Pierce knew it would be foolish to resist. Then a deep voice from behind them said, “These are my friends.”
As the speaker stepped into the headlights, Pierce recognized the man from the Rhino Bar. Calmly, he took a wad of Luandian bills from his back pocket, holding it out to the soldier. “They are also visitors from America.”
The soldier looked from the man to Pierce, a series of calculations showing in his eyes. Seconds passed. Then he took the money from the stranger’s outstretched hand. “And for
her?”
he pressed.
The man from the Rhino produced a few more bills. Counting them, the soldier inquired, “That’s all?”
“She’s smaller,” the stranger replied with quiet authority.
Turning, the soldier said something to his companions. Then he got in the jeep and drove away, the soldier in the passenger seat again tipping the whiskey bottle to his lips.
“Come with me,” the man from the Rhino directed.
A nondescript Honda was parked near the bar. Edgy, Marissa got in the back seat, glancing up at Pierce. He shut her door and slid in front beside their guide.
The man from the Rhino drove for minutes in the direction from which the soldiers had come. Just before the road ended, he swerved right, toward a grove of trees, so sharply that Marissa cried out before the car slipped through the foliage onto a concealed path. They went deeper into the palms and mangroves, perhaps two hundred yards. Then the headlights captured a dilapidated shack beneath a corrugated roof. Stopping the car, the man abruptly told Pierce, “Go inside.”
Bara trusted this man, Pierce thought, and it was too late to wonder whether he should trust Bara. Nodding toward Marissa, Pierce said, “She comes with me.”
Together, they left the car and walked toward the shed, Pierce holding the duffel bag. The door was ajar, emitting a soft glow. Pierce entered before Marissa.
In a chair to one side sat a man holding a gas lantern in one hand and a gun in the other. The man raised his gun, aiming at Pierce’s head, and Pierce suddenly knew he would die in Luandia. He almost said, “Don’t shoot,” then realized how pointless this would be.
“I
know
you,” Marissa told the man.
Eyes still on Pierce, he lowered his gun. “Yes, madam.”
“Do you have something for us?”
Slowly, the man placed the weapon in his lap, putting the lamp on the floor beside him. In its light, Pierce saw that he, too, was young, with liquid brown eyes in a sensitive face. “My name is Sunday Opuba,” he told Marissa. “My loyalty is to FREE. I joined the Asari movement to learn whatever I could. So I made it my business to cultivate friendships, smoking weed and hanging out in bars. Two guys I spent time with were Moses Tulu and Lucky Joba—”
“From Ela,” Marissa said.
“Yes. Three weeks ago we were in the bar there. Your husband had been arrested; there were many rumors about Goro. We drank much gin. But Joba kept watching me, more keenly than before. Finally, he said, ‘We all know Okari’s finished.’
“’Yes?’ I asked.
“’Yes,’ Joba said, like it was settled. ‘But there may be a way for us to profit from it.’ When I asked him how, he said, ‘You should meet the one-eyed colonel.’”
Pierce glanced at Marissa. Calmly, she said, “Go on.”
“Two nights later Joba and Tulu drove me to the barracks at Port George. I was frightened—when the soldiers let us in, everything was dark, and I could hear a prisoner screaming.” Briefly, Sunday could not look at Marissa. “The officer with us laughed and said it sounded like your husband. But I do not think it was.”
Marissa’s face showed nothing. “What happened then?” she prodded.
“We went inside the prison to an office. At once I knew Okimbo by his eye patch. The
oyibo
with him was a stranger who did not give his name.”
Pierce felt the tingle of anticipation. “What did he look like?”
“He was big—not fat, but broad. His hair was blond with gray. But mostly it was the colonel who spoke to us.” Sunday looked somberly at Marissa. “They needed witnesses against your husband, he said, to prove what they already knew.
“I was scared, wishing to get out. Then Okimbo turns to Joba, saying, ‘Tell him.’
“Before Asari Day, Joba says, he was waiting outside Bobby’s home in Goro. He heard Bobby on his cell phone. ‘There must be deaths now,’ he
tells me Bobby said. ‘There are repair crews in the field—who dies doesn’t matter, only that it’s done.’” Pausing, Sunday told Marissa, “It’s like he’s telling a story. But then Tulu says he heard this, too.”
In the yellow light of the lamp, Marissa’s expression did not change. “So then Okimbo asked you to become a witness.”
“Yes, madam.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That now I knew your husband was guilty as charged. But his lawyers would call Tulu and Joba liars. That was why they needed me to corroborate their story.”
“How did you answer?”
“That my fellow Asari would see me as a traitor.” Sunday glanced at Pierce. “The white man said there’d be money for me—fifteen thousand American, five before the trial, ten after. Then he laughed and said, ‘Why fear the Asari? They do not believe in violence.’”
Anger surfaced briefly in Marissa’s eyes. “Did you agree?”
“No. I told them I was in my village all the days before Asari Day. Too many people would remember.” Sunday bit his lip. “When I saw Okimbo’s face I promised to say nothing.
“’You
will
say nothing,’ he told me. ‘That much I can promise you.’ When he picked up the phone, I felt like I would piss my pants. ‘Take him away,’ Okimbo says.
“The soldiers came for me. When they took me toward the gallows, I was sure that I would die. Then they took me to the front gate and pushed me into the street.”
“And your friends?” Marissa asked.
Sunday shook his head. “I stayed away from them. Instead I came to General Freedom.”
Pierce stepped forward. “Is this the truth?”
“Yes.” Slowly the man looked up at Marissa. “I will swear to it in court. You may find me through the man who drove you.”
Without saying more, he stood, nodding to Marissa, and walked out the door. Quiet, they watched until the light of his lantern vanished in the foliage.
“Van Daan,” Pierce murmured.
“Yes.” Marissa’s voice was etched with doubt. “Unless he’s lying.”
It was five days until the trial.
O
N THE MORNING
O
KARI’S TRIAL COMMENCED
, A
TIKU
B
ARA DROVE
Pierce and Marissa to the courthouse in Port George.
The building was a remnant of British rule, a staid Edwardian structure surrounded by Okimbo’s soldiers. The few demonstrators who’d braved the government’s disapproval were thwarted by a system of military roadblocks that controlled access to the courthouse, admitting only a trickle of foreign journalists, human rights workers, diplomatic personnel, and, observing for PGL, Clark Hamilton. Pierce’s mood was grim. In the past five days, little had changed: Beke Femu—the soldier-witness to Goro—had vanished, as had Sunday Opuba, the spy for FREE, and Pierce had been forced to seek a week’s delay in asking Judge Taylor to enjoin PGL from allegedly colluding in Bobby’s prosecution. Nor had Caraway’s diplomatic efforts, as far as Pierce could tell, succeeded in blunting Karama’s resolve to rid himself of Bobby. And so, as Rachel and their associates had labored in Waro, Pierce had prepared for a grotesque distortion of the judicial process, certain only that whatever happened would be as Karama ordained. In only days or weeks, Bobby might be dead.
That knowledge shadowed Pierce’s interactions with Marissa. Though they treated each other with kindness, an unspoken sense of betrayal seemed to haunt them both: the knowledge that Bobby’s lawyer and his wife desired each other was, in light of his prospective fate, painful beyond words. Pierce’s fear that his judgment was compromised, his motives tangled, caused him to ruthlessly censor any thought of his relationship with
Marissa outside or beyond the trial. Now, with Bara, they passed through the checkpoints and barricades in silence.
Arriving at the courthouse, they saw a Black Maria waiting, a steel truck with darkened windows evocative of a hearse. As they exited Bara’s sedan, two soldiers opened the door of the Black Maria. Stiffly, Bobby Okari stepped out, his hands manacled, his movements resembling those of an old man no longer certain of his balance. Seeing Marissa on the other side of the barricade, he gave her a smile so bright and brave that it seared Pierce just to see it. Then the soldiers took both his arms, half-dragging him up the courthouse steps before his wife could reach him. He turned his head to see her; Marissa smiled back at him until he vanished inside, and then briefly closed her eyes. Pierce had never entered a courtroom with such foreboding.
T
HE WORLD OF
a trial, Pierce had long ago learned, is hermetic, its ruthless imperatives consuming every resource he possessed. But every trial has its own peculiar character. The trial of Bobby Okari, Pierce knew at once, would be as bleak as it was unjust.
One factor was the courtroom itself: once a temple of the law—with tall windows, wooden floors, and a judge’s mahogany bench—it had fallen into disrepair, the floors worn, the air-conditioning groaning, the lights flickering at random. Worse was the presence of soldiers stationed on all sides; worst was that Okimbo sprawled in the jury box with an air of command, like the silent impresario of a drama with its end already written. Sitting beside Pierce, Bobby murmured, “Okimbo’s the jury. These judges are on trial, too.”
They seemed to know this. In the moments before the trial commenced, the presiding judge, George Orta, glanced at Okimbo with an apprehension at odds with his air of gravity. In another setting, Pierce would have found his appearance laughable: a sour-faced man in a three-piece suit topped by a black bowler, he reminded Pierce uncomfortably of an undertaker from an era long since past. The judge to Orta’s left, Sidney Uza, was an elderly man so thin that he appeared in the grip of a wasting disease. The more robust member of the tribunal, Colonel Yakubu Nubola—a man without legal training who served to represent Karama’s interests—wore a purple beret, combat fatigues, and a seemingly permanent scowl. Eyeing them, Bobby murmured, “The faces of justice,” and began scribbling on a notepad.
Rising from the jury box, Okimbo held up his hand to Orta, signaling that matters would be held in abeyance. He paused in the well of the courtroom, giving Marissa a look that bespoke a lascivious remembrance. Then he walked to the prosecutor, Patric Ngara, placing both hands on the table and speaking so that only Ngara could hear. Ngara, a lean, mus-tached man whose air of professionalism could not conceal the anxiety of a functionary who could not afford to err, listened intently. Pierce suspected that this conference was less important for its substance than its reminder that Karama, through Okimbo, controlled the fate of everyone involved.
Nodding curtly to Orta, Okimbo went back to the jury box. For an instant, humiliation surfaced in the presiding judge’s eyes; by reputation a once distinguished jurist, he had been recast as Karama’s puppet in a procedure that mocked every tenet of the system of justice, founded in English law, in which he had risen. The genius of an autocracy, Pierce supposed, was that fear reduced most men to a cowardly commonality. But not the man Pierce was defending.
He placed his hand on Bobby’s arm, a gesture of support. A court reporter entered with a stenotype machine, and then a courtroom deputy intoned, “The special tribunal in the matter of Robert Okari is now in session. God bless this tribunal and the sovereign nation of Luandia.”
Expressionless, Orta spoke; only his lips, seeming barely to move, marred Pierce’s impression of a waxworks dummy. In a deep voice, he said, “You may enter your appearances.”
Ngara stood. “Patric Ngara, Your Honor, on behalf of the people of Luandia.”
Orta turned to Pierce and Bara. “Atiku Bara on behalf of the defendant,” Bara said. “With me is Damon Pierce, an eminent trial lawyer from the United States. I ask that the court admit him to practice before it for the sole purpose of representing Mr. Okari.”
Orta inspected Pierce like a frog contemplating a bug. “Can you assure this court that you will conduct yourself in a manner consistent with its dignity?”
In its perhaps unintended irony, the question tempted Pierce to suggest that it was impossible to answer. Instead he responded smoothly, “Of course, Your Honor. Beginning with the appropriate devotion to the rights of my client.”
Though Orta’s lips opened, it was a moment before they emitted a sound. “Very well, Mr. Pierce. But the nature of those rights will be determined by this tribunal.”
“I would like to address that now,” Pierce responded promptly. “To protect those rights, I ask that the tribunal postpone this trial for six months’ time.”
Orta remained impassive. “On what grounds?”
“Several. We have no witness list from Mr. Ngara, nor a summary of the evidence against Mr. Okari. We’ve been denied adequate access to our client, as well as sufficient time to prepare a defense.” Pausing, Pierce concluded emphatically: “These are the rudiments of a fair trial, Your Honor. We cannot proceed without them.”
As Ngara stood, Orta said, “Do you wish to be heard, Mr. Ngara?”
“I do. Counsel’s argument is disingenuous. He is utterly aware of the charges against Bobby Okari. We have not impeded him from investigating. And if he wants to know our witnesses, we will tell him. As for the delay he seeks, an expeditious trial preserves the national security of Luandia. In perilous times, the justice system must preserve the right of a nation to defend itself against secession and sedition.”
Orta nodded. To Pierce, he said, “Motion denied. The trial will proceed.”
Pierce did not sit. However hopeless matters appeared, he would make his record for the world press. “There are other grounds, Your Honor.” After turning briefly toward the gallery, he gathered himself, speaking quietly but clearly. “There are observers in this courtroom from around the globe. And what they are about to see, unless this trial is adjourned, is a proceeding so lacking in the basic elements of due process that it is unrecognizable as justice.