Authors: Brian Haig
Kim Parrish suddenly bounced to her feet. “Your Honor, we’ve changed the charges.”
His Honor stared at the ceiling a moment. Speaking in a generally upward direction, he said, “Miss Parrish, you heard what
I just advised Agent Wilson?”
“Every word.”
“You understand that this applies to you also?”
“It left little question in my mind.”
“Then proceed. Carefully, Miss Parish.”
“Thank you. In fact, we have now established that the Konevitches do possess entirely valid visas.”
“I would have thought this rather simple fact could’ve been established before their arrests.”
“As would I, sir.” She frowned contemptuously at the younger colleague at her table, as if he was at fault for this stupid
blunder. His role in this farce was apparently to take the blame, and he obediently shrank and cowered under the force of
her fierce glare. She continued, “Regrettably, paperwork was misplaced. A simple administrative mistake. We were unable to
confirm this fact until yesterday.”
“And did you notify Mr. Jones, who is, after all, representing these people?”
MP decided this was a perfectly good moment to help her out with this difficult question. “No, this is the first I’ve heard
of it. I’m caught between shock and surprise. As Miss Parrish is no doubt aware, I’m prepared only to contest the charges
I’ve been made aware of.” MP looked so sad and disgusted it was impossible not to feel an ocean of pity for him.
“What do you have to say to that, Miss Parrish?”
“I tried to reach Mr. Jones.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Phone.”
“Once? Twice? How often?”
“I made multiple good-faith efforts. I can’t recall the precise number. Unfortunately, there was no answer at his office.”
“Do you have an answering machine, Mr. Jones?”
“Yes.”
“Is it left on after office hours?”
“Yes. Always.”
“Miss Parrish?”
“Maybe I dialed the wrong number.”
“I’m sure that explains it.”
Now that it was firmly established that she was lying, she pressed on. “We’re now charging the Konevitches with immigration
fraud.”
“Is this charge likely to change in the next few minutes?” MP asked, looking at the judge.
“It will not.” She was getting creamed, and like a good lawyer, taking it in cool stride.
Alex was almost lost. English wasn’t his native tongue, and the parries and thrusts shot around the small courtroom like lightning
bolts. The questions and replies came without time to breathe or think. Not a word was wasted, no “uhs,” no hesitations. Three
first-rate legal minds were playing hardball with each other, with his life at stake.
The judge removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “As this is the first this court has heard of this new charge, can you
honor us with a little more specificity?”
“Mr. Konevitch was heavily involved in criminal activity in Russia before he fled and came to America. He presented himself
to the Immigration Service as a victim of political persecution. He deliberately constructed false facts to verify this status.
Further, he claimed permanent employment with a company that has subsequently been discovered to be a fraud. It is, in fact,
a front for criminal activities, including money laundering. Given those un-lawful actions, we recommend that Mr. and Mrs.
Konevitch be immediately deported back to Russia.”
“Mr. Jones?”
“I’m not at all prepared to contest these absurd charges. They’re obviously preposterous, and will be easily debunked.”
“When will you be ready?”
“Two weeks, at a minimum.”
“Then we’ll reconvene in two weeks.”
Like that, it was over. His Honor started to rise, before MP interrupted his progress. “I have another matter for your advisement,
Your Honor.”
His Honor sank back into his chair.
“My clients should be released on bond immediately. The charges that led to their arrest have already been disproved and disposed.
They should not have to suffer a lack of freedom over what my colleague Miss Parrish has already confessed was gross negligence
on the part of her department.”
“Miss Parrish?”
“I did not state it was gross negligence. That’s an outrageous distortion of what I said.”
“Remind me. What did you say?”
“Simple bureaucratic oversight. Nearly two million immigrants a year enter our porous borders, legally or otherwise. As hard
as our people work, well”—she stared down at her hapless associate again—“occasionally a few pieces of paper get misplaced
in the shuffle.”
The elbows landed on the bench again. “Miss Parrish, I admire your noble efforts to defend the reputation of your service.
I surely do.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“It is admirable and it definitely touches my heart. However, I spent fifteen long years in your shoes. So don’t you ever
utter such outlandish baloney in this court again. It was, unmistakably, gross negligence. The INS is overworked and severely
understaffed, but that in no way excuses or ameliorates what happened here today. Now, what’s your response to bond for these
people?”
She never blinked. “We strongly advise that it be denied, Your Honor.”
“Grounds?”
“According to the Russian attorney general, Mr. Konevitch embezzled many millions of dollars from the investors in his bank.
He also fled with millions more that he stole from the Russian mob. He fled from there, and he will certainly flee from here.
He is, by any stretch, a definite flight risk.”
“Mr. Jones?”
MP paused and stared down at his legal pad for a long moment. Alex didn’t have a prayer. MP knew this. Further, he knew better
than to irritate the judge and risk losing his obvious sympathy by arguing otherwise. Alex seemed to understand this as well.
He was vigorously nodding his head in Elena’s direction.
“Mr. Jones?” the judge repeated, taking his tone up a notch.
“Those issues will be addressed in two weeks. Mrs. Konevitch, though, has been accused of nothing.”
His Honor was tired of talking. He simply shifted his stare to Kim Parrish.
“The government,” she replied, “would strongly prefer that she remain in custody as well.”
“I do not react to preferences, Miss Parrish. You had better offer substantiation for denial.”
“She’s a flight risk as well.”
“With her husband in jail?”
“Maybe.”
“You need to do better than that, Miss Parrish.”
“She was party to his falsehoods. She testified at his hearings, confirmed his lies, and served as his able co-conspirator.”
His Honor bent far forward and peered down at his court reporter, who also happened to double as his appointments secretary.
“Sally, what did I do last Sunday?”
“You played golf, Your Honor.”
“I did?”
“Of course. You had your usual ten a.m. tee time at Washington Golf and Country.”
“And were you to ask Mrs. Everston where I was, what do you think she’d say, Sally?”
Sally produced a shy smile and blushed nicely. “She’d say you were at your county school board meeting.”
“Am I on the school board, Sally?”
“No, Your Honor. Not for about five years now. It’s the same tired old alibi you give her every other Sunday.”
He redirected his gaze to Kim Parrish. “Mrs. Everston and I have been married thirty-two years now. You’d think she’d be on
to me by now, wouldn’t you?”
“I have no idea. I’m not married.”
“Then allow me to offer a little wisdom from the trenches. The state of matrimony, Miss Parrish, does not confer infinite
or absolute knowledge of spousal activities. Believe it or not, lots of married people cheat on each other, hide money from
each other, and, in cases, even have additional wives and husbands. So as much as you might wish it, the laws of this land
do not yet assign mutual guilt on married couples. I am not responsible for the horrible quilts my wife knits and afflicts
on our poor children every Christmas. She is certainly not responsible for the three times Sunday that I regrettably shifted
the lay of my golf ball and thereby cheated my partners into buying my lunch.”
“Moving a golf ball and stealing millions are wildly different offenses. I don’t agree with your analogies, Your Honor.”
“You don’t?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Bond will be set at $5,000.”
“I protest, Your Honor.”
“Of course you do.”
Before Alex was led away, Elena squeezed his hand, but did not say, “I love you.”
Instead she said, “Interactive Internet video?”
“Exactly. And call Mikhail for an update,” he whispered before he was tugged away.
T
he destroyed remnants of a long working lunch were strewn around the table. The mess would be picked up by the secretaries
shortly after the meeting ended. Laura Tingleman presided from the end of the long shiny table.
The chief lieutenants of the Justice Department were gathered on this Friday morning, as they were every Friday morning, for
what had come to be known as the “Weekly Roundup,” named in honor of her background as a Montanan. A city girl through and
through, Laura Tingleman could barely tell the back end of a cow from the front.
The chief of the Civil Rights Division was just winding up a long, complicated report about the status of a suit brought by
an Indian tribe nobody in the room had ever heard of. The tribe demanded the right to sue the shorts off anybody who used
the name “Indian,” or any variation thereof, or any reference thereto, or any image thereabout, in their product, team, school,
or institution, or whatever.
The case had bounced around various lower courts for over a decade. A victory here. A successful appeal there and now it was
on the verge of ascending to consideration by the Supreme Court. No fewer than ten civil rights lawyers had been involved
full-time, dodging around the country every time the case changed jurisdiction. The tribe in question was quite small, comprising
a husband and wife, a weird migratory couple who claimed they were pursuing the nomadic tradition of their forebears and could
not be pinned down for any length of time. They claimed to be following buffalo herds, or locusts, or even slight changes
in wind direction. Every move incited a new excuse. Coincidentally, their geographic shifts occurred every time they lost
an appeal and needed to bounce the case to a different, more radically liberal venue; they staunchly insisted that their ancient
native rights took precedence over the newly created White Man Rule, and some harebrained judge somewhere had ruled in their
favor. They won legal permission for unlimited changes of venue along with infinite reasons for appeal.
The couple had once been named Antonelli, before they had it legally changed to Chief and Mrs. Stare at My Moon. They happened
to be graduates of Yale Law.
The head of the Civil Rights Division and the solicitor general squabbled back and forth. Civil Rights wanted to hand this
hot potato to the solicitor general on the grounds that it was within spitting distance of the Supreme Court. The Court had
yet to determine whether this case belonged on their docket, the solicitor general shot back, with his loquacious lips pursed.
Yes, but the head of Civil Rights wanted his ten lawyers sprung. Also if the couple won, they would go on a legal rampage,
suing for billions from schools and companies that apparently were brutally insensitive to the terrible slights they were
inflicting on Indians. The costs would be huge, the backlash staggering.
Unfortunately, the White House was putting unbearable pressure on the department to roll over. The president felt the pain
of what had happened to American Indians and he wanted to make amends for three hundred years of atrocities, for white men
sharing their awful diseases, for stealing Indian land, for decimating the proud tribes. More succinctly, he wanted their
votes.
It was a definite no-win situation.
As usual, Laura Tingleman deferred the decision for later—later being when it somehow resolved itself without her fingerprints.
Time to bounce to the next issue, and Laura’s chief of staff held up an article clipped, a few days earlier, from the
New York Times
. Said article concerned a Russian couple being prosecuted for immigration violations. Predictably for the
Times
, the article was slanted and not overly complimentary to the government’s case. The word “railroad” was thrown around a few
times by the defense attorney, who had been given suspiciously generous play by the
Times
reporter.
“Does anybody know what this is about?” Laura asked, searching the faces around the table.
Tromble bent forward. “I do, and so should you.”
“I should?”
“Sure. From our Moscow trip, remember? This couple ripped off hundreds of millions and are hiding here. We specifically agreed
we would return them to Russia for trial.”
“I might have a vague recollection about it,” Laura allowed. So much business passed through her office, she could barely
keep it all straight.
“You were a little tired,” Tromble allowed back. “You gave your word to the Russian attorney general. I’m just following through.”
“How did it make the papers?” she asked.
Fortunately, Tromble had the answer. “The usual games, nothing to become concerned over. The defense attorney has no case.
He knows it, too. He’s trying to spin up the media and build sympathy. He and the
Times
reporter went to college together. She did him a big favor.”
Nobody asked how he knew this. He wouldn’t have told them if they had. If the Russians could tap and wire the lawyer’s office,
it was clearly a national security imperative for Tromble to have a few taps of his own. It was only fair to know what the
Russians knew.
“Do we have a solid case?” Laura’s chief of staff asked.
“It’s in the hands of INS,” he fibbed, smoothly and persuasively. “We’re providing assistance from the side; only when they
ask, though. Believe me, it’s waterproof.”
“How can you be so sure?” the aide countered. Every eye in the room swiveled to Tromble. How indeed?