“True, but still. You call him Tom, huh? His assumed name?”
“That’s how I know him. I don’t know him as Ron.”
“You still think he’s innocent, huh? After what we both read?”
She turned to him angrily, but before she could reply, the door opened. Tom, in his blue jumpsuit, stood there in his restraints, flanked by guards. She noticed he was wearing black boots.
“All right, I want these off,” Grimes told the guards, waving at Tom. “All of ’em. And not just one cuff either. You tell your CO we want all these off or we’re going to file complaints with every single goddamned member of the Senate Armed Services Committee plus the senators from Massachusetts and Virginia, and then we’re going to initiate a CONGRINT and your CO’s going to go blind with paperwork.” Tom remained standing at attention, looking at Grimes curiously.
“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said. They turned and escorted Tom off.
Grimes laughed, almost a cackle. “I love threatening these guys,” he said. “I mean, Christ’s sakes, where the hell is this guy going to go anyway? They think he’s going to escape from a conference room inside the fucking brig, with steel bars everywhere?”
They brought Tom back a few minutes later with all his restraints gone. Claire kissed and hugged him, and for the first time he could hug her back. He looked gaunt and haggard. “Charlie Grimes,” she said. “Your new lawyer. You’ve already met.”
“Charles,” Grimes corrected, and shook Tom’s hand.
“Where’s the kid?” Tom asked as he and Claire sat down. “What’s his name, Embryo?”
“We’re meeting without him this morning,” Grimes said.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Mostly bored,” he said. His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time. “New-prisoner indoctrination. They bring around a library cart with a shitty selection of paperbacks. TV call for an hour three times a week, but there’s nothing I want to watch. I get ‘sunshine call’ an hour a day, outside in this awful little cement courtyard. In full restraints. By myself.”
“They didn’t give you the tour of the health club?” Grimes asked. “Sauna, steam, Nautilus, pretty girls giving massages? No?”
“Missed it,” Tom said. “Yeah, I can’t complain, I guess.” To Claire he added, “But I miss you.”
“I miss you. We all do. You can call us, you know.”
“I just figured that out. They bring the phone around on this wooden cart and plug it in. Collect calls, thirty minutes max.”
“Yeah,” Grimes said, “and they monitor the calls, so be discreet.”
“I’m representing you, too, Tom,” she said. “I’ve signed on. Did an appearance letter. It’s official.”
“Thank God,” Tom said.
“Thank her,” Grimes said. “Bet she figures she’ll save you guys money that way.”
“You know this is a death-penalty case,” she said, ignoring him. “And I haven’t done a full-blown criminal trial in years. I’m rusty on trial law. That doesn’t make you nervous?”
“You?” Tom said. “No way. Thank you, honey.”
“Can I smoke?” she asked Grimes.
“Nonsmoking facility,” Grimes said with a firm shake of the head.
“How politically correct,” she said. “Tom, we’re going to have to know everything. No more holding back-anything. You understand that?”
He nodded.
Grimes spoke up. “It may not be pleasant for you. But if you start holding back, we’re going to get tripped up. They’re coming at you with all the ammo they got, and if you leave out a detail, especially something that’s unflattering to you, we’re all screwed, dig?”
“I dig,” Tom said.
“All right, cool,” Grimes said.
“Tom,” Claire said, “you didn’t tell us about your tour in Vietnam.”
“I told you I went to-”
“That’s not what I’m referring to. You know damned well what I’m referring to. You never told me you were part of the Turncoat Elimination Program.”
“What are you talking about?” Tom said.
“What are we talking about?” Grimes said angrily. “U.S.-government hit squads, that’s what we’re talking about. Special hunter-killer operations, teams of U.S. Army and Marine snipers sent deep into enemy territory to assassinate Americans. To eliminate American ‘traitors,’ deserters. Officially sanctioned assassination of American soldiers. You were on one of those recon-combat patrols. You were a hired killer for the U.S. government, Tom. A little something you forgot to mention.”
“That’s bullshit!” Tom exploded. “They’re making that up!”
“It’s in your file,” Claire said, desperately hoping he was telling the truth. “Says you volunteered for this mission. That you were one of their top snipers, with deadly accuracy. That’s why you were accepted into the program, even though you were so young.”
“It’s a lie!” he said. “I did a normal tour of duty, then I was sent to Special Forces training at Fort Bragg. I heard of those teams-everyone heard rumors about them over there-but I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t eliminate American soldiers. They’ve forged records or something, trying to make me look like a cold-blooded killer. You can’t possibly believe this, Claire!”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“You can’t believe this, Claire!”
“We can get it excluded,” Grimes said. “It doesn’t have to come up at court-martial.”
“But it’s a goddamned despicable lie! Look, those assassination patrols were such a goddamned closely guarded secret, nobody knew about it. If there’s anything on paper about it, wouldn’t it be top secret or something? It wouldn’t be in my unclassified files!”
Claire sighed in frustration. “That’s true. It would be in the classified stuff.”
She looked at Grimes, who shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll get it excluded. Of course they won’t want that on the record anyway-it’s a government scandal, one of the most shameful secrets of the Vietnam War.”
“What are they telling you about what happened in Salvador?” Tom asked.
“We haven’t seen the records yet,” Claire said. “But Charles tells me discovery starts now, so we’ll see it soon.”
“The good news for you,” Grimes said, “is that we’ll be going to trial soon. The military has a speedy-trial provision. They’ve got to start the court-martial within a hundred-twenty days of the time you were locked up here.”
“But we don’t want a speedy trial,” Claire said. “We need as much time as we can get to comb through the evidence, interview the witnesses. Raise reasonable doubt. We don’t want to try this case half-assed. They’ve been putting this sham together for years, I’ll bet.”
“Hey, you’re in the army now,” Grimes said. “They got the right to force us to trial if they want, when they want. The good news for you, Tom-or-Ron, is that in less than four months you’ll either be out of here or-”
“Or in Leavenworth,” Tom said mordantly. “Or executed.”
“Right,” Grimes agreed with a blitheness that seemed inappropriate. “So the clock’s ticking.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The military policeman stood straight and tall and perfectly dressed in a perfectly creased uniform. He had whitewalls behind his ears. His shoes appeared to be spit-shined to a mirror gleam. He looked like he’d just stepped out of an inspection box. He was “strac,” Grimes marveled. ‘Strac,’ he said, was army lingo for spiffy, impeccably attired, and groomed in the very best, strictest army manner.
He stood guard before a windowless room in the basement of a building at Quantico called Hockmuth Hall, where all classified materials in the Ronald Kubik matter were stored under conditions of the highest security. Outside the room Claire waited with Embry and Grimes.