The Spy Who Was Left Behind

by Michael Pullara

  “Lali,” I said, “Do you know anyone with a gun?”

  It was dark when we arrived at the ZTV studio. I felt uncomfortably exposed as I walked across the plaza to the front steps. The surrounding buildings blocked the wind and offered excellent sight lines. It was, I thought, an easy place for a sniper to kill an annoying American.

  I waited in the lobby while Lali went to fetch the station manager. He came out and guided me through makeup and into a small office. It was separated from the main studio by a short hallway. There was a nondescript little man wearing an oversized sky-blue sport coat standing in the passage. He looked at me briefly with impassive eyes and then turned back to watch the people in the other room.

  Lali saw me looking at him and smiled. “That’s your bodyguard,” she said. “When he’s not busy protecting you from Gogoladze, he’s a very capable handyman in my neighborhood.”

  The office was cluttered with unused cables and amplifiers. The only window was covered with a blanket. A small desk and chair stood arranged in front of a blank wall. And directly opposite, in the center of the room were lights, camera, and a video monitor.

  Per my request the production staff had made me a separate studio.

  I took off my suit coat and sat behind the desk. I laid out my toys on the tabletop while the station manager fitted me with microphone and earbud. I counted to five in order to test the sound levels and Lali responded into my right ear. She was again providing simultaneous translation for me and everyone who was watching.

  The video monitor displayed the feed from both my camera and from the camera in the other room. I could see Irakli Batiashvili, the former chief of Georgia’s intelligence and information service, settling into one of two chairs on the platform. Black turtleneck, black slacks, black leather jacket—he exuded sophistication and privilege.

  Another man stepped up onto the stage. Shorter, older, balder, Gogoladze had chosen a button-down white shirt, black bomber jacket, and designer jeans.

  “He looks comfortable,” I thought. “And confident.”

  The station manager counted down to the beginning of the show then exited the room. I was alone. The host was the same skinny adolescent who’d interviewed me during my last appearance. He bubbled with enthusiasm as he reminded the audience about the murder of Freddie Woodruff. After providing a little background, he introduced his three guests and quickly segued to a prerecorded interview with Gogoladze.

  “He was my best friend,” said the former chief bodyguard. “I would never kill my best friend.”

  As evidence of his heartfelt sincerity, Gogoladze cited the financial inconvenience that Freddie’s murder had caused him. “I was so upset about his dying in my Niva that I sold that car—at a loss!”

  The recorded segment ended with a close-up of a single tear coursing down Gogoladze’s cheek. It was unclear whether the tear was provoked by the death or the monetary loss. Either way, it was riveting drama.

  I knew from experience that in Georgia interviews of this type were conducted with a single camera and a solitary cameraman. The interview portion of the video had been filmed at a different distance and from a different angle than the teardrop portion. Thus, the only way that the cameraman could have gotten the teardrop shot was if he repositioned the camera and lights for that specific purpose. And that probably meant that Gogoladze had managed to cry on cue. He was apparently fully committed to his role as the heartbroken hero.

  The video monitor shifted from the prerecorded Gogoladze to the live one. He seemed to enjoy watching himself on television.

  “How do you respond to the American lawyer?” the host asked him.

  Gogoladze was ready for the question. His facial expression and posture changed from Grieving Comrade to Aggrieved Civil Servant. He was suspicious, pugnacious, and armed with a lifetime of experience in the intelligence service.

  “What do we know about Michael Pullara?” he asked. Even in Georgian, his tone dripped with the suggestion of secret information. “Do we know whether he actually has a client? Or an office? Do we know whether he is really a lawyer?”

  There is a saying among trial lawyers: If the facts of your case are bad, argue the law; if the law of your case is bad, argue the facts; and if the facts and the law are both bad, then argue the other lawyer.

  Gogoladze was arguing the other lawyer. He wanted me to rise to the bait, to disregard the substance of my case and join him in an argument of my bona fides. He wanted me to fight his fire with my fire.

  But sometimes it is best to fight fire with water. So I took a deep breath—and smiled. “Mr. Gogoladze is suggesting that I am not the best lawyer in the world,” I said softly. “And he’s right: I’m not. But I am the lawyer who is here. And if a great lawyer ever comes to take over this case, I will support him. But until then, I will do the best I can to represent my client’s interests.”

  Gogoladze’s shoulders slumped slightly. It was not the response he had expected. But he was ready with another line of attack.

  “Even if you are a lawyer,” he said, “this is not an area in which lawyers work. Lawyers do not investigate espionage operations. You are CIA—or worse you are a blind tool in the hands of a professional intelligence officer.”

  This was a dangerous attack: a frontal assault on my credibility as the victim’s advocate. It was the kind of accusation that the typical Georgian would reflexively believe—that the truth behind every event was a struggle between powerful governmental forces. “Mr. Gogoladze is suggesting,” I replied, “that I must be acting on behalf of an intelligence service because in his mind it would be crazy to confront the government unless you were supported by a powerful security agency. But I am not an intelligence professional. I am a man who disagrees with what the government has done and wants to make it right.” I leaned forward toward the black lens of the camera. “This is what free people do,” I said.

  Gogoladze was utterly deflated. He had expected confrontation, and I had given him a bear hug of goodwill. It was time to take control of the conversation.

  “I have a question for Mr. Gogoladze,” I said. “In your recent interview you acknowledged that—on the night of the murder—you thought the bullet that killed Freddie had entered the car through the front passenger’s side window. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I inspected the car at the hospital and didn’t find a bullet hole anywhere: not in the metal, not in the glass, nowhere. So it had to be the open window.”

  “And two hours later, you walked into a roadside police station, pointed at Anzor Sharmaidze and his two companions, and said, ‘Arrest them! They killed the American!’ ”

  He smiled. He liked this part better. “Exactly right,” he said.

  “Then—four months later at the trial—you testified that Anzor and his companions were fifteen to twenty meters behind your Niva when you heard the shot.”

  “That’s correct,” he said. “I had just passed them on the road a second or two before.”

  “So my question is this, “I said. “Why did you arrest the only three people on the planet that you absolutely knew could not have committed the murder that you thought had occurred?”

  Gogoladze looked stunned. He had never before encountered American-style cross-examination and so was not prepared for its stinging consequences. He tried to say something but nothing worth translating came out.

  I held up the toy SUV where it could be seen by the camera.

  “In order for a bullet to enter the front passenger’s side window of your car and strike Freddie Woodruff as he sat in the back seat on the right, it would have to have been fired from a very severe angle in front and slightly to the right of the vehicle.” I inserted a red straw into the front passenger’s side window of the toy car to show the path of the bullet. The straw pointed almost directly in front of the toy.

  “And on the night of the murder that’s where you thought the bullet had come from,” I said. Holding the car and straw in one ha
nd, I picked up the Ghostbuster with the other and positioned him forward of the SUV in line with the straw. “Here,” I said. “The killer would have to have been here in order to shoot Freddie through the front passenger’s side window.”

  Then I moved my little plastic soldier behind the car. “But you testified under oath that Anzor Sharmaidze was here—behind the car—when you heard the shot,” I said. “So tell me, sir—why did you arrest Anzor?”

  By now Gogoladze had recovered some of his balance. But he still didn’t answer the question. Instead, he responded with anger and arrogance. “No one has ever questioned my professionalism!” he roared.

  “I apologize, Mr. Gogoladze,” I said softly. “This is the lack of legal skill I was talking about earlier. The truth is, I’m working as hard as I can to question your professionalism. I know housewives who are more professional than you. If you were really a professional you would have shot back at the killers or ordered the local police to close the road or at the very least been able to identify the location of the shooting. But you didn’t do any of those things, did you? All you did was break down weeping for your friend who was shot. And any of the women here could have done that just as well as you did.”

  Gogoladze was speechless. It was unclear whether the cause was rage or humiliation. But one thing was certain: No one had ever talked to him this way. And if it weren’t for the cameras, I would be paying the price for such insolence.

  “So tell us, Mr. Gogoladze,” I said. “Why did you arrest Anzor Sharmaidze? Did you think he fired a bullet through the open window and then ran to the back of the car before you heard the shot? Or did you think he had a special gun that could shoot around corners? Why did you arrest the one person in the world that you absolutely knew could not have committed the crime you thought had occurred?”

  Gogoladze did not reply. He could not think of an answer, he could not run away, and the camera simply refused to stop looking at him. He was trapped.

  And then I heard the soothing voice of Irakli Batiashvili.

  “Eldar,” he said. “You know that the murder did not happen this way. The killing of Freddie Woodruff was the work of a great regional power.”

  Great regional power was code language understood by every Georgian: It meant Russia.

  Gogoladze was quiet for a second or two. Then, without looking up, he responded to the former minister. “Yes,” he said. “That is true.”

  Eldar Gogoladze—the principal eyewitness—had just confessed that Anzor Sharmaidze did not kill Freddie Woodruff. He had just acknowledged that the Russians had killed the American CIA officer. I felt exhilaration, exhaustion, and awe. And all I wanted was to get back to Lali’s house as quickly as possible.

  * * *

  The next day Gogoladze was fired from his job as vice president at Cartu Group. That afternoon I sat on the bed in Lali’s guest room and tried to puzzle out the connection: Why would acknowledging Russia’s role in Woodruff’s murder get Gogoladze fired by Georgia’s biggest oligarch?

  Lali tapped on the door and walked in without waiting for an answer. In her hand she had a copy of a videotape of the previous night’s program. “I saw my neighbor as I was coming in,” she said. “He’s a lawyer too, you know. He graduated Moscow State University with a red diploma—highest honors! He came out as I was parking my car. ‘I saw your American on television last night,’ he said. ‘It was impressive. The West does not usually send us A-level professionals.’ ”

  To be adjudged A-level by a superbly educated Georgian was a big compliment—the first and best I would receive. I was savoring the words when I heard a loud knock at the front. I followed Lali to the entry hall and was standing there as she unbolted the four locks and swung open the reinforced metal door. It was my bodyguard, the little man in the oversized sky-blue sport coat I’d seen standing in the hallway between the two studios at ZTV.

  He’d come for his $20.

  “Thank you very much,” I said, with Lali translating. “Knowing that you were there gave me a lot of confidence.”

  The little man bowed and turned to leave, but I stopped him.

  “May I see it?” I asked.

  He smiled in a way that made him look taller as he unbuttoned his sport coat. There, in a small holster on his hip, was an antique revolver. Not much of a gun, really. But big enough to give me courage.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  A GEORGIAN EDUCATION

  The day of our courtroom proceeding finally came. A TV news crew was waiting for Lali and me outside the courthouse. Waiting for me in the lobby was a stumpy peasant woman dressed all in black. Gray hair peeked out from under her headscarf. I judged her to be about sixty, but her eyes looked older. Her hands were worn and calloused. They shook as she reached toward me. She touched the hem of my coat and rubbed it gently between thumb and forefinger.

  Lali gasped. “It’s Anzor’s mother,” she said.

  Complex commercial litigation is a bloodless practice. It is more often than not millionaires suing billionaires over money that neither one needs for his next meal. I never meet my clients’ parents and no one ever anoints me as his or her last best hope. As a result, I wasn’t prepared for this mother’s tidal wave of adoration. I began to panic as it washed over me: a salty ocean of expectation. I hoped she would like me as much when we left.

  Tamaz Inashvili was already in the courtroom. He had agreed to sit second-chair and advise me on the nuances of Georgian law and procedure. I expected the presentation to be fact-intensive and so didn’t anticipate any discussion of substantive law; nevertheless, I wanted to be prepared.

  The accommodations were spare: two tables, a metal desk, a few wooden chairs. But the layout told me a lot about litigation in Georgia; there was no spectators’ gallery, no jury box, no court reporter’s desk. Georgian process occurred in relative secrecy, with no permanent record other than the final order. If a particular piece of evidence was problematic, the government-appointed judge could ignore it with impunity.

  In addition, there was a noticeable dearth of symbols in the room, a complete absence of the mythic and patriotic images that define a community’s understanding of Good and Evil. There were no reminders of the struggle for human dignity, the inalienable rights of Man, or the sanctity of Law. In the absence of these tokens, the room felt less like a Temple of Justice and more like a Bus Station of Pragmatism.

  All in all, the setting did not inspire confidence.

  The young prosecutor—the same one with whom I’d previously met—had already arrived and was seated at the table directly in front of the judge’s metal desk. Tamaz, Lali, and I were relegated to the second table: one that was perpendicular to and to the side of the other participants.

  “That’s where the prosecutor general always sits,” said Tamaz, “in the center.”

  The regional judge entered the courtroom from a door behind her desk. She was young but wore her black robes comfortably and with confidence. Lali spoke first, saying that she was prepared to translate the proceedings simultaneously (Georgian to English for me and English to Georgian for everyone else). There were a few introductions and then the judge asked for opening statements.

  Tamaz and I had discussed the possibility of his making a brief statement regarding the legal standard governing my client’s request to reopen the murder case. I hadn’t vetted his remarks but assumed they would be limited to a few sentences about the relevant sections of the criminal code. I was wrong.

  He stood up and began talking. And talking. And talking. He reviewed the history of the case, the details of the investigation, the principal issues of the trial. He described the allegations of torture and the suspicious provenance of Anzor’s confession. He urged all the same arguments he had made twelve years before.

  And he ate up my time.

  Over the years, I have paid a lot of legal consultants a lot of money for advice on how best to influence judges and juries. One of the pearls of rhetorical wisdom
that I acquired from these pundits is called the Rule of Primacy: People remember best that which they hear first. And the first thing my judge was hearing was a chaotic torrent of almost indecipherable stutters. Tamaz seemed agitated, almost defensive—as though someone had insulted his professionalism. He listed one after another the heroic efforts that he made on behalf of Anzor Sharmaidze until he and everyone else in the room were tired. And then he sat down.

  I was mad and confused. I had no idea why Tamaz had hijacked my hearing. I had evidence to present and arguments to make. But this was the first time I’d tried to do it with someone literally talking over me. Lali listened to me and spoke to the judge at the same time: a kind of human megaphone that heard soft-spoken English and spoke amplified Georgian. I had to disregard Lali’s voice while at the same time searching for the judge’s time-delayed reactions. Normally, I watch my audience for nonverbal cues: facial expressions, postural changes, eye movements—all these things give me hints about how the person is reacting to what I’ve just said. But with simultaneous translation, I had to guess first which statement the judge was reacting to and second what her reaction meant in the context of Georgian culture.

  I processed through the Batiashvili affidavit, the Tserekashvili witness statement, and the FBI reports without any objections from the young prosecutor. This was by itself remarkable. In American trial practice, testimony and documents are carefully scrutinized before the finder of fact is allowed to consider them as evidence. Lawyers argue the minutiae of intricate rules regarding what is reliable and authentic. These procedural skirmishes often decide the outcome of a case.

  But in a Georgian court, evidence was not required to meet a minimum standard of trustworthiness prior to it being presented to the judge. This absence of procedural safeguards made me feel unmoored. I finished my presentation and sat down. The young prosecutor shuffled through some papers, stood up, and—instead of addressing the court—began talking to me.