“Fuck you, you sorry piece of shit,” Zach said, standing up and glaring down at Mr. Jordan, “you and your maggot of a client.”
“Mr. Gary, please control yourself,” Judge Crenshaw said. “And Mr. Jordan, one more interruption like that and I will hold you in contempt; do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Mr. Jordan said, abashed. “It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” Judge Crenshaw advised sternly.
“First of all, neither I nor Krista has ever asked Susan for anything,” Zach said. “And she has begged us numerous times to leave her to her own devices so that we wouldn’t be endangered. Unlike you, Mr. Jordan, I have a sense of honor. You show that you don’t by the clients that you choose to represent.”
“Your Honor,” Mr. Jordan said.
“That’ll be enough of that, Mr. Gary,” Judge Crenshaw said, struggling to contain a smile. “Please continue.”
“Well, we heard that the third guy fell in the river and got eaten by the piranhas and caimans while friends of our friends were trying to find and catch him,” Zach continued. “I knew that the urgency of our timeline depended in a large degree on whether any of the hit team had been able to contact their contractor, Quinn. If so, we needed to move quickly; if not, then we had some breathing room, at least until the bodies from the fire were ID’d.”
“After almost a week, I was finally able to get out of bed and start moving, though I had to be careful not to tear open the wound,” Zach continued. “I decided that we needed to get out of Manaus ASAP and go somewhere else. We picked the Cayman Islands because Susan needed to contact her bank there, at least until we heard anything that would make us think of going elsewhere.”
“If I might, Your Honor, I’d like to ask Mr. Gary what makes him such a strategic wunderkind?” Mr. Jordan said sarcastically.
“Were you born a dick or did you study to become one, asshole?” Zach asked, glaring at him.
“Mr. Gary, please,” Judge Crenshaw said.
“Along with my martial arts studies, I also learned the Chinese, or Japanese, depending upon who you ask, game of Go. It is a board game of strategy. I hold a Go Master ranking,” Zach replied.
“He really is a dick,” Krista muttered, though loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Please continue, Mr. Gary,” Mr. Smithers said, smiling at the look on Brad Jordan’s face at being spoken to like that by Krista.
“I found and chartered a private jet for a trip to Quito, Ecuador,” Zach continued, smiling. “Our Brazilian friends helped us get Susan to her hotel safely to grab her passport and anything important and to go to a bank to get some cash money to pay for whatever we needed, including the charter. I knew that we couldn’t let her use a credit card. That kind of a transaction is all too easy to trace, so everything was going to have to be done in cash to minimize our trail’s footprint. Half an hour into the flight, I offered the pilot more than enough money to get him to change his flight plan to Grand Cayman.”
“Sun Tzu had a lot to say about misdirection,” Zach explained. “Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, military strategist, writer, and philosopher who lived in the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China. He said that all warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
“Zach, you have surprised me yet again,” Susan said, smiling at him.
“We spent a week on Grand Cayman, then went to Cayman Brac, telling the hotel where we were staying that we were going back to the States,” Zach continued. “More misdirection in case anyone was trying to track us. We had been on Cayman Brac for about a week when we heard that David’s remains had been one of those identified in the fire. I knew that that meant that Quinn was going to let the dogs loose and that we had perhaps two days to disappear again, so I arranged another charter, this time to Cancun. An hour into the flight, I again asked to have the destination changed to Bora Bora in Tahiti and gave them a bag full of money.”
“I knew that things were going to heat up,” Zach explained. “Susan had checked, and as I had expected, Quinn had called for this hearing so that he could take over the company. The only thing standing in his way was Susan. If he could prevent her from showing up, he’d win. Because of that, I induced the head of security at Bora Bora airport to keep an eye and ear out for anyone inquiring about us. I promised him an equal inducement if he heard of anything like that and told us. Two weeks later, he came to the resort where we were staying to tell us that a man had inquired about Susan. He even had a picture of the guy, but Susan didn’t recognize him.”
“The security chief promised to keep the guy out of the way for a day or so and I chartered another jet, this time ostensibly to New Zealand,” Zach continued. “An hour into the flight, I convinced the pilot to change the flight plan to Muscat, Oman. It seemed like the end of the world, so I figured that it would be an easier place to hide. We only had to keep Susan alive until this hearing.”
“We had the incredibly good fortune to be introduced to Sheikh Hakeem,” Zach continued. “We explained our predicament, mentioning the angry, abusive husband to lend plausibility, and he offered us the sanctuary of his tribe of Bedouins. We spent the next month drifting south along the coast with them, living like Bedouins. It was an incredible experience. Sheikh Hakeem is probably the finest man I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I can’t say enough good about him.”
“Anyway, we were pretty far south, almost to the border near the town of Salalah, when the sheikh’s men reported that they had seen the guy from Bora Bora — I had given the sheikh the photo that the security chief had given me — in Salalah,” Zach continued. “The sheikh had his men bring the man to him, which they did, rolled up in an oriental carpet. After… questioning him, the sheikh learned that he had a partner who was also in Salalah. The sheikh sent his men to find that man and bring him to him, which they did. The sheikh questioned him and learned that $5 million had been offered for Susan’s braid, as proof of her death.”
“Did these men just voluntarily give up this information?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“Hardly,” Zach replied, smiling grimly. “If he didn’t like anything about how they responded, or didn’t respond, to his questions, one of his men would cut a part of their body off, first the ears, then the fingers. The first guy, Chet something, didn’t break until Krista suggested cutting his cock and balls off and Susan said to then feed them to him. When he felt a hand grab his cock and balls and then the cold steel of the blade, he broke and told everything that he knew.”
“What happened after that?” Mr. Smithers asked.
“The sheikh had his men dig a big hole just above the low tide line on the beach, then they threw them into it, still tied up, still alive,” Zach replied. “As the tide came in, the sides of the hole collapsed, eventually burying them.”
“How did you feel about all of that?” Mr. Smithers asked.