High Crimes (18 page)

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.

Complete dead silence on the phone. She was about to hang it up when a voice came on.

An odd, metallic voice, metallic and hollow. Synthesized. “You should ask yourself who really wants him put away.”

The voice was low-pitched and electronically altered.

“Who is this?” Claire demanded.

“Waldron’s only the point man,” the voice said. Then dead, flat silence.

“Who is this?” Claire repeated.

And the call was disconnected.

She was unable to go back to sleep for more than an hour.

CHAPTER THIRTY

In his
baby-blue prison jumpsuit and manacles, Tom looked peculiarly vulnerable. His chasers, the two beefy brig guards, stood by, warily watching him examine a machine gun. They stood in a large empty room off one of the armories at Quantico.

The weapon, an M-60, was forty-four inches long and was sealed in a long plastic bag and tagged as evidence. Allegedly it was Tom’s gun, the one he’d used while serving with Detachment 27, the one he’d allegedly used to slaughter eighty-seven civilians. To Claire it was just a machine gun; she’d never seen one up close before.

She and Grimes waited in a couple of metal chairs in the armory while he turned it over and scrutinized it.

“Do you know,” Grimes said, “they call Quantico Camp Sleepy Hollow?”

“Why’s that?” Claire said without bothering to feign interest.

“Since it’s so quiet and wooded.”

“And so peaceful,” Claire said mordantly. “I want Embry back.”

“What?”

“You hear me. I want Embry back on the team.”

“What makes you think he’ll come back?”

“Because they’ve probably got him doing drug busts and drunk-driving stuff. He’ll jump at the chance.”

“He quit, don’t forget. We didn’t fire him.”

“We shamed him into quitting. We also wronged him. We accused him of leaking, when now we know they had the office bugged. We need him. We need an insider, you said so yourself. We need someone to interview and develop witnesses, do all the scut work that you and I don’t have time for.”

“Hey, you don’t have to convince me. Talk to him. I sure as hell won’t.” In a louder voice he called out to Tom: “That look familiar?”

“What can I say?” Tom said. “I mean, how do I know it’s mine? Seriously. I mean, it’s an M-60. We used M-60s.”

“Obviously we’ll have our independent examiner look at it, and the bullets and shell casings,” Claire said. “I don’t trust them.”

“I wonder why,” Grimes said. “There’s a serial number on there. Stamped on the receiver. Look familiar?”

“Grimes,” Tom said, “you don’t really think I can remember the gun’s serial number after all these years?”

“Just trying to help. I thought you covert-action boys file down the serial numbers so they never get identified in case they’re found.”

“Old wives’ tale,” Tom said. “We were part of the army—we need serial numbers just like everyone else to keep track of weapons. We were just fancy about it. We used sterile weapons—new guns purchased by the Panamanian or Honduran governments, so there’s no chain of custody.”

“Shouldn’t it be a simple matter to figure out whether this was the gun used to kill all those people?” Claire asked.

“Sure,” Grimes replied. “Run the ballistics, compare the shell casings and the bullets to the barrel of the machine gun, see if you got a match.”

“And if there’s a match?” Claire asked. “How can they prove Tom fired it?”

“If there’s a match,” Tom said wearily, “then it wasn’t my gun.” All of a sudden he sounded defeated.

“But were there records of who got which gun?”

He shrugged, studied the floor. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Each one of us was issued one machine gun, one rifle, one pistol. We used the same one every time. You had to sign it out.”

“So there’s records,” Claire said.

“Armory records,” Grimes said.

“But we don’t have them.”

“Haven’t come in yet. Maybe they don’t have them either.”

“If it’s exculpatory,” she said, “I bet they ‘lose’ them. Without the armory records, they don’t have a case.”

“It may be my weapon,” Tom said, even more slowly, covering his eyes with a hand, “but if it is … it wasn’t the one that fired the rounds. And if it’s the one that fired the rounds…” He made a sudden hiccuping sound. “Claire?”

She looked at him sharply. It was a sob, which he’d tried to stifle. He was weeping. The suddenness of it frightened her.

He lurched forward toward her. His chasers vaulted forward and grabbed him, threw him down on the floor. There was a loud crack: his skull hitting the floor. The guards seemed to take some satisfaction in it. He howled in pain.

“Jesus,” Grimes said.

“What are you doing?” Claire shouted.

“She’s my wife, for Christ’s sake!” Tom said. “I don’t have the right to touch her?” The guards were silent. “Claire, I want to talk to you! Alone!”

“We can’t allow that, ma’am,” one of them said.

“This is a legal visit,” she said. “We have the right to talk without you present.”

*   *   *

They moved Tom to the defense shop and waited outside one of the empty offices with Grimes while Claire and Tom talked.

By now Tom seemed to have regained his composure. “I’m sorry about that. It’s just that it’s sinking in.”

“What is?”

“What’s happening to me.
United States
v.
Ronald Kubik.
I think maybe I was in a state of denial. But this is real. This is happening. They’re never going to let me go. I realize that now. This is real.”

“I know what you’re feeling,” she said softly. Her chest felt tight. She wanted to cry on his shoulder but knew she mustn’t lose it; he needed to see strength and confidence, whether she felt it or not. “It’s a nightmare, a nightmare for all of us. But you’ve got to keep the faith. Grimes and I are doing all we can. We’re not going to let them get away with anything. I promise you.”

*   *   *

“Embry,” he said when he answered the phone.

“Terry.”

“Ms.—Claire. Hi.” He seemed glad to hear her voice. “How’s it going?”

“Same old same old,” she said. “We need you back.”

A long, long pause. “You figured out I wasn’t the leak.”

“I never thought you were.”

“Does Grimes want me back? Or is it just you?”

“Yes, he does too. Definitely.”

“But aren’t you guys always going to be suspicious? I mean, don’t you want me to take the polygraph?”

“How do we know you weren’t trained to beat it?” she said with a laugh.