The Escape (John Puller, #3)(60)

Knox said, “He would have, except your brother testified that his personal devices could not be hacked by anyone. That anything found on there would have to come from him.”

Puller slapped his palm against the tabletop, causing both women to jump. “The idiot. He was proud over practical. He didn’t want to admit that someone had beaten him. He was the same way growing up. You might kick his butt once in something, but it would be the only time.”

Knox said, “A guilty man would never have done that. He would grab at every defense he could get.”

“Another reason Landry remembered the case so well. In point of fact, he’d never had an accused purposely torpedo a potential defense like that. Never. And yet your brother did without blinking an eye, apparently.”

“Maybe he never really believed he was going to be convicted,” said Knox.

“Well, he was wrong.”

“But there was an appeal, right?” said Knox.

“Whenever the penalty is the dismissal from the ranks of an officer, the Court of Criminal Appeals—in this case the one for the Air Force—automatically conducts one. Robert Puller’s case was reviewed and the lower judgment was upheld. No further action was taken on his behalf. Any other appeal would take some work to initiate, which he never did.”

Puller fingered his coffee cup. “So he protested his innocence strongly. He never told me that. I wonder why?”

Knox shrugged. “There could be lots of reasons.”

“I can’t believe my brother would ever sell secrets.”

“But he would be in a position to transmit secrets to the enemy. And if he did he might not have done it for money despite the gambling piece,” pointed out Knox.

“What, he’s like that Snowden guy and wants to transform what he thinks is a bad system by outing it to the world from a safe distance away?”

“Well, he obviously didn’t do it like Snowden,” said Kirk. “The court found he did it for the money.” Puller put down his cup. “But we can’t lose sight of the fact that someone may have been sent to DB to kill my brother. Since then an Air Force general at STRATCOM has been murdered and Knox here had to shoot an Army captain who might have been involved in the attempt on my brother’s life. If he was guilty and safely in prison, why all the attention now?”

Kirk nearly choked on her coffee. She stared over at Knox. “You did what?”

“She shot at me first. I defended myself. She’s dead, I’m not.”

“But what was the reason?”

“We found out she had financial problems, and lo and behold she sets up an account in the Caymans under another name and someone puts a million bucks in it.”

“What did she do to earn that?” asked Kirk.

Puller said, “A device that simulated the sounds of gunshots and an explosion played a primary role in the chaos at DB. My take is she brought them in herself. That’s why she didn’t search any of the guards for it later. That way we could never pin anything on her. And she might have sabotaged the cell door locking software too.”

Kirk held up a hand. “Okay, but let’s get back to your last question: Why all this attention now?”

Puller looked at Knox and then glanced back to Kirk. “I’m not sure either one of us can answer that.”

Kirk nodded. “I agree that it all looks dicey. And that more investigation is needed. But you have to understand that it unduly complicates the situation now that your brother has escaped from DB.”

“Well, he might not have had much choice. Escape or die. Given those options, I’d have cut and run too.”

“And the problem with that answer is that the people hunting him won’t care about his reasons.”

“And another problem is he may have folks after him who aren’t part of the official machine,” retorted Puller.

Knox said, “After what happened to you, I think he probably does. Kidnapping and then trying to murder you definitely speaks of unofficial involvement.”

A stunned Kirk now shot Puller a glance. “First she shoots a friggin’ Army captain, and now you’re telling me that you were kidnapped and nearly killed?”

“That’s pretty much the gist of it. Bunch of guys with guns got the jump on me using a damsel-in-distress act that I fell for. They took me to a place, tied me up, asked me a bunch of questions, none of which I answered, and then they were going to kill me.”

“Then why aren’t you dead?”

“I had a guardian angel on site. He did enough to allow me to get my own way out.”

“And who was this angel?” asked Kirk.

“I hope to find out one day so I can thank the person.”

He turned to Knox and his voice dropped even lower. “And you can guarantee to me that you don’t know who any of these folks are, or where they might have come from?”

Knox said, “If you’re asking me whether it’s any of my people, I can assure you that it’s not. We may deceive, we may slice and dice the truth, we may conceal. But we don’t do crap like this. We do have oversight committees, Puller. And if we tried any of this and it came out, well, everybody could pretty much kiss their asses, pensions, and freedom goodbye. And I’m not sure there’s ever a compelling enough reason to do that. We have enough true enemies without turning on ourselves.”