False Witness (53 page)

He turned toward her, his face serious and drawn. Carzak looked as tired as Jamie felt. “Sometimes, in the interest of a greater justice, in the interest of serving and saving millions of innocent people, compromises are made. That's the whole purpose of the witness protection program in the first place, really.

“I want to make it up to you, Jamie.” He hesitated, then added, “Assuming for the sake of argument that what you say is true. But I can't recommend a million. You don't get a jury under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In a post-9/11 environment, I can't see a judge giving you more than a few hundred thousand for this claim. Without a reasonable number, I can't get the settlement approved by the deputy attorney general. And believe me, he will need to personally authorize this deal.”

“Will you drop the Farnsworth subpoena?” Jamie asked.

“We just wanted to know if he has the algorithm.”

“Will you drop the subpoena?”

Carzak waited and thought. After a few seconds, he shook his head ever so slightly as if he was still convincing himself. “We may be able to obtain the algorithm through other means. Tell you what. If you're willing to settle for two hundred and fifty thousand and agree to a confidentiality order, I'll release Wellington's subpoena.”

“Seven fifty.”

Carzak frowned and shook his head. “Jamie, I think a judge might be somewhat sympathetic to our predicament. If this algorithm had made it into the hands of the mob, it would have been a complete disaster. I can recommend five hundred thousand but even that's a stretch.”

Jamie hated this. It seemed like she and Carzak had just sat down at a Vegas poker table, both trying to bluff the other, as if justice were some kind of game. To Jamie, justice was anything but a game. It was a calling. A chance to avenge some very personal losses. A sacred thing.

But definitely
not
a game.

“Seven fifty,” she repeated. This time, she meant it. She would blow this whole charade wide open, expose everything the government had done, if Carzak dared to offer her one penny less. She didn't even care about the money all that much, although she wouldn't turn it down. There was something far greater at stake than money changing hands.

Carzak must have read it in her eyes. “I'll see what I can do,” he said.

“That's not good enough,” Jamie insisted. “Do you have the authority to approve this deal, or do we need to get the deputy attorney general on the phone?” She paused, unblinking. “If I walk out that door, the deal's off.”

“Give me ten minutes,” Carzak said. Jamie nodded and left him alone in his office.

Fifteen minutes later, he ushered Jamie back in and told her they would have the paperwork and check ready by the end of the week. He reiterated the confidentiality provisions and had her sign a brief statement. Carzak agreed to release Wellington's subpoena. Jamie agreed to release all claims arising from the kidnapping and agreed not to talk with anybody about the incident.

“
Anybody
means just that,” Carzak reiterated. “No exceptions—public or private. We can't, of course, keep you from testifying about these events if you're compelled to do so in some kind of criminal case by a court subpoena. But the final paperwork will require you to contact me if you ever receive such a subpoena. That will give me a chance to have the court quash the subpoena based on national security interests. Are those confidentiality and release terms acceptable?”

Jamie assured Carzak she understood. They shook hands, and Carzak told her that she was going to make an outstanding lawyer.

“One last question,” Jamie said, watching Carzak's face for any hint of the answer. “Assuming, hypothetically, that it was my government who kidnapped me—would that idea have come from the FBI agent involved or from this office?”

Carzak didn't blink. “The government didn't kidnap you, Jamie; the mob did.” He lowered his voice a notch, his face oozing sincerity. “But if the government had done this, I can assure you that it would not have been initiated by this office.”

She knew the first statement was a lie.
But if he's lying about the second part,
Jamie thought,
it's a world-class performance.

She should have left celebrating. Wellington didn't have to testify. The key to the algorithm would never leave his hands. Jamie could wipe out her student loans with a fraction of the settlement and still have enough to live on for ten years. If money could buy justice, Carzak had just provided a nice down payment.

Yet somehow, Jamie felt like she had been played. She hated this feeling of compromise, of feeling like she'd sold her soul one little piece at a time. Beating the government at its own game brought no real satisfaction. She wanted to be able to trust men like Carzak, prosecutors sworn to uphold the law and protect the citizens.

When Jamie became a prosecutor, things would be different. She would bust the bad guys, all right, but not sacrifice her own morals in the process. She would not break the law in order to convict criminals. There had to be a line, she decided as she walked away from the federal building. A line she wouldn't cross.

A person had to determine where that line was before she started practicing, or the temptation would be too great in the heat of battle. Especially for someone like Jamie—a crusader, someone who hated to lose, someone with some very personal reasons to combat crime. Jamie would never cross that line, she told herself.

But something inside her didn't quite believe it. She knew in her heart that she would use any means necessary to make sure her mother's killer, now sitting on death row, received his ultimate punishment. She would continue to do whatever it took to ensure that the men who killed Snowball got what they deserved.

That was different, she told herself. Personal tragedies. As a prosecutor, she would maintain a professional distance from the crimes. She would be vengeance personified, a scourge on the criminals, but she would not compromise integrity or ethics just to achieve some misguided notion of justice.

She beat back that skeptical voice in her head, the one claiming that the system
required
those kinds of compromises. She buried it someplace deep in her own subconscious. If she couldn't walk the line, then why even become a lawyer? Why become a prosecutor especially—with all the power of the state at her disposal?

Jamie had learned advocacy well from her law school professors. By the time she climbed into her 4Runner, she had convinced herself it was true. Jamie Brock, representing the people of the state of Georgia, would never compromise just to get a conviction. There were some things in life more important than winning.

90

Thursday, April 24

Los Angeles

As Walter Snead's grand jury testimony ground to a conclusion, Allan Carzak had to admit that the law school professor made a formidable witness. In the last two days, Snead had painted a graphic and detailed picture of justice for sale in Los Angeles—crooked lawyers buying verdicts in civil cases and simultaneously selling out their criminal defense clients. He had a nearly photographic memory, testifying without notes about the particulars of cases and meetings from four or five years ago. His details always checked out with the corroborating documents that Carzak and his team had assembled from Snead's computer and legal files.

Getting the grand jury to indict would not be a difficult matter. Defense lawyers weren't even allowed in the grand jury room—all of the proceedings were conducted in secret. Carzak had often claimed he could have indicted the pope if he had wanted to. Thanks to a wealth of damning testimony from Snead, this grand jury had more than enough to issue blanket indictments that would shake the Los Angeles legal community. Plus, the feds in California had already used Snead's particulars to flip another crooked lawyer, one who would testify at trial in the light of day as part of his plea agreement.

These were the best of times for the career of Allan Carzak. The big shots at justice knew about his role in helping to procure the Abacus Algorithm, though thus far the encrypted code had proved impenetrable. He was personally handling the Atlanta grand jury proceedings that would generate additional indictments against the Manchurian Triad members and several of their cohorts. At the same time, he had been asked to question Walter Snead in front of this Los Angeles grand jury, since Carzak and his team were the ones most familiar with Snead's testimony, the ones who negotiated the deal requiring Snead to testify in the first place.

As Thursday afternoon drew to a close, Carzak turned to his last area of questioning: the deal between Snead and the federal government.

Carzak had warned Snead and the U.S. attorney for the southern district of California that he would cover this ground. Carzak always informed grand jurors of plea bargains and deals that might be used to question the credibility of a witness. That way, when the defense attorneys eventually got their hands on the grand jury transcript, they couldn't attack the prosecutors for a failure to disclose exculpatory evidence. Plus, it only served to make the grand jurors trust Carzak more—he appeared so forthcoming.

Snead handled the questions about the deal without flinching. Yes, he had been granted immunity. In fact, he had insisted that the government enroll him in the witness protection program. He couldn't provide details of where he had relocated, of course, but the government had given him a fresh start in exchange for testifying here today. Snead even admitted, rather arrogantly in the opinion of Carzak, that his deal included the proviso that the government could not call him as a witness at trial. He was only required to provide this grand jury testimony before he disappeared forever.

But Snead was adamant in saying his testimony had not been bought. It was all true, he claimed, looking the jury dead in the eye. Every word of it.

Carzak nodded his affirmation, then took a few steps toward the witness. Carzak didn't appreciate crooks who tried to game the system. It was one thing to negotiate a deal with the government—such dealings greased the wheels of justice every day. But it was
the way
this deal got cut that stuck in Allan Carzak's craw.

“You understand that your immunity applies to any criminal activity associated with the practice of law in Los Angeles and in particular the allegations of bribing judges; is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you also understand that you have immunity with regard to any dealings you might have had with Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman and the Chinese mafia; is that also correct?”

“Yes.”

“But you do know, Mr. Snead, that if you testify falsely today or have misled the government in any way about these events—in other words, if you have defrauded the government in the process of obtaining this deal—you don't have immunity for those types of actions.”

Snead took a drink of water. He stared at Carzak as if trying to read the man's mind. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. “Of course not.”

Carzak brought out a personal laptop computer and had the court reporter mark it as a government exhibit. “Is this your laptop, Mr. Snead?”

Snead took the computer and inspected it, snarling at Carzak, undoubtedly wondering why they had departed from the script. “Without turning it on to make sure, it appears to be.”

“You will recall that the government seized this computer pursuant to a search warrant issued last week. Is that your recollection?” Carzak smiled as he asked the question. He knew how much Snead hated the smile.

“Yes, I believe that's correct.”

“Did you know, Mr. Snead, that your computer hard drive retains evidence of every document produced and a log of every website ever accessed?”

“I don't doubt that, though I fail to see the relevance of it.”

Carzak loved this moment. He studied Snead's face. The scowl lines were carved deep into the man's forehead. Snead probably knew that Carzak was now toying with him, but he obviously hadn't figured out the details just yet. Carzak glanced quickly at the jurors, giving them a watch-this look. “You know, Mr. Snead, there was one thing that always bothered me in the case against the Manchurian Triad. You have any idea what that was?”

“No, Mr. Carzak,” Snead said sarcastically, “I'm afraid I left my mind-reading crystal ball at home.”

“After four years of hiding out, why would David Hoffman write a letter to Johnny Chin and try to sell the algorithm to the Chinese mob?” Carzak started pacing in front of the witness. He was no longer technically in question mode, but this was a grand jury. There was no judge to rule him out of order, and Snead knew better than to start an argument here.

“If Hoffman wanted to sell the algorithm on the black market—even the encrypted algorithm—would he really pick the one organized-crime group that already had a grudge against him for killing several of its members? And even assuming that Hoffman sent the letter, how did the Manchurian Triad find him? The only people who knew where he lived were his wife, the federal marshals, the FBI, and his attorney. That would be you, Mr. Snead.”