“Do you see the number on top of each page?”
“Yes: MC16-26885.”
“What does that number mean?”
“The ‘MC’ means that the file was handled by our major crimes unit. The ‘16’ represents the year the file was opened, and the ‘26885’ represents the number of the file that was opened that year. For instance, the file that was opened before this one would be 26884, and the file opened after this file would be 26886.”
“That’s not the complete file, is it?”
Indy looked at the pages closely. “I’m just not sure, ma’am. I have managed thousands of files and I just can’t tell.”
“Well where’s the rest of the file?”
McSheffrey stood up and objected. “We gave her forty-nine boxes of documents. She found a few that she now alleges are apparently missing. The inspector can’t say if anything is missing. So how can she? Yesterday this court made a ruling. Ms. Wittenberg was to provide an affidavit of the research and work she did to review these boxes of documents and tell this court in such an affidavit that such documents have not been found, either in those boxes or in the hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that she received before all of this. She has not done that. Now she is trying to perpetuate the myth in front of the jury that the prosecution is attempting to hide documents. Now she is suggesting that documents have been deliberately withheld. We have not done that.
Certainly, with a hundred thousand documents, discovery of documents cannot be flawless. But we have done everything possible to accommodate our very learned friend, and she is now just stalling for time, and, frankly, being ridiculous. She says documents were withheld. But she refuses to swear an affidavit.
“In any event,” McSheffrey continued, “Blankstein deFijter had ample opportunity to explore this in the discovery process of the case. As you may recall, they brought on endless applications on basically useless points. They could certainly have raised this issue then. It is a little late in the day to be raising these points now. The jury is doing a great service here. It is so wrong to unnecessarily delay them.” Jurors were nodding.
Judge Mordecai took off his glasses and looked at Dana. “What about that, Ms. Wittenberg?”
“That might be so, Judge, but, but . . .” she petered out, knowing full well every detail of the pretrial battle that Blankstein deFijter had waged. She had prepared all the documentation.
“Ms. Wittenberg, your firm has taken this through a preliminary inquiry that went for months and months, an inquiry where this particular witness was questioned extensively. Your firm has brought on disclosure motions before, during, and after the prelim. Now you’re doing this in the second week of trial? All you have to do is swear an affidavit that you truly do not have the allegedly missing thirty-seven documents, and how you came to that conclusion, and you have not done that. You are playing games here. We’ve already lost a day and a half of this trial by this pestering over documents that probably do not exist, or do exist and you simply can’t find. I order you to carry on,” Judge Mordecai commanded.
At that moment, all Dana could think about were the words of Lee PenGarrett: “Stick with it, Dana. Stick with it. There’s a tiny crack in the prosecution. I want you to hit that crack with a giant axe over and over. I don’t care what Mordecai says or does. He’s crazy now, he was crazy on the Supreme Court bench when I was on it, the judges on the appellate court think that he has flat-out flipped, and now, watching him in this trial. He has drifted into a whole new dimension of lunacy. I’m in the back of the courtroom, Dana. I am watching every second of this trial. If you need help, I’m here.”
Sweating profusely, she replied, “My lord, these are obviously documents that have been withheld. I need them to conduct the defense properly. The witness has just said there were missing documents. He just said that the entire file is not here. And I need to see everything in that file.”
“The rest of the file,” said McSheffrey with deliberation, “the rest of the file is in the other 100,000 documents in this case. It exists, somewhere in those forty-nine boxes. It simply has not been put together the way that she would like. She is trying to suggest that we suppressed documents when we did not. I resent the implication she is making.”
“You are playing games in my courtroom, Wittenberg,” said Judge Mordecai. “If you thought there was redaction or withholding of documents, it should have been dealt with months ago. In fact, there were many such motions in the month or so prior to the opening of this trial. You had the incredible power of Blankstein deFijter in acquiring documents, and now you want more, at this stage of the trial, throwing everything in a mess. You cannot question on these allegedly missing documents. If you provide me with an appropriate affidavit, I might change my mind. Now, cross-examination. Go.”
Dana turned around and looked at Lee Penn-Garrett, who almost imperceptibly nodded his head. Gritting her teeth, she pursued the point.
“Inspector Singh, can you turn to tab three of the documents, please?” The inspector immediately complied. “That meeting occurred in October 2017, shortly after the Colorado attack. What happened at that meeting, sir?”
McSheffrey stood up and objected. “She’s trying to sneak something in through the back door when you ordered her not to bring it in through the front. That’s contrary to the spirit of your ruling.” “It is not,” replied Dana.
“It is,” said the judge. “Don’t go there.”
Indy was sitting in the witness box listening to the ongoing war between the judge and Dana, and between Sheff and Dana. He was frowning more than the judge. When the court settled down, and Dana was looking at the computer to see what her next question would be, Indy spoke.
“The meeting was a joint meeting between senior members of MC division, the FBI, and TTIC . . .”
“Stop,” said Judge Mordecai. “I have ruled on that. We are not going there, Inspector. Didn’t you hear the last exchange?”
“I did, m’lord.”
“Okay, move on then.” Mordecai looked at Dana. “Continue.”
Dana took a deep breath. “Back to that meeting, it was clear to everyone—”
“Stop!” yelled the judge.
“Objection,” yelled both Archambault and Sheff. “She’s still doing it.”
“Ms. Wittenberg, you are still in contempt. Be very careful or you will leave the courtroom by the side door, and ushered into cells unless you respect my rulings.”
“But a person at a meeting can testify to what happened at the meeting,” she said.
“Not if I have ruled against it. A meeting between two agencies does not help me or the jury in understanding this case. And you’re actually not asking about the meeting. You are trying to show that somehow documents have been suppressed and I. Have. Made. My. Ruling.”
When things quieted down again, Dana, with an amazing sense of perseverance, continued. “Was there not a document produced at that meeting suggesting that Leon Lestage had little involvement in the conspiracy?”
Before the uproar, Indy said, “Yes.”
“The jury will disregard that. Ms. Wittenberg, if you persist, you will spend tonight in cells. Four times you have deliberately flouted my rulings.”
“But m’lord,” said Dana, looking at the jury, not at the judge. “A senior member of the police force has just testified that there is a document that states that Mr. Lestage played a minimal part in the conspiracy, NONE.”
Every one on the six-woman, six-man jury was smiling. Judge Mordecai was not. His face was turning purple. “You, you, you . . . I direct the jury to disregard your remark, and you then repeat a critical portion of that remark, with great emphasis to the jury? How much more in contempt can you be? You are done. At four o’clock this afternoon, you will not leave this courtroom through the front door. You will accompany the sheriffs to cells, and I instruct the sheriffs to hold you there until eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
The day was hellish for Dana. She st
umbled through cross-examination, lost her place and her train of thought countless times, and was watching the clock, now afraid of it. When it hit four, she would not go home to Chris and Bam-Bam.
When the clock reached four, Judge Mordecai, as he was leaving the courtroom, pointed to the sheriffs and to Dana. “Cells,” he said.
“Can I take my notes, briefs, and computers with me?” Dana asked. “I use them to prepare. I need to prepare for the continuation of Mr. Singh’s cross-examination.”
“I am not sure what kind of moronicity could be on those computers that provokes you to ask the questions that you do. Yes. You may take that junk with you. And sheriffs, get rid of those hundreds of binders. I do not want them cluttering up my courtroom.”
As McGhee was Googling “moronicity,” McSheffrey rose to his feet.
“Now what do you want, Mr. McSheffrey? We’re adjourned.”
“This case should be mistrialed. The jury has been hopelessly compromised by the remarks Ms. Wittenberg made. How can that possibly be corrected? The Crown has been deeply prejudiced by what she did, directly contrary and in the face of orders the court just made.”
“I knew you would rise to your feet and say that,” responded the judge. “And I will consider this overnight. But that’s giving deFijter exactly what he wants. But do you really think that the jury is so stupid that when I say disregard this evidence, they won’t?”
“I don’t know. But if Ms. Wittenberg doesn’t get it, how can a jury, not trained in the law, get it? Come on. Ms. Wittenberg is a lawyer. She caused all of this. I don’t think she fully appreciates what she’s done here.”
“I’ll think about it. I’m guessing Ms. Wittenberg is obviously not welltrained in the law. How the hell did you pass the bar exams, Ms. Wittenberg? The jury probably has more common sense than you do. If I do mistrial this case, Ms. Wittenberg, you are going to pay personally ALL of the costs that have been incurred in this trial. I think between clerks, reporters, sheriffs, and me, you’re looking at at least $10,000 per day.”
That was the end of that. At four o’clock that day, Dana, cuffed, walked out a side door. Two other sheriffs gathered up her computers and pieces of computers, her papers, and the coat she had draped over her chair.
Leon Lestage was taking the measure of the argument. McSheffrey had applied for a mistrial. All Leon needed to do was get Wittenberg to agree, and the case would be over for now. But while Wittenberg seemed to be floundering her way through the trial, and McSheffrey seemed to be winning every point, neither counsel was looking at the jury with the sharpness that Leon did. The jury was unhappy with the judge, and with the prosecution, and seemed to be riding with Dana, notwithstanding the hopelessness of her position. Leon did something he seldom did. He grinned.
28
An intercom in the office area of the special projects wing at KDDE buzzed. “Is Jimmy Stalbach there?” came the voice from the main office switchboard.
“Yes, he’s here. What is the message?”
“There are three strange men here. One of them says he is Kumar Hanaman, but he looks nothing like company pictures of him. He is with two others, maybe Americans. They look,” and the voice dropped off a bit, “look and smell like derelicts. We were going to have security remove them but this Kumar fellow seems to know a great deal about this company.”
“Just a moment please . . . .” Thus began a series of phone calls and conversations that ultimately led Richard, Zak, and Kumar to the inner sanctum of KDDE.
Jimmy howled with laughter when he saw the three of them. “No wonder they had issues with you guys. God, did you crawl through the sewers to get here?”
“Almost,” said Kumar. “We are in a hurry. These two gentlemen are accompanying me. Is the Allegro Star ready?”
“Yes she is, but if I’m going to be in close quarters with the three of you for a week or two on that ship, take a shower, get into some company clothes. You guys reek and after three days in close confines, you’ll all likely die of the plague or something. I have my standards. What is the hurry? You said last night that you had given the authorities the slip.”
“That was last night, Jimmy,” Kumar said. “They were able to track us down. They almost had us cornered on the promenade, and we had to crawl underneath the railway bridge to get here. My guess is that they will figure out this was our likely destination, and they’ll come in here, kicking down the walls and shooting before talking. We need to hustle, Jimmy.”
There was, of course, the contractual issue of payment. Jimmy was Yousseff’s most successful drug runner, which was why he had been chosen, in the Colorado attack, to pilot a minisubmarine crammed with tons of explosives to a remote outpost on the British Columbia/Alaska border. This was a similar venture. Kumar was clearly on the run, and there was a high degree of risk associated with the mission. They settled on payment of 5 million euros, laundered and perfectly clean, in a Swiss bank account.
Jimmy indeed had his standards. He insisted on showers and clean clothing, but that was accomplished in under five minutes, and he led the three freshly scrubbed fugitives toward the ship. He opened a series of double doors and the four were standing inside a large indoor quay harboring a stunning craft, one of the strangest vessels that KDDE had ever produced.
The ship was approximately eighty feet from bow to stern but sat low in the water. It was a trimaran, with the two outrigger hulls narrowing to sharp reverse angles along the prow. When the ship was in motion, the central hull elevated so that only the two outrigger hulls and the sleek engine housing were in contact with the water, somewhat akin to surface-piercing hydrofoils. The engines were located in the central hull. They were amazingly silent and, when at speed and above the water, every bit as quiet as a Triton class nuclear submarine. The propellers were of a special design and made of carbon nanotube materials. They created very little noise even when rotating at higher speeds. The entire craft was unusually angled with planar segments connecting at odd points.
“Damn,” breathed Richard. “A hull like that—it’s got to be stealthy. Looks like an F-117.”
“Actually,” Kumar said, “it was modeled after the F-117. The Pakistan military got hold of those plans and passed them along to us. It turns out that F-117 technology works better in water than in air. She is very stealthy.”
“What kind of material is it made out of?” Richard asked, checking out various aspects of the ship.
“It is made of radar-absorbing carbon-titanium acrylic material. NASA technology. Stealth technology. On a radar or sonar, the Allegro Star is about the size of a sardine.”
“How did you get your hands on those types of materials?” Zak asked.
“Dubai, gentlemen. Dubai,” Kumar responded. “You can buy anything you want in those marketplaces. Anything from elephants to Ebola.”
“But a visual inspection, from say a chopper or another ship, would pick it up, wouldn’t it?” asked Richard.
“Theoretically, yes. But the Allegro Star has multiple personalities.”
There was the sound of a distant explosion coming from the other side of the harbor. PPC Corp. was still burning. “Let’s get on this thing and go,” said Zak. “Every cop and multiple militaries are looking for us. The faster we get out of Karachi, the happier I’ll be.”
“We have fuel and provisions for ten days,” Jimmy said. “Where are we going?”
“The first order of business is to get the hell out of Karachi,” said Richard. “We’re fugitives. We’ll have to figure out the next step when we get out of here.”
“So we’re leaving Karachi on a dead run and we don’t know where we’re going?”
“Yes, Jimmy,” said Zak. “We live our entire lives that way.”
Kumar nodded to one of the technicians present in the mooring area. “Open up the harbor doors,” he ordered quietly. “Only about half way. And dim the inside lights. We don’t want to advertise this any more than we need to.”
The bay doors slow
ly retracted, revealing a harbor scene that was far from tranquil. Multiple police boats featuring flashing red, green, and blue lights were cruising up and down the harbor. There were two Coast Guard cutters, one near the Port Grand, and the other toward the mouth of the harbor. Beyond that, between the breakwaters that separated the open ocean from the outer harbor, were two Pakistani Navy cruisers. The far shore of the harbor was a sea of flashing lights from various emergency vehicles. Several helicopters were hovering low over the water, with powerful searchlights playing across the inky waves.
“How the hell are we going to dodge all that, Jimmy?” asked Richard. “A minnow is not going to swim past that without detection.”
Kumar looked at Richard and smiled. “Yousseff’s business is drug smuggling. We have a lifetime of experience slipping in and out of scenes like this.
Now get on board. The Allegro Star can do amazing things.”
29
Dana was placed in a small eight-by-eight concrete cell with a rimless metal toilet and a small bunk bed. She lay down, wondering where she would find $1,000, let alone what might be tens of thousands of dollars for a mistrial. She turned off her laptops, slid into the bottom bunk, curled into fetal position, pulled the covers over her head, and hoped the rest of the world would just go away. The sounds of cell doors clanging, men cursing, people detoxing, and women wailing were too hideous to bear. Childhood memories began to drift through her mind, memories that had taken years to suppress, memories that had required much counseling to remove. No Chris, no Bam-Bam, just the hideous privations of a cold brick cell. She began to silently sob underneath the thin jailhouse blanket. She drifted into troubled sleep. . . .
The Vancouver to Whistler highway, before the Olympics, was a twisty, narrow, dangerous road that required skill and concentration to navigate. Seven-year-old Dana and her mother had just enjoyed a spectacular day on the slopes of Whistler Mountain. They drove home invigorated, using words like “epic” and “totally sick” to describe the wonderful mother-daughter bonding day. As often happens in mountain passes, the weather changed abruptly, and ten miles into their journey home, snow was being deposited at a rate of eight inches per hour. The snowplows and graders had not yet cleared the highway. Halfway through their journey, lights came up behind them—powerful lights. They belonged to a huge Dodge pickup truck with a ten-inch lift kit and Monster Mudder tires. The tires alone were almost as high as the roof of Mrs. Wittenberg’s small Toyota. The pickup belonged to a high-striding seventeen-year-old, fueled by testosterone and beer. Like many his age, he felt that huge tires and four-wheel drive rendered him invincible. The laws of physics, or any laws for that matter, did not apply to him. Mrs. Wittenberg was driving a reasonable speed of 60 kph; the other driver was going 110. He passed them with an angry arrogance, but as he pulled back into the southbound lane, his rear wheels kicked sideways, first left, then right, then left again in gradually increasing arcs.
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