by Randy Singer
“Do something, you fool!” the Saudi shouted from the backseat of the Lincoln. “We’re losing valuable time.”
Spurred by Ahmed’s anger, Barnes turned on his flashers and rolled down his window. He moved from the left lane partially onto the left shoulder, but the big Lincoln could not maneuver past the car ahead, and so it straddled the yellow line marking the outside of the left lane. He pulled the vehicle as close to the concrete abutments as he dared, yelled out his window, and blew his horn. Slowly the drivers in front of him pulled partly into the right lane, allowing him to pass on the shoulder of the roadway.
* * *
Less than a half mile back, Nikki mimicked Barnes’s driving strategy and gained the right shoulder of the roadway. The narrow frame on her Sebring made it much easier to get by, and she had a good alibi. She stuffed a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from her gym bag inside her blouse. She then hit the flashers, leaned on the horn, and yelled that she was on her way to the hospital.
“My water broke! . . . Thank you! . . . I’ve got to get to the hospital! . . . Baby! . . . Thanks!” The cars parted like the Red Sea, as she advanced up the right-hand shoulder.
Her phone rang. “What?” she yelled. This was no time for a call. She had Barnes in sight no more than fifteen car lengths ahead.
“Ichabod issued a bench warrant for Ahmed,” Bella yelled into the phone. “Don’t let him get away.”
“I won’t; he’s within sight. . . . Excuse me, sir—got to get to the hospital! Thanks, so much. . . . How far back are you? . . . Hey! Get out of the way! I’m going to the hospital. . . . Hurry up, Bella. . . .”
Nikki needed a break and found one just a few hundred yards from the tunnel. Barnes was wedged behind a pickup truck, and the two bubbas inside looked like they had no intention of letting him by. Barnes leaned out the driver’s window and yelled at them over his hood, commanding them to move out of the way because he was on official government business.
The bubbas gestured and moved farther onto the shoulder to block the path of the Lincoln. The bigger of the bubbas even got out of the truck, stood on the shoulder, and asked Barnes if he wanted a piece of that action. Barnes continued to yell at the man but stayed in his car.
On the opposite shoulder, Nikki glided past the Lincoln and the pickup.
Suddenly the traffic began to pick up speed. Nikki glanced over her shoulder to see that the pickup was moving and that the Lincoln was cruising along behind. Traffic was only rolling at about fifteen miles an hour, but Nikki knew the fickle nature of the tunnel snarls and estimated that in no time the vehicles could be moving at close to normal speeds.
If Barnes and Ahmed made it to the other side of the tunnel, they could not be contained. Several quick exits led to hundreds of roads, and Nikki was sure she would never see them again. They had to be stopped now.
She pulled her Sebring squarely into the right lane of traffic. There traffic moved at about twenty miles an hour. She was about four car lengths in front of the pickup and the Lincoln, which were moving slightly faster in the left-hand lane. Nikki said a quick prayer for forgiveness, then made her move.
She cranked the wheel hard left, broadsiding the car next to her and wedging him at an angle into the concrete abutment at the left-hand edge of the road surface. Then she swerved hard to her right, forcing her car perpendicular to the traffic, turning straight toward the concrete abutment on the right side of the road. She slammed on her brakes.
In the very next instant, a millisecond of time, she felt the jolt of her own sudden stop, her head jerked about like a rag doll. She heard the sound of crunching metal and broken headlights, the squeal of tires, and the blaring of horns. She braced herself to be hit broadside. The second collision, however, never came. The cars behind her miraculously came to a stop just short of her Sebring.
Nikki jumped out of the car and surveyed the damage she had caused. The car she had forced into the abutment had been hit in the rear by another at a low speed. That fender bender, coupled with her car angled across the right shoulder and right lane, brought traffic to a complete stop. There was no room for even one lane to get through. The occupants of the other cars appeared to be fine. For a split second, Nikki flushed with pride at her accomplishment.
Her pride quickly gave way to fear. Barnes and Ahmed came sprinting toward her, Ahmed wielding a large black pistol. Other drivers also alighted from their cars and were now yelling at Nikki. In the chaos, Ahmed ran ever closer, then crouched.
Nikki moved toward the concrete abutment behind her Sebring. She pointed at Barnes and Ahmed. “They’re trying to kill me!” she yelled as she backed toward the edge of the bridge.
As Ahmed crouched, he extended both arms, steadily taking aim. He was no more than fifty feet away. The barrel of the gun looked huge. She could dive behind her vehicle, but if she hit the ground, Barnes would be on top of her in a second.
She felt the concrete behind her, turned, placed both her hands on the abutment. She heard Barnes yell “Stop!” as he closed on her.
Nikki glanced in fright at the choppy water below, then thought about the gun. She took a deep breath and swung her legs out to the side, jumping over the top of the abutment and pushing off with both hands. She brought her legs together so that she would knife into the water.
She held her breath and prepared herself to plummet through thirty-three feet of air. As she closed her eyes, she heard the pop of Ahmed’s gun.
* * *
“Let’s go back to the beginning,” Brad suggested. “Why don’t you explain the circumstances leading to your first contact with Mr. Aberijan on this case.”
Leslie looked at the back wall, collecting her thoughts, then turned to Brad. “The day that I learned Mr. Strobel was trying to have this case dismissed on a technicality, I had a long talk with Sarah. I remember that I was filled with anger about what the defendants were doing, but she was so forgiving and accepting. She told me that she harbored no hatred toward either Mr. Aberijan or Mr. Strobel. She said that hate only consumes the person who hates.”
She looked admiringly toward Sarah and continued. “The night after we had that conversation, I couldn’t sleep and could only think about losing my own husband and about Sarah’s loss. That night I decided to take matters into my own hands.”
“What did you do?”
“I had been working on a document called ‘Preliminary Game Plan for Reed v. Saudi Arabia.’ It had lists of witnesses, exhibits—those types of things. Frankly, it was all the kind of stuff that the defendants would be entitled to obtain through the normal discovery processes, but I knew that Mr. Aberijan wouldn’t know that. So I took that document and edited out any confidential stuff I didn’t want the other side to see, like the fact that we would be calling Rasheed Berjein as a witness, and I mailed a sanitized version to Mr. Aberijan along with a letter demanding fifty-thousand U.S. dollars and containing wiring instructions for a Cayman Island bank account.”
“Did Mr. Aberijan know who you were at this time?”
“I don’t think so. The letter was anonymous.”
“Okay,” a curious Brad said. “When did you contact Mr. Aberijan a second time?”
“The second time was after I met with and prepared a potential expert witness for us named Alfred Lloyd Worthington—”
“I should have known,” Brad mumbled.
“What was that, Counsel?” Ichabod asked. She was leaning forward now, her scribble pad sitting untouched in front of her.
“Nothing, Your Honor.”
Leslie continued. “Mr. Worthington was a Washington lobbyist and former congressman who served on the House Foreign Relations Committee. He was going to testify about how the nation of Saudi Arabia sanctioned the actions of their religious police, the Muttawa.”
“Your Honor, this is ridiculous,” Strobel interjected. “They did not call Worthington to testify. They should not be allowed to put in his testimony by proxy through this witness.”
“
I agree,” Ichabod said. “Ms. Connors, refrain from discussing the proposed testimony of Mr. Worthington.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Leslie said, without missing a beat. “In the course of preparing him for his testimony, I learned that Mr. Worthington had pleaded ‘no contest’ to a misdemeanor charge that resulted from beating his wife. I was not about to put a wife beater on the stand as an expert in a case alleging police abuse by Mr. Aberijan. I also believed that the defendants would uncover this information too, so I decided to use Mr. Worthington’s testimony as my second piece of bait.”
“Then how did you think we were going to make that part of our case?” Brad’s frustration was beginning to show. He didn’t like hearing his expert witnesses referred to as “bait.”
“I knew,” Leslie said, “that if this sting worked, we wouldn’t need Worthington. And if it didn’t work, all the Worthingtons in the world couldn’t help us. I knew it was a huge gamble, but it seemed like a chance I had to take.”
No it wasn’t, he wanted to say. You didn’t need to resort to this to win this case. But he would admonish her later.
“How did you use Worthington’s testimony as bait?” Brad asked, getting back on track.
“I sent a second anonymous letter that explained that Worthington had an Achilles heel that could be exploited. I basically told Mr. Aberijan about the no-contest plea of Worthington in Alexandria General District Court. I told him that information would cost one hundred thousand dollars.”
Brad could feel the heat rising on his neck. It was a wonder he had any case left at all. “What happened at Worthington’s deposition?” he asked.
“Mr. Strobel asked him a few questions about whether he had ever abused his wife, and Worthington withdrew as an expert,” Leslie summarized.
Judge Baker-Kline eyeballed Strobel. She was not content to let this go. “Do you have any information to suggest that Mr. Strobel was part of this conspiracy?” she asked Leslie.
Leslie looked hard at Strobel and then furrowed her brow as she considered her answer. The man’s reputation hung in the balance, and Brad could sense that Leslie was wavering. If the shoe were on the other foot, Strobel would hang them out to dry in a heartbeat. What did Leslie know? And what would she tell?
“No, none at all,” she said at last.
Other than a slight relaxation of his shoulders, there was no visible reaction from Mack Strobel.
“What happened next?” A safe question to ask, as Brad had no idea where the witness was heading.
“I decided it was time to bring Mr. Aberijan to the trap,” Leslie answered coldly.
“How did you do that?”
“Well, I figured the best place to meet a man as dangerous as Mr. Aberijan would be a public place with lots of police officers. So I picked General District Court in Norfolk. I sent him a letter and told him to meet me there alone on a certain date. I told him to bring some transmitters so I could bug our office.”
“You did what?” asked an astonished Brad, eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“You’ll remember that after the Worthington incident, we were all paranoid and decided we would not use our office phones for any confidential communications. We hired a private investigator, Patrick O’Malley, to check for listening devices. He would come by the office and do that every morning. I believed that I needed something to cement Mr. Aberijan’s trust so that he wouldn’t think he was being set up. I knew that if I placed some bugs on our office phone lines, he wouldn’t hear anything more than harmless information. I also knew that he would no longer have any suspicions about a setup. And finally, I knew that I could simply reattach the transmitters every morning after O’Malley left and take them off every night.”
“I thought you said O’Malley already knew.”
“Now you’re getting ahead of the story.”
“Then tell us what happened at this meeting.”
“We had a very short conversation. When I invited Mr. Aberijan to the meeting, I told him that I had a plan for knocking out our best remaining expert, Dr. Nancy Shelhorse. I told him the price would be one hundred thousand dollars. At the meeting, he delivered three shortwave radio transmitters. He told me he actually thought it was a bad idea. I think his words were something like, ‘Do you really think these are necessary?’ But I assured him I knew what I was doing, then left.”
Brad was having a hard time believing what he was hearing. From the moment he saw Leslie at the Marriott the prior night, he assumed that she had been responsible for keeping Shelhorse out of the case. But he allowed himself to hope otherwise. Now the reality of it was sinking in, and he was numb.
“But you still didn’t talk to me about this.”
“I started getting nervous, realizing I was in way over my head. I was playing an awkward game of espionage with a cold-blooded killer. A part of me desperately wanted to tell you everything that was happening, but it was more important for me to protect you and keep you out of this nightmare I had created.” Leslie bit her lower lip and paused. “I didn’t want to lose you.”
Brad looked down at the podium. He felt uncomfortable discussing such a private matter in open court. He admonished himself to stick to the facts, make it easier on Leslie.
“What happened next?”
“I needed more proof before I could go to the authorities,” she said, regaining the cool professionalism that had characterized her testimony thus far. “But my plans started to unravel on the third day of trial.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Aberijan approached me in the elevator and handed me a note. In it, he demanded details about my plan to deal with Shelhorse. He also demanded a meeting for that Friday at 8:30 a.m. in Norfolk General District Court. He wanted the transmitters back.
“His boldness scared me, but the note gave me what I needed to go to the district attorney. The problem was that I needed to get back to the office before everyone else after court that day in order to retrieve the transmitters.
“When I returned to the office, Patrick O’Malley was there. Instead of his customary inspection that morning, he had conducted his search just a few minutes prior to my arrival that afternoon. Of course, he had found the three devices I was using.”
“What did you do?” Brad asked. He was still having a hard time believing his old friend O’Malley was in on this.
“I took Mr. O’Malley into the conference room and told him everything. He agreed to hold it in confidence and help me if I promised to go to the authorities the next day. He became a partner in my sting operation.”
“Did you go to the authorities?”
“Yes. The next day, Mr. O’Malley and I went to see Ms. Bennett. She agreed to grant me immunity and let me testify in this case before she had Mr. Aberijan arrested. But it was conditioned on catching Mr. Aberijan with some hard evidence and also on not talking about this operation with anybody else.” Leslie paused and gave Bennett a look; then she turned back to Brad. “Including you.”
Brad was not surprised. Bennett had never liked him much.
“What happened when you met Mr. Aberijan this second time?”
“I went to the meeting with Mr. Aberijan,” Leslie explained, “knowing that he was somehow scanning me for bugs. But I also knew that I would be returning the three transmitters he had originally given me. Mr. O’Malley found a way to tap into the frequency of Mr. Aberijan’s shortwave transmitters. So Mr. O’Malley stationed himself outside the courthouse, listened to our conversation, and taped every word.”
“What happened?”
“Mr. Aberijan accused me of wearing a wire. I simply gave him the three transmitters. He was very rough with me. He grabbed my arm and jerked me around. He demanded to know the plan for waylaying Shelhorse.”
“What did you tell him?”
Leslie paused. There was not the slightest stirring in the courtroom. “I told him I could buy one of the jurors,” she said.
Brad looked to the jury box in time to see juro
r four turn ashen.
“And what was his response?” Brad asked reluctantly. He was no longer sure he wanted to know. Things were growing more bizarre by the minute.
“He wanted to know which juror,” Leslie said. “He said that they already owned one.”
“I object,” Strobel announced, no longer able to contain himself. “This is blatant hearsay.”
“No it’s not,” Brad countered. “It’s an admission of a party opponent. Besides, it’s all on tape. I’ll have some equipment brought in here and play the tape if I have to.”
“There’s no need for that at this point,” Ichabod said. She seemed anxious to hear the rest of this testimony. “We’ll play the tape later. But this witness is entitled to testify from memory about this conversation and the resulting admissions of a party opponent. Objection overruled.”
“May I continue?” Leslie asked.
“Proceed,” the judge granted.
It seemed to Brad that Ichabod was displaying the slightest hint of a growing respect for this witness. Maybe she liked her bold search for the truth. Maybe she liked the fact that Leslie had done all this behind Brad’s back. Maybe she just liked the scenario of a resourceful young woman outfoxing an experienced and powerful man. But whatever was causing her change in mood, Ichabod was plainly fascinated with this testimony.
“Mr. Aberijan told me that they already owned a juror. So he asked me which one I was dealing with to make sure it wasn’t the same one.”
“To make sure the record is clear,” Brad said. “Had you actually talked to any jurors up to this point in time or have you talked to any jurors since?” He held his breath.
“No,” Leslie said.
Brad exhaled. “What did you say to Mr. Aberijan?”
“I knew I had to make a quick guess.” Leslie turned slightly in her seat and faced the jury head-on. Most of the jurors crossed their arms and gave her a stern look. “Based on blatant body language during the trial, I assumed that juror number four was firmly on their side. So I would not name him. Frankly, I assumed that he was the one Ahmed already ‘owned.’” She leveled an accusatory gaze at the pale face of Zeke Stein. He had his arms crossed and stared right back.