Fatal Conceit (40 page)

In fact, it was already personal to him, even if he didn't let it show on his face. The two men sitting at the defense table weren't just murderers; they hadn't just conspired to kill General Allen, or even the men who died in Chechnya and Dagestan.

They tried to kill my daughter
. The thought boiled up in his mind as it had since he heard the entire story of what had happened in Chechnya and Dagestan from his daughter and the man he would soon be calling to the stand. Up to that point he'd been focused on the concept that Allen had been murdered to keep him from testifying to Congress. But he had not discovered the truth about what had actually occurred in Chechnya and the betrayal of the Americans who died, or were taken hostage, there. Not until Lucy told him. Just as he had not realized the personal involvement of the defendants until he learned about “Augie”; up to that point, he thought they'd committed murder to protect the president. He hadn't realized it was also to protect themselves. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to walk over to the defense table and choke the life out of Fauhomme and Lindsey. But, of course, he remained seated, with a look of indifference on his face, as he listened to Caulkin question
his
integrity.

Of the two defense attorneys, he was more impressed with the old man. They'd sparred in the past and Caulkin was usually well-
prepared and had one of those deep, resonant voices that played well with juries. He looked like a kindly old grandfather—and used that to good effect to portray himself as the most reasonable person in the courtroom, the jurors' friend, rather than the shrewd defense attorney he was. His opening statement had been well done, considering what he had to work with, and taken lightly it could be dangerous, in that jurors in the modern era were predisposed to think the worst of law enforcement. His assessment of the defense's alternate theory that Allen's murder was to cover up a blackmail ring's activities—in light of some of the evidence that would be presented—was the sort of reasoning that could easily persuade a credulous juror to hold out for a not guilty verdict. All it would take was one, and Caulkin was fishing for that one.

However, Faust had taken the lead in most of the cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses so far, and it was obvious that she considered her colleague to be an inferior litigator. Yet in Karp's experience dealing with former U.S. attorneys, he found that in general they were full of themselves without good cause. They always seemed to come from the big-name law schools where they were invariably tops in their class, but their real-world experience in a courtroom was sadly lacking. Whereas an assistant district attorney in New York County might have a caseload of between thirty-five and fifty cases to be disposed of by way of trial or plea, an assistant U.S. attorney would have one-tenth that number and had the luxury of spending six months chasing semicolons and commas and reading grand jury transcripts before making a command decision.

Celeste Faust fit the mold. As part of his pretrial homework, Karp had read the “scouting report” on her provided by Gilbert Murrow, his chief administrative assistant and a well-trained legal scholar. “Faust graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College and was law review at Berkeley Law. She went straight into the U.S. Attorney General's Office in Washington, D.C., where she quickly gained a reputation as a willing player in office
politics—she's seen as a climber both socially and professionally, as well as openly partisan for the current administration.”

In six years at the DOJ, she'd only gone to trial four times as the lead attorney, and a half-dozen times sitting second chair. “She's never lost a case,” the report went on, “but my sources at the DOJ say they were all slam dunks, mostly drug and immigration cases. A lot of plea bargaining and dismissals. Although this is unconfirmed, it is also thought among her colleagues that she has written most of the administration's legal responses, including denying press Freedom of Information requests, regarding the events in Chechnya.”

Murrow smirked and shook his head when Karp put the report down. “So much for that vaunted ‘transparency.' The scuttlebutt is that she was asked by the AG himself to take a leave of absence to represent Fauhomme and that Fauhomme was told in no uncertain terms to can his other attorney and use her if he wanted help from the feds. If it's true, my take is Faust has marching orders to control the fallout on the president. ‘Do what you can to get Fauhomme and Lindsey off the hook, but nothing comes back on the Big Man,' ” Murrow commented.

After the opening statements, Karp called several technical witnesses, whose purpose was to familiarize the jury with the crime scene and try to take the jury out of the antiseptic courtroom setting and into the real world where Allen's murder and the Loon Lake shootings occurred. Consistent with this process, Karp first called DAO civil engineer Jack Farrell, who had marked in evidence his diagrams of the two major crime scenes. Thereafter, Karp called the NYPD police photographer who photographed those scenes. Then Karp called the first cops to arrive on the scene to further implant the images and accurately corroborate the crime scene photos and diagrams. Some only appeared for a few minutes, such as a representative from a telephone company who brought the documentation to back up his testimony that a call was placed on the night of the murder from the Casablanca Hotel
on a cell phone belonging to Ray Baum to a cell phone registered to Rod Fauhomme. “The call lasted approximately three seconds.” The initial parade of witnesses was concluded when Karp called the medical examiner to give testimony to the cause and manner of the deceased's death.

Then there were the witnesses who could place Ray Baum, “the man with the tattoo on his forearm,” at the Casablanca and in Orvin, including the nosy woman in the hallway and Gertie Malcom, the librarian who, according to Constable Tom Spooner, was a “celebrity” at the Lucky Duck bar and grill. Detective Clay Fulton made a brief appearance to inform the jurors about his investigation, including what he'd been able to find out about Baum's background—the disgraced Marine who, along with his partner, was found with an NSA identification card on his body.

Now it was time to answer the question that, if it wasn't already in the jurors' minds from Caulkin's opening, now would be. And that was what could have possibly been so devastatingly important as to cause the two defendants—powerful, important men in positions of the highest authority—to plan and execute the murder of General Sam Allen.

When the jury had settled into their seats, Judge Hart greeted them and then turned to the prosecution table with a smile as though the morning had begun pleasantly enough. “Mr. Karp, are you ready to present your next witness?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Karp replied, as he turned to the door at the side of the courtroom that led to the witness waiting room and nodded at Detective Clay Fulton, who stood there anticipating his signal to escort the man in.

“The people call David Huff.”

I
N SPITE OF ANOTHER STERN
look from Judge Hart, the media in the gallery began buzzing like a faulty transformer when the former deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in Grozny entered the courtroom. They'd known for two weeks that the “surprise witness” was scheduled to testify for the prosecution, but none of them knew for sure what he was going to say.

However, Fauhomme, who sat at the defense table looking only mildly interested at the man's appearance, knew, because he'd read Huff's interview with Karp.
Goddamn Lindsey for not pulling the trigger faster on that drone in Dagestan, and goddamn Ray Baum for not killing the girl and that bitch Stupenagel. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be sitting here sweating bullets.

Fauhomme glanced back at the press in the gallery with a half-smile on his face that he thought exuded confidence.
Journalist scum.
It wasn't so long ago they'd fallen all over themselves to be in his good graces. Laughed at his jokes. Begged to get invited to his parties. They happily ate, drank, and sometimes whored on his tab while fawning over what a great man he was, with such vision for the future of America. And then they wrote what he “suggested” they write.

Now they thought he was done. Washed up like a dead fish on
the dirty shores of politics no matter what happened in the trial. The butt of late-night talk show host monologues and Facebook jokes.
They look like a bunch of vultures sitting on a fence waiting for something to die; perched there on the edge of their seats, talking in loud whispers that I can hear . . . laughing at me behind my back,
he thought. He winked at a television reporter who'd spent many a debauched weekend at his beach house; the reporter looked away, embarrassed to have been singled out.

Fauhomme turned back around to watch as Huff walked past him into the well of the courtroom.
Well, fuck them! I'm not going anywhere. Who the hell do they think they're dealing with? I'm the goddamned man of the hour.
He was suddenly so filled with contempt that he could barely conceal the sneer that threatened to take over his face and fought to maintain a look of mild disdain when Huff stopped in front of the witness stand to be sworn in.
I'll show them. I'm going to beat this and then we'll see who doesn't return phone calls. I'm taking names, and I'll be kicking ass again by the midterm election cycle.

Still, when Huff climbed up on the stand, Fauhomme felt a chill run down his spine. A lot had transpired over the past eight months that had shaken his legendary arrogance.

Two months before the trial, Faust had assured him that it was going to be difficult for Karp to introduce evidence about the events in Chechnya and Dagestan without a witness appearing on the stand. “No testimony about Chechnya, no motive—at least not better than what we're saying really happened.”

Then she'd called with the bad news: the man who could provide a motive for murder was going to testify. “Can't we stop him?” Fauhomme had asked as he felt a knot growing in his stomach.

“I think we can and we're going to try—both in front of Judge Hart and at the federal level,” Faust said. “But we have to prepare just in case.”

Faust had filed a motion at the trial court level to prevent Huff from testifying on the grounds that his testimony would be solely
collateral in nature and not relevant to any of the issues in the case. The U.S. Department of State filed an amicus/interveners motion supporting the defense motion and also asking the court to prohibit the testimony, alleging possible breach of national security.

In support of his opposition, Karp responded, with the jury out of the courtroom, by first arguing that the testimony was relevant since it established the motive for the murder. He further argued with respect to the alleged national security issue that there would not be sources or methods revealed by the testimony, only relevant, documented facts “about the government's and defendants' criminal manipulations and deceit regarding their fellow Americans and the deceased, General Sam Allen.” To satisfy the court's inquiry, Karp supplied the court with the transcript of the proposed Huff testimony as an offer of proof.

Karp had, of course, not said anything about Huff to the press. And while the defense attorneys and State Department motions were being fought, the defense kept it quiet, too. But when Judge Hart denied their motions, Faust had “let it slip” to a member of the print media who'd been milling about in the hall outside of the courtroom that Huff was “known to be sympathetic to the opposition party and was angry over being turned down for an ambassador's post after returning from Dagestan.”

When Judge Hart cited her for contempt, she complained within earshot of the press that Karp was “running roughshod” over the judiciary. She wondered aloud if her client could get a fair trial “anywhere Roger Karp is the district attorney.”

Confronted by the reality of yet another defeat over Huff's testimony, Fauhomme felt panic rise in his throat like bile. He fought it by getting angry.
Fuck these people. And fuck falling on my sword,
he thought. They were supposed to make sure that Huff was stashed away someplace—
like fucking Yemen
—to keep him away from Karp, or give him whatever he wanted.

Faust told Fauhomme that Huff had been promised a good
posting, maybe even one of the minor embassies that had already been promised to one of the president's friends, if he decided not to testify. “He knows he's done at State if he testifies for the prosecution,” she said.

It didn't work. Not the promises or the threats. “We'll deal with it,” Faust assured him again after they lost the motions to suppress his appearance. “There's nothing in his Q&A with Karp that names you or Lindsey.” But Fauhomme wasn't convinced.

The morning he learned that Hart had agreed with Karp's motion to allow Huff's testimony, Fauhomme called the senator. “Do something,” he'd demanded. But he was told there wasn't much the president could do except more character assassination.

That afternoon, Hilb expressed “the president's disappointment” in the decisions to allow Huff to testify, saying that it set a dangerous precedent. Hilb told press sources off the record that Huff was a disgruntled employee who'd wanted an ambassadorship following the events in Chechnya and Dagestan. “But he was not considered to be ambassador material. That did not sit well with him.”

Assistant Secretary of State Helene Vonu again took to the Sunday morning talk shows. She now seemed subdued and defensive, but still she argued that Huff was “not aware of all of the facts” and hinted that he might also be suffering from post-traumatic shock.

Meanwhile, Fauhomme had called what few friends he could still count on in the media, mostly people he had some dirt on, and said he'd appreciate seeing a story about rumors that Huff had been promised an ambassadorship with the next opposition administration. Several “sources close to the State Department,” who were in reality Fauhomme, were thus quoted as saying they'd heard Huff boasting at a department dinner welcoming him home that he had friends in high places who'd be taking care of him. “He's rumored to be in line for the post in Berlin, a plum position, if the opposition wins the next election,” one newspaper reported.