The bailiff reappeared and took the members of the board and the court’s president to the judge’s chambers.
A couple of minutes later, Fink, purple-faced, returned with Cheung and Latham and the members of the board. He took his pen and attempted to tap some silence into the gallery. It wasn’t working. ‘Bailiff and security forces! Detain this man.’ He pointed to Beau Lockhart.
Bedlam reigned. People stood and shouted at each other while Lockhart was surrounded. The court had no jurisdiction over the DoD contractor, but the judge could detain him for the folks at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I wondered what had happened behind closed doors.
Fink roared, ‘Silence!’ When he got some, he pointed at me and said, ‘You! Were you aware of the existence of this phone?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. I had seen Leila trying to raise a signal on it when we first came down in the jungle.
‘Were you aware that she was using it to keep a photographic diary while in the Congo?’
‘No, sir, though I was aware that the phone’s owner held the Air Force responsible for the situation we found ourselves in.’
‘I see,’ said Fink, his nostrils faring. He glared at Cheung. ‘You and I know what happened here today, Counselor. Pull a stunt like this in my courtroom again and I will personally see to it that you’re discharged and disbarred.’
Cheung took the blast without acknowledgment, which was wise, and said, ‘Your Honor, the defense moves for the dismissal of all charges.’
Fink’s nostrils fared grandly. He went into a huddle with the board members as the bailiff and security police hustled Lockhart from the room. After two solid minutes of discussion with his fellow officers. Fink and the members of the court resumed their seats. Fink then did that thing with his pen on the edge of his bench until everyone stopped talking.
When he could make himself heard, he said, ‘Court President, how do you find the defendant?’
The colonel stood. ‘We find the defendant not guilty of offenses punishable by court-martial, but recommend that he be remanded to his commanding officer for Article 15 non-judicial proceedings.’
‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Fink. The judge turned to me and said, ‘Will the defendant rise?’
I stood and buttoned my coat.
‘Major Vincent Cooper. The charges are dismissed.’ Fink then threw his pen into an empty trash bin at his feet, slipped off his seat and stomped out.
Epilogue
‘What was on the iPhone?’ I asked Cheung as he and Macri drove me back to my box.
‘Bad shit that’ll give me nightmares,’ he said.
‘Take a number. What was on it?’
‘There were photos of you standing over a man lying on the ground with your service pistol. It looks as if you’ve just shot him. The French pilot you believe was part of the ransom attempt is with you.’
I remembered the moment. Now that I thought about it, I also recalled glancing up and seeing Leila with her cell phone in her hand. At the time, I had thought she’d turned it on to see if she could raise a signal.
‘There is another photo of Boink shooting the man in the head.’
I remembered that, too.
‘They weren’t the photos shown to Colonel Fink, by the way. What he saw was a woman having her arms hacked off in a village occupied by soldiers. There’s also a picture of a truck rolling up, the window’s down and Lockhart can clearly be seen leaning out the window. Colonel Lis-souba — I assume it’s him — is coming over to meet him. Her phone ran out of battery power at that point in your journey.’
Why didn’t I think of using a damn cell phone to capture evidence — especially after the business with Fallon and the photo he took of me in Afghanistan and posted on his blog? Maybe because my cell was a base model — no extras, no camera.
‘The phone was your strategy all along,’ I said.
‘What do you want us to say?’ said Cheung. ‘There were twenty — count ’em — witnesses to your assault on Lockhart. I told you that we would have to use every trick in the book.’
‘When did you find out about the pictures?’
‘You really didn’t know she’d taken them?’ Macri asked.
‘No. I’d have had Lockhart behind bars the moment we’d arrived back at Cyangugu had I known about them.’
‘I interviewed everyone who was with you in the DRC,’ said Cheung. ‘Leila and Ayesha came forward and told me about the phone a week ago. I think you owe her.’
Or maybe now we were about even.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You’ve already thanked us,’ said Macri.
‘You played it a certain way to make sure Lockhart got nailed. Trotting out all those witnesses that were getting us nowhere… It was all just a diversion.’
‘It’s called a tactic where we come from,’ said Macri.
‘We had to make some kind of show of putting up a defense. If we hadn’t, Fink wouldn’t have been prepared to believe we knew nothing about those photos. We just had to stage Leila and company’s late arrival to give us time to set it all up. Luckily, Fink wanted to believe it after he saw that photo.’
‘And if the phone had come up in discovery,’ I said, ‘the case against me would’ve been dismissed and Lockhart wouldn’t have stepped foot in the US ever again. You kept the cell a secret so that the trial would go ahead, and Lockhart would make an appearance and you could put a noose around his neck.’
‘We figured you’d think it was worth it,’ said Cheung.
I grinned. ‘You guys are the most unlawyer-like lawyers I’ve ever met. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. While I think of it, Leila insisted that she was going to sue the Air Force. That still going to happen?’
Cheung shook his head. ‘Before anything else, the Air Force had her sign a waiver the thickness of a telephone book. And you brought her back without a scratch. What’s she got to litigate about?’
Macri turned into my street and parked out front of my accommodation block, behind my old Pontiac.
‘We’ll pick you up in an hour and a half,’ said Cheung.
‘We’re drinking. You’re buying,’ Macri informed me.
Seemed fair to me.
Ten minutes later I was sitting on the end of my bed with a single malt, feeling it evaporate up the back of my nose, and the relief I felt that I was free gave me a shiver. There was a knock on the door. ‘Don’t want any,’ I called out.
‘It’s Arlen,’ came the reply. ‘Open up.’
I let him in.
‘Hey, I missed you over at the courthouse,’ he said, his spirits brimming. ‘Congratulations, buddy.’ He shook my hand warmly, a smile full of genuine pleasure on his face.
‘You were in on it,’ I said.
‘What are friends for?’
‘Did you put the idea in Cheung’s head?’
‘I don’t think he’d recall it quite like that. Justice has a blindfold. Sometimes she needs a little help pinning the tail on the donkey’s ass.’
‘The investigation turn up anything useful yet?’
Arlen’s smile flickered. ‘Charles White. Former Marine Recon, honorably discharged three years ago, rank of sergeant. Went to work for FN Herstal. Lasted six months and then fell off the radar. Interpol believes he has connections with Somali pirates. He’s a weapons trader, with plenty of connections to the military and military industry here in the US. He lives in Rio de Janeiro and is believed to be moving around on false passports. As for André LeDuc? No idea where he is. Interpol has a brief. Piers Pietersen is greedy and rich but clean, as far as we can tell.’