It didn’t have to come to this. But the goddamn government was so sensitive about anything concerning Islam, more concerned about the rippling effects of international action, than they were about making it clear what happened to you if you killed Americans. The president didn’t face much political pressure at home on this. It didn’t happen in America, it wasn’t aimed at Americans, and few American casualties resulted. Seventeen Americans, in the scheme of things? Not a big deal. Shake your head, make an off-color remark about Muslims, and flip over to the latest reality television show.
He remembered his old fraternity brother from the Ivy League days, now a defense contractor with good ties to the CIA, who put Manning together with someone who could help. He remembered the agent who agreed to give him the straight scoop-for a fee, of course. Costigan was his name, a man with loads of information and twin girls who wanted the same expensive Ivy League education Randall Manning had received.
He remembered what Costigan had told him, two weeks later. He’d always remember every single word that Costigan told him.
He remembered several weeks after the bombing, calling Bruce McCabe and Stanley Keane. Manning was firmly committed to the idea, but he danced around it initially with the two of them. He didn’t know if they’d go along, if they’d need some coercing, or if they’d simply say no. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if they’d said no outright.
But they didn’t. They said yes.
Manning always described it to them as something they could pull off without detection. A large, international company like GHI and a smaller industrial supply company like SK could separately sell bomb components to a front company, a farm, that could justify purchases of both fertilizer and nitromethane for pesticide. Nobody would be expecting it. And nobody would suspect it afterward, if the bombings were carried out correctly. The trucks could be rented in a way that didn’t lead back to them; the bomb components wouldn’t be traceable; and the individuals actually carrying out the attacks wouldn’t survive and wouldn’t be traceable back to them, in any event.
But the truth was, Manning never really believed he’d get away with this. The federal government had ways he couldn’t fathom of gathering evidence and chasing down leads. They would catch him. But maybe not Stanley, a small-business owner who would be guilty of nothing more than selling a legal product to a farm. And maybe not Bruce McCabe, guilty of nothing more than practicing law, working the financial deals that allowed GHI to purchase Summerset Farms and Stanley’s company.
Manning had to cancel the public offering of GHI, naturally. The things he was going to do, he couldn’t be answering to a board of directors and shareholders. No, he’d have to keep the company private, so he was the one and only boss, free to do whatever he pleased with the company. Like selling an inordinate amount of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to a small farming company. Like keeping people such as Patrick Cahill in a job, so he had the right people watching the gates and driving the trucks.
He thought the hardest part would be finding recruits, people who detested the government and were willing to take up arms against it and risk their lives in the process. He was surprised to learn that this was the easiest part.
Tuesday, December 7, was the ideal date. The symbolism was perfect, and it gave them sufficient time to stockpile materials for this attack and future ones, and to recruit and train the soldiers.
Manning stretched his nervous limbs and sat down on the bed. He looked at his prepaid cell phone again, an untraceable phone he’d purchased at a convenience store two days ago with a package of two hundred minutes. The FBI had come calling today. They didn’t search the place. They just came by to chat.
So they’d gotten wind of things, probably from Jason Kolarich, but it didn’t sound like they were close.
Not close enough. Not soon enough.
The attack was less than forty-eight hours away.
88
After Joel Lightner’s briefing, he and I spent the next several hours with Lee Tucker of the FBI. This time, Lee Tucker wasn’t wearing a patronizing smirk. I’d made some headway with him, and the information Joel and I gave him now only solidified our position.
Not that Lee gave up a single damn thing in return. He didn’t confirm or deny anything. He gave no indication whether my information was news to him or stuff he already knew. I couldn’t tell if he put the threat risk at low, medium, or high, or the imminence of that threat as near or far.
From his viewpoint, which he revealed drip by drip through various comments, I had a circumstantial case against Global Harvest at best. None of the sales of fertilizer or nitromethane were illegal. In fact, they were openly disclosed to the authorities. I claimed the quantities were underreported, but I had no proof of that. And my theories on how Kathy Rubinkowski and Bruce McCabe died were just that-theories. Yes, it helped my cause that two people from GHI’s law firm had been murdered, and it helped that white Aryan supremacists named Patrick Cahill and Ernie Dwyer, in custody on federal gun charges, worked private security for GHI. But at the end of the day, all of my arguments were colored by the fact that I lacked a smoking gun, and I was a defense lawyer desperate to use these facts to exonerate his client.
“So this map came from Stanley Keane’s house,” said Lee Tucker. “And you take these X marks to be bombing targets.”
“Don’t you?” I replied.
“And Stanley Keane is in the hospital right now with multiple broken bones, recovering from shock.”
I nodded. “In his rush to hand me the map, he fell down the stairs.”
Tucker didn’t even smirk. “He’ll tell that story the same way?”
“Lee, are we here to discuss whether I assaulted this asshole, or are we here to discuss whether he plans to detonate bombs in our city someday soon?”
Tucker thought for a long while, perused his notes, and then gave a presumptive nod. “Okay, Kolarich, I got it,” he said.
Okay, he got it. He wasn’t going to give me anything more. But I’d done my duty. Again.
Joel and I got back to the law firm at four. Shauna was in her office, busily typing. Tomorrow morning, we were going to present Judge Nash with a written motion outlining all of the evidence we had uncovered and why it merited either a mistrial or a delay. If Judge Nash denied it, I was going to file an emergency motion in the state supreme court, which has supervisory powers over every court, every case, and ask them to halt the proceedings based on this emergency development. I would make sure that Judge Nash knew of my plan B. My best chance was that, with the specter of the state’s highest court looming over him and the stakes being so high, the old codger would at least grant me a small delay in the trial. Most judges would. Then again, Judge Nash ain’t most judges.
Regardless, this written submission had to be spot-on. I needed the best written product I could muster, and that meant Shauna. She knew this stuff, but she had been focusing on forensics, so I wanted Joel Lightner around this as well. I called Tori in, too, because she’d seen much of this up close. We would need a sparkling brief and affidavits as well, supporting our factual contentions.
“Okay, do your magic,” I said to Shauna. “And Lightner, behave yourself around these two beautiful women.”
“Yeah?” he said. “And where the hell are you going?”
I stretched my arms. “I’m going to prepare my closing argument,” I said. “In case Judge Nash tells us to go fly a kite.”
89
I worked on two things for the remainder of the night and well into the morning: my argument on why Judge Nash should let us reopen this entire case and investigate my new evidence, and, in the event he shut us down, my closing argument to the jury on why the prosecution hadn’t proven its case against First Lieutenant Thomas
