“Which entity received the explosive?” Will asked again.
“The Russians were unable to determine that.”
Prosecutor Zayed slowly eased back in his chair.
“Were they able to determine anything about the delivery?”
“Yes—they were.”
“Like what?”
“Like who paid for it.”
“And—who paid for it?”
Now Zayed was leaning forward again in tortured anticipation, his feet barely on the floor.
Back in the media room, Jack Hornby stopped bouncing. No one was breathing.
“The Russian police followed the money trail—” Michalany continued, but then stopped. He glanced at his notes. Then he finished his answer.
“And the money trail led to an account in Rome—and the account belonged to a foreign state.”
“Which foreign state?” Will asked from the podium, almost in a whisper.
“The Republic of Maretas.”
Hornby was muttering to himself and shaking his head, “He’s going to do it. Will—you’re going to do this…. you’re bringing this right to Mullburn…”
Judge Mustafa had a disoriented look on his face, as if he were refusing to process the answer to the last question. But Alain Verdexler, seated next to him, was already calculating the implications. And for him, there now seemed to be no easy way out of this yawning geopolitical abyss.
But in a moment that abyss would crack open even wider.
“And have you been able to trace the source of the computer hardware that was used to detonate the explosion?”
Zayed stood up. He wanted to object. But he was caught in an intractable dilemma. To object any further would make it appear as if he were attempting to cover up the true identity of the killers of his fellow Muslims.
“What is it?” Judge Mustafa asked, in a voice reflecting fatigue from the unraveling of the prosecution’s case before him.
“Nothing.” Zayed slowly sat down.
“Please continue,” Will said to his expert.
“We did trace the computer hard drive—”
“How?”
“When the Israelis had possession of the hard drive and computer keyboards before the Palestinian Authority demanded they be turned over, they disassembled the equipment and did a quick forensic evaluation.”
“What did they find?”
“Nothing, really. There were no serial numbers. No identifying components that would point to any one source—”
“Was there something else?”
“Oh, yes. There was,” Michalany glanced over at the judges, who were transfixed.
“There was a sort of…anomaly. You see, the forensic specialist with the Israelis became ill after examining the computer components. You, Mr. Chambers, told me that you had read in the Palestinian reports that Dr. el Umal, their expert, who had also examined the components, had also fallen ill. You suggested I follow up on the nature of the specialist’s illness.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. It was a rare form of botanical poisoning—caused by exposure to resins from a plant that had found their way into the inner components of the computer…probably from the hands of the computer designer.”
“What kind of plant?”
“Something called—” Michalany looked down at his notes, “called cicuta maculata—otherwise known as ‘water hemlock.’ It can look deceptively like the kind of greens you could put in a salad. It’s indigenous to the swampy areas of North Carolina, among other places. But if ingested, it can cause respiratory distress, followed by foaming at the mouth and a very unpleasant death. Happily, the residue picked up by the computer specialist was quite minimal.”
“Did you do any research regarding recent use of this plant?”
“Yes. The FBI botanical section verified only one recent incident. A real-estate salesman from North Carolina died on an airplane flight en route back to the United States. The cause of death was poisoning by ingestion of the cicuta maculata plant.”
“You said this unfortunate man was flying back to America. Where had he been just prior to his death by poisoning?”
In the media room, several dozen reporters were frozen in disbelief, hardly daring to think they would witness the unveiling of the real plot behind the Temple Mount massacre.
“The real estate agent,” Michalany replied, “had just left the large island of the Republic of Maretas.”
“Will Chambers—you are doing it! You are doing it!” Jack Hornby was yelling as the other reporters knocked over chairs in a scramble to reach their laptops and cell phones.
“Of course,” Michalany continued, “we knew that Mr. Orville Putrie was now living on the islands of that republic and was employed by its government, and was a former resident of North Carolina and an avid amateur botanist. So that naturally led us to the conclusion that someone in the government of that republic had sponsored the Temple Mount attack—and that Khalid and Lorraine were simply a couple of religious cultists used as the front for the real conspiracy.”
Then Will asked the final series of questions, which dealt with the Mossad’s detection of someone’s unlawful entry by remote computer access and the manipulation of its encrypted surveillance logs concerning the Knights of the Temple Mount—all, apparently, to make it look as if Israel had deliberately neglected to stop the plans of the Knights. It was the final link exposing Warren Mullburn’s convoluted plot.
Will Chambers had intended to use Michalany to tie that computer hacking to Orville Putrie, computer intelligence chief for Mullburn’s island republic.
But here, Zayed objected, wanting to exclude any evidence that would exonerate Israel from the incident.
Judge Mustafa quickly sustained the objection, characterizing Will’s inquiry as “beyond the scope of the knowledge or expertise of this witness.”
But Will simply smiled and said quietly to himself, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you say something?” Mustafa asked in a bewildered voice.
Will shook his head. Soon enough, he thought, it would all be clear.
Zayed tried a half-hearted cross-examination, focusing on the fact that Michalany was relying on the equipment evaluation done by the Israelis, rather than his own personal observation. But the witness quickly replied that he had had his own computer consultant at Intellitek independently review the work of the Israelis and verify their findings—and he further pointed out that his computer expert was there in Jerusalem, ready to testify if needed.
Mira Ashwan, who had been silent during the last few days, rose for some limited questioning—mainly impugning the motives of the Israeli military and police in so quickly confiscating the computer evidence before finally turning it over to the Palestinian police. She was no match for Michalany’s deft answers.
“Does the defense rest?” Mustafa asked hopefully as Mira sat down.
“No,” Will declared. “One more witness.”
Just then noise erupted in the hallway outside. Voices were yelling. First, warnings in Arabic. Then responses in Hebrew. The shouts were getting louder. It sounded as if a fight were about to break out just outside the courtroom.
“I believe my last witness has just arrived,” Will said with a smile.
69
A SMALL SQUADRON OF ISRAELI OFFICERS with sidearms burst into the courtroom. In their midst, clothing disheveled, hair uncombed, Orville Putrie was in custody, peering out of the thick lenses of his glasses as he was hastened to the front. Leading the contingent was a large, thick-necked man in a black suit and black turtleneck, sporting a completely bald head. Putrie was wearing handcuffs, but the man in the black suit unlocked them and gave him a little shove in the direction of the witness booth.
“Orville Putrie,” Will announced, “the last defense witness.”
In the doorway of the courtroom, several Palestinian police were loudly murmuring in protest against the presence of the Israeli military inside the Orient House
.
“Quiet!” Judge Mustafa cried out.
Putrie slowly shuffled toward the booth, giving one last, resentful look at his captors before he entered and closed the door.
Then Will began. He questioned Putrie on his area of responsibility within the island republic controlled by Mullburn…on Mullburn’s face-to-face meeting with him and his boss’s personal reliance on his expertise in breaking through the encryption system of a foreign state…and how later Putrie discovered he was to hack into the Mossad computer system and manipulate intelligence data regarding their surveillance of the Knights of the Temple Mount. Once he had accomplished that, Putrie reported, he had decided to apply for a U.S. patent for a program designed to detect the precise kind of decoding he had just done on Israel’s quantum-encryption system. Lastly, the computer genius recounted how, in the month prior to the bombing, he had been instructed by Mullburn’s assistant, Mr. Himlet, to design and then construct a remote detonation system capable of setting off a large quantity of plastic explosives.
“Do you know of any involvement of the Israeli government in planning or encouraging the attack on the Temple Mount—or in deliberately permitting it to be carried out?”
“No. Those guys were not involved.”
“Do you know of any involvement whatsoever of Gilead Amahn in any part of this plot?”
Putrie paused for only an instant. Then he simply said, “No. Not him either.”
“And do you, Mr. Putrie,” Will asked, “have an interest in botany?”
Putrie gave a little grimace.
“Oh yes.”
“Including the deadly cicuta maculata plant, cuttings of which you brought to the Republic of Maretas from North Carolina?”
“Yes. Matter of fact, I have a fine collection now in my greenhouse…”
“Did you happen to work on the aforementioned computer detonation system after cutting some of those plants in your greenhouse?”
“I believe I did. Caught—green-handed, I guess.”
With that, the witness started mumbling something, half-smiling in a twisted grimace as if he were telling himself his own private, tortured joke.
When Will rested, Putrie perked up.
“Aren’t you going to tell everybody how we first met?” he asked.
Will rose and faced the tribunal.
“The witness is referring to an encounter we had in North Carolina when I was working on an unrelated case.”
Then he concluded by adding, “But that is a different story altogether.”
Samir Zayed stepped quickly up to the podium. He asked Putrie how he happened to be in Jerusalem.
“I was kidnapped off the main island of Maretas…in the middle of the night…by these Israeli goons…”
The prosecutor then howled out several objections to the defense “obtaining a witness by an illegal seizure in violation of international human-rights standards.”
Mustafa, trying to contain the legal melee unfolding in front of him, said the tribunal would defer ruling on that until later.
Then Zayed asked what plea bargain the Israelis had made with Putrie to get him to testify.
“No death penalty.”
“Outrageous!” Zayed yelled.
“No more outrageous than your plea bargain with Scott Magnit,” Will countered loudly.
“The government of Israel can make no such promise to bind us!” Zayed went on. “The Palestinian Authority is not bound by that plea bargain. Mr. Putrie, we will arrest you here and now, and we will then prosecute you, and we will obtain a death penalty. Now, Mr. Putrie—do you wish to retract your testimony in light of what I have just said?”
The bald man in the black suit rose to his feet and stepped briskly forward to face the panel.
“Mr. Zayed—and Judges of this tribunal,” he said solemnly in a thick accent, “I am authorized by the government of Israel to announce that the Israeli police and the IDF have this building entirely surrounded and secured. Mr. Putrie is in the lawful detention of the nation of Israel. Any attempt by the Palestinian public prosecutor or the Palestinian Authority or their police to interfere with our custody of Mr. Putrie, will result in my ordering an immediate military intervention against this facility.”
There was a stunned silence in the courtroom.
In the media room, reporters were motionless, as stiff as stone artifacts, some holding cell phones, some with fingers poised over keyboards. They were waiting, eyes fixed on the television monitor.
But Samir Zayed had played his last card. The catastrophic revelations in the final phase of Will’s defense had left his prosecution dazed and dismayed. He raised his hands up in frustration, then dropped into his seat at the table.
Orville Putrie was quietly escorted out of the glass booth by the Israeli agents, out of the courtroom, and into an armored personnel carrier waiting outside the building. The Israeli police and IDF troops then rapidly retreated from the Orient House with their prisoner.
“The defense rests,” Will announced.
Then he renewed his motion for dismissal of the criminal case against Gilead Amahn.
“This tribunal will take the motion under advisement,” Mustafa said with an overwhelmed look on his face. He then declared the proceedings adjourned for three hours and slammed his gavel down on the bench.
In the media room, Jack Hornby was still standing in the same position. But his mouth had dropped slightly open. And his eyes were unblinking as he stared at the television monitor, shaking his head.
70
AS THE COURTROOM CLEARED, Will and Nigel tried to explain the significance of the day’s roller-coaster developments to Bill and Esther Collingwood. While there was no guarantee that Gilead would be acquitted, they said, the testimony of Michalany and Putrie did establish a positive link to Warren Mullburn. That meant that the real plot had been hatched between Mullburn—for his geopolitical purposes—and Khalid and Lorraine—who had sought to fulfill the prophecy of their religious cult. For his part, Will figured that the oil tycoon must have used a highly trusted middleman to connect with the Knights and supply the deadly hardware, but his identity was still unknown.
As a result, that placed Gilead one full step removed from the real conspiracy. And it distanced him even further from the real players in the murder-and-mayhem plot. Coupling that with the other evidence of his innocence, the lawyers felt a real confidence that justice might be done after all.
Esther looked upset and pale, so Bill decided to take her back to the hotel. As Will, Tiny, and Nigel strode down the hallway to catch some fresh air, Jack Hornby dashed out of the pressroom in a frenzy to get a few quotes from the defense team, not only for his magazine article, but for the story he was now sending out over the wires.
“So, ‘man meets grizzly bear,’ ” Hornby said, calling out a mock newspaper headline to Will, “ ‘and man eats bear!’ ”
The trio caught a taxi and found a nearby café. It was a clear bright day, and they found an outdoor table, where they ordered some coffee and untwisted the defense of Gilead that had just rested.
Will explained to his bewildered co-counsel how it had all started with a magazine article that had been shoved under his hotel-room door. It was about the patent application Putrie had filed.
“Who on earth fed the information to you?” Nigel asked.
“A former Mossad agent in Jerusalem. And a good friend—Nathan Goldwaithe.”
“I thought he was dead,” Nigel exclaimed.
“No. That was actually his partner,” Will explained. “To protect him, the Mossad treated the death as if it were Nathan’s—and he in turn has been living under an assumed identity ever since. Tiny and I finally pieced this all together when Michalany connected the dots on the plant toxin found in the computer components. We finally got a sit-down with the Israelis—who decided it was time to lift the cover on Nathan and start working with us to zero in on Mullburn. The only way to do that was to literally grab Putrie. When we convince
d the Mossad it was in Israel’s best interest to completely clear its name in the bombings, they decided to send in a group of special ops guys to seize Putrie and offer him a deal in return for his testimony.”
“Which is why,” Tiny said to Nigel, “Will here thought you ought to be protected from any involvement—in case things went bad, you know, allegations of kidnapping Putrie and that stuff. No sense putting two heads on the chopping block when only one will do.”
“Well, I must say,” Nigel said, still laughing a little at Tiny’s sardonic comment, “your cases are hugely more exciting than the criminal suits I handle down at the Old Bailey back in London.”
When Nigel glanced over at Will, he noticed that his lead counsel had a strange look on his face.
“What is it?” Nigel asked, slightly alarmed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I just remembered why there was something familiar about you. I had this lingering feeling we had met. And I don’t mean just last year at that legal conference—I mean way back, years ago.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Your name. Newhouse. I just remembered. I had this case down near Cape Hatteras about ten years ago. An inheritance case, a contested probate of a will. That’s where I had this run-in with Putrie, by the way. Anyway, I had to do quite a bit of historical research into a related case handled under the English court system all the way back in the 1700s…I read these old court transcripts. The arguments of counsel from three hundred years before. And there was this English barrister by the name of—”
“Oliver Newhouse,” Nigel said quickly.
“Exactly. That’s the one.”
“Right you are. He was a rather famous barrister of his day. Actually, I am his direct descendant. His oil portrait hangs in our law rooms…in our offices there in Fleet Street. Where the old Inns of Court used to be.”
Will was shaking his head and laughing. Tiny and Nigel were now chuckling at him.
The Last Judgment Page 36