The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(115)

“No, I didn’t.”

“And nowhere in the plea agreement you signed does it say you were working for the CIA or that LSR&C was a CIA proprietary, does it?”

“No,” Goldstone conceded.

Velasquez was more than happy to sit down. Sloane looked to Jenkins. They both knew that any attempt to rehabilitate Goldstone would just make the defense look desperate. They dismissed him.

During the lunch recess, the defense sat at a restaurant table staring at their food. “That went a lot worse than I anticipated,” Sloane said.

“Not your fault,” Jenkins said. “Without the ability to introduce documents, Goldstone does look like a liar. But we had to put him on. What do we do about Emerson?”

They talked in detail about Judge Pence’s ruling, and decided it was too risky to call Emerson as a witness. “He’d carve you into little chunks,” Sloane said. “And the documents to prove he’s lying will be sitting in boxes in Judge Harden’s chambers. They might as well be somewhere on the moon, given the restrictions Judge Pence has placed on us.”

“Put me on the stand,” Jenkins said. He knew the risks, but he’d talked it over with Alex. If he was going down, it would be with a fight. He didn’t want to be convicted without ever getting the chance to look the jury in the eyes before they called him a liar.

Sloane turned to him. “Without the documents—” Sloane started.

“I know the ramifications and the risks, David. This isn’t on you. It’s on me. Put me on the stand. Let me talk directly to the jury. If the government is going to call me a liar, let them do it to my face.”

“It could backfire,” Sloane said. “The jury could see it as a desperate act—”

“Of a condemned man,” Jenkins said. “I know. And maybe I am, but I prefer to go down swinging.”





67



In the courtroom, as Jenkins had requested, Sloane stood and called him to the stand. Jenkins saw Velasquez look at Sloane as if he was crazy, but she also flipped through her binder. She had prepared for this possibility.

Jenkins felt his anxiety rise as he walked to the witness chair, but he managed to keep his right hand from quivering when he took the oath to tell the truth.

Sloane and Jenkins had agreed that it was important, as it had been in voir dire and in Sloane’s opening statement, to immediately alter the negative connotation of the word “spy” and to get the jury to acknowledge that America uses spies to protect national security.

“Are you a spy?” he asked.

Jenkins spoke to the jury. “Yes.”

“What country did you spy for?”

“The United States of America.”

“What agency were you working for?”

“The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.”

“Did you at any time provide to a Russian FSB officer, or to anyone else, any information that you were not authorized to provide?”

“No. All of the information I gave was authorized.”

“Did you do anything other than follow CIA orders?”

“No.”

“Who was your case officer in the CIA?”

“Carl Emerson.”

“And you followed Mr. Emerson’s orders and instructions?”

“Yes.”

Sloane then asked, and Jenkins answered, questions concerning Vietnam, his initial recruitment by the CIA, and his time in Mexico City. Jenkins answered each question in about twenty-five words or less, to prevent the government from asking questions about subjects outside the scope of his answers. “Can you tell the court why you left the employ of the CIA?”

“Again, I can’t provide specifics. I left because I felt that the government had not been truthful with me about the intentions of a certain operation, and that operation had resulted in unnecessary deaths. I decided to leave.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

“No. But I provided intelligence.”

“Were you upset when you left the CIA?”

“No. I was saddened.”

“Why?”

“I thought I had found a career, something I was good at and loved. But I didn’t want to be a part of anything like what had happened.”

“When you left your employ with the CIA, did you tell anyone you were leaving?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“In hindsight I wish I had. I wish I’d done a lot of things differently when I was in my early twenties. Now that I’m older and have a better perspective I would do things differently, but I can’t change the past. I just wanted to get out and get as far away as I could.”

“Did you go back to your childhood home in New Jersey?”

“No. I wanted a fresh start, so I went to Camano Island in Washington State.”

“Were you hiding from the government?”

“Pretty hard to hide when your name is on a deed to a ten-acre parcel of land and you pay income tax every year.”

Sloane asked why Jenkins had started CJ Security.

“I was looking for something that would give my son opportunities in life to be whatever he wanted to be. He’s smart. He takes after his mother.”

Several of the jurors smiled.