High crimes, p.17
High Crimes, page 17
A meeting was scheduled for one o’clock that day with the military judge who’d just been detailed to the Ronald Kubik court-martial. As she drove to Quantico, Grimes said, “Well, your complaint certainly sped things along.” He was referring to the complaint she’d filed with the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who took things like unlawful surveillance devices and interference with attorney-client privilege with the gravest concern. “That’s one way to get the military judge named—they wanted to have a judge named to deal with the bugging complaint. Problem is, now we’re fucked.”
“Why?” she said, and glanced at him to see whether he was being ironic.
“We’re fucked because our judge is Warren Farrell, who happens to be a Nazi.”
“How so?” Claire asked.
“He’s what you call a real iron colonel.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what you call a full-bird colonel who’s at his terminal rank, meaning he’s not far from retirement and can’t be threatened. So he can be as outrageous as he wants and piss all over us, which he likes to do to defense lawyers, particularly civilians. He certainly doesn’t give a shit about a reversal down the line.”
“I take it you’ve tried cases before him.”
“Never had the pleasure. Heard a lot, though. He don’t much like dark-green army boys like me.” Grimes paused to take a sip of his take-out coffee. “Great circumstances to be meeting the judge for the first time.”
“What are you talking about? It’s great. Puts them on the defensive, makes us look good by contrast.”
“You don’t know Judge Farrell.”
“What, he’s going to be prejudiced against us because we had the misfortune to have our workspace illegally bugged by the government?”
“It wasn’t necessarily the prosecution,” Grimes said.
“Oh? You got any other candidates?”
“Hell, it could be the Pentagon. Defense Intelligence. Defense Humint Service, or one of those creepy military-intelligence groups they keep locked up in the basement of the Pentagon. Might even be some private organization of old Special Forces alumni who don’t want shit like this coming out. Or want to make sure we lose.”
“Maybe some friends of the general’s,” Claire said. “But FBI’s not going to find fingerprints on anything, are they? The culprits aren’t going to be that sloppy.”
Grimes nodded slowly in distracted agreement. “This kind of shit happens all the time.”
“In the military?”
“Oh, yeah. When I was with the Judge Advocates Corps, prosecuting, I heard all the time about how they’d plant bugs on civilian lawyers. Military doesn’t like civilian lawyers playing in their sandlot, I told you.”
“Bullshit, Grimes. Don’t tell me the prosecution used information they picked up from bugs.”
“Oh, they’d launder it first. Always happens. You find an independent source, attribute it to them. You think I’m kidding?”
“No, I don’t. I just don’t want to think you’re right.”
* * *
The meeting with the military judge was held in camera, in the high-security subbasement courtroom. Waldron was already seated, fuming, when they arrived. He shuffled papers as Captain Hogan talked to him. A court reporter was placing tapes in the Lanier recording machine and testing her equipment. The jury box was empty. Tom was seated at the end of the defense table in his uniform.
In time the bailiff entered the courtroom from the judge’s chambers and called out, “All rise!”
A large, beefy, big-shouldered man, with a shock of white hair, entered. Under his black robe he wore a dress uniform. He was carrying a leather portfolio in one hand and a Pepsi in the other. He looked dyspeptic. Claire was sure he was scowling. Leisurely, he made his way to the bench and flicked a finger against the microphone. Satisfied by the amplified thump, he spoke in a gruff and gravelly voice: “This Article 39(a) session is called to order. Be seated.”
When the defense and prosecution lawyers had sat down, he said, “I’m Judge Farrell.” He put on a pair of black-rimmed half-glasses and consulted some papers on his podium. He ran through a few minutes of preliminaries.
Claire’s heart sank. She’d heard voices like this in Charlestown, in all-white neighborhoods of Boston—self-assured, bigoted, thuggish, clannish. For all she knew he would turn out to be a fair man of judicial temperament, but her instinct told her he was a schoolyard bully.
He spoke as if he was already fed up with the trial, even before it had begun, even before the arraignment. “Now, as you all know, the purpose of this pretrial session is to address a complaint lodged by defense counsel regarding alleged bugs or transmitters or whatnot allegedly found on her premises, within her office.” Warren Farrell’s luxuriant thatch of white hair contrasted with his ruddy face, which was spiderwebbed with the broken veins of a serious drinker. He was a former Golden Gloves boxer, Grimes had said, which would account for his broken-looking nose. Farrell had attended night law school.
“Defense counsel,” he growled, “you have somethin’ to say?”
Claire rose. “Your Honor, I’m Claire Heller Chapman. I’m the lead defense counsel.” She held up a Ziploc plastic evidence bag, clearly marked “FBI” and “EVIDENCE,” containing one of the tiny black transmitters. Very buglike indeed, with its slender black body and long filament tail. The FBI had reluctantly loaned it to her, after great pressure from Ray Devereaux.
“Your Honor,” she went on, “I’ve received technical assistance from the FBI, which is investigating this matter right now, and which confirms that my office has been bugged by parties unknown.” She spoke guardedly for the record, careful not to overstep. “I have reason to believe the government is involved. I would like to move for appropriate relief for disclosure of all intercepted conversations collected from my office. I would respectfully request that you direct the government to disclose any and all information regarding wiretaps, overhears, et cetera, and disclose copies of any and all transcripts or tapes made.”
“Trial counsel?” the judge said wearily.
Waldron vaulted to his feet. “Your Honor, we find these allegations outrageous and clearly intended to prejudice Your Honor against the government. There is no evidence whatsoever that we had anything to do with such an egregious penetration of attorney-client privilege, and, frankly, we resent the accusation.”
Waldron spoke so heatedly, with such righteous indignation, that for a moment Claire actually believed him. Certainly it was possible he knew nothing about the whole sordid business. If Grimes was right that information illegally obtained could be laundered through independent sources, wouldn’t they—whoever “they” were—want to keep Waldron in the dark about where the juicy stuff came from?
“You’re tellin’ me you had nothing to do with this,” Farrell said, fixing Waldron with a beady-eyed glare.
“Your Honor, not only did we have nothing whatsoever to do with this,” Waldron replied in high dudgeon, “but I am personally outraged that—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Farrell said, interrupting Waldron’s tirade as if he were already tired of him, too. “All right, look, I’m going to make this short and sweet. Trial counsel, I’m going to issue an order for the government to show cause that defense counsel’s allegations are untrue, and that the government has had no responsibility for these bugs. Now, in the event that the prosecution has had any involvement in this, I’m requiring you to produce forthwith copies of all transcripts or tapes of conversations intercepted, and to show cause why your conduct is not in violation of the law. And on a personal note, I wanna tell you that, if I find the slightest evidence of any monkey business on either side, there’s goin’ to be hell to pay.” He slammed down his gavel. “That’s all.”
Waldron passed by the defense table on his way out of the courtroom, and before he had a chance to say anything, Claire looked up at his thin-lipped face. “You should know I’m going to move to dismiss for outrageous government conduct,” she told him. “You just blew it, Major. Violating attorney-client privilege is a mammoth violation of due process.” She pursed her lips in disgust. “That was really pathetic. Amateur hour.”
Waldron stared back with his lucid blue-gray eyes. “I hope you don’t seriously think we even need to bug your offices.” He shook his head and gave one of his feral smiles. “You really have no idea, do you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The man whose first name and phone number Tom had scrawled on a scrap of paper in the brig met Claire at a yuppie bar in Georgetown—his choice, although as soon as he arrived he announced that he hated it. Too many antiquarian Italian advertising posters, too many twenty-somethings smoking cigars. But neither one of them made a move to go someplace else.
He was short and trim, athletic-looking, about fifty. He was also entirely bald, shiny-bald, as if he waxed his head, which Claire had heard some men did. Upon closer examination she saw he shaved the hair at the sides of his head, probably daily. He had heavy dark eyebrows and would have looked sinister were it not for his morose demeanor. He made Claire ill at ease.
“I’m Dennis,” he said without offering his hand. She did not expect a Dennis; a Dennis did not have a bullet head.
“Claire,” she said, and didn’t offer hers. For several evenings in a row she’d called the phone number Tom had written down for her, but it was never answered. It was the man’s home phone number, and he had neither an answering machine nor voice mail. It just rang and rang, until last night he’d finally answered.
“Who knows you’re here?” Dennis asked. He wore a decent gray suit and an expensive-looking white shirt with a silvery tie and large gold cuff links.
“Why? Are you going to kill me?”
He wasn’t amused. “You tell any of your cocounsel, any of the military guys?”
“No.” She planned to tell Grimes later, but saw no need to get into that now.
“You don’t have a tape recorder on you, I assume.”
“No, I do not.”
“I’ll take you at your word. I could get into a fair amount of difficulty, so, please, no records of our meetings, don’t tell anyone. You know the drill.”
She nodded. “Do you have a last name, Dennis?”
“Let’s leave it at that for now.”
“How do you know Ronald Kubik?”
“I know him.”
“Vietnam?”
“Rather not get into it.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He flashed a genial smile, although his eyes did not participate.
“Well,” she said. “I’m glad all that’s cleared up. Where do you work?”
“Langley,” he said, his face a blank.
“Ah, the Agency. I might have guessed. I don’t imagine you want to tell me which division you’re in at the Agency.”
He shrugged and smiled. It just missed being a charming, boyish smile. “Can we get down to business?” His gray suit was wrinkled at the armpits, as if he’d been in it all day. This was not a man who worked in shirtsleeves. She guessed he was a fairly senior-ranking official at the CIA. “I assume you don’t know much about how the military works,” he said.
“I’m learning.”
He smiled again. “Like what you see?”
“I’m not planning on enlisting, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, when a combat unit comes back to base after field action, it’s standard for the CO, the commanding officer, to file an incident report. In the army it’s called an After Action Report. So tell me something: I’m sure you guys have filed discovery and all that—did you get a copy of the After Action Report that Colonel Marks filed after the La Colina atrocity?”
“No. We’ve gotten boxes and boxes of papers, but that’s not in there.”
“And it won’t be. It doesn’t exist. I was just curious as to whether they faked something up. The point is this: when Detachment 27 returned to their hooch, Colonel Marks—now General Marks—filed what’s called an MFR. That’s a memorandum for the record. To tell his side of the story, his version of what happened. Three or four lines, handwritten. See, Marks is the sort of guy puts ‘take a dump’ on a list, okay? He maps out everything. There’s a saying in the army—MFR equals CYA. You know the expression CYA?”
“Yeah, we even cover our asses at Harvard Law School.”
He didn’t smile. “You want to get that MFR.”
“How?”
“Specify it in your discovery request.”
“You think we’ll get it?”
“Hard to say. Pentagon’s good at ‘misplacing’ things. Congress tried to get the Pentagon’s files on Guatemala, took ’em five years. Pentagon said they’d misplaced them.”
“Right. So we’re not going to get the MFR. What good’s it going to do us, anyhow? It’s just going to give the same old bullshit line about Tom—er, Ron—massacring a bunch of innocent people.”
“Maybe.”
Claire’s scotch-and-soda was just arriving, but Dennis was already slipping his olive trench coat back on.
“You must have a copy somewhere,” Claire said.
He flashed another orthodontically perfect smile. “Well, as a matter of fact, we might. But you wouldn’t believe what a mess our records are in. I could have one of my girls look. I’ll let you know if she turns anything up.”
“And what’s it going to prove?”
“It may or may not prove Marks is a liar. Look, no one’s going to testify against General Marks. But now maybe you won’t need that.”
* * *
Jackie was still up when Claire returned. They went into the small “rec room” off the laundry room for scotch and cigarettes. So much for her no-smoking-in-the-house rule. Civilization was crumbling.
“Ooh, spy stuff,” Jackie said. “Cool. This guy sounds like what’s-his-name, G. Gordon Liddy. You know, the Watergate guy who used to hold his finger over a lit candle to show how macho he was?”
“I think all bald spooks want to be G. Gordon Liddy.”
“Why’s he helping you?”
“That’s the big question. I guess it’s because he’s a friend of Tom’s.”
“From where?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“You think he’s telling you the truth?”
“We’ll see if he produces anything.”
“But it makes you all the more sure Tom’s telling you the truth.”
“There’s something about Tom’s intensity that tells me that. Independently. It’s the sound of truth spoken by a desperate guy. And he hasn’t lost his faith. You know, last time I visited him at the brig he told me he wanted to go to Mass, but they wouldn’t let him leave his cell. So they brought the chaplain to him.”
“Home delivery. Can’t beat it. You gonna put him on the stand?”
“I don’t know,” Claire said with heavy irony. “Plastic surgery, name change, false identity—I’m sure he’d make a great witness.”
“Oh, right.”
“Not just that. Fact is, I think he’d do well on the stand. I know he would. But if we put him on, all sorts of background stuff, bio stuff, becomes admissible. Stuff they cooked up, though we can’t prove it. What he did in Vietnam, was he a sort of government assassin who killed American deserters, did he do sicko stuff to dogs.”
“Dogs?”
Claire lighted another cigarette. “Funny, isn’t it, how we’re more revolted by killing dogs than human beings?”
“I figure U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were up to no good. Dogs are innocent.” She exhaled a plume of smoke through her nostrils. “Your secretary from Cambridge called. Connie. There’s a long list of people who want to hire you.”
“She told them no, I assume.”
Jackie nodded. “The Post called again. I think they’re really getting pissed off you won’t talk to them.”
“I don’t have to talk to a newspaper reporter.”
“They think they have a moral, God-given right to talk to you.”
A long silence passed.
“Claire,” Jackie said at last.
“Yeah?”
“If there’s a chance—even the remotest chance—that he’s guilty, that he’s the monster the prosecution says he is, do you really want him around Annie?”
“If he were guilty, of course not.”
“That’s good to hear,” Jackie said darkly. “Because for the last few weeks I’ve been under the impression that you’re a wife first and a mom second. Like, way second. Look at Annie, how’s she’s reacting. Look how you’ve been ignoring her.”
Claire looked at Jackie, saw the fury in her face. She’d never seen her sister so angry before. Then again, Jackie was fiercely protective of her niece. “I’m doing the best I can,” Claire said in a subdued tone. “I’m working night and day—”
“Oh, come on,” Jackie said brusquely. “You used to dote on her. Before all this happened. Now you barely talk to her. Jesus fucking Christ, Claire, you’re the only parent that girl has! She needs you really badly. More than your husband does. Your husband can get another lawyer. Annie can’t get another mommy.”
Claire stared in dull shock, unable to reply.
* * *
As she lay in bed for hours, Claire’s mind raced, in a disorganized, useless way. She cried for Annie, for the way she’d neglected her daughter. She didn’t get to sleep until well after two.
At three-thirty-seven in the morning the phone rang.
She jolted awake, fumbled for the phone, heart hammering. “Yes?” She stared at the red digital numbers on the bedside clock.
