by Liam Durcan
It was a little after eight in the morning, but outside it was still so dark and hazy that the streetlights of Den Haag remained on. Patrick dressed, the slow and deliberate act of an aching body. He put his folder of notes back into his briefcase. As he was about to leave, scanning the room for the credit card-sized room key, the room’s phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Lazerenko?”
“Speaking.”
“My name is Anders Lindbergh. I’m calling from the tribunal.”
NINE
Marcello had yet to arrive, so Patrick was ushered into his office by his secretary. The office was pretty much what he expected, space used in that way familiar to anyone experienced with European hotel rooms or airplane washrooms. His desk was well-organized, no atrocity so unwieldy that it couldn’t be contained in a file folder. Patrick noticed a couple of bound law journals sitting in various places around the room. He was used to the American style of having rows of them stacked high on bookshelves, forming an imposing gold leaf and Moroccan leather wall-of-law. Impossible to breach, expensive to scale.
On the opposite side of the room hung a framed photo from a newspaper, dated in the nineties, showing Marcello in action, assisting in one of those big organized crime trials that Patrick had read about, the type with half the town behind bars in the back of the courtroom like a Mafia zoo exhibit. Patrick leaned forward for a peek at the framed photos that sat facing the other way on Marcello’s desk. He turned the photos around for a better look. Patrick presumed these to be family photos: two children, not yet teenagers but already with that look of precocious competence, as though slowing only to pose for the photo before getting back to composing their operas or sight-translating some Latin. It was difficult to describe his wife’s physical beauty, except to say that she looked just as attractive without Botticelli’s clamshell wake-boarding her onto the beach. Marcello swept in and took off his jacket in one fluid movement, as though he were shedding a cape. He smiled, apologized for being late and Patrick realized that being in Marcello di Costini’s presence would forever make him feel like he was wearing white socks. Marcello’s forehead, up to now engaged in battle with his cheekbones and chin for structural supremacy of his chiselled looks, broke ranks and wrinkled into a look of puzzled concern.
“It’s nice to finally meet you. What happened to your face?”
“Long story.”
“No, really, have you been to a doctor?”
Patrick brought a hand to his cheek. He had momentarily forgotten about it, although he should have figured how bad it looked by the way the tribunal guards had scrutinized his passport. And while it hurt, Marcello looked at him like he’d had a farm accident.
“I’m pretty sure I saw a doctor. Here.”
Marcello nodded, understanding when to cut short a line of questioning that was clearly heading out to deep space.
“Thanks for coming. How long have you been in town?”
“I got in a couple of nights ago. I’ve been in and out of the courtroom, mostly out.”
“You missed the excitement last week–we finally made some progress. Two witnesses admitted that Hernan helped them, and we were able to cast doubts on some unhelpful testimony.”
“But still, there’s, what, a dozen who will testify that he tortured them?”
“I will do what I can with that. You know how memory is, how it can be shown to be less than completely accurate.” Marcello stalled for a second, a voice deflating, and Patrick found it hard to discern whether he was lost in thought or just tired. “I thought we would go over a few things…”
“Someone named Anders Lindbergh called me.”
Marcello looked up from a file folder that Patrick was shocked to see had the name “LAZERENKO, P” on it. Marcello’s expression had frozen. Then, as if a button has been pressed and a gear engaged, his face moved again.
“What did Mr. Lindbergh have to say, Patrick?”
“He said he wanted to speak to me in person.”
“That shit,” Marcello spat. It was a refreshing curse, a little hiss and flare of emotion, a hint that he had a bit of the brawler in him.
“I’m supposed to see him at noon.”
“Cocksucker.”
“Can I refuse to meet with him? Should I?”
Marcello didn’t answer at first, occupied with what Patrick imagined was pure strategic alarm. Patrick was relieved to see evidence of it on someone else’s face; it was an expression he imagined he wore as he listened to Lindbergh’s invitation.
“No, no,” Marcello said, leaning forward and raising his hands, “don’t make him think that you have anything to hide.”
“I don’t know how the tribunal works. Can he subpoena me?”
“Technically, yes. They can subpoena anyone. Usually it’s different, if you are a hostile witness, there’s extradition and other matters before they can even get you to the tribunal,” Marcello explained. He was holding the file so tightly that his nails blanched white. “But you’re here. That’s a problem.”
“It’s no problem, I can leave tonight–”
“Patrick. Don’t think like that. They haven’t issued subpoenas. You haven’t even met with them. You don’t think he’s going to ask you about, you know, any possible biological defence?”
Ah yes, the biological defence. Patrick felt for the briefcase sitting at his feet, knowing it was full of notes he had written on free will and neurological correlates of diminished responsibility. Full of what Marcello hoped was an anthology of freshly minted loopholes.
“I don’t think so. I think he wants to ask me about Hernan.”
“About what, precisely?”
“I suppose if I know anything incriminating.”
Marcello nodded. Those muscles must have got a lot of use.
“And why do you have that feeling?”
With that, Marcello gave him the look–one Patrick imagined Anders Lindbergh would also deploy when they met later–a polished, gunmetal stare-down that some of the nastier personalities of the genocidal era have faced. Tyrants. Warlords. Lazerenko, P. Patrick imagined his file nestled in the same cabinet with the others.
“Hernan didn’t give up practising medicine when he got to Canada.”
Marcello put the file down and rubbed the back of his neck, “Yes, yes. Oh, this fucking case.” He reached into a drawer and brought out a pad of lined paper at the same time he produced a bulky fountain pen. He readied himself: “And you saw this, you saw him treat patients.”
“Yes. They came to him in the store.”
“They came to him?”
“Yes. New immigrants, maybe some illegals, too.”
“But you don’t know for sure they were illegal immigrants.”
“No.”
“Then don’t say that. Did he mistreat them? Did he give them drugs?”
“I don’t think so.”
Marcello looked straight at Patrick. “Let me rephrase the question: Can you say with absolute certainty that you never saw Hernan hurt anyone?”
“That was twenty years ago,” Patrick said, and Marcello leaned forward. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what I was looking at.”
“Oh, Christ,” Marcello muttered and kept scribbling. “Look, Patrick, you were young, what I am hearing is doubt. Doubt is on our side.” He looked up from his pad. “So how did these people pay Hernan?”
“Hernan did it for free.”
Marcello snorted and put the pen down. “This does not worry me. This is maybe a little reckless, that’s all they could argue. Just say what you said to me. You didn’t know what you were looking at. You were young. Besides, I think this is a decoy. Something to throw a little scare into you. I don’t think they will ask you about Hernan. Now, for the real business at hand.” Marcello took the elastic band off the oversized folder. Across the table, Patrick recognized some of the items he’d referenced for Marcello.
“I have looked for precedent,” Marcello said, flipping throug
h the pile of papers, journal articles, photocopies of textbook chapters, extricating the ones he had tagged with a yellow Post-it note, “and of course, there is none. The normal brain scan didn’t help us. Okay, yes,” Marcello said, and paused. “Here is my premise: Hernan is a good man. You know that, of course. We both know that. Hernan has been implicated in some terrible situations, and let’s say, for argument, that he actually committed these acts. Let’s say I want to prove that he was incapacitated in some way during the time he was at Lepaterique. I have no psychiatric explanation, so I would like to explore trying to explain his incapacity in terms of abnormal brain function. The scans you use at Neuronaut, the functional scans–”
“Functional magnetic resonance.”
“Yes, could these scans show that Hernan’s brain responds differently, atypically, in certain situations?”
“And this difference would mean he wasn’t criminally responsible?”
“Yes,” Marcello said, leaning forward, clearly excited, as though his pupil was now able to conjugate a verb properly.
“So the court would allow he wasn’t responsible for his actions.”
“Well, yes. Of course. Look, Patrick, let’s for a moment think about the judges in this case. They’re fair people. They’re reasonable. I know most outsiders think that all the judges do is weigh the evidence for and against. But these people want to understand. They want a verdict to make sense, to themselves, at least. I want to appeal to that. The acts that Hernan is charged with are abhorrent, a good man with a normally operating brain would not act this way. I am not talking about clearing Hernan, I’m talking about something that will mitigate the guilt. Most of the people I deal with, there is a history of hate. Something suppressed until it explodes. But not with Hernan. I read that book on him, with all the theories, and I know the details. He’s had a psychiatric assessment. He’s not a sociopath, he’s not an ideologue. But one day he appears at Lepaterique and participates in torture. He’s not defending himself and yet he refuses to accept guilt.” Marcello looked at Patrick with an expectancy that lapsed into disappointment. “I’m not explaining myself. Correct me if I’m wrong. With your business, Patrick, you use the technology to understand why people make decisions.”
“Well, I–”
“So how do we demonstrate the decision-making process is faulty in this man. I mean, can we?”
“I don’t think so. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I don’t have the faintest idea why people make the decisions they do, the research isn’t about that. I study what part of the brain is activated by certain stimuli and how that relates to predictable behaviour. There’s not a lot of ‘why’ in it.”
“Okay, okay. No ‘why,’ but then ‘how.’ I want to know ‘how.’ I see Hernan in that room: above all, he is a doctor and even then he has competing goals, first, keep the person alive; second, do not let them suffer. What impulse does Hernan listen to? Maybe he was beaten himself, or deprived of water, maybe they threatened his family. These are competing goals, a situation just like the ones you study, no? And the behaviour is the torture.”
“But I deal with experimental conditions,” Patrick said, conscious of trying not to disappoint Marcello, “not an actual event that occurred twenty-five years ago. You can’t just propose a situation like that.”
“We can simulate, can we not?” Marcello flipped through papers and pulled something out of the pile. “There’s a company in Amsterdam that does contract work, very much like your own company. I thought perhaps we could stage a simulation, see if this causes some response in Hernan that’s different from controls.” Marcello handed Patrick the papers that advertised the services of a company called Cervoscan. He tried not to appear pessimistic, but Marcello was sounding like a grad student whose thesis plans have collapsed, grasping at ideas to help salvage the data he’d cobbled together.
“Who’s going to pay for all this?” Patrick asked, knowing that a functional MRI study was a strictly à la carte proposition; that time in the scanner ran in the range of a couple of thousand dollars an hour, and interpretation would be extra. A lot more extra. Another mortgage on Le Dépanneur Mondial for Nina to work off. Then Marcello smiled and introduced Patrick to the true meaning of demure.
“That’s not important.”
“Tell me,” Patrick insisted, but Marcello was silent, assessing Patrick in a way that frustrated him more than the lawyer’s evasiveness. “I’ve come three thousand miles because you’ve asked me to, I’m facing a subpoena, I–”
“Enough. It’s a group called the Democratic Voice,” Marcello said. “They’ve been very active in–”
“I know who they are. Do the Garcías know about this?”
“It was the Garcías who introduced Oliveira to me,” Marcello said, and, registering what appeared to be Patrick’s partial recognition of the name, continued: “Caesar Oliveira, he represents the Democratic Voice. He’s been in Den Haag since the start of the trial.”
“And this man, Oliveira, he’s going to pay for a scan. You’re okay with that?”
“Why not? What choice do I have? You have to realize the situation, Patrick. Lindbergh came into this case with a room full of witnesses, eager to testify. I have a client who won’t even talk to me. It was the Democratic Voice–an investigator hired by them, anyway–who tracked down both our witnesses. And it was Oliveira who showed me this–” Marcello pulled out a journal article that Patrick had seen recently. It was a study showing subjects being imaged while in the act of deceiving others and it claimed to show increased activity in certain brain areas, the caudate, anterior cingulate gyrus, and the thalamus–that were not active during truthful responses. The study caused a rash of speculation that an infallible method of lie detection was around the corner. Even Bancroft got excited, proposing that Neuronaut should consider developing a protocol for lie detection. Marc-André loved the idea, said they should apply for matching funds from Homeland Security and install a Neuronaut scanner in every airport, right next to the baggage X-ray machine and the metal detector. Too unproven, too contentious, Patrick had said, and used his veto for the first time.
“This is completely different from what we’ve been discussing, Marcello. This is about lie detection. Plain and simple. The Democratic Voice brought you this paper?”
“Yes. Oliveira has been doing his homework. He found the lab in Amsterdam, too.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Marcello, but it seems like the Democratic Voice is calling the shots.”
“No, no. Not at all. They are helping, certainly. And to tell you the truth, I am interested in all options to prove my client’s innocence. You are telling me it isn’t feasible to examine whether Hernan feels responsible–”
“Don’t say feels,” Patrick said, cringing.
“Okay, it’s not feasible to examine whether his brain responds normally when confronting a moral dilemma. Well then, is it feasible to do a test to see if he is lying?”
Patrick held up the paper, impressed and disturbed that someone else was combing the research literature on Hernan’s behalf. “This ‘lie-detection paper’ is an experiment, too. Tightly controlled conditions, not people being interrogated. Hypothetically, even if he passes–”
“If? You don’t think he’ll pass the test?”
Patrick lifted his hand, refusing to add another card to this shaky house. “Where’s the precedent?” he said to Marcello. “There must be rules of admissibility.”
“But this is where you come in. If we did any test, even this lie detection protocol, you’d be invaluable. You’re an expert on the technology. You’ve done consulting work for some of the biggest corporations in the world. Your opinion would be valued by the court. You wouldn’t have to weigh in on the results, just the validity of the science.”
Patrick had enough experience in academic departments and the business world to know when he was being asked to use science as a weapon. He knew he should take it as a compliment. Patrick wo
rked in an area of science that had recently promised answers to the most basic questions of human behaviour and yet was a daunting mystery to most. The world of knowledge was being prefixed with his specialty: neuromarketing, neurophilosophy, neuroethics. Any new religion needed its priests. He understood. To Marcello it must have been obvious: Patrick had sold himself before, for Globomart or whatever company could pay the bills; this was another proposal. For a moment Patrick felt the desire to reach over the desk and choke the lawyer, see his handsome face purple a little.
“I don’t do forensic work.”
“You have expertise. You’re interested in these types of questions; I’ve read your work.”
“That was before. And what I was interested in, well, it wasn’t meant to be applied in this way. And besides, I know the man. They wouldn’t allow me to give expert testimony in his defence.”
“Again, listen to me: not to testify. Write a brief. A technical opinion.”
“Is this what Hernan wants?”
“He’s not talking.”
“But you ran this by him. He knows that we’re talking about this.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course,” Marcello said, and nodded, a well-oiled movement. A precision even Patrick could appreciate.