CHAPTER
30
THEY DROVE SEPARATELY back into Leavenworth and met at the same diner they’d eaten at before. Puller held the door for Knox, who was walking stiffly thanks to her banged-up hip.
“Did you get the Percocet?” he asked.
“No,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I downed four Advil. Just waiting for the suckers to kick in.”
Puller spotted Kirk at a back booth and they headed over.
Kirk was dressed in slacks and a jacket, both of which were ruffled and wrinkled. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, her curly hair was in disarray, she smelled of cigarette smoke, and there was an empty coffee cup in front of her.
Puller introduced the two women. Kirk gave Knox an appraising look and then nodded curtly.
“I don’t know you, Knox, but if Puller vouches for you, then okay.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Don’t thank me, I’m not doing it for you.” She turned to Puller. “I left last night. I had to fly to Chicago, where my connection was canceled. I slept in the airport and spent today trying to get on another flight, till I snagged a seat on a puddle jumper. I could have driven the whole way faster. Friggin’ useless airlines.”
“A phone call would have been a lot faster.”
“I’m hungry, you guys want to order? Because I do.”
They ordered their food and after some chitchat Kirk hunched forward and spoke in a low voice. “You know how a court-martial works, I take it?”
Puller said, “Fortunately, I’ve never experienced one, but, yes, I know how it works. They’re Article 1 legislative courts, meaning Congress controls them.”
Kirk nodded. “The convening authority is the commanding officer. He creates the court-martial and selects the panel members.”
“And that’s the rub,” said Puller. “The CO creates the court and picks the jurors.”
“There are strict guidelines concerning unlawful command influence. Rule 104 of the court-martial process is very explicit. The CO is banned from punishing or influencing members in any way. The system has survived all attacks for over two centuries.”
“That still doesn’t mean it’s fair. But who wants to rock that boat?”
Kirk spread her hands. “I’m not saying it’s an ideal system, but it’s the one we have. And it works for the most part.”
“I don’t think it worked for my brother.”
Kirk sipped her coffee and shot glances around the diner, while Puller stared moodily off and Knox glanced back and forth between the two.
Their food came a few minutes later and they waited for the waitress to leave before resuming the conversation.
“I’m going to eat and talk,” said Kirk. “Pardon the open mouth full of food.” After liberally salting everything on her plate while Knox looked on in disapproval, Kirk said, “There are no hung juries like in civilian courts. You need a three-quarters agreement among the panel for a sentence of ten years or more, and the panel, not the judge, also decides the sentence.”
“But I understand that unanimity by the panel is required for the death penalty,” said Puller.
“Not always. If he was convicted under Article 106 of spying, then the penalty decision is taken away from the panel. Spying carries a mandatory death sentence. There are no exceptions if the conditions are met. The judge will simply announce the sentence.”
Puller sat back. “I wasn’t aware of that. What are the conditions?”
“Pretty simple and straightforward. The genesis of the language actually dates back to colonial times, although it’s been modified from time to time over the years. It has to be during a time of war, which we certainly were when he was arrested.”
“But Congress never officially declared war on Afghanistan or Iraq,” Puller pointed out.
“You’d make a good lawyer, Puller. And the defense argued that point. But while technically what you say is true, practically, we were at war. And your brother was accused of aiding our enemies. When dealing with something like that, the defense is going to lose more often than it wins. And that’s what happened when your brother’s lawyer argued that point. He lost.”
“Okay, go on,” said Puller.
“The accused has to be acting as a spy in a place within the jurisdiction and control of the armed forces or any other place engaged in work in aid of that war. There are other elements: acting clandestinely, attempting to collect certain information with intent to convey to the enemy, etcetera, etcetera.”
“But was he charged under Article 106?” asked Knox. She quickly added, “But I guess he couldn’t have been. He was convicted but he wasn’t sentenced to death.”
Kirk said, “It seems Article 106 was originally on the table, but then it was taken off. He was instead convicted under Article 106a of espionage. It’s sort of splitting hairs, because it carries many of the underlying requirements of spying although there is no requirement that it be during time of war. It also carries a capital penalty when the crime involves certain elements like nuclear weaponry, satellites, and communications intelligence.”
“All things my brother was involved in,” said Puller slowly.
“Right, but as opposed to a conviction of spying, the death penalty is not mandatory. It’s also subject to whatever other punishment the court-martial wants to direct. And as you said, that’s when all panel members must vote unanimously to impose death. That’s a big difference from an automatic capital sentence.”
“And they didn’t have unanimity?” said Puller.
“No. Otherwise he’d be on death row or actually dead. Instead he was given life.”
“So there must have been some extenuating circumstances,” said Knox.
“I suppose there were, yes, but the whole picture was a little fuzzy from a trial perspective.”
“Surely you didn’t get that from just a paper trail, Shireen?” asked Knox.
Kirk swung her gaze to Knox. “My first name isn’t Shireen, it’s actually Cambrai. But it might as well be ‘Scorched Earth.’ I dug up the prosecutor and the defense counsel and spoke with both of them. They were surprisingly candid. Surprisingly.”
She let the word hang out there.
“And why do you think they were so cooperative?” asked Puller.
“Well, it’s hard to say,” began Kirk cautiously. “They both remembered the case well, though I’m sure they’ve both handled dozens since. You know there was a PTA but your brother rejected it.”
“What’s a PTA?” asked Knox.
“Pretrial agreement. The accused can provide a guilty plea in exchange for a more lenient sentence. He apparently wanted no part of that. He consistently proclaimed his innocence in the strongest possible terms.”
“Who was the convening authority?” asked Puller.
“The CO at STRATCOM, Major General Martin Able.”
“I know Puller was convicted of espionage, but what were the specific charges?” asked Knox.
“As Puller told me earlier the trial record was sealed. And for good reason, because it was full of classified information. MRE 505 is very detailed on that point.”
Knox said, “MRE? Not meals, ready to eat, surely?”
“Try Military Rules of Evidence,” suggested Kirk.
“But you wouldn’t come all this way unless you had unsealed it,” commented Puller.
“As I told you before, that would take a court order. Which there was no way I could get, certainly not in the time since I talked to you last.”
“But?” prompted Puller.
“But, as I said, the counsels were cooperative. The defense counsel, Todd Landry, especially so. He told me in confidence about the charges.”
“Didn’t he ask why you wanted to know?” Knox asked.
“Of course. I made noises about Robert Puller’s escape from DB, which they both knew about. It’s all over the military pipelines.”
“And they just assumed you were part of some group investigating it?” said Knox.
“If they made that assumption, I did nothing to suggest they were incorrect in that assumption,” Kirk said smoothly.
“So what were the charges?” Puller said.
“It’s fairly well known that NSA has deals in place with major technology companies and cellular phone carriers to allow them backdoor access into those platforms. Well, apparently Robert Puller had devised a back door into STRATCOM’s intelligence platform, which, by the way, is tied to pretty much all the other intelligence pipelines, including NSA, CIA, and Army Intel. And that he was in the process of selling off the access codes to that back door to enemies of this country. It would have been catastrophic.”
“Selling secrets? That’s bullshit!” exclaimed Puller. “He didn’t care about money. Why would he do that?”
“Apparently the motive was online gambling debts. In the millions.”
“Online gambling?” exclaimed a stunned Puller. “My brother was not a gambler.”
“Well, it seems they found evidence to the contrary on his personal computers and his cell phone. He played under a variety of fictitious names.”
“My brother is a super-smart geek. He would know gambling is based on luck, not skill. He’s too intelligent to bet.”
“I asked that very question.”
“And?” said Knox.
“And the prosecutor, Doug Fletcher, informed me that it seems that your brother had devised an elaborate gambling algorithm that was initially extremely successful.”
“Initially?” said Puller.
“Before it became unsuccessful. That’s where the millions in losses come in. He just kept playing, trying to bet his way out of a hole. Lots of gamblers do that. It’s a bona fide addiction. And playing online just opens up that addiction to millions of potential abusers.”
“And they had evidence of all this?” said Knox.
“Yes. Apparently clear-cut.”
“So—” Puller began, but Knox beat him to it.
“So why did both counsel remember the case so well?” she asked.
“Landry in particular seemed to think that everything was too neat and clean. There was no question that your brother knew his way around technology. And yet they discovered all this evidence on his personal devices without a lot of effort.”
“So he thought it was planted. If so, did he raise that as a defense?”
Knox said, “He would have, except your brother testified that his personal devices could not be hacked by anyone. That anything found on there would have to come from him.”
Puller slapped his palm against the tabletop, causing both women to jump. “The idiot. He was proud over practical. He didn’t want to admit that someone had beaten him. He was the same way growing up. You might kick his butt once in something, but it would be the only time.”
Knox said, “A guilty man would never have done that. He would grab at every defense he could get.”
“Another reason Landry remembered the case so well. In point of fact, he’d never had an accused purposely torpedo a potential defense like that. Never. And yet your brother did without blinking an eye, apparently.”
“Maybe he never really believed he was going to be convicted,” said Knox.
“Well, he was wrong.”
“But there was an appeal, right?” said Knox.
“Whenever the penalty is the dismissal from the ranks of an officer, the Court of Criminal Appeals—in this case the one for the Air Force—automatically conducts one. Robert Puller’s case was reviewed and the lower judgment was upheld. No further action was taken on his behalf. Any other appeal would take some work to initiate, which he never did.”
Puller fingered his coffee cup. “So he protested his innocence strongly. He never told me that. I wonder why?”
Knox shrugged. “There could be lots of reasons.”
“I can’t believe my brother would ever sell secrets.”
“But he would be in a position to transmit secrets to the enemy. And if he did he might not have done it for money despite the gambling piece,” pointed out Knox.
“What, he’s like that Snowden guy and wants to transform what he thinks is a bad system by outing it to the world from a safe distance away?”
“Well, he obviously didn’t do it like Snowden,” said Kirk. “The court found he did it for the money.” Puller put down his cup. “But we can’t lose sight of the fact that someone may have been sent to DB to kill my brother. Since then an Air Force general at STRATCOM has been murdered and Knox here had to shoot an Army captain who might have been involved in the attempt on my brother’s life. If he was guilty and safely in prison, why all the attention now?”
Kirk nearly choked on her coffee. She stared over at Knox. “You did what?”
“She shot at me first. I defended myself. She’s dead, I’m not.”
“But what was the reason?”
“We found out she had financial problems, and lo and behold she sets up an account in the Caymans under another name and someone puts a million bucks in it.”
“What did she do to earn that?” asked Kirk.
Puller said, “A device that simulated the sounds of gunshots and an explosion played a primary role in the chaos at DB. My take is she brought them in herself. That’s why she didn’t search any of the guards for it later. That way we could never pin anything on her. And she might have sabotaged the cell door locking software too.”
Kirk held up a hand. “Okay, but let’s get back to your last question: Why all this attention now?”
Puller looked at Knox and then glanced back to Kirk. “I’m not sure either one of us can answer that.”
Kirk nodded. “I agree that it all looks dicey. And that more investigation is needed. But you have to understand that it unduly complicates the situation now that your brother has escaped from DB.”
“Well, he might not have had much choice. Escape or die. Given those options, I’d have cut and run too.”
“And the problem with that answer is that the people hunting him won’t care about his reasons.”
“And another problem is he may have folks after him who aren’t part of the official machine,” retorted Puller.
Knox said, “After what happened to you, I think he probably does. Kidnapping and then trying to murder you definitely speaks of unofficial involvement.”
A stunned Kirk now shot Puller a glance. “First she shoots a friggin’ Army captain, and now you’re telling me that you were kidnapped and nearly killed?”
“That’s pretty much the gist of it. Bunch of guys with guns got the jump on me using a damsel-in-distress act that I fell for. They took me to a place, tied me up, asked me a bunch of questions, none of which I answered, and then they were going to kill me.”
“Then why aren’t you dead?”
“I had a guardian angel on site. He did enough to allow me to get my own way out.”
“And who was this angel?” asked Kirk.
“I hope to find out one day so I can thank the person.”
He turned to Knox and his voice dropped even lower. “And you can guarantee to me that you don’t know who any of these folks are, or where they might have come from?”
Knox said, “If you’re asking me whether it’s any of my people, I can assure you that it’s not. We may deceive, we may slice and dice the truth, we may conceal. But we don’t do crap like this. We do have oversight committees, Puller. And if we tried any of this and it came out, well, everybody could pretty much kiss their asses, pensions, and freedom goodbye. And I’m not sure there’s ever a compelling enough reason to do that. We have enough true enemies without turning on ourselves.”
He studied her closely for a long moment and then looked away.
Kirk looked at Knox. “Tell me about this shootout with an Army captain. What was her name?”
Puller answered. “Lenora Macri. And she must’ve been pretty desperate to take a shot at you, Knox. Do you think she saw you coming in?”
“I knocked and rang the doorbell before I picked the lock. I wasn’t trying to do it on the sly.”
“I know you did. I was watching. So for Shireen’s edification, tell us again how it went down.”
“Step by step,” added Kirk.
Knox sighed and then gathered her thoughts. “I closed the door behind me and called out her name. There was no answer. I called out again and identified myself, full title and everything. The next thing I know she came around the corner from the living room at me. Her gun was out and pointed at me. My cred pack was in my hand and held out for her to see but I knew it didn’t matter. The look on her face told me all I needed to know. I had maybe a second. She was going to shoot me.”
“Keep going,” encouraged Puller when Knox paused.
“I dropped my creds, grabbed the chair, and flung it at her as I went down to the floor. She fired. I felt the round pass over me and hit the wall behind me. The chair had struck her as she fired and threw off her aim. I hit the floor, kicked away, aimed, and fired upward, into her chest. She dropped where she stood. She hit the floor and never moved after that.”
“That all coincides with what I heard downstairs,” said Puller, looking at Kirk.
“Well, it also happens to be the truth,” replied Knox resolutely.
“But attempting to shoot you in cold blood like that,” said Kirk. “It’s an extreme response. How could she know what you were there for? It could just be routine questioning. If she killed you she’s looking at the death penalty. And how was she planning to get away?”
“She had an alias. Same name she used to set up the account in the Caymans, but we traced it back to her. Under that alias she had purchased a series of one-way tickets with the final stop in Saint Petersburg.”
“No extradition treaty between Russia and the U.S.,” said Kirk.
“Right. And I doubt Russia was her final destination. She was just going there to disappear. After that, it’s anyone’s bet. She certainly would have had the financial resources to do it.”
“What date was the plane ticket for?” asked Puller.
“Today. She was supposed to be on duty, but called in sick. She was clearly never going back. That’s why I went there.”
Puller eyed Knox steadily and she returned the gaze. Kirk noticed this staredown and looked back and forth between them, like she was viewing a tennis match.
“I know what you’re probably going to say,” said Knox at last.
“Really?” replied Puller. “So why don’t you tell me what I was going to say.”
“That we’re a team and I should have told you all of this. And you’d be right. And maybe if you hadn’t left me in that graveyard, I would have told you. But you did leave me and I had no idea where you were. And I had to get this done.”
Puller studied her for a while more but seemed satisfied by this explanation. He said, “I’m surprised with all the evidence you had against her that you didn’t send in a SWAT team. The Army would have.”
“That may be how the Army does things, but not us. What we really wanted was for her to cooperate with us and lead us back to whoever she was working with. In the grand scheme of things she was small potatoes. We wanted the others. That’s why I went in solo, to talk to her, to make her see reason.”
“And you almost got blown away for your troubles.”
“I have to tell you, I didn’t see that coming. There was nothing in her profile that would have led us to believe that she would have reacted with such violence.”
“Well, profiles can be misleading,” commented Kirk.
“And now we’ve lost her as a potential witness and information source. And it’s really all on me,” Knox added glumly.
Puller said, “So she saw you in her home, figured out who you were from you calling out. She knew the game was up since she was probably upstairs packing for her trip to Russia, and she panicked.”
“Well, I’m just glad her aim was off.”
“Because of the chair you threw.”
“I’m still lucky, Puller.”
“Like the hip.”
“Like the hip,” she agreed as Kirk looked at her quizzically. Knox saw this and said, “Long story.” She sipped her coffee and looked thoughtful.
“What?” Puller asked, seeing an ironic look in her eyes.
“I was just wondering when my luck is going to finally run out.”
“Don’t we all,” replied Puller.
“Well, unfortunately for you two, it seems the answer will be sooner rather than later,” noted Kirk.