Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) (42 page)

“Yes.”

“Was he the one who took you off this ship and escorted you to Egypt?”

“Yes.”

“Was he there when you were tortured?”

“No.”

“Was he was in the room during any of the torture?”

“No.”

“Are you Wahamed Duar?”

“No. I am Mohammed el-Mahdi.”

“Everything in the so-called confession is untrue?”

“Yes. Completely.”

“Why did you sign it?”

“Because I couldn’t stand the pain anymore.”

Stern nodded his head. “No further questions.”

Elizabeth Watson rose slowly. She wasn’t sure where to start. She had not anticipated this man testifying, whatever his name really was. She had not prepared a cross-examination, for which she was now kicking herself. “You wear contact lenses, do you not?”

“No.”

“There is only one photograph in existence of Wahamed Duar. That photograph was taken of you when you were wearing light brown contact lenses. Correct?”

“No. That is not me in the photograph.”

“You admit you were at the meeting when the raid took place. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you admit that you are part of Duar’s organization. Correct?”

“No. I never do anything with him. I just hang around. Once in a while he will ask me to drive him somewhere. But that’s all.”

“Yet you were friends with him from childhood? And he shows so little faith in you that you’re not part of his organization?”

“I’m not very . . . smart. I never got much education. He knows this. I think he really just keeps me around because I look like him. There are a couple of other men who look like him too that he uses for the same purpose.”

Watson was horrified. This was getting worse. She felt the burning eyes of the journalists on the back of her head. They were scribbling furiously in their obnoxious little notebooks, ready to transmit to their newspapers and television stations that the United States had captured the wrong man, and Wahamed Duar was still at large. Her name would be in every newspaper in the country for having failed. “If in fact you are Wahamed Duar, it would be very clever for you to have your friend have
his
photograph taken who has lighter eyes, and tell anyone who would listen that he is Wahamed Duar. Wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maybe you are Mohammed el-Mahdi and maybe you are Wahamed Duar. You were captured with Duar’s organization in the middle of the biggest arms sales meeting in recent memory. Yet you claim complete innocence. Perhaps you’re Wahamed Duar and pretending not to be. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

“No.”

“The photograph we have in evidence is of Mohammed el-Mahdi, isn’t it?”

“It looks like Wahamed to me. But it isn’t me.”

“Maybe you are Duar and the photograph is of Mr. el-Mahdi, your double?”

“No. It is not. I am el-Mahdi.”

She thought for a moment, just long enough for those in the gallery to think she had lost her way. “Sir, you were there on the morning of the raid, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you were armed, correct?”

“We were attacked and I found a rifle on the floor and picked it up.”

“When you were about to be captured you fired at the American forces, trying to kill them, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know what was happening. I was afraid.”

“No further questions,” Elizabeth said, sitting down with a slight smile on her face, a manufactured, disingenuous smile that hid her frustration. She had hoped to place some belief in the minds of the court that this man was in fact Wahamed Duar, who had simply created a clever story to evade conviction. But she doubted the very thing she was trying to sell. It was simply the best she could do.

“Anything further, Mr. Stern?”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“You may step down, sir,” Judge Graham said.

Stern stood. “Your Honor, if it please the court, I would like to renew my motion to exclude the confession. It seems apparent that United States agents were complicit in the confession. If it wasn’t solicited by them, they participated by delivering my client to Egypt, then waiting just behind the curtain until the torture was completed. It is complicity of a very dark and troubling kind, Your Honor, and the confession must be excluded to deter American forces from participating in this kind of charade.”

“Denied,” Judge Graham said with finality.

In Washington Wolff stood up. He was ready to call his next witness. He had just completed Sellers, the one disgruntled member of Rat’s team, who had willingly, eagerly, spoken with Wolff on the phone, and had testified gladly. He had nearly skipped into the courtroom, ready to relieve his conscience by telling all, but had suddenly lost some of his enthusiasm when he looked into Rat’s face. At the end, all he could say was that Rat had been kneeling by Mazmin, and there was water involved, but he really couldn’t see much. Wolff was furious. It wasn’t what Sellers had said on the phone. But he too had seen the look Rat had given Sellers.

Skyles turned to Rat. “There are still twelve people on their witness list that they haven’t called. A few of them I never even had a chance to contact.”

“That just impresses the hell out of me,” Rat said, looking at Skyles. “It’s my life that’s on trial here. Do you understand that I’ll be in
prison
? You couldn’t even find time to
call
them? What the hell have you been doing?” Rat was seething. The trial was getting to him. He was unable to fight back; he had to rely on Skyles. Why hadn’t he followed the advice of his friends and stayed in Dev Group? Don’t go to the CIA, they said. It’s in Washington, and Washington is poison. Everything is political, and we don’t know how to play that game. They don’t believe in duty and honor, just power and position. But he hadn’t listened. He had been flattered by their interest. It felt like an opportunity to do some things he would never get another chance to do. Now he wanted nothing more than to go back to his regular Navy life, back to Dev Group.

“Don’t worry about it,” Skyles said.

“The United States requests that the courtroom be cleared,” Wolff said.

Judge Wiggins nodded. “All observers and journalists are to clear the courtroom.”

The marshals escorted everyone out except the court personnel, the attorneys, and the jury.

Wiggins waited for complete silence, then said to Wolff, “Call your witness.”

“The United States calls Achmed Massoud.”

Skyles frowned. “This is their big, secret witness.”

Rat looked at the back of the courtroom as the man came in. He recognized the man instantly. He tried not to let the jury see his consternation. He said through his clenched teeth, “Oh shit.”

Skyles turned quickly to him. “What? Who is he?”

“Acacia. He was there.”

“Where?” Skyles said as he saw Acacia enter the room dressed in a khaki-colored Italian suit.

“Sudan.”

“Do you have any dirt on him? Anything I can use to cross-examine him?”

Rat thought, then said quickly in a whisper, “When I was—talking—to the guy, Mazmin, Acacia asked me to look away for a few seconds. He wanted to kill him. He was ready to cut him open. Or shoot him. And Achmed’s not his real name.”

“What is his real name?”

“I don’t know. Acacia was a code name. He used all kinds of names.”

Acacia’s eyes met Rat’s as he walked up to the witness chair.

Acacia was sworn in and sat down carefully. His suit was perfect. His shirt matched, and his expensive designer tie gave him a sophisticated cosmopolitan look. He was wearing a Rolex. Rat had known him for two years. He was one of the cleverest operators he had ever met. He always seemed to find his way into the financial side of terrorist organizations, criminal endeavors, or even government corruption, and he always came out ahead of the game. Not only did he roll up the terrorist organization, but he ruined their finances for decades and seemed to somehow make off with some of it. Some of the money probably went to his principals in Jordan, and some of it probably ended up in Switzerland.

Wolff was clearly relishing calling a foreign operative to testify against Rat, to drive the final nail in the coffin. He knew that Acacia had been there, and he knew that Acacia had seen everything. It had been a struggle to get Jordan to force Acacia to come over to the trial. He had been required to go through the State Department and even the CIA to get authorization to identify him.

“Were you present on the night an attack occurred in Sudan by American forces trying to capture Wahamed Duar?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Who led that raid for the American forces?”

“Lieutenant Rathman. We knew him as Rat.”

“Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s sitting right over there,” he said, indicating.

“Were you there when the American Special Forces came into the room?”

“Yes.”

“Describe for us what happened.”

Acacia recounted the events of that night. The jury was riveted. They wanted to listen to Acacia all day. They were dazzled by his suave demeanor and his mystery.

“And after the firefight subdued, Lieutenant Rathman, the defendant,” Wolff said, pointing, “grabbed this Mazmin and threw him onto a table. Is that correct?”

“Well, I saw Mazmin on the table.”

Rat’s heart sank. “Here we go,” he muttered to Skyles.

“What did he do?”

Acacia hesitated. He looked at Rat, right in his eyes. For some reason, perhaps wishful thinking, Rat felt reassured. Acacia answered, “He offered him some water.”

The jurors laughed. Several of them sat back, thankful for the release in tension. Wolff was not pleased. “By offering him water, as you said, you don’t mean to imply that Rathman was trying to satisfy the thirst of the man he had just placed on the table, do you?”

“I don’t know what his intentions were. I wasn’t watching that closely, and he and I have never spoken about it.”

“Did you see him pour water onto his face, in the mouth and nose area of Mazmin, the man who later died?”

Acacia glanced at the jury, then back at Wolff with a starkly serious look. “This Mazmin, this murderer, is part of the most vicious terrorist organization in the world, headed by Wahamed Duar, who was there that night. I
saw
him with my own eyes. These are the men who tried to kill the King of Jordan six months ago. These are the men who murder Americans at every opportunity. They have no sense of justice. I personally wanted to—”

“Did you or did you not see Lieutenant Rathman pour water onto his face?”

Acacia was annoyed. “May I finish?”

Wolff replied, quickly sensing that this witness was getting out of control, “You may continue answering the question, but you may not continue a speech about your opinions regarding—”

Skyles saw his opening. He stood up quickly. “Your Honor, he asked a question, yet now he refuses to let the witness answer it because he doesn’t like the answer. That’s not justice, that’s not—”

The judge turned to Acacia, pressing his glasses up hard into his face. “Answer the question, sir, and you will be given a chance to give your full answer, but it must be responsive to the question.”

Acacia nodded. “I personally wanted to kill the man on the table. I had a knife in my clothing, as well as a gun. Lieutenant Rathman restrained me. I walked to the table with the full intention of killing him, but your American officer would not let me do it. He saved the man’s life.”

Rat tried not to smile.

Wolff wanted to strangle him. “Did you see him pouring water into Mazmin’s face?”

Acacia sat there for what seemed like an eternity. Finally he spoke in his quiet way again. “I saw him offering the man a drink, I saw him prevent me from killing him, which I would do today with my bare hands if given the chance, and would do to Wahamed Duar if you allow me to go aboard your ship for thirty minutes, but after I was stopped, I was ashamed, and turned away. I did not see what happened after that.”

“You saw Lieutenant Rathman torture him. Didn’t you?”

“Leading,” Skyles objected.

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“Did you see Rathman torture Mazmin?”

“I saw some water, I saw him offer a drink, but if Mazmin needed to be tortured,
I
would have done it, and he would’ve told me whatever I wanted to know, I promise you. Your Lieutenant Rathman seemed restrained. He seemed unwilling to do what was necessary to truly get this man to talk. I would’ve been happy to do it.”

“But he told Lieutenant Rathman where Duar was, did he not?”

“That is what I understand. Perhaps he was grateful for the drink.”

Two jurors laughed out loud and then put their hands over their mouths, ashamed of their lack of control.

Wolff knew he had missed his target by a wide margin. He remembered that phrase before. Another witness had used the same phrase, that Mazmin was grateful for the drink. But who? Someone had gotten to the witnesses and encouraged them not to talk to him, even told them what to say and how to say it. Wolff had been required to call the witnesses cold, without meeting with them first, and they were killing him. Groome, he suddenly thought. The other SEAL. Rat’s best friend. “Sir, one last thing. Have you spoken with anyone about your testimony here today?”

“Not really.”

“Did you talk to a Lieutenant Ted Groome?”

Acacia looked surprised. “Yes, I did.”

“He called you.”

“Yes.”

“In Jordan?” Wolff asked skeptically.

“No. Here. After I got here to testify at the request of your Department of Justice, an official request through my government in Jordan.”

“He called you here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At my hotel.”

“How did he know you were coming, or what hotel you would be at?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t you tell him?”

“No.”

“Then I have no idea.”

“What did he say?” Wolff regretted the question as soon as he asked it.

Acacia hesitated. “He said he had already testified and that you were trying to hang Lieutenant Rathman, you were twisting the truth and determined to get a conviction because of political pressure. I think that’s what he said. Oh, and that the American government was trying to convict a hero.”