Counterplay

by Richard Aaron

  “We have a problem,” said Zak. “I am positive that there is going to be an attack on Kumar’s life again tonight. His testimony is incredibly important, and goes far beyond this courtroom. After what they just attempted to do, we need to be ready for anything.”

  “I’m not sure what we can do,” said one of the sheriffs. “Our jurisdiction beyond the courthouse extends to moving prisoners around. That’s about it.”

  “Prisoners?” questioned Zak. “Are prisoners kept overnight here?”

  “Yes, we have a secure facility a couple of levels down below the parkade. It’s actually safer there than in cells somewhere else. Often we get high-profile cases in here. The chief justice lobbied hard for the facility.” “Could we spend the night there?” asked Zak.

  “In cells? You want to spend the night in cells?”

  “Yeah. Why not? You say you have incredibly good security. You say that you’re responsible for witnesses. Why don’t we stay here while this storm blows over?”

  “You’d have to take Kumar and me, too,” added Richard. “We’re here to protect him, or at least, that was the initial mission.”

  The sheriff chuckled. “We don’t get requests like that very often, but I’ve been in court the entire time and I’m concerned about that sort of thing. Let me radio the boss.”A few minutes later he returned. “Come with me, people,” he said. “There are a few elevators to go.”

  “Thanks,” said Zak, motioning to Kumar. “You’re coming with us.”

  They were led deep beneath the courthouse through many electronically coded elevators and multiple steel doors. Eventually they reached a cellblock. “I hope you three are having fun,” came a voice from the opposite row of cells.

  “Oh, Dan, that’s you,” Richard laughed. “I hope they’re taking good care of you.”

  “Wow. It’s a regular party in here,” said Zak “Lestage, too?”

  “Is there any way you guys can get this pompous little fucker to shut the fuck up?” Leon asked, pointing to Dan Alexander. “Having to spend the nights with him is cruel and fucking unusual punishment you know. I’ve got rights.”

  “You belong here, moron,” said Dan to Leon. “And I’m going to make damn sure that we drag your terrorist ass across the border somehow, and when I do, I will draw up an indictment of 20,000 or more murders that you’ve committed.”

  “You’re awesome,” Zak laughed. “That performance in court yesterday was worthy of an Oscar.”

  “You’re done, you and Richard,” Dan snapped. “Your treasonous conduct will not be forgotten. Get ready for a lifetime in Gitmo.”

  “For what?” asked Zak. “Telling the truth? Bringing Kumar here to tell the truth? We all know Yousseff and what he did. You know that, Dan.”

  “Sure I know it. Yousseff is a terrorist. But we have our geopolitical interests on the table. We’re at war, you fucking idiots. We have bases in Afghanistan that have incredible strategic value. You attack Yousseff, you attack our objectives and interests in Afghanistan, and that’s treasonous fucking behavior. Got it?”

  “No,” said Zak. “We don’t get it. Yousseff murdered tens of thousands of American citizens. He was the man who supervised the destruction of the Glen Canyon Dam. He should be stuffed somewhere and never again see the light of day.”

  “So what? It’s politics, you two idiots,” Dan ranted. “You don’t seem to get that. Deals have to be made, sometimes with people you don’t like, sometimes even with terrorists like Yousseff. It’s the way of history. This happens all the time.”

  “You’re a sick and twisted little man, Dan,” Zak replied. “Some values cannot be compromised. Some lines cannot be crossed. You’ve crossed so many that you’ve lost your moral compass altogether. You would make a deal with Satan if it suited your purposes. In fact, you probably have.”

  “That’s right, asshole. That’s why I’m the director of TTIC and will be president before long, and you will spend the rest of your days in some cockroach-infested prison. Now shut the fuck up. I want to get some sleep.”

  The conversation ended when Lestage demanded that he either be put in solitary confinement or share a cell with Dan Alexander. Either option would solve his little problem.

  58

  Judge Mordecai was insistent that they begin the following day in Courtroom 401 at 2:00 p.m. Repairs to the courtroom were far from done, and both the front and rear walls consisted of temporary ply-wood partitions. Counsel tables, a new witness box, and various desks for the clerk and the reporter were brought in. The bench itself was an eclectic collection of lumber and makeshift furniture. Mordecai insisted that the trial continue in the same courtroom, primarily because it was the largest courtroom in the complex, and ironically because it was designed with maximum security in mind. The foyer roof had been covered with plastic and plywood. Repairs continued when court was not in session. The guard was doubled around all doors of the courtroom, and additional metal detectors had been brought in. For thirty-six hours, forensic teams from the RCMP and CSIS gathered up evidence. Witnesses were interviewed and hundreds of hours of videos from the court security system were confiscated. A public plea went up for turning over video clips from literally thousands of cell phones.

  Laboriously, the government began a yearlong project of reconstructing, second by second, what had occurred. The internet rumor machine went into overdrive and dozens of theories were hatched and developed. Lestage himself had orchestrated it in an effort to escape custody; the Russians had done it because whenever anything malevolent transpired, the Russians had to be involved; the CIA/FBI/DEA had done it; the Canadian armed forces, or the American armed forces or, in fact, armed forces from any jurisdiction that came to mind were involved. The usual extremists argued that it was all a hoax somehow orchestrated out of Zurich/Jerusalem. With the police still collecting evidence, Lestage’s trial continued. By 2:00 p.m., the blood was wiped up, crews were arriving to fix the bullet-holed and shattered glass, and extra security was in place. In Courtroom 401, Dana was up.

  “Are we all ready to go after that entertaining bit of gunplay we had yesterday morning? Liveliest this outfit’s been in forty years.”

  Dana nodded. “Yes m’lord, we’re ready to go.”

  There was the usual introduction of the witness to the court, and Dana went through Kumar’s name and occupation. “What is it that you do for a living, Mr. Hanaman?”

  “I am an engineer. My company builds submarines and small specialty ships.”

  “Where do you work?”

  Kumar gave evidence about the businesses in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and California. He gave detailed evidence about his education and the growth of these various businesses. The court was presented with a clear picture of the man and his amazing talents. It was a short afternoon, given the confusion and uncertainty that the uproar of the previous day had caused. The clock went to 3:30, a grudging truncation of the usual afternoon, granted to give the construction and repair crew more time to continue to rehabilitate the courtroom. Given a half hour break and the slow start, Dana, still unsure of where the evidence would go, barely went beyond the point of painting a picture of Kumar’s background and his involvement with Karachi Dry Dock and Engineering and its sister company, Pacific Western Submersibles.

  “Now,” she said, “with the clock reaching 3:30, we’ve not mentioned a gentleman by the name of Yousseff Said al-Sabhan. When did you first meet—”

  The judge cut her off. “The carpenters need to get back in here. I’m tired. You seem to be switching to a different topic. That will be a good place to start in the morning. We’re adjourned.”

  Tyra was immediately on the phone to the president’s chief of staff. “Put me through, Marv. This is important. I don’t care who he is with or what he’s doing.”

  Marv knew that Tyra would not push for such an intrusion unless she had a very good reason. The president took the call. “Yes, Tyra?”

  “We got a break. Something finally went our w
ay. Kumar testified for an hour or so and did not mention the terrorist attack once, or the connection between him and Yousseff. Wittenberg was just getting to that point when the judge adjourned for the day. If we can figure out a way to adjourn this trial, even for a few days, we can make this problem go away.”

  “Do what you have to do, Tyra. Get us the hell out of this.”

  “My ass is hanging out a mile. Time to cut me in for half.”

  The president didn’t need any time to reflect on that. “Deal,” he said.

  “In writing,” she said.

  A few more details had to be worked out, but it would easily go her way. She would become fabulously, amazingly wealthy. Hundreds of millions of dollars wealthy. A nice payday for a few simple tasks. She phoned the two agents who had remained behind, Wilder and Fitzpatrick. “I have a job for you guys . . .”

  There are many extrajudicial ways to get a trial adjourned.

  59

  It was well past 2:00 a.m. and the content Wittenberg household was deep in sleep. Tyra Baylor was lurking. For most agents, the chore at hand would be unpleasant in the extreme. A number, mainly those not interested in promotions, would have declined. Not Tyra. The intoxication of the pre-kill thrill was overpowering. These moments were too few and far between. Pushing her mother down the stairs. Burning down the orphanage. The glorious Syrian interrogation. The orgy of wet work required to ensure that Matthew Finnegan’s agenda was advanced. His presidency would have been unsuccessful without her. She lived for these moments when she wielded the power of life or death. Unfortunately, tonight, the moment would not be prolonged; the prey needed to be terminated, not played with.

  She screwed the suppressor onto her Beretta and fished around her jacket pocket for her lock-picking tools. She was absolutely silent and descended the stairs like a wraith, picked the lock in seconds and, like smoke, entered Dana’s basement suite.

  As the apparition descended the stairs, Bam-Bam, snoring (it was Chris’s one critique of the Saint Bernard), apparently dead to the world, abruptly opened one eye. As Tyra was congratulating herself over the lunar nature of the break-in, Bam-Bam opened his other eye and emitted a deep, soft, belly rumble. Dana turned in her sleep, throwing one arm across Chris’s naked chest. She was oblivious to Bam-Bam’s blast of adrenalin and that he was now crouched, lionlike, at the foot of the bed. Tyra wasn’t familiar with the floor plan, but knew there was a theme to basement suites. Kitchenette, dining/living area, small bathroom, small bedroom. She let her eyes adjust to the dark. There was sufficient light thrown off from various high-tech gadgets for her to see where the bedroom was. She drifted toward the door, gun in hand. The door was not fully shut, and with one hand, she slowly pushed it open. She felt the hard steel of the Beretta in her hand, and willed her heartbeat to slow. The seconds prior to the kill created a religious clarity and a preorgasmic rush of power and pleasure. Her index finger began to tighten around the trigger. . . .

  Agent Fitzpatrick was one of two agents, in addition to Tyra Baylor, who remained in Vancouver after the botched courthouse attack. His assignment was to take out Kumar and Turbee. He knew Turbee was on the fortysecond floor of the Wall Centre. He thought that Kumar was in the same suite. He was not aware that Zak and Richard had taken Kumar into the courthouse lockup.

  At 2:00 a.m. Fitzpatrick, equipped with a Beretta and various other weapons of personal combat, entered the main foyer of the Wall Centre and took one of the east tower elevators to the forty-second floor. He knocked on the door of room 4201. He felt the tingle of adrenalin surge through his system. He pulled out his gun and knocked on the door again. “Room service,” he said.

  The mouse whizzed past George’s ear and clattered on the floor behind him, knocking the battery cover off and sending the battery skittering in 360s across the wood-paneled floor.

  “Whoa, Turb, I’ve never seen you do that before. What’s up little buddy?”

  “I’m completely stuck, George. I think I know who owns fifty-one percent of the Afghanistan Development Corporation, and it’s suspicious. But this Erbium166 company is thoroughly hidden away. I don’t think there’s a digital record at all.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Yes, George. Paper and pen are becoming the new high-tech form of encryption. You don’t use computers at all. You go back to the 1950s. You write things down. You use ink. Honest to god ink. And you don’t put it on a hard drive or in the cloud or on a flash drive. You put it in a desk. In a drawer, lock it up with an old-fashioned key. You avoid digital snoops by avoiding digital. That’s what I think happened here.”

  “How far did you get?”

  “Well, Erbium166 is a company incorporated in Afghanistan, and it’s owned by another company in Pakistan. Both countries have modeled their corporate system after the English model. After all, it was the English who took things over for a while, in the nineteenth century, until they were thoroughly beaten and tossed out. But in the meantime, a lot of British law was adopted, and it hung around. Erbium166 is owned by Erbium166—Pakistan— Ltd., which is owned by a numbered company that’s headquartered with a large law firm in Karachi. There is absolutely no trace of anything owned by or owning the numbered company, other than a lawyer at the law firm.”

  “Are you sure, Turb?”

  “George, I’m accessing the TTIC computers from here. They have access to pretty much every database on the planet. If it exists, TTIC can find it.”

  “So if TTIC can’t find it—”

  Turbee finished George’s sentence: “It does not exist. At least not digitally.”

  “But,” George added, “we know it must exist because it owns a company that owns a company that owns forty-nine percent of most of the natural resources of Afghanistan. There is no way that some lawyer in Karachi owns it.”

  “The syllogism works, George. You are right. It must exist because of the wealth it owns. But TTIC can’t find anything about it. That means that while it does not exist digitally, it must exist. And the only way I can think of is the nineteenth century way.”

  Turbee was silent for a few minutes, listening to the distant sound of traffic, and the occasional siren coming from the direction of St. Paul’s two blocks away. He poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee and looked disconsolately at his computer screen.

  “What about the fifty-one percent chunk?” asked George.

  “Kumar told us that Yousseff owns it, but probably indirectly, through trusts and offshore holding companies.”

  “Who is supposed to own it? On paper?”

  “The press releases state that it’s owned by the government, by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. But when you look a little closer, it’s actually owned by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Ltd. This is a limited company. It’s owned by a series of numbered companies that are owned by various trusts that are directed by various other numbered companies in countries famous for laundering and hiding drug money, or money stolen by despots. You know, the usual places—the Bahamas, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, St. Maarten, Martinique, those places. But at least that’s trackable and I’m working on it. One of the things that helps us is that ultimately the trail has to lead back to Yousseff. But George, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I think I’m being followed.”

  “Followed how?”

  “I think someone is tracking me, George. There’s nothing specific that I can point to. Every now and then I get weird interruptions in my searches, stuff that you wouldn’t spot if you didn’t know the system intimately. You know what I mean. You and I designed most of the programming. You kind of get a feel—”

  There was a sharp rap on the door. “Room service,” came the voice from the other side.

  “Did you order anything, Turbee?”

  “I might have. I think I ordered some root beer and a bunch of chocolate bars a couple of hours ago, but then I might not have, or I might have.

  George, you know I don’t keep
track of such things. I don’t know.”

  60

  The haste of the assignment had resulted in faulty intelligence. The trial had to be stopped in any way possible, as rapidly as possible. If defense counsel were to be deleted from the equation, the trial would be delayed until new lawyers could be brought into the picture. That would be enough for the Yousseff-did-not-do-this cabal to regroup. Tyra was ready for two people, Dana and Chris, either of whom she could have killed with her bare hands. But no one had told her about an 185-pound Saint Bernard who was fanatically devoted to—in fact, made it his mission to protect—the two people he adored.

  An almost imperceptible creak of a moldy stair riser will sound like a fracturing two-by-four to most dogs; to an animal with the exquisite hearing of a Saint Bernard, it sounded like a train wreck. The lock on the door, being of 1980s vintage, was in such poor condition that it could be picked with a kitchen knife. Tyra slid her lock pick noiselessly into the keyhole, and the tumblers were edged silently into position—silent to human ears, but to Bam-Bam, they echoed like I-beams crashing onto a factory floor. As Tyra entered the suite, his teeth were bared and his massive muscles became compressed metal springs. He struck with the speed and power of a python.

  The gun was slowly rising to bed level when Bam-Bam uncoiled. Almost 200 pounds of fury launched itself from the bed and massive jaws clamped around Tyra’s shooting arm. The ulna and radius were shattered by the crunching lock of Bam-Bam’s jaws. Tyra screamed and fell over backward, discharging several bullets into the ceiling as she went down. Bam-Bam’s jaws were so strong, they could have been powered by hydraulics. He went for Tyra’s throat but she was able to fend him off with her good arm. In the melee, Bam-Bam’s monstrous jaws clamped onto that arm, snapping the same two bones. For good measure, a couple of bones in Tyra’s left wrist were fractured into irreparable ruins.