When they returned a third time, they yanked him up off the floor and pushed him out of the cell into a long, dark corridor. It was at times like this that he wished he lacked any imagination. He tried not to think about what they might have in mind for him. The citation for his Medal of Honor had described how Lieutenant Fitzgerald had been fearless in leading his men, had rescued a brother officer, and had made a remarkable escape from a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. But Connor knew he had never come across a man who was fearless. In Nan Dinh he had held out for one year, five months and two days - but then he was only twenty-two, and at twenty-two you believe you’re immortal.
When they hurled him out of the corridor and into the morning sun, the first thing Connor saw was a group of prisoners erecting a scaffold. He was fifty-one now. No one needed to tell him he wasn’t immortal.
When Joan Bennett checked in for work at Langley that Monday, she knew exactly how many days she had served of her eight-month sentence, because every evening, just before she left home, she would feed the cat and cross off one more date on the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall.
She left her car in the west parking lot, and headed straight for the library. Once she had signed in, she took the metal staircase down to the reference section. For the next nine hours, with only a break for a meal at midnight, she would read through the latest batch of e-mailed newspaper extracts from the Middle East. Her main task was to search for any mention of the United States and, if it was critical, electronically copy it, collate it and e-mail it to her boss on the third floor, who would consider its consequences at a more civilised hour later that morning. It was tedious, mind-deadening work. She had considered resigning on several occasions, but was determined not to give Gutenburg that satisfaction.
It was just before her midnight meal-break that Joan spotted a headline in the Istanbul News: ‘Mafya Killer to go on Trial’. She could still only think of the Mafia as being Italian, and was surprised to discover that the article concerned a South African terrorist on trial for the attempted murder of the new President of Russia. She would have taken no further interest if she hadn’t seen the line drawing of the accused man.
Joan’s heart began to thump as she carefully read through the lengthy article by Fatima Kusmann, the Istanbul News’s Eastern European correspondent, in which she claimed to have sat next to the professional killer during a rally in Moscow which Zerimski had addressed.
Midnight passed, but Joan remained at her desk.
As Connor stood in the prison courtyard and stared up at the half-constructed scaffold, a police car drew up and one of the thugs shoved him into the back seat. He was surprised to find the Chief of Police waiting for him. Bolchenkov hardly recognised the gaunt, crop-headed man.
Neither of them spoke as the car made its way through the gates and out of the prison. The driver turned right and drove along the banks of the Neva at exactly fifty kilometres an hour. They passed three bridges before swinging left and crossing a fourth that would take them into the centre of the city. As they crossed the river, Connor stared out of the side window at the pale green palace of the Hermitage. It couldn’t have been in greater contrast to the prison he had just left. He looked up at the clear blue sky, and back down at the citizens walking up and down the streets. How quickly he had been made aware of how much he valued his freedom. Once they were on the south side of the river the driver swung right, and after a few hundred yards pulled up in front of the Palace of Justice. The car door was opened by a waiting policeman. If Connor had any thoughts of escape, the other fifty officers on the pavement would have caused him to think again. They formed a long reception line as he climbed the steps into the huge stone building.
He was marched to the front desk, where an officer pinned his left arm to the counter, studied his wrist and entered the number ‘12995’ on the charge sheet. He was then taken down a marble corridor towards two massive oak doors. When he was a few paces away the doors suddenly swung open, and he entered a packed courtroom.
He looked around at the sea of faces, and it was obvious they had been waiting for him.
Joan typed a search string into the computer: attempt on Zerimski’s life. What press reports there were all seemed to agree on one thing: that the man who had been arrested in Freedom Square was Piet de Villiers, a South African hitman hired by the Russian Mafya to assassinate Zerimski. A rifle discovered among his belongings was identified as identical to that which had been used to assassinate Ricardo Guzman, a presidential candidate in Colombia, two months earlier.
Joan scanned the Turkish newspaper’s line drawing of de Villiers into her computer, and enlarged it until it filled the entire screen. She then zoomed in on the eyes, and blew them up to life size. She was now certain of the true identity of the man about to go on trial in St Petersburg.
Joan checked her watch. It was a few minutes past two. She picked up the phone by her side and dialled a number she knew by heart. It rang for some time before a sleepy voice answered, ‘Who’s this?’
Joan said only, ‘It’s important that I see you. I’ll be at your place in a little over an hour,’ and replaced the phone.
A few moments later, someone else was woken by a ringing telephone. He listened carefully before saying, ‘We’ll just have to advance our original schedule by a few days.’
Connor stood in the dock, and looked around the courtroom. His eyes first settled on the jury. Twelve good men and true? Unlikely. Not one of them even glanced in his direction. He suspected that it hadn’t taken long to swear them in, and that there wouldn’t have been any requests for alternatives.
Everyone in the courtroom rose as a man in a long black gown emerged from a side door. He sat down in the large leather chair in the centre of the raised dais, below a full-length portrait of President Zerimski. The clerk of the court rose from his place and read out the charge, in Russian. Connor was barely able to follow the proceedings, and he certainly wasn’t asked how he wished to plead. The clerk resumed his seat, and a tall, sombre-looking middle-aged man rose from the bench directly below the judge and began to address the jury.
Holding the lapels of his jacket, the prosecutor spent the rest of the morning describing the events that had led up to the arrest of the defendant. He told the jury how de Villiers had been seen stalking Zerimski for several days before he was apprehended in Freedom Square. And how the rifle with which the defendant had intended to assassinate their beloved President had been discovered among his personal belongings in a hotel lobby. ‘Vanity got the better of the accused,’ the prosecutor said. ‘The case that contained the weapon had his initials clearly printed on it.’ The judge allowed the rifle and the briefcase to be examined by the jury.
‘Even more damning, a slip of paper was found secreted in the accused’s spongebag,’ continued the prosecutor, ‘which confirmed the transfer of one million US dollars to a numbered bank account in Geneva.’ Again, the jury was given the chance to study this piece of evidence. The prosecutor went on to praise the diligence and resourcefulness of the St Petersburg police force for preventing this heinous act, and its professionalism in catching the criminal who had intended to perpetrate it. He added that the nation owed a considerable debt of gratitude to Vladimir Bolchenkov, the city’s Chief of Police. Several members of the jury nodded their agreement.
The prosecutor completed his monologue by informing the jury that whenever the defendant had been asked if he had been hired to carry out the killing on behalf of the Mafya, he had refused to answer. ‘You must make what you will of his silence,’ he said. ‘My own conclusion is that having heard the evidence, there can only be one verdict, and one sentence.’ He smiled thinly at the judge and resumed his seat.
Connor looked around the courtroom to see who had been appointed to defend him. He wondered how his counsel would go about the task when they hadn’t even met.
The judge nodded towards the other end of the bench, and a young man who looked as if he hadn’t long
been out of law school rose to address the court. He did not clasp the lapels of his jacket as he looked up towards the bench, or smile at the judge, or even address the jury. He simply said, ‘My client offers no defence,’ and resumed his seat.
The judge nodded, then turned his attention to the foreman of the jury, a grave-looking man who knew exactly what was expected of him. He rose from his place on cue.
‘Having listened to the evidence in this case, Mr Foreman, how do you find the defendant?’
‘Guilty,’ said the man, delivering his one-word script without needing to be prompted or to consult any other member of the jury.
The judge looked at Connor for the first time. ‘As the jury has reached a unanimous verdict, all that is left for me to do is pass sentence. And, by statute, there is only one penalty for your crime.’ He paused, stared impassively at Connor and said, ‘I sentence you to death by hanging.’ The judge turned to the defence counsel. ‘Do you wish to appeal against the sentence?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘No, sir,’ came back the immediate response.
‘The execution will take place at eight a.m. on Friday.’
Connor was surprised only that they were waiting until Friday to hang him.
Before she left, Joan checked over several of the articles again. The dates exactly matched Connor’s absences abroad. First the trip to Colombia, then the visit to St Petersburg. There were, to quote one of Connor’s favourite maxims, just too many coincidences.
By three o’clock, Joan felt drained and exhausted. She didn’t look forward to telling Maggie the results of her detective work. And if it really was Connor on trial in St Petersburg, there wasn’t a moment to waste, because the Turkish papers were already a couple of days old.
Joan shut down her computer, locked her desk and hoped her boss wouldn’t notice that his e-mail in-box was almost empty. She walked up the old staircase to the ground floor, inserted her electric pass-key in the exit security control, and passed the trickle of workers arriving for the early-morning shift.
Joan switched on her headlights and drove her brand-new car out of the parking lot and through the gate, turning east onto the George Washington Parkway. The road was still covered with patchy ice from the previous evening’s storm, and highway crews were working to clear it before the morning rush-hour. Normally she enjoyed driving through Washington’s deserted early-morning streets, past the magnificent monuments that commemorated the nation’s history. At school in St Paul she had sat silently at the front of the class while her teacher regaled them with tales of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. It was her admiration for these heroic figures that had fuelled her ambition to work in the public service.
After studying government at the University of Minnesota, she had filled in application forms for the FBI and the CIA. Both had asked to interview her, but once she had seen Connor Fitzgerald she had cancelled her appointment with the FBI. Here was a man who had returned from a futile war with a medal he never mentioned, and who continued to serve his country without fanfare or recognition. If she ever expressed these thoughts to Connor, he only laughed and told her she was being sentimental. But Tom Lawrence had been right when he had described Connor as one of the nation’s unsung heroes. Joan would suggest to Maggie that she contact the White House immediately, as it was Lawrence who had asked Connor to take on this assignment in the first place.
Joan was trying to put her thoughts into some logical order when a large green sanding truck passed her on the outside and began moving across into her lane moments before it had fully overtaken her. She flashed her lights, but the truck didn’t pull away as she expected. She checked her rear-view mirror and eased into the centre lane. The truck immediately began to drift across into her path, forcing her to veer sharply into the left-hand lane.
Joan had to decide in an instant whether to slam on her brakes or to try to accelerate past the thoughtless driver. Once again she checked her rear-view mirror, but this time she was horrified to see a large black Mercedes coming up fast behind her. She slammed her foot down on the accelerator as the highway banked steeply to the left near Spout Run. The little Golf responded immediately, but the sanding truck also accelerated, and she couldn’t pick up enough speed to pass it.
Joan had no choice but to move further to her left, almost into the median strip. She looked into her rearview mirror and saw that the Mercedes had also drifted across, and was now close to her rear bumper. She could feel her heart pounding. Were the truck and the car working together? She tried to slow down, but the Mercedes just moved closer and closer to her rear bumper. Joan slammed her foot down on the accelerator again and her car leapt forward. Sweat was running down her forehead and into her eyes as she drew level with the front of the sanding truck, but even with her foot flat on the floor she just couldn’t overtake it. She stared up into the cab and tried to attract the driver’s attention, but he ignored her waving hand, and went on implacably easing the truck inch by inch further to his left, forcing her to slow down and fall in behind him. She checked her rear-view mirror: the Mercedes was, if anything, even closer to her bumper.
As she looked forward the truck’s tailplate rose, and its load of sand began to pour out onto the road. Instinctively Joan slammed on her brakes, but the little car careered out of control, skidded across the ice-encrusted median strip and hurtled down the grass embankment towards the river. It hit the water like a flat stone, and after floating for a moment, disappeared out of sight. All that was left were the skidmarks on the bank and a few bubbles. The sanding truck moved back into the centre lane and continued its journey in the direction of Washington. A moment later the Mercedes flashed its lights, overtook the truck and accelerated away.
Two cars that were heading towards Dulles Airport came to a halt on the median strip. One of the drivers leapt out and slid down the bank towards the river to see if he could help, but by the time he reached the water there was no sign of the car. All that remained were the skidmarks on the snowy bank and a few bubbles. The other driver scribbled down the sanding truck’s licence number. He handed it to the first cop to arrive on the scene, who punched it into his dashboard computer. After a few seconds he frowned. ‘Are you sure you wrote down the correct number, sir?’ he asked. ‘The Washington Highway Department has no record of such a vehicle.’
When Connor was bundled into the back of the car, he found the Chief of Police waiting for him once again. As the driver began the return journey to the Crucifix, Connor couldn’t resist asking Bolchenkov a question.
‘I’m puzzled to know why they’re waiting until Friday to hang me.’
‘Bit of luck, really,’ said the Chief. ‘It seems our beloved President insisted on witnessing the execution.’ Bolchenkov inhaled deeply on his cigarette. ‘And he doesn’t have a spare fifteen minutes in his schedule before Friday morning.’
Connor gave a wry smile.
‘I’m glad you’ve found your tongue at last, Mr Fitzgerald,’ continued the Chief. ‘Because I think the time has come to let you know that there is an alternative.’
21
MARK TWAIN ONCE SAID of a friend, ‘If he didn’t turn up on time, you would know he was dead.’
Once four o’clock had come and gone, Maggie started checking her watch every few minutes. By four thirty she began to wonder if she had been so sleepy when Joan called that she might have misunderstood what she had said.
At five o’clock, Maggie decided it was time to give Joan a call at home. No answer, just a continual ringing tone. Next she tried her car phone, and this time she did get a message: ‘This number is temporarily out of order. Please try again later.’
Maggie began pacing round the kitchen table, feeling sure that Joan must have some news of Connor. It had to be important, otherwise why would she have woken her at two in the morning? Had he been in contact with her? Did she know where he was? Would she be able to tell her when he was coming home? By six, Maggie had decided it was now an emergency. She
switched on the television to check the exact time. Charlie Gibson’s face appeared on the screen. ‘In the next hour we’ll talk about Christmas decorations that even the kids can help you with. But first we’ll go over to Kevin Newman for this morning’s news.’
Maggie began pacing round the kitchen as a reporter predicted that the President’s Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Conventional Arms Reduction Bill was almost certain to be voted down in the Senate now that Zerimski had been elected as the Russian leader.
She was wondering if she should break a lifetime’s rule and try to ring Joan at Langley when a trailer appeared under Kevin Newman’s image: ‘GW Parkway crash involves sanding truck and Volkswagen - driver of car presumed drowned. Details on Eyewitness News at 6.30.‘ The words crawled across the screen and disappeared.
Maggie tried to eat a bowl of cornflakes while the early-morning bulletin continued. Andy Lloyd appeared on the screen, announcing that President Zerimski would be making an official visit to Washington just before Christmas. ‘The President welcomed the news,’ said a reporter, ‘and hoped it would go some way to convincing Senate leaders that the new Russian President wished to remain on friendly terms with America. However, the majority leader of the Senate said he would wait until Zerimski had addressed …’
When Maggie heard the little thud on the mat, she went out into the hall, picked up the seven envelopes lying on the floor and checked through them as she walked back into the kitchen. Four were for Connor; she never opened his letters while he was away. One was a Pepco bill; another was postmarked Chicago, and the letter ‘e’ on ‘Maggie’ was at an angle, so it could only have been Declan O’Casey’s annual Christmas card. The last letter bore the distinctive handwriting of her daughter. She tossed the others to one side and tore it open.
The Eleventh Commandment (1998) Page 19
