55
In Courtroom 401, two floors below the Court of Appeal, McSheffrey and the others. were ready for another round with Dana Wittenberg, who was set up with her three computers, a mountain of transcripts, briefs, and question notes floating amid it all. She was again confronted with a witness that she had only met once, for one superficial interview. While presumably the witness was going to say important things, Dana had only a vague idea what those things might be. Kumar Hanaman was nervously standing in the witness box, and the judge had given Zak and Richard, dressed in ill-fitting, somewhat wrinkled suits, permission to sit in the well of the court, near the witness box.
Judge Mordecai entered the courtroom. As he did, Lee Penn-Garrett appeared in the rear of the court and was wheeled to the well by the sheriffs.
“I’d like to say,” began Judge Mordecai, “nice job in the Court of Appeal, upholding my order and all, but really, you didn’t do anything, did you?” “No, m’lord,” Dana replied.
“But it really had nothing to do with you. We all know that they’re completely random up there, so it’s like they get it right fifty percent of the time, you know, just by accident. Anyway, Ms. Wittenberg, who do we have on the stand today?”
“Mr. Kumar Hanaman.”
“Proceed then.”
At 10:05 a.m., Tyra surreptitiously placed a large barrister’s briefcase beside one of the planters near the east end of the foyer. The case had hidden within it a flash-bang grenade.
At 10:08, Tyra called the security center of the courthouse. This center, located in the basement not far from cells, was large and modern with a staff of four. There were a total of eighty cameras: two in each courtroom and another forty showing scenes of the foyer, barristers’ lounge, library, and the registry. Twenty more cameras were aligned so that any view could be had of any street adjacent to the building, another ten in the cells area, and another twenty in the various hallways and judges’ chambers—170 cameras in all. The sheriffs in charge of the monitoring hub were linked via shortwave technology to all the other sheriffs in the building. There were also some large screens available. If a judge were to activate a knee switch in an emergency, that particular courtroom would be shown on the large screen. There were also two large additional screens. These showed the feeds of the cameras in Courtroom 401. The Lestage trial had been a particular source of anxiety for the sheriffs.
The phone rang. All four looked at it. It rang twice more before anyone picked it up.
“Security center.”
“There are two bombs in the building. You must evacuate or people will be killed.”
The technician replayed the call, which had been digitally recorded, through the security center speakers. “Is it serious?” he said.
“We get so much of this crap,” another operator said. “We’ve never yet, in the forty-year history of this building, had a bomb go off. Crazies call this stuff in just for its entertainment value.”
Tyra had parked her van near the intersection of Smithe and Hornby streets, directly below where the eastern wall of the courthouse met Robson Square. The orange cones had been put out, and Keith and Ron were in the back of the van performing a last check of the drone.
At 10:10, Tyra tapped out another number on her cell phone. She called the phone that was in the briefcase that was attached to the fusing mechanism of the grenade. The phone buzzed once. This action activated the grenade’s timed fuse. Five seconds later it went off. While it was not designed to kill, the detonation was powerful and very loud and could be heard throughout the courthouse and in the security center. It took out parts of the east glass wall of the foyer.
“Foyer cameras,” ordered the commander of the security center. Instantly the foyer camera feeds were flipped to the large screens. The outside glass wall beside the grenade had been shattered, and the air was full of dense, heavy smoke.
“Shit!” he said, reaching for the intercom. No further debate was needed. “There has been a bomb threat. Everyone please evacuate the building immediately. Please evacuate the building immediately. Please go to the predesignated muster stations.”
Both Richard and Zak heard the explosion in the foyer. Both were instantly up and jumped in front of the witness box, shielding Kumar from the gallery. Neither had guns; the chief justice had vetoed that. Another second passed when the announcement was heard over the court intercom:
“Evacuate. Evacuate immediately.”
“Which way do we go?” shouted Richard at the sheriffs. “Front or back?”
“Only court personnel through the back,” one barked. “Jury members, prosecutors, Wittenberg, follow me, please. And you two,” he was pointing at his two colleagues, “bring Lestage down here as well. Everyone else out the front. Take the central steps to the foyer, turn left, and muster at the northwest exit of the building. Madam Clerk, lock the courtroom doors when everyone is out.”
“Don’t like this, Richard,” Zak said under his breath, making sure Kumar could not hear. “There is only one person they’re after, and that’s Kumar.”
“They?”
“Yeah. They. Either the CIA, or a private army put together by Yousseff, or the RCMP, or hell, a plot by Pakistan or Russia. Whoever they are, they are after Kumar.”
“If it’s the CIA, the president has completely lost his mind,” Richard replied.
“If it’s the CIA, they’ll be crafty; it will be a multifaceted attack. If we muster where everyone else musters, we could be surrounded by them. And they’ve probably got a sniper crew as well. We’ve got to stay in the building.”
At 10:12, Keith and Ron opened the rear doors of the van. Immediately behind the van, a second five-ton rented cube van had been parked, obscuring the view of the one-way eastbound traffic on Hornby.
“Take her out, gentlemen,” Tyra ordered. Keith and Ron complied, lifting the
