High Crimes (12 page)

“It’s a
lie
!” he said. “I did a normal tour of duty, then I was sent to Special Forces training at Fort Bragg. I heard of those teams—everyone heard rumors about them over there—but I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t eliminate American soldiers. They’ve forged records or something, trying to make me look like a cold-blooded killer. You can’t possibly believe this, Claire!”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“You can’t believe this, Claire!”

“We can get it excluded,” Grimes said. “It doesn’t have to come up at court-martial.”

“But it’s a goddamned despicable lie! Look, those assassination patrols were such a goddamned closely guarded secret, nobody knew about it. If there’s anything on paper about it, wouldn’t it be top secret or something? It wouldn’t be in my unclassified files!”

Claire sighed in frustration. “That’s true. It would be in the classified stuff.”

She looked at Grimes, who shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll get it excluded. Of course they won’t want that on the record anyway—it’s a government scandal, one of the most shameful secrets of the Vietnam War.”

“What are they telling you about what happened in Salvador?” Tom asked.

“We haven’t seen the records yet,” Claire said. “But Charles tells me discovery starts now, so we’ll see it soon.”

“The good news for you,” Grimes said, “is that we’ll be going to trial soon. The military has a speedy-trial provision. They’ve got to start the court-martial within a hundred-twenty days of the time you were locked up here.”

“But we don’t want a speedy trial,” Claire said. “We need as much time as we can get to comb through the evidence, interview the witnesses. Raise reasonable doubt. We don’t want to try this case half-assed. They’ve been putting this sham together for years, I’ll bet.”

“Hey, you’re in the army now,” Grimes said. “They got the right to force us to trial if they want, when they want. The good news for you, Tom-or-Ron, is that in less than four months you’ll either be out of here or—”

“Or in Leavenworth,” Tom said mordantly. “Or executed.”

“Right,” Grimes agreed with a blitheness that seemed inappropriate. “So the clock’s ticking.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The military
policeman stood straight and tall and perfectly dressed in a perfectly creased uniform. He had whitewalls behind his ears. His shoes appeared to be spit-shined to a mirror gleam. He looked like he’d just stepped out of an inspection box. He was “strac,” Grimes marveled. ‘
Strac
,’ he said, was army lingo for spiffy, impeccably attired, and groomed in the very best, strictest army manner.

He stood guard before a windowless room in the basement of a building at Quantico called Hockmuth Hall, where all classified materials in the Ronald Kubik matter were stored under conditions of the highest security. Outside the room Claire waited with Embry and Grimes.

“This is what we call a SCIF,” Captain Embry told Claire. He pronounced it “skiff.”

“Another new word,” Claire said dryly. “Meaning?”

Embry hesitated.

“Special Compartmental Information Facility,” Grimes said. “Something like that.”

“I think it’s Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility,” Embry said.

“Whatever,” Grimes said.

“I requested a continuance on the 32,” Embry said. “But the investigating officer turned us down.”

“What a surprise,” Grimes said. “Who is he, by the way?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Robert Holt. Nice guy.”

“They’re all nice guys,” Grimes said. “Watch out for nice guys in the military.”

Embry ignored him. “He instructed me that this is a case with national security implications, and any conversations regarding it must be conducted in the SCIF.”

“Whatever that stands for,” Claire said. Grimes caught her eye, which she took to mean
Pay no attention to their instructions
.

“Next time we talk to your husband,” Grimes said, “I want to do it outside the brig. I don’t trust these guys. Who knows who might be listening in?”

“They’re not allowed to listen in on conversations between attorney and client,” Embry said.

“Oh,
I
see,” Grimes said. “You want to tell ’em that, or should I?”

Grimes and Embry had just met this morning, and already Grimes was testing Embry’s patience. But Embry was too polite to rise to the bait. In any case, before Embry had the chance to say anything now, the door to the SCIF was opened by a security officer.

It was just a room, linoleum floors with government-issue green metal tables and gray metal chairs. There were, however, a number of large safes, Sargent & Greenleaf brand, officially approved government safes, that opened with combination locks. Inside were separately locked drawers, each with its own combination lock. Each of them was given a drawer where he or she was to lock up any notes taken. No notes were to be removed from the room. They’d brought yellow legal pads—Grimes had told her not to bother bringing a laptop computer—but even their own handwritten notes had to stay there in the locked drawers. All notes on classified files would become part of an official government file, kept under government control.

Claire found this alarming, even a little ominous. They couldn’t take notes out with them? How could they work anywhere outside this awful little room? The official headquarters of the Ronald Kubik defense was the library at her rented Thirty-fourth Street house, where all their files were kept; how could they work there without notes on the classified files? She was given no satisfactory answer. Neither Embry nor Grimes seemed perturbed by this ridiculous precaution.

She was shown a procedure designed to ensure that no one else looked at her notes. Any papers she chose to leave here would be placed inside a manila envelope, sealed with two-and-a-half-inch brown paper tape, the kind you moisten with a little sponge. The security officer would seal it for her, after which she would sign her initials over the tape’s seal line. That went into another manila envelope, which was then sealed with the same tape and then initialed. That envelope was marked S
ECRET-
S
ENSITIVE
P
ROPRIETARY
and then placed into yet another envelope marked P
RIVATE FOR
_____.

The whole ritual was designed to set the note-taker’s mind at ease, and, indeed, it appeared to be awfully hard for anyone to get to her private notes without being detected, but she put nothing past these people. Anyone who came up with such elaborate and lurid precautions probably had figured out how to penetrate them.

“
Jesus,
” Grimes exclaimed from his seat at an adjoining table. “Either your husband is really some kind of sick fuck or they got some fine creative minds over at the JAG Corps.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Claire.

Grimes waved a sheaf of papers. “CID statement taken in, what, August of 1984. Sergeant Kubik was stationed at Fort Bragg for training, living off-base in Fayetteville at the time. Neighbor, a civilian, lodges a complaint against him.”

Claire approached, tried to read over Grimes’s shoulder.

“Seems the neighbor’s dog kept pissing on Kubik’s rosebushes, Kubik complained a number of times, and then one morning he grabbed the dog, slit its throat, and hung it by its hind feet from the neighbor’s mailbox. Hoo-boy.”

Claire, speechless, shook her head. “That’s … that’s impossible. That’s not—Tom.”

“
Man,
” Grimes said. Embry looked over nervously, then returned to whatever he was reading. “Hoo-boy. Avon calling. No welcome wagon for this bad boy.”

“It’s got to be a forgery,” Claire said. “Can’t they make these things up? I mean, look at it, it’s a couple of crappy typed pages.”

“The CID agent’s name who took the complaint is down there. Neighbor’s name, too. Roswell something.”

She shook her head again. “That’s not Tom,” she repeated.

“No, Professor,” came a voice from the entrance to the room. “That’s Ronald Kubik. And I’m Major Waldron.”

Major Lucas Waldron was a tall, lean, brown-haired man in his late thirties whose predominant feature was his aquiline nose. He was neither handsome nor plain—he had a fine, strong brow, and a thin, weak mouth—but he was unmistakably intense. He did not smile as he shook hands. Claire felt her stomach clench, as it did whenever she met a powerful adversary.

“Maybe you’re beginning to understand, Professor, why so many people consider your husband a stain on the army’s reputation,” Waldron said.

Claire looked at him for a moment. “Are you proud of prosecuting this farce?”

Waldron gave a glacial smile. “Given who your husband is—
what
your husband is—I personally don’t think he’s even worthy of a trial—”

“The charade of a trial, you mean,” Claire interjected. “I’m surprised you were willing to accept this assignment. You might spoil your perfect win-loss record.”

“Let me tell you something, Professor,” Waldron said. “This is not a case the army’s going to lose. When you get a look at the evidence we have here, you’ll understand. I can only assume that you don’t have any
idea
what kind of monster this man is, what kind of monster you married.”

“You’ve got to be awfully naïve if you believe the stuff they’re handing you,” she said. “If you can’t smell a cover-up.”

“All you have to do is check out the evidence.”

“Believe me, I plan to.”

“Just check it out. You’ll see. And as for my perfect win-loss record, well, part of that’s because I’m lucky. And I’m thorough. But the main reason is, the people I prosecute happen to be guilty.”

“I’m sure you’re good, too,” Claire said. “Anyone can convict a guilty man, but it takes a really good prosecutor to convict the innocent.”

“My father was a POW in Vietnam,” Waldron said. “I’m an army officer and I happen to be proud of it. I plan to spend my whole career in the army. But if I had to destroy my career to get a sicko like your husband convicted, I’d do it. And gladly. Nice to meet you, Professor.”

And he turned and left the room.

“Nice guy, huh?” Grimes said.

“Over here, guys,” Embry called out. “CID’s got seven statements here, from seven members of Kubik’s unit in Salvador, Special Forces Detachment 27. Taken on 27 June 1985. Five days after the 22 June incident, in debriefings back at Fort Bragg. They’re almost identical. And they’re devastating.” Embry looked at Claire anxiously, almost wincing. He licked his lips.

Grimes bolted from his seat. “They’re only calling one eyewitness at the 32 investigation. A Colonel Jimmy Hernandez, now a senior administrative officer based in the Pentagon. Now, he wouldn’t happen to be one of the seven, by any stretch of the imagination, would he?”

Embry flipped through the pile in front of him. “Major James Hernandez, the XO. The executive officer. Yep, he’s here.”

Claire felt her stomach constrict. “Let me see it,” she said.

Embry handed it to her with an involuntary wince.

Her heart thrumming, she at first skimmed it, then began to read through it very slowly. Her mouth was dry. She felt sick.

The top page was a cover sheet from the Criminal Investigation Division of the United States Army. Statement taken at Fort Bragg, 27 June 1985. The time. HERNANDEZ, James Jerome. His Social Security number. His grade. Then several long blocks of text, each initialed by Hernandez at the beginning and the end of each paragraph. Then several pages of questions and answers.

“I, Major James J. HERNANDEZ,” it began,

make the following free and voluntary statement to JOHN F. DAWKINS, whom I know to be a Criminal Investigator for the United States Armed Forces. I make this statement of my own free will and without any threat or promises extended to me.

On 22JUN85 my unit, Detachment 27 of the Special Forces, a top-secret combat unit, was based at Ilopango, El Salvador. I am the unit’s XO. Our mission was to conduct operations regarding the antigovernment forces in El Salvador. Our CO, Colonel William MARKS, received intelligence from a reliable source that a splinter group of the leftist, antigovernment guerrilla organization FMLN, which had killed four off-duty marines and two American businessmen several days before at the Zona Rosa in San Salvador, had gone to ground in a tiny village outside San Salvador. The village, which was called La Colina, was the birthplace of several of the guerrillas. They were said to be in hiding there.

In the middle of the night, early on 22JUN85, we located the village. The unit split in half to approach the village from two directions. We had silencers on our weapons to prolong the element of surprise, to shoot dogs or geese or whatever animals we might encounter. Both teams moved in and took control of the village, going from house to house, waking inhabitants and rousting them from their huts. We took this approach to ensure that the inhabitants had no firearms.

All of the inhabitants, who numbered eighty-seven individuals, were assembled in an open area that was presumably the town square. They were all civilians, old men and women and children and infants. They were interrogated in Spanish but claimed no knowledge of the whereabouts of the guerrillas. Col MARKS, who remained behind at headquarters, was informed by radio our determination that the intelligence lead was wrong and there were no commandos in hiding in La Colina at that present time. Col MARKS then directed us to leave. There was an exchange between several of the villagers and Sgt KUBIK. Suddenly Sgt KUBIK leveled his M-60 machine gun at the villagers. I noticed he had linked two ammo belts together on his shoulder so he had two hundred rounds. Sgt KUBIK began firing directly at the inhabitants and in a few minutes he had killed them all.

The following questions were asked by J. F. DAWKINS and answered by myself.

Q: Was an attempt made to restrain KUBIK?

A: Yes, but no one could approach him, because he was firing wildly.

Q: Were the civilians checked for weapons?

A: No, because Col MARKS thought we had lost control of the situation and ordered us to move out of there immediately.

Q: Did Sgt KUBIK have any comment after he finished killing the eighty-seven civilians?

A: No, he just said, “Well, now, that takes care of
that.
”

Claire put down the page she was reading and felt lightheaded. She excused herself and located the women’s room in the corridor outside. The “head.” She staggered to a stall and was sick. Then she washed her face at the sink with a brown block of army-issue soap.