Without asking, the waiter brought him his regular, the farmer’s omelet with piping-hot biscuits, which he slathered with plenty of butter. No health fanatic, he. Nearby sat the White House chief of staff with a Republican senator; Iselin, who knew them both, nodded at them.
“You know, there’s an old saying,” he said. He had widely spaced gray eyes, under which were deep circles, and a large mouth with large lips, the bottom one appearing to be split. “Military justice is to justice as-”
“As military music is to music,” Claire finished. “I know, I know. But I thought they’d gotten a lot better since Vietnam.”
“Since the Calley court-martial, actually. When I was in the army everyone used to tell me the military system is far superior to our civilian one because at least they take it seriously. But I never believed it. Still don’t. I think, if the military wants to lock someone away and throw away the key, they can do it. And I have no doubt they want to lock your husband away.”
“Probably true,” Claire conceded.
“And if you tell me he’s innocent, he’s innocent.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course, that’s easy for me to say. After lunch I go back to my office and my stack of briefs. Your life will never be the same.”
“Right.” She nibbled on a bite of salad. Since the arrest she’d had no appetite.
“The first decision you’ll have to make, and it’s a big one, is whether to make this public. Tom’s story itself is a headline maker. If the Pentagon goes ahead and prosecutes, that makes it front-page stuff.”
“Why wouldn’t I publicize it?”
“Because that’s your ace in the hole. The Pentagon is terrified of public scrutiny these days. Going public is a potent threat. Use it when you have to. For now, I’d keep all this absolutely secret.”
She nodded.
“Tell you something else. If you leak it, even if he’s acquitted, he’ll always be known as a mass murderer. Your family will be destroyed. I wouldn’t do it, given the choice.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“Sounds like you’ve already decided not to get involved as an attorney of record.”
She shrugged.
“I’d reconsider. You’re the last one they want trying this case. To the military, civilian lawyers are wild cards. Get them involved, next thing you know you got what the military calls a CONGRINT, a congressional inquiry. And you most of all-Claire Heller Chapman, big scary Harvard Law School celeb-you’ll scare ’em to death. They’ll piss their pants. You really should do it.” He looked at her, assessed her dour expression, then chomped down blithely on a biscuit. “Failing that, there’s this.” He slid a typed sheet of paper across the table.
“Your list of civilian lawyers who do military law.”
“Correct. You’ll notice it’s not a very long list. Good civilian criminal lawyers who don’t just practice military law but actually specialize in it, there’s maybe a handful of them around the country. You’ll want someone who lives and works in the Virginia area, ideally, so that narrows it down even further. Every one of these was once a JAG officer in one of the service branches of the military. Judge Advocate General Corps.”
“I know what ‘JAG’ is.”
“This is good. You’ll see, the military speaks a different language, and the sooner you learn it the better. Not that many decent civilian military lawyers in the area. Slim pickings.”
She looked the list over with dismay.
“It’s a tough way to earn a living,” Iselin went on. “In the old days when we had a draft, there were rich kids whose daddies were willing to pay the big bucks for a civilian attorney. In the new military, not too many can scrape the money together. If it were me, I’d pick this guy Grimes. In solo practice in Manassas.”
“Why?”
“He’s smart as hell, and he knows the ins and outs of military justice as well as anyone. But most of all he hates the military with a vengeance. You want someone like that, someone with fire in the belly. Because you’ve got a really tough case, and you need a fighter.”
She looked at Grimes’s entry. “He’s a former army JAG and he hates the military? Why?”
“Oh, they forced him into retirement five or six years ago.”
“Over what?”
“I don’t know. Some scandal or something. He’s black, and I think it was racism. Ask him. Thing is, he’s a scrapper and a street fighter, and he’s obsessed with beating them at their own game.”
“But there must be some hotshot partner in a Washington firm who was an army JAG.”
“Sure. There’s a partner in one of the big firms, but you don’t want him.”
“I don’t?”
“Nah. He’s like me-full plate, stretched way too thin, hands everything off to his associate. You want Bernie the Attorney, you want someone who knows the system inside and out and still has lots of time available for this case, because it’s going to be a huge time-consumer. They’ll have him up on murder charges, count on it. Mass murder, whatever the military calls it.” He peered at her over his coffee cup. “Though I thought they were in the mass-murder business.”
“You know anyone who has a house to rent?”
“A house?”
“Preferably furnished. This is going to be a long haul.”
When she returned to her room at the Quality Inn, across from the Quantico gates, she was surprised to find her bed unmade. When she called down to Housekeeping to ask about it, she was told that a DO NOT DISTURB sign had been hung from her doorknob for most of the afternoon. She knew she hadn’t put the sign up. This prompted her to check her suitcase; sure enough, the zipper was aligned differently from the way she had left it.
She sank onto the unmade bed and, more depressed than frightened, began to make telephone calls.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Boy, it’s a real honor to meet you, ma’am,” the young man said. His name was Captain Terrence Embry, he was twenty-seven years old, and he was the military defense counsel assigned to Tom. (Claire still could not get herself to call her husband Ronald, to think of him as anyone except Tom.)
She smiled, nodded politely, stirred nondairy creamer into her coffee. It was early in the morning and they were meeting for breakfast at the McDonald’s on the base. His invitation: he’d called the Quality Inn the night before, told her he’d just been detailed to the case, and would she like to get together?
“I mean, we studied your book Crime and the Law in my criminal-law class,” he went on. “I’m just sorry about the circumstances and all…” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at his Egg McMuffin. His face reddened.
Terry Embry had reddish hair, cut short in what she was beginning to recognize as an army regulation haircut, large prominent ears, nervous watery blue eyes. He blushed easily. He had long slender fingers and a dry, firm handshake. On his left hand was a large, perfectly shiny gold wedding band, obviously brand-new. On his right hand was a heavy West Point ring, on top of which was mounted a synthetic black star sapphire. He was a West Point graduate, he said, sent by the army to the University of Virginia Law School and then the Judge Advocate General School there, in Charlottesville. He was a smart young man, Claire saw at once, and almost totally inexperienced.
Her appetite still hadn’t returned. She took a sip of her coffee. “Do you mind if I smoke, Captain Embry?” she asked.
Embry’s eyes widened and he looked around anxiously. “No, ma’am, I…”
“Don’t worry, we’re in the smoking section,” she said, as she unwrapped a pack of Camel Lights, pulled one out, and lighted it with a plastic Bic lighter. She despised herself for smoking again-actually buying a pack, and not just bumming from Jackie, was serious-but she couldn’t help it.
She exhaled. There were few things more disgusting than smoking a cigarette at breakfast. “Tell me something, Captain-”