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at this early stage, but who’s our client?”
    The other four in the room all looked at one another like I’d just asked the stupidest question there ever was. I didn’t think it was stupid.
    Katherine said, “Captain Thomas Whitehall.”
    She started to open her lips to say something else, and I raised my hand again.
    “What?” she said, even more agitated.
    “Hey, I apologize if I’m getting ahead of myself here. What’s he accused of?”
    Katherine shook her head and looked around at the others in exasperation. “I’m sorry,” she explained, very nastily, “I know this case has been plastered for weeks on the front page of every newspaper in the U.S. and Korea, but Attila here doesn’t know how to read. Keith, would you quickly summarize the case for our token Army lawyer?”
    Keith turned to me and smiled. “Three American soldiers, a first sergeant named Carl Moran, a private named Everett Jackson, and our client were all seen entering an apartment building in the Itaewon section of Seoul. This was around nine o’clock on the night of May 2. Three different witnesses observed them. There was a fourth party with them, a Korean soldier wearing an American Army uniform. His name was Lee No Tae. The witnesses also testified they heard sounds of a loud party that lasted past midnight.”
    “The witnesses,” I asked, “they were all South Koreans?”
    His smile broadened. “Oh, Sean, how wonderfully clever of you. Anyway, the four soldiers were all in Apartment 13C. It had a living room, a kitchen, three bedrooms, and was leased by Captain Whitehall. About five-thirty in the morning, First Sergeant Moran entered the bedroom where Captain Whitehall was sleeping and discovered him on a sleeping mat beside Lee No Tae. Lee had been strangled with a belt. An autopsy was done and revealed that his anus contained two different specimens of semen. One was traced to First Sergeant Moran, the other to Captain Whitehall. The autopsy also revealed that at least one case of anal penetration had been inflicted after the victim was dead. Since corpses can’t willingly consent, that leads to charges of murder, necrophilia, and rape.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said. “And aside from the fact the victim was lying beside him, what evidence is there that Captain Whitehall did the crime?”
    “Lee was strangled with an Army-issue belt that turned out to be Whitehall’s. Also First Sergeant Moran and Private Jackson are both turning evidence against Whitehall. Finally, one of the two semen specimens was traced to Whitehall, and he was the last known partner Lee slept with.”
    “This is not good,” I said, which was so ridiculously obvious that everyone else chuckled.
    “No, it’s worse than that,” Keith went on. “You know about Lee’s father?”
    “The defense minister, right?”
    “Also a living legend. He was a big war hero in one of the two army divisions the Koreans sent to Vietnam back in the sixties. When he returned home, he became disgusted with the military dictatorship here, resigned from the army, and became a democratic activist. He was imprisoned a number of times. He was beaten, tortured, and nearly executed, but he never broke. Every time he got out of prison, he went right back to the barricades. Once democracy finally came, he could’ve run for president and easily won. But he never did. He refused to take any rewards, until Kim Dae Jung, the current president, begged him to take the post of defense minister. The reason he begged him is because the Defense Ministry is so rife with corruption that the past three ministers have all ended up in prison. President Kim hoped that Minister Lee would lend his own good name to restore some public confidence in an institution known for being completely rotten.”
    I said, “So that makes it bad from a public relations standpoint, but what does it have to do with this case?”
    “Well, Lee No Tae was
supposedly
lured to the apartment without any foreknowledge