Marine One

opened my driver's door to get in and was about to leave when the door of the sedan opened. Thompson got out. I could see he wasn't alone. Probably the same guy who came with him before.

Thompson passed under a streetlight as he approached me. He was wearing dark clothes and a leather bomber jacket. He had his hands in his pockets. I waited. He walked around to my side of the car. 'Don't trust me?'

'No. I don't trust anybody, and that would include you.'

'I'm here for your own benefit.'

'Just like last time?'

'Yes. Just like last time. You may not agree, but if you had done what I suggested, you wouldn't be stirring up the things you are stirring up.'

'What exactly am I stirring up?'

He glanced around. 'You have a recording device?'

'No. You?'

'No.'

'So what do you want?'

'You have done what I told you not to do. Your investigator continued to talk to my acquaintance in the Secret Service. I warned you.'

'I have to protect my client's interests. I have to defend the case.'

'No, you don't. If you were smart, you would have listened to me.' He turned toward me. 'And stayed the hell away from the Secret Service, and your digging about Camp David. All you've done is stir up a hornet's nest, and you can't even see the hornets. They're all around you. And now you can't get them back into the nest.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'I told you I'd have to tell the people involved that you were digging. I told them. They didn't appreciate it. That's all I know. And then you kept digging, and I told them that. Now they really don't appreciate it, and frankly, there's nothing I can do about it.'

'So you set them on me?'

'I didn't do anything. I told you how to avoid this problem, and you ignored me. I told you I would tell them, and I did. When you put a stick in the eye of some people, they don't say thank-you, they put a stick in your eye. Simple as that. Especially when it has nothing to do with the accident. If you had just done your job, if you had left Camp David out of this, you'd still be the big attorney with the biggest case in the country. But no. You had to keep going. You had to send Byrd back.'

'We follow the truth-'

'Save it. I don't care about what you think you were doing. I'm just here to tell you that you've put a noose around your own neck and it's tightening. I can't do anything about it. And the closer you get to trial, to putting on any evidence, the tighter that noose is going to be.'

I shook my head. 'This is unbelievable. My government comes to tell me that things are out of its control and I need to watch out?'

'Basically, yes. Your government is telling you that you dicked it up, Mike. You were forewarned and laughed it off. That was your choice.'

'Who's so concerned? That's the least you can tell me.'

'No, I can't. That's the whole point. I can't even hint at it.'

'You talking about violence? You think they'd come after me?'

'No idea. All I know is that the people I told you would be upset, are.'

'I've got to find out what happened. The public deserves to know. So does my client.'

'You just don't get it, do you? Camp David had nothing to do with it! You're banging on the wrong door, and the people behind that door are sick of it! You can tell the public anything you want! But you should have stayed away from this, like I told you. Now I don't know what will happen.' He stepped toward his car. 'You probably won't hear from me again. I've got nothing else to say. I tried to stop all this, but now I can't. You're on your own.' He walked away.

I called to him. 'Let me ask you something.'

He stopped and turned. 'You working with Hackett?'

Thompson smiled and walked back toward me. 'At least you're thinking. He would benefit the most, wouldn't he?'

I nodded.

'But no. I've never spoken to him and don't plan to. He is formidable, I have to admit, but he's the least of your worries at this point.'

'One other thing.'

'What?'

'You tapping my e-mail?'

Thompson frowned. 'That would be illegal.'

'Are you?'

'No.' He walked away and said over his shoulder, 'You do have problems, don't you?' He got back to his car, climbed in, started it, and drove away slowly.

I opened my car door and climbed in. I locked my door and dialed Tinny. I got his voice mail. I hung up.

Two days later we had a hearing in front of Judge Betancourt. It had been on calendar for eight weeks. It was my motion to dismiss Hackett's claims for punitive damages. Making a settlement demand was one thing. Demanding punitive damages to punish the defendant made things much more difficult and risky for a defendant. This case had punitive damages written all over it. Everybody in the country was mad at WorldCopter for 'killing' the president. The Justice Department was investigating 'fraud' in how WorldCopter had obtained the contract.

I felt like we had effectively deflected those claims in our court filings. Hackett's assertions didn't seem to have the heat they initially had when Senator Blankenship went on television the day of the accident and started throwing around accusations. The truth is usually less dramatic.

We did have one lingering problem, and it might allow the plaintiffs to get through my motion to dismiss punitive damages. It came down to the tip weights. Hackett was zeroed in on that issue. I would be too if I were him. The NTSB hadn't given any indication that there was any other cause. The entire country had become obsessed with the washerlike pieces of metal, and it was an easy theory to explain. Hackett would get an expert to say that was the cause, and that was good enough.

Our problem was the documentation about the tip weights was sketchy. For cases throughout the country, companies had got hammered by juries or judges for destroying documents. Such as a case from a computer-memory company that supposedly had held a 'shred' day for damaging documents, to others who failed to set documents aside that were relevant to a lawsuit. The juries had awarded punitive damages. And here we were with a dead president, a foreign helicopter, and documents that could not trace specific tip weights to the specific blade on Marine One. You could have the same kind of problem with the chain of custody of a critical piece of criminal evidence. If you can't prove where that piece of evidence had been from the time it was collected at the scene of the crime until the trial, you would be accused of manipulating the evidence.

For the tip weights, we had the purchase order from a Taiwanese company that manufactured them according to the specifications created by WorldCopter. We had the delivery receipt, and the storage records. The tip weights were individually numbered, and when one was placed on a blade, the entry went into the manufacturing logs, and into the documents that went with the blade as it got shipped. The shipping documents showed which numbers had been on the blade that was found by Marine One, but somehow, no records at WorldCopter headquarters confirmed that those were the tip weights that had been placed on the blade when it was balanced. That made it possible for Hackett to say we didn't know which weights were on which blade.

The tip weight bin was protected and in a secure location. The weights were placed on the blade for balancing by authorized personnel. WorldCopter had no doubt that the integrity of the tip weight system was intact, but what they couldn't prove was that somebody hadn't put a couple of extra tip weights in the bin that were not built to specification or had the quality-assurance check at the same level as every other piece of equipment that went on Marine One. The engineering tolerances allowed for materials on Marine One were substantially less than for a general WorldCopter helicopter.

But we couldn't prove that the tip weights on this blade satisfied this specification. We could argue by implication, but we sure couldn't prove it. And Hackett said it was a hole big enough for him to drive his punitive-damages truck through. I think the truck he had in mind was a Brink's truck, but it was his analogy. Hence my motion to get rid of the threat of punitive damages. At the very least, we would find out what he had up his sleeve.

The hearing before Judge Betancourt was set for 9 AM. As usual, the journalists and television crews beat us there by hours. We hadn't had a hearing or been in front of the judge for over eight weeks, so the press was happy to have another reason to reconvene the circus.

I walked into the courthouse and into the courtroom on the first floor on the right. It was the largest courtroom of the new courthouse and was perfect, as Judge Betancourt saw it, for this 'important' trial.

Hackett and his minions were already there. He had set up his papers at the appropriate table, the one closest to the jury box, and was seated with his legs crossed, turned toward the door, watching me come in. For reasons that I couldn't understand, we were the only ones in the courtroom.

Hackett looked smug and said, 'Morning, Rachel.'

'Morning,' she said.

I walked up through the bar, let the gate swing behind me, and placed my briefcase on the table opposite him. He turned in his chair and followed me with his eyes. I said quietly to Rachel, 'Go check the tentative.'

She nodded and walked back to the entryway of the courtroom and examined the document pinned to the corkboard. It listed all the motions being heard that day by the judge, and her tentative ruling on each one. Rachel returned, looking surprised. She leaned over and said in a whisper, 'Tentative is to grant.'

I was as surprised as she was. I never thought Betancourt would have the nerve to dismiss the punitive-damages claim. Hackett seemed unusually sanguine for that tentative. And he didn't seem prepared for the hearing.

The court clerk entered the courtroom followed by the court reporter and the bailiff. They took their positions, and the bailiff suddenly said, 'All rise.'

We stood as I continued to look around in wonderment as the journalists were not swarming into the courtroom. The bailiff announced the judge, who took her seat, and asked the clerk to call the calendar.

'Number one on calendar, Adams et al. v. WorldCopter, case number C334232.'

The judge looked at us with her reading glasses on her nose and began, 'Mr. Nolan-'

She was immediately interrupted by the doors being opened from the back and the two men guarding the doors walking into the courtroom. They were followed by other men in dark suits, then ultimately by the first lady, Mrs. Adams. She walked down the aisle with grace and an insistent presence. No one said a word. I