“Well, come in and close the door. Mrs. Walker, we won’t need you for this,” the judge snapped, first at the hapless Ms. Esposito and then at Mrs. Walker, who’d been pulling up a chair.
Mrs. Walker’s gray eyebrows shot up her forehead, but she rose wordlessly and walked toward the door. Before leaving, she turned and gave Sasha a look that seemed to say ‘good luck, you’re going to need it.’
She pulled the door shut firmly behind her and disappeared into the outer office.
Esposito crossed the room and stopped awkwardly beside Sasha’s chair. She smiled and said, “Jill Esposito, Office of General Counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Bardman, that dirty, sandbagging weasel.
Sasha tamped down her dismay and shook the woman’s hand.
“Sasha McCandless, counsel for Serumceutical. And this is Leo Connelly, Serumceutical’s chief security officer,” she said, aware that her irritation was audible in her voice. At the moment, she didn’t care.
Leo mumbled a greeting and shook the government lawyer’s hand. Sasha could tell from the hint of anger in his eyes that he was piecing the situation together, too.
“Okay, Ms. Esposito, have a seat, so we can get on with this,” the judge instructed.
Figuring she had nothing left to lose, Sasha spoke up. “Your honor, Serumceutical would like to formally request the presence of a stenographer to record the proceedings in the event there’s an appeal.”
“Request denied,” the judge snapped without looking at her.
Across the table, Jill Esposito—who was perhaps the only person in the room who didn’t know the score—formed a small ‘O’ of surprise with her lips.
“Now, then,” the judge rumbled on, “this is an ex parte hearing on a motion for an emergency temporary restraining order that Serumceutical has filed against a competitor called ViraGene. The motion is denied because the court finds that the United States government is an indispensable party to the litigation.”
Sasha opened her mouth to speak, but the judge cut her off. “The court does not intend to hear argument, Ms. McCandless.”
He turned toward Esposito. “Ms. Esposito, if the government were joined as a defendant, is it your office’s position that it would consent to jurisdiction?”
Esposito looked down at her notes for a moment. Then she said, “Your honor, the CIA believes that the subject matter of the contract between Serumceutical and the government raises national security implications and cannot be the subject of civil litigation between private parties.”
“That’s nice, Ms. Esposito. My favorite color is blue. Ms. McCandless wishes this was on the record. Now that we’ve each shared some irrelevant information, why don’t you try answering my question?” the judge demanded.
Esposito blinked down at her papers.
“Would the government consent to jurisdiction?” Judge Minella repeated, enunciating each word.
“No?” Esposito guessed.
“No. Good answer, Ms. Esposito,” the judge said. He turned toward Sasha, “Because this Court finds that the federal government, which is immune from suit, is an indispensable party pursuant to Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and because the government has indicated it will not waive immunity, your request for a temporary restraining order is denied and your motion is dismissed with prejudice.”
Sasha swallowed her mounting anger. “Your honor, if I may—”
“No, Ms. McCandless, you may not. We’re adjourned.”
Sasha saw Connelly’s hand curl into a fist, and she placed a cautioning hand on his arm. It didn’t matter how big of a dick Judge Minella was, he was a sitting federal judge.
Jill Esposito seemed stunned. She hurriedly tossed her papers into her bag and gave Sasha a weak, apologetic smile. Then she said, “Thank you, your honor,” and scurried toward the door before her luck could reverse itself.
The judge shook his head at her departing back and said, “Have a safe trip back to Pennsylvania, Ms. McCandless.”
“Thank you, your honor,” Sasha managed. She gathered her papers and pushed in her chair.
The judge came around the table and clasped Connelly on the shoulder. “Nice to meet a fellow angler, Mr. Connelly,” he said in a warm, friendly tone.
Connelly stared at the judge mutely.
CHAPTER 27
Gavin awoke in complete darkness. His dry eyes stung, and the skin at their corners cracked as he strained to see in the blackness. A thudding ache reverberated through his head. His mouth was hot and cotton dry.
“Hello?” he said—or thought he did. But all he heard a hoarse, cracked moan. It took a moment to realize that was his voice. He ran his tongue over his dry, shredded lips. Tasted dried blood. He tried to work up some saliva but failed.
He couldn’t lift his head off the flat pillow it rested on, so he turned his face to the side and stared at nothing. A thin, scratchy blanket covered his torso. He pushed it down to his waist. The movement sent a dull pain through the muscles in his arms, and he shook.
He tried to remember where he was. He tried to remember anything. But heavy clouds floated in his brain. He strained. Thought hard. Celia. Bricker. An idea rolled past him and his tired, fuzzy mind tried to latch on to it but missed.
He shivered and pulled the blanket up to his chin. He swallowed around a thousand tiny knives that pierced his throat, and his eyes fluttered closed. Sasha. Celia. A little girl in the snow. He struggled again to grab hold of a thought as it evaporated. He slept.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Bright, relentless light leaked under his eyelids, and he flinched. He opened his eyes slowly, painfully to the white glow. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but he remembered the itchy blanket and the hard pillow. He was in the same place, wherever that was. He squinted up at a face, a woman, with delicate, high cheekbones and big, kind eyes. The lower half of her face was hidden by a blue surgical mask. Behind her, as his eyes focused, he saw rough-hewn logs fitted together to form walls. He was in a cabin.
“Here. Drink this,” she said, her gentle voice muffled by the mask.
She leaned over him and raised a straw to his mouth with gloved hands.
He tried to speak—to ask what she was giving him, who she was, where he was—but all he managed was a croak. He decided he didn’t care what was in the glass. He parted his lips and sucked on the straw. Cold, sweet liquid hit the back of his throat.
“It’s Gatorade. You’re dehydrated, and you need the electrolytes,” the woman told him.
He sucked again.
“Take it slow,” she warned.
Too late. The liquid splashed down, and his stomach roiled.
She jumped back, and he leaned over the side of the bed and retched. The fruity drink mixed with bile and burned his throat.
“Sorry,” he managed. He returned his head to the pillow, out of breath and dizzy.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll get Lydia in here to start you on an IV. You need to rehydrate.”
He stared up at her, too weak to ask what was happening to him, but she must have read the question in his eyes.
“You have the flu. You passed out in Captain Bricker’s office. Don’t worry, we’re going to take care of you. I’ll turn out the lights when I leave so you can sleep. You need to rest up,” she said.
She smoothed his blanket, and he could tell from the way her eyes lifted that she was smiling reassuringly behind her mask.
She walked away, out of his line of vision. The squeak of a hinge and then the bang of metal sounded as she filled the wood-burning stove and lit it.
Then, as promised, the harsh overhead light disappeared. In the blackness, he heard the creak of the cabin door as it opened, felt a blast of cold air, and then heard the thud of the door as it closed. From the sounds of metal clinking, he could tell she was locking him in from the outside.
Gavin pinned his eyes open and stared sightlessly at the ceiling, desperate to drift back into his f
itful, feverish sleep, but determined to keep himself awake long enough to piece together what was happening. He listened to his labored, whistling breathing and remembered the names the woman had said: Captain Bricker and Lydia.
Sasha. Celia. Bricker. Lydia. Rollins. The preppers. Gavin coughed, and the force of the cough racked his body. He waited until his rattling breathing slowed again and the burning pain in his chest subsided, then he continued remembering.
They’d taken his car keys and his cell phone. His gun was locked in the car. He was defenseless, unable to reach the outside world, locked in a cabin, and as sick as he’d ever been. Under the circumstances, he was going to need one helluva plan to get out of this alive.
But, for now, he needed to rest. Just for a minute or two. The stove was already heating the small room, and the warmth made him drowsy. His eyes, so heavy and dry, closed of their own volition.
CHAPTER 28
Leo was trying to wrap his mind around the ambush he and Sasha had just experienced in Judge Minella’s chambers. As they walked from the courthouse to the parking garage, he asked Sasha a series of questions.
“What just happened?”
Sasha threw him a disgusted look. “We got sandbagged, Connelly. I can’t wait to report back to Tate—that should be fun.”
“I’ll handle Oliver,” he told her. “But can you explain this to me? Why would the government get involved in a private lawsuit between two pharmaceutical companies?”
Sasha dug her gloves out of her pockets and pulled them on. “I honestly don’t know, Connelly. I explained at the meeting that we weren’t going to get into the contract specifics, nobody seemed to have any objections then. But, Judge Minella has the discretion to raise the indispensable party issue sua sponte—sorry, that means on his own initiative, without a party raising it. And, when the judge fed Jill Esposito her line, she had the sense to agree that it was the official government position that it would be deemed an indispensable party. So that’s that.”
“What’s it mean to be an indispensable party?”
Sasha considered her answer for a moment.
“Okay, this is a little bit of an oversimplification, but under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure—Rule 19, to be exact—all parties who have an interest in the outcome of a case have to be included in a case. It’s called mandatory joinder, and it’s a good rule.” She continued, warming to her subject. “The purpose of Rule 19 is to consolidate litigation. Let’s say you, Naya, and I start a business together and it falls apart. I can’t sue for damages, claiming you ran it into the ground unless Naya is in the case, too. Because resolving my case without also addressing any claims she might have wouldn’t dispose of the case. It wouldn’t be a good use of judicial resources. Are you with me so far?”
“Sure. It sounds like a reasonable approach,” he said.
“It is, except for the fact that Rule 19 has been turned on its head. Instead of being used as a tool to bring people into court to ensure conflicts get resolved in their entirety, it’s routinely used to shut down a case entirely.”
“How?” he asked.
He took her arm as they crossed a cobblestone alley. The last thing he needed was for her to twist an ankle in her ridiculous boots. He half-expected her to shake his hand off, but instead she covered it with her own gloved hand and smiled up at him before continuing with the civil procedure lesson.
“In a lot of cases, when a governmental entity or foreign sovereign has an interest that would merit mandatory joinder, the case ends up being dismissed because those parties have sovereign immunity. They can’t be sued unless they consent to the court’s jurisdiction. And dismissal of the whole case could keep the plaintiff out of court for good because there’s no other forum that can exercise jurisdiction over the matter. That’s not what the rule was intended to do.”
Sasha shook her head, her green eyes dark with annoyance at the misuse of the rule.
Leo still wasn’t following the argument. His antenna, finely tuned to governmental bureaucracy, vibrated: something was off.
“So, even though you told the government lawyers today that the details of our contract to supply the vaccines wouldn’t need to come in to court, the CIA is saying it will?”
She spread her hands wide, signaling she was at a loss herself. “Beats me, Connelly. I would expect ViraGene to make the argument, maybe. But, I can’t see a reason for any third party to stand up and say, no, this really does involve us, especially when the moving party has explicitly said it doesn’t. And I can’t see what the CIA has to do with a domestic contract anyway. But, honestly, it doesn’t matter. Judge Minella had the discretion to do what he did, even if the CIA hadn’t sent a lawyer. But, he’s not an idiot, he’s a federal judge. I’m sure he reached out to someone in the government who put him in touch with Bardman. Now his ruling is basically appeal-proof, because I doubt the Court of Appeals would find he abused his discretion now that the United States said it’s an indispensable party and it won’t waive its immunity and consent to jurisdiction.”
Leo pondered this development.
“What?” she demanded.
Startled, he met her angry gaze. “What what?”
“You’re ruminating. I can tell you have a theory, Connelly. Spit it out.”
He smiled despite himself. To a person, everyone who knew him called him unreadable. He suspected they’d call him inscrutable if they weren’t afraid it would sound racist. His expressions and gestures never provided a clue as to what he was thinking or feeling to anyone—except Sasha.
“The judge didn’t call the CIA. They called him, guaranteed. National security issue override,” he said, more to himself than to her.
Although all the participating agencies had assigned experienced employees to the task force, the only decision maker in the room had been Hank. He ran through his memory of the CIA’s structure.
Sasha waited.
“Bardman doesn’t call the shots. He’s the equivalent of some mid-level associate in private practice. After the task force meeting, he reported back to his boss, who probably briefed the General Counsel. That’s a Presidential appointment, so he has a lot of authority. But given the specter of a pandemic, I’d guess he’s in constant contact right now with the Director, too,” Leo explained.
“Are you saying the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency personally intervened to prevent a civil lawsuit between two private entities?”
He kept his tone mild when he answered. “I’m saying it’s not unthinkable. And maybe I have it all wrong; maybe ViraGene has its hooks in someone at GAO, and that’s where the pressure came from. Or maybe this judge did take the initiative. But, unless the government has changed pretty dramatically in the last few months, the first and most important job right now, across all agencies, will be finding and containing the virus. The second most important job will be disaster planning—having contingency plans in place to respond to and contain an outbreak of the killer flu, with a strong emphasis on preventing panic. And our temporary restraining order probably wouldn’t have impacted the first part, but I can see an argument that the news of the vaccine manufacturer suing a competitor for unspecific bad behavior could undermine confidence in the government’s abilities to handle any outbreak.”
Sasha considered this. “Well, Esposito did lead with a national security argument, but Judge Minella shut her down pretty fast. That was probably to keep us in the dark. And it explains his refusal to put the hearing on the record.”
They stopped in front of the parking garage and looked at each other. Leo could read in her face that they were having the same thought: they were in way over their heads. Again.
CHAPTER 29
Gavin floated in and out of wakefulness. He didn’t know what time it was when he heard the voices outside his cabin but he strained to listen, pressing his ear right up against the wall by his bed.
He could make out Bricker’s booming voice, and one other voice. He thought he recognized
the other man as Rollins. It sounded as though they were right outside the window.
That would make sense. The cabin was set off from the others and, by the window, the group wouldn’t be visible from either the recreation center or the perimeter where the sentries patrolled. It seemed to Gavin to be a good spot for conspirators to meet.
He listened hard, trying to keep his wheezing breath quiet so he could hear.
“Tomorrow, we move,” Bricker said.
The man who Gavin believed to be Rollins spoke in an uncertain voice. “Sir, I don’t understand.”
“Which part escapes you, George?” Bricker asked, exasperated.
Gavin nodded to himself. Yep, it was Rollins all right.
“Sir, more than two hundred members have already reported and been vaccinated. We have reports that another fifty to seventy-five are on their way. The organization has responded. We’re going to weather any storm that comes. If the virus strikes, we’ll survive. But … if I understand you correctly, you want to attack the government. I’m just not sure I follow,” Rollins said in a quick, apologetic voice.
“George, it’s not an attack. It’s a warning. Yes, we’re safe, but what about all the civilians out there who are counting on their leaders to protect them? They’re exposed, vulnerable. We need to send a message. A message to the government to take care of its people and a message to the people to learn to take care of themselves.” Bricker’s voice took on the cadence of a speech from the pulpit.
Gavin suspected that was an effort to distract Rollins from the fact that the words rolling off Bricker’s tongue were nonsensical and inconsistent. And it seemed to be working
“Okay. Thank you for explaining, Captain. So, can we go over the plan one more time?”
Bricker snorted. “I’m going to leave tomorrow morning for Pittsburgh. I will release the virus and return here. All you have to do is keep an eye on the prisoner and help Anna maintain order here for several hours. It’s not rocket science.”
Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) Page 17
