Guardian of Lies

TWENTY-FIVE

Harry and I had to wonder why, if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is so secret, the minions who pull its levers would want to show up in a state court judge’s chambers to tell us about it. The answer is that levels of government often like to piss on one another. It’s a bureaucratic pastime.

The first thing we did when we got back to the office was to have it swept for electronic devices. When the detection equipment was turned on, it lit up like a Christmas tree. When they were finished, we stepped outside and they asked Harry and me if we wanted it removed. We conferred for a moment and agreed that the answer was no. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. Remove it, and they’d just find another better way.

So this morning Harry pitches one of the heavy volumes from our code books in the library. It lands with a thud on the table in front of me.

“Check it out,” he says. “Fifty, U.S.C. 1803. It’s the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. According to this it was passed in 1978, and amended under the Patriot Act a few years ago.” Harry is reading from a stapled sheet of papers, something he printed off the Internet.

“The most recent figures that are public are four years old. There were more than eighteen thousand warrants granted in that year alone and only four or five applications that were denied. Who could have guessed there were that many spies?” says Harry. “Or that many rubber stamps, for that matter.

“Listen to this. ‘Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a secret court: its hearings are closed to the public, and, while records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not available to the public. Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to appear before the FISC.’ What does that sound like to you?” says Harry.

“I don’t know. A star chamber?” I say.

“A federal grand jury,” says Harry. “It’s the same thing.”

“In the meantime they have the photographs, and we can’t see them. They know two people have been murdered, probably over these same photos, but they don’t care because this is outside the purview of their law enforcement union card.”

“At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that if the look on his face means anything,” says Harry, “Templeton knows less than we do about what’s happening.”

“You mean with the feds?”

“Exactly,” says Harry. “When you dropped Nitikin’s name, Rhytag went supernova. He damn near melted the Dwarf, but Templeton didn’t have a clue. Which makes you wonder, if all this stuff is so secret, why did Rhytag and company show up in Quinn’s chambers to tell us anything at all?”

“The reason’s obvious,” I tell him. “Once we filed the Brady motion, they didn’t have much choice. It was either that or have Templeton tell the judge that the federal government had seized the photos from the evidence files. Either way, Rhytag’s operation would have been smoked out. This way at least they got to talk to us, fish for information, like where the pictures were taken.”

“True. They could have sent the FBI here to the office to ask questions but they know that’s a dead end. Privileged information,” says Harry. “Anything Katia’s told us is covered by the attorney-client privilege, and there’s no way they can get around it.”

“Right. They could drag you and me behind closed doors in front of a federal grand jury, but they know they’d get the same answer.”

“That’s true. No federal judge is going to issue a contempt citation and jail two lawyers in a capital case because they refuse to violate privileged communications with their client.”

“That’s why Rhytag mentioned use immunity for Katia,” I say. “He was testing the waters.”

“If they gave her use immunity and agreed that nothing she said before the grand jury could be used against her in any criminal proceedings, she couldn’t take the Fifth and remain silent,” says Harry.

“And if they built a Chinese wall around the state murder charges and declined to share anything with Templeton, the immunity wouldn’t apply there. So for that she’d still be on the hook,” I say.

“Of course, if they tried to take Katia before a federal grand jury, they’d have to allow her access to her attorneys before they did it,” says Harry. “We can’t go inside with her, but she’s certainly entitled to legal advice and the right to confer with her lawyers.”

“And that, of course, is their problem,” I say. “If their only sanction is to have her held in contempt and jailed if she refuses to talk, since she’s already in jail they have to know we’re going to tell her to sit tight and say nothing.”

If they didn’t know it before, they know it now.

“And besides,” says Harry, “that way she gets the upgrade to the five-star room at the federal detention facility.”

Harry looks at me, shrugs a shoulder, and glances at the ceiling as if to say, Can you think of anything else?

I raise a finger. One more point.

“What’s troubling to me is why Templeton invited us to file the Brady motion immediately. Why not wait? He knew the feds would be forced to come out of the shadows, to show their hand the minute it was filed. You have to wonder why.”

Unless I’m wrong, this little tidbit will have Rhytag and his underlings looking for a stick to tie the Dwarf to so they can burn him at the stake. The quick Brady motion was Templeton’s idea. The feds had taken the photos from his files, but they wouldn’t tell him why. The curiosity must have been killing him, so he stirred the pot to see what would happen.

“We need to talk to Katia about everything, go over it all one more time, everything she told us, and we need to do it soon.”

“It’s already been arranged,” says Harry. “She’ll be on the morning bus day after tomorrow with the early arraignments. We don’t meet with Quinn until one in the afternoon. That gives us all morning to huddle with her and pick her brain.”

And it gives Rhytag two days to wire the courthouse holding cell where we will talk to her. He’s going to be very disappointed when Nitikin’s name never comes up. But we can convey Templeton’s offer to her, the LWOP, and make sure the judge is satisfied she understands all the terms before she turns it down. Harry is convinced it’s the only way we’re going to get Templeton off my back.

“We can’t get her in any sooner? Why not tomorrow?” I say.

“I already tried. Quinn’s not available,” says Harry. “That’s as soon as we can do it. So what’s next? Where do we go from here?”

“We go back to where we started. Pike was killed for the photographs. They’re still the key to our case. We go after the pictures.”

“And just how do you propose doing that?”

I check my watch. It’s just after ten thirty in the morning and our script has run dry. But it’s always best to leave them with an unanswered question. “How about an early lunch?” I say. “For some reason I’m hungry this morning.” I give Harry a wink.

“Sure, why not?”

As we head out of the conference room, Harry turns toward his office. I grab his arm.

“I need to get my jacket,” he says.

“Let’s take a walk.” We go out through the front door of the office in shirtsleeves. Instead of turning left toward Miguel’s Cocina, through the little plaza and out under the arch onto Orange Avenue, we turn right and go out the back way, past the trash cans, to a small gate that leads to the parking area behind the buildings.

“What’s going on?” says Harry.

“You asked me how I was going to get the photographs. Rhytag thinks he has the only copies. It’s possible that he doesn’t.”

“If you’re gonna tell me you got Pike’s laptop,” says Harry, “I’m going to start thinking the Dwarf may be onto something after all.”

“No, it’s not the laptop. But the day I met with Katia alone out at the jail, I think you were busy with something else. She told me something and I let it slide, because at the time I didn’t think it was important. She told me that her camera, the one her mother used to take the shots down in Colombia, is at her mother’s house in San José. She told me that as far as she knows, the original images that her mother took are still in the camera. Pike told her that he didn’t erase them from the media in the camera when he copied them to his laptop.”

“That’s assuming we believe him,” says Harry.

“If we’re going to get the photos, it’s the only shot we’ve got.”