“Yeah, Allan, I’m ready for whatever weather comes my way. I’ve got a ringside seat on a total circus, and, quite frankly, Chief, it’s a blast.”
48
“Riotous bedlam” was too gentle a phrase to describe the scene outside Courtroom 401 the following morning. There were hundreds of spectators jostling and pushing one another before the courtroom opened. The plan was to pump the video feed into two large courtrooms that weren’t being used that day to accommodate the overflow crowd. A satellite village had been erected over the course of the night. News agencies from around the world caught on to the significance of what was transpiring in the trial of Leon Lestage. There was hilarity in abundance, as the behavior of the director of TTIC was pure vaudeville. Late-night television hosts indeed had a field day with it. Strip the humor away, however, and there were serious questions about who committed the Colorado attack. Who was Yousseff? What went on with the Colorado inquiry? Was America in bed with terrorists? If so, why?
Ten o’clock came, and, as had become a hallmark in the Lestage trial, proceedings were anything but ordinary. Turbee, at the behest of the sheriffs, took his seat in the witness box. Dana was ready with a few final questions and Sheff was coiled like a snake, waiting to strike. As Judge Mordecai nodded to Dana to begin, the double doors at the rear of the courtroom opened and in walked two senior partners from Inverness McPhail International— two senior partners of the powerful law firm, in one court, at the same time. Both were dressed in $10,000 Savile Row suits and $1,000 Italian shoes. As was his custom, His Lordship completely ignored them and repeated his instruction to Dana, a little louder. “Carry on, Ms. Wittenberg.”
“Mr. Turbee, yesterday, before all the interruptions, you were explaining to the jury how email works, and I believe before we stopped, you were explaining to the jury how you checked the various servers through which the emails allegedly passed. Can you explain how you did that, and what your conclusions were?”
Turbee had had a dreadful night. He had hardly slept. George put them all up in one large suite in the Wall Centre with Richard in one neighboring room and Zak and Kumar in the other. As soon as Turbee felt nourishing sleep roll over him, his mind would return to another image of death in the Colorado attack. Demonic appearances of Dan Alexander haunted him as soon as he closed his eyes. Sometimes he’d imagine himself alone in Gitmo, or in the Denver Supermax. He had been there on the internet, and the thought of scorpions on the loose was in itself enough to get him to a thoroughly agitated state. The dark circles under his eyes were growing darker and his eyes appeared to have receded in their sockets. He talked softer than normal. The judge had to ask him repeatedly to speak into the microphone.
“Yes, of course. I was able to search the hard drives that were given to me, and review the email logs.” He cast furtive glances in the direction of McPhail and the other lawyer, standing between the counsel table and the witness box. “What was the question again?”
Dana repeated the question, urging him to explain how he’d concluded that the emails entered into evidence were fake.
Turbee cleared his throat and tried again. “I used special searching software, and the email messages that Mr. Lestage apparently had sent and received were not in any of the series of servers that were involved in the mail delivery. After conducting these searches, I found no record of those emails being sent or received. They are fake emails that were never sent or delivered to anyone.”
“And can we go back to—”
“Excuse me, m’lord.” McPhail had grown tired of waiting and had no appetite for a repeat of his last experience in front of Judge Mordecai.
Dana respectfully stopped speaking. Turbee fell silent and began inspecting his fingernails.
“Ms. Wittenberg, please carry on with this witness.” Judge Mordecai was fed up with interruptions.
“Did you compare the emails found on Mr. Lestage’s computers to the other emails produced in this case?”
“Yes. We go back to the emails themselves. I compared them, and their properties, to the emails on the computers that belonged to the members of the Los Angeles terrorist cell. The nature of those emails was identical. The properties were identical. It is my opinion that the emails placed on the Los Angeles computers were similar in their properties and metadata to the emails placed on Mr. Lestage’s computers.”
“And what—”
Dana was cut off again by McPhail. “Excuse me, m’lord, there is an international crisis brewing, the United States is in the thick of it, and you have placed the director of an American intelligence agency in cells so that at some undetermined time in the future, Ms. Wittenberg can call him as a witness on some irrelevancy or other. This is an outrage, and has sparked an international row between Canada and the US. Both our prime minister and the American president have demanded the release of Mr. Alexander and Mr. Turbee. We demand to be heard now.”
“We will wait for this witness to be done, then you can make whatever fool point you want to make. How much longer will you be in chief, Ms. Wittenberg?”
“I am winding down. Fifteen minutes.”
“And in cross, Mr. McSheffrey?”
“The rest of the day.”
“Very good. McPhail, you can make whatever stupid motion you want to make at four o’clock today.”
“This is an outrageous ruling,
