False Witness
Praise for False Witness and other novels by Randy Singer
“In this gripping, obsessively readable legal thriller, Singer proves himself to be the Christian John Grisham.”
Publishers Weekly
“Great suspense; gritty, believable action . . . make this entry Singer’s best yet.”
Booklist
starred review
“False Witness is an engrossing and challenging read. . . . Part detective story, part legal thriller—I couldn’t put it down!”
Shaunti Feldhahn
Bestselling author, speaker, and nationally syndicated columnist
“Get ready to wrestle with larger themes of truth, justice, and courage.”
Crosswalk.com
on Fatal Convictions
“A solid, well-crafted legal thriller.”
Booklist
on Fatal Convictions
“A book that will entertain readers and make them think—what more can one ask?”
Publishers Weekly
on The Justice Game
“Singer artfully crafts a novel that is the perfect mix of faith and suspense. . . . [The Justice Game is] fast-paced from the start to the surprising conclusion.”
Romantic Times
“At the center of the heart-pounding action are the moral dilemmas that have become Singer’s stock-in-trade. . . . An exciting thriller.”
Booklist
on By Reason of Insanity
“Readers will be left on the edge of their seats by Singer’s latest suspense-filled thriller.”
Christian Retailing
on By Reason of Insanity
“Singer hooks readers from the opening courtroom scene of this tasty thriller, then spurs them through a fast trot across a story line that just keeps delivering.”
Publishers Weekly
on By Reason of Insanity
“[A] legal thriller that matches up easily with the best of Grisham.”
Christian Fiction Review
on Irreparable Harm
“Singer hits pay dirt again with this taut, intelligent thriller. . . . [Dying Declaration] is a groundbreaking book for the Christian market, with well-drawn characters . . . and ingenious plotting.”
Publishers Weekly
“Directed Verdict is a well-crafted courtroom drama with strong characters, surprising twists, and a compelling theme.”
Randy Alcorn
bestselling author of Safely Home
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False Witness
Copyright © 2007, 2011 by Randy Singer. All rights reserved.
First printing by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., in 2011.
Previously published as False Witness by WaterBrook Press under ISBN 978-1-4000-7334-4.
Cover photo taken by Stephen Vosloo. Copyright © by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Author photo copyright © 2008 by Don Monteaux. All rights reserved.
Designed by Dean H. Renninger
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.
Some Scripture quotations or paraphrases are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 2003, 2002, 2000, 1999 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Some Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Singer, Randy (Randy D.)
False witness / Randy Singer.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4143-3569-8 (sc)
I. Title.
PS3619.I5725F35 2011
813ʹ.6—dc22 2010051598
Author’s Note
People often ask me, “Where do you get the ideas for your books?”
This one came at a funeral.
The deceased was David O’Malley, a good friend and former client. His wife had asked me to give the eulogy. I talked about David’s generosity, his big heart. He was always inviting someone to live at his house until they could get back on their feet. He ran a used-car lot and hired people down on their luck. David believed in second chances.
And he was a character. He had this larger-than-life personality that made people laugh. He sang in a gospel quartet. Everybody had a David O’Malley story. Heads nodded as I shared mine.
David’s pastor followed me in the pulpit. He spoke about a man named Thomas Kelly. The man was a scoundrel. Involved in organized crime. He turned on everyone he knew.
Jaws dropped and the mourners stared in disbelief at this pastor. The man had clearly lost his mind!
“You don’t think you know Thomas Kelly, but you do,” the pastor insisted. “David O’Malley was Thomas Kelly before he went into the witness protection program. Before he came to the Lord.”
Prior to that moment, the only people who knew about David’s past were the government, his family, myself, and his pastor. The men he had testified against had died in prison. His wife had obtained the government’s permission to reveal his past.
There was utter silence as the pastor concluded with a line I will never forget.
“The government can give you a new identity,” he said. “But only Christ can change your life.”
That would make a good book, I thought.
I hope I was right.
A false witness will not go unpunished, and one who utters lies perishes.
Proverbs 19:9
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
Part I: The Bounty Hunter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part II: The Law Students
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Part III: The Code
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Part IV: The Deal
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Part V: The Witnesses
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
A Note about the Church in India
About the Author
Prologue
Thursday, August 5
Las Vegas
If anything happened to this kid, the professor would never forgive himself. The young man was more than just a brilliant protégé; he was like a son. He reminded Professor Kumari so much of himself at that age. Too much, sometimes. Except that Rajat was brasher, bolder than Kumari had ever been.
Rajat Singh possessed his mentor’s gift for complex mathematical theories, but he had something more. At heart, Rajat was a businessman. A risk taker. A part of India’s new generation of entrepreneurs. He had grown restless as a teaching assistant at the university; Kumari could see that. Rajat stayed out of respect for the professor.
When Professor Kumari told his protégé about the Abacus Algorithm, the young man’s eyes burned with entrepreneurial fire. To Rajat, it was more than a math formula. It became an opportunity to piece together a historic agreement that might help millions of other Dalits, India’s caste of untouchables, achieve the same kind of success Rajat had obtained. Though discrimination against the Dalits had been outlawed, the vestiges of the caste system were everywhere. Professor Kumari preached patience, but Rajat would have none of it. He proposed a plan with such zeal and attention to detail that the professor couldn’t say no.
This meeting was the culmination of Rajat’s plan.
Kumari said a prayer, his head bowed as he sat in the driver’s seat of the Ford Escape he had rented. He had a bad feeling about this meeting, something he just couldn’t shake. He had insisted on elaborate security precautions to protect the algorithm.
“You worry too much, grasshopper,” Rajat said from the passenger seat, trying hard to inject a worry-free tone into his voice. Kumari had once asked Rajat about the grasshopper reference; it was an allusion, as best Kumari could remember, to some old American movie or television show, the type of thing that didn’t interest the professor in the least.
“That the birds of worry fly above your head, this you cannot change,” the young man continued with mock solemnity. “But that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
Kumari did not smile. He was known for being jovial and outgoing, having a type of mad-professor personality, which, he had to admit, was a reputation he did little to dispel. But this was not a time for smiles.
“Be careful, my son,” Kumari said.
Rajat took the cue, nodded solemnly, and instantly became the earnest young businessman. He looked professional in his dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. Professional—and almost American. Still, he was so inexperienced to be handling such a sensitive transaction.
Kumari wanted to give Rajat a lecture, one of Kumari’s patented professorial pep talks, more about life than about academics. But Kumari sensed that the young man had already surpassed his teacher in so many matters of life and faith. The time for lectures had passed.
“God be with you,” Rajat said.
“And with you.”
The young man climbed out of the van, grabbed his briefcase, and strode confidently toward the MGM Grand. He did not look back to see the lines of worry etched into his mentor’s face, the birds beginning to nest in the professor’s hair.
“Protect him,” Kumari prayed. He pulled away from the front of the casino, cutting off other drivers and ignoring their horns.
Twelve minutes later, Kumari entered his apartment, breathless from his climb up the outdoor steps. He disabled the alarm system, locked the dead bolt, and pulled the chain lock into place.
The living room and dining area, one long, L-shaped open space, was littered with twenty-four interconnected desktop computers and enough wiring to make the rooms look like a den of snakes. There were no pictures on the walls and no couch or recliner or television set. Just twenty-four desktop units, a small card table set up in the dining area, two folding chairs, and a beanbag.
In the single bedroom were two air mattresses.
Kumari had chosen this unit twenty days ago because it met all three criteria on his list: high-speed Internet access, a monthly lease, and anonymity. He paid cash in advance and signed the application using a phony name.
He hustled across the room, accidentally kicking one of the computers. He checked the lock on the sliding-glass door that led to a small patio, then pulled the blinds on the glass door and placed his laptop on the card table so he could hook it up to his improvised network.
Each computer had been maxed out with memory upgrades, according to Rajat, and then linked in such a way that the total network capacity exceeded 256GB of RAM. The network was protected by three separate firewalls.
Kumari’s screen flickered to life, and he entered his password. He connected immediately to the Internet and opened the program that gave him remote access to Rajat’s computer screen. Kumari typed the words I’m on so that they showed up on a document opened on Rajat’s desktop. Then Kumari opened a second window on his computer that pulled up the video and audio feed from Rajat’s computer. When the MGM Grand conference room came into focus with the same grainy resolution that Kumari had witnessed during the trial runs, he began to relax a little.
Rajat, the more electronically savvy of the two, had wired his laptop with a hidden video camera on the back, inside a port that looked like an Internet connection. He squeezed a corresponding microphone into what appeared to be an expansion port on the side. His computer now fed Kumari a live, blow-by-blow broadcast of the meeting.
Though the resolution was not the best, Kumari could make out three business executives within range of the wide-angle lens. They sat across from Rajat, separated from him by a large, polished-wood conference table. The man in the middle had dressed casually; the others wore suits. All three appeared younger than Kumari had anticipated.
The Chinese American man on the right looked more like a thug than a businessman. He had a low brow and thick neck, with veins bulging from a too-tight collar on his shirt, as if he couldn’t afford a custom fit. On the right side of his face, a scar started at his sideburn and ended at his jaw. His right ear was smaller than the left, as if he had lost part of it in a knife fight and a plastic surgeon had just sewn up what was left. A tattooed cobra was coiled on the left side of his neck, poised to strike at any moment.
Kumari pegged him as security.
The man on the left, pale-skinned and tall, seemed infinitely more sophisticated. Eastern European perhaps, with ice blue eyes and short, Nordic-blond hair. He slouched in his seat, a cool, disinterested look on his face.
In the middle, the position of influence, sat a young man approximately Rajat’s age, probably the CEO, dressed in a black linen shirt, with long dark hair, a trim goatee, and dark, brooding eyes that seemed to pierce Kumari’s screen.
Kumari had missed the introductions and
casual conversation, if any had taken place. Rajat was sketching out the logistics of the transaction, a complicated matter since Rajat had insisted on having the fifty million dollars in the bank before the algorithm was transferred. The men opposite Rajat were employed by a deal-brokerage agency that represented the three largest Internet security companies in the world. Understandably, they wanted to test the algorithm before any money changed hands.
“You will forgive my skepticism,” the middle man said, his expression difficult to read, “but the implications of your claims are enormous. Not to mention the fact that our top consultants believe rapid factorization into prime numbers is a mathematical impossibility.”
“Did you bring the numbers?” Rajat asked calmly. His voice came across louder than the others, based on his proximity to the mike. Kumari could discern no wavering in it, no hint of the frayed nerves that surely had to be racking his young partner.
“Of course.”
“Then we can talk theory or we can talk application,” Rajat said. “I mean, why bother finding out the true facts if we can just sit around and speculate based on the opinions of your experts?”
“We can do without the sarcasm,” the Nordic man said.
The CEO betrayed no emotion as he consulted a folder. He dictated a long number that Rajat typed into the open document on his screen. Next, Rajat read back the digits to the CEO, all 197 of them, double-checking them slowly. It took nearly two minutes just to verify the number.
Kumari smiled. Child’s play. Using his algorithm, he should have the answer in less than five minutes. His laptop could process this one by itself. He copied and pasted the number into his formula.
As Kumari’s computer crunched the algorithm and Rajat plunked away on his own keyboard, plugging in phony numbers and functions, the conference room grew remarkably quiet, tension filling the air, as if the executives didn’t dare jinx this moment by making a sound. From miles away, Kumari could almost tell what they were thinking: If this works—if this really works—it would destroy the foundation of Internet encryption. The RSA protocol, used extensively to secure transactions on the web, would be a sieve. It was, as Rajat had exclaimed when Kumari first told him about the breakthrough, “The key to every lock!”
Kumari had started working on his formula nearly twenty years ago as the result of a challenge from a fellow professor. Kumari called it a serious academic pursuit, a scholar’s desire to break new ground. Others called it an obsession. Whatever the label, he dedicated his best and most productive years to accomplishing something unprecedented: discovering an order in the sequence of prime numbers. Most theorists believed that the numbers sprang up like weeds among the natural numbers, obeying no law other than the law of chance. It was impossible to predict where the next prime number would sprout, they said.