The Simple Truth

by David Baldacci

  deafening. So much power, Fiske thought. He went down the hallway to the other bedroom and undressed. He sat on the bed in his undershorts and T-shirt, listening to the rain. His room was stuffy, but he made no move to open a window. The house was too old to have central air, but it didn’t have window-mounted air conditioners either. Apparently Sara preferred the river breeze to cool her. A clock hanging on the wall ticked the seconds at him. He caught himself measuring his pulse against it. His heart was pumping fast, gallons of blood gushing through him.

  He pulled on his trousers, rose and went down the hallway. Her room was dark now, but the door was still open. The curtains kicked up and down with the bursts of wind. He stood in the doorway and watched her as she lay in bed, only a sheet over her.

  She was watching him watching her. Was she waiting for him? Letting him come to her this time? He moved into the room, hesitantly, as though this was the first time he had entered a woman’s bedroom. She didn’t move or speak, neither encouraging nor discouraging.

  He lay down next to her and she immediately moved next to him, as though refusing to give him the opportunity to rethink his decision, to flee from her. She wore no clothes. Her body was warm, her skin smooth; the breasts spongy and heat-filled; the scent of the outside air thick over them. Sara’s hair was tangled and falling in her face. Her lips clenched and then opened; her fingers stroked him gently, everywhere. Together, they worked his pants off and let them fall to the floor.

  They kissed, lightly at first, and then with greater depth. She moved to raise his T-shirt, to rub his chest, his belly against hers. He moved her hand away and pulled his shirt back down. As the rain hit the roof and glanced off the windows, Fiske slid off his undershorts, lifted his body up, and eased himself down on top of her.

  * * *

  Sara awoke early, the first shafts of sunlight just dropping over the windowsill. Behind the storm had come waves of deliciously chilly air, and a sky that would transform fully from pink and gray to a deep blue in another hour. She put out her arm to touch him and felt the empty space next to her. She quickly sat up and looked around. Wrapping the sheet around her, she rushed down the hallway and checked the guest room. Empty. So was the bathroom. In a panic she reached the top of the stairs and stopped, a smile edging across her face.

  She watched Fiske as he poured a cup of coffee and then returned to cracking eggs in a bowl, to which he then added grated cheddar cheese. Sara stood there, the smell of simmering onion reaching her nostrils. Fiske was fully dressed, his hair damp from the shower. As he turned to pull open the refrigerator door, he saw her.

  Sara clutched the sheet a little tighter around her.

  “I thought you might have left.”

  “Thought I’d let you sleep in. It was a late night.”

  A wonderful night, she wanted to say, but didn’t. “You okay?” she asked as casually as she could, unable as yet to fully read the subtle messages behind his words, his movements and expressions. Especially about something as recent as their lovemaking. Was the choice of eggs over lying next to her until they both awoke a bad sign?

  “I’m fine, Sara.” He smiled, as if to show her that this was actually so.

  She smiled back. “Whatever you’re making smells wonderful.”

  “Nothing fancy. Western omelet.”

  “I usually have dry toast and kitchen sink coffee. It’s a nice change. Do I have time to shower?”

  “Make it fast.”

  “Not like last night.” She smiled, flicked her eyebrows and turned away. The sheet was fully open in the back.

  Fiske watched her go, aroused again at the sight of her naked body, the delicate, sensual tensing of her back, legs and buttocks. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked around the cozy space. He had stood on the rear deck for a while and watched the sun slowly rise over him. Dawn always seemed so much purer over water, as though these two essential elements of life, heat and water, produced a near-spiritual performance. He glanced back at the stairs as the sound of the shower started. He had watched Sara after she had fallen asleep. In the darkness of the night, their mingled scents a second skin, it had seemed as though he belonged next to her, and she to him. But then the blunt clarity of morning had come. Fiske lifted the coffee cup to his lips, but then quickly put it back down. If he had called his brother back right away, Mike would be alive right now. Fiske could never dodge that truth. He would, in fact, have to live with it forever.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Elizabeth Knight also awoke at the crack of dawn, showering and dressing quickly. Jordan Knight still slept soundly and she made no move to wake him. She brewed the coffee, poured a cup, took her notebook and sat out on the terrace and watched the sun come up. She looked over every page of her materials for oral argument today, which included the last bench memo Steven Wright would ever author. His blood seemed to replace the ink on the page. As she thought this, she had to fight back the tears again. She swore to herself that he wouldn’t die in vain. Ramsey would not carry this day, this case. Knight already had great incentive to make sure that Barbara Chance and women like her could sue the Army for damages for, in essence, condoning the cruel, sadistic and illegal behavior of its male personnel. The organization had not been invented that deserved immunity from such action. But now her motivation, her will to win, to beat Ramsey, had grown a thousandfold. She finished her coffee, packed her briefcase and took a cab to the Supreme Court.

  * * *

  Fiske rubbed his reddened eyes and tried to put the memory of the night before and its bewildering complexities out of his mind. He sat in a special section reserved for members of the Supreme Court bar. He looked over at Sara, who sat with the other clerks in a section of seats perpendicular to the bench. She looked over at him and smiled.

  When the justices appeared from behind the curtain and took their seats, Perkins finished his little speech and everyone came to rigid attention. Fiske looked over at Knight. Her subtle movements, an elbow resting lightly here, a finger sifting through paper there, were those of nearly uncontrollable raw energy. She looked, he thought, like a rocket straining at its tethers, desperately wanting to explode. He looked over at Ramsey. The man was smiling, looking calm, in control. If Fiske were a betting man, though, his chips would be at the extreme right of the bench, directly in front of Justice Elizabeth Knight.

  The case of Chance v. United States was called.

  Chance’s attorney, a hired gun from Harvard Law School, who made a practice of appearing before the Supreme Court with much success, launched into his argument with vigor. Until Ramsey cut in.

  “You’re aware of the Feres Doctrine, Mr. Barr?” Ramsey asked, referring to the 1950 Supreme Court opinion first granting immunity from lawsuits to the military.

  Barr smiled. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Aren’t you asking us to overturn fifty years of Court precedent?” Ramsey looked up and down the bench as he said this. “How can we decide this case in favor of your client without turning the military and this Court on their heads?”

  Knight did not let Barr answer. “The Court did not allow that argument to dissuade it from overturning the segregated school system in this country. If the cause is right, the means are justified, and precedent cannot stand in the way of that.”

  “Please answer my question, Mr. Barr,” Ramsey persisted.

  “I think this case is distinguishable.”

  “Really? There is no question that Barbara Chance and her male superiors were in uniform, on government property and performing their official duties when the sexual episodes occurred?”

  “I would hardly call coerced sex, ‘official duties.’ But nonetheless, the fact that her superior used his rank to coerce her into what amounted to a rape, and — ”

  “And,” Knight cut in, seemingly unable to remain quiet, “the superior officers at the base in question and the regional command were aware these events had taken place — had been advised in writing of them, even —
and had taken no action to even investigate the matter other than in a cursory fashion. It was Barbara Chance who called in the local police. They undertook an investigation which resulted in the truth coming to light. That truth clearly establishes a cause of action that would result in damages with respect to any other organization in this country.”

  Fiske stared from Ramsey to Knight. It was suddenly as though, instead of nine justices, there were only two. In Fiske’s mind, the courtroom had been transformed into a boxing ring, with Ramsey the champ and Knight the talented contender, but still an underdog.

  “We’re talking about the military here, Mr. Barr,” Ramsey said, but he looked at Knight. “This Court has ruled that the military is sui generis. That is the precedent you face. Your case deals with chain-of-command issues. An inferior personnel to her superior. That is just the issue that this Court has — several times in the past — addressed and unequivocally decided that it would not intrude upon the military’s presumptive immunity. That was the law yesterday, and it is the law today. Which gets me back to my original statement. For us to hold for your client, this court must reverse its position on a long and deeply followed line of precedents. That is what you are asking us to do.”

  “And as I mentioned earlier, stare decisis is clearly not in-fallible,” Knight said, referring to the Court’s practice of adhering to and upholding its previous decisions.

  Back and forth Knight and Ramsey went at it. For every salvo fired by one, there was an answer fired by the other.

  The other justices, and Mr. Barr, Fiske thought, were reduced to interested spectators.

  When the lawyer for the United States, James Anderson, stepped forward to deliver his argument, Knight did not even let him begin a sentence.

  “Why does allowing a damage suit against the Army for condoning a hostile environment for women interfere with the chain of command?” she asked him.

  “It clearly impacts negatively on the integrity of the relationship between superior and subordinate personnel,” Anderson promptly replied.

  “So let me see if I understand your reasoning. By allowing the military over the years to poison, gas, maim, kill and rape its soldiers with impunity, and stripping the victims of any legal recourse, that will somehow improve the relationship, the integrity, of the military and its personnel? I’m sorry, but I’m not quite getting the connection.”

  Fiske had to stop himself from laughing out loud. His respect for Knight as a lawyer and judge increased tenfold as she finished her statement. In two sentences, she had reduced the Army’s entire case to the level of absurdity. He looked over at Sara. Her gaze was trained on Knight, with, Fiske thought, a great deal of pride.

  Anderson reddened slightly. “The military, as the chief justice has pointed out, is a unique, special entity. Allowing lawsuits to fly at will can only inhibit and destroy that special bond between personnel, the need for discipline that is at the very core of military preparation and readiness.”

  “So the military is special?”

  “Right.”

  “Because it serves to defend and protect us?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So we have the four branches of the Armed Forces which are already covered by that immunity. Why don’t we extend this immunity to other special organizations? Like the fire department? The police department? They protect us. The Secret Service? They protect the president, arguably the most important person in the country. How about hospitals? They save our lives. Why not let hospitals be immune from suit in the event male doctors rape female personnel?”

  “We are getting far outside the boundaries of this case,” Ramsey said sternly.

  “I think those boundaries are precisely what we’re trying to determine,” Knight fired back.

  “I believe that U.S. v. Stanley — ” Anderson began.

  “I’m glad you mentioned it. Let me briefly recount the facts of that case,” Knight said. She wanted this heard. By her fellow justices, several of whom were on the Court when the case had been decided, as well as by the public. To Knight, the Stanley case was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in history and represented everything that was wrong with the Court. That had also been Steven Wright’s conclusion in his bench memo. And she intended to make those conclusions heard both today and when it came time to win a majority vote on this case.

  When Knight spoke, her voice was strong and resonating.

  “Master Sergeant James Stanley was in the Army in the fifties and volunteered for a program which he was told had to do with testing protective clothing against gas warfare. The testing was conducted in Maryland, at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Stanley signed up for it, but he was never asked to wear any special clothing or do testing with gas masks or anything. He only talked to some psychologists for great lengths of time about a variety of personal subjects, was given some water to drink during these sessions and that was it. In 1975, Stanley, whose life had gone downhill — inexplicable behavior, discharge from the Army, divorce — received a letter from the Army asking him to participate in a follow-up exam by members of the Army who had been given LSD in 1959, because the Army wanted to study the long-term effects of the drug. Under the pretense of testing clothing against gas warfare, the Army had slipped him and other soldiers LSD without his knowledge.”

  A collective gasp went up from the general public’s seats as they heard this, and the spectators started talking to each other. Perkins actually had to bang his gavel, an almost unheard-of event.

  As Fiske sat there and listened, it occurred to him how important this case was. Rufus Harms had filed an appeal with this Court. Was he also seeking to sue the Army? Something terrible had happened to him while in the military. Certain men had done something to him that had ruined his life and resulted in the death of a little girl. Rufus wanted his freedom, wanted justice. He had the truth on his side, Rufus had proclaimed. And yet even with the truth, under the current law, it didn’t matter. Just like Sergeant Stanley, Private Rufus Harms would lose.

  Knight continued, secretly well pleased with the audience’s reaction. “The psychologist was employed by the CIA. The CIA and the Army had undertaken a joint effort on the study of the drug’s effects, because the CIA had received reports that the Soviet Union had stockpiled the drug and the Army wanted to know how it might be used against its soldiers in wartime. That sort of thing. Stanley, who rightly blamed the Army for destroying his life, sued. His case finally made it to the Supreme Court.” She paused. “And he lost.”

  Another gasp came from the public.

  Fiske looked around at Sara. Her eyes were still fixed on Knight. Fiske peered over at Ramsey. He was livid.

  “In effect, what you’re asking is for this court to deny to Barbara Chance and similar plaintiffs one of the most cherished constitutional rights we possess as a people: the right to our day in court. Isn’t that what you’re asking? Letting the guilty go unpunished?”

  “Mr. Anderson,” Ramsey broke in. “What has happened to the men who perpetrated these sexual assaults?”

  “At least one has been court-martialed, found guilty and imprisoned,” Anderson again promptly replied.

  Ramsey smiled triumphantly. “So hardly unpunished.”

  “Mr. Anderson, the record below clearly establishes that the actions for which the man was imprisoned have been going on for a very long time and were known to higher-ups in the Army, who declined to take any action. In point of fact only when Barbara Chance went to the local police did an investigation ensue. So tell me, have the guilty been punished?”

  “I would say it depends on your definition of guilt.”

  “Who’s policing the military, Mr. Anderson? To make sure what happened to Sergeant Stanley doesn’t happen again?”

  “The military is policing itself. And doing a good job.”

  “Stanley was decided in 1986. Since that time we’ve had Tailhook, the still-unexplained incidents in the Persian Gulf War, and now the rape of female Army pers
onnel. Do you call that doing a good job?”

  “Well, every large organization will have small pockets of trouble.”

  Knight bristled. “I rather doubt if the victims of these crimes would describe them as small pockets of trouble.”

  “Of course, I didn’t mean — ”

  “When I alluded to extending immunity to police, firemen, hospitals, you didn’t agree with that, did you?”

  “No. Too many exceptions to the rule disproves the rule.”

  “You recall the Challenger explosion, of course?” Anderson nodded. “The survivors of the civilians on board the shuttle were entitled to sue the government, and the contractor that built the shuttle, for damages. However, the families of the military personnel on board were denied that right because of the immunity granted to the military by this court. Do you consider that fair?”

  Anderson fell back upon the old reliable. “If we allow lawsuits against the military it will unnecessarily complicate the national security of this country.”

  “And that’s really the whole ball of wax,” Ramsey said, pleased that Anderson had raised the point. “It’s a balancing act, and this court has already determined where that balance lies.”

  “Precisely, Mr. Chief Justice,” Anderson said. “It’s bedrock law.”

  Knight almost smiled. “Really? I thought bedrock law was the constitutional right of citizens of this country to seek redress of their grievances before the courts. No immunity from suit was granted to the military by any law of this country. Congress did not see fit to do it. In fact, it was this court in 1950 which invented, out of broadcloth, such specialized treatment, and they apparently did so, in part, because they were afraid that allowing such suits would bankrupt the U.S. Treasury. I would hardly call that bedrock.”

  “However, it is the controlling precedent now,” Ramsey pointed out.

  “Precedents change,” Knight replied, “particularly if they’re