Authors: Stephen Coonts
“Not up to me. Serve them on him and he’ll send them to the firm he’s hired.”
If Chano Aldana thought he had problems now, Liarakos told himself, wait until he read the interrogatories. Any answer he supplied could be used against him in the criminal trial. Most of these asset confiscation actions went uncontested for this very good reason. Regardless of how the criminal action went, Aldana was going to return to Colombia a much poorer man. Which somehow didn’t break Liarakos’ heart.
Jack Yocke stood against the back wall of the courtroom to shoulder with three dozen other reporters and notes on his steno pad. “Courtroom packed … crowd hushed, expectant …”
Defense attorney Thanos Liarakos’assistant, Judith Lewis, was already at the defense table, which was marked with a small sign. To her far right, with an empty chair between them, sat a man in a brown sports coat and slacks. Yocke murmured to the man beside him and pointed.
“The interpreter.”
At the prosecutor’s table sat another woman, whom Yocke assumed was an assistant. He whispered another question to the man beside him. Wilda Rodriguez-Heffera. The man spelled the name as Yocke wrote it down. Why is it, the Post reporter . wondered, that most high-powered lawyers these days have female factotums? Both women were in their middle-to-late twenties or perhaps early thirties-it was impossible to tell at this distance-and were dressed for success in conservative getups that must have set each of them back a week’s pay. Yocke jotted another note.
I Aldana entered in company with two U.s. marshals. He was wearing a dark suit and a deep maroon tie. His hands were cuffed in front of him. As one of the marshals took the cuffs off, Aldana looked quickly around the room, scanning each face. Every eye in the room was on him. The room was so quiet Yocke could hear the clink of metal as the cuffs were removed from Aldana’s wrists.
The defendant sat down at the defense table between Judith Lewis and the interpreter. One of the marshals took a chair immediately behind him, inside the barricade, while the other moved to a chair against the wall where he could watch the defendant and the crowd without turning his head.
Lewis whispered something to Aldana. He made no reply, didn’t look at her, kept his face impassive. Now the interpreter whispered in his ear. Aldana replied, a few phrases only, and didn’t look at him. He surveyed the bailiff, who averted his eyes; then Aldana turned his head, leaned forward slightly in his chair, and stared for several seconds at Assistant Prosecutor Rodriguez-Herrera, who was busy with a sheet of paper that lay on the table in front of her. Now his eye caught the Post courtroom artist in the far corner, who was studying him through a pair of opera glasses mounted on a tripod. For the first time Aidana’s features moved-the upper lip rose into a slight sneer and his eyes became mere slits.
The moment passed and the face resumed its impassive calm. Aidana looked back toward the front of the room, at the magistrate’s bench with the flags behind it. He leaned back in his chair, sat loosely, comfortably, staring at the flags. He crossed his legs. In a moment he uncrossed them.
He’s nervous, Yocke decided, and scribbled some more in his notebook. an after all.
Minutes passed. Coughs and hacks and muttered comments from the audience. Aldana poured himself a cup of water from the pitcher on the table and spilled some. He ignored the spill. After several sips he placed the cup on the table in front of him and didn’t touch it again.
As he stared at Aldana, Jack Yocke reviewed what he had heard about the defendant. A barrio brat from Medellin, Chano Aldana reputedly had worked his way to the top of the local cocaine industry by outthinking and murdering his rivals. He was smarter than the average sewer rat and twice as ruthless. Rumor had it he had personally executed over two dozen men and had ordered the murders of hundreds more by name, including a candidate for president of Colombia. A vicious enemy of the law-and-order forces battling the cartels for control of Colombia, he had ordered airliners and department stores bombed, judges murdered, and policemen tortured.
Yet this monster had a human side. he liked soccer and controlled several teams in the central Colombian league. Referees and star players on rival teams had been assassinated on his order. Finally the government had suspended league play because of organized crime’s corrosive influence on the games. The last two years Aldana had allegedly spent hiding somewhere in the Amazon. He had been captured by the Colombian government when he decided in a weak moment to visit a prostitute of whom he was fond. Somehow he had survived the ensuing shootout, although six of his bodyguards hadn’t. Sewer rat’s luck.
By all accounts Aldana was an amazing man, a Latin Also Capone with several of Hitler’s worst traits thrown in for seasoning. Yet staring at this slightly overweight, middleaged Latin male with the black curly hair and the modest thin mustache, Jack Yocke found this tale of unadulterated evil hard to believe. It was incredible, really. Even Aldana’s performance at yesterday’s news conference couldn’t overcome one’s natural inclination to accept the man as a fellow human being. Yocke tried to picture him eating snake and monkey meat in the jungle-and gave up.
U.s. Attorney William Bader had a herculean taskddahead of him to convince twelve working-class Americans that Chano Aldana was el padrino, the godfather.
Yocke was furiously scribbling notes when the door to the hallway opened and a man entered, a man wearing a naval officer’s blue uniform. Captain Jake Grafton. His ribbons and wings made a splotch of color on his left breast. Those and the four gold rings on each sleeve looked strangely out of place among all these civilians.
Jack Yocke stared as Grafton surveyed the seating arrangements, apparently concluded the place was full, and took up a station against the wall, near the door. His eyes met those of the reporter. He nodded once, then his gaze settled on Chano Aldana, who had turned to examine the newcomer. Aldana turned back toward the bench.
Several of the spectators looked the captain over, whispering tilde back and forth, and finally dismissed him.
Jake Grafton? Why is he here? Yocke scribbled down the name in his notebook and put three question marks after it.
A few minutes later the door behind the bench opened and Bader came in, followed by Thanos Liarakos. Bader glanced at Aldana and the audience and sat down beside Rodriguez-Herrera.
Judith Lewis moved to the chair at the far left of her table and Liarakos took the one she had vacated. He spoke to the defendant, got something in reply, then spoke to Lewis.
He looks tired, Yocke thought, and studied the attorney. Dark, trim, of medium height with black hair streaked with gray at the temples, Liarakos habitually wore thousand dollar tailor-made wool suits. He was wearing one today, if Yocke’s comeyes could be trusted. Liarakos normally looked every inch the successful criminal lawyer. Yet Mergenthaler had said that Liarakos had spent the summer of 1989 playing baseball in a professional senior league in Florida. At the age of forty-one he had tried out for a team composed almost exclusively of former major leaguers and made it. Jack Yocke didn’t know exactly what to make of that.
This morning, the reporter thought, the honest, sincere face that juries loved looked softer, less on stage. Then the explanation occurred to him-there was no jury.
“All rise,” the bailiff announced. The lawyers rose respectfully as the audience shuffled noisily to its feet. Aldana hesitated a second, and Liarakos pulled almost imperceptibly on his sleeve.
The magistrate, enshrouded in her judicial robe, entered and took her seat behind the raised bench. The bailiff chanted the incomprehensible incantation that opened every court session and ended with a curt “Be seated.” Jack Yocke kept his attention on the defendant. Aldana was leaning forward in his chair staring at the magistrate, a fiftyish woman with her hair pulled back severely, wearing a stylish pair of large glasses. He didn’t take his eyes off her as she read the indictment handed down by a grand jury in Miami several years ago and the interpreter spoke in a low tone in his ear. Yocke could just hear the ratatat-tat of the Spanish, although he couldn’t make out the words. “How do you plead?”
Liarakos half rose from his chair. “Not guilty, your honor.” The magistrate ordered a not guilty plea entered in the record, then addressed the prosecutor. “I understand you have a preliminary motion in this matter, Mr. Bader?”
“Yes, your honor. May I approach the bench?” She nodded and he walked up and handed the clerk a paper, which the clerk stamped and passed to the magistrate while Bader handed a copy to Liarakos.
“The prosecution is asking the court for a gag order in this case, your honor. The order is to apply to attorneys for both sides and the defendant.”
“Any argument, Mr. Liarakos?”
“No, your honor. We will have some motions of our own, and I understand you have set a date next week to hear them?”
“That’s correct.” She gave him the date and time. “Without argument, Mr. Bader, your motion is granted.” She consulted the proposed order. After a moment, she read, ““Counsel for the government and the defendant, and the defendant, are enjoined from discussing this case, the facts, legal theories, possible witnesses, testimony to be introduced at trial, and any and all other matters connected therewith with the press or any of the representatives thereof. They shall not do, say, or write anything for publication or broadcast that might in any way prejudice possible jurors or interfere with the orderly administration of justice.” Is there a motion for bail, Mr. Liarakos?” “Not today, your honor.”
“Mr. Bader?”
“We have filed a motion, your honor, to confiscate the defendant’s assets as proceeds of criminal activity.” The courtroom buzzed and the magistrate looked stern. She raised her pvel but the noise ceased before she could tap the anvil. Bader continued: “We’d like you to set a date for a hearing.”
The attorneys and the magistrate discussed the scheduling and checked their calendars and settled on a Monday in January.
“This matter is adjourned until next Thursday.” The magistrate rose from the bench as the bailiff intoned, “All rise!” and the reporters gathered their coats for the dash to the phones.
As the marshals put the cuffs on him, Aldana got in a heated discussion with his attorney. Yocke edged as close as he could. “Why didn’t you argue against this?” Liarakos spoke too softly to hear, although Yocke tried. “But she can’t make me be silent!” More whispers.
“No one can gag me up. No one.” His voice was loud, but the sharp edge of command was there too. The crowd stopped dead, captivated by this drama. “That woman can’t gag me up while they send me up the railroad for a crime of which I am not guilty. This is supposed to be America! Not the Germany of the Nazis or the Russia of the Stalinistas.”
“This is not the time or place-was
“Are you my lawyer or their lawyer?” The voice was a brutal snarl.
“Shut the fuck up. was Although Liarakos” voice was low, it cut like a whip.
The lawyer turned to the nearest marshal. “Clear these people out of here, please, and give me a moment alone with my client. You may wait in the hallway. Ms. Lewis will knock on the door when we need you.”
“Everybody out.” The crowd began to move.
Just before he went through the door, Jack Yocke glanced back at Chano Aidana. The defendant was glaring at Liarakos, his face dark with fury, his lips pressed together. His body was tense, coiled.
In the hallway Yocke sprinted to catch up with Jake Grafton. “Captain, wait! Please! Jack Yocke of the Post. I was at your party the-was
“I remember you, Jack.” Grafton had his dark bridge coat over his arm and held his white hat with the scrambled eggs on the bill in his left hand. Yocke glanced at his chest to see if the blue-and-white ribbon of the Congressional Medal of Honor was displayed there. It wasn’t. Maybe Mergenthaler rrect: he had said that Grafton never wore the decoration he received several years ago for ramming El Hakim’s plane with his F-1 4 over the Med.
“I’m curious, Captain. You were the last man in town I expected to see here today. Why’d you come?”
“Wanted to get a look at Aldana.”
“Officially?”
For a fraction of a second Grafton looked annoyed. “What’s an official look?”
“I mean is this personal or does the Joint Staff have some interest in Aldana?”
“No comment.”
“Aw, come on, Captain! Gimme a break. Why is the military interested in Chano Aidana?”
A grin spread slowly across the captain’s face. He settled his white hat on his head, nodded, and turned away. Jack Yocke watched him go, then remembered he needed to find a phone.
“You should have seen him come unglued, Ott. That man is something else!”
“Jack, you need to stop using those banal phrases. People will get the idea you’re a semiliterate burn.”
“I’m telling you, Ott, you should have seen him! Oh, he never really lost his temper. He didn’t actually threaten Liarakos, but that look! This man could order the murder of hundreds of people. He could kill them himself. I was ten feet from him and I could literally feel the energy.”
“Maybe you should write a letter to Shirley MacLaine.”
“Listen to me, Ott. Aidana is criminally insane. his
“He’s behind bars and guarded night and day. What should we do about it?”
Yocke lost his temper. “Okay, go ahead and snicker like a retarded hyena. I’m telling you we’ve got a rattlesnake in our pocket and the pocket is cloth. Dammit, Aidana scared the hell out of me!”
“He scared the hell out of me too,” Ott admitted. The telephone rang. Yocke reached for it without looking. It was his editor. “Jack, the feds just closed a savings and loan over in Maryland. Please go up there and interview everyone you can lay hands on. Try to find some depositors this time.”
“You want some brain surgeon who’ll miss his ski Christmas in Aspen?”
“I was hoping that with some diligent effort you might find some little old white-haired lady who’s got five bucks in her purse and no access to her checking account.”