The Escape (John Puller 3)

“Right, but as opposed to a conviction of spying, the death penalty is not mandatory. It’s also subject to whatever other punishment the court-martial wants to direct. And as you said, that’s when all panel members must vote unanimously to impose death. That’s a big difference from an automatic capital sentence.”

“And they didn’t have unanimity?” said Puller.

“No. Otherwise he’d be on death row or actually dead. Instead he was given life.”

“So there must have been some extenuating circumstances,” said Knox.

“I suppose there were, yes, but the whole picture was a little fuzzy from a trial perspective.”

“Surely you didn’t get that from just a paper trail, Shireen?” asked Knox.

Kirk swung her gaze to Knox. “My first name isn’t Shireen, it’s actually Cambrai. But it might as well be ‘Scorched Earth.’ I dug up the prosecutor and the defense counsel and spoke with both of them. They were surprisingly candid. Surprisingly.”

She let the word hang out there.

“And why do you think they were so cooperative?” asked Puller.

“Well, it’s hard to say,” began Kirk cautiously. “They both remembered the case well, though I’m sure they’ve both handled dozens since. You know there was a PTA but your brother rejected it.”

“What’s a PTA?” asked Knox.

“Pretrial agreement. The accused can provide a guilty plea in exchange for a more lenient sentence. He apparently wanted no part of that. He consistently proclaimed his innocence in the strongest possible terms.”

“Who was the convening authority?” asked Puller.

“The CO at STRATCOM, Major General Martin Able.”

“I know Puller was convicted of espionage, but what were the specific charges?” asked Knox.

“As Puller told me earlier the trial record was sealed. And for good reason, because it was full of classified information. MRE 505 is very detailed on that point.”

Knox said, “MRE? Not meals, ready to eat, surely?”

“Try Military Rules of Evidence,” suggested Kirk.

“But you wouldn’t come all this way unless you had unsealed it,” commented Puller.

“As I told you before, that would take a court order. Which there was no way I could get, certainly not in the time since I talked to you last.”

“But?” prompted Puller.

“But, as I said, the counsels were cooperative. The defense counsel, Todd Landry, especially so. He told me in confidence about the charges.”

“Didn’t he ask why you wanted to know?” Knox asked.

“Of course. I made noises about Robert Puller’s escape from DB, which they both knew about. It’s all over the military pipelines.”

“And they just assumed you were part of some group investigating it?” said Knox.

“If they made that assumption, I did nothing to suggest they were incorrect in that assumption,” Kirk said smoothly.

“So what were the charges?” Puller said.

“It’s fairly well known that NSA has deals in place with major technology companies and cellular phone carriers to allow them backdoor access into those platforms. Well, apparently Robert Puller had devised a back door into STRATCOM’s intelligence platform, which, by the way, is tied to pretty much all the other intelligence pipelines, including NSA, CIA, and Army Intel. And that he was in the process of selling off the access codes to that back door to enemies of this country. It would have been catastrophic.”

“Selling secrets? That’s bullshit!” exclaimed Puller. “He didn’t care about money. Why would he do that?”

“Apparently the motive was online gambling debts. In the millions.”

“Online gambling?” exclaimed a stunned Puller. “My brother was not a gambler.”

“Well, it seems they found evidence to the contrary on his personal computers and his cell phone. He played under a variety of fictitious names.”

“My brother is a super-smart geek. He would know gambling is based on luck, not skill. He’s too intelligent to bet.”

“I asked that very question.”

“And?” said Knox.

“And the prosecutor, Doug Fletcher, informed me that it seems that your brother had devised an elaborate gambling algorithm that was initially extremely successful.”

“Initially?” said Puller.

“Before it became unsuccessful. That’s where the millions in losses come in. He just kept playing, trying to bet his way out of a hole. Lots of gamblers do that. It’s a bona fide addiction. And playing online just opens up that addiction to millions of potential abusers.”

“And they had evidence of all this?” said Knox.

“Yes. Apparently clear-cut.”

“So—” Puller began, but Knox beat him to it.

“So why did both counsel remember the case so well?” she asked.

“Landry in particular seemed to think that everything was too neat and clean. There was no question that your brother knew his way around technology. And yet they discovered all this evidence on his personal devices without a lot of effort.”

“So he thought it was planted. If so, did he raise that as a defense?”

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?”