Today’s circus would be bigger and better than usual and, indeed, there were more than a dozen trailers out there, parked among network vans, all of which were present for the biggest show in town. This was the day when witnesses would be called, and that meant Twenny Fo and Leila, now officially his fancée, would be making an appearance. The networks were salivating.
Outside the wire there was plenty of support. Inside, where it counted, it was a different story. All the legal maneuvering and wrangling was done and dusted and none of it favored me. Cheung and Macri had tried to convince the court that my assault on Lockhart was provoked, and that I therefore acted in self-defense. After hearing counter mumbo jumbo from the USAF prosecutors, Major Vaughan Latham and his hot captain assistant, Colonel Fink ruled that, as Lockhart was unaware that I was in the camp, it was ridiculous to claim provocation on his part and that therefore the charges stood. In short, only the circumstances around the assault were admissible. Every thing that transpired over the previous eight days, including my testimony that I’d observed Lockhart shoot French Armée de l’Air Lieutenant Henri Fournier dead in cold blood — among many other crimes including rape, kidnapping, extortion, and slavery — were deemed to be outside the court martial’s purview. My problem was that we had no evidence, hard or otherwise, produced in disclosure to support my counter claims.
Though Ryder had been with me at the time of Fournier’s murder, he hadn’t actually seen Lockhart at all, let alone witness the shooting — the murderer having disappeared into one of the tents by the time I’d handed the scope over to the captain. At the village, when the baby had been thrown into the bushes and Lockhart had pulled up in a Dong, it was a similar story. I saw him, but no one else could corroborate. Same again at the mine, when we were escaping in the truck with Francis and his people and Lockhart had tried to stop us with some FARDC troops. I’d seen him, but it seemed that everyone else had had their heads up their asses at the time. Francis had noted Lockhart at the mine when the gold nugget had been found, but Francis was lost somewhere deep in the Congo rainforests, if, indeed, he were still alive. And even if he were breathing and could be contacted and his video testimony delivered to the court, Cheung believed that Fink and his co-judges would not have accepted Francis’s word over Lockhart’s.
Of course, there was Twenny Fo’s belief that he smelled Lockhart in the FARDC camp. When they heard about it, Cheung and Macri laughed.
So, basically, I was screwed.
I ran back to my rooms, trying to work out what #12. Cooper deserves better! might mean. When I got there, a man was waiting in ambush for me by the front entranceway to my accommodation: fortyish, balding, tall in a faccid way that suggested no exercise and too much booze, and jowls that reminded me of a bloodhound’s. His name was Rentworthy, the New York Times reporter. I slowed to a walk to throw off his targeting. It didn’t work.
‘Vin. Can I call you that?’
‘What else you got in mind?’
‘You’re a hard man to catch.’
I remembered Cheung’s advice: play nice with this guy. ‘You’ve written some interesting stories about what happened out there.’
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Mind telling me who your source was?’
‘Sorry, can’t reveal that.’
‘Then how about narrowing it down a little — one of my principals, or one of the PSOs?’
‘Does it matter?’
It only mattered because whoever the source was had selectively edited the facts to make me out to be some kind of hero, which I wasn’t. ‘No, I guess not.’
‘Our readers don’t want you to go to prison, Vin.’
‘I’m not so keen on it either.’
‘You mind if I ask you some questions?’
‘You’ve got me cornered. Shoot.’
The guy took out a tape recorder and showed me the red light.
‘I got a bad memory,’ he said, a half smile compressing one of his jowls. ‘I want to know whether you had sex with Leila. There are allegations…’
‘No.’
‘The first night you were down on the ground, when it was your watch. Leila didn’t pay you a visit? Make an offer that was too good to refuse? Was it true she wanted to cut and run, leave her fancé behind?’
I remembered the night and I remembered Leila down on her knees in front of me and I remembered that nothing happened. Where was this coming from? ‘This doesn’t sound like a story the New York Times would be interested in,’ I said.
‘Till an earthquake bumps you off, you’re the big news at the moment, Vin; do you realize that? The media is chewing on the same information, presenting it different ways, digging up people who know you; people who know your principals. You could make a lot of money. Our readers just want the full story.’
‘And sex sells.’
‘Indeed it does.’
‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. Nothing happened.’
‘Not according to People.’
He handed me a rolled-up magazine. Leila was on the cover, dressed in an Army battle uniform, her shirt undone and her breasts looking like they were trying to punch their way out. She was in a jungle setting and a large snake was coiled around a nearby branch. Plenty of symbolism. The cover announced that it was the ‘Sexiest People On The Planet’ issue. Another headline read, ‘Sex on the run. What really happened in the Congo — an insider tells.’
‘This your source?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been the go-to-guy on your story, but not on this chapter.’ He held up the magazine. ‘I wanted to see if someone else got the drop on me. And I figured only you’d know.’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘Shame. She’s hot.’
And loopy.
‘There’s a story in the paper tomorrow. It’s not mine either. Twenny Fo and Leila want to adopt two orphans from the DRC — girls; twins. They’re also hoping to build a school in some village you passed through. Maybe you know which one.’
I thought of a baby girl caught upside down in the bushes, a driver ant biting her toe. I shrugged.
Rentworthy clicked off his tape recorder, handed me his card. ‘I can write your story, Vin. It’s a good one. There’s a book in it somewhere and it’ll sell. Think about it. You’ll need the money when you get out.’
‘Nice to hear you’re thinking positive on my account. Okay, I’ll think about it,’ I told him, pocketing the card, but I already knew what my answer would be.
‘Oh, I see you made number twelve. Congrats. And today in court — break a leg, eh?’
I said thanks and see you later and jogged up the stairs with the magazine. Number twelve? I had a shower and shave, dressed, ate breakfast and flicked through the magazine while I waited for Cheung and Macri, who were escorting me to court. I opened the mag at its halfway point, found the story pertaining to the coverline and read it. The inside source wasn’t named. The story insinuated that Leila and I were eating each other’s forbidden fruit in the Congo’s primordial Garden of Eden while everyone else slept. I could see a lawsuit heading People magazine’s way from Leila’s team. That aside, the story would be good for my bar cred, if I ever managed to get to a bar while this edition was still on the newsstands, which didn’t seem likely. I skimmed the rest of the rag and stopped at a page showing the photo Fallon had taken of me on his iPhone that day back in Afghanistan. My jaw went slack. The headline on the photo said, ‘#12. Special Agent Vin Cooper, OSI’.