Counterplay Read online

  Richard yelled over the comm-link, “Open up the hallway door, Turbee. Then open every cell door. All of them. Then close and lock the hallway door behind us. It would be nice for the other prisoners to have a few words with Hamani.”

  Turbee looked perplexed but complied. Zak, Richard, and Kumar ran up the stairs with the sounds of Hamani’s screams cutting through the air behind them.

  “That was easy,” Richard said as doors opened and closed behind them. “Rich, we’re not out of here yet. I rode with Yousseff and his crew for three years. He has hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in this place. Drugs, cash, weapons, you name it.”

  They reached the foyer, which still smelled of bitumen and charred flesh, and rushed toward the destroyed outer gates. There to greet them were several jeeps mounted with heavy machine guns and a good twenty-five battlehardened foot soldiers. The top floor of Inzar Ghar had not been upgraded by Yousseff. That floor housed the garrison that defended the fortress.

  3

  As the Inzar Ghar rescue mission was unfolding, a battle of a different sort was developing in Courtroom 401 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was day one of the trial and things were not going well for young Dana Wittenberg.

  “You want a what?” Judge Shawn Mordecai scowled. “A WHAT?”

  Dana was so paralyzed by fear and adrenalin that she could barely speak. Her lips were parched and white, and her tongue was sandpaper, stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her hands shook with anxiety.

  “An adjournment,” she croaked.

  Dalton McSheffrey, Queen’s Counsel, the senior prosecutor, was instantly on his feet. “My lord,” he began, but was cut off.

  “Sit down, Mr. McSheffrey. She’s not getting it. It’s obvious what’s going on here.”

  “But, but . . .” started Dana in a less-than-articulate response. But she, too, was cut off. Dana tried to block out the snickers from McSheffrey’s juniors—Archambault, Danson, and McGhee—three arrogant pitbulls adding the trial of the decade to their résumés.

  “No. Not after the games that have been played here. Start jury selection.”

  That was it. Her two-word legal argument and McSheffrey’s two-word rebuttal found no favor with the court. Dana choked with the injustice of it. Here she was, less than one year to the bar, defending a loathsome client already convicted and sentenced for possessing and importing and exporting drugs and guns, a man by the name of Leon Lestage. Leon now stood charged as the central figure in a conspiracy that destroyed a number of dams on the Colorado River in an attack that had killed tens of thousands and almost shattered the American economy.

  A complicated legal history had led Dana to this point. The first legal minefield that Leon had to navigate was the obvious guilt stemming from his possession of vast quantities of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and firearms. He went, as seasoned criminals do, to the best criminal defense lawyers that money could buy. He paid them $2 million and tossed them the case. As it turned out, the great hoard of drugs were on the American side at Devil’s Anvil, a deserted coal mine with a tunnel system that stretched underneath the border and connected with northern Montana at its southern end. The government of Canada could not claim jurisdiction over illicit substances that were on American soil. That left the prosecutors with a much thinner case, with some of the illegal drugs on the Canadian side of the border together with a mass of wiretap evidence.

  Through a host of clever pretrial motions, the prosecutors were left with evidence that could possibly be dismissed. Then Leon’s counsel had him reviewed by a battalion of psychiatrists and psychologists, all of whom pointed to extreme violence and abuse—yes, likely even sexual abuse of horrendous proportion that had scarred his childhood and teenage years. This terrible childhood led Leon into the drug business, which, in fact, was run by other members of the Hallett/Lestage gang. The main culprit was Dennis Lestage, who lived at Devil’s Anvil and supervised drug and weapons deliveries. The Crown placed Dennis on its witness list to testify to the contrary, but somehow Dennis, incarcerated at a different institution, died in a violent, seemingly unprovoked beating, a pretrial motion executed ex juris.

  Ultimately, after some clever judge shopping and a short, one-day hearing in which a statement of facts agreed to by the prosecutor and defense counsel was placed before the judge, Leon was sentenced to seven years, inclusive of time served. If he demonstrated good character and showed genuine remorse, he would likely be on parole within a year. In his great contrition, Leon ingratiated himself with the prison administration. He counseled and assisted fellow prisoners. He found Jesus. He employed endless means and devices to artfully disguise the lump of anthracite that was his heart and the cold canyon that was his conscience. Hence, Leon walked out of the courtroom virtually a free man. He had demonstrated to the corrections officers and to the court genuine contrition. Indeed, he had turned his life around.

  If that represented the total of Leon’s misdeeds, he likely would have returned to his old line of work, replenishing the fortune that he had lost in the raids on Devil’s Anvil. But there was the second hoop, extradition, potentially the most dangerous, and the third and even darker branch, conspiracy to commit murder. Murder of more than 20,000 people.

  The extradition process went first. The United States moved to have Leon extradited and brought before American courts for a determination of his involvement in the massive Colorado River attack (which was obvious to all) and the sentence that would follow (which was equally obvious to all). Extradition. Conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and mass murder. This was unfamiliar territory for Leon. The Americans wanted him tried in an American court, preferably in Texas. Criminal defense lawyers were not sophisticated enough to deal with this. He asked around. Blankstein deFijter. That was the firm, an enormous multinational law firm with branches in Vancouver; Ottawa; Washington, DC, and in major centers around the world. A firm with a tremendous record in international law, immigration, and within it, a highly specialized boutique dealing with extradition matters.

  He approached Blankstein deFijter. They sent him an errand girl, Dana Wittenberg, still a law student preparing for her bar exam. Dana, though slender and attractive, looked pale and drawn. Her beauty was marred by a long, thin scar running across her forehead down to the right side of her right eye and into her cheek. Articling for a firm like Blankstein deFijter required at least eighty-hour weeks, and, on top of that, she was cramming for the bar. She stumbled her way through the interview, getting a vague sense of the various legal entanglements to come.

  At length, Leon, impatient by nature, put out his offer. Ten million dollars, legal, legitimate, clean bank account money. Ten million. But Blankstein deFijter would need to represent him from beginning to end, through extradition processes and conspiracy trials and all appeals. A few days later, Dana returned to the prison with another lawyer. The management committee of the mighty firm had met, considered, and accepted the offer. At that precise point Leon made an uncharacteristic error. He assumed that a transnational law firm behaved similarly to a small criminal defense firm. You give them the money, they do the job.

  But that’s not quite how the multinationals function. A monster firm like Blankstein deFijter is concerned—in fact, consumed—with “billable hours.” Someone had poured $10 million into the trough. It was feeding time.

  At first Leon was pleased with the representation he was receiving. The aging warrior, deFijter himself, attended every meeting supported by a cast of three, Dana being the youngest. Dana was constantly downloading legal precedents at an amazing speed, which she passed along to deFijter, who usually would shake his head in displeasure. The other lawyers worked hours in inverse proportion to their seniority at the bar.

  Gradually Leon became alarmed as the hearings before the Immigration Appeal Board, which arguably could have been dealt with in an hour, took weeks to proceed. Canada does not extradite its citizens if there is a likelihood of a death sentence. That, however, was not how the proceedi
ngs went. There were motions, depositions, adjournments, and appeals. The tribunal chairman commented many times, “Well, that’s a new one, but I guess we’ll need to deal with it.” The case proceeded to the federal Court of Appeal twice, once on an evidence motion, and once on the merits. By the time the Supreme Court ruled what was anticipated, namely that Leon could not be extradited, Blankstein deFijter had sopped up more than $4 million of the retainer.

  Finally, the last legal process began. Leon was charged, in Canada, with conspiracy to destroy the Colorado River dams resulting in the murder of a good 20,000 souls, most of whom were American, but a few of whom were Canadian. Once again there were pretrial motions, appeals on interim rulings, motions to quash the indictment as being too vague, and motions to quash the indictment because the deaths took place in the United States and this was Canada. It was endless. The feeding continued, unabated. Once or twice, when it seemed to Leon that the various motions were ridiculous, and he would say as much, one of the lawyers would invariably turn around, eyeball Leon, and tell him, “We’re the lawyers, not just any lawyers, but Blankstein deFijter. And the senior partner of our firm is sitting right there, at counsel table. You don’t know how rare that is. We’re privileged he’s here. Now shut up and look depressed.”

  The preliminary inquiry began with less than $5 million of the retainer left. What ought to have been accomplished in three or four weeks had turned into a three-month torturous grind. Finally the pretrial carnival concluded, the indictment was not quashed, and a trial date was set. Two weeks prior to the start of the trial, scheduled to last three months, Dana Wittenberg was given an unpleasant chore. The trough was empty. Blankstein deFijter required another $10 million to see things through to the end of trial. If there were to be appeals, well, that would cost another $5 million or so.

  The steel doors clanged shut and Dana waited for Leon to be ushered in. The alleged criminal mastermind came in, hands cuffed, legs chained. The corrections officers were not taking any chances. Leon was not what he appeared to be in court. His rolled-up sleeves showed powerful arms, heavily tattooed. His long ponytail, which had been hidden from view during the various legal proceedings, was undone, revealing long, thick, greying shoulder-length hair. His eyes were a piercing pale blue, and his face radiated rage.

  “What d’ya want, kid?” he asked, having a fairly good idea why Dana was there.

  Dana tried not to show fear, but wasn’t very successful at it. She reddened slightly, which only served to highlight the scar. “The, uh, the retainer.

  The money. It’s used up.”

  “You little snot,” Leon snarled, turning around and spitting on the floor. “I’ve been talking to other prisoners, to other lawyers, about what you whores at Blankstein deFijter have done . . . .”

  “But Leon,” Dana retorted, “we vigorously defended on every aspect—”

  “Screw you,” Leon snapped. “Everyone knows that Canada never extradites if the accused faces the death penalty. You could have sent a $150-anhour clerk to sit at the extradition hearing. And that prelim that went on for three months, and all those idiot motions? A complete waste of time.”

  Dana was tougher than she looked. She had suffered through a difficult childhood, poverty, and teenage humiliation. Her mother was killed in an accident, in the accident, and her father took to drinking and worse. She was able to work her way through college and law school on scholarships and working eight-dollar-an-hour fast food jobs. She refused to wilt. “Mr. deFijter has asked for a further retainer, Leon,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “He requires a further $10 million to defend you to the conclusion of the trial.”

  “The tottering old money fucker wants what?”

  “Ten million. Dollars.” Dana was squirming uncomfortably in the plastic prison chair. “Ten million.”

  “I don’t have it. I’m not paying it. Wouldn’t pay it if I had it. I gave you $10 million to look after me. To resolve everything. Now you can’t ask for another ten. Bring it in front of the judge.”

  With that he stood up and punched the red button on the wall behind him. “Tell deFijter and the rest of you assholes to bring on a motion. Tell them to go screw themselves.”

  Thus, within a few days, Blankstein deFijter brought on another motion. An application to be relieved from the obligation of defending Leon. “We can’t work if we don’t get paid. I mean, could anyone?”

  Judge Shawn Mordecai, who had been assigned to handle the conspiracy trial, bristled. “Mr. deFijter,” he said, in a slow deliberate setup, knowing exactly what was coming. “It is common knowledge. Blankstein deFijter has overindulged, once again.”

  Before deFijter could respond, Leon stood up and spoke.

  “I have been charged with many things. I was faced with extradition hearings and this baseless conspiracy charge. They said to me that they would look after it all if I gave them $10 million, which represented everything I had. I handed over the $10 million. But now, when we’re just half done, they want another $10 million. I don’t have another nickel.”

  That last bit wasn’t exactly true, but the court didn’t need to know that.

  “What about that, Mr. deFijter?” said the judge, peering at him through bushy eyebrows, his spectacles, somehow defying gravity, perched on the end of his nose.

  “We have a contract,” deFijter said, pulling several copies of a fifty-page document from his briefcase. “I would ask your lordship to look at page forty-seven, clause 37(B) (iii). That clause very clearly refers to this sort of situation. Mr. Leon is required pursuant to that clause to pay us a further $10 million.”

  “I never knew that was in there,” Leon said, from the prisoner’s dock. “All I remember is this little puppy, Wittenberg there, saying to me that this would be ample, that there were probably funds that would be returned to me.”

  “What about that, Mr. deFijter?” asked Judge Mordecai, crinkling up his nose still further.

  “I don’t know what said little puppy stated,” deFijter began, “but a contract is a contract. And at Blankstein deFijter, we prosecute our clients’ rights vigorously. If we can seek a procedural advantage, we will. We leave no stone unturned in acting as counsel. Our opponents run into a thicket of motions, depositions, and appeals. We win that way. I built this firm that way. I make no apologies for it.”

  “From the sounds of it,” said the judge, “you brought on a bunch of stupid motions that went nowhere, and you turned a four-week preliminary inquiry into, if I hear the lower court’s view of it, three hellish, idiotic months. It does not take a rocket scientist to see what happened here. You are not removed from the record. Your firm will defend this man as you agreed to do, never mind some fine-print bullshit in a fifty-page contract. The trial will take place, with your firm representing Leon Lestage. And if your firm is not here, you will be in contempt of court and I will send the sheriff out to arrest you.” He glowered at deFijter. DeFijter glowered back. He wanted to say, “I’d like to see you try, you old bastard,” but he had the wisdom of forty years to the bar, and knew Judge Mordecai was a bit of a wayward duck.

  That crisis led to a series of management committee meetings at the powerful firm. Judge Mordecai was going to arrest deFijter? Had he completely lost his mind? The brain trust of the firm met and it didn’t take long to solve the problem. The solution was simple. Elegantly simple. Send in Wittenberg. She was now a lawyer. She was called to the bar, albeit for less than a year. She was bright. She was a member of the firm. She had conducted many of the witness interviews. She had sat in on the prelim, the motions, and the extradition proceedings. She knew the case. Sure, send in the little puppy. If some problem developed, she would have the support of the firm, more or less. That led to the Monday morning scene, with a totally overwrought Dana Wittenberg asking for an adjournment.

  “After all this fiddling around, you now want an adjournment?” Judge Mordecai’s face reddened noticeably. “An adjournment? The jury pool is here. It’s day one
of THE TRIAL. And where is your co-counsel? Where is deFijter?”

  “Not here, m’lord,” said a hapless Dana.

  “What do you want to do, Mr. Lestage?” the judge asked.

  Leon Lestage was cagey and street smart. Here was this kid, who admittedly, on the grand deFijter team, seemed to be the only one working. If she marked down eighteen hours on a time sheet, she had actually worked eighteen, as opposed to working one hour and billing for seventeen. She wasn’t half bad. Bit of a nerd, but leggy and good-looking. His Harley buddies would admire the scar. Nervous as a kitten in a snake pit. And on the other side of counsel table sat four of the sharpest prosecutors the Crown could buy. The jury would see that. No one likes to see the little guy being hammered by laser-sharp overeager prosecutors. Wittenberg would gain the sympathy of the jury. Many trial lawyers had volunteered to sit at counsel table, but Leon told them all to get lost. DeFijter, with their endless motions and repetitive questioning, would alienate the jury.

  “Let’s go, Judge,” said Leon. “Let’s kick some ass.”

  “What do you have to say about that, Mr. McSheffrey?”

  “We’re ready, m’lord.”

  With that, Dana, ill with anxiety, bile churning in her gut, began the chore of questioning potential jurors. Fortunately she had brought a law text, An Introduction to Criminal Procedure, and stumbled through the day, fighting memory lapse after memory lapse, incurring the wrath of Judge Mordecai every few minutes, and feeling the sting of whispers and snorts coming from the prosecutor’s side of the counsel table. At the close of the day, she took two of her computers with her and dragged her way back to the barristers’ room to de-gown. She heard the animated chatter of McSheffrey and his crew from behind a row of lockers on the male side of the room. The phrases “little puppy” and “scarface” were repeated often, with gales of laughter. Dana practically ran out of the room, wondering again and again why she had not chosen med school.