She spent half an hour rereading Glenda Craft’s motion and Harlan Madden’s opposition, and then her iPhone rang. A 202 number: Washington, DC.
“Aaron.”
“Judge Brody! Long time!”
A long time ago, back in law school, Aaron Dunn had been interested in her, romantically. He’d asked her out persistently, even though she’d politely rebuffed him. It took him a long time to get the message. Not all persistence is rewarded. But eventually they got past it and became friends.
“Nice to hear your voice. You’re, like, chief of the division now.”
“Yeah, you keep to yourself and mind your own business, and look what they do to you. How’s Duncan?”
She glanced at her watch. Court started in ten minutes. She had to get right to it, didn’t have time to chat and catch up.
“Aaron, let me tell you why I reached out.” She gave him a quick summary of the Wheelz lawsuit she was presiding over.
“Wheelz is that Uber competitor, right?”
“Right. And because of various documents that have come to my attention, I’ve learned that Wheelz is secretly owned by a Russian businessman you might have heard of. An oligarch named Yuri Protasov.”
“Sure, I know the name,” said Dunn. “He’s a dual national.”
“A citizen of Russia and the US, you mean?”
“Right.”
“Well, for some reason, he’s trying to keep his ownership stake a secret. He’s done it through a series of shell companies.”
“Interesting.”
“And something else,” she said. “This is going to sound like a—thriller, a movie, whatever. But the last principal investor, before Protasov took it over, was killed on the ski slopes at Aspen. Kevin Mathers.”
A pause. “Okay.” He sounded dubious.
“One of the defense lawyers in the Wheelz case died last week—ostensibly a suicide, but very likely a murder. Their British lawyer, or should I say solicitor, was killed a few years ago in a bus accident in London.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say.”
“I need to contact the FBI. At the right level. And I thought you might know some FBI agents.”
“Of course I do. You want me to give someone a heads-up?”
“If you could.”
“I’d be happy to.”
She thanked him and hung up; then she stood up and put on her robe.
55
All right,” she said as soon as she sat down. “Ms. Craft, this is your motion. I’ll hear you first.”
Glenda Craft stood. She was wearing an elegant black suit over a white top and pearl earrings. A perk of being a judge, she reflected: no one expects a judge to look especially put together. Judges should look dignified. Dignified, with a black robe on, was easy.
“Your Honor,” Glenda said, “a couple of months ago, we served a request for the production of documents. We requested copies of any and all e-mails that mention Rachel Meyers, including e-mails to and from her. But the defense is stonewalling us once again. Now, Mr. Madden and I have discussed this, and we were unable to arrive at a satisfactory resolution.”
“How many e-mails are we talking about?”
“Well, it’s a string. A chain of e-mails. The chief operating officer, Andrew Westerfield, forwarded an e-mail he’d gotten from Rachel Meyers to his boss, the chief financial officer, Eugene Brod. For some reason they’re withholding that.”
“For what reason?”
“They claim it’s ‘proprietary and confidential,’ Judge. And—”
“Hold on. Let me talk to you, Mr. Madden. How many e-mails are you withholding?”
“Five, but they’re all part of one conversation, one thread, between Mr. Brod and Mr. Westerfield.”
“And the basis for your claim of privilege?”
“Your Honor,” Madden interrupted, “the e-mail correspondence back and forth between the CFO and the COO contains proprietary and confidential business information that has absolutely no bearing on this case. Which is, let’s remember, alleged sexual harassment.”
“All right,” Juliana said, her hands up, palms out. “Let’s make this easy. I’m ready to rule right now. Mr. Madden, I want you to produce that entire e-mail thread for me to read in camera. And I don’t want to see pieces of paper full of black lines. I want to see the whole exchange. And show me what you propose to redact, and why. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Madden.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Craft.
“I want it within one week,” Juliana said.
She wondered what the Wheelz Corporation might be withholding. Was it the identity of the principal investor? Was that it? How could the top officers not know who owned their own damned company?
Or were they withholding something else?
When she returned to her lobby, she found a couple of phone messages. One was from an assistant to Attorney General Kent Yarnell asking her to join General Yarnell—she actually called him General!—for a drink that night at the Bostonia Club. She was too intrigued by how sociable it sounded—was Yarnell trying to make nice?—to be put off by how last-minute it was. She was amused that Yarnell didn’t extend the invitation himself but instead had an assistant do it. That was officious, of course, and probably meant to send her a message, to remind her of her place in the ecosystem.
The second message was from her old friend Aaron Dunn at the Justice Department.
“Jules, okay, call this number,” he said, and he gave her a Boston-area phone. “He’s a good guy. Works in the FBI in counterintelligence. I told him about you and said you were going to call.”
She was glad the guy was in the Boston office of the FBI. She wanted to talk in person, not over the phone, and preferred not to go to DC if she could avoid it. Rescheduling her court obligations was a massive pain.
She wrote down the name—Special Agent Paul Brickley—and the number on a pink message pad and called it.
56
At 4:45 she pulled up in front of a new eight-story building in Chelsea, outside Boston, in front of which was a giant stone seal and the words FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. She parked in the small visitors’ lot and approached the guard booth. The man asked her to put her driver’s license against the bulletproof glass so he could see it. He told her she should lock up her phone in her car because she wouldn’t be allowed to bring it into the building. He buzzed her into a small glass-walled room, where she had to empty her pockets and put her metal objects in a bin and walk through a metal detector. (She’d left Hersh’s knife in the car along with the phone.) Then she entered the main building and handed over her driver’s license in exchange for a small plastic clip-on badge with a red V for Visitor on it. While she waited, she looked over the wall display of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Nobody she knew.
A few minutes later a door opened, and a man in his midforties emerged. He wore a gray suit and had jet-black hair with a prominent white part. He reminded her of a TV anchorman.
“Judge Brody, I’m Special Agent Brickley.” He had a deep, rumbling voice.
She stood up and shook his hand. He led them to a conference room just off the lobby. There was a table with an Avaya phone on it and a couple of chairs.
“Aaron Dunn speaks very highly of you,” Brickley said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Very nice to meet you. I’m sure you’re busy, and I know it’s the end of the day, so I’ll make this brief. I’m in a difficult position here. I have a concern about a case I’m involved with. I’ve never done anything like this before. But I’ve never confronted a case like this before.”
She gave him a rundown on Wheelz. She concluded: “So it appears that the biggest investor in Wheelz is a Russian oligarch named Yuri Protasov.”
He nodded. He knew the name.
“T
he financing for the deal secretly came from a bank that’s under US sanctions. So it’s illegal. Which may be why he’s going to such lengths to keep his name a secret.”
Agent Brickley nodded again.
“And one thing more,” she said. She felt faint, queasy. “I just have to say it, no matter how farfetched it may seem to you. A couple of people who’ve found out about this have been killed.”
His expression morphed from skeptical to concerned. He paused a few seconds. “Obviously you’ve found something quite interesting. Maybe even alarming—I think so, for sure.”
“Okay.”
“But this isn’t really our area of concern. It’s really more a matter for the State Department.”
“The State Department?”
He nodded, smiled sadly. “Yeah, they’re in charge of sanctions. Sorry to make you come all the way in here.”
“I see.” Why, she wondered, did Aaron Dunn give me this guy’s name?
“But come to think of it,” he went on, “the State Department shut down their sanctions office a while ago. So there really isn’t anyone at State who deals with it. It may be a matter more for the Treasury Department.”
“Treasury, now? Hold on a sec. The FBI is charged with enforcing US law, and we’re talking about a US law. Am I right? How is this not the FBI’s business? The guy’s breaking the law. That seems pretty clear-cut to me.”
“I know, I know. But candidly and off the record? We’re not in the business of going after Russian oligarchs.”
“You’re not? Even Russian oligarchs who break US laws?”
“It’s a new era. The Russia stuff—you know, our enforcement powers have been whittled away. We just don’t have the staff anymore.”
“How come?”
“I used to be in CD, Counterintelligence Division, in Russian affairs, but most of us Russia experts have taken early retirement or left. Not many left. So Russia is no longer so much of a focus.”
“Seriously?”
“And, you know, the FBI isn’t exactly the apple of anyone’s eye these days, when it comes to funding and personnel and such,” said Agent Brickley. “It’s a new world.”
* * *
—
She returned to her car and sat in the FBI visitors’ parking lot for a few minutes. She took out her phone and called Aaron Dunn in Washington. This time she got right through.
“He said that?” Dunn remarked.
“Yes,” Juliana said. “‘Russia is no longer so much of a focus.’”
“Oh, Jesus. Listen, is there any chance of you coming to DC?”
“If I need to, sure.”
“I found someone who’ll see you. Can you get here Monday?”
“It can’t be any earlier?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s out of town before then.”
I have court, she thought. “I’ll be there.”
57
She stopped at home before going out to the Bostonia Club to meet Kent Yarnell and found both her husband and her son. She was hungry, and Duncan hadn’t made dinner or picked up any takeout. She’d grab something from the refrigerator.
But first she made a point of chatting for a couple of minutes with both Jake and Duncan. She wanted them to think of her as living at home again, not the wife and mother who was sent into exile at Martha Connolly’s. Her exile was over. Going out tonight, to the Bostonia Club, was an exception. She preferred to be home with them.
Once again she and Duncan were walking on eggshells with each other, back to being polite and formal and distant, and she realized it would take some time before relations got back to something approaching normal.
Then she got into her SUV and headed into town. As she drove, she called Hersh.
“Safe to talk on the phone?” she asked.
“As long as it hasn’t been out of your hands.”
She thought for a moment. She’d left it in the car when she was visiting the FBI. But the FBI parking lot was probably the safest place in the city to park. “Okay. You think you have a source on Protasov?”
“Not quite. Someone who may be able to get into that British lawyer’s e-mail for me. Legally or at least semi-legally.”
“At Linklaters.”
“Right. Fiona Charteris, her name is. The woman who was killed. She was basically doing her due diligence, closing a financing deal, and she obviously found out something she shouldn’t have about Mayfair Paragon and the money behind the deal. I want to know what else she found out. I wonder if she figured out about Yuri Protasov. It’ll be in her e-mails, I’ll bet.”
“Can you do this remotely? You don’t have to go to London, do you?”
“What, you worried about my travel costs?”
“I’m worried about time.”
“Well, I’m just making phone calls.”
“On Monday I’m going to DC for the day.” She explained about Aaron Dunn at Justice. “Let me ask you something. How do I know if I’m being followed?”
“I don’t know how to answer that over the phone. Beyond the obvious. You’re driving. You think you’re being followed?”
“Maybe.”
For the last couple of minutes she’d noticed a car behind her with a figure of a horse in its grill. A Mustang. Even she, not exactly a gearhead, knew it was a Ford Mustang. It was dark blue and new, and it had been behind her all the way down Route 9, for the last couple of minutes. And even before she turned onto Route 9, she remembered.
Odds were it was a coincidence. She knew that. She didn’t want to surrender to paranoia. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be oblivious.
“I want to know if you really think you are being followed, okay?” said Hersh. “Call me right away if you are.”
She next called Martie Connolly and told her about DC. “Do you know anyone at the CIA, by any chance?”
“I do—an old, dear friend,” Martha said, “who is not only an excellent person, but he’s as discreet as they come. I suppose that comes with working for the CIA. Anyway, he’s a real character. You’ll like him. Let me put in a call.”
“Thanks,” she said. She turned left onto Brookline Avenue, and the Mustang turned left as well.
At the next major intersection, she decided at the last minute to turn left onto the Riverway instead of going straight as she’d normally do.
The Mustang behind her turned left too.
Was she in fact being followed? Or was the Mustang simply heading into Boston the same way?
Because if this car was following her, it was not being subtle about it. It was following in an overt, obvious way, as if to taunt her. Or intimidate her.
She felt her nerves prickle.
At the light, at the intersection with Park Drive, she hit the stored number for her law clerk, Kaitlyn. “I need to be out of town on Monday,” she said. She asked Kaitlyn to continue her cases and “take off” the motions. She hated to do it, but she knew she had no choice. Trials are scheduled up to a year in advance. Motions are set up weeks in advance. She would be inconveniencing a long list of attorneys and witnesses, and she wasn’t happy about it.
The Mustang was still following her.
When she backed into a parking spot on the same block as the Bostonia Club, she saw the Mustang pass by.
She shut off the car and called Hersh again. “Okay, I really think that car might have been following me.”
“Did you get a look at the driver?”
“I didn’t, not really. A guy.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“If I see the Mustang again, I’ll look more closely.”
“A Mustang?”
“So?”
“Good acceleration. A good chase car.”
“Wasted on me. I generally keep to the speed limit. One of the drawbacks to bei
ng a judge.”
“But more to the point, a Mustang’s also instantly recognizable. They wanted you to know you were being followed. Let me know if you see it again.”
“I will.”
She pushed at the beautiful brass knob on the gleaming black front door.
Attorney General Kent Yarnell was standing in the lobby, alone, underneath the John Singer Sargent portrait, waiting for her.
The General, she thought.
58
Kent,” she said. Juliana and Kent Yarnell exchanged quick, social kisses. “Good to see you,” she said. “Been a while.”
“Juliana,” he said. He had never called her “Jules.” Always “Juliana,” and he liked to overenunciate each syllable, annoyingly.
They were both pretending to like each other. He disliked her, she knew, and the feeling was mutual.
“Library okay?” he said.
“Sure.” That meant a drink, not dinner. Good.
They found a nook in a far corner of the library, dimly lit. The attorney general sat on a green leather couch, and Juliana took the chair next to it.
Kent Yarnell had a high forehead, a ridiculously large dome, and small, deep-set eyes. He wore frameless glasses. His eyes, she’d always thought, were beady. He was dressed in a well-cut gray suit with a red tie. But with his long limbs and his slender wrists and his liquid movements, he’d always reminded her of a spider.
They chatted awkwardly for a few minutes. He mentioned someone they both knew from the US Attorney’s office. But Juliana didn’t really remember much about the woman. She said, “That was a long time ago. My memory’s hazy.”
“I know what you mean,” he said with a smile.
The server came, and they both ordered drinks. She ordered a chardonnay, and he ordered a Diet Pepsi.
“Well, I imagine your feminist sisters are proud of you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sexual harassment,” he said. He flicked two fingers of each hand to make air quotes. He shook his head. “What a racket. You start handing out major awards, you know what’s gonna happen, don’t you? People start filing major grievances. And when one employee starts, another one joins in, and pretty soon you get a riot effect. It’s like looting. Once the storefront gets smashed, everybody wants to grab a stereo for themselves.”
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