipstick with her napkin, and sketched a rapid end-around on the tablecloth with a fingernail. “A mobile force we can deploy where we need it, in days or hours—that’s what we need to iterate toward. The Koreans have to understand that. The era of big forward-based divisions is over.”
It made analytical sense. It made budgetary sense. But it also left him uneasy. He kept thinking of all those guns and tanks along the DMZ. How for forty years Kim II Sung and now his weird son with the Eraserhead haircut had vowed to “reunite” Korea. Hwang’s warning that an ally that came too late was no ally at all. A submarine that had no business where it’d been discovered. And the hatred he’d glimpsed in a human being’s eyes moments before he’d slugged her.
He watched his wife sip wine and tried to let go of it. Not his decision. Not his watch.
But when he reflected on the people he’d worked with and for in the National Security Council, and the way policy got made in DC, his confidence factor in the right decision coming out the delivery end of that sausage grinder wasn’t high. It wasn’t absolutely accurate to say whoever came in with the highest payment bought the decision. But money talked and it talked loud. The special interests kept squeezing the toothpaste tube of the budget their way. And whatever didn’t have a paying patron, no matter how important that issue was in and of itself, got left out.
And really, why should he have been surprised that in a country whose business was business, that everything, absolutely everything, should be for sale?
She put her hand on his. “Deep thoughts?”
He shook himself back to where he was: a nice hotel, with his beautiful wife, whom he really didn’t see that often, on a free night before he went back to sea. “Not really. How about it? Want to go out and paint the town?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
THE next morning was cloudless and still. He stood at the base of a starkly modern tower built of what looked like concrete pipes. They emerged from the grass, bent upward, and met to support a great bronze globe. Around its perimeter the flags of many nations drooped in the breezeless heat. Beside him Blair stood in a white lace dress, adorned with one of the corsages a bowing official had distributed to the ladies in the official party.
Which was slowly breaking up, now that the final benediction had been said. The ceremony had been unmercifully long. One Korean had ranted for nearly forty minutes. Dozens of veterans, war widows, and their families had sat in the audience, many blotting away tears as generals and ambassadors from the coalition nations, in many different languages, had invoked the memories of the fallen. Then each had stepped forward to lay his or her wreath.
He felt out of place uniformwise. The other military were in whites. Gold braid and aiguillettes sparkled. All he’d brought, not expecting formal occasions, was khakis. But the Koreans were also in khakis, or a service dress green he thought was the equivalent. He’d cleaned up his shoes, gotten a close shave, and made sure his ribbons were straight. So far no one had said anything.
But now it was over, and the reception line on the carefully manicured grass was moving. He shook hands with an elderly American in a gray double-breasted suit. Blair said, “Ambassador, I’m Blair Titus.”
“Of course, Blair. I know your boss very well.” He turned his expressionless gaze to Dan and she introduced him. “My husband, who’s currently serving with the ROK Navy.”
“How interesting. Nice to meet you, Mr. Titus.”
The ambassador looked past them and Dan pulled Blair along, though she seemed to want to stay. “You could do his job,” she told him under her breath.
“Me? His job?”
“In your sleep. What’s one of these guys do anyway? Nothing I’ve ever been able to figure out.”
Dan nodded to Carol Owens, in crisp whites. The attache narrowed her eyes and looked closely at him, then at Blair, before nodding. She inclined her head to a U.S. Army general’s at her side. Then brought him over, towing him through the throng. Dan caught the glare of four stars on his shoulders. The matching dazzle of shaven temples beneath his cap, a Ranger patch, and incongruous horn-rimmed glasses. Dan recognized him as one of the speakers—one of the brief ones.
“Dan.”
“Captain. Blair, meet Captain Carol Owens, naval attache to the Republic of Korea.”
They shook hands. Owens introduced Mark Harlen, U.S. Army, Commander, Combined Forces Command, and Commander, U.S. Forces Korea. Which made him both the senior U.S. officer in theater and the representative of the UN Command. As a civilian appointee in the Department of Defense hierarchy, Blair was a four-star equivalent. She and the general were equals, but they were on Harlen’s turf. It felt like the Field of Cloth of Gold, two high potentates, wary, surrounded by their subordinates.
“I know General Harlen,” Blair said. “I think we met briefly last time you were in the building to brief the SecDef.”
“And I know of the Honorable Ms. Titus.” Harlen chuckled, but there was no humor in his eyes. He glanced at Dan, returned his salute, then stuck out a hand to him too. “And if this isn’t your aide, it must be your husband.”
Too late, Dan realized that if Nick Niles had sent him to TAG to get him out of the sights of the U.S. Army’s senior commanders, this might not be the wisest venue to show himself off. Blair’s warning glance told him she was thinking along the same lines. But he couldn’t deny his identity when he was wearing his name tag. “Uh, pleased to meet you, General,” he said, and caught himself just before he bowed.
“Take it easy, Commander,” Harlen said, but he didn’t say what Dan was to take it easy from. “Ms. Titus. Time for a quick tour of the DMZ? As long as you’re on the peninsula?”
“I could check with my aide. The schedule’s not all that flexible, though. I have to be back in DC Tuesday at 09.”
“Three or four hours. An hour up from Pusan to Osan or K16 in Seoul, thirty minutes by helo to the DMZ, an hour on the ground, thirty minutes back. Most of our DVs leave from Osan. I’d like to bend your ear on a couple of personnel issues.”
“I’d like very much to have your views.”
“And perhaps we could discuss the transfer of wartime control of South Korean troops.”
“That would be a Joint Staff issue, I believe.” Blair deflected Harlen so smoothly Dan barely caught it. “I’m aware of the question, but we’d need to study it thoroughly before floating anything concrete. The United Nations would be involved too—your UN Command hat. But I’d be glad to discuss it with you, unofficially. If, as I say, we can make the time.”
Dan felt left out, out of place. He glanced around and found himself face-to-face with Min Jun Jung. The commodore was in whites and it took a moment to recognize him. His PhotoGrays were black in the bright sunlight, and his eyes were totally invisible. They shook hands.
“Why, Dan. I didn’t expect to run into you here. You do get around, don’t you?”
“Good afternoon, Commodore. Nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too. This is your wife, I understand?”
“I’ll introduce you as soon as she’s done with General Harlen.”
“I hadn’t really understood. She is the secretary of defense?”
“No, no! Just the undersecretary for manpower and personnel.”
“Still, that is news to me.” Dan watched Jung mull it over, then look at him again. “I thought I’d ask you your opinion. On getting under way tomorrow.”
“The typhoon?”
“Exactly. It’s moving slowly just now, but the forecasts show it passing south of us.”
“They’re not always predictable,” Dan said. “Or at least I’ve found it to be that way. Both typhoons and hurricanes. And they tend to turn north. This side of the equator, anyway.”
“As we all know,” Jung said drily.
“Sorry, sir.”
“So you counsel caution?”
“Sir, in this case, I don’t counsel anything. This really has nothing to do with conduct of the exercise. You’re the OTC. You’re the host country commander.”
“The North takes advantage of heavy weather to slip their infiltration teams in. When we fought them, defending our fishing fleets, they attacked at night, in bad weather. I believe we need to be ready to fight in bad weather.”
“I can’t argue with that, sir. But you have to balance it against prudence.”
“That’s what the Australians said.”
“Are they in?”
“They’re out. Left last night.”
“No guidance from Higher?”
Jung made an expression Dan couldn’t interpret. “COMROKFLT left it up to me.”
“Well then—that’s good. If you’re satisfied there’s enough warning time to get into port, if it hooks toward us—”
Jung nodded, pursing his lips. He muttered, “And of course there is the question of what Commodore Leakham will decide. So far his cooperation is… spotty. If I order him to go out and resume exercise play—will he?”
“That’s up to him,” Dan told him. “Just do what you think is right. I don’t have any fucking idea where Leakham’s coming from on anything, if that’s what you’re asking me, though. Sir.”
He looked toward Blair again. Her conversation with Harlen seemed to be winding down. He was moving up again, getting ready to introduce Jung, when a heavily bemedalled Korean Army aide pushed his way through the crowd toward them. Harlen bent to him, cupping his ear.
The general turned to Blair. “If you’d step this way, ma’am, I’ll present you to the defense minister.”
“Should I come?” Dan asked her. “Or wait here?”
“Sure, come on,” she told him. “I want you to. Come on.”
He smiled apologetically back at Jung. The commodore looked disappointed, but smiled back and shrugged.
The defense minister, a small man in a dark blue suit, turned out to be the guy who’d ranted for forty minutes. He was smiling and bowing to Blair. Dan and Harlen bowed back. They were exchanging stilted small talk about the ceremony, how pleasant the weather was, and so forth, when someone behind him clamped a hand on Dan’s shoulder.
He turned to confront the tallest, strackest Korean he’d ever seen. The guy was in starched fatigues, gleaming black battle helmet, and gold armband. A lanyarded pistol was holstered at his belt, and his face was coldly, absolutely hostile. He jerked a thumb behind him. “Commander Lenson? Is this your man, sir?”
Dan leaned to see around him. To where, at some distance, Rit Carpenter, hands shackled behind him, was standing beside a jeep. Korean troops with unslung rifles surrounded him.
“Excuse me,” he said, bowing first to the minister and then to Blair. She glanced from him to the jeep, and a line appeared between her brows, but only for a moment; she turned back to the politico, smiling and nodding, and moving ever so slightly—to mask what was going on from his view, Dan realized.
He followed the guy toward the vehicle. “What the hell’s going on?” he snapped.
The military police officer said stiffly, “This man was found with a Korean woman. Among the gravestones.”
“So what? They were walking among the—”
“They were not walking.”
“Oh… shit,” Dan muttered. Past Carpenter now, in the back of the vehicle, he saw Lee was huddled. The girl’s dress was mussed. Her face was swollen with tears.
“Rit, goddamn it. What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s a tourist attraction. We heard there was some kind of celebration here—”
“So you came and—what’ve you gotten us into? In the UN cemetery? On their Memorial Day, or whatever the hell this is?”
“I’m sorry, damn it—I thought we were out of sight.” It didn’t look as if they’d hurt him, but Carpenter hung his head. “It’s my fault. She didn’t want to. I said, just for a minute—”
“What are the charges?” Dan asked the tall Korean.
The officer was deep in what seemed to be an English language phrase book. Finally he looked up. “Public fornication,” he stated. “And—de-se-scra—?”
“Yes, desecrating,” Dan helped him out.
“—Desecrating grave of British soldier. This is the charges. Very serious charges.” He examined Dan’s uniform, then Carpenter’s slacks and striped shirt. Then, finally, accepted Carpenter’s passport from one of the men guarding him. “This man is U.S. Navy?”
Dan thought quickly, trying to figure if there’d be an advantage either way. Then was disgusted with himself. Just stick with the truth! “Not exactly. He’s a civilian, employed by the U.S. government.”
“He is subject to Code of Military Justice?” the Korean said. “Covered, Status of Forces Agreement?”
“Actually probably not—I don’t think so. It’d have to be a civilian trial.”
The officer’s face changed, and not favorably. Dan guessed he’d just tripled the paperwork and time involved. “But I’m his senior officer,” he added.
“You are his senior officer?”
“That’s what I said. I’ll prefer charges against him in our system. If you’ll give me a copy of your charge sheet.”
The Korean wavered. He looked in at the sobbing girl. “What about her?”
“I think the shame is enough punishment,” Dan told him. “Don’t you?”
The Korean was thinking that over when Lee screamed out, ”Ke jag a na rel kan gan hat seo yo!” The officer stiffened. He looked quickly in at her, then at Carpenter.
“What’d she say?”
“She accuses him of raping her.”
They looked at each other. “This is much more serious,” the Korean muttered. “What do you know about this woman? Have you seen her before? Who is she? Her identity documents say she is a student.”
Dan rubbed sweat from his forehead. “She told us she was a teacher. At Pusan University.”
“Your man here. You! Turn around. Let me see hands. He knew her? You see them together before?”
Dan felt they were getting deeper and deeper into something bad. He chose his words carefully, but spoke quickly; he saw Owens headed their way, a thunderhead riding over her. “Yes—I’ve seen them together before. I have witnesses who can testify she went to his room last night. At our hotel. Willingly. I can’t swear as to what happened here today. I didn’t see it. But to call it rape seems—unlikely.”
The officer thought that over. He turned Carpenter’s hands over, looking at the fingers. Then reached in and roughly pulled Lee’s out of her lap and examined them too. The girl was sobbing noisily.
He straightened. “I will give you arrest report and remand custody. You will escort your man back to your ship. I do not believe her story, but that is not for me to decide. I will keep her for my superiors to interrogate.”
“I’d rather take them both,” Dan said, not liking the idea of leaving a teenager face-to-face with the military justice system.
“No, she is Korean citizen. Student. Some students join unwise associations.”
Owens joined them, breathing hard. “What’s going on here?”
“Let me handle this, Captain,” Dan told her. “Believe me, it’s better if we can keep it between the—arresting officer, here—and myself.” He turned back to the Korean. “What kind of associations?”
“Leftist associations. Dangerous ones, that act as the Communists direct. I will take charge of her. We will find out the truth.”
Carpenter licked his lips as if about to butt in. Dan hoped he had the good sense to keep his trap closed, and tried to get that across to him with a scowl. The submariner closed his mouth and looked at the grass, flexing his wrists, handcuffed once more, behind him.
Glancing back toward the official party, Dan saw Jung staring their way. Behind him, with a fast-sinking heart, he caught Blair’s questioning glance too, and from beside her, the minister’s. He had to wrap this up, now. “I will take both, or neither,” he told the officer. “Look, Major: She’s his girlfriend. They met a week ago. Things got out of hand. But there’s no gain for any of us making an international incident out of this.”
“I will keep the girl. This may be a plot. To make trouble.”
”You’re making it trouble, buddy. An ugly incident, at the Memorial Services, with the defense minister and the UN commander present. Wouldn’t that be exactly what they want? If she was some kind of student radical?”
The Korean wavered, holding Dan’s eye. At last he wheeled and spoke sharply. His troops sprang out of the jeep and pushed the girl out. She struggled, then stopped resisting. She stood with head drooping like the windless flags. Dan felt pity for her, whatever was in her heart. The officer scribbled on a pad. He tore a sheet off and handed it over, together with Carpenter’s passport. He took a step back and saluted Dan smartly. Dan returned the salute, turned instantly on Carpenter, and started yelling. “You fool! Your punishment will be severe, you son of a dog. You have brought shame on us all! Get off the grounds this moment!” The Koreans looked more satisfied. They unlocked Carpenter’s handcuffs. Dan kept shouting, whatever threats and abuse occurred to him. The officer waved, got in the jeep, and drove off.
As soon as they were out of earshot Dan took his hat off and wiped his forehead. “All right,” he told Carpenter.
“Nice act, sir.”
“It wasn’t a fucking act! Well, maybe a little bit. But Jesus Christ, Rit! Couldn’t you keep it in your pants, just during the ceremony? I don’t know how you put somebody on report at TAG, but I’m going to find out. You’re not skating on this one.”
The contractor mumbled that he sure deserved it, that he was grateful not to be on his way to a Korean hoosegow. “You just remember that statement,” Dan told him. He turned on Lee, but couldn’t muster the same rage for that tear-smeared face. “I don’t know what you tried to do just now. Or why. And I don’t really care. I just want you to go home and not come back. Rit, give her cab fare. Good-bye.”
BACK with Blair he felt sweat trickling under his khakis. He eased the tucks of his blouse out, hoping he wasn’t showing stains. The defense minister gazed up at him, a question in his eyes. But instead of asking it, he turned to speak to General Harlen.
“So what was that all about?” his wife muttered. “Who was that with the MPs?”
“One of my guys. And a local girl.”
Her brows contracted. “Oh, no. Not… is it serious?”
“I defused it. At least I hope so.”
“Rape?”
“Public sex. But apparently it was consensual.”
“Sex here?”
Dan shook his head grimly. Blair blew out. “God, I hope you’re right. We don’t need any more bad press. Did you see any reporters?”
“Not a one.”
“I can’t believe you’d let this happen. Not here. Not now.”
“It won’t again. The guy’s toast when I get his ass back to TAG.”
She studied him; almost spoke; then seemed to dismiss whatever she’d been about to say.
“So what’d Harlen want?” Dan asked her.
“A lot of things are happening. A lot of other things might happen.”
“That’s cryptic.”
“And that’s how we’d better leave it. Considering tomorrow you’ll be under way again.” She glanced toward the reception tables, where aides were ushering the guests toward white-uniformed waiters, tables stacked with delicacies. “Hungry? Looks like they’ve really outdone themselves.”
He wasn’t, not really. Not for more kimchi and rice and the little sickly sweet pastries. In fact he felt slightly ill. But aloud he only said mildly, “Sure thing, honey. Sure thing.”