“I’d better call the chief on this one,” the captain said.
Two hours went by before the investigation was concluded. They marveled at the computer setup that George and Turbee had assembled, but left the electronics alone. When they left, and the carpenters who were putting plywood over the windows left, George called the CBC. “We got a story for you. It involves the Lestage trial, and more shooting, this time in the Wall Centre. Come over and I’ll give you the details.”
The CBC broke with the story almost immediately. Other news networks picked it up. It appeared that the CIA had not only attempted to destabilize the trial, but had attempted to murder Lestage’s defense counsel, and now other witnesses.
When the police, medics, firemen, reporters, and various hotel staff disappeared, when the workmen had come and gone, putting temporary plywood in the broken window space, Turbee turned his attention back to the computers.
Multiple security services from two countries, the US and Canada, were investigating the incident, parsing the millimeters and nanoseconds in a focused effort to divine the truth underlying the attack. The historic friendly relationship between the two nations plunged into a chilly standoff. The Canadian government accused the CIA, rogue or not, of attacking one of the pillars of Canada’s constitutional freedoms, the court system. The Americans denied everything, but the weapons that were used, the curious role of the director of TTIC, the American-made grenade launcher on an American-made drone, coupled with the endless spinning of conspiracy lore created unparalleled tension between the two nations. The longest open border on the planet was threatening to close, with a potential cost of billions of dollars to the economies of both nations. The Canadians were contemplating expelling the American ambassador and the head of consular services in Vancouver, and the Americans were preparing to reply in kind.
The press of both countries, sensing the story of the century, began to dig, and the first bone to be uncovered was the omnipresence of Tyra Baylor. Her critical role in White House operations was played up, together with her decade-long connection with Matthew Finnegan, both when he was governor of Alabama and when he became president of the US. The more capricious and haphazard news outlets began publishing stories about various murderous exploits, fabricating interviews as they progressed, all of which was denied by a White House that was busy spinning its own set of alternative facts.
62
The following day, Kumar Hanaman was back on the stand. Carpenters had worked through the night on Courtroom 401 and the rear wall of the room looked almost as it did before the attack. A proper bench for the judge had been brought in from another courtroom, as were other articles—a new witness stand and tables for the clerk and counsel. Zak and Richard were now permitted to be armed. There were more than a dozen sheriffs inside the courtroom and more than twenty outside. There was a heavy police presence, and members of the Canadian Armed Forces were stationed at all of the intersections adjacent to the courthouse and Robson Square complex. Two military helicopters circled overhead throughout the balance of the day. Air space above the downtown Vancouver core was closed and major traffic corridors were rerouted. Not only were all entrants to the building required to pass through metal detectors, but random and frequent body searches were conducted. The Canadian prime minister delivered a furious tirade, lamenting how “the excesses of our American friends” now required “a military presence to protect the courtrooms of the land.” The American president declared it all to be fake news.
George, Turbee, and Khasha were seated directly behind Dana, and they spent a good fifteen minutes before Judge Mordecai came in discussing their respective adventures from the night before.
As Dana was nervously shuffling papers around on counsel table, she saw a small slip of paper with a series of handwritten letters and numbers on it. Curious, she inspected the eccentric little note. The cryptic alphanumeric sequence read: “SWIFT C-M-B-A-B-B-A-W-E-X-X-5611092.”
“Did you leave this here, Lee?” she asked, sliding the note to PennGarrett.
“No, Dana. I did not. And don’t ask me what it means. It’s gibberish to me,” he said.
She shrugged and put the note aside. Judge Mordecai came in and Kumar’s testimony resumed. Dana’s questioning was ridiculously simple. It began with “Tell me about your childhood,” followed by either “And what happened next?” or “Then what?” or “Could you elaborate on that please,” or some variant thereof.
McSheffrey objected continuously, most commonly with a shrug and a gesture of hopelessness. “Judge, what could this possibly have to do with anything? So he’s a teenager working in a dry dock in Karachi forty years ago. What could that possibly have to do with anything remotely relevant to anything going on in the Lestage trial?”
To which Dana responded, “Relevance will be forthcoming.” Judge Mordecai permitted it not out of any legal consideration, but because he was curious to see where Dana was going. Thus, over the course of the day, Kumar described his childhood, his teenage years with Yousseff, and smuggling drugs from Peshawar down the Indus River to Hyderabad or Karachi.
The jury paid rapt attention to the evidence and sat intently upright when Kumar began to describe Yousseff’s connection with Leon Lestage. Kumar described Leon’s mine on the BC-Montana border, and how he had personally supervised the installation of a new elevator system and upgraded the railway tracks that traversed its far-reaching, border-crossing tunnels. He described the efficiency of transit when a load of heroin arrived, usually from Stewart, on the BC-Alaska border, and from many other isolated shoreline communities up and down BC’s mostly isolated, mountainous coastline.
She asked him to explain how the Semtex, stolen from a military base in Libya, had found its way onto one of Yousseff’s freighters, a ship by the name of the Haramosh Star. A pin drop could have been heard in the
