“I don’t know. But if Ms. Wittenberg doesn’t get it, how can a jury, not trained in the law, get it? Come on. Ms. Wittenberg is a lawyer. She caused all of this. I don’t think she fully appreciates what she’s done here.”
“I’ll think about it. I’m guessing Ms. Wittenberg is obviously not welltrained in the law. How the hell did you pass the bar exams, Ms. Wittenberg? The jury probably has more common sense than you do. If I do mistrial this case, Ms. Wittenberg, you are going to pay personally ALL of the costs that have been incurred in this trial. I think between clerks, reporters, sheriffs, and me, you’re looking at at least $10,000 per day.”
That was the end of that. At four o’clock that day, Dana, cuffed, walked out a side door. Two other sheriffs gathered up her computers and pieces of computers, her papers, and the coat she had draped over her chair.
Leon Lestage was taking the measure of the argument. McSheffrey had applied for a mistrial. All Leon needed to do was get Wittenberg to agree, and the case would be over for now. But while Wittenberg seemed to be floundering her way through the trial, and McSheffrey seemed to be winning every point, neither counsel was looking at the jury with the sharpness that Leon did. The jury was unhappy with the judge, and with the prosecution, and seemed to be riding with Dana, notwithstanding the hopelessness of her position. Leon did something he seldom did. He grinned.
28
An intercom in the office area of the special projects wing at KDDE buzzed. “Is Jimmy Stalbach there?” came the voice from the main office switchboard.
“Yes, he’s here. What is the message?”
“There are three strange men here. One of them says he is Kumar Hanaman, but he looks nothing like company pictures of him. He is with two others, maybe Americans. They look,” and the voice dropped off a bit, “look and smell like derelicts. We were going to have security remove them but this Kumar fellow seems to know a great deal about this company.”
“Just a moment please . . . .” Thus began a series of phone calls and conversations that ultimately led Richard, Zak, and Kumar to the inner sanctum of KDDE.
Jimmy howled with laughter when he saw the three of them. “No wonder they had issues with you guys. God, did you crawl through the sewers to get here?”
“Almost,” said Kumar. “We are in a hurry. These two gentlemen are accompanying me. Is the Allegro Star ready?”
“Yes she is, but if I’m going to be in close quarters with the three of you for a week or two on that ship, take a shower, get into some company clothes. You guys reek and after three days in close confines, you’ll all likely die of the plague or something. I have my standards. What is the hurry? You said last night that you had given the authorities the slip.”
“That was last night, Jimmy,” Kumar said. “They were able to track us down. They almost had us cornered on the promenade, and we had to crawl underneath the railway bridge to get here. My guess is that they will figure out this was our likely destination, and they’ll come in here, kicking down the walls and shooting before talking. We need to hustle, Jimmy.”
There was, of course, the contractual issue of payment. Jimmy was Yousseff’s most successful drug runner, which was why he had been chosen, in the Colorado attack, to pilot a minisubmarine crammed with tons of explosives to a remote outpost on the British Columbia/Alaska border. This was a similar venture. Kumar was clearly on the run, and there was a high degree of risk associated with the mission. They settled on payment of 5 million euros, laundered and perfectly clean, in a Swiss bank account.
Jimmy indeed had his standards. He insisted on showers and clean clothing, but that was accomplished in under five minutes, and he led the three freshly scrubbed fugitives toward the ship. He opened a series of double doors and the four were standing inside a large indoor quay harboring a stunning craft, one of the strangest vessels that KDDE had ever produced.
The ship was approximately eighty feet from bow to stern but sat low in the water. It was a trimaran, with the two outrigger hulls narrowing to sharp reverse angles along the prow. When the ship was in motion, the central hull elevated so that only the two outrigger hulls and the sleek engine housing were in contact with the water, somewhat akin to surface-piercing hydrofoils. The engines were located in the central hull. They were amazingly silent and, when at speed and above the water, every bit as quiet as a Triton class nuclear submarine. The propellers were of a special design and made of carbon nanotube materials. They created very little noise even when rotating at higher speeds. The entire craft was unusually angled with planar segments connecting at odd points.
“Damn,” breathed Richard. “A hull like that—it’s got to be stealthy. Looks like an F-117.”
“Actually,” Kumar said, “it was modeled after the F-117. The Pakistan military got hold of those plans and passed them along to us. It turns out that F-117 technology works better in water than in air. She is very stealthy.”
“What kind of material is it made out of?” Richard asked, checking out various aspects of the ship.
“It is made of radar-absorbing carbon-titanium acrylic material. NASA technology. Stealth technology. On a radar or sonar, the Allegro Star is about the size of a sardine.”
“How did you get your hands on those types of materials?” Zak asked.
“Dubai, gentlemen. Dubai,” Kumar responded. “You can buy anything you want in those marketplaces. Anything from elephants to Ebola.”
“But
