The Insider (27 page)

The DOJ agent hauled him to his feet and walked him over to a knot of people a few yards away. Although he drew his share of curious stares, the crowd's attention seemed to be focused on what lay before them.

Six men and women in sunglasses were arrayed in a circle around two figures on the pavement. They seemed to have formed the circle intentionally to block the view of the crowds and cameras.

The two figures sprawled on the asphalt were Nikolai and Yuri. Nikolai was lying facedown and motionless, arms splayed. Yuri was lying faceup in the street, his hand clenching in a fist and unclenching, as if by that action he were somehow managing to keep his heart pumping. The agents broadened their circle slightly as they inched away from the shockingly large pool of blood that drew everyone's eyes to the Russians like a big red spotlight.

Will searched the crowd for Claire's face, but she was nowhere to be seen.

A young agent wearing a bright blue polo shirt and cargo shorts was shouting into a cell phone.

“Where's the ambulance?” the agent barked. “The parade has stopped and we're on fucking television!” He paused to listen to the voice on the other end of the line, then shouted, “If it was only half a block away, why isn't it here yet?” Another pause. “That's what the cops are there for! Get them to clear the goddamn intersection!”

Will waited with the agents for an ambulance to arrive. Numb from shock, his eyes wandered over the scene, from the dead and dying figures of Yuri and Nikolai on the pavement, to the anxious attitudes of the agents, to the morbidly curious faces of the parade crowd.

“Shouldn't somebody be helping them?” Will asked the woman agent.

“One of 'em's already dead. The other one's probably gonna be gone soon. There's not much we can really do till the ambulance gets here, anyway.”

The noise of the parade had died away, leaving a strange quiet that was punctuated by the troubled murmuring of the crowd and, finally, the wail of an ambulance siren. The floats and the parade marchers shifted to the opposite side of Market Street to make way for the ambulance, which crept fitfully toward them as obstacles were removed from its path.

When the ambulance finally arrived, its rear doors slammed open. Three EMTs bearing gurneys emerged in a practiced drill. Nikolai and Yuri were borne into the ambulance. Nikolai was brusquely hoisted aboard like so much cargo. Yuri was lifted with more care, an indication that he was still alive. Yuri's fist was no longer clenching, but his eyelids were half open and he seemed to be breathing.

“Come on,” the woman agent said. “You're going with them in the ambulance.”

“Why?”

“The one that's still alive might have something to say to you.”

Will and the agent climbed into the back of the crowded ambulance, with Nikolai and Yuri on the gurneys and a paramedic. The other two paramedics rode in the front.

“If it were my decision, you wouldn't be back here,” the paramedic said. He was a small, muscular man with bushy, black eyebrows. He didn't seem particularly alarmed by the life-and-death event before him.

“It's not your decision,” the agent said.

When Will looked over at Yuri, he saw that the Russian's glassy, heavy-lidded eyes were fixed on him. Will couldn't be sure if he was really seeing him, though. Perhaps his attention was already directed inward. The interior of the ambulance was brilliantly lit. Watching the harsh lights flicker and fade in Yuri's eyes, Will felt as if he were standing outside a house that was being prepared for a vacation, the windows going dark one by one.

A gurgling rose in Yuri's throat, followed by a garbled Russian phrase.

Will looked at the agent and the paramedic to see if they had heard.

“He says, ‘Fuck you,'” said the agent. “Loose translation.”

“You speak Russian?”

“That's why I'm here.”
She's hoping Yuri will say something that will incriminate me,
Will realized. That's why he was allowed to ride in the ambulance.

Will returned his gaze to Yuri, who was still staring at him intently over the head of the now-busy paramedic, with a look that he read as hatred. He had been taught to feel compassion for all living things, but at that moment he was simply glad that Yuri's career of inflicting pain was drawing to a close.

Will noticed that the ambulance had stopped. No one seemed to be in a hurry as they climbed out into the sunny spring afternoon.

“He's gone,” the paramedic said, removing the IV from Yuri's wrist.

The paramedic, the agent, and Will stretched for a moment in the driveway in front of the emergency room, glad to be out of the ambulance's cramped quarters.

The agent turned to Will and pulled an identification badge from her wallet. “I guess it's time to introduce myself. I'm DOJ Special Agent Joan Fisk. The San Francisco PD is going to let us take you down to our offices for questioning now.” She glanced at him. “It's better for you than spending the night in jail.”

“Is it better? Because I think I'd take the night in jail.”

Agent Fisk ignored him. “I guess you already know this drill, but I'm required to tell you that you have the right to an attorney.”

“Actually, I don't know the drill. I do corporate work. I'm not a criminal attorney,” Will said, absently.

“Oh, yeah?” Agent Fisk responded, returning the badge to her wallet. “Well, as far as we're concerned, you're a criminal attorney now.”

Will was taken to the DOJ's offices on Geary Street and ushered past an expanse of cubicles into a conference room. Agent Fisk offered him coffee, which he accepted.

He was still carrying the memory stick that contained the encryption keys, and he worried that soon he would be asked to empty his pockets. Once the agents figured out what the encryption keys were, the proceedings were likely to take on an entirely different tone.

After returning with a cardboard cup of something lukewarm, Agent Fisk left the room without a word. This, he thought, must be the point in the process where the suspect is left alone with his thoughts to ponder his fate. If the tactic was intended to make him anxious, it was working.

Will's first-year criminal procedure class was a hazy memory. Everything he knew about the process of arrest and interrogation he had learned from television. He had already decided that as soon as his interrogators arrived, he was going to “lawyer up,” as they said on the cop shows. The question was, who would his lawyer be?

Although he had spent most of his adult life working in law firms, Will knew very few criminal lawyers. Major law firms generally did not handle criminal cases, except for some white-collar criminal defense work. The top firms viewed criminal law as low-rent, dirty, and, worst of all, not particularly lucrative. Even though many of his peers had formed their first notions of the legal profession watching Michael Kuzak try criminal cases on
L.A. Law
, that was not the reality of the practice of law for most graduates of good law schools. In order to pay off the sizable student loans required by a top-twenty law school, graduates needed to earn top salaries—which were paid by the major law firms. And those firms did not do criminal work.

As he sipped the coffee and scanned the ceiling, trying to spot cameras and microphones, he searched his memory in vain for the name of a criminal lawyer that he could trust.

The conference room door opened and Dennis Tyler and Mary Boudreaux, the two agents who had interviewed him at his office, entered.

“Hi, Will,” Mary said, frowning sympathetically.

“Will,” Dennis said, curtly. Will thought that they must be almost as tired of this good-cop, bad-cop routine as he was.

Dennis and Mary sat down opposite Will at the conference table. “It's pretty clear that you weren't being straight with us at our last meeting,” Mary said. “But we're not going to hold that against you for now. Clearly, you were under some pressure.”

“What do you want to know?” Will asked.

“Someone phoned the San Francisco PD with an anonymous tip about a terrorist attack on the BART system. It involved the Russian
mafiya
.” Mary paused. “And Aashif Agha.” Another pause. “And sarin nerve gas. We know it was you that placed that call, Will.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Will felt that if he told the truth, he and Claire would be convicted as participants in a terrorist plot. The theft of the encryption keys alone was probably enough to ensure that they would spend the rest of their lives in prison. If Will reached the point of disclosing everything, he would do it only after consulting with a criminal defense attorney, and he wasn't about to say anything that would incriminate Claire.

“Do you really expect us to believe this crap?” Dennis said. “Who else is going to make that call? We already know about your links to the
mafiya
. After today's little incident, surely even you can't deny that. In our last meeting, we told you about Agha and his efforts to purchase sarin. Obviously, you put that information together and left the message warning about the BART attack.”

“We know that you were trying to do the right thing,” Mary said. “And that will be taken into account if you tell us the whole story. Why don't you start with how you got involved with the Russians?”

“I don't think I can respond to questions like that without a lawyer present.”

This was enough to redirect the line of questioning. Dennis pointed behind his back through the plate glass window of the conference room. “Do you see those people working out there in those cubicles?”

“Yes.” Will was unsure where Dennis was heading; it sounded like a question when he said it.

“Do you think you're better than them?”

“No, Dennis, I don't.”

“Good. Because very soon you'll be wishing to God that you could do the things that they can do. Little things like taking a walk outside. Eating a hamburger. Sleeping in a real bed.”

“I get your point.”

“No, I doubt that you really do. If you don't cooperate with us right now, and I mean
right now
, you're going to lose the ability to do all of those things for a very long time.”

Will did not respond, briefly mesmerized by Dennis's performance, which was that of a journeyman actor who was finally being allowed to take center stage. As with most B-actors, however, Dennis's performance lacked subtlety and modulation. He tended to overplay.

“Do you appreciate what that means, Will?”

“No, I guess I don't.”

“It means that your life as you know it is now over. I'm guessing that you're a guy who's spent a lot of time trying to separate himself from everybody else, trying to get ahead. You probably made good grades, went to a good college. Top law school. Got hired by a good law firm. Made partner. I respect that. We both do.”

Mary gave a slight nod of support for Dennis's statement. Will gave her credit for not smirking or even allowing a twinkle of humor to show in her eyes. She might not be getting many lines in this scene, but Will recognized a gifted performer when he saw one.

“Thanks, Dennis.”

“Just shut up and listen, wiseass. If you go to prison, you probably think it's going to be one of those artsy-craftsy minimum-security places, where they put people like Milken and Boesky. Well, I've got news for you . . . they don't exist. You'll be going into the general prison population, and that's not a very inviting place for someone like you. When you finally get out, everything you've worked for will be gone. You'll never be able to practice law again. All your skills, all your education, it won't mean shit. An ex-con who knows how to work a drill press will be more employable than you. You want to be forty-five years old and starting over from square one?”

“Just tell us the story,” Mary said. “Beginning to end. How you got involved with the Russians, the insider trading, the planned BART attack, Claire—”

“Where is Claire?”

“She's being questioned down the hall.”

“And she is talking,” Dennis added. Will did not believe him.

“There is one thing I'm curious about,” Will said. “How did you happen to be there at the Gay Pride Parade?”

“You know what? I'll tell you that much. Call it a show of goodwill,” Mary said. “The joint investigation of the Jupiter deal caused us to step up surveillance of some of the local
mafiya
. We saw Nikolai and Yuri meeting with some known Red Fellas . . . in a Starbucks, no less. We didn't know who Nikolai and Yuri were, but we caught a break when they led us right to you. Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive right now?”

Will did not respond. He was not feeling particularly lucky.

“Unfortunately, Yuri made one of the agents in the crowd, and that's when the shooting started,” Dennis said. “He probably figured that you had set him up.”

“There's a narrow window here where we can make the next ten or fifteen years of your life a whole lot better,” Dennis continued. “That window's closing fast. If you come clean now, it can still make a difference.”

“You should listen to him, Will,” Mary said. “You know, we don't even have to be in here right now. We don't need a statement from you to make our case.”

“Then why are you here if you don't need my statement? You know, I am familiar with these interrogation techniques. I watch
Law & Order
.”

“If you just tell us what happened,” Dennis said, “there will be less paperwork and less court time. Saves everybody money. We'll be able to move on to other things. It's the kind of thing that gets favorable consideration in sentencing.”