We Were Beautiful Once (31 page)

Later that night, unable to sleep, he went to his study, where he usually picked out something dry to read—something to put him to sleep. Instead he grabbed an electronic chess game, which was smart enough to keep him from winning. Every so often, after moving a chess piece in response to the computer, he jotted down the sequence of court events back to the first day of trial. He wrote down the possible moves Harris might make, but the rules of litigation were more complicated than chess. Sometimes rules were made up, did not follow convention, or there were just too many exceptions, and if there were enough of those, then in reality there were no rules. Was it possible that his opponent, like the electronic chess set, could actually beat him? He scanned the books on his shelf:
The
Old Testament
,
All Quiet on the Western Front
.  He especially liked the cover of
Mutiny on the Bounty
: a clipper ship with sails unfurled. It reminded him that he had always wanted to learn how to sail—buy a boat, spend time with his son fixing it up, take Diane out sailing once in a while. Come to think of it, they hadn't left the kids with her parents for a weekend alone in years. It would be good for them. He missed her, having her to himself, even if it were only for a weekend. When did they stop doing that, he wondered. Out of single malt, he poured himself a stiff glass of twelve-year-old Dewars.

Diane opened her eyes around two and noticed Nick gone.  She went to the study, where Nick was pouring his fifth shot. “Honey, it's late.”

“Diane!” He looked at his wife standing at the door—beautiful, pristine, sleepy—and was just sober enough to realize he was too drunk to make a respectable approach.

Her hazel eyes narrowed.  “You've been drinking.”

“Couldn't sleep,” he slurred. “The case is driving me crazy. I just can't figure why they've dug their heels in so deep on this. It's no skin off their nose, just give the goddamn reclassification.”

“Things will look better in the morning,” she added, too tired to engage in the kinds of existential questions Nick loved to grapple with at two in the morning when he was “three sheets to the wind.”

“I suppose, but you know, sweetheart, justice isn't one man's battle—it's every man's, not for one man, but for all men. I don't understand why everyone isn't pulling in the same direction?”

 

 

 

LINDQUIST HAD BEEN COMATOSE FOR FIVE DAYS when a conclave of doctors, those on duty and those from the long night in the emergency room gathered around his hospital bed to remove the breathing machine and see if he regained his sensibilities. Ventilator unplugged, IVs disconnected, a doctor shook him vigorously.  He did not stir.  The doctor shook him again, and Lindquist took a shallow breath and opened his eyes—baffled that his wrists were tied to a bed, above him an array of monitors with phosphorescent green traces that swept across video screens, and that except for his sister Klara and his secretary Alice, the room was full of strangers who stared at him like an alien.

The seminal medical event, the one that had choked off blood flow, had every potential to erase the trillions of impulses that had flowed into his sensory pathways and impressed themselves into the billions of nerve endings in the course of what Lindquist called his life. Although the results of an EEG were guarded to slightly positive, for at least the next few days he appeared childlike. It was possible that the brain reverted to an earlier stage in life, but he would never know because, as the neurologist explained to Klara, the brain doesn't report to itself what goes on in its mysterious cosmos. In the days that followed, a rational attitude began to emerge, one where he displayed his usual temperament, demanding more than a sick man should—especially one who eight days earlier had, by all measure, died.

Two years after Peter Lindquist had moved from Vermont to Boston following the tragic death of his wife, he married Jenny Revere Svenson, a woman who would raise Joe until college. Klara was born the year following their marriage, so Joe was Klara's big brother, and she saw Joe's recuperation as her responsibility.

“Joe, I don't like seeing you in bed like this, in a hospital no less. But, I do love seeing you every day. Like we're kids again.”

“Yeah, but we didn't spent time enjoying each other as kids, we were self-centered brats, going from pillar to post.”

Klara smiled. “Happily, we're close, now.” She changed the subject. “Joe, when you passed out, did you see anything? You know a light or a sign? They said you'd died.”

“No, don't think so, no light. But you know, Klara, I did see my life pass. The life  measured from the moment I took my first breath until those last ones. I saw no flash, no long tunnel, no light at the other end, but as I was passing out...  felt calm. It's like in that final moment I resolved things that might've troubled me. In a split second, I realized that I was only those things that I'd touched, the places I'd breathed, the people that I'd loved.”

Lindquist, admiring her gentle look, waited for his sister's response. She had a pretty face and seldom wore make up, was a big-boned woman, though not being self-conscious of her size, and she did little to hide it. “Klara, am I making sense?”

She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you Joe, and yes, you make a lot of sense.”

 

 

 

A FEW DAYS LATER, NICK LEARNED THAT THE TRIAL would resume in September.  Nick enlisted Mitch and Kathy in picking up the lines of inquiry he'd abandoned when the trial had first begun: people that might shed light on issues he had no answers for.  There were still many questions, not the least of which was what happened to the over four hundred POWs that had never been heard from again. Another question was whether there had been sightings of American soldiers in North Korea, China, or the Soviet Union. And, finally what certain hexagonal symbols meant, if anything. What had Jack called them? “Hexagons within hexagons.” His quest for answers had ended when the trial drew near, and he had to prepare witness examinations. But, with the break in proceedings he would have time to resume the investigations.

Following the suspension of trial, he called Bob Cousins whom he had met the previous summer at an ABA International Law Section meeting. Nick remembered him saying he had Korean connections. He asked if he knew any college students in Seoul who would be willing to work at the archives there. Cousins did not know anyone offhand, but put him in touch with Henry Kang, a forty-year-old Philadelphia businessman. Nick told him about the case and what he was after. Kang indicated he would call back in a few days after seeing what he might do.  The Korean meanwhile did his due diligence and discovered Nick had something of potentially considerable value that he could use to his benefit. Kang called Nick, arranging to meet in Atlantic City over the weekend.  Nick spotted Kang from his description: 5'7”, wide shoulders, brown leather flight jacket, dark glasses, jet black crew cut. They went to the
Gambler's Den
, a restaurant at
Caesar's Place
Kang frequented when he came to town. Nick learned that Kang had been one of five students who, during the 1959–1960 student protests in Seoul, invaded the presidential Blue House forcing President Syngman Rhee to resign. For his service, Kang was considered a genuine patriot to whom the country extended a lifelong calling-card into all echelons of the government.

 “Nick, the kind of information you are asking about would probably not be found in the archives, and if it were, it'd be classified. And of course any classified information would only come with a very steep—prohibitively steep—price.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“It's not money, Nick.  The Koreans need something more essential.”

“And what's that?”

“Access.”

“Access to what?” Nick asked naïvely.

“To power, Nick, in D.C.”

“Why's that?  They have an embassy, lobbyists, don't they?”

“Nick, let me explain it this way. Do you play chess?”

“Yes, in fact I do.”

“Are you good at it?”

“I'm no Bobby Fisher, but I play a good game.”

“Me too, someday we will play.”

“So what's this got to do with chess?”

“When you are trying to deal with Washington, it is like chess. You need a full complement of pieces on the board at all times. We lost our knights, our rooks, our bishops a few years ago. To achieve our objectives on an ongoing basis, we need people to clear the way.  We need access.”

Seeing Nick's face, he rushed to assure him. “No, no, do not get me wrong, all on the up-and-up. For the right contact we could pay, that is,
offset
the cost of your efforts, even pay for you to go to Korea yourself.  If I could offer the Koreans someone who could do some lobbying for us, that is, for them.”

“Yeah, but who'd you think I know that can help?”

“Well, Mr. Cousins tells me you have a colleague who worked in Washington. One that was well connected, someone you could put us in touch with.”

 

Kang was referring to Seymour Freedman, Nick's friend who had retired in the late 70s from government, most notably as Chief Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. The two men met at a cocktail party at a time when Freedman was moving from Washington to New York just after he had married for the fourth time. Freedman, the first guest Nick laid his eyes on when he walked into Hannie Azan's crowded living room that winter Sunday in '79, was overweight, with drooping jowls, flabby chin and a red lumpy nose plastered to a large balding head. Nick's enduring memory of that day was not Seymour's anatomical features, but that the left side of his shirt hung outside his pants, free beneath his open suit jacket, which with every turn, revealed an opened fly. But Nick quickly learned that despite his slovenliness, the man had a keen intellect, spoke impeccably—up close and fast—engaging responders who felt the power of his conviction.

Before Nick left for home that afternoon, the man dropped dates, names, places and historical happenings, all while lighting a succession of fresh white cigs from the rapidly diminishing butt gingerly held between his yellow stained fingers. Freedman proved more than a fast-talking, chain-smoking neurotic who had lived in the luminosity of a former stellar federal career: he had grand theories on politics.

Nick called Seymour to explain what the Korean wanted. Seymour asked a lot of questions.

“I want to meet him to better appreciate who the man is, what's his game.” In late August, the two men drove to Atlantic City, and since Seymour had an appetite for oysters, they met Kang at the
Old Oyster Barn
. After introductions, Kang got down to business. “Mr. Freedman, I have been retained to enlist someone who could meet with the highest echelons of the Korean government with the view toward helping them with several problems.”

“When you say high echelons,” Seymour paused. He squinted his eyes and looked at the man hard. “Relative to the president, what do you mean?”

Kang turned his head away, avoiding Seymour's intimidating stare. “I cannot disclose that or be certain how high up.” He made eye contact. “But be assured that for your help— with access to the right people here—the very highest echelons of the Korean government would make it worth your while.”

“Why me?”

“Let me speak frankly. You are an important man, Mr. Freedman. You know Washington inside out. I know your reputation. We need someone that can repair considerable damage.” He slowed his speech. “You will remember the scandal involving congressional payoffs in 1976.”

“How well I remember.  Nick, you may not remember, but the Korean intelligence operatives had been accused of funneling bribes to some thirty members of Congress.” He added, “And the Justice Department made it stick.”

“We have come to know this unfortunate time as Koreagate,” Kang said addressing Nick. “The central figures were a man named Park and his Korean friend, an ex-elevator operator in Congress.”

“You mean the operator who once had a crush on Karl Gabler, the seventy-year-old Ways and Means Chair?” Seymour quipped.

“Yes, that one.”

“Oh yeah, how could I forget her.” Seymour laughed. “The press was all over the halls following the election and Karl was being hounded because he had put his hat in the ring for Speaker. Well, Karl wanted time with, I've forgotten her name now, but the Korean elevator girl. One of my staff actually caught him in the copier closet with her one night.”

“Yes, that must be the same one. And of course you know that Congress censured Rohban, John McDougal and Buddy Wilson. All of them.”

“Christ, later Dick Pajewski was jailed,” Seymour added, “I knew all that, but I left Washington in '79, so I missed a lot, too.”

“Well, you can understand that Koreagate has had some long term dislocations. We cannot gain admission to any government offices. We need help.”

 

By the end of the meeting Freedman had accepted an invitation to fly with Nick to Korea, for a fee of three thousand dollars and all expenses paid for each of them. Freedman's interest was clear. The connection included the prospect of bringing in a fat retainer representing the Korean government. For Nick, it had the added attraction of releasing the pressure building up between him and Diane. With the case on hold, Nick had spent too many hours considering his crumbling prospects with a bottle of scotch until finally, one night, Diane had had enough.
“Maybe you shouldn't have taken a case against the
government. After all, you had a good record with them on those VA cases.”
 

“Yeah, but it was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“They liked your work, Nick, and they paid. So maybe it wasn't the most exciting thing in the world.  But do you think they're ever going to send you another case?”