High Crimes

“I just may,” Claire replied. “But it’s clear to me that the only justification for keeping this whole business so top secret is to keep certain persons from being embarrassed. There’s clearly no real national-security justification, given that the events we’re talking about are thirteen years old.”

“The national security—” Waldron began.

“It’s just us here talking,” Claire said. “No investigating officer to play to. Just us. So we can be honest. You see, I really don’t quite get the point of putting my husband through a court-martial. Why didn’t you guys just lock him away in a loony bin?”

“That’s actually where he belongs,” Waldron shot back. “Your husband is a sociopath, a twisted, sick bastard. He demonstrated that as an assassin in Vietnam. He was a legend, a sicko legend in that covert world. But he was brilliant, he spoke a bunch of different languages and dialects perfectly, and he had no compunction about killing his fellow human beings. He was perfect for the military’s purposes. Just like the U.S. government hired those Nazis at the end of World War Two. Only the Pentagon thought they could control Kubik. But he lost it.”

“Ask yourself what the brass really want,” Claire said. “Say whatever lies you want to about my husband; the folks at the top really just want to keep all this buried. They want to make sure the fact of a U.S. massacre in El Salvador never becomes public. And we’re prepared to agree to that. You drop the charges now, and we’ll agree to complete secrecy. In writing if you want. Nothing will ever come out. But if you let this go to court-martial, you’ll destroy the chief of staff of the army. This I promise you. And I’ll go public with the story — the whole world will know. You’ve gotta ask yourself, do you really want that? He goes down, you do too.”

Waldron smiled. It was an unpleasant, feral smile, the smile of someone who rarely did. “I really don’t give a shit who wants to cover their ass. Or who goes down. My job here is to prosecute a mass murderer, to get him put in Leavenworth for the rest of his pointless life. And preferably executed. That’s my job. And I’ll do it happily. I’ll see you at trial.”

27

Cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, Claire and Jackie talked. Annie was getting ready for bed, brushing her teeth. Claire, exhausted and ruminative, rinsed off the dishes while Jackie loaded the dishwasher.

“Will someone please explain to me what the deal is with Eeyore?” Jackie said. “I mean, give the poor donkey some Prozac, you know?”

Claire nodded, smiled.

“And this Kubik thing. I can’t call him Ron,” Jackie said. “That’s fucked up.”

“I can’t either. I don’t know what to call him, and there’s something kind of symbolic about that. It’s as if he’s a different person, only I don’t know who or what he is. I see him for five minutes before the hearing starts, we talk business. It’s all business. He says I did a good job, or he asks me something procedural. I go to visit him in the brig, and we talk about the case. All business.”

“Isn’t that the way it should be? You’re defending him, you’re his lawyer, his life is on the line.”

“Yes, you’re right. But he’s not there somehow.”

“Anyone would be scared out of their mind. You mind if I ask something — did you get the polygraph results admitted?”

“Yeah, sure. But it was damaged goods. If I were the investigating officer, I’d think he beat the box because he was trained to do it.”

“And what do you think? I hate this dishwasher.”

“About what?”

“About whether he ‘beat the box’ — whether he pulled one over on the examiner?”

“How can I answer that? He could have — I mean, he apparently knows how to. Yet I don’t think he’d have to — he’s innocent.”

“Okay,” Jackie said guardedly.

“It’s maddening. I’ve defended enough cases against the government where the government persecuted someone or scapegoated someone — a whistle-blower, whatever — so I know how they can do these things. How corrupt they can be. I once defended this guy who was fired from the EPA for whistle-blowing, basically, about this toxic-waste site. And it turned out his supervisor had forged and backdated personnel records, evaluations, to make it look like the guy’d had a drinking problem. When in fact he’d been a model employee. So I’ve seen this stuff happen.”

Jackie turned over one of the hand-painted ceramic dinner plates. “These are cool,” she said. “I’m surprised they’re letting us use them. You think they’re supposed to go in the dishwasher?”

“They didn’t say not to.”

“Can I be straight with you?”

“What?”

“Look, two months ago we both basically thought Tom Chapman was just this great guy — macho, good-looking, great at everything. Real guy guy. Good provider, great dad, great husband, right?”

“Yeah? So?”

“So now we know he was hiding from us. He’s got a different name, he has this creepy secret past—”

“Jackie—”