High Crimes (24 page)

“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.”

CHAPTER FORTY

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 N
O
S
MOKING
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 M
OUNTAIN
C
HALET
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.