Secret Justice

by James W. Huston

  DeLong had been listening intently. “What’s the second ship? Where is it going?”

  “It’s called the Monrovian Prince. It’s a large container ship and it’s headed for Jacksonville, Florida.”

  DeLong frowned and leaned back, thinking. “What do they want with a large container ship?”

  “Depends on what’s in the containers. What if there’s a nuke in there? Or . . . smallpox or anthrax?”

  “Possible, but where would they get those?” He sat forward quickly. “And who is doing this? Whose containers are they? If they came off the Tbilisi are they Georgian?” His mind was racing, trying to correlate everything he had seen over the last two weeks in secret message traffic, terrorist warnings, alerts, hunches, and opinions of those in Washington he respected. “Not up to us to know everything. That’s Langley’s job. Get this off to Washington right away. They may have some other pieces of this puzzle.”

  “You want to look at the message before I send it off?”

  DeLong nodded. “Get it to me in fifteen minutes.”

  * * *

  The Navy officers aboard the Belleau Wood had spent countless hours in the officers’ mess discussing the difficulty of proving the case against Duar and watching Elizabeth Watson sitting by herself reviewing documents or notebooks full of something or other. They watched as her face grew clouded from the crushing burden on her shoulders.

  As she pulled the chair back and sat at the counsel table her face still showed the burden they perceived. That night, like several before it, she had lain awake terrified of losing the case and watching Wahamed Duar go free. She visualized him demanding a helicopter from the United States to take him back to his home in Sudan. He would return a conquering hero. And if the images of the trial—the Kangaroo Trial as many countries were calling it—were absent from television, the images of Duar stepping off an American helicopter in triumph would be everywhere.

  The judge and the court were seated. The rest of the room followed.

  Judge Graham looked at Elizabeth. “Call your first witness.”

  Elizabeth stood, looked to the back of the wardroom where a wooden door was closed, and said, “The United States calls Suzanne Parks.”

  A first-class petty officer in his dress white uniform opened the door and bellowed into the passageway, “Suzanne Parks!”

  A short woman in a pantsuit walked briskly into the courtroom carrying a file. She walked between the counsel tables and to the witness chair, which sat on an elevated platform to the right of the judge.

  Elizabeth stood at the lectern. She opened her notebook. “Would you please tell the court where you’re employed?”

  Parks had her hair bound behind her with a clip. She appeared intelligent and energetic. She exuded confidence. “My name is Suzanne Parks. I’m employed by the Central Intelligence Agency in counter-terrorism.”

  The crowd muttered and the journalists scribbled. They were surprised that someone would admit to being employed by the CIA, a prohibition that had long since been abandoned by the Agency, and that a counterterrorism expert would come out of the shadows and actually testify in court. They all took it as a sign of how serious the United States was about this trial and the extent to which they would go to get a conviction.

  “How long have you been employed by the Agency?”

  “Approximately ten years.”

  “Would you summarize your educational background, please?”

  She did.

  “As part of your job, have you had an opportunity to study the operations of Wahamed Duar?”

  “I have been studying his operations and his organization for years.”

  Elizabeth paused, then continued. “How does one study the operations of an organization of someone who doesn’t want their operation and organization to be studied? I don’t suppose that, for example, Mr. Duar published an annual report that describes his operations in a brochure with photographs.”

  Stern rose. “Objection, Your Honor. Counsel’s question is argumentative and attempts to testify instead of asking the witness for testimony.”

  “Overruled,” the judge said. “You may answer the question.”

  Parks nodded in response to the judge’s instruction. “Sure, it’s not easy. But it’s not that difficult sometimes. Mr. Duar for example was rather easy to trace in some regards and rather difficult in others. We have been able to track many of his financial dealings for example, and have attached—frozen—some of his assets and bank accounts around the world. But tracking him personally was much more difficult.”

  “Apparently someone was able to track him, as he was captured in the country of Sudan.”

  Stern rose. “Objection, leading. Additionally, Your Honor, whether it was Wahamed Duar who was captured in Sudan is one of the fundamental issues in this trial. It cannot simply be asserted as fact by counsel, when there is currently no proof before this court that Wahamed Duar was captured anywhere, let alone Sudan.”

  “Sustained. Please rephrase, Counsel.”

  “Let’s get down to the basics. How do you know that the person you have been following is Wahamed Duar?”

  “We have a photograph.”

  “Did you bring a copy of that photograph with you?”

  Parks opened the file she had brought and pulled out an eight by ten photograph. “Yes I did. Here it is.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Your Honor, a copy of that photograph has been premarked as Exhibit One.”

  “Very well. Are you offering it into evidence?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Any objection?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. There’s no foundation for this photograph. I have no idea what it is a photograph of, or where it came from, or what it purports to represent. We don’t know—yet, anyway—who took it, when, or where. Nor is there any testimony that it hasn’t been modified or tampered with. Until then, I would ask that Counsel be instructed to refrain from calling that a photograph of Wahamed Duar, whoever he is.”

  “This photograph was taken—”

  “Just a minute,” the judge said. “Commander Watson, do you intend to lay the foundation for this photograph through this witness? If so, please do so before asking her any further questions about its content.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Ms. Parks, can you identify this photograph?”

  “Yes. It was taken by a CIA employee. It is of Wahamed Duar when he was last seen in public in Khartoum,” Parks replied.

  “Move to strike, Your Honor,” Stern protested. “Her testimony is hearsay. She is simply repeating what she has been told. She cannot authenticate the photograph herself.”

  Watson asked, “Ms. Parks, were you present when this photograph was taken?”

  Parks hesitated. Watson had told her she would avoid asking if at all possible. “Yes, I was.”

  Stern sat down, surprised. The gallery was equally surprised. They tried to envision this bubbly American in a pantsuit in Khartoum, taking a photograph of a terrorist who had never been photographed before or since.

  “How did you come to be in Khartoum?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t go into it. It was on Agency business, and I cannot disclose the details.”

  “Did you take the photograph?”

  “I did not.”

  “Does the photograph fairly and accurately represent what it purports to be?”

  “It does.”

  “Did you personally see the man who was photographed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see the person take the photograph that is Exhibit One?”

  “I did.”

  “Has it been modified or changed in any way since it was developed?”

  “No.”

  “Why is it so grainy?”

  “It was taken at night.” She considered how much to reveal. “Without a flash. With very high-speed film.”

  “I offer Exhibit One into evidence, Your Honor.”

  “Exhibit One will be admitted,” the judg
e said.

  Watson lowered her voice. “Do you see the man in this courtroom who is in that photograph?”

  “Objection,” Stern said. “It’s just her—”

  “Overruled.”

  Parks looked at the judge, then said, “Yes. He is sitting at the defense table.”

  “In your work following the operation and organization of Duar, what did you find? What, in other words, were his operations and what was the nature of his organization?”

  “Objection, compound.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Duar has been attacking American interests and threatening the United States for years. He apparently believes that we are responsible for everything evil in the world. He has declared repeatedly his intention to attack the United States, and has done so. We have attributed five terrorist attacks to his organization against Americans and American interests.”

  “Resulting in how many deaths?”

  “One hundred twenty-three.”

  “How do you know it was his organization that was involved in those attacks?”

  “He said so.”

  “Don’t you find that sometimes certain organizations claim responsibility for a particular attack when in fact they had nothing to do with it?”

  “Not anymore. They know that if they claim responsibility for an attack, we will come and get them. People are much less likely to do that for something they didn’t do than they used to be.”

  “Would you summarize for us the terrorist attacks that Duar is being charged with perpetrating against the United States, and the evidence you have that he was responsible?”

  She did, at great length. She showed photographs of the scenes, autopsy photographs, destruction, and death. She made sure everyone in the room, including the journalists, were horrified. She wanted to show Wahamed Duar for what he was—a brutal killer. She reluctantly produced transcripts of cell phone calls by Duar to members of his family, and to his lieutenants. She told of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo in tremendous, conclusive detail.

  “But how do you know it was Duar?”

  “Here are the faxes that were sent claiming responsibility for those very attacks. They were sent to a newspaper in London, and I obtained copies. The newspaper will not publish claims unless it authenticates them from the source. That was true of bin Laden, and it is true of Duar. These were authenticated by the paper’s private sources.”

  “Objection, hearsay!” Stern protested.

  Graham looked at Stern. “Mr. Stern, you have read the rules of the tribunal. The rules of evidence are relaxed. Hearsay is admissible if it is otherwise reliable. You know that. Your objection is overruled.”

  “Your Honor, I’d like to offer these faxes as Exhibits Seventeen, Eighteen, and Nineteen,” Watson requested.

  “They will be admitted.”

  Stern shook his head and sat down.

  Watson turned to look at Stern triumphantly. “Your witness.”

  Chapter

  20

  The South Atlantic was as gray as the sky. The whitecaps broke all around the M/V Monrovian Prince as a light rain began to fall, driven sideways by the steady wind. Tayseer Hotary stepped onto the bridge silently. The captain drank deeply from his oversized coffee mug and stared to the west through the thick bridge windows. The captain turned and frowned, seeing Hotary. “What do you want?” he asked angrily.

  Hotary stood silently.

  “I don’t know how you convinced my company to list you and your men as crew. We don’t need you; you’re in the way.”

  Hotary walked closer to the captain in a menacing way. “Actually it is you that is in the way. Not me.”

  The helmsman and the others on the bridge watched carefully. They had never heard anyone speak to the captain like that.

  Hotary said, “I notice our speed is eight knots.”

  The captain looked at the shaft RPM. “Approximately.”

  “Increase your speed to twelve knots.”

  The captain stared at him in disbelief. “We are to arrive in port on a specific date at a specific time. We calculate the time to get there based on the most efficient speed of the ship, to burn the least amount of oil. That speed, which will put us in port on time, is eight knots. Not twelve.”

  “Increase your speed to twelve knots.”

  “Why the hell should I?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “That’s not good enough for me. This ship will arrive on time. We will do so by transiting the Atlantic at eight knots.”

  Hotary stared out the window at the complete grayness. He stared for two minutes without speaking. The captain finally directed his attention elsewhere.

  Hotary spoke. “Please get on your radio and speak with Mr. Lisbie, your director of operations. Ask him whether you should follow my directions or not.”

  “I don’t need Mr. Lisbie to tell me how to run my ship.”

  “Ask him.”

  The captain considered. Reluctantly he crossed to the back of the bridge, and picked up the radio handset.

  * * *

  Rat sat at the large table full of members of the counterterrorism team at Langley. They had all made it there by 0600, the time Jacobs wanted to start the meeting due to Rat’s trial. Don Jacobs was at the head of the table and nodded at Rat as he sat down. It was the first such meeting he had been invited to. Rat’s pursuit of the Duar organization into Georgia after Sudan had gotten a lot of attention, initially because it was thought he was freelancing too much, but then because it had become obvious that he was on to something and had identified a warm trail with the help of John Johnson of the NSA. Rat had kept Jacobs informed of every step, of every theory he had, and had found him receptive and impressed. Jacobs didn’t care where the information or solution came from, he just cared about results.

  People stared at Rat in his whites as he sat at the table. Very few of them had even had a conversation with a member of the military. They regarded him with curiosity. They all knew about his trial, and had seen his picture everywhere. But to see him in person was somehow more impressive and interesting. They couldn’t take their eyes off him.

  Rat was much less concerned about how he looked than how Jacobs looked. He looked as if he had lost weight; his skin had grown gray and pale. He usually punctuated meetings and conversations with humor and kidding, but that had been missing for about two weeks.

  Rat noticed the bulge in Jacobs’s shirt pocket. He thought he could read “Marlboro” through the fabric. Jacobs had smoked years before but no one in the room had ever seen him smoke. Some thought Jacobs had called this early morning meeting to announce his resignation. They all waited expectantly.

  “Thank you all for coming in this early. I expect to have a full day. We have a situation developing that is frankly keeping me up all night. I think I’ve been missing something. It wasn’t until I talked to Rat yesterday that I got that cold feeling in my stomach. I wanted you to hear what he has to say. He has a rather busy day ahead of him, as we all know, but I wanted him to tell you what he is thinking. Rat?”

  Rat stood and went to the head of the table. Jacobs moved his chair around to the side so he could watch. “Thanks,” Rat said. “Since we captured Duar in Sudan he has been in custody aboard the Belleau Wood. You all know that. He has taken one short vacation during that time—to Egypt—but otherwise has been in custody. Some people, myself included, think that while we may have gotten the head of the snake, the body is still intact. Somehow his organization is still operating. In the files in front of you are the intercepted e-mails that the NSA believes are from his organization. John Johnson gave them to us. He has tracked the servers to Sudan and Georgia. As you’ve probably heard, I was in Georgia at the request of the Georgians to supplement the Green Berets who have been sent there to train them to help them clean out the Pankisi gorge. But they asked for me because they had heard that Duar’s people had fled to Georgia and were operating out of there.

  “The
n we learn that nuclear cores from old Russian RTGs had disappeared and you start to see Duar’s fingerprints everywhere.

  “I thought they would try to get the cores out of the country by ship, and went to the Dardanelles to try to intercept the ship or at least identify it. But we were probably too late. They had too much of a head start. Either they left by air, earlier by ship, or are still in Georgia. I think I just missed them. I think a ship made it out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean undetected.”

  “We know all that,” Shauna Smiley said from the other end of the table.

  Rat glanced at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I know you.”

  “Shauna Smiley. Intelligence.”

  Intelligence, as in the Directorate of Intelligence, not the Directorate of Operations. An analyst, not an operator. But Rat never considered it a possibility that she was an operator. She continued to give him a look of disrespect or judgment. “I think they have several nuclear cores, probably put them on a ship, and are headed for the United States. The thing that put it together for me yesterday, and the reason I went to Don with this, was I got a look at the report on the car bombing in Monrovia. I mean why Liberia? But the FBI report confirmed the early CIA initial impressions that it was military grade C4 and was intended to kill the driver. It was brought off with tremendous precision probably above the skill level of any Liberian anarchist or revolutionary. Somebody else was at work, somebody who was well trained with explosives. And someone who was able to get military-quality C4. The woman was the mother of the director of shipping operations of the Liberian International Shipping Company.

  “Russell told me about some new information,” he said, glancing at Russell Edwards, who nodded. “Yesterday, a Georgian ship pulled in to Liberia and transferred three containers and fifteen men to a Liberian ship headed for the United States.