The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(64)
But Lawrence Strauss didn’t take cases like Sheikh Abdullah’s. In fact, he rarely took cases at all. In Washington he was known as the lawyer no one knew but everyone wanted. He never spoke to the press, stayed clear of Washington cocktail parties, and the only time he had been inside a courtroom in the last twenty years was to testify against a man who assaulted him during an early-morning run through northwest Washington’s Battery Kemble Park. Strauss had never won a major trial, and no groundbreaking appeal bore his name. He operated in Washington’s shadows, where political connections and personal friendships counted for more than legal brilliance, and, unlike most of his brethren in the Washington legal community, he possessed the ability to cross political lines. His politics were the politics of pragmatism, his opinion so highly valued that he usually spent several weekends a year at Camp David, no matter which party was in power. Lawrence Strauss was a cutter of deals and a smoother of ruffled feathers, a conciliator and a crafter of compromises. He made problems and prosecutors go away. He believed trials were a roll of the dice, and Lawrence Strauss didn’t play games of chance—except for his Thursday-night poker game, which included the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, two former attorneys general, and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Last week he’d won big. He usually did.
A burst of static came over the plane’s intercom system, followed by the voice of the pilot, informing Strauss that they would be landing in ten minutes. Strauss slipped the file into his briefcase and watched the snow-covered plains rising slowly to receive him. He feared he had been sent on a fool’s errand. He had been dealt a lousy hand, but then so had his opponent. He’d have to bluff. He didn’t like to bluff. Bluffing was for losers. And the only thing Lawrence Strauss hated worse than flying was losing.
The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, also known as the Supermax, and the Alcatraz of the Rockies, stands two miles south of Florence, Colorado, hidden from public view by the rolling brown hills of Colorado’s high desert. Four hundred of the country’s most hardened and dangerous prisoners are incarcerated there, including Theodore Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Eric Rudolph, Matthew Hale, David Lane, and Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, underboss of the Lucchese crime family. Also residing within the walls of the Supermax is a large contingent of Islamic terrorists, including Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard Reid, and Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Despite the high-profile inmate population, recent investigations had revealed that the prison was dangerously understaffed and far from secure. Prosecutors in California had learned that Mexican mafia leader Ruben Castro was running his Los Angeles criminal enterprises from his cell in the Supermax, while authorities in Spain discovered that World Trade Center conspirator Mohammed Salameh had been in written communication with terror cells linked to the Madrid subway bombings. Lawrence Strauss, as he passed through the outer gate in the back of an FBI Suburban, hoped the beleaguered guards managed to keep a lid on the place until he was airborne again.
The warden was waiting for Strauss in the reception area. He extended his hand solemnly as Strauss came inside and offered a murmured greeting, then turned and led him wordlessly into the bowels of the complex. They passed through a series of barred doors, each of which closed behind them with an irrefutable finality. Strauss had taken a ride with the president once on a nuclear submarine, an experience he had vowed never to repeat. He felt the same way now—confined, claustrophobic, and sweating despite the sharp chill.
The warden led him into a secure interview room. It was divided into two chambers separated by a Plexiglas wall—visitors on one side, prisoner on the other, a telephone line between them. A sign warned that all conversations were subject to electronic monitoring. Strauss looked at the warden and said, “I’m afraid this won’t do.”
“The recording devices and surveillance cameras will be turned off.”
“Under no circumstances is this conversation going to be conducted electronically.”
“It’s good enough for the CIA and the FBI when they come here.”
“I don’t work for the CIA or the FBI.”
“I’m afraid it’s regulations, Mr. Strauss.”
Strauss reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “One phone call—that’s all it will take. One phone call and I get what I want. But let’s not waste valuable time. Let’s find some reasonable compromise.”
“What do you have in mind?”
Strauss told him.
“He hasn’t been out of his cell in weeks.”
“Then the fresh air will do him good.”
“Do you know how cold it is outside?”
“Get him a coat,” Strauss said.
It was beginning to get dark by the time Strauss was shown through a secure doorway leading to the west exercise yard. A folding table and two folding chairs had been placed in the precise center and arc lamps were burning along the top of the electrified fence. Four guards stood like statuary along the perimeter; two more were perched along the parapet of the watchtower with weapons trained downward. Strauss nodded in approval to the warden, then headed into the yard alone and took his seat.
Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq emerged from the cellblock five minutes later in shackles, sandwiched between a pair of hulking guards. He was shorter than Strauss anticipated, five-six perhaps, and thin as a pauper. He wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a tan parka was draped over his boney shoulders. His beard was unkempt, and what little Strauss could see of his face was gray and slack with illness. It was the face of a dying man, he thought, a face that had not seen sunlight in many years. His eyes, however, still shone with a condescending intelligence. Lawrence Strauss was a man who earned his living making instantaneous judgments about people. His first opinion of Sheikh Abdullah was that he was a courageous and committed man—hardly the raving zealot that had been portrayed by the media and the prosecution at the time of his trial. He would be more than a worthy opponent.