Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) (22 page)

Rat knocked loudly on the thin steel door.

“Who is it?” Watson said, surprised by the knock.

“Lieutenant Rathman,” Rat said.

She came to the door and opened the door part of the way. Rat could see she was damp and had a towel wrapped around her. “Sorry, I just got out of the shower. I was working out.” She looked at Rat’s camouflage uniform and noticed there was no name tag, no insignia, no rank. Rat’s boots had desert sand dust all over them.

“No problem. I’ll wait.”

Watson was surprised. “Do I know you?”

“I’m with the group that captured Duar. We brought him back.”

“You’re Rat.”

Rat nodded. “I have something to give you.”

“Like what?”

“Not out here,” Rat said. “How long before you’re ready?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“How about I meet you up at your office in twenty?”

“Sure. What’s this about?”

Rat was already gone. He was running up the ladders to the communications office. He had to get a message off to Washington. On the way back to the ship he had read the Arabic notes of the Egyptian colonel. Even though Rat hadn’t been there when the information was collected, Duar had revealed numerous planned attacks in the United States set to occur in the next month. Rat had read the notes with a mixture of disbelief and horror. It was critical intelligence information, if true. It was the very information they had wanted to get from Duar when they set their minds to capture him. Rat was skeptical about much of the information, but he’d leave it up to others in Washington to determine what was true and what wasn’t. They could cross-reference a lot of other intelligence information he wasn’t privy to.

He sent copies of the Egyptian officer’s notes back to the CIA via secure fax, and a message summarizing Duar’s confession and the contents of the notes to the Agency and to the National Security Council via Sarah St. James. He would make sure her message went out first. She would know about it a few minutes before anyone else in Washington.

He sent off the faxes and the messages in time to be at Watson’s office in the allotted twenty minutes. Watson wasn’t there. Rat sat in one of the chairs and took his first deep breath of the day. He was bone tired. He was worried about Duar. Not only because of what the Egyptians had done to him, but what he had said were his intentions for the United States. And now Andrea was lining up against him. He checked his watch again as Watson walked in. He looked at the confession that he had placed on Watson’s desk. He wondered if it was the best thing to do, to use a confession against him that was extracted through torture. She might actually be able to use it—he wasn’t involved in the confession and hadn’t expected it. If they got the confession through the acts of somebody else, well, so what? They didn’t force it out of him. Egypt did. It just fell into their hands. But it didn’t feel right. He wanted to get Duar put away for life, or better yet, executed. But he was getting a bad feeling about the entire thing.

“You’re here,” Watson said.

“Twenty minutes,” he said, standing up. Her uniform hung on her as if it were on a hanger. She had large, protruding eyes that had a sadness about them.

“What’s this about?” she asked as he walked around the desk and sat down.

Rat hesitated, then handed her the confession.

“What’s this?”

“Read it.”

“It’s in Arabic.”

“A translation is attached.”

“Who did the translation?”

“I did.”

“Are you qualified?”

“Probably not for court, but it’s right. You can have it done later by whoever you want.”

Watson looked at him skeptically, then paged through the document until she saw English. She read straight through to the end. She looked up. “Where did you get this?”

“In Egypt.”

“How?”

“We took him to Egypt to let them question him. When I went to pick him up, he had signed this. I took it from the Egyptians and brought it back.”

“What did they do to him to get it?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. But I can see it wasn’t pretty.”

“Did you have anything to do with it?”

“No. When I came back to pick him up I found this confession.”

“How do you know it’s his signature?”

“I asked him. He said it was.”

“They tortured this out of him. I don’t know if we can use it for much.”

“I thought you could use something from a foreign country if we weren’t . . . involved.”

“Sometimes. It’s very tricky. I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll think about it.”

“Yeah. I’ll think about it.”

The more he got to know Watson, the less impressed he was. To think that this was the attorney who was responsible for prosecuting Duar was distressing. Rat stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

“I’ve go to go too,” Watson said.

Rat moved as Watson hurried out of her office with the copy of the confession. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the message that had been waiting for him at the communications center. He read it again, still annoyed. He skipped over the addressee information and the classifications and read the body of the message, which had been sent to him personally:

1. 125 SPECIAL FORCES TEAM MEMBERS BEING SENT TO GEORGIAN REPUBLIC FOR TRAINING OF GEORGIAN ARMY. TERRORISTS FROM GEORGIA, CHECHNYA, AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, SUDAN, AND ELSEWHERE ACCUMULATING IN PANKISI GORGE REGION NORTH OF TBILISI. GEORGIAN ARMY NEEDS TRAINING AND WEAPONS TO GO INTO VALLEY AFTER TERRORISTS.

2. GEORGIANS HAVE REQUESTED YOU BY NAME. AGENCY AND DOD HAVE APPROVED. YOU ARE TO TRAVEL TO GEORGIA TAD WITH THREE OTHERS FROM YOUR TEAM FOR SPECIAL FORCES INSTRUCTION. MORE DETAILED ORDERS AWAIT ARRIVAL IN GEORGIA. OFFICER IN CHARGE OF DETACHMENT IS LIEUTENANT COLONEL JAMES SWIFT, USA.

Rat studied the message, wondering why the Georgians would request him by name. He looked at his RPDA and the e-mail from Sarah St. James. He was starting to regard her e-mails with suspicion. Her encouragement to “cooperate” fully with the Egyptians had come on a recommendation, she said, from Jacobs. And she said Johnson had enough traffic to link Duar’s organization straight to Georgia. He looked at his watch. He had to talk to Andrea, to see if he could calm her down a little, then get off on the earliest transportation to the nearest airport and get to Georgia. Groomer, Robby, and Banger were going to be thrilled.

Dr. Satterly’s red face lit the way for him as he stormed to the bridge to see the captain. He had forgotten his hat—his cover—which was required on the bridge, but he didn’t care. He opened the door and stepped onto the bridge. “Request permission to come onto the bridge.”

The Officer of the Deck looked at him, noticed he was without his cover and decided not to make too much of it because he wasn’t unrestricted line—not a warfare officer—and he was a captain. “Permission granted.”

“Captain here?” Satterly asked.

The OOD motioned to the captain’s chair on the port side of the bridge.

Captain Hogan was intently studying something on the horizon through enormous binoculars.

“Captain, he’s done it again.”

Logan looked at the surgeon. He didn’t really like Satterly, but he was supposed to be a good doctor. “Meaning?”

“That Special Forces man. The one they call Rat? Whoever he is, Navy, CIA, whatever, he took Duar off the ship—”

“I know.”

“Well, they came back, and I sent the new flight surgeon to see Duar as soon as he came back, to make sure nothing had happened. Plus I figured it would be less . . . I don’t know, confrontational. I don’t think he likes me. He wouldn’t let her see him. So I went down there myself. Captain, he has been tortured.”

Logan put down the binoculars and yelled to the OOD, “You got that trawler?”

“Yes, sir.”

Logan looked at Satterly. “How do you know?”

“I checked him out. There are burn marks on his ears and his . . . testicles. He’s been electrocuted.”

Logan frowned. “You sure?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure. And he seems different. This has really affected him. He’s almost in shock.”

“Is he at risk of dying?”

“No, I don’t think so. But he’s not the same man they took out of here. At least not yet.”

“OOD?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get the comm officer up here. I need to send off a message right away.”

President Kendrick hated being pushed faster than he wanted to go by the press. He had told them almost everything from the day Duar was captured. But it was never enough. “They just don’t ever let go, do they? No matter what we do, they use it to make us look bad. If we’d gone completely public right away, they’d have yelled at us for not giving him a lawyer, or something, start right in on us about tribunals, and how unfair they are. And if we hold off a little, it’s because we’re ashamed, or trying to hide something. Always the same.”

Stuntz drank deeply from the coffee cup in front of him. “Press,” he muttered. “Their goal in life is dis
ruption
. They carry a stick around just in case they find a government wheel with spokes.”

Kendrick ignored him. “Now we have to explain.” He looked at Stuntz. “And I want you to do the explaining.”

“Me?” Stuntz almost choked.

“You have a good understanding of everything, and you’re good on your feet. Hold a press conference. Tell them about the tribunal. Then you’ll be grilled about this Rathman trial. You can tell them it’s DOJ, but you should also be ready to defend the charges. The manslaughter charges. Geneva Convention. After all, it was your idea, wasn’t it?”

Stuntz frowned, but said nothing.

“This afternoon.”

Stuntz nodded.

“Sarah, what happened in Egypt?”

She knew he would ask, but his timing and directness surprised her. “In what way?”

“Duar was taken off the ship to Egypt, and on return appears to have been tortured. And this Rathman was with him the entire time. What the hell is going on? He’s one of the ones you’re in contact with, right? And he’s the one who’s going on
trial
for doing this to another terrorist? Who authorized this?”

“The Egyptians wanted to talk to him and we needed some help in the interrogation. As I understand it, it was a CIA request that was acceded to by the DOD, to give Egypt a chance to interrogate him. As I recall, sir, we all wanted to have him interrogated, and our interrogation wasn’t very effective. We discussed giving a friendly country the chance to interrogate him.”

“Did you know this Rathman was going to take him to Egypt?”

“Yes. Where did you hear about this?” she asked.

“From the captain of the ship. Through Defense,” he said.

She glanced quickly at Stuntz, who pretended to be reading a memo in front of him.

“The captain said his ship’s surgeon reported that Duar was tortured with electric current. To his
testicles
.”

She grimaced.

“According to the message he has charred skin. He’s in a state of shock. Won’t talk to anyone. And now, I hear, his American lawyer—ACLU type, of course—is on his way to the ship, courtesy of the DOD. We promised that those tried in these tribunals would have civilian lawyers if they wanted. There’s a great idea. You know what his new lawyer is going to do when he finds out his client has been tortured in Egypt, of all places, while he has been denied access to his client? He’s going to go ape-shit. And then he’ll call the
Post
, and
they’ll
go ape-shit—what’s the name of that woman?”

“Josephine Block.”

“Right, then
she’ll
go ape-shit and this will become her hobby until she makes someone look stupid. And it won’t be me.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Stuntz said. “We haven’t really done anything wrong. The Egypt thing is fine. We can allow others to interrogate him whenever we want any time we want. There are a lot of other countries who have been harmed or threatened by this man. Egypt sees him as a huge threat, with his operation in Sudan and ties to Islamic Jihad. No doubt they got some good stuff out of him too. But we can’t be seen to have anything to do with it. I was aware it was going to happen, sir, and if in the future you’d rather know about these things ahead of time, I’ll be glad—”

“No,” Kendrick said, waving his hand dismissively. “I just hate giving critics ammunition.”

Stewart Woods spoke up. “We got a lot of extraordinary intelligence out of this and a confession, sir.”

Kendrick looked at him. “Is it useful?”

“We think so.”

Kendrick nodded. “If it allows us to interfere with their plans, stop attacks . . . I don’t know.”

David Stern, Duar’s new lawyer, fresh from the Washington, D.C., office of the ACLU, stepped off the helicopter onto the deck of the
Belleau Wood
. His senses were completely overwhelmed by the noise of the turning aircraft, the brightness of the ocean reflecting the sun, the smell of jet fuel, and the feel of the hard steel deck under the leather soles of his dress shoes.

He wore a lightweight brown suit that hadn’t fared well in traveling halfway around the world from Washington. It looked like he had slept in it, because he had, several times—in London, Kenya, and finally on the helicopter, with his head dangling like a lamp on a ship. He was completely exhausted. His skin was shiny and pale.

He followed the sailor who had gestured to him and headed toward the island of the enormous ship. They stepped through the steel hatch and the sailor dogged it closed behind him. “You’re here to see Commander Little, right?”

“I don’t know. Who is he?”

“He’s the Navy lawyer defending the terrorist.”

“Yes, I remember Mr. Little’s name, now that you mention it. And he’s only an
alleged
terrorist.”

“Right,” the sailor replied, smiling, “alleged. I’ll take you right to him. I’ll get your bag and get you checked into your stateroom, sir. Then later I’ll come by and show you where it is.”

Stern stretched his back. “I’d like to get cleaned up and change my clothes.”

“You’d rather do that first, sir?”

“I think I would, actually.”