High Crimes

He nodded again. He reached his free hand across the table and held hers.

“No joke,” she said. “You’ve been joined to a headquarters-and-service company, on paper anyway. After thirteen years they’ve got you back on active-duty status. The good news is, you start drawing pay again.” She flashed a fake smile.

“How’s my little girl?” he asked.

“She’s okay. She misses you. I kissed her goodbye this morning. Jackie took her to school. It’s her last day. End of the school year.”

“Early in the morning for Jackie, isn’t it?” He gave a rueful smile.

“She’s a trouper. I got the first flight out of Logan. I’m basically running on fumes.”

“Are you going back to Boston today?”

“Probably not.”

“Where are you staying?”

“For now, some Quality Inn right outside the Quantico gates.”

“What am I charged with?”

It occurred to her for the first time that Tom had been kept entirely in the dark. They’d flown him directly to the marine base at Quantico on one of the U.S. Marshals Service DC-9s — “Con Air,” they called their fleet of planes — and trundled him into a holding cell, stripped him, confiscated all his possessions, printed him, photographed him, gave him a regulation haircut. Thrown him into Cell 3, Cell Block B, wearing nothing but army-issue shorts. Told him nothing. All the U.S. Marshals had told her was that they had been subjected to a sophisticated new incapacitating agent, a formula that had been developed after the FBI’s fiascos at Waco and Ruby Ridge. The grenades burned a formula that contained a built-in antidote, so that as soon as the two of them were knocked out, a chemical immediately started waking them up. Within an hour both of them were awake, though groggy and nauseated.

They’d threatened her with all kinds of charges: they were furious at her evasion and at first refused to allow her to see Tom. In the end, though, the FBI men had backed down. Legally, they couldn’t do anything to her. She had a right to meet with her husband; it was as simple as that. The next day she flew to Washington National Airport, rented a car, and drove to Quantico, Virginia.

“I don’t know,” Claire said. “Officially you haven’t been charged. They don’t have to do that yet. Some system they got here.”

“They made me sign a confinement order.”

She scowled. “Don’t sign anything.”

“It was just to acknowledge that I’d read it.”

“What did it say?”

“Just the ‘nature of the offense.’”

“Which is?”

“Desertion. Nothing else. Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I guess they drew up those charges years ago, after I disappeared.”

She nodded. “And more to come. Did they read you your rights?”

“Yep.”

“Damn. Now we need to find you an attorney.”

“What about you?”

“Me? What the hell do I know about military justice?”

“They’ll assign me a military attorney automatically. He’ll know all the military stuff.”

She shook her head slowly. “We have to find you an outside attorney who really knows what he’s doing. In addition to whoever they assign to you.”

“How?”

“I’ll find someone. Don’t worry about it.”

“Claire, don’t you realize what’s going on here? Don’t you know what they’re planning to do to me? They’re going to put on a court-martial. A fucking kangaroo court. They’ll probably do it in secrecy. They’ll find me guilty, and then they’ll lock me away in Leavenworth, or maybe some special Pentagon facility no one’s ever heard of, for the rest of my life. Which won’t be long, because soon they’ll ‘discover’ me dead in my cell, presumably a suicide.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Have you seen my cell, Claire? You can see it from here — look.”

The guard entered. “Time,” he said.

“We’re not finished yet,” Claire said.

“Sorry,” the guard said. “Commander’s orders.”

Tom pointed with his free hand. Through the open door she could see his cell, just a green mattress on a metal shelf and a steel toilet-sink unit.

“Claire,” Tom said, “I need you.”

15

Despairing and angry and, above all, confused, Claire sat in the rental car for a long time after leaving the brig. She felt lost and powerless and didn’t know who to turn to for help, and finally she took out her cell phone and called an old friend.

Arthur Iselin, a prominent Washington attorney who was her old boss and a trusted friend, agreed to meet her for an early lunch at the Hay-Adams. Iselin was a partner at one of the biggest and most powerful law firms in Washington. Fresh out of law school, she had clerked for him when he was solicitor general. He was then, and remained, one of the wisest men she knew.

Without asking, the waiter brought him his regular, the farmer’s omelet with piping-hot biscuits, which he slathered with plenty of butter. No health fanatic, he. Nearby sat the White House chief of staff with a Republican senator; Iselin, who knew them both, nodded at them.

“You know, there’s an old saying,” he said. He had widely spaced gray eyes, under which were deep circles, and a large mouth with large lips, the bottom one appearing to be split. “Military justice is to justice as—”