The Accused (36 page)

“Will,” he said calmly, “I'm here to make sure you don't miss your appointment with the bogeyman.”

Will's eyes widened and he took a step back. He stared at the man, clearly an American and—as Will then surmised—an agent with the United States government.

“I suppose it would be stupid of me to ask for some identification…”

The man smiled. “Yes, real stupid.”

The two walked out of the airport together to where the man had a cab waiting.

“This guy's going to be your cabbie. Don't use any other taxi drivers except him. Do you understand?”

The attorney nodded.

“Will, he's going to take you over to the de la Gruta hotel. You're going to have to stay there for forty-eight hours. I'm sure you've got some things to do on your case. Then he will pick you up at 8:30 sharp on the morning of the day after that and take you over to the correctional facility. He will give you the name of the jailer to ask for. You will ask for that jailer—and nobody else—when you present yourself at the prison. Do you understand everything I've told you?”

Will acknowledged that he had.

The man opened the door of the dark blue taxicab and motioned for his companion to step in.

After he had closed the door behind Will, the man stuck his head through the window and gave him one last piece of advice.

“Will, stay focused. Keep on task. And watch your back.”

The cab jolted forward, picking up speed rapidly, and exiting the airport so fast that Will was thrown from one side of the seat to the other, as the driver made abrupt turns, accelerating as he went. Finally, the car came to a stop sign. The driver, a Mexican man, slowly turned around to face Will. He smiled, showing several missing teeth, and began to laugh.

Suddenly, the attorney realized he knew this man. It was Pancho, his taxicab driver down in the Yucatán during his investigation of Marlowe's case before the Article 32 hearing.

“I suppose you're flabbergasted to see old Pancho again? I'm glad to be of service…”

Will was astonished at Pancho's sudden fluency in English, and then he chuckled to himself as he realized the obvious—Pancho had been assigned to keep an eye on him during his first trip to Mexico. And he had been assigned to Will again—on this trip as well.

After about an hour the cab pulled up in front of a drab hotel on the outskirts of Mexico City. There were a few palm trees outside. The hotel was a four-story affair, and when Will checked in, he would discover it had few amenities—and terrible service. But then, as he finally concluded, this was not a hotel that was in the business of making money—not exactly. Most of the persons checking in and out were English-speaking businessmen—nondescript—who spoke confidently and casually, but kept their distance. No families. No married couples. No tourists. The “bellhop” who escorted him up to his room was a thick-necked man in his thirties…who looked more like a bodyguard than a hotel staffer.

As the attorney was about to close the door to his room, the man told him, “I'll be outside your door, in the hall. Keeping an eye out on things. If you need anything just talk to me.”

As Will closed the door, then locked and bolted it, it was now very clear—he had been recruited for a task that transcended any legal case—or any jailhouse interview he had ever performed.

He quickly telephoned Fiona and caught her as she was leaving to visit her father.

“I'm aching for you,” she said mournfully on the other end. “This bed is so big and so empty without you.”

Will smiled and then replied, “You save up all those kisses for me—because I'm going to need them when I finally get home.”

He decided not to share with his wife his dawning realization that he had suddenly been thrust into the role of a covert operative—on a mission whose breadth and scope was still unknown, but with implications and dangers he could only imagine. Besides, he wasn't totally convinced the telephone was secure. And he didn't want to use his cell phone.

They exchanged a few tender words, and then Fiona said she had to get going.

“I'm making dinner for Da tonight. You know how he's just been feeling so tired lately. Well, I'm going to go over and cheer him up!”

“Be careful,” he urged her.

After assuring each other of their undying love, they hung up. Will worked for a while, plowing through the first pile of evidentiary discovery he had picked up at Les Forges' office before heading to the airport.

It had been organized, indexed, and summarized by the prosecutor's office. The report from the Mexican federal police who had investigated the shootings also had attached to it a word-for-word translation into English, provided by Les Forges' office.

It was very apparent to the attorney that the prosecutor was making every effort to comply with the discovery demands made necessary by an expedited trial. It was also clear that she could not be accused of delaying or obstructing his access to the evidence they planned to present at trial.

After a while his eyes started closing involuntarily out of exhaustion.

He stacked the file on the desk, got himself ready, and turned out the lights as he climbed into the sagging metal-framed bed.

Out on the street below, he heard the sound of music and of sirens off in the distance. Someone was yelling down in the street.

As the sirens wailed in the streets of the city that housed ten million people, Will sank into a deep, almost medicated, sleep.

The next morning he woke and ordered room service. It took an hour for his breakfast to arrive—a lackluster affair with fruit that was fairly fresh, but a rubbery egg and orange juice that was room temperature. The only thing that was truly good was the dark coffee. At least it was hot.

He spent the day taking notes on the hundreds of pages of discovery documents from Les Forges. He made one phone call to his office to check in with Hilda, as well as with Jacki. He was hoping that the State Department had called and left a message that the United States government would be formally joining his defense of Colonel Marlowe. But according to both of them, no such call had come in.

The attorney lost track of time as he immersed himself, first in finishing a review of all of the Mexican police reports, then in a review of a forty-page report by a Dr. Michael Zagblundt. Zagblundt was clearly going to be used as an expert witness by the prosecution. He was a retired army colonel, a former instructor at the War College, and an expert in international military affairs. His conclusion at the end of the report was devastating.

It is clear, based on my review of the evidence in this case, that the death of the four individuals at Chacmool, Mexico, was so clearly excessive in relation to any military advantage Colonel Marlowe could have anticipated, that Colonel Marlowe's conduct satisfied element number two of the “War Crime of Excessive Incidental Death to Civilians” under Article 8(2) (b)(iv) of the International Criminal Code.

As Will settled down for his second night of sleep in the indifferently serviced hotel, he was feeling overwhelmed by the immensity of the case against his client. And he wondered how he was going to be ready for trial in just over two weeks.

The next morning, Will woke and dressed for his jail interview with Rusty Black. Before he was able to load up his briefcase, there was a loud pounding on the door.

He opened up. It was Pancho, his missing teeth displayed in a broad smile, and the “bellhop” standing behind him.

He followed them down to a waiting taxicab. Pancho climbed into the front, and the hotel man climbed into the back with Will. There was little conversation as they drove an hour and twenty minutes through snarled Mexico City traffic down to the federal correctional center.

The building was an ugly cement-block edifice, three stories high. Pancho handed Will a slip of paper. The name on it read “Juan Vila.”

“Ask for that jailer—only that jailer,” he said with a smile.

The man sitting next to Will thrust out a thick hand and gave Will a bone-crushing handshake, then added, “Good luck.”

Will slipped out of the taxicab, dodging fast-moving traffic, and entered the main lobby of the jail.

He asked for Juan Vila and was told to have a seat. He waited in the lobby for about half-an-hour before a brown-uniformed Mexican
jailer greeted him. He followed the man down the corridor, down a stairwell two flights, to a cell in the basement unit.

The jailer brought Will up to the cell. The attorney peered through the barred window and saw a man with shaven head, sitting on the edge of his bunk and smoking a cigarette. He had on a sleeveless T-shirt, with jeans and black boots. Muscular and heavily built, he was a little shorter than Will, and as he was smoking his head was bobbing, as if he were listening to an inaudible tune from somewhere else. The eyes in his stubbly, unshaved face were staring at the cement floor.

The jailer unlocked the door and swung it open, waving for the visitor to enter. Will walked into the cell and jumped slightly as the metal door slammed behind him and he heard it lock.

The man on the bunk took a deep drag on his cigarette and then slowly exhaled as he lifted his head and stared at his visitor.

Will had never met this man before…at least he didn't think so. But there was a cold, animal look to his eyes. And something vague…some connection. But he couldn't even begin to describe it. He sat down on the bunk across from him.

The prisoner sucked on his cigarette and exhaled slowly again. Then he spoke.

“Okay. Let's get this on. Let's go. This is your show…”

57

T
HE EVENING THAT
F
IONA HAD
spent with her father, Angus MacCameron, had been warm and nostalgic. She had traveled to Angus's sparse little apartment between DC proper and Georgetown and had spent the evening making supper for him and catching up on things.

Angus's health—after the heart attack and stroke—kept Fiona in constant contact with him. She called him every other day and would visit him once, sometimes twice a week. Since the death of her mother, Helen, Fiona had tried to tailor her concert tours around the need to be close to her widowed father—and, of course, to be close to Will as well.

After dinner and the dishes, she played a few songs for Angus on his out-of-tune piano and sang one of his favorite ballads, “Dark Island,” in her lilting, ethereal voice.

Then her father, leaning on his cane, made his way over to the closet and, after a few minutes of fishing and hunting through odds and ends, produced an old scrapbook of photographs.

The two of them sat down on the couch together and laughed, and teared up, over the family album. Particularly when it came to pictures of the two of them with Helen—who had died of cancer several years before.

Angus talked a little about how his archaeological magazine was doing now that he had designated a younger man to take over as editor and publisher. He was still keeping busy, however. He had requests now and then to speak at churches and conferences on issues of Bible prophecy.

And, at his daughter's urging, Angus had been working on the rough draft of a book based on his trial on charges of defamation against fellow Bible scholar Dr. Albert Reichstad—the case in which
he had first met a lawyer by the name of Will Chambers, the man who had successfully defended him.

The two of them reminisced a little about their first meetings with Will. The searching but agnostic former ACLU lawyer had seemed so skeptical of Angus's claims about the resurrection of Christ and the fraudulent nature of Reichstad's claimed proof of the nonresurrection of Jesus. As they talked, Angus grew quiet, and then he turned to his daughter.

“You know that young man is like a son to me,” he said with a catch in this throat. “What a revolutionary change has taken place in him since he gave his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ!”

Fiona updated her father with a little of what she knew about the Caleb Marlowe case. Angus—forever the student of current events and a Bible scholar with the big picture of life—asked for detail after detail about the case that would soon be tried before the international court. He would listen carefully to each response from his daughter, adding only short replies like “amazing…unbelievable…incredible.”

When Fiona had exhausted everything she knew about the case, her father said thoughtfully, “Fiona, dear, I love the way your husband has a love for God and a dedication for justice.” But then he added something that took her by surprise.

Angus gazed off in the distance somewhere and after a moment looked back at his daughter.

“I do believe, some day, that Will Chambers will stand trial, himself, before the principalities and powers of this world…like the apostle Paul before King Agrippa.”

Fiona gave him a puzzled look. Over the years she had become accustomed to his obscure, sometimes even eccentric, comments. But that remark, even for Angus, was over the top.

She took his hands and gently asked him, “Da, what do you mean by that?”

But her father looked tired. He turned to look at her with a puzzled expression, as if he had forgotten what he had said.
Perhaps it was his stroke…a loss of memory,
Fiona thought. She kissed him good night and drove home.