“I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to cook up next, Alexander,” George replied. “But screw you.”
“George, you need to read the Calvin Jones report. The inquiry into the Colorado River attack. The administration spent more than a hundred million dollars to put all of that together, and they came up with a very clear finding as to who the culprits were. And it’s not Yousseff Said al-Sabhan or Kumar Hanaman. It’s Leon Lestage and a bunch of drug dealer terrorists from Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
“Yes, Dan,” said George. “I’ve read that piece of crap. How come none of us testified? We all know what really happened.”
“A lot of conspiracy websites have been popping up,” Dan said, ignoring George’s comment, “and they have your fingerprints on them. You know, the crazy, off-the-wall nutjob stuff. The alternate facts stuff. Now we all believe in the First Amendment, but not when it’s our own people who are spreading garbage out everywhere. That’s a bad thing. And if we can prove it’s you two, you’re going into the slammer.”
“So? What’s your point?” George’s jaw was out and his neck muscles were flexing. He had a fearsome temper and what was euphemistically referred to as a self-control issue. He had been in many boardroom fights in Silicon Valley—not the paper kind, with lawyers and venture capitalists, but the back-alley kind, with bare knuckles.
“You and the little weirdo,” Dan said, tilting his head in Turbee’s direction, “you two have put up a lot of those sites, haven’t you?” “You can never prove—” began George.
“Leave that damn conspiracy crap alone,” Dan thundered. “There has been a full inquiry into what happened on the Colorado River, and the conclusions have been widely circulated. Do not use our systems to put out some views that you may happen to have. You had better put a lid on things, or you will end up in Leavenworth or the Supermax.”
“You wouldn’t dare. You couldn’t.”
“George, when it comes to how the world works, you are positively a buffoon.” With that, Dan and the eight Marines unceremoniously marched Liam Rhodes, TTIC’s brilliant deputy director, out of the control room and into a waiting van.
“That does it, George,” said Turbee after the control room settled down. “He’s been doing this for a year. It hurts us. As people. As an organization.
And he almost got me killed. And he’s making a joke of it.”
“Leave the jackass be, Turb,” said George. “Don’t rise to his game.”
“A year, George. A whole year he’s been slandering us, hurting our reputation, damaging our name in the White House and everywhere else. Now he’s dragging Liam away, and Liam is totally loyal. Nothing in those websites is false. Why he keeps backing that CJ report is beyond me. How anyone can buy into that stuff is beyond me. We tracked the terrorist attack from beginning to end. We know Yousseff directed the whole thing. We know the guy Richard and Zak nabbed, Kumar, Kumar Hanaman, engineered those submarines and the focused charged device. Why has this become such a big deal with them?”
“It’s politics, Turb,” George said. “Yousseff has opened up Afghanistan to American interests. They do not want him to be the bad guy.”
“I don’t care. Dan needs a tune-up.” Turbee sat down at one of the keyboards in his work area and quickly started flipping through screens and databases. “Here it is,” he said. George was amazed. In under a minute, Turbee had stepped inside the database of one of the most digitally fortified institutions on the planet—American Express.
George smiled. “Okay, little buddy. What else can you do?” As it turned out, Turbee could do a lot.
15
After day three it became apparent to all that Dana Wittenberg was stumbling badly. She knew the law and she knew the facts but she did not know trench warfare. She was so caked with fear that she could barely turn a page without feeling another wave of adrenalin and anxiety coursing through her. As she struggled through her cross-examination of Corporal Gray, she was met with objections at every turn. Each objection felt like a bullet carving through her flesh: “Objection, asked and answered.” “Objection, relevance.” “Objection, solicitor-client privilege.” There were even objections she had never heard of before: “Objection, the rule of Ziemer v. Wheeler.” “Objection, the exception in Clements v. Clements.”
Each time Judge Mordecai turned to Dana with a remark like, “What about it, Wittenberg?” or “That seems kind of obvious, Wittenberg,” Dana could only lamely mumble something about rephrasing the question and then move on to something else altogether. Leon began to work with various prisoners who had schooled themselves in the law underlying the seeking of adjournments and mistrials—the sophistication of legal knowledge behind bars is significant.
Dana was working in a small witness room adjacent to Courtroom 401. It was 8:00 a.m. on day five and the complex was deserted, but for a night watchman whom Dana had befriended. The “Lord Shatterer of Deathrot” chyron again began to flash across the screen of one of her computers. In a flash of frustration and anger she typed a response: “What do you want?”
A few seconds later a reply flashed across the screen: “Your client might actually be innocent. Call me.”
A telephone number followed. Dana reflected on the situation for a few minutes. She had been deserted by her law firm, had the misfortune of drawing one of the meanest judges in the stable, had a drug dealing client whom she despised, and was facing four arrogant, over-caffeinated prosecutors. She had little to lose. She took out her phone and dialed the number.
A soft voice answered. “Hi, this is Turbee.” The response had the intonation of a question rather than a salutation.
Dana wasted no time. “This is Dana Wittenberg. Are you the Lord Deathrot that’s hacked into my computer?”
There was a lengthy silence, then a quiet
