“And he doesn’t want to settle the case.”
“Correct. Look, I understand how you don’t think this should have been filed, that you were justified in your actions, and in a criminal court, I would easily kick Mitchell Townsend Ames’s ass and make him write ‘I’m so sorry Uncle Michaels’ on the chalkboard a hundred times. But this isn’t a criminal court. They’ve filed this as a civil matter, where the burden of proof is different — easier — and where the plaintiff has cause to open all kinds of cans of worms. We can block some of it on the grounds of national security, but he’s still going to shine some light on corners you’d rather were kept dark.”
“We don’t have anything to hide,” Michaels said.
“Yes, you do. You just haven’t thought about it enough. Did anybody make any jokes about this incident? Maybe some gallows-humor remark that might have gone out in an e-mail?”
Michaels shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t see every e-mail — or even remember every one I do see.”
“Right. So you have this jury looking at some thug’s kindly old mama, all teary-eyed, and Ames whips out this e-mail with a remark like, ‘Teach ’em to mess with Net Force!’ and over that, a picture of her poor dead son taken the day he graduated from high school, or maybe on prom night. Juries are sympathetic to that kind of thing. If he can put a human face on the guy — and he will, even though the bad guy was a cold-blooded headbreaker — he’ll be able to cast Net Force as a bunch of bloodthirsty jack-booted storm troopers who laughed as they shot him and spit on his corpse just for fun. Now you and I both know it didn’t happen like that, but a good lawyer can convince a jury it did, and Ames is as good as they come.”
Michaels shook his head.
“And that’s just for starters. Once he gets going, this guy can convince a jury of God-fearing folk that you’re the Antichrist, or at least Satan’s second lieutenant. I’ve seen him do it. It will get ugly. Your best defense — your only defense — is to show those nice folks on the panel that you had to do what you did, no way around it, else the Republic would have fallen, that you hated to do it, and that you are a much, much nicer fellow than the dead guys. Which won’t be easy.”
“Aren’t you my lawyer?”
“Sure. But after the trial is over, I’ll go have a drink with Ames, if he’s interested. We like to pretend that we don’t take these things personally.”
“Well, excuse me if I do take it that way.”
“Yeah, that’s allowed.”
What a rotten situation this is, Michaels thought.
“All right, let’s get the story down to brass tacks,” Tommy said. “Our legal status is quite clear, of course. Your military arm technically works under the auspices of the National Guard and not the FBI, and thus can be activated and sent out of the country when deemed necessary. Our charter doesn’t say that, exactly, but we can blow smoke and wave mirrors and make that sound good. And we are proceeding on the idea that Net Force had reason to believe that the gambling ship was essentially a pirate vessel. This might be a fine legal hair to split, given the strict definitions of piracy according to the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, Article 101, but when you factor in the Internet and terrorism, I think we can pull that off. You, as a duly authorized representative of a sovereign nation, had the right to board and seize the vessel pursuant to Article 105 of the U.N. Convention.”
“I knew it all along,” Michaels said.
Tommy grinned. “Sure you did. That’s why you need lawyers.”
Alex didn’t smile back. Somehow, this just didn’t seem all that funny anymore.
“All right,” Tommy continued, his grin fading. “Start with how you began to suspect that CyberNation was fielding bad guys doing illegal things.”
“That’ll take a long time.”
Tommy nodded. “Then we better get started.”
6
In the kitchen of his apartment, Ames added a bit of Chardonnay — the 1990 Reserve — to the two-quart copper-clad stainless pot holding the lobster and shitake sauce. The pot was from France. You had to give the French that, they did know how to cook. The sauce was for poaching the Yukon salmon he’d had flown in that morning. The fish was a small one, a three-pounder, illegally caught out of season, he believed. When you figured it all up, that salmon probably cost about three hundred dollars a pound, but that wasn’t important. Most of these salmon went to the Japanese, but being rich had its perks. Yesterday, the fish had been swimming in the cold waters of Alaska; tonight, it would be dinner at Ames’s apartment in New York City.
Civilization was a wonderful thing.
The wine he was using for the stock was eighty-some-odd bucks a bottle, too, but there was no substitute for quality. If you were going to cook fine food with wine, what was the point in murdering the taste with cheap stuff?
Ames was not a wine snob. He didn’t bother to learn all the proper terms one used, nose and bouquet and finish and so forth. But he knew a good wine when he tasted it. The first time he had sipped anything from Blackwood Canyon, he knew he’d found a vintner who knew exactly what he was doing. He bought a cellarful of the wines by the case. He had also invested money in the business, as much as Michael Taylor Moore would let him.
He had others now, but Moore’s first winery was a hole-in-the-wall place at the end of a gravel road out in the middle of Nowhere, Washington. His first place was hard to find, and it wasn’t even listed on the local guides. If you didn’t know where the place was, you pretty much had to stumble across it by accident, or else put in a lot of hours doing detective work. It was worth it, though. Back then, the only spot you could buy any of his product was at the winery itself, or by the bottle in a few of the world’s finer restaurants.
Moore made his vintages in the old-style European manner, much of it involving a process called “sur lees.” Ames didn’t quite understand that, but he knew it involved leaving the fruit in the stuff longer than was considered by most to be proper. As a result, the whites had a fullness unmatched by any made in North America. Those whites could run with almost anybody else’s reds. And his reds? Well, they were just unbelievable.
Moore’s cheap stuff alone was better than most other wineries’ expensive vintages. And with the exception of maybe two other places in the world, one in Spain, one in France, nobody could touch his expensive ones. He called his vintages his children, and he didn’t let them out of the house until they were all grown up and ready to face the world.
He was something of a renaissance man, Moore was. He thought of himself as an alchemist, and considering that he turned water into a wine that eventually turned more or less into gold, it wasn’t a bad description. He was as good a cook as many world-class chefs. He also designed catamarans, some of which would fold up for storage and hauling, and assorted hydrogen-powered farm machines.
A lot of his neighbors hated him because they thought he was arrogant. That was to be expected, though. A man who stood up and said and did what he believed always got flak. Especially when he could actually back it up.
Ames knew all about that. He had been driven by his own demons to excel in everything he tried. First in his class in medicine, first in his class in law school, and a top track athlete. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
Still, being great was why he had hooked up with CyberNation. They appreciated talent and skill, they encouraged it, and they were willing to pay for it. They always went for the best.