Harry gives me a shot in the ribs with his elbow, as if to say shut up.
“Your Honor, it wasn’t a burglary in the conventional sense. Whoever came to kill came because of those pictures. That’s what they wanted. That’s why those photographs are at the heart of our case.”
“What’s in the pictures?” says Quinn.
“Ask them.” I point to Rhytag.
“Can you give us even a clue?” says Quinn.
“No, sir,” says Rhytag.
“I have an obligation to assure that the defendant gets a fair trial,” says Quinn.
“And I have an obligation to protect national security,” says Rhytag.
“Find Pike’s computer and you’ll find the killer,” I tell them. “And it’s not my client.”
“Then tell me where to start looking,” says Rhytag.
“Seems we’re back where we started,” says Harry. “I have one suggestion.”
Rhytag looks at him. “What’s that?”
“The federal government has regulatory powers over most banks, correct?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” says Rhytag.
“We have a name—John Waters. According to information, Mr. Waters received a cash payment in the amount of a hundred thousand dollars for the sale of one of the gold coins belonging to the victim, Emerson Pike. It may be a long shot, but it’s possible this Mr. Waters may have deposited that sum in a bank account in this country. You could check your computers for the name John Waters and see what you find. I mean, he’d have to use a social security number or taxpayer ID number to open an account, right?”
Rhytag thinks about it for a moment, then makes a note. “I don’t suppose you have a date of birth?” he says.
“It’s an alias.” Templeton says it with scorn.
“So what?” says Harry. “If someone opened an account under that name, we should find out. In the interests of national security.” He looks at Rhytag.
“Mr. Madriani and I agree on one thing, Your Honor,” says Temple ton. “Find Emerson Pike’s computer and you’ll find one of the killers. Because the other one’s already locked up in the county jail. Convey the offer to your client.” He turns to look at me. “Tell her she has a chance to live. It’s the last one she’s going to get. Let’s see what she says.”
He gives me a sinister smile.
TWENTY-FOUR
Yesterday afternoon after she hung up the receiver in the telephone booth at the jail, Katia realized she had forgotten to thank Paul. It was clear that either he or Harry had talked to the authorities at the jail, because things had become much better.
Paul called to tell her about what had happened at the courthouse, the argument over the motion and the missing photographs. He told her they would meet at the courthouse in a few days. He had many important things to discuss with her, none of which could be talked about over the telephone. Katia was to be taken to the courthouse, where some of this was to be discussed in the presence of the judge, in the judge’s office, and with the prosecutor available outside in the courtroom. Katia asked him what was happening. Paul told her he could not talk about the details over the phone and the conversation ended. She would have to remember to thank him when they met at the courthouse.
It was amazing how quickly things had improved. For the last several days, ever since the fight in the shower, all of her problems at the jail had vanished. The Mexican Chicas who had been badgering Katia since the day she arrived, particularly the big one with the pockmarked face and the scar on her cheek, were now leaving her alone and licking their wounds.
Katia thought about this and smiled as she strode across the yard, back toward the unit where her cell was located.
The big Mexican still glanced at her occasionally with angry eyes. But the moment Katia looked back at her, the Mexican would look away. And her nose still did not look quite right. She and her friends now kept their distance. Even in the dayroom, which Katia had avoided for so long, she was now free to roam and watch television and no longer had to hide.
She knew that either Paul or Harry had made this possible. They had talked to someone at the jail, because one of Katia’s three cell mates, the Chica who ran with the big Mexican and was causing her problems, had suddenly been transferred to another cell. In her place a new Latina, Daniela Perez, was moved to the top bunk, above Katia.
Daniela was not Mexican. She was Colombiana, originally from Bogotá, and like Katia, she was alone, without friends in the jail. Ordinarily Ticas would be leery of Colombianas. People from Costa Rica have long feared the drug violence of Colombia. But somehow Daniela seemed different.
She was quiet. She kept to herself. But she would smile and say hello whenever they passed. This was not done in the jail. To smile or to say anything that might be seen as courteous was a sign of weakness. It would make you a victim, someone to push around.
She wondered how long Daniela would last if she was acting in this friendly way with others. Sooner or later she would smile and say hello to the big Mexican and the Chica gang would start in on her.
For two days Katia watched Daniela from a distance. The Colombiana was older and taller than Katia and seemed quite fit. She lifted weights every day in the exercise area. And while Daniela was pretty, Katia could tell she had lived a hard life. It was difficult to guess her age. Katia estimated maybe mid-thirties.
She had a large tattoo on her back that ran almost to the elbow on her left arm, a web like Spiderman’s that bulged and flexed whenever she lifted weights. Katia was amazed by how much Daniela could lift. She did not look that strong. It was in the technique, how she moved her body. Even some of the other women, the regulars who seemed to own the weights, were impressed. Katia saw two of them talking to Daniela, who said a few words, shook the hand of one of the other women, and then left to walk out to the yard.
It was that afternoon that everything changed. Katia had gone to take a shower. She often did this earlier in the day to avoid the other women. With the water running and facing the spray, she didn’t see or hear them. The big Mexican and two of her friends came into the large communal shower bay behind her. They were wearing sweats and running shoes. Even though the Mexican was large and outweighed Katia by at least fifty pounds, she always traveled with at least two others.
One of them groped Katia from behind. When she turned around, startled, and tried to cover herself with her hands, they all laughed.
“Relax, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to have a little fun,” said the big one. When she reached out and tried to touch her, Katia pulled away. Then they started with the insults. They told her how worthless Ticas were, how the Costa Rican women preened like peacocks, showing their bodies in order to kowtow to the gringos. Katia turned and tried to finish her shower.
“Don’t you turn your back on me, bitch.” The big Mexican grabbed Katia, spun her around, pulled her out of the spray, and pushed her against the tiled wall where the Mexicans could get at her without getting wet. The big Mexican’s two friends grabbed Katia’s arms and held them to the wall. The big Mexican pumped some soap into her hand from the dispenser on the wall and rubbed it on Katia’s face and into her eyes.
“Leave her alone!”
Katia’s eyes burned. She couldn’t see a thing, but she heard the voice. It came from somewhere outside the shower bay.
Suddenly the two women released Katia’s arms. She slid along the wall, away from them, toward the running shower. While they had their backs turned, Katia was able to quickly rinse some of the stinging soap from her eyes. In the yellow haze she saw Daniela standing in the entrance to the shower bay. She was wearing shorts, a jail top, and running shoes. There was a sheen of sweat on her body, as if she might have been out in the yard running.
“Why don’t you just leave her alone?” said Daniela.
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” said the big Mexican. “Unless maybe you would like some of this too.”
�
�I don’t think there’s enough of you to go around,” said Daniela.
“Oh, you think so?”
“I know so.”
It happened so quickly that Katia wasn’t even sure what she saw. Through the lingering sting and blur of soap she remembered a flash of slick, muscled body as Daniela closed the distance. She came at them so fast and with so much aggression that the first instinct of the Mexican’s was to back up. This forced one of them, the one closest to Katia, into the spray of the shower.
They braced themselves with their hands out, ready to take her. But Daniela was no longer there. She had dipped down onto her hands on the tile floor and spun her body. With a single powerful sweep of her muscled leg, she reached out and swept the feet from under all three of them.
Katia remembered the sound. It reminded her of coconuts on concrete as their heads hit the hard tile floor. The next thing Katia knew, the three women were on their backs, sliding across the soap-covered tile as if in slow motion. They lay there for several seconds with their mouths open, dazed.
Only one of them tried to get up. It was the big Mexican, and it was a mistake. She held on to the wall to steady herself, got to her feet, and with a look of fury in her eyes, she got a bead on Daniela, lowered her shoulder, and charged.
The sleek Colombiana stepped to one side, like a toreador in a bullring. She grabbed the Mexican by the hair as she passed and redirected her head, faceup, right into the tile wall.
Katia remembered the dull thud, the vibration against the wall, and the red river of the Mexican’s blood that was flushed by the running water down the drain.
The woman lay there on the floor for more than a minute before her wide-eyed friends even stirred to help her, and when they did, they gave Daniela a wide berth in order to get there.
Katia thought the Mexican might be dead. But it didn’t even seem to faze Daniela. To her it was simply the natural order of things, the law of the jungle in jail.
Katia and Daniela had spent most of the time since the shower altercation hanging together and talking.
Daniela told Katia that she had been arrested three days earlier in San Diego on charges related to drugs. But, of course, like everyone else in the jail, she was not guilty.
Paul had told Katia not to talk about her case with anyone, and so she did not. Even when Daniela asked Katia what she was in for, Katia told her flatly that her lawyers had told her it was best not to discuss the matter. It was difficult. Katia knew that she owed her safety and her newfound sense of independence to her friend.
After lockdown in the evenings they played cards, as they did tonight on top of the small table in the cell. Daniela had taught her several new games. Tonight they were into the third hand of gin rummy and Katia was having difficulty trying to decide whether to discard a three or a five when the cart rolled up in the hallway, outside their door. Katia turned her head to look. It was clean towels for the next day.
“I’ll get it, you play,” said Daniela. She got up, walked over, and watched through the thick glass in the door as the laundry inmate outside stacked two towels. The inmate was about to put the towels on the pass-through, the metal device like a large mail slot next to the door. Then one of the male guards came down the hall. Starched uniform, sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, hair in a crew cut, he stopped at the cart and talked to the inmate. Daniela couldn’t hear what they said, but her heart nearly stopped when the guard looked at the towels, then reached into them for a quick frisk while he looked into the laundrywoman’s eyes. Guards often found drugs and other contraband this way.
He went on and the laundrywoman gave him a contemptuous sneer. Then she placed the two stacked towels into the pass-through. Daniela took them on the other side.
“Okay, I laid down the five,” said Katia.
“Just a sec.” Daniela put one towel on Katia’s bottom bunk. The other she put on her own mattress. As she did so, she slipped her hand into the inner fold of the towel to feel for the tiny raised points of the checkered plastic handle. It was not much bigger than the box the playing cards came in, but the Walther PPK .308 carried a deadly punch. It was all she would need.
Yakov Nitikin could stall no longer. Alim was growing restless. Increasingly he conferred with the technician his own government had sent. The man was not familiar with the Russian device, but he knew enough about weapons design to realize that the time for assembly had arrived.
The barrel was clean. There was no corrosion, and the few tiny traces of oxidation that appeared on the metal parts had been meticulously cleaned and removed by careful handwork using strips of emery cloth. This was followed by a bath in light machine oil to remove any residue of abrasives left by the cloth.
Nitikin supervised all of it. First he instructed Alim’s men and then he watched them as they worked. He paid particular attention to the inside bore of the gun’s smooth barrel. Yakov was looking for any signs of pitting in the metal surface, anything that might cause drag or slow the speed of the projectile as it was fired down the barrel. The muzzle velocity required was a thousand feet per second, roughly the speed of an American .45-caliber bullet.
Even though the projectile was not designed or intended to clear the muzzle, and the barrel was less than three feet long, any significant reduction in velocity would result in a premature detonation. As the two subcritical elements of uranium came in close proximity, but before they could properly be assembled under pressure to initiate a chain reaction, a small nuclear explosion would tear the device apart, what physicists had long called a fizzle. Radiation would spill out, but it would be largely confined and easily cleaned up. The device and the entire mission would be a failure.
Alim’s technician knew this. What he didn’t know was the proper order of assembly to make the weapon field ready. He had tried on several occasions to coax this information from Nitikin. But Yakov had given him sufficiently vague and confusing responses, further muddled by the need for translation between Russian, Spanish, and Farsi, that the man finally threw up his hands and said something to Alim. They gave up. Nitikin had, for the moment at least, remained indispensable. He decided that the time had come to play his hand.
Through the interpreter he told Alim that he had two demands. They were not requests. If Alim wanted his bomb, he would have to comply with both.
As the words were translated into Farsi, Yakov watched as Alim’s eyes transformed to two tiny slits and the cords in his neck protruded like steel cable.
First, for the final assembly of the device he, Yakov, would use none of Alim’s men, or his technician. In fact, they were barred from the hut where the work would take place.
Alim didn’t like it. He was furious, arguing with the translator. At one point he reached for a pistol, seemingly ready to kill the messenger.
Before Alim could calm down, Yakov delivered the second demand. Maricela, Nitikin’s daughter, was to be delivered home to her house in Costa Rica by men of the FARC whom Nitikin trusted, with assurances guaranteed by the FARC that neither she nor her family would be harmed in any way.
Alim’s face flushed with anger.
But for Nitikin, both points were nonnegotiable. The reason for not using Alim’s men was the language barrier. At least that’s what he told Alim. It was a dangerous process. One mistake, if the two portions of subcritical uranium came in contact or even close proximity, they could get a full-yield nuclear explosion, or at a minimum irradiate a good piece of the jungle. Yakov didn’t want any confusion in the room and no bystanders to get in the way.
He would do the assembly alone, with the assistance of a single FARC rebel.
Without Alim’s knowledge, Nitikin had already selected the man. He was in his early twenties and seemed to have the best hands in the camp, long, nimble fingers and what appeared to be excellent hand-to-eye coordination. Both Nitikin and the rebel spoke Spanish, the common tongue. If Alim wanted his bomb, this was the price. He left little for the Persian to bargain with.
As Al
im talked furiously with his technician, Yakov slipped in a few final choice words to the translator. He told the man that he and his FARC assistant would be “tickling the tail of the dragon.”
Then he watched as the translator conveyed the message. He wasn’t looking at Alim. He was checking the expression on the technician’s face as the man’s shifting eyeballs suddenly shot in the direction of the Russian.
Yakov was not a good gambler, but if he had to take odds, he would have been willing to bet that the day they assembled the bomb, Alim’s technician would find some good reason to be in Medellín, a few hundred miles away.
TWENTY-FIVE
Harry and I had to wonder why, if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is so secret, the minions who pull its levers would want to show up in a state court judge’s chambers to tell us about it. The answer is that levels of government often like to piss on one another. It’s a bureaucratic pastime.
The first thing we did when we got back to the office was to have it swept for electronic devices. When the detection equipment was turned on, it lit up like a Christmas tree. When they were finished, we stepped outside and they asked Harry and me if we wanted it removed. We conferred for a moment and agreed that the answer was no. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. Remove it, and they’d just find another better way.
So this morning Harry pitches one of the heavy volumes from our code books in the library. It lands with a thud on the table in front of me.
“Check it out,” he says. “Fifty, U.S.C. 1803. It’s the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. According to this it was passed in 1978, and amended under the Patriot Act a few years ago.” Harry is reading from a stapled sheet of papers, something he printed off the Internet.
“The most recent figures that are public are four years old. There were more than eighteen thousand warrants granted in that year alone and only four or five applications that were denied. Who could have guessed there were that many spies?” says Harry. “Or that many rubber stamps, for that matter.
Guardian of Lies Page 17