The Resurrection File (17 page)

17

T
HE BRIEFING ROOM IN THE SMALL MILITARY INSTALLATION
twenty miles outside of New York City was jammed with investigators, law enforcement agents, and government lawyers. The U.S. Army command post had been converted into a makeshift jail in order to house one single prisoner. Gathered there was a larger consortium of federal agencies than had been involved in either the Oklahoma City bombing or the World Trade Center attack. The group had assembled to participate in the interrogation of Rahji Ajadi, the truck driver who had been arrested entering New York City a few weeks before.

An army major general stepped up to the front of the sparsely furnished room, and everyone quieted down.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” he began, “I think we are all here, so I will begin.

“We have present with us today representatives from the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, Immigration and Naturalization, the National Emergency Response Team, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of State.

“As you all know,” the major general continued, “it took us some time to work out the kinks in the overlapping and sometimes conflicting jurisdiction between the agencies here. And of course you know all about the dogfights going on over who was to head up the national terrorist response team in the event that something like this ever happened. We can thank the media for spreading that all over your morning papers. But let's be clear about one thing. The Pentagon is now running this show. That was the final decision of the White House.

“You will all be given a crack at interviewing Mr. Ajadi. You should have already received the backgrounder on his case. The government lawyers will talk to you tomorrow about some of the specific problems they see in prosecuting Mr. Ajadi under existing federal laws. But let me just summarize them.

“First, there's the fact that a New Jersey state trooper arrested Ajadi just after he had crossed over into the state of New York. At page twenty-three of the backgrounder you'll see where the lawyers explain the problem of ‘territorial jurisdiction' for the arrest. Bottom line, a state law enforcement officer from New Jersey can't make an arrest across the state line unless he's in ‘hot pursuit.' But the rotten fact is that there was no chase going on here, so the arrest was probably illegal. Therefore, the search of the truck was probably illegal too. That means we've been gut-shot in this case. Guys, this is not rocket science here. Most of you probably learned about how not to make an illegal arrest in the first class at the police academy. Our MPs learn that in their first training session. But that's what happened here, like it or not.

“Second, at pages thirty to forty you have a rundown about the weapon that was found in the back of Mr. Ajadi's rental truck. Again, just to summarize, what we've got here is an American-made W87 MIRV thermonuclear warhead. The identifying serial numbers had been removed—but we know it was one of ours.

“Now here is the real kicker.” The major general walked over to a large engineering diagram of a warhead that was on a display stand at the front of the room.

“Now this little puppy is standard nuclear technology.” With that he started indicating areas of the diagram with a little laser pointer.

“The trigger mechanism is a chemical explosion that combines beryllium and plutonium-239. That starts the fission explosion. That's boosted by DT gas. Then X-rays compress the second component right here. That, in turn, causes the massive fission/fusion reaction. And when that happens, well, that's when you and everyone else within about two-and-a-half miles of you buys the farm.

“People, the MIRV they found on that truck had no plutonium-239. It had no beryllium. It had no DT gas. Nor did it have uranium-238, or 235, or any lithium deuteride.”

Then the major general clicked off his laser pointer and looked over the audience.

“In other words,” he said, “the MIRV in that truck was a blank.”

He waited a few minutes for the unruly conversation to die down in the room.

“The agenda in your report tells you when each agency is given the chance to interview this guy. Your time allotments are listed. None of you will be allowed to be present during the interviews of the other agencies, primarily because you have different security clearances, as well as for jurisdictional and secrecy reasons that should be pretty clear. Only the lawyers from the Justice Department will be present during all of the interviews, and of course, Mr. Ajadi's lawyer.

“Now because the Department of State has the fewest questions and they need the least amount of time talking to this guy we've put them at the end of the interrogation list. They are batting cleanup.”

Someone shot his hand up.

“Are we supposed to assume that this case is being plea-bargained with Ajadi? That seems to be the only logical explanation as to why his lawyer is allowing us to talk to him, rather than having him take the Fifth.”

“I'll let the Justice lawyers elaborate on that in tomorrow's session. But the bottom line is this—it's pretty clear we don't have any shot at a nuke-related criminal prosecution against Ajadi. He will enter a plea to a minor immigration violation and will be deported, of course. But hopefully we can all get some useful information and be able to trace this incident back to the source—who put that empty nuke in that truck, and why. And in the process we can improve our national security status. I am sure you are just as disappointed as we are that there will be no major criminal prosecution against Ajadi. Now each of you can stand down until your interview time comes up.”

The major general dismissed the assembly. The federal agents began filing out of the room, talking angrily and shaking their heads in disbelief.

Meanwhile, in another part of the building, Rahji Ajadi was sitting in a small room, across a plastic table from the public defender who had been appointed to represent him. Ajadi was outfitted in a prison-issue sweatsuit that was too big for him. He pulled the sleeves up over his elbows as he waited for his lawyer to speak.

“First of all,” the lawyer began, “let me start with the good news. It looks like the government is going to charge you only with the immigration offense we talked about. No other criminal charges. That assumes that you will fully cooperate over the next few days with each of these federal agents who will be interviewing you. You will have to be truthful. You can't hold anything back. If they discover you are lying, the deal is off.”

“And how soon can I see my family?” Ajadi asked.

“I don't know yet. There will be a court hearing called a ‘presentment.' The charges will be filed. We will be pleading ‘no contest,' which is the same
as guilty—we talked about that at the last meeting. The government is going to be asking the judge to sentence you to the exact time you have spent in jail. And then you will be deported. We have agreed, as you will recall, not to fight the deportation. The government will return you to Jordan.”

Ajadi shook his head. “This has been such a nightmare. I am no terrorist. I know that I was wrong in staying here in this country after my visa expired. But I had no idea what was in that truck. They told me not to look, so I didn't.”

“Look, Rahji, just answer all of their questions. I will be there with you the whole time. It will be fine. And remember the big question everybody wants to know.”

Ajadi nodded his head in affirmation.

“It's the question we've been over and over. Why you?” the lawyer asked. “Why would some complete stranger have started up a conversation with you at a bus station and then end up offering to pay you fifty thousand dollars to drive a truck from Vermont down to New York City, but insist that you do it via a swing through New Jersey? To the feds that doesn't make any sense. They are going to be interrogating you with that question in mind. In the back of their minds they are thinking that you are a terrorist. They think you work for Abdul el Alibahd.”

“This is crazy,” Ajadi exclaimed, “I have never met that man. I don't even know any person who knows him. He is a terrorist—a murderer. As I am driving the truck, I start thinking about the bombing last year on Wall Street. I tell you for that reason I was very afraid, as an Arab, of driving a truck into New York City. But the idea of getting fifty thousand dollars, it made me blind. I had those gambling debts I had to pay off. I was very frightened. I thought that the men who ran the casino would come and hurt me. And I was concerned that my family would find out and I would shame them. I thought I could just drive the truck and collect the money. I got the twenty thousand in advance to drive the truck, like I was promised, so I thought everything would be so easy.”

The lawyer nodded. He had heard all of it before during his earlier sessions with his client. But his eyes narrowed now and he looked at him intensely.

“So the question remains,” the lawyer stated. “Why you?”

Ajadi shrugged his shoulders, and then as he pulled his baggy sweatshirt sleeves over his elbows he said, “Maybe because I am an Arab.”

The lawyer leaned back in his chair. He had heard that before too. Then the public defender asked the follow-up question that he had asked himself,
and his client, several times earlier—the question he'd never received a good answer to.

“And why would someone want to randomly set up an Arab by putting him behind the wheel of a rented truck with an unarmed, nonoperable nuclear weapon in it, and then head him toward the heart of New York City? And then, why would a mysterious dispatch from the New Jersey State Police order a rookie Arab state trooper to illegally stop that truck after it was already across the border into New York?”

Ajadi just stared back at his lawyer blankly. Outside the door they could hear the sounds of the guards approaching, bringing a meal to the prisoner on a cardboard tray.

“I'd really love to get the answer to that,” the lawyer said, rising from his chair to stretch as the jailers opened the heavy metal door and entered the room with the food.

18

A
NGUS
M
AC
C
AMERON WALKED INTO
W
ILL'S OFFICE
at one o'clock sharp. He was carrying a worn brown-leather Bible under his arm.

Before Will could focus the discussion on the upcoming deposition, MacCameron smiled and raised his index finger dramatically in the air, and with the other hand began fishing in the pocket of his suit coat. After a few seconds he found what he was looking for, broadened his smile, and placed the contents on the table in front of Will.

Will looked down on the conference table and saw two concert stage passes.

“Do you have any plans this weekend, Mr. Chambers?”

There was an awkward silence as Will wondered what his client had up his sleeve.

“Perhaps we can discuss my plans later,” Will replied. The lawyer folded back the first sheet of his yellow legal pad to reveal a clean sheet of paper. This was a subtle reminder that he was ready to start to take notes about the case.

“Come now, Mr. Chambers. Surely you can take some time off from your strenuous pursuit of justice to enjoy some spectacular musical entertainment,” MacCameron urged.

Chambers tried to resist. But as he looked at his client, who was peering through his thick glasses with that twinkle in his eye, the lawyer found the corners of his mouth slowly breaking into a smile.

MacCameron was pressing in. “You need to get away from the office and have some real fun and fellowship. Now here are two tickets to my daughter Fiona's gospel concert this coming Friday night. One for each of us. It's at the Concert Pavilion in Baltimore, down by the harbor. The concert starts at 8:00
P.M
. Just meet me a little ahead of time outside the stage door, and Fiona will greet us backstage.”

MacCameron took one of the tickets off the table and put it in his pocket. Then he pushed the remaining one toward Will.

“What do you say?”

“I will try to make it,” Will answered with a tinge of hesitation in his voice.

“Truly?”

“Sure. Why not?” Will was secretly intrigued by the idea of watching Fiona perform in concert. He had, he admitted to himself, nursed an interest in the beautiful singer. Yet at the same time, the thought of sitting through a “Jesus” event made him uneasy. As Will reached for a copy of MacCameron's
Digging for Truth
magazine from his file, he figured that he would put the concert on the back burner, and decide later.

Will quickly began to walk his client into the core of the lawsuit's allegations against him.

“I want to focus on the essential facts: In other words, I want to go into the article you wrote, why you wrote it, and what investigation you had undertaken before you wrote what you did about Reichstad's discovery. Then I will go over the deposition itself, what it will be like, what questions will be asked.”

Will pointed to a copy of the lawsuit papers on the table in front of MacCameron.

“Now here is Reichstad's lawsuit in a nutshell. He has the burden of proving four things. First, that in your article you communicated ‘
defamatory
' statements about him. Something is ‘defamatory' if it injures someone's reputation, particularly their professional reputation. Frankly, they will be able to nail that one. Implying that Reichstad was connected with the wrongful death of Azid the antiquities dealer and the murder of Dr. Hunter, your archaeologist friend—that is defamatory. And going after Reichstad's lack of professionalism—in fact suggesting scientific incompetence in his interpretation of the 7QA fragment—is also defamatory.