The Tears of Dark Water (61 page)

He felt the instinct to touch her face, but he restrained himself. “That’s kind of you,” he replied, embarrassed at the way his heart was pounding. “But it doesn’t make things right.”

“Nothing will,” she said quietly. “All we can do is move on.”

He thought about her words. She could have used the singular “you,” but instead she used the plural “we.” Was it intentional? He wanted it to be. But it was absurd. No one would understand it—well, Megan would, but no one else. People would judge him, accuse him of taking advantage of her when he had done nothing but try to protect her family. He thought of Daniel in the Conex box on the
Truman
and forced his desire aside.
I lost him
, he thought bitterly.
I won’t tread on his grave.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said at last, and saw the way his words wounded her.

She hugged herself. “I know it’s crazy. It doesn’t make any sense. But when I look at the Bösendorfer, I don’t just see Quentin anymore. I see you.”

His resolve began to waver. He looked into her eyes and remembered what she had said about Quentin and Ariadne. He didn’t know where the road would lead, but right now her affection was a precious gift. “Okay,” he said, giving in to the voice in his heart. “I’ll try.”

She grazed his hand with her fingers. “That’s all I ask.”

Megan

Norfolk, Virginia

June 25, 2012

At nine in the morning on the sixth day of the trial, Megan pushed aside the pigskin doors and entered Courtroom One. When she was trying a case, she always made a point to arrive an hour before anyone else. She loved to sit alone in the vaulted chamber, surrounded by portraits of justice past and present, and absorb the silence. A courtroom was a sacred space to her, like a mountaintop above the clouds. It gave her room to reflect and prepare for the day ahead.

She sat down at the defense table and surveyed the vacant bench. Ismail’s trial had commenced as she expected, with a jury selection process that weeded out everyone who might have sympathy for either side. Judge McKenzie had given her wide latitude to strike jurors for cause—anyone who had served, or had family serving, in the armed forces; anyone who had been a victim of gun violence or knew someone who had been; anyone employed by the government. In a death penalty case, there were a host of constitutional tripwires. The judge wanted to avoid a biased jury at all cost.

Once the jury was empaneled, however, Megan had entered uncharted territory, following Ismail’s instructions precisely as he had articulated them. She listened to Clyde Barrington’s opening statement with dread. The story he told was so damning that she would have had difficulty countering it with her hands untied. In Ismail’s straitjacket, however, she could only make bald assertions that sounded more like the sniping of the guilty than the protestations of the innocent. She told the jury that the government’s case rested upon speculation and falsehood. There were two shooters, not one, and the other pirates were lying for reasons Ismail would make clear when he testified. But that was as far as she could go. When she sat down again, she caught a sideways glance from the judge that said, “What the hell was that?”
I know
, Megan thought.
This is crazy.

She had taken some solace in cross-examining Captain Masters, eliciting two key admissions from him—that the Navy’s confrontational approach had increased the risk that the pirates would retaliate, and that any number of available alternatives would have diminished that risk. But he balked when she invited him to cross swords with Captain Redman, labeling the SEAL commander’s disputes with Paul “constructive discussions.” Thankfully, Paul had set the record straight. With the help of Kiley Frost, he succeeded in sowing doubt in the minds of the jurors that the government was telling the whole story. That doubt and the far-fetched tale Ismail would recount when he testified were all that stood between him and a death sentence.

Megan took out her legal pad. Today, Barrington planned to call two witnesses: Redman and Mas. She reviewed her outline and added notes here and there. A few minutes later, she heard the doors swing open behind her. She turned around and saw a Somali man in a blue-checked shirt take a seat in the corner of the gallery. Her heart lurched when she met his eyes. He had attended every minute of the trial, sitting alone and talking to no one. Ismail pointed him out during jury selection and explained his presence. She didn’t believe him at first, but as time passed, she began to wonder.

What is your name?
she wanted to ask.
Did Gedef’s family really send you?
She shook her head.
If I have a hard time understanding the truth, how can I convince the jurors to believe it?

Two hours later, Megan walked to the podium and stared into the face of Frank Redman. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the twelve-foot black curtain that the Court had erected in front of the gallery to conceal his identity from the public. Only parties to the case, lawyers, and government officials with a Top Secret security clearance were allowed on this side of the barrier.

“Good morning, Captain,” she said in a friendly voice.

“Good day, counselor,” Redman replied.

Megan made a show of looking down at her notes, but her real intention was to let Redman squirm. It was a trick she used to tenderize adversarial witnesses. For over an hour, Barrington had tossed the SEAL commander softball questions, deferring to his judgment almost obsequiously. She knew Redman was accustomed to royal treatment. In the military, he was a demigod. But Megan wasn’t impressed. To her he was just another man in uniform with an outsized ego and a penchant for violence. This was her turf. By the time she finished with him, he would know the meaning of humility.

Eventually, she looked up again. “Captain, you said that one of the first things you did when you arrived on the
Gettysburg
was to deploy your sniper unit around the ship, is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Redman said.

“I suppose that’s no different from what a SWAT team does? As soon as you get to the scene, you put the bad guy in your crosshairs.”

Redman’s eyes flashed in irritation. “It’s quite a bit different, actually. My team isn’t in the business of law enforcement. We’re a special-operations unit with sea, air, and land capabilities.”

Megan nodded. “Would it be fair to say that, as a military unit, your business is war?”

Redman bristled at her word choice. “Our business is saving American lives and prosecuting the enemies of the United States wherever they may be found.”

Megan gave the jury a look of puzzlement. “When you say ‘prosecute,’ you don’t mean like Mr. Barrington here? He prosecutes with paper. You use bullets.”

Redman frowned. “I’m not interested in semantic games. I’m certain everyone here understands what my team does.”

Megan smiled sardonically. “Captain, if bullets were only a matter of semantics, we would live in a very different world.”

Clyde Barrington rose to his feet. “Objection.”

“Sustained,” said Judge McKenzie. “Please move on, Ms. Derrick.”

Megan nodded. “As a
military
commander, you’re not trained in the art of negotiation, are you?”

Redman grimaced. “Some of my SEALs have been cross-trained in negotiation. I’ve taken classes myself, and I’ve worked with negotiators before. There isn’t much to it, really.”

“About as much as putting a bad guy in your crosshairs, I suppose,” Megan said.

On cue, Barrington voiced his objection, and Megan said, “I withdraw the question.”

“Captain,” she went on, “isn’t it true that before your team deployed to the Indian Ocean, the White House asked the FBI to send a team of hostage negotiators to offer you advice in your quest to obtain the safe release of Daniel and Quentin Parker?”

Redman nodded. “That’s correct.”

Megan held out her hands in a gesture of reasonableness. “Are you aware that the lead negotiator deployed to the
Gettysburg
, Paul Derrick, has more experience in international kidnapping incidents than anyone in the U.S. government?”

Redman began to fidget with his hands. “I wasn’t aware of that. But, as you said, he was sent as an advisor. The White House put my team in charge of the incident.”

Megan gave him a frank look. “So what you’re saying is that you had no obligation to
accept
Paul Derrick’s advice? He could offer it, but you were free to ignore it.”

Redman took a breath, trying to contain his frustration. “Derrick was not part of my chain of command. I valued his opinion, but I didn’t always agree with it.”

Beautiful
, Megan thought.
Keep it up.
“Let’s talk about your orders for a minute. Who told you not to allow the pirates to take Daniel and Quentin Parker to Somalia?”

Redman shrugged. “I received my orders from my commander. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“Did the order make sense to you?”

“Of course,” said the SEAL commander testily. “If we had let the pirates take the Parkers to land, they would have achieved their objective. America isn’t interested in letting hostage takers win, Ms. Derrick. Other countries might not care, but we do.”

Megan raised her eyebrows. “So your goal was to prevent the pirates from winning?”

Redman shot her an angry look. “My mission was to secure the safe release of the hostages. I had to work within certain parameters. But the parameters were not the mission.”

“Of course,” Megan said breezily. “But this wasn’t a military engagement, was it? The pirates weren’t terrorists or enemy combatants.”

Redman shifted impatiently in his seat. “They were holding two American sailors at gunpoint. We treated them as enemy combatants. There’s a long history of this, Ms. Derrick. In the old days, the Navy called pirates
hostis humani generis
—enemies of all mankind.”

Touché
, Megan thought. It was a fair point, but she pressed him anyway. “If they were enemy combatants, then why weren’t you authorized to use deadly force against them?”

Redman hesitated, sensing the snare but not seeing any way around it. “Tactical action always entails risk. We didn’t want to endanger the hostages.”

Megan glanced at the jury and saw that they were riveted by the exchange. “Your orders were to negotiate with the pirates, correct?”

“Yes,” Redman admitted.

Megan looked quizzical. “Let me get this straight. The government put an elite unit of Navy SEALs trained in the art of warfare in charge of a hostage negotiation, and gave the people trained in the art of negotiation only an advisory role. Can you explain that?”

“In a hostage event, tactical action is always a possibility,” Redman said. “That’s why we were in charge. But Paul Derrick handled the negotiation with my oversight.”

Megan left the podium and moved toward the witness stand. “Let’s talk about the negotiation. You didn’t trust Ismail, did you? You thought he was acting in bad faith.”

Redman leaned forward in his chair. “As a general rule, I don’t trust anyone holding a gun to the head of innocent people.”

“Exactly. In your mind, he was an enemy combatant, not a partner in resolving the standoff.”

“Pardon my density,” Redman said, “but I’ve never thought of a hostage taker as my partner in anything. Ismail was an obstacle to fulfilling my mission.”

Megan tilted her head skeptically. “That makes it hard to negotiate, doesn’t it? Unless you take the view that the other side has to make all the concessions.”

The SEAL commander tried to hide his disgust. “Ms. Derrick, we offered Ismail ample opportunity to release the hostages and return to Somalia. He didn’t want to deal with us.”

“Paul Derrick disagreed with you on this point, didn’t he?” Megan insisted. “He believed that Ismail was acting in good faith. That’s why he suggested, over your objection, that the government allow Ismail to negotiate with the family.”

Redman shrugged. “As I said, Agent Derrick and I didn’t always agree. These scenarios are very fluid and evolve quickly. In this case, the people up the chain of command sided with him. But it didn’t work out the way he wanted. Your client betrayed us in the end.”

Megan stood perfectly still, weighing her options. If she asked the question her instinct told her to ask, it could blow up in her face. But if it worked, it could drive the thorn of doubt so deeply into the mind of the jury that they would look at Ismail with new eyes. She decided to go for broke.

“Isn’t the truth exactly the opposite?” she asked quietly. “Isn’t it you who betrayed him?”

Redman’s eyes took on a furious light. “How dare you,” he growled. “I’ve devoted my entire life to the cause of freedom. Your client is a brigand and a murderer. He promised us he would release the hostages when the money was delivered. The money came and he reneged. When we demanded that he honor his word, he shot the hostages in cold blood. Your accusation is not only wrong; it is a disgrace to the justice system you claim to serve.”