Secret Justice

by James W. Huston

  “How can that be?”

  “That’s where the tribunal is going to be.”

  “Wow,” she considered. “What could I do about him?”

  “What I want you to do is about me, not him.”

  “Your trial?”

  “My crucifixion.”

  “You want me to stay and help? I really feel like I can be more use to you here. The timing is horrible.”

  “No. You have to go. They told you if you didn’t accept now, they were going to fill the job with someone else.”

  “The job isn’t that important, Kent. I would much rather be with you.”

  “The only reason I’m in trouble is because of a doctor on your ship. He—”

  “A doctor? The surgeon? Dr. Satterly?”

  “The very guy.”

  “How could he have anything to do with you?” she asked.

  “He was treating one of the terrorists. The guy who died. Satterly got pissed and decided to make me his personal crusade.”

  Andrea shook her head in disbelief. “He has a good reputation in the medical community. He’s supposed to be a good guy.”

  “I just know he’s got it in for me. See if there’s anything out there that I can use in my defense.”

  Andrea hesitated. She was suddenly feeling a slight pinch she had not felt before. “You want me to spy for you?”

  “Just listen carefully. Tell me if you hear anything.”

  “I don’t know. The medical community is kind of close—”

  “This guy is trying to send me to prison, Andrea. I’m not asking you to go through his underwear drawer. Just pay attention.”

  Andrea smiled awkwardly. “I don’t know . . .”

  The last bus was preparing to leave the gate for her airplane to Rome. Rat walked toward it with Andrea’s carry-on bag. “You need to go.”

  Andrea was silent.

  “See if you can figure out why that doctor has it in for me. And if you get a chance to meet Duar, see what you think of him.”

  Andrea took her carry-on bag and hesitated. After a moment, a long moment for each of them, she walked through the door of the bus without any farewell, without a kiss or even a reassuring look.

  Rat watched to see if she would at least turn around, at least wave. She entered the bus and never looked back.

  * * *

  Rat had only met Sarah St. James once. He had corresponded with her several times by the encrypted e-mails that had probably given rise to the difficulties that he now found himself in. As much as he hated calling in political chips, or asking people to do anything for him, it was time.

  He assumed Brad Walker, St. James’s assistant, would get to work early. He had been waiting for him for fifteen minutes, since five forty-five. Rat watched each car pull up to the gate of the White House. He recognized Walker in his car, fourth car in line waiting to get into the gate. Rat crossed the sidewalk to Walker’s American sedan and rapped on the window. Walker looked up startled. He didn’t recognize Rat. Walker wasn’t sure what to do. His car was trapped between others waiting to enter the White House grounds. He reached his left hand to lower the electronic window and hesitated.

  Rat tapped on the window again. He didn’t look like a homeless man, or some psycho serial-killer, but still . . . Walker glanced at the gate where the security guards were now carefully watching Rat. He lowered the window three inches. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Walker, Kent Rathman.” Rat could almost hear Walker searching for that name to generate some recognition.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I need a ride through the gate. I need you to take me to see Ms. St. James.”

  “I can’t do that—”

  “Sure you can. I’m Rat.”

  “Of course, sorry. I wasn’t . . . expecting you. I’m still not sure I can just take you in. You have to have an appointment. And then the National Security Adviser doesn’t just have people drop in to see her—”

  “Open the door,” Rat said.

  The door locks sounded and Rat’s door opened. He climbed into the front seat of the sedan and closed the door behind him. “Thanks. I’ve left a couple of messages for her, but she’s awfully busy. I probably could’ve done this a different way, but I wanted to meet you anyway.”

  Walker was clearly uncomfortable. He felt threatened, but knew he shouldn’t be. He knew of Rat’s magical reputation in the special forces and how loyal he had been to Sarah St. James in spite of his reluctance to become entangled in politics. “I wanted to meet you too. You’re sort of legendary,” Walker offered.

  “How do you like your job?”

  “Great. Tough to get, but very exciting.”

  They pulled up to the gate at the White House and Walker showed the guard his identification. “This is Mr. Kent Rathman. He’s with me.”

  The guard leaned over and looked through the window at Rathman. “You have any identification, sir?”

  Rathman pulled out his active duty military identification and handed it to the guard.

  The guard went to the guardhouse and entered Rat’s name into the database. He returned the ID and waved them through.

  Rat had never been in the White House parking lot. He got out of Walker’s car and followed him toward the white building that seemed bigger close up. They walked around to the special entrance and went directly in. Secret Service greeted them at the door and checked their IDs again. Walker greeted them by name and went directly through the hallway toward the National Security Adviser’s office. Walker said quietly, “She’s not going to be too happy about your unscheduled appearance. She’s pretty organized and doesn’t like her schedule to be disrupted.”

  “This shouldn’t take that long.”

  Walker turned into Sarah St. James’s office. “Morning, Millie. Is Ms. St. James at her desk?”

  “As always.”

  “This is Kent Rathman. Millie Grossman.”

  Rat nodded and extended his hand. “Morning.”

  “Morning,” Millie said as she studied him with deep curiosity.

  “Can we go in?” Walker asked.

  Millie nodded.

  Walker opened the door and went right into Sarah St. James’s plush office. She glanced up from her desk, expecting to see Walker, but then recognized Rat. “Mr. Rathman. What a surprise,” she said with a tone of annoyance. “Do you know Brad? Is that how you got in here?”

  Rathman entered the office and looked around. “We just met. I came here to see you.”

  “I’m afraid we have a morning brief in just a few minutes. We don’t really have time for a meeting that was not on our calendar.”

  “That’s okay. I have time.”

  St. James could tell that he was intent on seeing her, and resistance was going to get her nowhere. “Sit down.”

  “No, I need to get going. I just wanted to ask you a couple of quick questions.”

  “Do you and I need privacy? Is it okay if Mr. Walker stays?”

  “Sure. . . . You have any idea how this happened? Any idea what’s going on—the behind-the-scenes stuff? How did I end up in somebody’s crosshairs?”

  St. James glanced at the clock and replied, “What do you think?”

  “They think I work for you, and it’s a way to get to you—to short-circuit your little private intelligence network.”

  “And who do you think it is?” she asked as she gathered up several documents and placed them in her thin briefcase. She turned to Brad Walker. “Are you ready for the brief? We haven’t even gone over what you’re going to say.”

  “I was kind of hoping we could grab a couple of minutes to go over a few things,” Walker replied.

  Rat realized his clever idea of seeing Sarah St. James had been misguided. He was irritating her, his only friend in the administration, the only one who might actually do something for him. “I should have called and gotten an appointment. I’m sorry. I may have to go out of town soon. I just wanted to talk to you for a second.”
>
  She walked around the desk without replying, heading for the door and her brief.

  “I’ve heard it’s the Secretary of Defense.”

  She stopped. “I think so too, but I can’t prove it.”

  “Any way you can make this trial stop?” There. He had asked the question he had come to ask. He had done what he hated to do, asked for help.

  She put the long leather strap from her briefcase over her shoulder. “Did you have to torture that guy?” St. James asked.

  “I wasn’t leaving without Duar. We knew he was there.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The agent. He would only signal if he saw Duar with his own eyes.”

  “So why did you have to almost drown that man?”

  He hesitated. “Do you really want me to go into it?”

  “Yes.”

  He knew better. “Field interrogation. Why such interest in this guy?”

  “Because he died! People care when other people die. We try to live by higher standards than the run-of-the-mill terrorist, Rat. Do you not get that?”

  “How many people were killed in the raid?” he asked.

  St. James hesitated. “I don’t know. Ten or twelve.”

  “Sixteen terrorists. How many Americans killed or wounded?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does that make?”

  “Because everybody knows a lot more about this one guy who died of pneumonia than about others who died, or were wounded. Even Americans.”

  “You’re missing the point. They have charged you with something. Either you did it, or you didn’t. Pointing out other things that make people look stupid won’t help you advance your cause at all.”

  “Are we supposed to be real nice to these guys? We can kill them, but at some point, we can’t even touch them. I want to know when that is.”

  “When they stop fighting. When they lay down their arms.”

  Rat smiled. “These guys never quit fighting. They don’t surrender, like POWs. They just try to find a new way to cut your throat. You ever read about Guadalcanal?”

  “Some,” she replied defensively.

  “After the first real battle with the Marines when the Japanese had their asses handed to them, the injured Japanese lay on the battlefield moaning. The Marines ran out to help them. We wanted to take them prisoner, give them medical attention, and treat them properly under the Geneva Convention—even though Japan never signed the Geneva Convention. When the Marines got there to help, the Japanese soldiers rolled over and handed the Marines live hand grenades killing the Marines and themselves. You aware of that?”

  “Not really.”

  “So what do you do when you’re a Marine after the next battle and a Japanese soldier is moaning on the next battlefield?”

  St. James shook her head subtly. She didn’t want to answer.

  “You shoot him, that’s what you do. We tried to give them quarter, and they wouldn’t take it. So you shoot them. That could be considered shooting a wounded soldier, or a POW, which is ‘illegal.’ Would you be okay with that?”

  “What does that have to do with what you did?”

  “I just want to see if there’s any ambiguity in your mind. Any room for discussion. Or if everything is crystal clear. Because I find when things are crystal clear, I’m usually dealing with someone who has never been in combat.”

  “This is different. This man—”

  “And when he knows the location of the most wanted terrorist in the world, you can’t ask him in a way that might make him uncomfortable? Seriously? Is that what you want? I ask him, he flips me off, and I say oh, okay, you win, and we come home without Duar? That’s what you want?”

  St. James had heard enough. “I have to go brief.”

  “One other thing. Do you really think we’ll get anything out of Duar by interrogating him with no threat of harm behind it?”

  “I would expect our interrogators to be very effective.”

  “You expect wrong. We’re more hamstrung than a cop. We don’t have anything to give. What lesser sentence do we have to offer? Better conditions? More food? A call home? Money? New identity? We’re not dealing with the mafia here. These murderers spit in our faces. What do you have to offer Duar that will persuade him to talk?”

  “We’ve had our best interrogators on it—”

  “I was there. I saw him in action.”

  “And?” she asked.

  “He didn’t get anything, nor will he. You know what we did in Guantánamo?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “They called it stress and duress. They’d make them kneel for hours, or make them wear hoods, or spray-paint goggles and make them wear them.”

  “We got some good information.”

  He nodded. “Some. But you’ll never crack a really hard case like that. You know what they tell us?”

  She stared at him.

  “If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time you probably aren’t doing your job. Believe that? Of course when you do, theoretically, they charge you like a criminal and claim they don’t know anything about it.”

  “All we can do is try. I need to go.” She paused. “So how do we get anything out of him?”

  “Render him.”

  “What?”

  “Send him to a friend. Like Egypt. They’re dying to interrogate him. He blew up our damned embassy in Cairo—a bunch of Egyptians were killed. They aren’t happy about that, and Sudan borders Egypt to the south. They’re scared to death he’s going to export his poison across the border more, and even hook up with the Islamic Jihad. We give him to them, and who knows, maybe they’ll have more luck.”

  “They’ll torture him.”

  Rat shook his head. “We make them promise not to. But Duar won’t know that. He’ll think they have a free hand and may sing just to avoid the unknown.”

  St. James considered. “We couldn’t let them have a free hand.”

  “If we give them limits, they’ll . . . probably go along.”

  She didn’t like it.

  “Don Jacobs is already trying to get authority to get Duar to Egypt. If you back it, it will happen.”

  “I’ll think about it. I’m not very comfortable with it.”

  Rat shook his head as she prepared to hurry to the brief.

  She stopped. “What?”

  “Why send me—send the team—into Sudan to capture him?”

  “So we could learn about his plans, his network.”

  “How? Exactly how did you plan to learn all that?”

  “Interrogation.”

  Rat fell silent, then changed the subject. “The Secretary of Defense isn’t my direct boss right now, but he can definitely ruin me. He got the DOJ to do the work for him, but you’re the only one I know who might be able to stop this.”

  She walked by him and out the door.

  He followed her into the hallway. “Couldn’t you talk to Stuntz? Or the Attorney General?”

  She stopped. “I already have.”

  Rat was caught off guard. “And nothing?”

  “I can’t stop it. You’re on your own.”

  Chapter

  11

  Right this way, ma’am,” the petty officer said to Andrea as he led her down the ladder toward her stateroom. She had just landed aboard the Belleau Wood on a CH-53 helicopter from Kenya. It had been a jarring flight, full of vibrations and misgivings. She looked forward to her new position, but the closer she got to the ship, the more she wondered whether she had made the right decision.

  She had left Washington angry. She had wanted Rat to know it too. His request had confirmed a deep suspicion she had had about him, that to him, his job was more important than almost anything else, like he had some special privileged position. The idea of him torturing a man to death had changed how she saw him. She selfishly prayed he would get off, but wasn’t sure that was the right result ethically. Maybe he deserved to be convicted. He sure hadn’t denied what had h
appened; he believed it was justified somehow because of who the man was. She couldn’t get herself to look at it that way. She had tried. She loved Rat and wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt in every way. She trusted him, but this had cast him in a new light. It was troubling.

  Being on the Belleau Wood would be a good break for her. She would have time to think, and time to practice medicine as a professional. She’d have time to be herself and see how she really felt about Rat. Maybe it would change things. If that was the result, so be it.

  “This is it, ma’am,” the petty officer said as he stopped in front of her stateroom door and ran the magnetic key through the reader. The idea of having her own private stateroom aboard a huge warship was exciting to her. She truly felt part of the Navy. It was one thing to wear the uniform, to live on Navy bases and work at Navy hospitals, even to be the flight surgeon for the Blue Angels as she had been before Bethesda, but going to sea on a warship was the real Navy.

  She followed him into the room, impressed by its size. It was obviously a commander’s stateroom, probably reserved for the commanding officer of a helicopter squadron, a lieutenant colonel or a Navy commander. But since there were few other female officers with whom she could share, she had a room to herself.

  The petty officer explained the calendar for laundry pickup, the phone number to the stateroom, and showed her how to fold down the bed and the desk. She fought back a smile as he closed the door behind him. Suddenly the door opened again and he stepped back through. “Sorry,” he said, knocking on the door even though he was already inside. “I forgot to tell you something. Dr. Satterly asked if he could meet you for dinner tonight. He said he would stop by your stateroom about 1730 and pick you up, show you where the wardroom was. Would that be okay?”

  Andrea was surprised. “Is that customary?”

  The petty officer avoided her gaze. “Not that I’ve heard, ma’am, but I wouldn’t really know.”

  “Let me guess,” Andrea said. “He’s single.”

  “I believe he was recently divorced,” the petty officer said, not quite grinning.