Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) (33 page)

Hotary studied the containers on the deck. He could see their three containers at the very top in the middle of the ship as their instructions had been. Their containers were indistinguishable from the other containers on the ship, and fit into the space that had been saved for them.

There were three other ships moored at the pier across from the ship they were boarding. Sailors were coming and going in the mist, covering their heads with parkas, newspapers, or nothing at all. No one took notice of Hotary. He went to the gangplank and walked up the slatted walkway quickly. A sailor waited at the top. He stepped out of his covered spot to get in Hotary’s way. “What do you want?”

“My name is Tayseer Hotary. I am a new member of the crew.”

“Right,” the sailor replied bitterly. “One of the fifteen new crew we don’t need.”

Just then two more of Hotary’s men walked up the gangplank and stepped off without incident.

Hotary said, “Show us to our quarters.”

The sailor bristled. “You don’t give orders on this ship. You don’t even tell us what you want. We’ll tell you. And if you’re crew, you’ll do what
I
say. That clear?”

“Quarters,” Hotary said as three more of his men arrived.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Send for the man to show us to our quarters. Now.”

“I don’t think you heard me.
You
don’t give orders.”

Hotary stared at him without replying.

The sailor looked down, then back. “Delgadillo will show you. I’ll call him,” the sailor said.

By the time Delgadillo arrived, all of Hotary’s men stood on the quarterdeck. As Delgadillo pointed forward and beckoned them to follow, Hotary stopped and spoke to the sailor. “What is your name?”

“Why?”

“Because when I start issuing orders, I want you to be the first to receive them.”

“I look forward to it,” the sailor said with a mean smile.

The three days Rat had allotted to race up and down the Dardanelles with James and his magic equipment had passed with no sleep and no results. Ship after ship yelled at them on the radio for approaching too close, and time after time James shook his head. No gamma rays coming from any ship. Beta rays would be harder to find, they both knew, and none were found. At the end of the third day the officer who had procured the boat drove them to Istanbul and Rat flew back to Washington with his jaw clenched to face his trial.

He sat on the couch in his apartment watching ESPN. He had his bare feet up on the coffee table. It was already late and he knew he should be in bed. He needed to be fresh for the trial that started in the morning. He dreaded it. He felt trapped. He had an attorney that he doubted, and had no real argument to get out of the charge, as ridiculous a charge as he thought it was. But the time had arrived, and there was no escape. He had decided to wear his white Navy uniform, his best opportunity to make a good impression on the judge and the jury. He knew if he went to the trial in a civilian suit he would look and feel awkward.

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. Rat jumped up from the couch and thought of grabbing the handgun he kept in his apartment. He had been jumpy ever since his name and picture had been in the newspaper as the “Special Forces operative” who was being charged with torturing a terrorist from the Duar network. Rat knew better than anyone that all the people affiliated with Duar were not dead. He was sure he had been on their trail in Georgia, and now they might be on his. Georgia had to be left to others, and Groomer promised to report to him when he returned to the Pankisi gorge once more.

Rat had replaced the cheap hollow door with a solid wooden door for security. He also had two dead-bolt locks on the door. He had gone to substantial effort to install something of a periscope-like peephole in the wall to allow him to see visitors from the side. Rat looked into the peephole and saw Andrea. He smiled. He grabbed the door handle and jerked the door open.

Andrea stood at the door. “You took off your shirt just for me?”

He smiled. “I sure didn’t think I’d see you for a while. And not here. How’d you get here?”

“I flew.”

He stepped back and motioned for her to come in. “How’d you get off? Take leave?”

“I tried that,” she said, setting her purse on the floor and taking off her jacket. “I got subpoenaed.”

“By that U.S. Attorney?” he asked, horrified.

“No, by Skyles.”

“What for?”

“He said I’d be a good witness and I should come.”

“I thought you hated me.”

She frowned. “I had to think about it a lot. I still don’t know if what you did is exactly the right thing, but I don’t like the fact that you could go to jail for it. If the Navy wanted to send you a letter or something, fine. But the Justice Department? A U.S. Attorney? I think you’re right. It’s political.”

He nodded, studying her face. “We’re okay?”

She nodded back. “I’m here to help.”

“They might actually convict me, you know. I took a look at the witness list. They’re calling people who were there. People who saw what happened.”

“We’ll just have to see what they say.”

“I’m not going to prison, Andrea. Not ever.”

“Meaning what?” she asked, her face clouding at the thought of him actually being convicted of a crime.

“I would disappear. And believe me, I know how to do that.”

She sat next to him on the couch. “Let’s think more positively. You’re going to get off.”

Rat raised his eyebrows once quickly. He wasn’t so sure. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“So am I,” she said. “Now. What can I do to help you get ready?”

“What are you going to say when you testify?”

“I’ll show you,” she said. She bent down and pulled out a handful of pages that she had printed out and brought with her.

Ray Winter, DeLong’s fellow CIA officer and his assistant in Monrovia, was in his late twenties and questioned everything. He shook the rain off his poncho, hung it on a hook in the entryway, and headed straight to Bill DeLong’s office. DeLong was burning the midnight oil as he did every night. Winter knew he would be there. He knocked smartly on DeLong’s door.

DeLong had turned off the overhead light and was operating with only a small desk lamp. The ambassador’s instructions to preserve electricity had been very clear. Not so much to save on their electric bill, but because power in Monrovia was often in short supply and they didn’t want to be seen as sucking more than their share of electricity from the community grid. The embassy had its own power generators, but they didn’t like to use them either as that was perceived as arrogant.

“What’s up?” DeLong asked, always happy to see Ray Winter, especially at odd times, which usually meant he had discovered something or had some curiosity that he was pursuing, always worth talking about.

“That car bomb thing.”

“What about it?

“You told me to keep an eye on the dead woman’s son—the guy who works at Liberian shipping.”

“Right, so?”

“So I, or some of our friends, have been keeping an eye on him ever since.” Winter began moving his hands expressively while he spoke. “His name is Thomas Lisbie. Solid guy. Community guy. Never been in trouble, not political, never crosses anybody. But he looks around a lot. It’s like he suspects somebody is watching him. I can’t imagine that he thinks we’re watching him. He’s concerned about somebody else. Maybe the same person that whacked his mother. Anyway, he’s been very predictable. Never overworks, never stays late, rarely in his office after dark, goes right home, comes right to work, goes out to dinner now and then, but nothing really noteworthy at all. Until tonight.”

DeLong nodded to encourage him.

“So tonight, there he is in his office, overlooking the harbor, with the lights burning in his office. One hour, two hours, three hours after sunset. So we’re like, what the hell? We start looking around. The only thing significant that happened—this seems bizarre—is a ship came in from the Black Sea. The
Tbilisi
. Pulls in and off-loads three containers, which are immediately put aboard another ship. A large container ship. That in itself is not that unusual. Ships switch containers all the time. But the
really
strange thing, and at first we didn’t even notice, but then one of our friends pointed it out to me, fifteen men who got off the
Tbilisi
got on board the other cargo ship, the one where the three containers got moved to. That to me is odd. They waited behind a warehouse until it was dark, then walked to the other ship in groups of two, like they were married. And there’s Lisbie, looking over the whole thing, like he’s making sure it comes off.”

DeLong had been listening intently. “What’s the second ship? Where is it going?”

“It’s called the
Monrovian Prince
. It’s a large container ship and it’s headed for Jacksonville, Florida.”

DeLong frowned and leaned back, thinking. “What do they want with a large container ship?”

“Depends on what’s in the containers. What if there’s a nuke in there? Or . . . smallpox or anthrax?”

“Possible, but where would they get those?” He sat forward quickly. “And who is doing this? Whose containers are they? If they came off the
Tbilisi
are they Georgian?” His mind was racing, trying to correlate everything he had seen over the last two weeks in secret message traffic, terrorist warnings, alerts, hunches, and opinions of those in Washington he respected. “Not up to us to know everything. That’s Langley’s job. Get this off to Washington right away. They may have some other pieces of this puzzle.”

“You want to look at the message before I send it off?”

DeLong nodded. “Get it to me in fifteen minutes.”

The Navy officers aboard the
Belleau Wood
had spent countless hours in the officers’ mess discussing the difficulty of proving the case against Duar and watching Elizabeth Watson sitting by herself reviewing documents or notebooks full of something or other. They watched as her face grew clouded from the crushing burden on her shoulders.

As she pulled the chair back and sat at the counsel table her face still showed the burden they perceived. That night, like several before it, she had lain awake terrified of losing the case and watching Wahamed Duar go free. She visualized him demanding a helicopter from the United States to take him back to his home in Sudan. He would return a conquering hero. And if the images of the trial—the Kangaroo Trial as many countries were calling it—were absent from television, the images of Duar stepping off an American helicopter in triumph would be everywhere.

The judge and the court were seated. The rest of the room followed.

Judge Graham looked at Elizabeth. “Call your first witness.”

Elizabeth stood, looked to the back of the wardroom where a wooden door was closed, and said, “The United States calls Suzanne Parks.”

A first-class petty officer in his dress white uniform opened the door and bellowed into the passageway, “Suzanne Parks!”

A short woman in a pantsuit walked briskly into the courtroom carrying a file. She walked between the counsel tables and to the witness chair, which sat on an elevated platform to the right of the judge.

Elizabeth stood at the lectern. She opened her notebook. “Would you please tell the court where you’re employed?”

Parks had her hair bound behind her with a clip. She appeared intelligent and energetic. She exuded confidence. “My name is Suzanne Parks. I’m employed by the Central Intelligence Agency in counterterrorism.”

The crowd muttered and the journalists scribbled. They were surprised that someone would admit to being employed by the CIA, a prohibition that had long since been abandoned by the Agency, and that a counterterrorism expert would come out of the shadows and actually testify in court. They all took it as a sign of how serious the United States was about this trial and the extent to which they would go to get a conviction.

“How long have you been employed by the Agency?”

“Approximately ten years.”

“Would you summarize your educational background, please?”

She did.

“As part of your job, have you had an opportunity to study the operations of Wahamed Duar?”

“I have been studying his operations and his organization for years.”

Elizabeth paused, then continued. “How does one study the operations of an organization of someone who doesn’t want their operation and organization to be studied? I don’t suppose that, for example, Mr. Duar published an annual report that describes his operations in a brochure with photographs.”

Stern rose. “Objection, Your Honor. Counsel’s question is argumentative and attempts to testify instead of asking the witness for testimony.”

“Overruled,” the judge said. “You may answer the question.”

Parks nodded in response to the judge’s instruction. “Sure, it’s not easy. But it’s not that difficult sometimes. Mr. Duar for example was rather easy to trace in some regards and rather difficult in others. We have been able to track many of his financial dealings for example, and have attached—frozen—some of his assets and bank accounts around the world. But tracking him personally was much more difficult.”

“Apparently someone was able to track him, as he was captured in the country of Sudan.”

Stern rose. “Objection, leading. Additionally, Your Honor, whether it was Wahamed Duar who was captured in Sudan is one of the fundamental issues in this trial. It cannot simply be asserted as fact by counsel, when there is currently
no
proof before this court that Wahamed Duar was captured anywhere, let alone Sudan.”

“Sustained. Please rephrase, Counsel.”

“Let’s get down to the basics. How do you know that the person you have been following is Wahamed Duar?”

“We have a photograph.”

“Did you bring a copy of that photograph with you?”

Parks opened the file she had brought and pulled out an eight by ten photograph. “Yes I did. Here it is.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Your Honor, a copy of that photograph has been premarked as Exhibit One.”