“Both sides will refrain from public statements regarding this proceeding until we have a verdict,” said Broyles.
“If we get a fair hearing in here, we will keep it in here,” said Donny. “Now may I have a moment to confer with my client before we get going?”
Broyles kept talking, but Donny stopped listening.
54
“Hey,” said Donny, leaning in, speaking in a near-whisper. “It’s going to be okay.”
Her eyes were raw, ringed with red, pupils wide, and the soul behind them screaming.
“Here,” said Donny. He poured a glass of water into one of the ridiculously tiny paper cups and served it to her.
She drank it, and he gave her another.
“This place,” she said.
“Tell me.”
“The noise.”
“Isolation?”
She nodded.
“Do you get out at all?”
She shook her head.
“I just left you something from Percy for when you do,” said Donny. “It’s in your pocket. She says you’ll know what to do with it. Starting with, don’t let them find it.”
She went to check her pocket, but she couldn’t lift her arms high enough.
“It’s there,” said Donny, looking at her arms. “Did they torture you?”
She looked away. Donny looked over at Bridget, and the ramrod government goons she had lined up to testify for her.
He turned back to Xelina. He moved to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but stopped when he sensed it would have the opposite effect.
“Listen to me, Xelina. It’s almost over. I promise.”
You could tell she had left whatever remaining hope she had back in her cell.
“I’m serious,” said Donny. “We have good news. The Court of Appeals upheld the trial judge’s decision in the election case. They appealed to the Supreme Court, but it’s all moving super fast and there’s a good chance we’ll have a decision by the end of the week. So if everything goes according to plan, this whole nightmare could be over in days.”
“Days? You want to trade places, Donny?”
“I will, if that’s what it takes to get you out of here. But I won’t need to. Because even if the election case goes the wrong way, we have a solid strategy to win this case.”
“Are you kidding me?” She looked at the panel of uniforms sitting in judgment, and the judge who had already ruled against her once.
“I promise,” said Donny, against the evidence before their eyes.
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. He didn’t blame her. But he was determined to show her.
55
“Are there any other preliminary matters we need to discuss?” said Broyles.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Donny, standing. “We’d like to confirm our agreement that the purported confession earlier produced by the government and obtained through unlawful means will be excluded.”
“Ms. Kelly?” said Broyles.
“We’ve agreed to that, Your Honor. With the agreement from defense counsel that no objections or related actions will be pursued regarding the means of interrogation.”
Donny nodded. He knew better than most that challenging the methods they didn’t call torture was not a winner. The law was on the government’s side now, and so, when people heard about it, was public opinion.
“Very well,” said Broyles. “Let’s proceed.”
“One other thing, Your Honor,” said Donny. “The defense would also like to get your ruling on admitting the Zorn deposition.”
“Which one is that again?”
“Amanda Zorn, Your Honor. Managing Director at Manaugh Feldman, the investment bankers. Her testimony includes foundation we need for one of the principal witnesses we plan to call. You have our briefing and motion on this.”
Broyles looked to his clerk, who handed him copies. He scanned them, then turned to the prosecution.
“Ms. Kelly?”
“Your Honor, I personally have not had time to view this, as one of my colleagues handled the deposition. But my understanding is a protective order has not been worked out for the information discussed in her testimony, and that is the basis of our objection.”
“There is no basis for objection, Your Honor,” said Donny. “Ms. Zorn is a private citizen. A businesswoman. And all she discussed with us are matters related to her work.”
Bridget was conferring with one of her colleagues.
“And how does it relate to this case?” said Broyles.
“It is essential foundation for one of our principal defenses,” said Donny, trying to convey confidence in his position without getting into details that might invite more scrutiny than he wanted.
Bridget spoke up again. “My understanding,” she said, looking at her colleague for confirmation as she spoke, “is that Ms. Zorn’s testimony in fact involves government work. Advisory services related to the Coastal Evacuation Zone.”
“Work for the State of Texas,” said Donny. “Not for the United States. The government that is prosecuting Ms. Rocafuerte has no legitimate interest in protecting the putative secrets of the government in Austin.”
Broyles considered that. He looked to the CSO.
“Mr. Walton?”
Walton shrugged reluctant agreement with Donny.
“Very well. Your motion is approved, we can rely on the general protective order covering this entire proceeding.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Donny. Then he turned and gave a reassuring nod to Xelina.
She didn’t return his confidence.
56
In the first season of the 1950s television series Perry Mason, the title sequence opens with a shot of the judge, a white-haired old white man, sitting at the bench looking over the courtroom with a humorless expression. A lawyer approaches, his back to the camera. He hands a document to the judge. The judge looks it over, unhurried and officious. He kind of nods, and hands the document back to the lawyer. The lawyer turns, revealing his face to the camera, the face of Raymond Burr. Burr looks down at the paper, then, his face hidden from the judge now, looks up to where you can see his eyes. And then his mouth breaks into a subtle but indisputably sinister grin. The grin of a lawyer who has just successfully tricked the judge. Tricked the whole system.
That was the idea.
Donny had never noticed this detail when his grandmother, the first lawyer in the family, used to make him watch the show when he would stay with her. At the time, he just wanted to watch the nature shows and the new westerns that were so popular then. But he knew Grandma had a similar bag of tricks.
Maybe he would be able to live up to her example.
He remembered the scary theme song they gaveled in Raymond Burr with. He wondered what the theme song for this trial would be, if they had one. Maybe the black noise they played at night on the lowest deck, to keep the non-compliant detainees like Xelina from sleeping.
57
They had conducted Amanda Zorn’s deposition at the offices of her lawyers, Worthington & Hurley. Mark Worthington himself sat in as Amanda’s bodyguard. A young prosecutor named Wesley Wilson attended for the government, and Percy accompanied Donny.
It was rare to take depositions in a normal criminal case, but there was nothing normal about this case. It was a summary proceeding being pursued by a government on a war footing, expedited far beyond any reasonable norm with no more than a week to prepare. The court was happy to be lenient in order to minimize bases for reversal and shorten the list of people who had to be heard from at the actual trial, especially considering the unique logistical challenges. Donny could also tell that Broyles and Bridget both assumed this was a sideshow that had little to do with the real issues in the case.
That, Percy argued, was probably because they were not in the loop about what was really going on. Donny agreed.
Amanda was definitely not happy to be there.
Donny tried to soften her up by talking about her str
ing of successes, the deals she had done to literally change the world. She didn’t mind that, but it didn’t make her any less cagey when they got around to the projects she was working on now, right here in their backyard.
“What is Pallantium Corporation?” asked Donny.
“I don’t think I can talk about that,” she said. “I’m under a confidentiality agreement.”
“That doesn’t apply here,” said Donny. “Here, everything is secret, and so nothing is secret.”
“Just answer what you can,” said Worthington. “Stick to what’s already public.”
“Very well,” she said. “Pallantium is a new venture, a sort of public-private partnership set up by community-minded entrepreneurs and the State of Texas. The company pays to help remediate some of the damage that has been done to our coastal region and the industrial foundation on which our economy is based. In exchange, they get to keep any returns on their investment, and operate with a certain degree of autonomy for a fixed period of time.”
“How long?”
“Ninety-nine years, I believe.”
“How much autonomy?”
“It’s relative.”
“More than a normal company?”
“Yes.”
“As much as a country?”
“Oh, no. It’s a tenant, not a sovereign.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Quite.”
“Is it bound by U.S. law?”
“That’s complicated. You would have to ask a lawyer.”
“I thought I was, but I guess you don’t practice anymore. Is it bound by Texas law?”
“Yes, by its charter.”
“Which says it can make up its own rules, within the leased territory.”
“Well, yes. Not much different from a shopping mall in that regard.”
“Or a country club. Or a gated community.”
She looked bored with him.
“Is it subject to the Accords?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Because you’re working with them, right?”
“I work with a lot of people.”
“So we heard. A lot of very rich people.”
“Oh, please, it’s not like that at all. I work for your people, too.”
“Lucky them.”
“You would understand they are, if you knew the alternatives.”
“The alternatives to this mass eviction you are helping to orchestrate?”
“It’s not an eviction. It’s a remediation. A rebuilding. It’s not some big conspiracy. It’s a bunch of different transactions. I’m only working on a few of them. Not just redevelopment deals, but also resettlement projects. Not just here, but in other parts of the country, especially those ravaged by drought.”
“Turning people into refugees and selling the lands from which they’ve been displaced.”
“They’re already refugees. Their homes are gone. And those lands are no longer viable, at least not for their former uses. They require massive reinvestment, infusions of capital that will only happen if they come with the right incentives.”
“Like political autonomy and freedom from taxation.”
“Among other things.”
“So what’s in it for ‘my people’?”
“The same kind of autonomy. More, really.”
“Where, exactly?”
She looked at her lawyer. “I’m not allowed to get into those specifics.”
Percy handed Donny a document. He handed it in turn to Amanda, while Percy gave copies to the other lawyers.
“Is it this island that Pallantium just purchased?”
Amanda looked at the document. You could see her surprise.
“How did you get this?” said Worthington.
“Through a private information service,” said Donny. The “service” was Ward Walker, who had made an expensive trade with one of the younger brokers who had worked on the deal. “But this is public information. It doesn’t reveal the price. Just the transfer of title from the prior owner.”
Worthington put the document down. “Go ahead and answer,” he said.
Wilson objected, but in a setting like this without a judge present, all he could do was preserve the opportunity to argue for its exclusion later.
“Is this where you’re sending ‘my people’?” asked Donny.
“I’m not sending anyone anywhere,” answered Amanda.
“It’s not an accident that this is just outside territorial waters, is it?”
“You would have to ask the buyer.”
“The buyer didn’t give you its requirements?”
“The buyer was not my client in this transaction. But yes, okay, I understood that was part of their needs. We identified several possibilities.”
“Several possibilities of places where people could be sent into exile.”
“No,” she said, growing more impatient. “A place where all the people who have decided they don’t want to be part of this country can have a new one. And we are working on a bigger deal, something probably a bit farther out, to meet future needs.”
“Does it ever make you feel like a monster?”
“You bottom-feeding weasel. Hard to believe I once considered you a peer. Don’t you get it? The world is falling apart. We’re all on the Titanic. And there are only so many life boats.”
58
After they spent most of the first morning on procedural arguments that tested Broyles’s patience, Bridget spent the rest of her two days walking the panel through a much more detailed version of the case she had made in the original hearing. They read the chats, saw the videos, handled the materials collected from Xelina’s house, and heard hours of testimony from the investigating agents authenticating every item presented. The CSO blocked much of that from the feed, but not from the defense in the courtroom. Donny was surgical in his cross-examination, spending only what time it took to lay the record for alternate theories of what the evidence showed. Every minute he used on cross was a minute he wouldn’t have for putting on his own case.
Bridget closed her case with the escape, which was a smart way to go.
Still, Donny argued it wasn’t relevant to the case, and even prejudicial. He was right. This case revolved around the original treason charges. But Bridget said it shows her connection to the network. Donny said what network, but you could tell the panel wasn’t buying it.
Bridget’s case was one of those prosecutions so important to the government’s institutional self-protection that the court, no matter who is on the bench, will bend over backwards to help the government make its case. They do this by providing all the time and evidentiary leeway they want to present every last scintilla of evidence supporting a guilty verdict. Donny had once helped out on the federal prosecution of a state court judge who had been shot and almost killed pulling her Lexus into the driveway of her River Oaks home after a high school lacrosse game. The shooter was a defendant in a felony prosecution before her court, out on bail. They gave the prosecution a month to make their case, with long days of forensic minutiae, every phone call and text message and online search, hourlong trajectories of each bullet, laboratory re-creations and disquisitions about the explosive qualities of different types of automobile glass. The defense took three days. They knew the likelihood of an acquittal had lottery odds or worse, so they focused on evading the death penalty. Which would have worked, had the defendant not also been a radical. That he was also black, and his victim white, did not help. Donny remembered her sitting there in the front row of the gallery in a dress that revealed the deep scar tissue in her left shoulder, guarded by a personal detail of marshals and accompanied by a row of her country-clubbing friends and family, while the prosecution projected cinema-scale mug shots of the defendant’s associates on the screen above the defense table. That was the first time Donny understood that the game was rigged, even in a case where the guilt was pretty obvious, one that still went through the motions of providing a trial by j
ury, even if the jurors mostly looked like they could have been the judge’s neighbors.
Watching Bridget get the marshal with the bullet wound in her leg to tell the sad story of what happened, as the attentive panel listened in judgment and the court reporter hammered away at his live transcript, Donny imagined the short day he had coming to make his own case, the evidence he already knew Broyles would preclude, the fate that awaited Xelina if he played the game by the rules they wrote to handicap the outcome. That’s when he had the revelation that trials for political crimes were different. That the way to defend them was to attack the politics of the case, to expose the charade, show the wizard’s real face. That you needed to figure out a way to do that during the prosecution’s case. That you needed to make the trial itself part of the defendant’s political program. Because after that, it was all over. It was what he had been building toward, without really understanding that’s what he was doing.
As he got up to cross-examine Deputy Marshal Garrison, he still wasn’t sure if he could do that and get the verdict he wanted.
But it was worth a try.
59
“How are we doing?” said Donny, sitting back in the armchair in Miles’s office late that afternoon as Percy brought in the files to prep for the next day. Bridget had finished her case before lunchtime, Broyles said he needed the afternoon to attend to other matters, and the defense was happy to have the extra time.
“I can’t believe you tried to argue that escaping from federal custody through armed violence is a legitimate form of self-defense,” said Miles.
“I think it is, when the custody is unlawful, and I thought some of the panel were with me. Part of the way at least.”
“You talked to that marshal like it was her fault.”
“That was good stuff, right? When I made her walk through each part of the restraints they use, how they decide who gets what, how arbitrary and punitive it all is.”
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