False Witness Page 37

  After a few initial objections, Carzak warmed to the plan. Parcelli promised that the feds would inflict minimal trauma on Jamie Brock. The kidnapping went off flawlessly. But then, as usual, the lawyers fouled everything up. Since Carzak and Parcelli couldn’t find Hoffman, they had to work through Walter Snead. The savvy old codger saw this as an opportunity to feather his own nest and possibly keep his sorry carcass out of jail. Snead proposed a package deal—“two for one,” as he phrased it. He would talk Hoffman into working with the government to nab the triad leaders, but Snead also wanted a secret side deal.

  And it was a doozy.

  Snead would testify in secret grand jury proceedings about corruption in the Los Angeles court system. A small band of lawyers, including Snead, had been bribing judges on civil cases so that they could win enormous verdicts. On criminal cases, those same lawyers provided only token defenses, basically throwing the cases so that criminal defendants whom the judges wanted to nail ended up serving time in prison. Snead would provide details as well as the names of lawyers and judges. The FBI had been investigating this corruption ring for nearly two years, and now Snead could give them proof.

  Snead would also talk Hoffman into working with the government on his case and, even more important, would try to pry the algorithm out of Hoffman’s greedy little hands so it could be sold to the government. Snead explained to Carzak and Parcelli that the algorithm was encrypted with a code nearly impossible to decipher without the government’s enormous resources. But Snead had a plan, he said, that might get the algorithm into Wellington Farnsworth’s hands. If that worked, the government would have to pony up about one and a half million dollars into an offshore account in exchange for the encrypted algorithm. Parcelli was pretty sure where that money would go.

  But Parcelli had done everything he could to intimidate Farnsworth and had come to believe that the kid probably never received a copy of the algorithm. In any event, that issue became moot on Monday, when the Hoffmans agreed to sell the algorithm directly to Parcelli for two million dollars.

  It was time to wrap up the loose ends on Snead’s deal. The lawyer had insisted on keeping his deal secret even from his own client. He had liked the government’s suggestion that they could stage Snead’s death when they apprehended the triad leaders. Things got complicated when Hoffman wouldn’t tell Snead the details of Hoffman’s plan to nail the triad leaders. He would only tell Snead to meet him at the Sheraton Hotel on Friday morning.

  As a result, Parcelli and his fellow agents had been forced to improvise. All things considered, Parcelli thought the improvisation—having Snead secreted into the triad’s headquarters after the triad members had all been arrested, staging the shooting as Snead left—had been nothing short of brilliant.

  Parcelli checked his runner’s watch: 10:20. He didn’t understand people like Snead, people who always showed up late, people who presumed on other people’s time. He especially couldn’t understand lawyers like Snead—ones who sold out their clients’ interests to further their own.

  That was the problem with the witness protection program. To convict the Satans of the underworld, you had to hold your nose and cut deals with Satan’s demons. Parcelli tried to console himself by thinking about all the judges and fat-cat lawyers they would convict in the Los Angeles corruption sting. He reminded himself that they would be putting Huang Xu and Li Gwah in prison for a very long time, something like three consecutive life sentences. Maybe even the death penalty. He reminded himself of these things just in time, right as big Walter Snead came ambling across the dining room, heading straight for Parcelli’s table.

  The FBI agent did not bother to rise. And Walter Snead did not bother to smile.

  “I don’t understand your insistence on the formality of a meeting,” Snead began. No pleasantries, no “thanks for saving my hide,” just begin the meeting with the usual Snead complaints. “I can read the agreement on my own.”

  “It’s procedure,” Parcelli said flatly. He waited for the waiter to appear and for Snead to order a Bloody Mary. At 10:22 in the morning. Parcelli slid the memorandum of understanding across the table. Walter Snead was now known as Archibald Holmes. His background: a retired state court judge from Nevada. That way, Snead said, he could insist that his new friends address him as “the Honorable Archibald Holmes” in any formal invitations.

  “Did you get the algorithm from Farnsworth?” Snead asked. He leafed through the memorandum and scribbled his signature on the last page of all three copies.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Parcelli said. “Hoffman agreed to sell us the original.”

  Snead snorted. “Traitor wouldn’t even give his own lawyer a copy, and he sells it to the feds?” He shook his head. “How much?”

  “It’s confidential.”

  “You probably paid too much. You know that thing’s encrypted.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Parcelli said.

  The waiter reappeared with Snead’s drink. Both men declined breakfast.

  “Here’s your subpoena for the grand jury,” Parcelli said, handing a second document to Snead.

  Snead read it quickly. “Next week,” he said. “I think I’m busy.”

  “Your continued protection under this memorandum of understanding is contingent on your truthful grand jury testimony and the truth of all the factual recitals in the memorandum of understanding.”

  Snead waved him off. “I know all that. What else you got in that magic little briefcase of yours?”

  Parcelli handed him the second-to-last document. It was a dismissal order from a federal court judge of Snead’s lawsuit against the government for allegedly disclosing Hoffman’s location to the mob. It was one of the benefits of the deal for the federal government.

  “It’s a shame my client had to go and get blown up,” Snead said. “That would have been a heckuva lawsuit.”

  Parcelli ignored the comment—this was the hold-your-nose-and-get-the-job-done part—then pulled out the last document. “As part of our investigation into that L.A. corruption ring, we obtained a warrant to search your home and office. Figured you wouldn’t mind, being dead and all. Of course, we had to tell the magistrate that you were actually in the program.”

  Parcelli took a deep breath and sipped his orange juice, savoring the only fun he would have on this entire trip. “This warrant covers all of your personal belongings as well. I know that when we sent you out of town, you took your laptop and a briefcase with you. I’m going to need to follow you up to your hotel room and secure that laptop as potential evidence.”

  “Let me see that,” Snead said, snatching the document from Parcelli. Snead read the warrant carefully. When he finished, he allowed himself a thin smile, perhaps remembering that he had already negotiated complete immunity for any crimes associated with the L.A. corruption ring or the Hoffman algorithm.

  “Suit yourself,” Snead said. “It’d be hard for me to win a motion to quash that subpoena anyway, given the fact that I’m not technically alive.”

  He took a long hit on his Bloody Mary and broke into a full-toothed smile. “Go right ahead, Mr. Parcelli. Knock yourself out.”

  89

  Atlanta

  By Tuesday morning, Wellington was sick with worry. He was scheduled to testify in front of the grand jury on Wednesday and didn’t know if he could handle the pressure. He knew that Carzak would ask about the algorithm. And Wellington’s research on the attorney-client privilege was not encouraging. Even if Wellington could object to testifying about any conversations he had with Stacie Hoffman, which was questionable since he wasn’t technically a lawyer, he would still have to answer whether he was presently in possession of the algorithm.

  His client was dead. There were national security interests at stake. And Carzak would argue he needed the algorithm to prosecute the triad members. Wellington was pretty sure a judge would compel him to answer Carzak’s questions.

  Wellington was no longer worried about giving up
the encrypted algorithm. When he had finally discovered how to decrypt the formula, he realized that nobody would ever be able to figure it out without Pastor Prasad’s Bible.

  If Professor Kumari had only used the encryption system that Wellington first suspected in church on Sunday, somebody might conceivably have been able to figure that one out without Prasad’s Bible. Especially if the federal government had put hundreds of cryptologists on the assignment. Somebody might have guessed that the sequences of five numbers somehow referenced the words in a book or document. Somebody else, knowing Kumari was a religious man, might have suggested the Bible. From there, it wouldn’t take long to check all the versions.

  So Kumari had used another twist. Sometimes, the sets of numbers would be pinpointing a character in a particular verse in the English translation of the NLT Bible, and sometimes the numbers would be pinpointing a symbol in a particular verse in the Hindi translation. And the only way to know which translation to use would be to check Pastor Prasad’s Bible, where Kumari had underlined the verse on one translation or the other. And just so it wouldn’t be obvious, he had underlined a number of other random verses as well.

  When Wellington had figured this out, he downloaded some software to help him translate the Hindi symbols and resulting words. After that, the entire algorithm fell into place.

  What scared Wellington now wasn’t the prospect of being forced to produce the encrypted algorithm, but being forced to answer questions about it. He knew that Carzak would ask whether Wellington had ever seen the key to the encrypted code or if he knew how to decrypt the algorithm.

  Which was why Wellington had hardly eaten a thing in the past three days. He couldn’t lie—not after taking an oath to tell the truth. The attorney-client argument looked weak. And he didn’t want to go to jail for refusing to answer.

  He sent another text message to Jamie Brock—Have you heard anything yet?—and said another prayer.

  How did I ever get myself into this mess?

  No.

  Jamie typed the one-word text message and sent it to Wellington. She understood why the kid was nervous, but he was driving her crazy.

  Jamie had finished the paperwork on Monday. She wanted to meet first thing Tuesday morning with the U.S. attorney, but Carzak the Magnificent couldn’t squeeze her in until late afternoon. Wellington would just have to endure a few more hours of panic attacks.

  She arrived at Carzak’s impressive office precisely at four and he offered her something to drink. When he shook her hand this time, he seemed shorter than he had when she’d first met him in federal court. The effusiveness she once construed as friendliness she now viewed as unseemly, even sleazy. She wanted to wipe her hand on the side of her skirt.

  She refused his offer of something to drink. When Carzak offered his condolences for everything she had endured, she nearly laughed in his face. She sat down in front of Carzak’s massive oak desk, crossed her legs, and looked him straight in the eye.

  “That’s actually what I’m here to talk about,” she said. “The U.S. government’s condolences for what I’ve been through. I’ll spare you the details of how I found out, but I think a million dollars might be the appropriate tangible expression of those condolences.”

  Carzak gave her a pleasant but sideways look, the condescending kind reserved for family members with mental disorders. “Jamie, you’ve been through a lot. But it’s not the federal government’s job to compensate you for that—”

  “Spare me,” Jamie cut in sharply. “It is when you orchestrate the kidnapping. When you stage the whole thing. When you tie up a law-abiding citizen and put her in fear of rape.”

  Jamie watched Carzak carefully, impressed by the man’s ability to maintain a thin, neutral smile in the face of stinging accusations. But it was no longer natural. Instead, Carzak pulled it into place by careful use of every one of his well-toned smiling muscles.

  The look infuriated Jamie.

  “How can you sit there and defend this conduct? My own government—threatening my life?” She pulled her smoking-gun document from the file and handed it across the desk. “It’s an affidavit from Drew Jacobsen.”

  She still hadn’t forgiven the man, still didn’t trust him, but at least he had done this much.

  Even Carzak couldn’t smile through this. He read the document, frowned, then interlaced his fingers on the desk. “Jamie, I don’t know what to say. If Mr. Jacobsen’s affidavit is true—”

  “It’s true, Allan. You can drop the hypothetical charade.”

  “Are you going to let me finish?” Carzak asked.

  “Please.”

  “Okay. If what Mr. Jacobsen says is true, I’ll help you get to the bottom of it. People will lose their jobs over this. And I’ll personally ensure that you receive fair compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act.”

  Jamie sat up a little straighter. She knew she had him, but the money wasn’t the only issue. “You’ve subpoenaed Wellington Farnsworth for the grand jury tomorrow,” she said. “Drop that subpoena and agree not to pursue his testimony.”

  Carzak scowled. “Are you blackmailing me—using a threatened lawsuit to force me into releasing a witness in a criminal investigation?”

  Jamie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Carzak staking out the high moral ground? “You sound pretty sanctimonious for an attorney representing a client that just got finished kidnapping me,” Jamie said. “I’m threatening you with the truth. A million bucks and drop the subpoena, or I’m going to the press.”

  Carzak got up from his seat and walked to his window, like a troubled monarch gazing down on his fiefdom. This time, he talked with his back to Jamie. “Assuming this is true, I offer both my apologies and also a sense of perspective. If you were detained by the federal government, it would have been to protect you from the Chinese mafia, criminals who would stop at nothing. The stakes in this case were unbelievably high. We’re talking about an encryption-deciphering algorithm that could literally throw the Internet into chaos and expose some of our national secrets.”

  He turned toward her, his face serious and drawn. Carzak looked as tired as Jamie felt. “Sometimes, in the interest of a greater justice, in the interest of serving and saving millions of innocent people, compromises are made. That’s the whole purpose of the witness protection program in the first place, really.

  “I want to make it up to you, Jamie.” He hesitated, then added, “Assuming for the sake of argument that what you say is true. But I can’t recommend a million. You don’t get a jury under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In a post-9/11 environment, I can’t see a judge giving you more than a few hundred thousand for this claim. Without a reasonable number, I can’t get the settlement approved by the deputy attorney general. And believe me, he will need to personally authorize this deal.”

  “Will you drop the Farnsworth subpoena?” Jamie asked.

  “We just wanted to know if he has the algorithm.”

  “Will you drop the subpoena?”

  Carzak waited and thought. After a few seconds, he shook his head ever so slightly as if he was still convincing himself. “We may be able to obtain the algorithm through other means. Tell you what. If you’re willing to settle for two hundred and fifty thousand and agree to a confidentiality order, I’ll release Wellington’s subpoena.”

  “Seven fifty.”

  Carzak frowned and shook his head. “Jamie, I think a judge might be somewhat sympathetic to our predicament. If this algorithm had made it into the hands of the mob, it would have been a complete disaster. I can recommend five hundred thousand but even that’s a stretch.”

  Jamie hated this. It seemed like she and Carzak had just sat down at a Vegas poker table, both trying to bluff the other, as if justice were some kind of game. To Jamie, justice was anything but a game. It was a calling. A chance to avenge some very personal losses. A sacred thing.

  But definitely not a game.

  “Seven fifty,” she repeated. This time, she meant it. Sh
e would blow this whole charade wide open, expose everything the government had done, if Carzak dared to offer her one penny less. She didn’t even care about the money all that much, although she wouldn’t turn it down. There was something far greater at stake than money changing hands.

  Carzak must have read it in her eyes. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  “That’s not good enough,” Jamie insisted. “Do you have the authority to approve this deal, or do we need to get the deputy attorney general on the phone?” She paused, unblinking. “If I walk out that door, the deal’s off.”

  “Give me ten minutes,” Carzak said. Jamie nodded and left him alone in his office.

  Fifteen minutes later, he ushered Jamie back in and told her they would have the paperwork and check ready by the end of the week. He reiterated the confidentiality provisions and had her sign a brief statement. Carzak agreed to release Wellington’s subpoena. Jamie agreed to release all claims arising from the kidnapping and agreed not to talk with anybody about the incident.

  “Anybody means just that,” Carzak reiterated. “No exceptions—public or private. We can’t, of course, keep you from testifying about these events if you’re compelled to do so in some kind of criminal case by a court subpoena. But the final paperwork will require you to contact me if you ever receive such a subpoena. That will give me a chance to have the court quash the subpoena based on national security interests. Are those confidentiality and release terms acceptable?”

  Jamie assured Carzak she understood. They shook hands, and Carzak told her that she was going to make an outstanding lawyer.

  “One last question,” Jamie said, watching Carzak’s face for any hint of the answer. “Assuming, hypothetically, that it was my government who kidnapped me—would that idea have come from the FBI agent involved or from this office?”

  Carzak didn’t blink. “The government didn’t kidnap you, Jamie; the mob did.” He lowered his voice a notch, his face oozing sincerity. “But if the government had done this, I can assure you that it would not have been initiated by this office.”