“Hey, you guys,” he said loudly. “It’s the lawyer, Puppy Little, from TV. Or was it Chicken Little? Or Shattered Puppy?”
“Nah,” said his friend. “Try Lord Chickenrot of Death.”
Again there were gales of laughter. Dana had nowhere to run and silently took the abuse, but when she arrived at her basement suite in Richmond, she literally fell through the doorway and into the arms of her fiancé.
“I can’t do this, Chris. We’ve got another ten weeks of trial, and I can’t deal with the people. The judge is crazy, the prosecutors are brilliant, my client hates me, and I don’t know what I’m doing.” Her giant 185-pound Saint Bernard, Bam-Bam, put his paws on her shoulders and tried to lick her face.
“Shush, babe,” said Chris, wiping her tears away. “There’s another part to this story. Everyone knows you’re just out of law school, and that you’ve got incredible courage to do this. The Law Society has called deFijter in for a ‘consultation.’ But you, Dana, you’re a hero. The jury—and I’ve been watching them on my smartphone at work—I think they like you. Nobody wants to see a bully stomp on someone. They’re on your side.”
“My side?”
“Yes, I think so. And if you do ten weeks of this trial, win or lose, you always win. You were the lady with enough jam to take on this incredibly difficult case, against four highly skilled prosecutors, and you’re not rolling over when the meanest judge in the litter is taking gratuitous shots at you. Come on. I’ve got a fresh salmon in the oven. Bought it off the docks at Granville Island two hours ago, and I’ve got your favorite white wine. Let’s unwind for a while. You’ve had a stressful day.” That, and another big lick from Bam-Bam, and she began to settle down some.
“What was that ‘Deathrot’ question about, though, hon?” asked Chris as he poured her a glass. “It didn’t quite seem to follow?”
“I misspoke. You know how I can do that. Someone had hacked into my computer and the words were flashing on my screen and I just blurted them out. It was someone who knew about the trial and I think was trying to help.” “How so?” Chris asked.
“This person seemed to know things about the case that I don’t.”
“Well, relax. It was just a little glitch.” Little did either of them realize that much more Deathrot was on the way.
11
January 2006
A high-ranking al-Qaeda militant had been captured and no amount of interrogation, no waterboarding, no boiling or burning by some surrogate outlaw state gave the US even so much as a grain of information. Tyra had been in the consulate where the latest round of interrogation had taken place. She had volunteered her services, and once the CIA had moved past the fact that she was a woman with no experience in this sort of thing, and she convinced them that being medically schooled was training enough, they gave her a shot.
She asked for half an hour with the terrorist, alone. She was granted this. Thirty minutes later she came back with a list of seven key high-ranking terrorists together with their contact particulars. It turned out to be one of the greatest intelligence scoops of the al-Qaeda era, and became one of the incidents that propelled her through the ranks of the military and intelligence communities, and ultimately into the White House.
Her success, however, had a dark side. A corporal was sent into the subbasement to clean up the mess Tyra had left behind. The militant was still alive, in a manner of speaking. The corporal stood, transfixed, wanting to scream, to run, but paralyzed by what he saw. He developed post-traumatic stress of such severity that he was unable to continue to serve his country. He was discharged from the military a few weeks later. He wandered around his home city of New York for eight months, falling into a life of alcohol and drugs before he committed suicide.
The witness room was small, no more than ten feet square, buried deep within the Pentagon. The deputy director of intelligence, Admiral Jackson—in this case the interviewee—sat opposite Tyra Baylor, the interrogator. A court stenographer was transcribing the conversation, which was almost exclusively one-sided. CJ sat at one end of the table. Two uniformed Marines stood by the doorway of the windowless shoebox.
Admiral Jackson had come up through the ranks from the Naval Academy, where he had graduated with distinction in the ’60, serving in various theaters of war: Vietnam, both Iraq wars, and various campaigns intercepting Somali pirates along the East African Coast. He’d earned a Purple Heart, a Navy Cross, and a Silver Star, to name but a few. When, at sixty, he announced his retirement from the Navy, several members of the cabinet, and ultimately the president himself, convinced him to accept the position of DDI, which had remained unfilled for two months. Now, at seventy-two years old, he had become the character and the conscience of the intelligence community.
“Was there a comm-link set up that night, Admiral?” Tyra asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know about Yousseff Said al-Sabhan?”
“Nothing.”
“How do you regard the conspiracy theory that Yousseff Said al-Sabhan and Kumar Hanaman organized the Colorado attack?”
“I have no view on it, ma’am.”
So it went for an hour, with answers that gave nothing. Tyra Baylor gave it a shot. “You know, Admiral, I am here on the order of the commander-inchief. I have other ways of getting you to talk, you know.”
The admiral looked directly at her. She was physically extremely attractive, in her mid-forties, and in immaculate physical condition. She had been given many gifts, but, unfortunately, she possessed neither empathy nor a moral compass. His eyes narrowed but
