High Crimes

“That number’s no longer in service.”

“You moved?”

“Just changed phone numbers. I do that periodically.”

“Why, you get a lot of crank calls?” she said. “I’ve been getting them myself recently.”

He looked puzzled but went on, “We’ve got a little old lady who works for us. Got the memory of an elephant.”

“Does every spy agency have one of those?”

“She remembered seeing the MFR I told you about. The memorandum for the record. Found it in operational files.”

“Really?” she exulted, but then she was troubled by something. “Why would CIA have an internal army document?”

He shrugged. “We’re pack rats. We had a source in the army’s Southern Command, SOUTHCOM, friendly to us. Found it in a safe full of classified stuff down there in Panama. Figured it would be of interest to us.”

“‘Friendly’ to you means he works for you?”

Dennis raised his heavy, Mephistophelian brows. “You said it, not me.” He slid a single photocopied sheet across the table.

It was not a good photocopy. It bore the smudges and detritus and vestigial chicken-scratchings of a document copied many times over. Yet it was quite readable. The general, fortunately, had had neat, if minuscule, handwriting. It was no more than three lines. She read it and looked up.

“He says here the peasants had weapons, so he got on the radio to Hernandez and instructed his men to fire.” She looked up, astonished.

Dennis drank his bourbon.

“That’s not in his statement to CID, or his interview with the government. That’s not in anyone’s statements,” she mused. “Nowhere else did he or anyone else ever mention weapons. Or that he gave the order. And to Hernandez!”

Dennis smiled. “That’s why I never put anything in writing,” he said.

Ten minutes later, when Dennis left Claire, he did not notice the tall, bulky figure of Ray Devereaux get up from a table near the door and follow him out.

44

Claire and Tom met in the small private conference room within the secure courtroom complex. She showed him the photocopy of General Marks’s memorandum for the record that Dennis had given her. He read it, betraying no expression, and looked up. “Nice,” he said, and smiled.

“‘Nice’?” Claire said, aghast. “Is that all you can say? ‘Nice’? This little piece of paper may have just won the case for us here!”

Tom cocked his head and said curiously, “You think so?”

“Well, who the hell knows what will happen in this kangaroo court. But now we’ve got proof that Marks gave Hernandez the order to have those people killed. This is hugely important.” She looked at him for a moment. “Do you think it’s possible Hernandez was one of the shooters?”

Tom shrugged. “I told you, I didn’t see anything. I heard gunfire, and by the time I got there all I saw was the bodies.”

“But did you see Hernandez holding his machine gun as if he’d just fired it, anything like that? You’re not withholding anything from me, are you?”

“Claire,” Tom said, raising his voice, “are you listening to me? I said I didn’t see anything. Okay? You want me to repeat it? I didn’t see anything.”

She stared at him, taken aback by this sudden flash of anger. What in the world was he so mad about?

“I hear you,” she replied tersely, and got up to enter the courtroom.

“The government calls Frederick W. Coultas.” Coultas was the prosecution’s ballistics man, a firearms-identification expert of national rank.

A tall, awkward man in a cheap brown suit, Coultas walked up the center aisle, settled himself in the witness chair, and was sworn in. He had a large oblong head, a tall forehead fringed by an ill-fitting hairpiece of beaver-pelt brown, wire-rim glasses framing beady brown eyes, and virtually no chin.

The jurors turned to look at him with curiosity. Most of the time they seemed to betray little emotion, but not once had Claire ever seen them look bored or distracted.

Coultas stated his credentials for the record, and Waldron helped him elaborate. Frederick Coultas was with the FBI’s Firearms and Toolmarks Unit and an instructor in firearms identification at the FBI Academy at Quantico. Graduate of the U.S. Army Small Arms Repair School, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, in Maryland. Graduate of armorer school, of gunsmith courses, of the firearms-instructors course at the Smith & Wesson Academy. A dozen years with the FBI’s Firearms Identification Section. Specialist in tool marks. On and on in overwhelming detail. Waldron made his point with wearying unsubtlety: Frederick Coultas knew his guns.

He went on to a methodical direct examination, Waldron at his merciless best.

“Tell me about the ammunition that was recovered,” Waldron said sometime later.

“Thirty-nine projectiles, bullets, were recovered, and one hundred thirty-seven cartridge casings.”

“Were they in good condition?”

“Yes.”

“Is that number of bullets, thirty-nine, consistent in your opinion with testimony that two hundred rounds were fired?”

“Yes. Even if you use a metal detector at the scene of the crime, many tend to be lost. You can’t help it.”

“Was anything else found?”