‘Shit,’ I muttered. I flicked forward and back. There I was, number twelve in People magazine’s list of the World’s Sexiest People. Leila was number one and Twenny was number seven.
A knock on the door. It was Cheung and Macri.
‘You’ve read it, I see,’ said Macri as he walked in, nodding at the magazine dangling from my hand.
‘Congratulations,’ Cheung added.
‘The poster was right — number twelve is an insult,’ I said.
‘What poster?’ asked Macri.
I let the question hang, exchanging it for my blouse dangling from a hook on the back of the door. ‘What can I expect today?’
‘You’re gonna see your friend,’ Macri told me.
‘Lockhart?’ I asked, though I knew who he meant.
‘Word just came from Latham’s office. He’s going to testify in person,’ said Cheung.
‘He knows we’ve got nothing on him,’ I said. ‘That’s why he’s here. He knows we can’t touch him.’
‘He’s come to gloat,’ Macri concluded.
I closed the door and we walked in silence down the stairs to the blue Ford Explorer parked out front.
‘This is how it will go today,’ said Cheung, opening the front passenger door for me. He drove and Marci took the back seat.
‘I know how it will go,’ I said before he could get started. ‘I’m in the same game, remember? Who’s our first witness?’
‘Duke Ryder.’
‘Why Ryder?’ I asked.
‘He’s an OSI agent and his eyewitness testimony differs from the prosecution’s eyewitness testimony in a key area. We can amplify the difference and perhaps throw some doubt on the flames.’
‘What key area?’
‘Leave it for the courtroom,’ said Macri.
‘What about Cassidy, Rutherford and West?’
‘They’ll also be called.’
The courtroom was inside 1535 Command Drive, a red-brick rectangle façade with a rotunda built off the back, like the architect couldn’t quite make up his mind. The eighties were a confusing time. Milling in front of the building were at least a couple hundred folks hoping to get a seat in a courtroom that could seat less than a quarter that number. Several reporters were doing live feeds, the network trucks I’d seen out beyond the main gate now parked along Command Drive. There were no placards.
‘We’ll go round the back,’ said Cheung, taking a detour.
The back turned out to be every bit as crowded as the front. Reporters swarmed over the Explorer once we’d stopped. A couple of security police managed to get themselves between the reporters shouting questions at me, and hustled Macri and me up the stairs and into the building, leaving Cheung to field the questions. He threw them a few bones and then came up the stairs that were blocked by more security forces. We made our way to the courtroom, which had yet to be opened to the public, and took our seats at the desk reserved for the defense, facing the members of the board.
Major Latham and Captain Pencilskirt, whose name I’d since discovered was Polly Blinkenspiel, took their places at the desk opposite the military judge.
Latham caught me looking in his direction or, rather, in Blinken-spiel’s, and gave me a shrug that said, ‘No hard feelings, hey.’
He was just doing his job. If it wasn’t him it’d be some other trial counsel and it was unlikely his or her assistant would be nearly as hot as Latham’s. While I was considering all this, allowing my thoughts to wander to the aforementioned assistant, the doors at the back of the room opened and people poured in. I saw a few familiar faces — Arlen’s, for example. We acknowledged each other and he gave me an it’s-gonna-be-okay nod, the kind of nod I imagine they give you when you go into surgery with a minor leg wound and come out an amputee. A familiar face was beside him — Summer from Summer Love, the vegetarian restaurant on the ground floor of my apartment. She wore a yellow hat and a long lemon dress pulled in tight under her smallish breasts, accentuating them. She looked good. I was surprised to see her, vegetarian food not being high on my favourites list. She waved and I gave her what I hoped was a smile. There were a few other people I knew, agents I’d worked with and so forth. Lockhart was somewhere close by. I was sure I could smell him.
The bailiff, in this instance an Air Force lieutenant colonel, closed the doors and walked to the front of the room, and everyone settled down, the talk dying to a low murmur and then ceasing altogether. ‘All rise,’ he said and everyone stood.
The side door opened and Colonel Fink came in, still short and bath plug-like, and climbed up on his stage to take his seat in front of the Air Force seal hanging on the paneled wall behind him. One colonel, one lite colonel and seven majors — more males than females — came in. They all took the seats behind the mahogany desk panels, each wearing a stern Mount Rushmore-like face.
Fink cleared his throat, shuffed a stack of loose papers in front of him and held a black fountain pen poised above them. Without looking up, he read through the usual script, outlining the defendant’s rights to counsel, followed by a series of oaths that counsels had to take, followed by the charges I was facing, followed by my plea — which was not guilty — followed by instructions to the court outlining, for example, what reasonable doubt meant. Then followed challenges — whether either my counsels or the trial counsel believed there might be any bias or competing interests amongst the members of the court that could leave justice short changed. The script Fink went through was forty pages or more in length. There were no challenges, the right people said ‘yes, sir,’ and ‘no, sir,’ when they were supposed to, including me. Eventually, Colonel Fink gave the stack of papers in front of him a big tick, shuffed them into order, then called on Latham to outline the United States’ case against me.
‘Yes, your Honor,’ said Latham. He got up, buttoned his coat, and walked to the dais in the center of the room with his cheat notes. He then read through the charges, repeating much of what Fink had already said, the court reporter putting it all down again. There was fdgeting from the bleachers. This was a long way from a Grisham novel.
‘Excellent,’ said Fink when Latham had concluded, adding another famboyant tick. I wondered if maybe the guy was going to introduce himself to the audience and take a bow. The courts martial I’d attended in the past hadn’t been in the least theatrical. Fink was enjoying himself.
‘I note that several members of the media have taken up the commander’s offer to attend this trial and are in the room today, this case having attracted more than its fair share of public attention,’ he said. ‘But I would remind you that you are here at the pleasure of the United States Air Force. This is a military court martial, and you are on a military base and you must conduct yourselves accordingly or your privileges here will be withdrawn.’ Fink took his stare around the courtroom. ‘While we’re on the subject, if I see tomorrow the scenes I witnessed out front of this building this morning, I will end public access to these proceedings and you will have to satisfy the cravings of your listeners, readers, watchers and bloggers with an Air Force-approved press release the morning after the previous day’s hearings. Do I make myself clear?’
I heard a pin drop.
‘Then, without further ado, gentlemen,’ he continued, turning his gaze on Latham. ‘If you please, Counselor…’