Dead Man's Rule

by Rick Acker

  “Which is why they will never let that happen.” As if to punctuate Elbek’s statement, a formation of helicopters flew by at a low altitude, momentarily drowning out their conversation. “I’ve been wondering if it’s worth keeping up the fight,” Elbek confessed. “We kill and we die for no purpose.”

  Hamzat arched his bushy gray eyebrows. “There are other ways.”

  Elbek had heard this argument before. He shook his head. “Hitting soft targets never helps. Blowing up a hundred random Russians or Americans may feel good, but all it accomplishes is to give them an excuse to attack us. Look at the Palestinians: all they’ve done is bomb themselves out of a country and make the Zionist atrocities look justified to the West. The Russians know this—they even blew up their own people to give them a reason to destroy our country.”

  The commonly held belief among Chechens was that the Moscow apartment bombings that started the second Chechen war had been the handiwork of Russian agents trying to create a justification for renewed attacks against Chechnya.

  Hamzat’s face was both angry and resigned. “So you want to give up? Just walk away and try to make a living under the Russian boot?”

  Elbek stared at the stone wall of the cave without seeing it. “For now,” he said, “but not forever. The problem with blowing up a plane or a building is that it hurts our enemies without weakening them. We have to find another way. Hit them hard enough to break their grip on the Muslim world long enough for us to join together.”

  Hamzat nodded. “Never shoot a bear if you are not sure you can kill it,” he said. “Now, how do we kill the bear?”

  They spent the rest of the day discussing and discounting various options. Nuclear weapons would work, but only if enough of them could be set off in enough cities. Nuclear bombs were hard to buy and extraordinarily expensive. They would also be difficult to smuggle into the target countries. Chemical weapons were cheaper and easier to obtain or make, but they wouldn’t kill enough people fast enough to do more than create a temporary panic.

  They finally settled on biological weapons. There were thousands of unemployed scientists in the former Soviet Union with bioweapons expertise. Some of them reputedly were looking for work and had taken “souvenirs” from their labs. A virulent plague could disable an entire people for decades, maybe permanently. Besides, there was a precedent: Allah had finally stopped the Crusaders by sending the Black Death to destroy them. Perhaps he would do so again through the hands of the Chechens.

  Elbek had slept well that night for the first time in months. The path ahead of him was hard and uncertain, but it led to victory—and victory not just for Chechnya but for Muslims everywhere.

  Elbek examined his bandages and grimaced as he recalled his ill-fated attempt to kill Sergei Spassky. The skinny Russian detective bothered him, and not just because of the throbbing ache in his left arm and his maimed right hand. Spassky represented the most significant unresolved threat to the Vainakh Guard’s US operation. The Brothers had assured him that the detective’s investigation had been neutralized, but not before he had identified Alikhan.

  Spassky had also managed to evade Elbek’s surveillance and talk to the informant, Josef Fedorov, at least once before the man died. That had been enough to warrant a death sentence. Now matters were more serious: the detective had talked to the police and the FBI, but what had he said? Elbek and his commanding officers needed to know. The Russian needed to die—but first he needed to talk. Elbek was very good at making Russians talk. Despite his pain, he smiled.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SHOW

  “I call Josef Fedorov as my first witness,” Ben announced.

  A murmur of surprise rippled across the courtroom. Several people looked around for Josef—but Ben noticed that Anton and Dmitry did not. After several seconds, it was clear that Josef was not going to appear. Ben continued, “It appears that Mr. Fedorov was unavoidably detained despite the trial subpoena served on his counsel.”

  As Anthony Simeon stood to respond, Ben noticed Anton give Dmitry what he must have thought was a discreet nudge and a wink. Dmitry ignored him.

  “Your Honor,” said Simeon, “we have been attempting to communicate with Mr. Fedorov ever since we received the subpoena. We are making every effort to locate him, but we have been unable to do so to date.”

  “All right,” said the judge, “but if he’s not here by tomorrow, I’m issuing a contempt citation. And if he’s not here by the day after that, I’ll issue a bench warrant for his arrest. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Simeon said as he sat down.

  “Since Mr. Fedorov is unavailable,” said Ben, “I call Anton Brodsky.”

  Anton conferred briefly with Dmitry, Pavel, and Simeon, then got up and walked over to the witness stand with an apprehensive, sullen look on his face. The bailiff swore him in as Ben arranged his witness outline and notes.

  Ben guessed that Anton would be nervous on the stand and planned to keep him off balance. He also guessed that Anton would never admit to knowing about Dr. Ivanovsky’s contract, but it might be possible to make some headway indirectly. “May I approach the witness, Your Honor?”

  The judge nodded.

  Ben picked up a piece of paper and a pen and walked over to Anton. “Please sign your name, Mr. Brodsky.”

  Anton hesitated for a moment and glanced around the courtroom as if looking for guidance. Then he slowly signed his name.

  “Thank you,” said Ben. He retrieved the paper and put an exhibit sticker on it. “Let the record reflect that I am marking Mr. Brodsky’s signature as Plaintiff’s Exhibit Two for identification.” He then walked to an overhead projection camera and put the piece of paper under it. The signature projected on the screen looked nothing like the one on the blowup of the minutes. “That’s your regular signature, correct?”

  “Yes,” said Anton.

  “The signature you use every day when you sign checks or credit-card receipts?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you signed your name like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not a special signature you invented for us here this morning, is it?”

  “No.”

  “May I approach the witness again?”

  The judge nodded and Ben handed Anton a copy of the minutes, which were already marked as Plaintiff’s Exhibit 1. Ben then pulled out another piece of paper and arranged it for the camera. The screen showed a close-up of a signature identical to the one on the minutes.

  Ben pointed to the screen. “Is that your signature?”

  “That is a fake.”

  “I’m not asking you whether the document is real. I’m just asking whether your signature is. Have you ever signed your name like that?”

  “No.”

  “Those two signatures match each other,” Ben gestured to both the screen and the blowup on the easel, “and neither of them matches the signature you just gave me, right?”

  “I think that’s right,” Anton replied uncertainly—as if he sensed a trap, but wasn’t sure how to avoid it.

  Ben turned down the magnification on the projector so that the whole page was visible. It was the signature page to the contract between the Brothers and Nikolai Zinoviev. “I’m going to mark as Plaintiff’s Exhibit Three the contract between Mr. Zinoviev and the Brothers LLC. Do you remember when I took your deposition in this case, Mr. Brodsky?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you remember that I asked you, ‘Is that your signature on the last page of the contract?’” Ben said, reading from the deposition transcript.

  “Yes.”

  “And do you remember what your answer was?”

  Anton glared malevolently at Ben. “Yes. I said it was my signature.”

  “But today you said it wasn’t your signature. In fact, you said you never signed y
our name like that, right?”

  Anton sat silently for several seconds, struggling to think of an answer. “I . . . I guess I made a mistake.”

  You sure did, thought Ben.

  In fact, Anton had made the same mistake as Nicki Zinoviev: thinking it’s easy to lie during a lawsuit. It isn’t. The entire litigation system is designed to ferret out the truth, and any moderately talented attorney will eventually uncover at least some of the lies told by an opponent. Furthermore, each lie must be entirely consistent with all other statements—including previous lies—and all facts known to the opposition. Only witnesses with a perfect and nimble memory have any chance of not getting caught. And getting caught almost always does more damage than whatever fact the witness was trying to hide—judges and juries assume the worst about whatever the lie concerned. They also naturally mistrust everything else the witness says.

  All lawyers, even dishonest ones, invariably instruct their clients to tell the truth under oath. Any client who isn’t smart enough to take this advice generally isn’t smart enough to lie effectively—as Ben had already been able to demonstrate twice in this case.

  Ben decided it was time to drive the knife all the way in. “And the reason you made that mistake was because you wanted to hide from Judge Harris the fact that you signed those minutes, correct?”

  “No! I . . . This document is forgery, so I could not sign it! It does not matter how my signature looks, this is fake!”

  Ben put away his notes while Anton answered. Nothing the man said could make much difference at this point.

  “No further questions.” Ben sat down. He doubted that even the great Anthony Simeon could do much to repair the wreckage on the witness stand.

  “Any direct examination, Mr. Simeon?” asked Judge Harris.

  Simeon stood, but didn’t leave the counsel table. “I’m not certain, Your Honor. I have one or two questions about the transcript.” He turned to the court reporter. “I’m sorry, miss. At my advanced age I don’t always catch everything people say. Did Mr. Brodsky testify that he heard Dr. Ivanovsky and Mr. Zinoviev verbally agree to any contract?”

  The court reporter skimmed through the transcript. “No, he was never asked that question.”

  “And was he ever asked if he had personal knowledge of any such contract?”

  She checked the transcript again. “No, sir.”

  “Thank you.” He turned back to the judge. “No, Your Honor, I have no questions for Mr. Brodsky.”

  Ben’s self-satisfaction evaporated. That was the most effective non-examination of a witness he had ever seen. Simeon had not only shown that Anton’s testimony did little to establish the existence of a contract, he had done it in a way that prevented Ben from asking any rebuttal questions. Any further questions he asked the witness would be limited to the subject matter raised by Simeon in his questioning—but he hadn’t actually questioned Anton, so there was nothing for Ben to follow up on. All he could do was sit there and admire his opponent’s work. The Velvet Dagger had just struck again.

  “All right,” said the judge. “You may step down, Mr. Brodsky.” He glanced at the clock and turned to Ben. “Mr. Corbin, it’s 4:40. Can you finish your next witness in twenty minutes, or shall we call it a day?”

  Ben doubted he could do another witness that fast. “Let’s call it a day, Your Honor.”

  “Okay,” said the judge. “I have some hearings and a motion call in the morning, so we’ll start after lunch tomorrow. This trial is in recess until one o’clock tomorrow.”

  Sergei got a call from Ben as soon as trial was over for the day and went to Ben’s office, where they spent two hours getting ready for the next day. They went over the background of Pavel Voronin, whom Ben planned to call as his next witness. They also teed up a couple of areas for investigation the next morning. Pavel was the Brothers’ bookkeeper, but Ben had picked up hints from the documents that he might be something more.

  After they finished, Sergei strolled down Dearborn Street to the garage where he had parked his car. He called his voice mail as he walked and found a message from Elena waiting for him. “Hi, Sergei. I got a call from George Hanson that I’d like to talk to you about. Also, I think I’ve got some info on your nine-fingered friend. If you get this after six, call me at home.” She left both her work and home numbers.

  Sergei glanced at his watch. It was seven o’clock. He hesitated—he didn’t like to call people at home, but she had invited him to. Plus, he really, really wanted to know what she had found. He dialed her home number.

  “Hello?” Elena said.

  “Hi, it’s Sergei. I got your message. What’s up?”

  “I got a package of documents from the military archives in Moscow. Very interesting. Do you have time to look through them?”

  “I’m tied up tomorrow, but I’ve got some free time tonight.”

  “Okay. The file’s at the office. I’ll meet you down there and let you in.”

  “Thanks,” said Sergei. “By the way, I haven’t had any dinner, so I’m going to pick up some Chinese on the way. Can I get something for you?”

  “Some sweet-and-sour pork and a side of rice would be great.”

  “Done. Dirksen Building in thirty minutes?”

  “See you there.”

  An hour later, they sat side by side at a little table in the FBI cafeteria, poring over old documents and using chopsticks to chase the remaining morsels of stir fry and rice around their foam plates.

  “Are they sure they matched the prints right?” Sergei asked.

  Elena nodded. “I had our own lab check it, and they’re sure it’s a match.”

  “Really?” said Sergei, shaking his head with surprise and disbelief. He looked at the file again. “Most of this does fit the profile, I guess—Spetsnaz, urban warfare school, combat experience in Afghanistan. It’s just that—”

  “—he’s been dead for years?” Elena finished.

  “Yeah, that generally rules someone out as a suspect.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted you to look at this. Tell me what you think of this page that I’ve flagged.”

  Sergei turned to it and read carefully. “Hmmmm. No body, no eyewitnesses, no details on manner of death—just ‘killed in combat.’”

  He sat back and thought for a minute. “You know, one of my uncles was in Afghanistan. I asked him once how many of his unit died, and he said he supposed that fifty-three of them did. I asked him what he meant by ‘supposed.’ He said that a lot of times they weren’t able to get bodies back after a fight. The Afghans would run off with them and do all sorts of unpleasant things with the corpses. Since the mujahideen didn’t take prisoners—or didn’t keep them, anyway—the soldiers just figured that anyone who disappeared during combat must be dead.”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” said Elena, “but I was thinking along the same lines. This Elbek Shishani was a Chechen, right? And his personnel records say that he had been acting erratic toward the end and was getting more religious. Maybe he decided to defect using some battle as cover.”

  Sergei nodded and flipped through Elbek Shishani’s file again. “Based on this, I’d say you’re right, but what’s he doing in America? Any insight from George Hanson?”

  “Actually, yes. He gave me a call this morning out of the blue. He said he had a security video from his parking lot that he had ‘forgotten’ to give us and wondered when he could drop it off. One of his boys brought it over this afternoon.”

  Sergei laughed. “Amazing what a good citizen George can be when he’s properly motivated. Have you looked at the tape yet?”

  “Yeah. All it shows is Eddie Thompson entering and leaving the store and getting picked up by someone in a light-colored Ford Taurus. The license plate isn’t visible, even with digital enhancement. I—”

  “Where’s the tape?” Sergei interrupted.r />
  “It’s back in my office.”

  He got up. “Are you still on the ninth floor?”

  “Yeah,” she answered as they walked back to her office at a rapid pace set by Sergei. “What’s the hurry?”

  “I think I may be able to give you the license plate number for that car,” he answered as they arrived at her office.

  Elena grabbed the tape off her desk and they walked down the hall to a conference room with a VCR, where she popped the tape in the player. It showed a black-and-white night view of the parking lot outside the Shooter’s Palace. The quality wasn’t great, but it was better than most security videos. That surprised Sergei—Hanson hadn’t struck him as the type to go the extra mile on customer safety. One of their better customers must have gotten mugged out there.

  “There’s Eddie.” Elena pointed to a man standing on the sidewalk outside the Palace and holding several boxes. “And here comes his ride.” A light-colored sedan pulled up. Eddie got in and the car drove away.

  “Replay that last five seconds,” Sergei said, walking up to the screen.

  Elena replayed it.

  “There!” Sergei pointed at the car’s rear bumper. “See that scuff? The car that was following me had a scuff just like that on the rear bumper, and it was a late-model light-gray Taurus.” He grabbed a notepad from the tabletop and hastily scrawled a series of letters and numbers. “Here’s your plate number.”

  Elena glanced at the notepad. “Okay, we’ll check it out.” She tore off the top sheet of the notepad and clipped it to the front of a set of documents. “Sounds like this guy isn’t content to just watch you anymore. Any idea why not?”

  Sergei shrugged. “I don’t even know why he was following me in the first place. Is there an arrest warrant out on him yet?”

  “We should have one by tomorrow morning. We’ll also do a search on that plate number tonight. Between that and the sketch you helped us do on Thursday, we should be able to snag this guy soon.”