The Rule of Nine

NINE

My daily calendar sheet says her name is Joselyn Cole. She is from the state bar association. According to our receptionist, she called late yesterday afternoon, demanded a meeting, and mentioned something about irregularities in our client trust account. Given the recent chaos it’s probably a minor bookkeeping mistake, but it’s not something I can ignore. I’ve had to shoehorn her into my calendar this morning.

As I cross the threshold into my office she is already seated in one of the client chairs in front of my desk, attractive, sleek, and from appearances all business. She is wearing a dark blue suit and packing a briefcase, black leather, that is slung from her shoulder on a strap like that of an assault rifle.

I close the door behind me and step around the desk and into my chair on the other side.

I introduce myself. “Ms. Cole, is it?”

“That’s right.”

“What is this about, our client trust account?”

She looks at me a little sheepishly and smiles. “I suppose I should apologize for that. I have to confess I’m sailing under false colors. It’s true my name is Joselyn Cole. But I’m not with the bar. So you can relax. As far as I know there is nothing wrong with your client trust account.”

As soon as she says it, I’m like Bambi in the headlights.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m sorry for the deception but it was absolutely essential that I talk to you.”

She looks to be in her early forties, with blue eyes and shoulder-length sandy hair. There are just a few specks of gray, enough to let you know she is more interested in what she’s about than how she looks.

“I am with a group known as Gideon Quest. We’re a nongovernmental organization, an NGO.” She slips me a business card from across the desk.

“I don’t make contributions or respond to solicitations in the office.” I talk as I examine her card.

“I’m not here looking for money, Mr. Madriani. Our organization is involved in the international effort to stem weapons proliferation, both weapons of mass destruction as well as certain classes of conventional weapons. So I suspect you probably know why I’m here,” she says.

An electric chill runs down my spine, the kind of feeling you got as a kid when the nun called you to the front of the class with a ruler in her hand.

“No. I’m sorry, I don’t. And I have a very busy day, so I think we’re going to have to cut this short.”

“Part of my job involves incident inquiries, events that may represent a threat to public safety, and that may go undetected and unreported for any number of reasons.” She ignores me. “Events don’t always get covered in the general press.”

“It’s all very interesting, but as I said, I’m busy.”

“We’re one of a number of organizations that report on a regular basis to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA. I assume you’ve heard of it.”

I’m still looking at her card, trying to collect my thoughts to figure out whether to toss her out now or let her go on to find out what she knows, if anything.

“I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask you,” she says.

That cuts it. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this.”

“It’s very important,” she says. “It’s not often that we see an incident like this. The fact is I’ve seen it only once before. And a friend was killed. They covered it up then too. I tried to warn people back then but no one would listen. The government made it sound as if I was crazy. So I did the only other thing I could do-I found others who shared the same concern and we founded Gideon Quest. Yes, accidents happen, but an attempted intentional detonation in a population center is a seminal event. You really have a moral obligation to talk about this.”

“Excuse me. You come here under false pretenses, scare the hell out of me with some story about problems in our client trust account. Then you tell me you’re with an organization I’ve never heard of…”

“I told you I was sorry, but it was the best I could do on short notice,” she says.

“No, you could have told the truth,” I tell her. I’m trying to shift from angst to indignation, so I can gain the moral high ground to get her back on her heels and out of here.

“If I’d told you the truth, you would have refused to see me.” The facts being what they are, she is dead on. So I try again. This time I get up out of my chair as if emphasizing my moral outrage.

“You come here misrepresenting who you are and what you want. Flying, as you say, under false colors, and you expect me to take time out of a busy day…Get out.” The words come out as if I’m trying to shoo some cat out the door. “Get out of my office. Now! Please.”

There is a moment of silence as she looks at me with a kind of quizzical expression, as if she has gas. It starts with a modest grin, then the laugh lines around her eyes begin to flex. A second later any attempt at composure evaporates in a wave of laughter. It seems my attempt at fury has waddled across the desk, rolled over in front of her, and died.

“What’s so funny?”

“You,” she says. There’s a tear running out the corner of one eye. “You should never try to do pompous, angry bastard. You’re terrible at it.”

“Is that so?”

“You lack the paunch and jowls.” She’s still laughing, wiping the tears from her eyes. “If you want to do anger, you should do silent and steely eyed. You know, quiet rage and maybe avoid getting out of the chair. I’m sorry, but the words just don’t comport with the picture. Pompous, angry bastard belongs to fat men. You just don’t make it. Besides, your eyes are all over the place. You’re looking at everything in the room except the object of your fury-me. You were avoiding eye contact. You know what that says to me?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“Man with a secret, trying to hide it under a bushel of feigned fury. And your body language…”

“What’s wrong with my body language?”

“It’s dead,” she said. “You’re supposed to be angry. You should be pointing at the door when you tell me to go, and you never, never, never end by saying please. It sounds like you’re asking permission to go to the bathroom. Trust me. I’ve been thrown out of better offices than this. I have a lot of experience. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Thanks for the dramatic critique,” I tell her. “Now you can go.”

“That’s better,” she says. “I mean I’m still not convinced that you’re about to turn the desk over on top of me. But at least you didn’t say please. It’s a step,” she says.

I stand there looking at her. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Now I’ve hurt your feelings,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Listen, it was cute. Really. And I’m flattered that you would do it for me. To take the risk, I mean, to put yourself out there like that. That takes a lot of courage. Let me guess. I’m going to bet that you don’t have a lot of authority with little children or dogs. Am I right?”

“Now I’m starting to get angry,” I tell her.

“Good,” she says. “It has to be real. It has to come from the gut or no one’s gonna believe it.”

“I want you to go.” I point toward the door.

“Yes, but how badly do you want it? I don’t see any real passion.”

I try to hold a stern expression but I can’t. I start to laugh.

“There you go,” she says. “Back to my question now about children and dogs.”

I’m shaking my head as I laugh. She’s destroyed me.

“I thought so. They have a sixth sense for false anger. They can read it in a heartbeat.”

“Is that so?” I slump back into my chair.

“Children just laugh, but dogs will try to take advantage of you. They’ll turn you into a littermate.” The laugh lines come to life deep within her tawny complexion as she smiles at me.

“I’m not your enemy. Believe me. You can call the police and have me thrown out, or have me arrested if it makes you feel better, but do me the courtesy of answering at least one question.”

I would ask her what, but sound judgment tells me not to.

“I want to know why you haven’t told the press or the public what you know about the events in Coronado. Why you haven’t made any public statement about what was on that truck. You see, we already know the device was nuclear. What we don’t understand is why you haven’t said anything. People need to know how close they came. The next time they may not be as lucky.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Acting talent and confidence skills come from the same area of the brain,” she says. “Your gifts must be elsewhere because you don’t lie very well either.”

“Now that’s something you would know about,” I tell her.

“They put pressure on you, didn’t they? The FBI, NSA, the Justice Department? They’ve threatened you, to keep you quiet. What did they say?”

“I’m practicing being silent and steely eyed,” I tell her.

“You can trust me,” she says.

“Of course I can. You come with such sterling credentials.” For all I know she could be working undercover with Thorpe, sent here to test me, to see if I’ll talk. The way she’s holding her briefcase under her arm, pointed at me, it could easily be concealing a digital minicam and a mic. My face might be playing on a television at this moment in the back of a government van parked out in front.

She notices me looking and glances down at her bag. “Ah. I see. You don’t trust me. You’re a careful man,” she says. “That’s good. Here.” She opens the briefcase, pulls out a file, two pens, a yellow notepad, and a small case for eyeglasses. When she opens the case, a pair of glasses fall out and clatter onto the top of the desk. She drops the strap from her shoulder and turns the briefcase upside down, shaking it to show me that it’s empty. Then she slides it across the desk toward me. “Go ahead, check it yourself. I want you to be comfortable. And I’m not wearing any electronics if that’s what you think. You can pat me down. I’ll even take my clothes off if you like.”

“What then? Scream rape? No thanks. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I’m a criminal lawyer after all. I’m used to being lied to. People lie to me all the time. Some of my best clients lie to me. But then, that’s all part of the lawyer-client thing. You expect a client to lie, at least from time to time. It’s like the husband-wife thing, when one of them tells the other they’re not having an affair. But we’re not married and you’re not a client, so we don’t have a thing. We’re strangers, so it’s much trickier trying to figure out when I’m being lied to and why. Do you understand? I know it’s confusing, but trust me on this.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” she says.

“You noticed. I’m sorry to tell you this, but if you keep asking I’m afraid you’re gonna have to get used to it. I am better at asking questions.”

“Go ahead. What do you want to know?” she says.

“Who sent you here?”

“No one.”

“What makes you think I know anything?” I ask.

“Now who’s lying?” she says. “Okay, I’ll tell you. We don’t think. We know,” she says. “Your name, along with all the details, was given to me.”

“By whom?”

“That I can’t tell you. But I can guarantee you that the information I have is solid-direct from God’s lips to my ear,” she says. “You wouldn’t be revealing any secrets to me if that’s what you’re afraid of. In fact, I suspect we know things you don’t. We know that you were on the truck, along with Mr. Diggs and a woman from Costa Rica whose name we have. We know that the device was of Russian design, gun type, using highly enriched uranium, and that it dated to the Cuban missile crisis, 1962 to be exact. At some point it became a loose nuke in the hands of Middle Eastern terrorists. We know that a defector from the Russian military with technical skills armed the device either when, or before, it was delivered to Coronado and that this man was shot and killed on the street outside the naval base. We know that you were there when he was shot and that you witnessed it. How am I doing so far?”

“If you know so much, why don’t you go to the press?” I ask her.

“Because we can’t. It would jeopardize our source of information. This is a valuable and continuing asset that we cannot afford to lose. The source is irreplaceable, not just with regard to weapons of mass destruction, but other weapons systems as well. Precision-targeted high-tech stuff that we believe presents unacceptable risks to civilized societies in the future. If we said anything, they would know where the information came from. And even if they didn’t, the source would never talk to us again. But you have independent knowledge. You were there. That’s why we need you and Mr. Diggs to come forward.”

“It’s an interesting story,” I tell her. “But I can’t help you.”

“My god, what did they do to you?” She reaches for her briefcase and pulls it back across the desk. “I mean, to put the fear of federal wrath into you so deeply that you’re willing to cooperate in covering up a major nuclear incident? They must have done something horrible. You poor man,” she says. She starts to load her stuff back into the briefcase.

“Appealing to my sense of manhood will get you nowhere.”

“Obviously,” she says. “Contrary to popular belief, they don’t kill all the lawyers, they just neuter them. That’s funny, they must have missed me,” she says.

“You’re a lawyer?”

“I don’t practice any longer.”

“That’s good, because going around passing yourself off as an investigator with the state bar could probably get your ticket punched.”

“I’m licensed in another state,” she says.

“For your sake I hope it’s the state of grace, because there’s a good chance you’re gonna find yourself up to your high heels in some serious doo-doo if you continue pursuing this line of inquiry.”

“You won’t say anything,” she says. “Not about what I told you. Not about our source.”

“Why not? If I’ve been as emasculated as you suspect, maybe there’s something I want that they can give me in return.”

“Like what? Courage?” She’s up out of her chair. “You’re no lion and this ain’t no yellow brick road. Just the same, you won’t tell them.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because refusing to help me is not the same as helping them. And you know as well as I do that they can’t be trusted.”

“And I thought I was a skeptic.”

“Every government in the world thinks it owns the cartel on virtue,” she says. “Of course, none of them would use the bomb. Those that have it would love to get rid of it, but they can’t. They need it to keep other less noble and more warlike pricks from using it on them. And the angels who don’t have it would never pursue it, unless of course they have an excess of spent fuel rods that need to be put to some useful purpose, wasted resources being a terrible sin. In the meantime, bombs like the one on your truck have become war surplus, like old canteens and frayed fatigue jackets. I used to ask how long before some nutcase on a crusade got his hands on one. Now I guess I’m gonna have to come up with a new question, because we both know the answer to that one, don’t we?”

I don’t answer.

“Have it your way.” She slings the briefcase over her shoulder, stands up, and heads for the door. As she gets there, hand on the knob, she stops to look at me one more time. “You’re a hard sell,” she says. “You’re sure there’s no way I can persuade you? Make no mistake. It’s a watershed event. News of this would flash around the world before you could blink. It would force people to wake up. It would produce a backlash that those in power would not be able to ignore. Right now they’re asleep. What is it going to take to get their attention? Do you have any idea how many people would have died if that device had detonated? This office probably wouldn’t be here,” she says. “And we must be at least two miles away.”

“You know a lot. It was nice meeting you. And thanks for the stage direction. I’ll try to keep the dogs from humping my leg.”

She smiles. “You do that.”

“One piece of advice. I’d stay away from Mr. Diggs. He’s not as understanding as I am.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. If you try to lie your way into his office, he won’t have any difficulty at all ginning up anger. And as for his body language, you may find yourself suspended by your panty hose from the flag-pole in front of his office.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I’ll be sure to wear pants,” she says. “I’m pretty good at it.”

I make a mental note to call Herman and warn him.