by Tom Clancy
“May it please Your Lordship,” he said formally to the bench. He walked slowly towards Ryan, a sheaf of notes in his hand.
“Doctor Ryan—or should I say Sir John?”
Jack waved his hand. “Whatever is convenient to you, sir,” he answered indifferently. They had warned him about Atkinson. A very clever bastard, they’d said. Ryan had known quite a few clever bastards in the brokerage business.
“You were, I believe, a leftenant in the United States Marine Corps?”
“Yes, sir, that is correct.”
Atkinson looked down at his notes, then over at the jury. “Bloodthirsty mob, the U.S. Marines,” he muttered.
“Excuse me, sir? Bloodthirsty?” Ryan asked. “No, sir. Most of the Marines I know are beer drinkers.”
Atkinson spun back at Ryan as a ripple of laughter came down from the gallery. He gave Jack a thin, dangerous smile. They’d warned Jack most of all to beware his word games and tactical skill in the courtroom. To hell with it, Ryan told himself. He smiled back at the barrister. Go for it, asshole....
“Forgive me, Sir John. A figure of speech. I meant to say that the U.S. Marines have a reputation for aggressiveness. Surely this is true?”
“Marines are light infantry troops who specialize in amphibious assault. We were pretty well trained, but when you get down to it we weren’t all that different from any other kind of soldier. It’s just a matter of specialization in a particularly tough field,” Ryan answered, hoping to throw him a little off balance. Marines were supposed to be arrogant, but that was mostly movie stuff. If you’re really good, they’d taught him at Quantico, you don’t have to be arrogant. Just letting people know you’re a Marine was usually enough.
“Assault troops?”
“Yes, sir. That’s basically correct.”
“So, you commanded assault troops, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Try not to be too modest, Sir John. What sort of man is selected to lead such troops. Aggressive? Decisive? Bold? Certainly he would have more of these qualities than the average foot soldier?”
“As a matter of fact, sir, in my edition of The Marine Officer’s Guide, the foremost of the qualities that the Corps looks for in an officer is integrity.” Ryan smiled again. Atkinson hadn’t done his homework on that score. “I commanded a platoon, sure, but as my captain explained to me when I came aboard, my principal job was to carry out the orders he gave me, and to lean on my gunny—my platoon sergeant—for his practical experience. The job I was in was supposed to be as much a learning experience as a command slot. I mean, in business it’s called an entry-level position. You don’t start shaking the world your first day on the job in any business.”
Atkinson frowned a bit. This was not going as he’d expected.
“Ah, then, Sir John, a leftenant of American Marines is really a leader of Boy Scouts. Surely you don’t mean that?” he asked, a sarcastic edge on his voice.
“No, sir. Excuse me, I did not mean to give that impression, but we’re not a bunch of hyperaggressive barbarians either. My job was to carry out orders, to be as aggressive as the situation called for, and to exercise some amount of judgment, like any officer. But I was only there three months, and I was still learning how to be an officer when I was injured. Marines follow orders. Officers give orders, of course, but a second lieutenant is the lowest form of officer. You take more than you give. I guess you’ve never been in the service,” Ryan tagged on the barb at the end.
“So, what sort of training did they give you?” Atkinson demanded, either angry or feigning it.
Richards looked up to Ryan, a warning broadcast from his eyes. He’d emphasized several times that Jack shouldn’t cross swords with Red Charlie.
“Really, basic leadership skills. They taught us how to lead men in the field,” Ryan replied. “How to react to a given tactical situation. How to employ the platoon’s weapons, and to a lesser extent, the weapons in a rifle company. How to call in outside support from artillery and air assets—”
“To react?”
“Yes, sir, that is part of it.” Ryan kept his answers as long as he thought he could get away with, careful to keep his voice even, friendly, and informative. “I’ve never been in anything like a combat situation—unless you count this thing we’re talking about, of course—but our instructors were very clear about telling us that you don’t have time to think very much when bullets are flying. You have to know what to do, and you have to do it fast—or you get your own people killed.”
“Excellent, Sir John. You were trained to react quickly and decisively to tactical stimuli, correct?”
“Yes, sir.” Ryan thought he saw the ambush coming.
“So, in the unfortunate incident before this court, when the initial explosion took place, you have testified that you were looking in the wrong direction?”
“I was looking away from the explosion, yes, sir.”
“How soon afterwards did you turn to see what was happening?”
“Well, sir, as I said earlier, the first thing I did was to get my wife and daughter down under cover. Then I looked up. How long did that take?” Ryan cocked his head. “At least one second, sir, maybe as many as three. Sorry, but as I said earlier, it’s hard to recall that sort of thing—you don’t have a stopwatch on yourself, I mean.”
“So, when you finally did look up, you had not seen what had immediately transpired?”
“Correct, sir.” Okay, Charlie, ask the next question.
“You did not, therefore, see my client fire his pistol, nor throw a hand grenade?”
Cute, Ryan thought, surprised that he’d try this ploy. Well, he has to try something, doesn’t he? “No, sir. When I first saw him, he was running around the comer of the car, from the direction of the other man, the one who was killed—the one with the rifle. A moment later he was at the right-rear comer of the Rolls, facing away from me, with the pistol in his right hand, pointed forward and down, as if—”
“Assumption on your part,” Atkinson interrupted. “As if what? It could have been any one of several things. But what things? How could you tell what he was doing there? You did not see him get out of the car, which later drove off. For all you know he might have been another pedestrian racing to the rescue, just as you did, mightn’t he?”
Jack was supposed to be surprised by this.
“Assumption, sir? No, I’d call it a judgment. For him to have been racing to the rescue as you suggest, he would have had to come from across the street. I doubt that anyone could have reacted anywhere near fast enough to do that at all, not to mention the fact that there was a guy there with a machine gun to make you think twice about it. Also, the direction I saw him running from was directly away from the guy with the AK-47. If he was running to the rescue, why away from him? If he had a gun, why not shoot him? At the time I never considered this possibility, and it seems pretty unlikely now, sir.”
“Again, a conclusion, Sir John,” Atkinson said as though to a backward child.
“Sir, you asked me a question, and I tried to answer it, with the reasons to back up my answer.”
“And you expect us to believe that all this flashed through your mind in a brief span of seconds?” Atkinson turned back to the jury.
“Yes, sir, it did,” Ryan said with conviction. “That’s all I can say—it did.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve been told that my client has never been arrested, or accused of any crime?”
“I guess that makes him a first offender.”
“It’s for the jury to decide that,” the lawyer snapped back. “You did not see him fire a single shot, did you?”
“No, sir, but his automatic had an eight-shot clip, and there were only three rounds in it. When I fired my third shot, it was empty. ”
“So what? For all you know someone else could have fired that gun. You did not see him fire, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“So it might have been dropped by someone in the
car. My client might have picked it up and, I repeat, been doing the same thing you were doing—this could all be true, but you have no way of knowing this, do you?”
“I cannot testify about things I didn’t see, sir. However, I did see the street, the traffic, and the other pedestrians. If your client did what you say, where did he come from?”
“Precisely—you don’t know, do you?” Atkinson said sharply.
“When I saw your client, sir, he was coming from the direction of the stopped car.” Jack gestured to the model on the evidence table. “For him to have come off the sidewalk, then gotten the gun, and then appeared where I saw him—there’s just no way unless he’s an Olympic-class sprinter.
“Well, we’ll never know, will we—you fixed that. You reacted precipitously, didn’t you? You reacted as you were trained to by the U.S. Marines, never stopping to assess the situation. You raced into the fray quite recklessly, attacked my client and knocked him unconscious, then tried to kill him.”
“No, sir, I did not try to kill your client. I’ve already—”
“Then why did you shoot an unconscious, helpless man?”
“My Lord,” prosecutor Richards said, standing up, “we have already asked that question.”
“The witness may answer on further reflection,” Justice Wheeler intoned. No one would say that this trial was unfair.
“Sir, I did not know he was unconscious, and I didn’t know how long it would be before he got up. So, I shot to disable him. I just didn’t want him to get back up for a while.”
“I’m sure that’s what they said at My Lai.”
“That wasn’t the Marines, Mr. Atkinson,” Ryan shot back.
The lawyer smiled up at Jack. “I suppose your chaps were better trained at keeping quiet. Indeed, perhaps you yourself have been trained in such things....”
“No, sir, I have not.” He’s making you angry, Jack. He took his handkerchief out and blew his nose again. The two deep breaths helped. “Excuse me, I’m afraid the local weather has given me a bit of a head cold. What you just said—if the Marines trained people in that sort of stuff, the newspapers would have plastered it on their front pages years ago. No, moral issues aside for the moment, the Corps has a much better sense of public relations than that, Mr. Atkinson.”
“Indeed.” The barrister shrugged. “And what about the Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Excuse me?”
“What of the press reports that you’ve worked for the CIA?”
“Sir, the only times I’ve been paid by the U.S. government,” Jack said, choosing his words very carefully, “the money came from the Navy Department, first as a Marine, then later—now, that is, as an instructor at the United States Naval Academy. I have never been employed by any other government agency, period. ”
“So you are not an agent of the CIA? I remind you that you are under oath.”
“No, sir. I am not now, and I never have been any kind of agent—unless you count being a stockbroker. I don’t work for the CIA. ”
“And these news reports?”
“I’m afraid that you’ll have to ask the reporters. I don’t know where that stuff comes from. I teach history. My office is in Leahy Hall on the Naval Academy grounds. That’s kind of a long way from Langley.”
“Langley? You know where CIA is, then?”
“Yes, sir. It’s on record that I have delivered a lecture there. It was the same lecture I delivered the month before at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. My paper dealt with the nature of tactical decision-making. I have never worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, but I did, once, give a lecture there. Maybe that’s where all these reports started.”
“I think you’re lying, Sir John,” Atkinson observed.
Not quite, Charlie. “I can’t help what you think, sir. I can only answer your questions truthfully.”
“And you never wrote an official report for the government entitled Agents and Agencies?”
Ryan did not allow himself to react. Where did you get that bit of data, Charlie? He answered the question with great care.
“Sir, last year—that is, last summer, at the end of the last school year—I was asked to be a contract consultant to a private company that does government work. The company is the Mitre Corporation, and I was hired on a temporary basis as part of one of their consulting contracts with the U.S. government. The work involved was classified, but it obviously had nothing at all to do with this case.”
“Obviously? Why don’t you let the jury decide that?”
“Mr. Atkinson,” Justice Wheeler said tiredly, “are you suggesting that this work in which the witness was involved has a direct connection with the case before the court?”
“I think we might wish to establish that, My Lord. It is my belief that the witness is misleading the court.”
“Very well,” The judge turned. “Doctor Ryan, did this work in which you were engaged have anything whatever to do with a case of murder in the city of London, or with any of the persons involved in this case?”
“No, sir.”
“You are quite certain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you now or have you ever been an employee of any intelligence or security agency of the American government?”
“Except for the Marine Corps, no, sir.”
“I remind you of your oath to tell the truth—the whole, complete truth. Have you misled the court in any way, Doctor Ryan?”
“No, sir, absolutely not.”
“Thank you, Doctor Ryan. I believe that question is now set-tied.” Mr. Justice Wheeler turned back to his right. “Next question, Mr. Atkinson.”
The barrister had to be angry at that, Ryan thought, but he didn’t let it show. He wondered if someone had briefed the judge.
“You say that you shot my client merely in the hope that he would not get up?”
Richards stood. “My Lord, the witness has already—”
“If His Lordship will permit me to ask the next question, the issue will be more clear,” Atkinson interrupted smoothly.
“Proceed. ”
“Doctor Ryan, you said that you shot my client in the hope that he would not get up. Do the U.S. Marine Corps teach one to shoot to disable, or to kill?”
“To kill, sir.”
“And you are telling us, therefore, that you went against your training?”
“Yes, sir. It is pretty clear that I was not on a battlefield. I was on a city street. It never occurred to me to kill your client.” I wish it had, then I probably wouldn’t be here, Ryan thought, wondering if he really meant it.
“So you reacted in accordance with your training when you leaped into the fray on The Mall, but then you disregarded your training a moment later? Do you think it reasonable that all of us here will believe that?”
Atkinson had finally succeeded in confusing Ryan. Jack had not the slightest idea where this was leading.
“I haven’t thought of it that way, sir, but, yes, you are correct,” Jack admitted. “That is pretty much what happened.”
“And next you crept to the corner of the automobile, saw the second person whom you had seen earlier, and instead of trying to disable him, you shot him dead without warning. In this case, it is clear that you reverted again to your Marine training, and shot to kill. Don’t you find this inconsistent?”
Jack shook his head. “Not at all, sir. In each case I used the force necessary to—well, the force I had to use, as I saw things.”
“I think you are wrong, Sir John. I think that you reacted like a hotheaded officer of the United States Marines throughout. You raced into a situation of which you had no clear understanding, attacked an innocent man, and tried then to kill him while he lay helpless and unconscious on the street. Next you coldly gunned down someone else without the first thought of trying to disarm him. You did not know then, and you do not know now what was really happening, do you?”
“No, sir, I do not believe that was the
case at all. What was I supposed to have done with the second man?”
Atkinson saw an opening and used it. “You just told the court that you only wished to disable my client—when in fact you tried to kill him. How do you expect us to believe that when your next action had not the first thing to do with such a peaceful solution?”
“Sir, when I saw McCrory, the second gunman, for the first time, he had an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands. Going up against a light machine gun with a pistol—”
“But by this time you saw that he didn’t have the Kalashnikov, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir, that’s true. If he’d still had it—I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t have stepped around the car, maybe I would have shot from cover, from behind the car, that is.”
“Ah, I see!” Atkinson exclaimed. “Instead, here was your chance to confront and kill the man in true cowboy fashion.” His hands went up in the air. “Dodge City on The Mall!”
“I wish you’d tell me what you think I should have done,” Jack said with some exasperation.
“For someone able to shoot straight through the heart on his first shot, why not shoot the gun from his hand, Sir John?”
“Oh, I see.” Atkinson had just made a mistake. Ryan shook his head and smiled. “I wish you’d make up your mind.”
“What?” The barrister was caught by surprise.
“Mr. Atkinson, a minute ago you said that I tried to kill your client. I was at arm‘s-length range, but I didn’t kill him. So I’m a pretty lousy shot. But you expect me to be able to hit a man in the hand at fifteen or twenty feet. It doesn’t work that way, sir. I’m either a good shot or a bad shot, sir, but not both. Besides, that’s just TV stuff, shooting a gun out of somebody’s hand. On TV the good guy can do that, but TV isn’t real. With a pistol, you aim for the center of your target. That’s what I did. I stepped out from behind the car to get a clear shot, and I aimed. If McCrory had not turned his gun towards me—I can’t say for sure, but probably I would not have shot. But he did turn and fire, as you can see from my shoulder—and I did return fire. It is true that I might have done things differently. Unfortunately I did not. I had—I didn’t have much time to take action. I did the best I could. I’m sorry the man was killed, but that was his choice, too. He saw I had the drop on him, but he turned and fired—and he fired first, sir.”