High Crimes

32

“All rise,” the bailiff called out.

Judge Farrell, wearing a black robe over his dress greens, entered the courtroom and mounted the bench. He sat in his high-backed leather chair. In his rumbling voice he spoke into the microphone. “Please be seated. This Article 39(a) hearing is called to order.”

Waldron remained standing. “This court-martial is convened by the secretary of the army, by convening order number 16–98,” Waldron said. In military court-martials, the trial counsel also served as the court clerk. “United States versus Sergeant First Class Ronald M. Kubik. The accused is charged with violation of Article 85, desertion, and violation of Article 118, premeditated murder, eighty-seven specifications.” And he continued reading a litany of preliminaries.

In front of the judge’s bench sat the court reporter, the same middle-aged blond-haired woman who’d been at the last court session, at a small table, wearing headphones. The LED lights on the tape deck before her flashed, emerald-green lines jumping and sinking.

“All right, I am Colonel Warren Farrell, U.S. Army,” the judge recited. “I’ve been detailed to this court-martial by the circuit military judge. I’m qualified in accordance with Article 26(a) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Would any counsel like to voir dire the military judge?” He referred to the seldom-used right to question, even to challenge, the judge’s right to try the case.

Waldron stood. “No, Your Honor.”

Claire stood next. “Yes, Your Honor. We would.”

Grimes slapped his forehead with a large hand. The sound was audible as far as the prosecution table, where Captain Hogan regarded Grimes with a smirk. He’d tried to talk her out of this last night, but Claire was determined.

“All right, Ms. Chapman,” Judge Farrell said in an attempt at bluff good humor.

“Your Honor,” she asked, “do you know why you were assigned to this case?”

Farrell jutted his chin and regarded her with veiled eyes. He took a sip of his coffee. “I assume I was assigned because of my experience with national-security cases.”

Claire considered this for a moment and decided to move on. “Can you please state for the record any conversations you’ve had with any member of the Office of the Judge Advocate General regarding this case.”

Farrell’s eyes flickered almost imperceptibly. But he remained game. “To the best of my recollection, counsel, I had one or two conversations that were purely administrative in nature.”

“I see. And can you please state for the record any conversations you may have had with any member of the personal staffs of the secretary of the army or the chief of staff of the army.” Here was the interesting question, and Claire wondered how honest he would be, whether he’d risk trying to cover his tracks.

But the judge was too clever. He took another sip of his coffee and glanced up at the low ceiling as if trying to recall a dim, distant memory. “Well, counsel, I can only recall one conversation I might have had that related to this case, with a member of the chief of staff’s office a few days ago.”

“Can you state for the record what you recall of that conversation?”

His eyes were dead. “Oh, we talked only generally about scheduling matters and such.”

But why was someone from General Marks’s office talking to the judge about scheduling matters? It made no sense.

“With whom did you talk, sir?”

“With Colonel Hernandez.”

From behind her, she heard Grimes exclaim, “What?”

Straining not to show her astonishment, Claire asked, “Is Colonel Hernandez in your chain of command, Your Honor?”

“No, he’s not.” The judge’s patience was visibly wearing thin.

“And, Your Honor, has Colonel Hernandez ever called you before about the scheduling of a case?”

Now he sounded dismissive. “I don’t believe so, no.”

“He’s never had any other conversations with you regarding any other court-martial scheduling?”

“As I said, I don’t recall any others.”

“Now, Your Honor, could you be more specific about what precisely you talked about with Colonel Hernandez?”

But Judge Farrell had had enough. “Counsel, I’m a busy man,” he said flintily. “My days are scheduled to the minute. I have conversations with dozens of people every day about hundreds of things. Unfortunately, I’m not always able to recollect every word that was exchanged. Now, do you or trial counsel have challenge for cause against the military judge?”

Waldron stood. “We most certainly do not have a challenge, Your Honor.”

“Your Honor, we need a brief recess to talk among counsel about whether we have a challenge,” Claire said.

“This court is in recess for ten minutes,” Judge Farrell said, and pounded his gavel.

Grimes reached out a hand and grabbed Claire’s shoulder as she sat down. “I have one simple question for you. Are you out of your fucking mind, or have you just been smoking too much weed? You’re not seriously going to challenge him for cause, are you? Because we don’t have cause.”

“No,” she admitted. “He’s stonewalling, unfortunately, and there’s nothing there we can use.”

“All right, he talked to Hernandez. Surprise, surprise. So is it just your intention to piss this asshole off?”

“Grimes, I want him to know we’re watching him, and that he’d better be on his best behavior.”

When court resumed, Claire said: “We have no challenge for cause at this time, Your Honor.”

Judge Farrell seemed to be suppressing a smile. “All right, then, will the accused please rise.”

Tom got slowly to his feet. He’d been briefed on what to say.

“Sergeant Kubik, by what form do you wish to be tried?”

Tom knew the answer. “A court-martial with officer members, sir.” The members of the jury were selected by the convening authority. It was illegal to stack the court, though it was known to happen from time to time. Members were also supposed to be free to vote their conscience, without guidance from above, or “command influence.” Generally, members were supposed to be senior in rank to the accused. If the accused was an enlisted man, not an officer, he had the right to request that at least a third of the jury members be enlisted; but Grimes had urged Tom to choose all officers, who tended to be more reliable, more trustworthy, and less likely to act rashly. Or so Grimes had told him.

“By whom do you wish to be represented?” asked the judge.

“By Ms. Chapman, Mr. Grimes, and Captain Embry, sir.”

“That request is approved. The accused will now be arraigned. Does the defense request the charges and specifications be read to the accused?”

“We waive a reading, Your Honor,” Claire said.

“Sergeant First Class Kubik, I now ask you how do you plead, but before I ask you, I advise you that any motions to dismiss, or for other relief, must be made at this time.”

“Your Honor, defense has a number of motions,” Claire said.

There was a glint in the judge’s eye. The motions weren’t a surprise, since he’d demanded they get their motions in three days before the arraignment and present them in a hearing before the judge without the jury present. The whole procedure was a formality, a highly scripted ritual, a Kabuki dance. “Sergeant Kubik,” he said, “you may be seated.”

Tom returned to his seat in a crisp military maneuver. This was the only time he would ever be required to speak in court, and he was done.

And the Kabuki dance began. Claire presented and argued her motions, one after another, and Waldron stood to knock them down as best he could. There were quite a few motions. Move to dismiss the entire court-martial on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Motion in limine to exclude the record of Tom’s service in Vietnam, which Tom continued to insist was cooked up, on grounds that it wasn’t relevant to the charges.

And on and on and on. Judge Farrell scribbled furiously while Claire spoke, as she produced her appellate exhibits. And for several hours this went on.

Until at last Claire was finished, and Judge Farrell began, “Counsel, I’ve considered your motion to dismiss, as well as the testimony and evidence produced in support of the motion, and the evidence produced by the government, and it is denied. My findings of fact and conclusions of law will be appended to the record of trial, prior to authentication.”

No surprise, but Claire stood to preserve the record. “Objection to your ruling, Your Honor.”

“Your objection is overruled.

“Next, counsel, I’ve considered your motion for appropriate relief for admission of an expert witness to testify on an exculpatory polygraph, as well as the testimony of your expert witness, as well as the testimony produced by the government, and your motion is denied. My findings of fact and conclusions of law will be appended to the record of trial, prior to authentication.”

This was a major loss, and Claire jumped up. “Objection to your ruling, Your Honor.”

“Your objection is overruled.”

And so it went. One after another.

Each motion, so artfully presented, so cogently argued — denied. Each time Claire popped up like a child’s jack-in-the-box and preserved her objection for the record, but there it was. Denied. Overruled. Finally Judge Farrell said, with a glint of triumph, “Any further motions, counsel?”

Grimes shook his head, scowling. Tom stared straight ahead in numb disbelief. Embry looked distant, troubled.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Claire said, getting wearily to her feet. “Defense once again challenges the closed nature of these proceedings. The accused, as we continue to maintain, has a right to a public trial, guaranteed to him in the First and Sixth Amendments, which we respectfully—”

“No,” Judge Farrell snapped.

“Your Honor?”

“We’ve been through all that, so forget it.”

“Your Honor, the defense respectfully maintains that such a trial—”

“Sit down.” Claire sat. “I said forget it. I don’t want to hear it again.” The judge’s ruddy face reddened further. “The government has already made a persuasive case that the accused’s rights are not in fact compromised by holding this trial in camera. That there are valid national-security concerns. This is all covered under Military Rule of Evidence 505. I’ve made my rulings. Were you paying attention in court?”

From her seat at the defense table, Claire said: “Your Honor—”

“Let me tell you something, Ms. Chapman. Loud and clear. I don’t want to hear it again. And if you bring this up in front of the panel, I’ll hold you in contempt of court, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Claire said. Under her breath she muttered to Grimes, “I’m in contempt of this court most of the time.”

“You say somethin’?” Judge Farrell barked.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Now, I’m dead serious about this. You raise this issue in front of the members — that’s the jury, by the way, since you don’t seem quite familiar with the rules of our court-martial system — you’re gonna spend time in the Quantico brig yourself. And I don’t know how these things work in Cambridge, Professor, but in these parts, warning is not mandatory. And you got no right of appeal. You hear me?”

Claire stood. “You can’t enforce that. I’m a civilian, which means I’m not subject to your jurisdiction. And you certainly can’t throw me in a military brig.”

“You wanna try me?”

Claire and the judge stared at each other for several long seconds, and then Claire sat.

Grimes covered his eyes with his hand and sank down in his seat.

“Now,” Judge Farrell said, “are you prepared to enter pleas on behalf of your client?”

“Yes, sir,” Claire said with crisp disdain, rising. “We are.”

“Accused, please rise.” Tom got to his feet.

“Your Honor,” Claire said, “through counsel, Sergeant First Class Ronald M. Kubik pleads, to all charges and specifications, not guilty.”

“Very well. I understand your pleas, and you may be seated.”

They sat. Claire clasped Tom’s hand and gave it a firm squeeze. Tom gave a squeeze in reply. She whispered, “All right, we’re done here.”

“Some rough going, huh?” he whispered back.

“Worse than I expected. This judge just doesn’t give a shit.”

“Counsel,” Judge Farrell called out, “are you prepared to conduct voir dire?”

“What?” Claire exclaimed.

“I said, are you ready to bring in the members?”

Claire turned to Grimes, who was as astonished as she was.

Tom blurted out, too loud: “The trial’s not supposed to start for another three weeks!”

“Yes, sir,” Waldron said, “we’re ready.”

Claire leaped to her feet. “No, Your Honor, we most certainly are not. It was our understanding that this trial was not to begin for another three weeks. This is a capital-murder trial, the charges are extremely serious in nature, and defense is not prepared to cross-examine witnesses. We’re still in the midst of our investigation.”

“What are you sayin’, it was your ‘understanding’?” Farrell shot back with narrowed eyes.

Grimes stood. “We were told that informally by the Staff Judge Advocate’s Office, Your Honor.” Claire had never before heard such anxiety, such timorousness, in his voice.

“Yeah, well, you may have that agreement with the Staff Judge Advocate’s Office,” Judge Farrell said, “but I’m the military judge, and I control the docket.”

“Your Honor,” Claire said, “we’ve just had a motion session this morning. We obviously couldn’t prepare our case without knowing what your rulings would be on our evidence. Your rulings on the admissibility or nonadmissibility of certain evidence sculpt our case. There are certain witnesses we haven’t had an opportunity to question at all. Other witnesses, we need more investigation to corroborate or contradict their testimony.”

“Counsel,” Judge Farrell said frostily, “you’ve had plenty of time to prepare.”

It took all of her restraint not to lash out at the judge. “Your Honor, the defense has not been dilatory. We have planned our case based on the scheduling that was informally decided — that is, three weeks between arraignment and trial. I will say, too, that we’ve tried repeatedly to question the primary witness against my client, the chief of staff of the army, and he has repeatedly refused our requests. Therefore, we are absolutely not prepared to present our case today, and we are not prepared to question witnesses. We would in fact request a month in which to prepare for this trial.”

“Your request is denied,” Judge Farrell said flatly.

Waldron stood and said, “Your Honor, the Staff Judge Advocate has communicated to us that General William Marks has decided to make himself available to defense counsel for an interview.”

Claire looked at Grimes. This was a thunderbolt. She got up. “In which case, Your Honor, we respectfully request two weeks to prepare for and conduct this interview before trial begins.”

“Denied,” Judge Farrell said.

“Your Honor,” Grimes put in, “defense will accept the delay in speedy trial. The accused has been arraigned, so speedy trial is no longer a consideration. All that’s at issue now is whether our client gets a fair trial, and he’s not gonna get a fair trial if counsel’s not prepared.”

“Well, counsel,” Judge Farrell said, “defense counsel shoulda been prepared, and if you’re not, it’s not this court’s fault. This case is going to trial today.”

Grimes sank into his chair, stunned. Tom turned to him wide-eyed, and whispered, “Is he serious?”

“This is a military court,” Grimes muttered. “They got the right. Only in a military court.”

“Son of a buck!” Embry whispered in disbelief.

“Your Honor,” Claire said, still standing, “once again we object to proceeding today.”

“Your objection is noted and overruled, counsel. Are you prepared for voir dire?”

“We are, Your Honor,” Waldron called out.

“Your Honor,” Claire said, “we’ve already made our position known on whether we are prepared. We are not. We are absolutely not prepared, because of assurances given us that this trial would not begin for another three weeks.”

Farrell jabbed a stubby index finger at her. “I said, are you prepared for voir dire?”

“If you’re going to force us to proceed,” Claire said acidly, “we will conduct voir dire to the best of our ability.”

“All right,” Farrell said. “I will give you two hours to frame your questions for the members. As the lunch hour is almost upon us, this would be an appropriate time to take that break.”

And he slammed down his gavel.

33

“Is the government prepared to make an opening statement?” Judge Farrell asked.

Waldron stood. “Yes, sir.”

This came after several hours of voir dire of the panel members. The jury. After several challenges for cause on both sides, and two peremptory challenges, it came down to two women and four men who would decide Tom’s fate. The most senior member, a lieutenant colonel, became the president of the jury, equivalent to the foreman. He was a light-skinned black man with steel-rimmed aviator glasses. He sat in the center of the front row of the jury box, the next most senior to his right, the second most senior to his left, and so on. They were an unremarkable group, and they watched the proceedings with rapt attention. Each of them had top-secret clearance, and could be relied upon to maintain absolute secrecy.

Waldron started softly, his voice almost incantatory. Claire had expected a booming, stentorian beginning. Waldron, however, was too clever.

“On 22 June 1985, in the tiny village of La Colina, not far from San Salvador, eighty-seven people were awakened from their sleep and slaughtered like farm animals.”

He had the jury members’ complete attention. They wrote nothing: the judge had instructed them that opening statements weren’t evidence and they shouldn’t take notes. They watched Waldron slowly approach the jury box and stand still in front of them.

“These eighty-seven people were not soldiers. They were not combatants. They were not rebels. They had nothing to do with the battles then raging in the country. They were men, women, and children — innocent civilians.

“And these innocent civilians were massacred not by some warring faction, not by soldiers of the El Salvador government, or by rebels or guerrillas.

“They were slaughtered by one American soldier.

“You heard me right: by one American soldier.

“One.

“And not in the heat of battle. Not by accident. But for the thrill of it.”

Claire looked at Grimes, who shook his head. Don’t object as to motive, he was saying. Not now. Don’t call attention to it. Not yet.

“How could this possibly have happened?” Waldron bowed his head as if in deep thought. He bit his upper lip. “Several hours earlier, a top-secret unit of the U.S. Army Special Forces, Detachment 27, was ordered to secure this village and determine whether the intelligence reports they had received were right — to see whether there were antigovernment rebels in hiding there.

“In fact, there were none. The intelligence, as often happens in wartime, was wrong.”

He shrugged.

“And Detachment 27, under the able leadership of Colonel William Marks — now chief of staff of the army — made this determination. They prepared to return to their base at Ilopango.

“And then, suddenly, without warning, someone began to fire his weapon. A machine gun. An M-60. To fire this machine gun on the innocent villagers.”

Claire turned to whisper to Tom and saw tears streaming down his face. She took his hand and squeezed it tight.

“You will hear from two members of the unit, Colonel James Hernandez, the executive officer, and Staff Sergeant Henry Abbott, who saw this man.” Waldron turned slowly and walked to the defense table. He pointed directly at Tom. “Sergeant First Class Ronald M. Kubik. They saw him raise his machine gun and point it at the eighty-seven villagers, who were lined up in four rows, and begin mowing them down.

“They saw the villagers, who had no weapons, beg for mercy. They saw them scream.

“And they saw Sergeant First Class Kubik, while machine-gunning these eighty-seven civilians, smile.”

Waldron turned back to the jury, a puzzled expression on his face. “He smiled.”

Tom shook his head. He was still weeping silently. He whispered to Claire: “How can he lie like that?”

“The commanding officer, General William Marks, was unable, despite his best efforts, to stop this atrocity.”

The panel members did not move. They watched in fascination. One of them had placed her index finger on her lips. The court reporter, a weary-looking middle-aged black woman with a floral shawl over her shoulders, softly ticked away at her machine.

“Two members of that unit will tell us about this horrible night. So will the commanding officer.

“But we will not stop with eyewitness testimony. We have hard evidence as well. We will present ballistic evidence: some of the bullets used to kill these civilians, and some of the shell casings ejected during this rampage. And we will demonstrate beyond any doubt that these bullets came from Sergeant First Class Kubik’s own gun. There will be no doubt, no ambiguity, not a shred of uncertainty. We have eyewitnesses, and we have forensic evidence.

“Yet there’s still more.

“After this nightmarish incident, members of Detachment 27 were recalled to Special Forces headquarters at Fort Bragg to be debriefed about what happened. Seven soldiers offered sworn statements. But what did Sergeant Kubik do? Sergeant Kubik was questioned at length but refused to give a sworn statement.

“And then he engineered an escape from custody.

“He escaped. He deserted the army.

“He fled across the country. He created a false identity using cleverly forged documents. He assumed a false name, even a false biography. And then he underwent extensive plastic surgery to drastically alter his appearance.

“Eventually Sergeant First Class Kubik, having assumed the name Thomas Chapman, moved to Boston, where he lived as a fugitive under a false name, with a new face. For thirteen years he escaped his crime.

“Until a few weeks ago, when a lucky tip led us to him, and he was apprehended by federal marshals.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the behavior of an innocent man. This is the behavior of a very clever, very calculating man who knew he was liable to be prosecuted for committing cold-blooded murder.

“We have rules, ladies and gentlemen. We have laws. Even in wartime — especially in wartime, some would argue — our conduct is governed by strict, honorable laws. And we do not slaughter innocent civilians for the demented pleasure of it. That way madness lies.

“The evidence you will hear in this trial will shock you and horrify you. All I ask is that it move you — to demonstrate that we Americans must never do such horrific things. And that you find Sergeant First Class Ronald Kubik guilty of murder in the first degree.

“Justice demands it.”

Quietly, he returned to his table.

There was a long, shocked silence.

Judge Farrell cleared his throat. “Defense counsel, do you have an opening statement, or do you wish to reserve?”

“I’m going to reserve, Your Honor.”

“Very well. Then we will recess for the weekend. On Monday at oh-nine-thirty we will resume with the prosecution’s case in chief.”

Claire sank into her chair, drained.

34

Two grease-spattered cardboard pizza boxes sat on the library desk, empty Coke cans resting on top of them. It was late Friday night. Between Waldron’s opening statement that morning, and the meeting with General Marks in the afternoon after court, it had been a long day. It had been barely a week since the Article 32 hearing, yet it felt like months.

Grimes and Embry sprawled in their usual chairs. Ray Devereaux was sweeping the room for bugs, going through the frequencies of an RF frequency-finder, which looked like a radio with a long antenna. Claire paced.

“What if we’d never brought it up with the general?” she said. “What if he’d never boasted he had immunity? When was the prosecution planning on telling us?”

Grimes and Embry said nothing.

“Aren’t they required to notify the defense of any grant of immunity,” she went on, “and serve us a copy of it before the arraignment?”

“Actually,” Grimes said wearily, “it says ‘or within a reasonable time before the witness testifies,’ something like that.”

“Which means whenever the fuck they feel like it.”

“Basically.”

“It’s clean,” Devereaux announced. “You can talk freely.”

“Bugs never stopped her before,” Grimes said.

“I wonder if we should raise this issue with the judge,” Claire said.

Embry shook his head slowly but said nothing.

“Claire,” Grimes said, “let me tell you something. When you decided to voir dire the judge, when you went after him, you pissed him off royally. You questioned his integrity. Now I think it’s time for you to cool it, lay off the guy. Stop pissing him off.”

“I don’t intend to stop pissing him off,” she replied. “Here we are, we have no witnesses to corroborate Tom’s account, and if we ask for a continuance, Farrell will laugh. The sworn statements from the other members of his unit are suspiciously identical—”

“You think they were coached?” Embry asked.

“They have to be.”

“How can we ferret that out?”

“The only way,” she said, “is from the witnesses. To try to get the unit members still living to repudiate the statements they made to CID thirteen years ago. So who do we have?”

Ray Devereaux spoke up. “The two Waldron mentioned as being the ones who saw Tom fire his machine gun are Hernandez and a guy named Henry Abbott. Hernandez you’ve already talked to.”

“He’s the general’s boy,” Grimes said. “He’ll never back down. Though I may be able to trap him, corner him, if I’m lucky. Who’s Abbott?”

“Staff Sergeant Henry Abbott left the army in 1985. Went into the private sector. Defense-contractor work, specifically.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Grimes said.

“He’s in ‘government liaison’ at one of those big scary defense corporations. That means he sells to the Pentagon. So somehow I don’t think he’s going to turn state’s evidence for you. The Pentagon’s got him by the proverbial short hairs.”

“He’s on the prosecution’s witness list,” Embry said. “But we don’t know when he’s being called.”

“He’s in Washington,” Devereaux said, always the master of timing. “At the Madison Hotel.”

“Let’s see him,” Claire said.

“I’ve set up a breakfast for you guys,” Devereaux said. “Tomorrow morning at seven.”

“What?” Claire said. “Thanks for telling us—”

“Seven?” Grimes moaned.

“I just set it up,” Devereaux said. He turned to Grimes. “He’s an early riser.”

“Or he’s just busting our balls,” Grimes said. “Who does that leave us?”

“Two others,” Devereaux said. “Robert Lentini and Mark Fahey. Fahey I finally located. He’s in real estate in Pepper Pike, Ohio. Wherever the hell that is. I talked to him. He might be worth talking to — it’s hard to say. He seems sort of embittered about his army experience. Not exactly gung-ho.”

“Our kind of guy,” Claire said.

“Then there’s Lentini,” Devereaux went on. “The mystery man. All I can turn up is his enlistment photo, which I put in a request for; they ought to dig it up in a few days, but it’s not going to do us any good. After that, nothing. No files on him. No record of where he ended up. I checked the U.S. Army Reserve Personnel Center in St. Louis, which keeps the records of all personnel who’ve left the army. And the U.S. Total Army Command, in Virginia, where they keep the active army files. Zippo. And there’s no record of his death anywhere.”

“That’s impossible,” Claire said. “If he’s alive, he’s either in the army or out of it. Can’t be neither. Make sure there isn’t some dumb glitch, like a wrong middle initial or a spelling error or something.”

Devereaux glared at her. “Do I look like an idiot?”

“Don’t answer that,” Grimes said.

“All right,” Claire said. “Ray, I need whatever you got on Abbott, right now. You guys can stay up if you like, but it’s almost two A.M., and I’ve got to get some sleep if I’m going to be coherent with Abbott tomorrow morning.”

35

There was the light tap of a car horn, and Claire opened her front door. Grimes’s rusty silver Mercedes was sitting in her driveway. Saturday morning at six-thirty, and Thirty-fourth Street was deserted. The early-morning sunlight was pastel. A bird trilled musically, regular as a metronome. Her head ached and thudded at the temples. The daylight pierced her eyes.

“Rise and shine,” Grimes said, sardonic.

“I read over the Abbott stuff until almost four. I need coffee.”

“We’ll grab some on the way.”

In the lobby of the Madison Hotel they were joined by Ray Devereaux. He handed Claire a small Motorola cellular phone, spoke for a few minutes, and returned to the street.

They met Henry Abbott in the Madison restaurant. He was tanned and prosperous-looking, handsome in a vaguely sinister way. His silver hair was combed straight back from his square forehead. He wore gold wire-rim glasses. He was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, elegant blue foulard tie.

He looked at his watch, a slim gold Patek Philippe, as they joined him at the small table. “You’ve got twenty minutes,” he said.

Grimes rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“Good morning to you, too,” Claire said, setting down her cell phone on the table in front of her. Caffeine and a fresh application of lipstick had made her feel marginally human. She introduced herself and Grimes.

“I have nothing to say to you,” he said. “No law says I have to talk to military investigators.”

“Then why’d you agree to meet us?” Claire asked.

“Curiosity. I wanted to see what you look like. I’ve read about you.”

“Well, now you know,” she said.

“She normally looks better,” Grimes apologized, “but she’s operating on less than three hours’ sleep.”

“We’ve got a couple of questions for you,” she said.

“Why the fuck should I talk to you? I’ve got a reputation to protect.”

I’ll bet, Claire thought. “Your CID statement is quite specific,” she said. “I’m sure they’ve provided you with a copy to refresh your memory.”

“I didn’t see what Kubik is supposed to have done anyway.”

“That’s not what your sworn statement says,” Grimes put in.

“Yeah, well,” Abbott said, and took a sip of coffee. A waiter came by and poured coffee all around. Claire took a grateful sip. The caffeine had an immediate effect, accelerating her heartbeat, causing prickles of sweat to break out at her temples.

“We know the real story,” she said. “All your statements are exactly the same, all you guys in Detachment 27. Which is too cute by half. As this case goes on, you run the risk of being locked into your statement, the one that was coerced out of you thirteen years ago. You don’t want that.”

“Are you tape-recording this?” Abbott asked.

“No, I’m not,” she said.

He dabbed at his mouth with a white linen napkin. “If, theoretically, I were to change my story, they’d charge me with lying under oath to the CID.”

So that was it. “They can’t,” she said. “You have no criminal liability in the military anymore, now that you’re discharged.”

“Says who?”

“The Supreme Court,” Grimes said. “Decades ago. You want to be the first guy who comes clean. You don’t want to be the last guy holding out, telling the lie.”

“And if I don’t?” He was exploring his options now, looking for wiggle room.

“Simple,” Claire said. “If you perjure yourself, you can be tried in federal district court for perjury. Under 18 U.S.C., you can get five years in prison. And when you get out, say goodbye to all those lucrative government contracts. They dry up right away.”

“Look,” Abbott said, exasperated. “You want a witness, I’m not your guy. I didn’t see him shoot — I was on the other side of that fucking shit-hole village manning the radio.”

“Yet you testified you saw him shoot.”

“Are you really that fucking naïve, or are you just pretending to be?” he snapped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Are we off the record here?”

“If you insist.”

“Well, I do insist. This is off the record. Don’t tell me you don’t know how the system works. The system works in favor of guys like Colonel Marks — excuse me, General fucking Marks. The system wants somebody to blame it on. Right after we got back to Fort Bragg, Marks called each of us in, before our interviews with CID, and says, ‘I’m preparing my statement and I want to make sure I have my facts straight. What is your recollection of what happened?’ And I say, you know, ‘I don’t recall one way or the other, sir.’ I was a good soldier. I knew what to say. But he wanted more than that. He says, ‘Didn’t you see Kubik suddenly raise his weapon and begin to shoot?’ I say, ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’ I mean, this was night, and I was like two hundred yards away. I saw someone fire. How the hell do I know who it was? He says, ‘Are you sure you didn’t see Kubik suddenly go crazy and start firing? Be sure about this, Sergeant. This’ll make or break your career. Kubik has violent tendencies. If you search your memory, I’m sure you’ll recall Kubik suddenly taking out his weapon and firing.’ Well, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I say, ‘Yes, sir, of course, that was it. That’s what he did, sir, you’re absolutely correct, sir.’ And that’s all it takes.”

Claire nodded as if he were simply confirming something she already knew.

“And let me tell you, I’ll deny all this on the stand. I’ve got to deal with the Pentagon every day. They buy billions of dollars of equipment from my company. And they don’t like snitches and turncoats. I got a meeting.” He stood up. “Was all that true, in the Post?”

“I didn’t see the Post yet this morning,” Grimes said. “What are you talking about?”

“You,” Abbott said to Claire. “You really do that? You probably don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

“Shit,” she said. “The Post found out why I’m in Washington, didn’t they?”

He looked puzzled. “You read it, didn’t you?” He popped open his metal briefcase, reached in, and pulled out a neatly folded copy of the Washington Post, which he dropped on the table in front of her.

She saw her photograph, small and below the fold, and the headline — A HARVARD PROFESSOR’S TAINTED PAST — and she felt the blood rush to her head.

36

Claire smoked.

Annie danced around the kitchen table, chanting: “What? What? What?”

Jackie told her, “Give us some privacy, babe.”

Claire stubbed out her cigarette. She pulled another from the pack, offered it to Jackie, was surprised when Jackie shook her head.

Annie grabbed on to Claire’s skirt. “What are you reading? Tell me. Tell me.”

Claire was too numb to talk.

Annie needed the reassurance of Mommy’s attention. Mommy, however, was a thousand miles away, and almost two decades.

Mommy was twenty-three now. A One-L at Yale Law School. Probably one of the smartest students in her class, but she didn’t actually feel like it. Most of the time she felt like crying, and very often she did. Most of the spring semester she’d been flying back and forth between Pittsburgh and LaGuardia. Renting cars at the Pittsburgh airport and driving to Franklin. Taking buses from LaGuardia to New Haven. Sitting by her mother’s hospital bed and watching her succumb to liver cancer.

There were a dozen excuses. She was barely in New Haven that semester, the second term of her first year. She was distracted. She should have taken a leave but didn’t. She was frightened. Even for a full-time student, law school was a challenge, and she barely saw the inside of the law library.

She’d meant to use the obscure law-review article only for inspiration. She had no interest, really, in civil procedures. The draft she handed in she’d meant to rework extensively, but she had a plane to catch. She’d just gotten the phone call from the attending telling her that her mother had just died. Anyone else would have taken a leave of absence, but she wanted to maintain a semblance of normalcy.

It was a bad break, really. A lousy coincidence.

Her professor was quite familiar with the obscure law-review article she’d all but rewritten under her name. The law-review article had been written by a former student of his, who’d proudly sent a signed reprint of it to his old professor.

A bad break.

He called her into his office and confronted her. Not for a moment did she try to deny it or make excuses. He was an acerbic and bitter man, not inclined to grant clemency.

Plagiarism, pure and simple. The dean was more understanding than the professor. She’d been under stress. Her mother was dying. She should have requested a leave. At least she should have requested an extension. She’d been irresponsible, not criminal.

The charge was buried. She was given the chance to resubmit the paper. Only the understanding dean, and the aggrieved professor (whose later nomination to the Supreme Court was acrimoniously rejected), would ever know.

In the background the phone rang repeatedly, but no one rose from the kitchen table to answer it. Claire reread the article for the hundredth time. Substantially it was accurate. Here and there a detail was off, but it was a good job of reporting. The Post reporter could even say, truthfully, that repeated calls to Ms. Chapman’s home were not returned.

The headline burned her insides like a red-hot poker.

Annie clung to the hem of her skirt as if afraid her mother would leave her.

“What happens to you now?” Jackie said.

“I don’t know,” she said thickly. “I may lose my position at the Law School. I’m pretty sure that’s what happens.”

“But you have tenure.”

“Tenure doesn’t cover this sort of thing.”

“There were mitigating circumstances.”

“I could make the argument. Harvard might even listen. But more likely they’ll quietly ask me to leave the faculty. I know how they work.”

“The general warned you,” Jackie said ruefully. “‘You have a career to be concerned about,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to ruin it.’”

“Yeah,” Claire agreed. “He warned me. But a threat like that wasn’t going to stop me.”

Finally Claire and Jackie began to take turns answering the phone. At least two dozen reporters, wire-service, newspaper, radio, and television, called to follow up on the Post story. To all of them she either refused to comment or declined to come to the phone. A few friends from Cambridge called, wonderfully full of understanding; loyal friends. Abe Margolis, her Law School colleague, called, and though he wasn’t exactly the touchy-feely type, he too expressed his anger at the intrusion by the Post into a part of her personal life that was no one’s business, and he talked strategy. He said he’d talk to the dean of the Law School. He thought this thing could be beat.

Claire was less sanguine.

Work had to go on.

Grimes and Embry interviewed witnesses, took depositions, pored over transcripts. Late that afternoon they all gathered in her library for a conference call with Mark Fahey of Pepper Pike, Ohio. Former Special Forces, now a realtor. Stranger things had happened.

“I heard Kubik slaughtered them all,” came Fahey’s resonant baritone over the speaker phone.

“But you didn’t see it,” Claire said.

“No. But everyone was talking about it afterward. They were really spooked.”

“You gave a statement to the CID,” Grimes said. “It said something totally different.”

“Yeah, it was bullshit,” Fahey said. “Canned. A total put-up job.”

Grimes nodded, smiled.

“How so?” Claire asked.

Fahey’s voice rose, both in pitch and in volume. “They fuckin’ wrote it out for me and told me to sign it.”

“The CID agent.”

“Fuckin-A right.”

“Did Colonel Marks prep you for the interview?”

“He prepped everyone. Called us in before our interviews, said, ‘Now, let me get my facts straight here.’”

“Why was he so concerned with having everyone pin it on Kubik?” Embry asked.

“He was covering his ass.”

“You mean Kubik didn’t do it?” Claire asked. She felt herself holding her breath, waiting for his response.

“I told you, I didn’t see the massacre. But everyone said the Six gave the order.”

“The Six?” Claire asked.

“The colonel — O-6. He ordered Kubik to do it. And Kubik, fucking wacko that he was, mowed ’em down happily.”

“But Marks wasn’t there,” Grimes said.

“He gave the order over the field radio. He said, ‘You got ’em rounded up?’ And Hernandez, the XO, he goes, ‘Yeah, we got ’em.’ And he says, ‘Wax ’em.’ And Hernandez goes, ‘But, sir’ — and Marks says, ‘Wax ’em.’ And wacko Kubik does it happily. Knowing they’re all innocent.”

“So you were told,” Claire corrected. “You didn’t see that.”

“Right. But those guys had no reason to lie to me.”

“But isn’t it possible,” Claire persisted, “that the cover-up was already beginning by then? That a number of the men had carried out the murders and they were already planning to blame it on Kubik?”

After a long silence came Fahey’s voice: “Anything’s possible, I guess.”

“If you’re asked to testify,” Claire said, “you can’t talk about what you heard about Kubik. Or, for that matter, what you heard about Marks. That’s all hearsay, and it’s not admissible. But you can testify about how Marks called you in to prep you for your CID interview, and about how the CID wrote it out for you.”

There was a short laugh. “What makes you think I’m going to testify?”

Grimes asked, “Did anyone come talk to you about testifying?”

“Yeah, some guys from Army CID came to see me, ask me to take the stand. I told them what I told you. Told them I’m not going to lie to cover Marks’s ass. I don’t care if he’s the fucking President of the United States. So they said they were going to use my sworn statement from 1985, and I’d better come in and testify the same way.”

“Or?” Claire prompted.

“They muttered something about my veteran’s benefits, shit like that. I knew they were bullshitting. They can’t take that away. I told ’em to go fuck themselves. They got no power over me anymore. I gave a fake statement, what more do you want? I’m not going to go in there and perjure myself.”

“Excellent,” Claire said. “You’re right, they have no power over you.”

“That it?”

“Would you be willing to testify?” Grimes asked.

“That I lied to the CID? What, are you crazy?”

“To clear the record. Clear your conscience,” Grimes said.

“I got no interest in visiting that nightmare again.”

“We’ll fly you out here first class,” Grimes said with a weak smile at Claire and a shrug.

“Hey, first-class trip to Quantico,” Fahey said. “What’s second prize? All-expenses-paid vacation in Leavenworth?”

“If you’d rather do it the hard way, we can subpoena you,” Claire said.

“Military courts can’t subpoena people,” Fahey said. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not talking military courts,” she said. “I’m talking about issuing a subpoena through the U.S. attorney.”

A long silence. “Who says I’m going to cooperate once I get there?”

“The law,” Claire said. “You won’t have a choice.”

“Hey, you do what you gotta do,” Fahey said.

There was a click, and the line was dead.

37

In the middle of the night, the phone rang again. Claire awoke with a hammering heart and pounding temples.

She let it ring. The answering machine would get it.

After five rings, the machine switched on, played her outgoing message, beeped. There was silence, then a click. She reached over, fumbled with the phone, and finally managed to turn off the ringer.

Her heartbeat slowing, she finally fell back asleep.

It didn’t ring again for three hours.

At five-fifty-six Monday morning, she awoke, glanced at the digital alarm clock, and knew she should get up and start preparing for court. Then she realized that the phone had been ringing, somewhere distant, somewhere in another room in the house. She remembered she’d turned off the ringer. She lay there in bed, her heart thumping again, and waited for the machine to get it.

This time a male voice came on over the answering machine. It was a youngish-sounding voice, crisp and authoritative. “Claire Heller,” he said.

She waited.

“Pick up the phone, it’s important.”

She reached over and picked it up. “Yes?”

“I have information for you,” the voice said.

“What kind of information?” She sat up slowly.

“For your trial.”

“Who’s this?”

“Information on Marks.”

“Who is this?”

Silence. Had he hung up?

“Lentini. You recognize the name?”

“Yes.”

“I need complete secrecy, and let me tell you right now, I won’t testify. I’m not testifying against him.”

“Can we meet?”

“Not at your house.”

“Where?”

“And with you only. Not with either of the other attorneys. Not your private eye either. I see anyone else, I take off.”

“How do you know I’m working with two attorneys?”

“I know people.”

“Is that how you got my number?”

“I can only meet at night. I have a job, and it’s not easy for me to get out of town.”

“I’ll meet you wherever it’s convenient for you.”

“Not near me. I won’t take that chance. Write this down.”

He gave her precise directions.

“Just you alone,” he said.

Annie was already at the breakfast table, wearing her feet pajamas and eating Cocoa Puffs. Claire, dressed in a handsome olive twill suit, kissed her and gave her a quick squeeze. “How’s my baby?”

“Goob,” Annie said through an immense mouthful.

“You going to paint with Jackie today?”

Annie nodded enthusiastically, eyes sparkling, and kept chewing. Claire made a large pot of coffee.

“Are you going to get Daddy out today?” Annie asked when she’d finally swallowed.

“I’m working on it. Might not be today, sweetie.”

“Can you and I play today?”

Claire hesitated. “I’m going to do my very, very best.” Then she said, “Yes, honey, we are, when I get home from work. We’ll play together. You, me, and Jackie — or just you and me, if you want.”

“Who’s taking my name in vain?” rasped Jackie as she dragged herself, dazed, into the kitchen. She leaned against the doorframe and massaged her forehead. “Morning, snookums.”

Claire took in Jackie’s long black Grateful Dead T-shirt and black sweatpants. She raised both hands and snapped her fingers in beatnik applause. “Dig those crazy threads, man.”

“It’s too early, Claire,” Jackie groaned, watching the coffee gurgle and hiss into the glass pot. “I need to mainline some of that caffeine.”

The phone rang.

“Not again,” Claire said. “Can you get it?”

“No,” Jackie said. “I can barely talk.”

It rang again. “Oh, God,” Claire said, and picked up the wall phone.

“Claire, it’s Winthrop.”

Winthrop Englander, the dean of Harvard Law School. Three guesses, she thought, what’s on his mind.

“Win, good morning,” she said.

“Claire, this is not a call I ever wanted to make,” he said.

“Win—”

“Is the report true?”

“Largely, yes.”

“This puts me in an extremely difficult position.”

“I understand. I’ll make only one excuse, which is to say that it happened a long time ago, and it was very bad judgment made at a time when my mother had just died.”

“I understand.”

“That doesn’t excuse it, Win, but—”

“It’s still going to be very difficult, Claire. You’ve been a valuable member of the faculty, an outstanding teacher, a real asset to the Law School.” She heard the verb tense; this was his version of the gold-watch retirement speech.

She wanted to ask him: If I told you about the incident, and no one else knew, would you still stick by your lofty principles? Or is it the Washington Post — and probably by now The New York Times and, by wire service, every other newspaper and broadcast medium in the country — that’s stiffening your sense of morality?

But she said, “I understand.”

“There will be all sorts of meetings and consultations. I’ll be in touch.”

She arrived at Quantico just in time to see the white van from the brig pull up to the building that housed the secure facility. From a distance she saw Tom step out, in full chains. He seemed small. She made a quick calculation: Did she want to catch his eye? To give him a hug? Increasingly she found it painful to make human contact with him before and after trial. Easier to treat him as just another client, one she rarely saw.

But he saw her first. “Claire,” he called out hoarsely.

She smiled, though smiling was the last thing she felt like doing this morning. Why burden him with her two hundred worries?

“Claire,” he said again, putting both cuffed arms out to her as if displaying them. An odd gesture.

She approached. His eyes glistened with tears. Puzzled, she hugged him. He couldn’t hug back, and it stabbed her heart. “It’s showtime,” she said with false good humor.

“Those bastards.” His voice was muffled.

She pulled away to see his face. He was crying now.

“Tom?”

“Goddamn them. I saw CNN this morning. They actually let me watch.”

“Oh,” she said.

“They want to go after me, that’s one thing. Now they’re trying to destroy you.” The guards stood by, eyeing them with hostility, though they knew enough by now not to interrupt.

“It’s true, Tom. I did it.”

“I don’t give a damn. It’s the past, it’s your private business...” Now he clenched both his hands into fists, and punched the air like a hobbled pugilist. His chains jingled. “Goddamn them, Claire. Come here, please. Will you hug me? These damned handcuffs.”

She hugged him, felt his face warm against hers.

“I want you to know something,” he said very quietly. “I know what you’ve been going through for me. What they’re trying to do to you. And I’m here for you, the way you’ve been here for me. I’m in these fucking chains, I’m locked up all day, but I’m your rock, too, okay? I think about you all the time. You’re suffering as much as me, maybe more. You don’t have time to be with Annie, you’re cut off from all your friends, you can’t tell anyone what you’re going through, except maybe Jackie, right? And now this. We’re going to get through all this shit. I promise you.”

38

“The government calls Frank La Pierre,” Waldron announced.

The prosecution was beginning its case with the Criminal Investigation Division agent who was in charge of the case against Ronald Kubik. Frank La Pierre was escorted by the bailiff into the courtroom. He walked with a slow shuffle, as if he’d been injured long ago. He wore a cheap-looking dark suit that flapped open; he’d clearly been unable to button it over his potbelly. He had owlish horn-rimmed glasses, a pinched nose, and a small downturned mouth. His receding hairline came down in a widow’s peak.

Waldron stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Mr. La Pierre, is it correct that you are a special agent for the CID?”

“That is correct,” La Pierre boomed in a sonorous, assured baritone.

“You are in fact the CID agent in charge of this investigation, is that correct?” As if there might be another reason he was here.

“That is correct.”

“Now, Mr. La Pierre, how long have you been a CID agent?”

“Eight years.”

“And what office are you attached to?”

“CID headquarters at Fort Belvoir.”

“Do you have a specialty as a CID agent?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And what is that specialty?”

“Personal crimes, particularly homicide.”

“I see. Mr. La Pierre, how many murder cases would you say you’ve worked in your career?”

“I don’t know, maybe forty.”

“Forty? Well, that’s quite a few.” He took La Pierre through his credentials and his involvement in the Kubik case. It was all matter-of-fact, often quite dry, but thorough.

After lunch, Claire stood to cross-examine the witness. She looked momentarily lost. “Mr. La Pierre, you say eighty-seven civilians were killed at La Colina, El Salvador, on 22 June 1985, is that right?”

“That’s correct.” La Pierre’s certitude was almost defiant.

“Well, can you identify, please, for the investigating officer, the individuals who are dead?”

La Pierre hesitated. “Identify how?”

“Well, how many, say, were male?” Claire gave a sudden little open-palmed shrug, as if the thought had just occurred to her.

He paused again, furtively glanced at Waldron, then looked down. “I don’t know that.”

“How many were female?”

With annoyance: “There’s no way of knowing—”

“Well, what were the ages of the eighty-seven victims?”

“Look, this was thirteen years—”

“Answer the question, please. What were the ages of the victims?”

Firmly: “I don’t know.”

“Well, where are they buried?”

“I’m sure I can get that for you—”

“Who buried them?”

“Your Honor,” Waldron burst in angrily, “counsel is engaging in a completely specious line of questioning, completely improper, inadmissible—”

“Sustained,” Judge Farrell replied blandly. “Let’s move this along, counsel.”

“Thank you. Mr. La Pierre, do you have any photographs of the dead bodies?”

“No,” he said testily.

“No? What about death certificates? Surely you have those?”

“No.”

“No? Autopsy reports, no doubt. You must have those.”

“No, but—”

“Mr. La Pierre, can you tell me the name of one individual that my client is accused of killing?”

La Pierre stared at her venomously. “No, I cannot.”

“Not even one?”

“No.”

“If you can’t tell me one, I know you can’t tell me two. Let alone twenty-two. Yet you’re accusing Sergeant Kubik of murdering eighty-seven people, is that your testimony here today, sir?”

But Frank La Pierre had had his fill of badgering. He came back at her with high moral indignation: “Ronald Kubik murdered eighty-seven innocent people in—”

“Yet you can’t testify that you’ve seen even a single one of the bodies of the eighty-seven people that my client is alleged to have killed. You can’t, can you?”

“But—”

“And you haven’t seen an autopsy report for a single person that my client is alleged to have killed?”

“No, I have not,” he said, this time almost proudly.

“And you haven’t seen a death certificate for a single person that my client is alleged to have killed?”

“No, I have not.”

“In point of fact, sir, you don’t have a single document, except for the” — she paused for emphasis, lifted her eyebrows — “‘sworn’ statements that the government has introduced, to prove that eighty-seven people were killed at La Colina on 22 June 1985. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Or who these eighty-seven people were.”

“Yes.”

“So we’re to take this on your word?”

“Based on seven identical sworn statements,” La Pierre managed to get in.

“Oh, I see. The seven” — she held up two fingers on each hand and flicked them in the universal quotation-mark sign — “‘sworn’ statements. Which are, as you correctly point out, identical. Yet you have no autopsy reports. You have no death certificates. In fact, you have no hard evidence whatsoever, do you?”

A long pause. “Besides the statements, no.”

“Now, Mr. La Pierre, we’ve had an opportunity to examine the service records of each of the members of Detachment 27 who made a statement to you. And, you know, it’s funny, but we didn’t discover any entry in those service records that would indicate temporary duty in El Salvador. Did we miss something?”

Now they were back on his turf. “No. Often top-secret missions aren’t recorded in service records.”

“So we didn’t miss anything.”

“I believe not.”

“Good. There was no mention in any of those service records of the incursion into El Salvador in June 1985, right?”

“I believe that’s correct.”

“Mr. La Pierre, did you see my discovery request?”

“No, trial counsel didn’t show it to me.”

“Well, Mr. La Pierre, the defense made a discovery request for the order assigning these individuals to El Salvador. And the strange thing was, we never got any. And I’m thinking, you know, bureaucracies and everything, the way things fall between the cracks... Did you happen to see any order assigning the members of Detachment 27 to El Salvador in June 1985?”

“No, I did not.”

“No record of any order?”

“That’s correct.”

“None at all.”

Warily, he said, “Uh, that’s right.”

“That’s a relief,” Claire said, “because I didn’t either.” Scattered laughter in the courtroom. “It’s good to hear I’m not the only one who hasn’t had an easy time dealing with the Pentagon’s paper-shufflers. And presumably you went to the supervisory headquarters for this particular Special Forces detachment.”

“I believe we did, yes.”

“Yet you got no records of any order assigning them to El Salvador?”

“Right.”

She turned suddenly to the witness as if another thought had just occurred to her. “Did you attempt to locate in archived records copies of the temporary duty orders that every single military unit has to get before they’re sent anywhere?”

“Uh, no.”

“You didn’t? What about travel claims? Did you attempt to locate in archived records the travel claims for Detachment 27’s alleged incursion into El Salvador in June 1985?”

“Well, no, but—”

“You know, Mr. La Pierre, I’m not a member of the military—”

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” he said flatly.

Hearty laughter broke out among the spectators. Claire laughed along, sharing the joke at her own expense. “And, well, you know, I really don’t know much about your world here, but it’s my understanding — and correct me if I’m wrong — that any time any U.S. soldier goes anywhere where there’s travel involved, there’s got to be a travel claim submitted. Am I right?”

“I believe so,” La Pierre said, seemingly bored.

“You believe so. Hmm. Yet you didn’t find any travel claim for this alleged operation in El Salvador in June 1985.”

“Well, no, but—”

“So there’s really no corroboration these individuals went anywhere.”

La Pierre worked his open mouth a few times, and at last began, “I—”

“Presumably you’ve made some efforts,” Claire interrupted, “to corroborate whether or not this operation ever actually occurred.”

With narrowed eyes, La Pierre shot back, “You’re not denying this operation took place, are you?”

“Let me ask the questions, Mr. La Pierre. You’ve made some efforts to determine whether or not this operation actually occurred, haven’t you?”

“It’s obvious it occurred—”

“It’s obvious? To whom? To you and Major Waldron over there? Or to me and Mr. Grimes and Ronald Kubik over here? Who is it obvious to?”

“The operation occurred,” La Pierre hissed.

“But you have no records of any orders to corroborate that, do you?” She didn’t wait for his reply. “Now, Mr. La Pierre, it’s my understanding — and again, correct me if I’m wrong — that before the U.S. government, including the military, engages in a covert operation, there must be a presidential finding authorizing that covert operation. A classified order signed personally by the President of the United States. Is that right?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“A presidential finding authorizing covert action is called an NSDD — a National Security Decision Directive — is that right?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Which may be classified, right?”

“It can be.”

“Sometimes an NSDD can have a classified and an unclassified version, correct?”

“I think so.”

“And this operation was a covert operation, isn’t that true?”

“Yes, it was.”

“So there must exist an NSDD, presumably a classified one, authorizing Detachment 27’s mission to El Salvador in June 1985. Right?”

He attempted to sidestep the jaw trap. “I wouldn’t know.”

“But you just said that every covert action must be authorized by an NSDD. And this was a covert action, you said yourself. So there must be an NSDD, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Yet you didn’t obtain the presidential finding authorizing the June 1985 covert operation and signed by the President of the United States?”

“No, I did not.”

“Well, gosh, Mr. La Pierre, as the chief investigator in this case, don’t you think it’s important to know whether this operation was authorized by the president?”

“In my job,” he said ringingly, “I don’t get into foreign affairs. I do personal crimes, including homicides.”

“You don’t get into foreign affairs,” she repeated.

“No, I do not.”

“Mr. La Pierre, if a full-bird colonel in the Special Forces, who’s now the chief of staff of the army, ran an operation in El Salvador in June 1985 that was illegal — because it wasn’t authorized by a presidential finding — don’t you think you’d want to advise him of his rights?”

Frank La Pierre looked over at the judge. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said.

“Just answer the question,” Farrell said with annoyance. “Did you read General Marks his rights?”

“No, I most certainly did not.”

“Why not?” Claire asked.

“I had no reason to believe this was an illegal operation.”

“Because you don’t ‘get into’ foreign affairs. Well, sir, don’t you think that, as the lead investigator in a mass-murder case that allegedly took place in a foreign country during a covert operation, you might want to educate yourself about foreign policy and the rules governing covert action?”

“I don’t see why I need to.”

“Really?” Claire said, amazed. “So it’s not important to educate yourself as to whether a U.S. operation violated the laws of the United States in its inception?”

“That’s not my job.”

“So let me get all this straight. You can’t identify a single person who was killed. In fact, you don’t know who was killed, or, indeed, if anyone was killed. So much for element one of the charge — that is, that a ‘certain named or described person is dead.’ We don’t know.

“And, secondly, we don’t even know whether or not this operation took place. And if it did take place, we don’t even know if the operation was authorized. So, heck, we don’t even know whether any of these alleged killings — of which we have no proof — were unlawful. Because we don’t know what was lawful in this case. We have no idea what the President of the United States ordered — assuming this mission even happened at all! So much for element two of the charge — that is, was the killing unlawful.” She shook her head in disgust. “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”

39

This time the call came at close to 4:00 A.M. She answered, said, “Keep it up. We’ll trace you,” then hung up.

Before she left the house that morning, Devereaux called. “The FBI’s close,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“On those mysterious phone calls. They’ve narrowed it down to one of several public payphones within the Pentagon.”

“The Pentagon?”

“Yeah,” Devereaux replied. “Whoever’s trying to scare you doesn’t want to make them from his Pentagon office, I’ll bet. That time of night, you can only get into the Pentagon if you’re an employee or have a pass.”

“That narrows it down to twenty-five thousand people,” she said tartly.

The first day of testimony had been, all told, a good one for the defense. Claire’s cross had been devastating. Waldron’s attempt to rehabilitate the CID man in his redirect was perfunctory and not particularly effective.

But by the end of the second morning of testimony, things took a sudden bad turn for the defense.

Colonel James J. Hernandez was testifying for the government, and for the most part he was repeating the same charges he’d made before. Waldron had put him on in order to establish what the law calls the corpus delicti, the material evidence that a crime has been committed, the body of a murdered person. They had no photographs of bodies, no autopsies, so they would have to present eyewitness testimony that there were in fact bodies — which Hernandez did ably and without a hitch.

Until shortly before lunchtime, when Waldron guided Hernandez to the moment when the unit, in the dead of night, entered the town. Hernandez had approached alongside Ronald Kubik, he testified.

“And what did you proceed to do?” Waldron asked in a seemingly offhand way.

“We went around from hut to hut, rousting people out of there, waking them up, checking for weapons or any signs of the guerrillas.”

“Did you find any weapons or any guerrillas?”

“No, we did not, sir.”

“Did you use your weapons while you were forcing them out of their huts?”

“Only to point at them. Bayonets or rifles or carbines or machine guns, whatever we had on us.”

“You didn’t shoot at them, did you?”

“Didn’t have to. They were scared. They were old men and women, and mothers with babies and little kids. They cooperated right away.”

“Did you see what Sergeant Kubik was doing at that time?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What was he doing?”

Hernandez drew himself up and turned toward the jury. Claire’s attention quickened. When a witness turned toward the jury, or the judge, he was often about to say something that he expected would elicit a reaction.

“He — well, he was doing sicko things.”

“Would you use the term ‘sadistic’?”

“Objection.” Claire shot up. “The witness isn’t a psychiatrist or a mental-health professional, to my knowledge. He’s not qualified to render diagnoses.”

“Your Honor,” Waldron said, clearly annoyed that she had broken his rhythm, “the witness is permitted to characterize actions using words he’s familiar with.”

“Overruled,” Farrell said.

“Go ahead,” Waldron prompted Hernandez. “Did he do things you’d characterize as sadistic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you tell us about those things?”

“Well, one old man tried to escape through the back window of his hut, and Sergeant Kubik, he says, ‘You want to flee? I told you to go out the front door.’ And he hamstrung the guy.”

“Hamstrung?”

“He cut the old man’s Achilles tendon. One slash of his knife. He said, ‘There, now you’ll never walk again.’”

Claire turned to Tom, who shook his head, compressing his lips. “Did you hear any of this before?” she whispered.

He continued shaking his head. “It’s a total fabrication, Claire.”

Waldron continued: “And what did you do when you saw Sergeant Kubik do this?”

“I told him to stop it.”

“And did he?”

“No, sir. He said, if I ever told anyone about it, he’d kill me.”

“Did he do anything else?”

“Well, yes, sir. It was so horrible.” Hernandez looked genuinely stricken. Either he was telling the truth, Claire thought, or he was a remarkable actor. “This boy — he couldn’t have been much more than ten — this boy was throwing rocks at him. Shouting obscenities. And Kubik forced him to the ground and took out his knife and sliced his belly.”

“Sliced how?”

“He made this quick Y shape on the boy’s belly with his knife. Real quick. Not deep.”

“What was the point of that?”

“Well, sir, it was so horrible.” Hernandez’s lips curled up on one side. His face was contorted as if he were about to be sick. “When you do that — well, the boy’s insides came out. His — his intestines popped out. When that happens, the victim dies a slow, agonizing death. I shouted — screamed at Kubik — but it was like he was enjoying himself.”

Claire whispered to Grimes, “Did this guy say any of this before?”

Grimes shook his head. “Nowhere I ever saw.”

“What about his original CID statement?”

“No way. You think I’d forget it?”

“We gotta object.”

“Ask for a 39(a) session, with the jury out,” Grimes said.

Claire stood. “Your Honor, this is the first we’ve heard this testimony. We claim surprise. We request a 39(a) session.”

“Is that really necessary?” Farrell asked.

“Sir, this is outrageous. The witness is introducing new material he never gave before, not in his CID interview, or his interviews with the prosecutor, or with us—”

“All right,” Farrell said, cutting her off. “The members will be excused.”

Everyone in the courtroom rose as the bailiff escorted the jurors out.

“Your Honor,” Claire said when the jury was gone and the witness temporarily excused, “this witness has been interviewed countless times about the incident in question, by army investigators, by prosecutors, and by ourselves. Not once did he make mention of all this alleged sadism by my client. Now, if the government is going to try to tell us that the witness has been hypnotized, I want to hear it now. Because the courts have recently been taking a pretty dim view of hypnosis-induced prior recollection—”

“Your Honor,” Waldron said, “this incident took place thirteen years ago, and, given the horrific nature of Sergeant Kubik’s actions, it’s only natural that the witness has tried to forget it.”

Claire gave Waldron a look of astonishment. “Is trial counsel trying to say that the witness didn’t recall these alleged actions immediately after they took place, when the CID interviewed him in 1985?” Claire snapped. “Your Honor, in light of the new testimony being presented, we request a reinterview of this witness, as well as time to confer with our client and among ourselves.”

“Your request is granted,” Farrell said. “We will resume after the lunch hour, at fourteen hundred hours.”

Waldron brushed by Claire on his way out and remarked casually, “Saw your name in the paper.”

She looked up, but before she could think of a response, he was gone.

They interviewed Jimmy Hernandez in a small conference room within the classified facility.

He sat uncomfortably at the conference table, his eyes hooded and darting uneasily.

“So,” Grimes said. “Sudden rush of memory, huh?”

Hernandez scowled, twisted in his seat.

“Have you been hypnotized?” Grimes asked.

His scowl deepened. He rolled his eyes.

“Cat got your tongue? You got anything to tell us you forgot to tell us before?”

Hernandez said nothing. With his index finger he stroked the scar under his right eye.

“Lemme ask you something,” Grimes went on. “You and Marks — how far back you guys go?”

Hernandez furrowed his brow, shrugged.

“Colonel, look,” Claire said. “We have copies of the citation and the statements from when you got your first Bronze Star, at the end of the Vietnam War. One of the eyewitness statements that supported your citation was a William O. Marks. So you two obviously go back quite some time. What I want to know is, how many times did you serve with him?”

“A lot,” Hernandez finally said. “Many operations.”

“A lot,” Claire echoed. “Care to be more specific?”

Hernandez shrugged again.

The reinterview went on for almost an hour.

When Claire, Embry, and Grimes entered the conference room where Tom had been sitting, his chasers standing post outside, Tom got to his feet. “Every time I think they can’t sink any lower,” he said, “there’s a new low.”

“I take it you deny it,” Grimes said, handing him a cardboard-encased double cheeseburger and large fries.

“I hope you’re kidding me,” Tom said, taking them. He unwrapped the burger ravenously and took a large bite.

“I’m not. These are serious accusations, whether they come out of left field or not.”

Tom chewed quickly, shaking his head. His reply was muffled. “Of course I deny it. I deny them all. How can you seriously ask?”

“It’s my job, man.”

“Claire, you don’t believe that crap, do you?” He put down his burger.

“No, I don’t believe it,” she said. “The way it was introduced is totally suspicious. I don’t believe he’s suddenly an honest man.”

“That isn’t what I’m asking,” Tom said. “I’m talking about me. Forget about the legal junk. You can’t possibly believe that about me.”

She felt her stomach tighten. “No, Tom,” she said. “Of course I don’t. Terry, do you think you can try to turn up Hernandez’s medical records?”

“Sure,” Embry said. “I mean, I think so.”

“But quietly, okay? I don’t want Waldron to know — he’ll make us show relevance.”

“No problem. But what are you looking for?”

“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it true that psychiatric records aren’t privileged in the military?”

“Man, nothing’s privileged in the military,” Grimes put in. “You don’t think this creep ever saw a shrink, do you?”

“Not voluntarily, I’ll bet. But maybe he was compelled to. I don’t know. It’s worth checking. See if we can find any interesting information about the guy.”

“What are you thinking?” Tom asked.

“Something about him I don’t get.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Just — is he covering for his boss, or is there something more going on?”

Tom shook his head. “He’s just covering Marks’s ass.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. I hope there’s nothing we’re missing.”

When court resumed after lunch, the members were brought back in and Hernandez was back on the stand for the cross-examination. Claire paced in front of him for a few seconds before she began, trying to strike the right note.

“Mr. Hernandez, when you were interviewed by the Army Criminal Investigation Division in 1985—”

“Objection,” Waldron called out. “The witness is a colonel and is fully entitled to all the respect that rank deserves. Ask that defense counsel refer to him as ‘Colonel Hernandez.’”

“Fine, Your Honor,” Claire said. “Colonel Hernandez, when you were interviewed by the CID in 1985, were you asked to give a complete version of the events at La Colina?”

“Yes—”

“Thank you. Did you do so?”

“No.”

“I see,” she said, moving hastily along. “Were you aware that when you gave that statement you were under oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“Yes,” he conceded.

“When you testified at the Article 32 hearing, were you also aware that you were under oath to tell the whole truth, so help you God?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I have to admit I’m puzzled, Colonel. Did you consciously think about these details, and then willfully and intentionally not give testimony about these alleged events at the Article 32 hearing?”

The question confused him. He had to think a moment. “Um, yes, but as I explained to you—”

“Just answer the question, please. Colonel, if you didn’t tell the whole truth under oath to the CID investigators, and you didn’t tell the whole truth at the 32 hearing, when you were also under oath — how can we believe what you’re saying now?”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“The whole truth?”

“Right!”

“Because you’re under oath?”

He hesitated. “Because I’m telling the truth.”

“I see. Thank you for clearing that up for the members. You’re telling the whole truth now because you are. Thank you.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Waldron shouted. “Badgering the witness.”

“Move on, Ms. Chapman,” Farrell admonished.

“Colonel Hernandez, did you tell the prosecutor about this before the trial began?”

Hernandez looked uncomfortable again. Claire was learning to read him. “No,” he said at last.

“May I remind you you’re under oath?”

“Your Honor!” Waldron exclaimed.

“I said no,” Hernandez said.

“Colonel Hernandez, did anyone else see the events you describe — the disemboweling of the young boy and so on?”

“Just me and Kubik.”

“Nobody else can corroborate your testimony?”

“I guess not. But I saw it.”

“So we have to rely on your memory from thirteen years ago — which we’ve just seen is seriously unreliable?”

“My memory is not unreliable!” Hernandez exploded. “I told you before, I—”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Claire interrupted.

Hernandez looked plaintively at Waldron. “Can’t I answer the question?” he asked.

“That’s enough,” Farrell boomed.

“Colonel,” Claire said, “I have another question for you. What were you doing, exactly, when you say Sergeant Kubik was doing all these terrible things?”

“I was rousting people from their huts.”

“That must have taken all of your concentration, right? After all, you never knew if the guerrillas might be hiding in one of the huts you were emptying out. Am I right?”

Hernandez looked suspicious. His eyes narrowed. “I could see what Kubik was doing.”

“Really? Let me get this straight. You saw him giving orders to an old man and his family, you saw him going after the old man climbing out the window. You saw him slash the old man’s Achilles tendon. You saw — and heard — him taunt the old man. Then you saw a young boy throw rocks at Kubik. You saw Kubik force the young boy to the ground and cut his stomach. You saw a great deal, didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t help but look. The people were screaming.”

“After he hurt them?”

“And before, when they were afraid about what he was going to do.”

“What span of time would you say these events took place over?”

“Five minutes, maybe. Maybe ten.”

“Ten minutes! You were able to see all of this, in the space of ten minutes — while, at the same time, you were doing some highly dangerous work that required all of your attention — that required, in fact, that you not divert your eyes from what you were doing or you might be killed?”

Hernandez stared at her with sluggish hostility. He seemed defeated. He didn’t reply.

“Unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head, and returned to the table.

“Objection, Your Honor,” Waldron shouted.

“Sustained.”

“Withdrawn,” Claire said as she sat. Tom reached around and squeezed her shoulder.

“Trial counsel, do you have redirect?”

“Yes, sir.” Waldron rose and stood squarely in front of his witness. “Colonel Hernandez, when you came back from El Salvador after this mission was over, you were subjected to a long and rigorous interrogation by the CID, right?”

“Right,” Hernandez said. He had the tone of a parched man who’d finally found a drinking fountain.

“Tell me about this investigation.”

“Man, they were always in my face. They were hardasses.”

“The investigators from the CID?”

“Right. They were doing all this good-cop/bad-cop stuff, and they wanted to polygraph me, and they looked like they were looking to hang me, too, along with Kubik. I figured, if I told them about the twisted stuff I saw Kubik do, they’d have thought I was part of it. Or, you know, why didn’t I stop it?”

“Why didn’t you?” Waldron asked reasonably.

“A crazy guy like that? No way you go near him. We’re trained to stay out of the line of fire, that’s our self-defense training. I knew he was losing it, and I wasn’t going to get in his way.”

“You thought they were going to charge you with the crime,” Waldron suggested.

“They always shoot the survivor.”

“But your thoughts weren’t just about saving yourself, were they?”

“I figured if this came out it would just blacken the army’s name even more. I didn’t want to hand that to these CID guys. I was hoping this would just die its own death, you know what I mean?”

“What about Kubik?” Waldron asked, leading egregiously. “I thought you didn’t much like the guy?”

“‘Like’ had nothing to do with it. We weren’t exactly friends, yeah. But I did train with the guy, and he saved my life not two months before — he pulled me back when I almost stepped on a mine in Nicaragua. He saw the trip wire before I did.”

“So you felt you owed it to him to, maybe, minimize his crimes,” Waldron said.

“Yeah. Then, at the 32, I thought I might get in trouble if I brought it up — like, false swearing or whatever it’s called. I mean, I’ve really been agonizing over this. But I finally decided I gotta tell the truth here.”

“Thank you,” Waldron said, satisfied.

“Defense counsel, do you have any re-cross?” Judge Farrell asked.

Claire cradled her chin in a cupped hand and thought a brief moment. “Uh, yes, Your Honor.” She rose. “Colonel Hernandez, you love the army, don’t you?”

He replied without hesitation: “Yes, I do.”

“How many times have you served with General Marks?”

“Several times.”

“Five tours of duty, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it a fact that, every time you served with General Marks, he was your immediate supervisor, and you even socialized with him after hours?”

Hernandez hesitated but a moment. “Yes,” he replied crisply.

“You’d follow General Marks anywhere, wouldn’t you?”

He paused for a moment, then gave her a steely stare. “I have many times, and I would again. The general likes to surround himself with people he can trust, and I know he trusts me, and I know I trust—”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Claire said.

“Your Honor,” Waldron interrupted, “where’s this going?”

“Yes,” the judge said, “enlighten me, counsel.”

“Bias, Your Honor.”

“Fine,” Farrell said. “Proceed.”

“Now, Colonel, why is it that we cannot find a single After Action Report on the incident of 22 June 1985 at La Colina, even a classified one?”

Hernandez gave her a look at once imperious and vacant. “Maybe you haven’t looked hard enough.”

“Oh, we’ve looked high and low, Colonel,” Claire said. “In fact, Major Waldron has assured me — has given us his word as an officer and, further, as an officer of this court — that no such report exists. Are you telling me that you did not do one?”

“That’s correct. I did not do one.”

“Do you know of anyone else who wrote an After Action Report on the incident of 22 June 1985?”

“No.”

“Well, was there any other type of account you know of concerning this alleged massacre at La Colina on 22 June 1985?”

He paused. “I believed the CO did one, but I didn’t see it.”

“The CO being General Marks, then Colonel Marks?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” she said with a glint in her eyes. “I have nothing further.”

40

The three attorneys sat at a table in a coffee shop in Manassas.

“Well, that sucks,” Grimes said, tucking into an outsized wedge of sour-cream coffee cake. The owners of the shop knew him and obviously liked him. “Panel members, they’re going to eat up Hernandez’s motive for holding back — helping out a buddy, esprit de corps, protecting the army’s good name. Shit, only thing he left out was God.”

Claire sipped a black coffee and looked balefully at the NO SMOKING sign posted on the wall directly above their table. “But it’s a lie,” she said. Embry nodded and took a sip of coffee.

“You think the guy just dreamed up that stuff to spice up his story? Sort of like icing on the cake? Or Waldron told him to suddenly ‘remember’ it?”

Embry put in: “Waldron must have had something to do with it. Hernandez had all the right reasons — it’s not like he tried to claim he’d forgotten.”

“Maybe so,” Grimes said, “but the panel won’t think that.”

“So they’re one up on us,” she said. “You think I should have re-crossed?”

Embry shook his head, puzzled. Grimes spoke first. “Maybe,” he said at length. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

She nodded. “Fair enough. It was a tough call. A criminal trial is a psychodrama — and a crapshoot.”

The owner, or owner’s wife, appeared with a pot of coffee. She was an ample-bosomed, middle-aged black woman who smelled of sweat and Opium. She laid her free hand on Grimes’s shoulders. “Refill, sugar?”

He held out his mug. “Thanks, babe.”

“Anyone else?” she asked. Embry and Claire shook their heads no. “How’s my coffee cake, honey?” she asked Grimes.

“Tastes just like my mamma used to make, before she got arrested.”

The woman stopped short for an instant, baffled. Grimes laughed, ha-ha! “But it’s not as sweet as you,” he said.

“Not like you’d know,” she said mock sternly, and moved on.

“At least we’ve got Mark Fahey,” Embry said.

“One witness to their ten,” Claire said mordantly. “Has he been served with a subpoena yet?”

Embry nodded. “Prosecution’s been notified. Fahey will be here in three days, ready to testify.”

“Wonder what kind of rat hole the government puts him up at,” Grimes said, and shoveled another immense forkload of coffee cake into his mouth.

“What’s up with the transcription?” Claire asked.

“I’ve hired five different transcriptionists,” Embry replied. “This is going to cost big-time.”

“I need to read over Abbott. He done yet?” she asked.

“Close. Maybe by tonight; I’ll call. These women are working ’round the clock. That’s why it’s so expensive.”

Grimes looked up. Crumbs had colonized the lines around his mouth. “You still getting spooky phone calls?”

Claire nodded. “Yeah, but if I let the answering machine get them, he hangs up. Funny, he doesn’t seem to want to leave us a voice sample. Ray says the FBI’s got nothing on the trap-and-trace: the caller moves around to different exchanges; he’s only on for a few seconds.”

“He’ll stop,” Grimes said. “He’s made his point — trying to unnerve you — but it didn’t work.”

“You guys mind if I leave you here?” Embry asked. “I’ve got a boatload of ballistics stuff to go over, and I’m working on an idea.”

“Share,” Claire said.

“When I’ve checked it out,” Embry said, standing up.

After Embry had left, Claire told Grimes about the call from Lentini.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said. “So he turns up after all. Man, this guy must be in deep fucking cover.”

“For good reason, I’d guess.”

“I want to go with you. We know nothing about him, and I don’t like mysteries.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Grimes seemed to consider this for a moment. “Can I ask you something?”

She looked at him.

“Was that all cooked up — that Post stuff?”

“No,” she admitted.

He nodded slowly. He was silent for a moment. “Shit, Claire,” he said at last, “we all make mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” she said with a bitter laugh.

“We all got skeletons in our closet. Stuff we wish we’d never done.”

She didn’t say anything, embarrassed to be talking about this with Grimes, but he gamely forged ahead. “General Marks said pursuing this case could be hazardous to your career. Guess he meant it, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“You think he, or one of his people, sent out people to dig stuff up?”

“My guess is it came up in the FBI background check. One of my professors at Yale.” She gave his name. Grimes, recognizing the name, nodded. “All it takes is someone in CID who’s friendly to the general.”

“Like just about anyone with ambitions,” Grimes said. “Suck up to the boss. You want to bring this up to the judge, get an investigation going?”

“For what? So he can say no, or, worse, he can order an investigation that goes nowhere? There won’t be any fingerprints on this.”

Robert Lentini had selected, as a rendezvous point, a hilltop restaurant some sixty miles northwest of D.C., in the Catoctin mountain range in Maryland. The first sign for MOUNTAIN CHALET was posted on Route 70 by the turnoff, in fake old-style Germanic lettering. She could see the restaurant from the highway, lit up, perched atop a hill like an Alpine ski resort. The approach was a long, narrow uphill road with barely enough room for two cars traveling in both directions. It wound up the hillside at such a steep grade that she could feel the rented car’s engine strain, the automatic transmission shift into lower and lower gear.

She parked in the small lot. There were only three other cars here, and it seemed to be the only parking area. She could see why he’d chosen this particular location. It wasn’t for her convenience, certainly, or for the garish ersatz Alpine decor, or, she guessed, for the food. It was instead the vantage point. From here you could see the countryside in all directions for miles.

Still sitting in the car, she checked the concealed Uher tape recorder Ray had taped to the small of her back. A wire came around to the front, taped to the side of her brassiere. With a quick motion she switched it on: the tiny on-off switch nestled beside her left breast. To anyone who might be watching, she’d simply appear to be scratching herself. She shuffled through the papers in her leather portfolio and, in another unseen gesture, switched on the miniature backup tape recorder concealed there, disguised as a pack of Marlboro cigarettes (not her brand, but she wasn’t going to quibble). There was, of course, the risk that he’d check to see whether she was wearing a wire, but she was willing to take that risk.

She did not expect Lentini to make himself available to testify in court.

She got out of the car, holding the portfolio, and made her way to the main entrance. The decor inside set her teeth on edge: cobblestone-paved floor, low wood-beamed ceiling (the beams looked fake even at a distance), artificially weathered wooden table, kitschy imitation stained-glass windows, a large artificial fireplace with roaring gas flames licking phony logs even in the summer heat. She found a table by a window overlooking a valley, and waited.

Nine o’clock came and went, and still she waited. She ordered a Coke.

At twenty past nine she wondered whether he would show up at all. She made a circuit of the almost empty restaurant and found only couples. No one who might possibly be Lentini. She asked the maître d’, who said that no one had mentioned meeting anybody. She called home; Jackie said no one had left a message for her.

At nine-forty-five she decided to leave. It was extremely unlikely she’d gotten the place wrong, unless there was more than one imitation-Swiss mountainside chalet in this remote Maryland town, which seemed improbable. More likely was that he had changed his mind, or for some reason had been scared off.

She left a few dollars for her Coke and went out to the parking lot. Two other cars there now. No sign of anyone who might remotely resemble Lentini.

Annoyed, she got in the car, started it up, and pulled out of the lot, half expecting him to arrive in his car as she was leaving. But no. She’d been stood up.

She maneuvered the car down the narrow mountain road. It was dark, and she was concerned that a car approaching from the opposite direction might whip around a bend and smash into her. So she flashed her brights as she approached the first hairpin turn, and braked to slow down as well.

And the brake pedal sank to the floor.

“Jesus,” she exclaimed, trying the brakes again and finding only a dead pedal. The bend in the road loomed closer. She turned the steering wheel abruptly to avoid going off the road and into the ravine.

The car accelerated from the natural gravitational pull, faster and faster, and she swung the wheel over to the left, then the right, as the road shimmied ahead of her and rushed toward her. She tried the brakes one last time, and nothing. Not working.

Spinning the wheel first to one side, then to another, the car speeding faster and faster down the incline, she yanked the emergency-brake lever upward. It pulled up easily, too easily, and the lever jiggled up and down uselessly.

“Oh, God,” she keened. Her eyes were frozen on the road ahead. The car careened, trees flying by in a blur, faster and faster and faster, and the thought suddenly leaped into her mind that any second another car might approach, and her stomach seized up.

“No!” she shouted. “No! God, no!”

Her eyes were blurry with tears, but they did not move from the headlong rush of the paved road ahead, her hands clenching the steering wheel with a death grip. The car hurtled forward wildly, now sixty, seventy miles an hour, accelerating madly. For a split second she felt herself at a remove, looking down calmly at this terrifying scene; then the next second she was screaming at the top of her lungs, petrified in her seat, immobilized while the car plummeted down the road. She shifted into neutral, but that made little difference.

Should I switch off the ignition? No, don’t dare, that would shut off the steering!

She spun the wheel left, then right, then left, then right, as the road whipped by and the trees and boulders on either side were dark blurs.

And then she saw, parked in the dead center of the road just ahead, a green military jeep, two large gas cans at its rear.

There was no way to avoid crashing into it!

She made an instant decision and spun the wheel to the left, steering the car sharply up the steep embankment overgrown with brush. As the car ran over the low bushes, rocks and branches crunching loudly, it slowed considerably, just what she’d hoped would happen, and she forced her left hand from the wheel, reached down for the car door, couldn’t find it, fumbled around, not daring to take her eyes off the road; then her hand touched steel, and she grabbed at the handle and pulled it, and the door flung open—

— and with a gasp of terror she leaned to her left, tucked her head in, and tumbled out onto the embankment, her head striking something hard among the brush, the taste of blood and fear metallic in her mouth, her eyes shut tight, a terrible crack of pain shooting up her neck, and then she heard the car lurch on forward, veering back onto the road, and strike something. There was a horrifying crunch of steel.

Crouched along the side of the road, half in the pine needle — covered soft earth, half on the asphalt, her head throbbing, she opened her eyes and stared ahead and saw that her car had crashed into the jeep, and then there was a cataclysmic, deafening explosion, and she shut her eyes, and even through her eyelids she saw the brilliant flash of light that was a gasoline fire, and she scrambled to her feet and turned and ran up the road, screaming.

A few minutes later, though it seemed hours, stumbling and weaving up the pitch-dark road, she remembered she was wearing her cell phone.