Garcia's Heart (2 page)

Hernan's silence–a stance interpreted in various media outlets as either principled, canny, or arrogant–had become the big, inexplicable development of the proceedings. After the initial incredulity and tactical regrouping, Marcello seemed to have taken his client's vow of silence in stride: “He is the first client I am certain will not perjure himself,” he had said to Patrick about a month before, during one of their first telephone conversations.

This was not to say that Hernan had disengaged from the trial. On most days that the tribunal was in session, the television camera showed him seated in the defendant's bullet-proof glass kiosk, scribbling the occasional note that he allowed no one, not his family, not the judges, not di Costini, to see. To Patrick, watching from the safety of an over-designed living room in Boston, Hernan's recent appearances on the evening news revealed a man who had undergone a radical physical change–a deterioration accompanied his silence, causing alarm and adding urgency to Patrick's thoughts of going to Den Haag. The man had aged. When he was shown being moved into and out of the courtroom, Hernan walked like a man crossing an icy road. The features of his face were traced deeper, as if by concession to the demands of public villainy, making every expression more severe.

The lawyers sat at tables arranged into a triangle. They continued to speak quietly among themselves, until one of the justices found the transcript of previous testimony they had all been looking for. Each of the participants kicked into sudden motion, as if the line of text was a power cord restoring current.

A lawyer for the prosecution approached the witness–number C-129 according to the updated docket–and asked
him in English how long the electrical shocks had been applied to his feet. There was a pause as the man, weathered skin drawn over broad Indian facial features, listened to the translation. He spoke, another brief silence followed, and then an English translation skipped along after his Spanish reply. “I don't know how long it took, but it was more than fifty times. I lost consciousness a few times.”

The witness sat impassively as he was asked to recount his experiences of internment and interrogation just outside the town of Lepaterique during the months of January and February 1982. He described the details of the cruelty he endured in the same way that Patrick had often heard the details of a traffic accident related. A clinical description: what happened, when, and how. Throughout, the witness referred to “the doctor” and when asked for a clarification, García's full name was pronounced. The details. Facts without any reaction. Patrick was used to this, the facts shouldn't have affected him–his job demanded a fairly strict detachment–but the lack of anger in witness C-129's voice, the absence of tears on those cheeks, only amplified the effect of his testimony. Patrick hadn't expected that he could just sit down and start hearing details like this. He'd thought it would be different, more dramatic; maybe it was the diet of television where adults felt free to cry on camera if they'd so much as been denied an upgrade on a flight to the Caribbean. More likely, Patrick thought, he needed some indiscriminate out-pouring of emotion to undermine the witness's testimony, to make it attributable to the embellishments of some
campesino
with a grudge and a faulty memory. There were no windows in the tribunal chamber or in the gallery–a security decision, he thought–and this added to the room
feeling sealed and increasingly airless. He became aware of the faintly ridiculous sound of himself panting and made the effort to breathe more deeply, only to revert minutes later to shallow, almost gulping breaths. It was a mistake to come here.

Patrick removed his earphones and looked around the courtroom in dismay. He'd spent five years hoping it wouldn't come to this, as though the accusations against Hernan were some sort of illness with a prognosis vague enough to offer hope. But as time passed, the possibilities narrowed until the trial became real and then inevitable. The day had arrived and the arraignment had been set and this place was the only logical conclusion for Hernan García's story.

And yet there were moments when he still felt inclined to
root
for him, the Angel of Lepaterique, a man with a history that had led to the death of his wife and had come to haunt his children. Patrick had not seen Hernan in more than ten years, and since then only on television surrounded by police or immigration officials or captioned by some news channel feed as a war criminal.
A real war criminal.
In a media cycle gorged with every form of criminality, Patrick could understand how a war crimes trial could seem reassuring, almost nostalgic. Balkan field marshals and Hutu warlords had been publicly tried in the very building in which he sat, the details of their genocidal acts transcribed and deliberated over and a judgment rendered. In the emporium of modern atrocity–airplanes piercing the perfect glass skin of American buildings, the videotaped farewell speech of the most recent suicide bomber–images of war criminals had become a relief, a rare example of evil being called to account for itself and where good was considered to have triumphed.

And now, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, Patrick was reduced to hoping tortured Hondurans would reveal themselves as less-than-credible witnesses. But the facts of the case were clear. Indians from the mountainous northern regions, university professors, activists from Tegucigalpa, all survivors of the civil war, were lined up and waiting to testify. Other figures from deep inside the regime were also due to appear, many with personal histories in the internecine wars of Honduras so shadowy that it was unclear who should be shown the witness stand and who deserved the defendant's chair. But García was the star. In the last five years the world had come to know the story of Hernan García's life, a life Patrick had not been aware of, one so incongruous with the decent and generous man Patrick had known, the man who had made him want to become a doctor.

Going to the tribunal had been based on more than just personal considerations; as the founder and chief scientific officer of Neuronaut, a biotech company that offered “the cognitive approach to marketing,” Patrick Lazerenko had faced considerable opposition when he announced that, with little notice, he was going to need three weeks away. In another country. At a war crimes trial. When he told the other four people on the board (the official term for the three
MBA
s who had started Neuronaut with him and the
CEO
they had poached from another company), their first reaction was a deep, broadloom silence, the type of silence that his recent entrepreneurial experience had taught him to associate with the imminent decision to contact a lawyer. Then there was shouting. The case for making him stay was presented to Patrick by Marc-André, the only one of his colleagues who could contain himself long enough to speak in complete
sentences. Yes, Patrick assured them, he was a team player and yes, he was aware of the tenuous nature of the Globomart deal and the issues involved in the latest campaign. Globomart Inc. was their biggest client, their breakthrough client, and now, according to all involved, their oxygen and water. Globomart, Marc-André said, knowing exactly which card to play, wouldn't want Patrick to go.

Famously founded by the Olafson brothers of Medina, Minnesota, Globomart took pains and spent a great deal of money to cultivate a corporate image of success based on hard work and moral probity. The image make-over–the pains and money, the strategically stealthy philanthropy (somehow always discovered in the act)–was necessary because Globomart had a reputation for being “results oriented” in its business approach, which was the diplomatic way of saying it treated its competitors as Genghis Khan treated his enemies. Globomart, simply put, was the biggest retailer in the world and the company acted like it, bare-knuckling across the American business landscape.

It was logical that Globomart, paying Neuronaut large sums of money to analyze its most recent advertising campaign, would fully expect the Chief Scientific Officer to be on-site, ready to troubleshoot. Marc-André reminded them all that for Patrick to simply be out of the office was troublesome. For the only person who knew the science to be away in another country,
indefinitely
, was a slap in their billionaire Lutheran faces. Marc-André had turned to the other people in the room: “And we haven't even brought up
why
he needs to go. Who wants to be the one to explain to the Olafsons that he's going to a war crimes trial? Public relations-wise, this is a worst-case scenario. Welcome to Chernobyl.
”

At this point the other two founding board members, Jessica Stallins and Steve Zaks–or “Steve Zaks from Baltimore,” as he inexplicably liked to call himself–both began frantically pacing around the main meeting room as if they had been suddenly transported to the listing promenade deck of the
SS
Titanic
. Jeremy Bancroft, who had been parachuted in as
CEO
just five months before, sat motionless and listened. At one point, when the discussions got heated, he took a long, almost thirsty look out the window in the direction of the Charles River.

Marc-André continued pressing Patrick–if he thought the Olafsons didn't appreciate him disappearing at this critical phase, he should try imagining how the shareholders would react. Just mentioning the shareholders–evoking images from their inaugural meeting one year ago where they had stormed the ballroom, commandeered microphones, and forced him to answer endless questions–made Patrick wince. Marc-André reminded him that the shareholders loved nothing more than to punish flighty moves like this, and their desertion could be sudden and would cause the very ground beneath them to crumble. Marc-André finished his summation, sat down beside Patrick, and, knowing his colleague would understand French, whispered in his most irritating Parisian accent: “
Tu restes, cowboy.
”

Then something quite unusual happened. Bancroft said that he, for one, supported Patrick making the trip, and the room rolled into another silence. Even though he was the
CEO
and had been incredibly quick to absorb the technological details behind Neuronaut, Bancroft was still the outsider and had not yet imposed himself in that
CEO
-way on “internal” issues like this. It was like watching a stepfather's first foray into an
old and foreign family squabble. The stepchildren were all a bit stunned.

“It isn't Patrick, but his ideas, that are indispensable,” Bancroft said, and Patrick remembered thinking that he would have preferred a simple, autocratic edict rather than the business school clichés. “We can't afford to be so dependent on the physical presence of one person, can we? It would be valuable to prove that to Globomart. Besides, Patrick has brought somebody on board specifically to handle data situations like this when he's inaccessible.”

“Sanjay?” Jessica said, alarm and disbelief fusing in her voice.

Sanjay Gopal was a post-doc from his old lab, hired two months before on Patrick's recommendation. On paper, Sanjay was perfect: brains and drive and a monthly student loan statement heavy with the weight of mounting interest. He was also, despite his designation as protegé, miserable in the office where his recent arrival and prepubescent appearance combined with the insecurity of the business-types to bleed credibility from him. Sanjay had offered his resignation three times in the last month; with a bit of supportive psychotherapy and an implied challenge to his intelligence–motivational tactics Patrick had mastered as a thesis supervisor–he agreed to stay.

Jessica looked around for support but all eyes were on Bancroft as he held up his right hand and leaned forward ever so slightly, a
CEO
-grade gesture that was authoritative and commiserating at the same time. It was nothing and yet it was perfect, a boardroom martial arts move that disarmed his colleagues and made Patrick understand why they were paying him.

“We need to prove to our clients, to our shareholders, that we're more than a boutique operation. We can't be dependent on one person. Patrick trusts Sanjay. I think we should all trust Sanjay.”

Jessica groaned and Marc-André put his head in his hands. Bancroft turned to Patrick, obviously looking for a peacemaking gesture, some quick concession offered from the victorious party. Patrick promised he'd be available, e-mail, phone, whatever, no limitations. This was, after all, the way the world usually did business, he reminded everyone. Jessica, apparently still wordless, snorted. The other two seethed. But Bancroft agreed with him. Bancroft knew it was Patrick's expertise that drove the company, just as he understood it was Patrick who had taken the biggest risks–quitting his university job and going to court to win the right to take his research results into the private sector. He knew who had made all of them wealthy in the last year.

Nobody said a word when Patrick tried to give his assurances. He'd thought Bancroft would be the swing vote, but, looking at the people around the table, he realized he'd been wrong. Bancroft was the only vote, and he had voted for Patrick. Sanjay was his voice in his absence. He'd be leaving on Monday.

Explaining the situation to Heather–the woman he'd been seeing for the last year–was tougher. He would have preferred to say nothing, to let her assume it was nothing more than a business trip that became unexpectedly prolonged, but she had seen an information package about the tribunal lying around the condo and she had begun to comment on the books he read, books about–as she put it–“people who do terrible things.” He started off by admitting that he knew
Hernan García personally, which, to his surprise, she was relieved to hear. (Apparently, it made those books and his interest in the details of the trial less creepy.) And if she'd been quietly miffed that he hadn't confided in her, her anger found its fullest voice when he told her he had a ticket for Den Haag and needed to pack his bags. Several hours of interrogation ensued, always narrowing down to the same question: “Why are you going?” The most convenient response, the one he settled on, was actually the truth. Hernan's lawyer had asked him to come. She left without saying goodbye.