Neither of them spoke as the car made its way through the gates and out of the prison. The driver turned right and drove along the banks of the Neva at exactly fifty kilometres an hour. They passed three bridges before swinging left and crossing a fourth that would take them into the centre of the city. As they crossed the river, Connor stared out of the side window at the pale green palace of the Hermitage. It couldn’t have been in greater contrast to the prison he had just left. He looked up at the clear blue sky, and back down at the citizens walking up and down the streets. How quickly he had been made aware of how much he valued his freedom. Once they were on the south side of the river the driver swung right, and after a few hundred yards pulled up in front of the Palace of Justice. The car door was opened by a waiting policeman. If Connor had any thoughts of escape, the other fifty officers on the pavement would have caused him to think again. They formed a long reception line as he climbed the steps into the huge stone building.
He was marched to the front desk, where an officer pinned his left arm to the counter, studied his wrist and entered the number ‘12995’ on the charge sheet. He was then taken down a marble corridor towards two massive oak doors. When he was a few paces away the doors suddenly swung open, and he entered a packed courtroom.
He looked around at the sea of faces, and it was obvious they had been waiting for him.
Joan typed a search string into the computer: attempt on Zerimski’s life. What press reports there were all seemed to agree on one thing: that the man who had been arrested in Freedom Square was Piet de Villiers, a South African hitman hired by the Russian Mafya to assassinate Zerimski. A rifle discovered among his belongings was identified as identical to that which had been used to assassinate Ricardo Guzman, a presidential candidate in Colombia, two months earlier.
Joan scanned the Turkish newspaper’s line drawing of de Villiers into her computer, and enlarged it until it filled the entire screen. She then zoomed in on the eyes, and blew them up to life size. She was now certain of the true identity of the man about to go on trial in St Petersburg.
Joan checked her watch. It was a few minutes past two. She picked up the phone by her side and dialled a number she knew by heart. It rang for some time before a sleepy voice answered, ‘Who’s this?’
Joan said only, ‘It’s important that I see you. I’ll be at your place in a little over an hour,’ and replaced the phone.
A few moments later, someone else was woken by a ringing telephone. He listened carefully before saying, ‘We’ll just have to advance our original schedule by a few days.’
Connor stood in the dock, and looked around the courtroom. His eyes first settled on the jury. Twelve good men and true? Unlikely. Not one of them even glanced in his direction. He suspected that it hadn’t taken long to swear them in, and that there wouldn’t have been any requests for alternatives.
Everyone in the courtroom rose as a man in a long black gown emerged from a side door. He sat down in the large leather chair in the centre of the raised dais, below a full-length portrait of President Zerimski. The clerk of the court rose from his place and read out the charge, in Russian. Connor was barely able to follow the proceedings, and he certainly wasn’t asked how he wished to plead. The clerk resumed his seat, and a tall, sombre-looking middle-aged man rose from the bench directly below the judge and began to address the jury.
Holding the lapels of his jacket, the prosecutor spent the rest of the morning describing the events that had led up to the arrest of the defendant. He told the jury how de Villiers had been seen stalking Zerimski for several days before he was apprehended in Freedom Square. And how the rifle with which the defendant had intended to assassinate their beloved President had been discovered among his personal belongings in a hotel lobby. ‘Vanity got the better of the accused,’ the prosecutor said. ‘The case that contained the weapon had his initials clearly printed on it.’ The judge allowed the rifle and the briefcase to be examined by the jury.
‘Even more damning, a slip of paper was found secreted in the accused’s spongebag,’ continued the prosecutor, ‘which confirmed the transfer of one million US dollars to a numbered bank account in Geneva.’ Again, the jury was given the chance to study this piece of evidence. The prosecutor went on to praise the diligence and resourcefulness of the St Petersburg police force for preventing this heinous act, and its professionalism in catching the criminal who had intended to perpetrate it. He added that the nation owed a considerable debt of gratitude to Vladimir Bolchenkov, the city’s Chief of Police. Several members of the jury nodded their agreement.
The prosecutor completed his monologue by informing the jury that whenever the defendant had been asked if he had been hired to carry out the killing on behalf of the Mafya, he had refused to answer. ‘You must make what you will of his silence,’ he said. ‘My own conclusion is that having heard the evidence, there can only be one verdict, and one sentence.’ He smiled thinly at the judge and resumed his seat.
Connor looked around the courtroom to see who had been appointed to defend him. He wondered how his counsel would go about the task when they hadn’t even met.
The judge nodded towards the other end of the bench, and a young man who looked as if he hadn’t long been out of law school rose to address the court. He did not clasp the lapels of his jacket as he looked up towards the bench, or smile at the judge, or even address the jury. He simply said, ‘My client offers no defence,’ and resumed his seat.
The judge nodded, then turned his attention to the foreman of the jury, a grave-looking man who knew exactly what was expected of him. He rose from his place on cue.
‘Having listened to the evidence in this case, Mr Foreman, how do you find the defendant?’
‘Guilty,’ said the man, delivering his one-word script without needing to be prompted or to consult any other member of the jury.
The judge looked at Connor for the first time. ‘As the jury has reached a unanimous verdict, all that is left for me to do is pass sentence. And, by statute, there is only one penalty for your crime.’ He paused, stared impassively at Connor and said, ‘I sentence you to death by hanging.’ The judge turned to the defence counsel. ‘Do you wish to appeal against the sentence?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘No, sir,’ came back the immediate response.
‘The execution will take place at eight a.m. on Friday.’
Connor was surprised only that they were waiting until Friday to hang him.
Before she left, Joan checked over several of the articles again. The dates exactly matched Connor’s absences abroad. First the trip to Colombia, then the visit to St Petersburg. There were, to quote one of Connor’s favourite maxims, just too many coincidences.
By three o’clock, Joan felt drained and exhausted. She didn’t look forward to telling Maggie the results of her detective work. And if it really was Connor on trial in St Petersburg, there wasn’t a moment to waste, because the Turkish papers were already a couple of days old.
Joan shut down her computer, locked her desk and hoped her boss wouldn’t notice that his e-mail in-box was almost empty. She walked up the old staircase to the ground floor, inserted her electric pass-key in the exit security control, and passed the trickle of workers arriving for the early-morning shift.
Joan switched on her headlights and drove her brand-new car out of the parking lot and through the gate, turning east onto the George Washington Parkway. The road was still covered with patchy ice from the previous evening’s storm, and highway crews were working to clear it before the morning rush-hour. Normally she enjoyed driving through Washington’s deserted early-morning streets, past the magnificent monuments that commemorated the nation’s history. At school in St Paul she had sat silently at the front of the class while her teacher regaled them with tales of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. It was her admiration for these heroic figures that had fuelled her ambition to work in the public service.