High Crimes

“Because you don’t ‘get into’ foreign affairs. Well, sir, don’t you think that, as the lead investigator in a mass-murder case that allegedly took place in a foreign country during a covert operation, you might want to educate yourself about foreign policy and the rules governing covert action?”

“I don’t see why I need to.”

“Really?” Claire said, amazed. “So it’s not important to educate yourself as to whether a U.S. operation violated the laws of the United States in its inception?”

“That’s not my job.”

“So let me get all this straight. You can’t identify a single person who was killed. In fact, you don’t know who was killed, or, indeed, if anyone was killed. So much for element one of the charge — that is, that a ‘certain named or described person is dead.’ We don’t know.

“And, secondly, we don’t even know whether or not this operation took place. And if it did take place, we don’t even know if the operation was authorized. So, heck, we don’t even know whether any of these alleged killings — of which we have no proof — were unlawful. Because we don’t know what was lawful in this case. We have no idea what the President of the United States ordered — assuming this mission even happened at all! So much for element two of the charge — that is, was the killing unlawful.” She shook her head in disgust. “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”

39

This time the call came at close to 4:00 A.M. She answered, said, “Keep it up. We’ll trace you,” then hung up.

Before she left the house that morning, Devereaux called. “The FBI’s close,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“On those mysterious phone calls. They’ve narrowed it down to one of several public payphones within the Pentagon.”

“The Pentagon?”

“Yeah,” Devereaux replied. “Whoever’s trying to scare you doesn’t want to make them from his Pentagon office, I’ll bet. That time of night, you can only get into the Pentagon if you’re an employee or have a pass.”

“That narrows it down to twenty-five thousand people,” she said tartly.

The first day of testimony had been, all told, a good one for the defense. Claire’s cross had been devastating. Waldron’s attempt to rehabilitate the CID man in his redirect was perfunctory and not particularly effective.

But by the end of the second morning of testimony, things took a sudden bad turn for the defense.

Colonel James J. Hernandez was testifying for the government, and for the most part he was repeating the same charges he’d made before. Waldron had put him on in order to establish what the law calls the corpus delicti, the material evidence that a crime has been committed, the body of a murdered person. They had no photographs of bodies, no autopsies, so they would have to present eyewitness testimony that there were in fact bodies — which Hernandez did ably and without a hitch.

Until shortly before lunchtime, when Waldron guided Hernandez to the moment when the unit, in the dead of night, entered the town. Hernandez had approached alongside Ronald Kubik, he testified.

“And what did you proceed to do?” Waldron asked in a seemingly offhand way.

“We went around from hut to hut, rousting people out of there, waking them up, checking for weapons or any signs of the guerrillas.”

“Did you find any weapons or any guerrillas?”

“No, we did not, sir.”

“Did you use your weapons while you were forcing them out of their huts?”

“Only to point at them. Bayonets or rifles or carbines or machine guns, whatever we had on us.”

“You didn’t shoot at them, did you?”

“Didn’t have to. They were scared. They were old men and women, and mothers with babies and little kids. They cooperated right away.”

“Did you see what Sergeant Kubik was doing at that time?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What was he doing?”

Hernandez drew himself up and turned toward the jury. Claire’s attention quickened. When a witness turned toward the jury, or the judge, he was often about to say something that he expected would elicit a reaction.

“He — well, he was doing sicko things.”

“Would you use the term ‘sadistic’?”

“Objection.” Claire shot up. “The witness isn’t a psychiatrist or a mental-health professional, to my knowledge. He’s not qualified to render diagnoses.”

“Your Honor,” Waldron said, clearly annoyed that she had broken his rhythm, “the witness is permitted to characterize actions using words he’s familiar with.”

“Overruled,” Farrell said.

“Go ahead,” Waldron prompted Hernandez. “Did he do things you’d characterize as sadistic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you tell us about those things?”

“Well, one old man tried to escape through the back window of his hut, and Sergeant Kubik, he says, ‘You want to flee? I told you to go out the front door.’ And he hamstrung the guy.”

“Hamstrung?”

“He cut the old man’s Achilles tendon. One slash of his knife. He said, ‘There, now you’ll never walk again.’”

Claire turned to Tom, who shook his head, compressing his lips. “Did you hear any of this before?” she whispered.

He continued shaking his head. “It’s a total fabrication, Claire.”