"If I do what you want me to do, we run the risk of blowing the whole case. They really could end up in the chair." It also would mean wrecking the careers of Coast Guard sailors who had done wrong, but not nearly so wrong as Stuart's clients had most certainly done. His ethical duty as a lawyer was to give his clients the best possible defense within the law, within the Standards of Professional Conduct, but most of all, within the scope of his knowledge and experience – instinct, which was as real and important as it was impossible to quantify. Exactly how a lawyer balanced his duty on that three-cornered scale was the subject of endless class hours in law school, but the answers arrived at in the theaterlike lecture halls were always clearer than in the real legal world found beyond the green campus lawns.
"They could also go free."
The man's thinking reversal on appeal, Stuart realized. It was an academic lawyer giving advice.
"My professional advice to my clients is to accept the deal that I have negotiated."
"Your clients will decline that advice. Your clients will tell you tomorrow morning to – what is the phrase? Go for broke?" The man smiled like a dangerous machine. "Those are your instructions. Good day, Mr. Stuart. I can find the door." The machine left.
Stuart stared at his bookcases for a few minutes before making his telephone call. He might as well do it now. No sense making Davidoff wait. No public announcement had yet been made, though the rumors were out on the street. He wondered how the U.S. Attorney would take it. It was easier to predict what he'd say. The outraged I thought we had a deal! would be followed by a resolute Okay, we'll see what the jury says! Davidoff would muster his considerable talents, and the battle in Federal District Court would be an epic duel. But that was what courts were all about, wasn't it? It would be a fascinating and exciting technical exercise in the theory of the law, but like most such exercises, it would have little to do with right and wrong, less to do with what had actually happened aboard the good ship Empire Builder, and nothing at all to do with justice.
Murray was in his office. Moving into their townhouse had been a formality. He slept there – most of the time – but he saw far less of it than he'd seen of his official apartment in the Kensington section of London while legal attaché to the embassy on Grosvenor Square. It was hardly fair. For what it had cost him to move back to the D.C. area – the city that provided a home for the United States government denied decent housing to those on government salaries – one would have thought that he'd have gotten some real use from it.
His secretary was not in on Sunday, of course, and that meant Murray had to answer his own phone. This one came in on his direct, private line.
"Yeah, Murray here."
"Mark Bright. There's been a development on the Pirates Case that you need to know about. The lawyer for the subjects just called the U.S. Attorney. He's tossing the deal they made. He's going to fight it out; he's going to put those Coasties on the stand and try to blow away the whole case on the basis of that stunt they pulled. Davidoff's worried."
"What do you think?" Murray asked.
"Well, he'll reinstate the whole case: drug-related capital murder. If it means clobbering the Coast Guard, well, that's the price of justice. His words, not mine," Bright pointed out. Like many FBI agents, the agent was also a member of the bar. "Going on my experience, not his, I'd say it's real gray, Dan. Davidoff's good – I mean, he's really good in front of a jury – but so's the defense guy, Stuart. The local DEA hates his guts, but he's an effective son of a bitch. The law is pretty muddled. What'll the judge say? Depends on the judge. What'll the jury say – depends on what the judge says and does. It's like putting a bet down on the next Super Bowl right now, before the season starts, and that doesn't even take into account what'll happen in the U.S. Court of Appeals after the trial's over in District Court. Whatever happens, the Coasties are going to get raped. Too bad. No matter what, Davidoff is going to tear each of 'em a new asshole for getting him into this mess."
"Warn 'em," Murray said. He told himself that it was an impulsive statement, but it wasn't. Murray believed in law, but he believed in justice more.
"You want to repeat that, sir?"
"They gave us TARPON."
"Mr. Murray" – he wasn't "Dan" now – "I might have to arrest them. Davidoff just might set up a grand jury on this and–"
"Warn them. That is an order, Mr. Bright. I presume the local cops have a good attorney who represents them. Recommend that attorney to Captain Wegener and his men."
Bright hesitated before replying. "Sir, what you just told me to do might be seen as–"
"Mark, I've been in the Bureau a long time. Maybe too damned long," Murray's fatigue – and some other things – said. "But I won't stand by and watch these men get ambushed for doing something that helped us. They'll have to take their chances with the law – but by God, they'll have the same advantages that those fucking pirates have! We owe them that much. Log that one in as my order and carry it out."
"Yes, sir." Murray could hear Bright thinking the rest of the answer: Damn!
"On the case, anything else you need from our end that you need help with?"
"No, sir. The forensics are all in. From that side the case is tight as hell. DNA matches on both semen samples to the subjects, DNA blood matches to two of the victims. The wife was a blood donor, and we found a quart of her stuff in a Red Cross freezer; the other one's to the daughter. Davidoff might just bring this one off on that basis alone." The new DNA-match technology was rapidly becoming one of the Bureau's deadliest forensic weapons. Two California men who'd thought themselves to have committed the perfect rape-murder were now contemplating the gas chamber due to the work of two Bureau biochemists and a relatively inexpensive laboratory test.
"Anything else you need, you call me direct. This one is directly tied in with Emil's murder, and I've got all the horsepower I need."
"Yes, sir. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday."
"Right." It was one small thing to chuckle about as he hung up. Murray turned in his swivel chair to stare out the windows onto Pennsylvania Avenue. A pleasant Sunday afternoon, and people were walking up the street of presidents like pilgrims, stopping along the way to purchase ice-creams and T-shirts from vendors. Farther down the street, beyond the Capitol, in the areas that tourists were careful to avoid, there were other places that people entered, also like pilgrims, also stopping to buy things.
"Fucking drugs," he observed quietly. Just how much more damage would they do?
The Deputy Director (Operations) was also in his office. Three signals from VARIABLE had come in within the space of two hours. Well, it was not entirely unexpected that the opposition would react. They were acting more rapidly and in a more organized way – it appeared – than he had expected, but it wasn't something that he'd neglected to consider beforehand. The whole point of using the troops he was using, after all, was for their field skills… and their anonymity. Had he selected Green Berets from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or Rangers from Fort Stewart, Georgia, or people from the new Special Operations Command at MacDill – it would have been too many people from too small a community. That would have been noticed. But light-fighters had four nearly complete and widely separated divisions, over forty thousand men spread from New York to Hawaii, with the same field skills as soldiers in higher-profile units; and taking forty people out of forty thousand was a far more concealable exercise. Some would be lost. He'd known that going in and so, he was sure, did the soldiers themselves. They were assets, and assets sometimes get expended. That was harsh, but it was reality. If the infantrymen had wanted a safe life, they would not have chosen to be infantrymen, to have re-enlisted at least once each, and to volunteer for a job that was advertised as being potentially dangerous. These weren't government clerks tossed into the jungle and told to fend for themselves. They were professional soldiers who knew what the score was.