Brian Haig - Mortal Allies

While I was still babbling, she stood up and walked over to her desk. She turned her back on me and picked up some papers that she started to read through. “Call me with the name by three this afternoon so I can submit the consent before close of business. Now, please leave.”

I was being summarily dismissed.

I didn’t move, while she tried to pretend I was already gone. I knew she was mad about this legal thing, but I’m not a completely clueless oaf. That phone call to my room early that morning was butting its ugly head into this.

But just like this legal imbroglio, I couldn’t admit my real relationship with Carol Kim. I couldn’t very well say, “Hey look, she was a CIA agent and the two of us were busy breaking up the biggest spy ring in our country’s history.” Even if she believed me, Mercer would have my balls.

What I should’ve done was let it drop. I should’ve sneaked out with my tail between my legs. But for some funny reason, I didn’t want to.

I shuffled my feet and coughed. “Hey, about this morning…”

At first she didn’t answer, like she hadn’t heard me speak.

Not until it was apparent I wasn’t just going to slink away did she murmur, “What about this morning?”

“You called my room around five.”

“Did I?” she asked, motionless.

“It wasn’t what you think.”

She still had her back turned and was reading through her papers. “I didn’t think anything. I don’t even remember calling.”

“Come on. I was in the shower. A woman answered,” I filled in the blanks, unnecessarily of course. But a hurt woman can play games, and you just have to march along with the flow. That’s a primary rule of life.

“Umhumm,” she mumbled, her voice rising on that “humm” part, like, How could it possibly have been anything different from what she thought?

“Katherine, the woman was a business colleague. It was a uh, a business meeting.”

Her back was still turned, and I’m a perceptive guy, so I took that as a poor harbinger. Maybe I should’ve explained this some other way. That “business” word was the type of adjective that can be open to nasty misinterpretation. After all, what kind of business is conducted in a hotel room at five in the morning?

I said, “Sure, it sounds a little odd that I was taking a shower with a woman in my room. I can see where you might get the wrong impression. But I’d been up all night. I needed a shower.”

“Get out,” she mumbled.

That being “up all night” phrase, I suddenly realized, was another ambiguous choice on my part. Maybe I should have specified I was awake all night. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.

“Look, I, uh-”

She spun around and pointed her tiny hand at the door. “I said get out. I mean get out.”

Her face had icicles hanging off it.

I left.

And I did the only other thing I could. I walked to the judge’s office. I told his long-nosed secretary I needed to see him in private, and she haughtily ordered me to sit and wait. So I sat and waited.

Finally she pushed her snooty nose in the air and told me to go in.

The office was dark again and I wondered if that had anything to do with his moods. You know, like bright on a cheery day; dark when he was in the mood to kill somebody.

I stuck my head in and said, “Good morning, Your Honor. I need to have a private word with you.”

He said, “Come in and have a seat.”

I fell into the chair across from his desk, and a huge explosion of air escaped from my lungs. If you think I was nervous, you’re right. Confessing in a dark, screened-off booth to a faceless Catholic priest whose job it is to forgive you, well, that’s one thing. Confessing to the hanging judge, eye-to-eye, in the privacy of his chambers, that’s another damned thing altogether. I was reminded of that old drill sergeant’s warning that God doesn’t get to exact his punishments till the Army’s done with you.

He examined my face. “Drummond, you look even worse than you did yesterday. You’ve got to stop burning the candle at both ends. Get some sleep, boy.”

I was beginning to get tired of everybody I saw these days telling me I looked like crap. It can start to wear on you.

Anyway, I said, “I think I’ve got a problem. Carlson gave me a copy of Golden’s motion.”

He held up a big, beefy hand. “We shouldn’t be discussing this without the two lead attorneys present. The motion has been filed.”

I gave him a pinched grin. “I know all that. Can we have another of those mano-to-mano chats?”

He leaned back into his big chair, and I’d like to say he looked receptive, or at least amused. He didn’t.

So I launched in anyway. “I’m talking theoretically here. Suppose you had an attorney involved in a criminal case. Then all of a sudden, it started to look like an espionage case. Suppose that attorney was approached by a very secret American agency and asked to share some knowledge. Is that crossing a boundary?”

His expression began to change. He leaned forward in his chair and the lines on his face deepened. All the lines – the ones on his forehead, around his lips, even the ones next to his ears.

“The sharing of knowledge of itself does not violate any legal ethics. As long as you don’t breach attorney-client privilege.”

“Nope, no breaches in that regard. But say things got a little deeper. Say people start getting murdered. The lawyer decides he has to do more than merely provide information.”

“If he can help stop the killings, he has a moral imperative to do that. He has to help.”

“Yes, but before he knows it, he’s helping that secret government agency hunt down spies. And it happens that two of those spies are actually key government witnesses.”

To say I had Carruthers’s attention would be an understatement. His head was canted at an odd angle like he was experiencing difficulty breathing.

“Bales and Choi?” he asked.

“Please, Your Honor,” I reminded him. “We’re only talking theories right now.”

“Okay. Theoretically, that could pose serious problems. How much did this attorney learn in the course of this effort?”

I inadvertently sighed. “He learned a lot. He learned that the two witnesses were at the center of a massive spy ring. He even helped chase them off.”

“So he learned things relevant to the case?”

“A great deal. He developed a reasonable theory that his client was framed by this spy ring. The problem is, even if he could prove it – which he can’t – he still can’t introduce anything into direct evidence. This is all still theoretical, of course, but that secret government agency warned him there’s a lid on all information.”

Carruthers was shaking his big head back and forth and rolling his eyes. “Has this mythical attorney shared any of this knowledge with his co-counsels? Any at all?”

“No sir. There have been firewalls. Because the attorney was involved in classified matters, and his co-counsels are all civilians, he’s kept them completely in the dark.”

“Holy shit,” Carruthers said. And frankly, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

“Anyway,” I continued, “the prosecutor has now submitted a motion for discovery that would force our mythical counselor to admit he gained pertinent knowledge by working with a key government agency. It’s obviously knowledge he can’t share with the prosecution.”

Carruthers snorted once or twice, pushed himself up from the chair, fell back down, then ran his stubby fingers across his eyes and forehead. He stared at his desk a long time. I stared at the floor and didn’t say anything, either. I’d said enough already.

He finally concluded, “Our theoretical attorney must recuse himself.”