Counterplay

he began, but was cut off.
“Sit down, Mr. McSheffrey. She’s not getting it. It’s obvious what’s going on here.”
“But, but . . .” started Dana in a less-than-articulate response. But she, too, was cut off. Dana tried to block out the snickers from McSheffrey’s juniors—Archambault, Danson, and McGhee—three arrogant pitbulls adding the trial of the decade to their résumés.
“No. Not after the games that have been played here. Start jury selection.”
That was it. Her two-word legal argument and McSheffrey’s two-word rebuttal found no favor with the court. Dana choked with the injustice of it. Here she was, less than one year to the bar, defending a loathsome client already convicted and sentenced for possessing and importing and exporting drugs and guns, a man by the name of Leon Lestage. Leon now stood charged as the central figure in a conspiracy that destroyed a number of dams on the Colorado River in an attack that had killed tens of thousands and almost shattered the American economy.
A complicated legal history had led Dana to this point. The first legal minefield that Leon had to navigate was the obvious guilt stemming from his possession of vast quantities of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and firearms. He went, as seasoned criminals do, to the best criminal defense lawyers that money could buy. He paid them $2 million and tossed them the case. As it turned out, the great hoard of drugs were on the American side at Devil’s Anvil, a deserted coal mine with a tunnel system that stretched underneath the border and connected with northern Montana at its southern end. The government of Canada could not claim jurisdiction over illicit substances that were on American soil. That left the prosecutors with a much thinner case, with some of the illegal drugs on the Canadian side of the border together with a mass of wiretap evidence.
Through a host of clever pretrial motions, the prosecutors were left with evidence that could possibly be dismissed. Then Leon’s counsel had him reviewed by a battalion of psychiatrists and psychologists, all of whom pointed to extreme violence and abuse—yes, likely even sexual abuse of horrendous proportion that had scarred his childhood and teenage years. This terrible childhood led Leon into the drug business, which, in fact, was run by other members of the Hallett/Lestage gang. The main culprit was Dennis Lestage, who lived at Devil’s Anvil and supervised drug and weapons deliveries. The Crown placed Dennis on its witness list to testify to the contrary, but somehow Dennis, incarcerated at a different institution, died in a violent, seemingly unprovoked beating, a pretrial motion executed ex juris.
Ultimately, after some clever judge shopping and a short, one-day hearing in which a statement of facts agreed to by the prosecutor and defense counsel was placed before the judge, Leon was sentenced to seven years, inclusive of time served. If he demonstrated good character and showed genuine remorse, he would likely be on parole within a year. In his great contrition, Leon ingratiated himself with the prison administration. He counseled and assisted fellow prisoners. He found Jesus. He employed endless means and devices to artfully disguise the lump of anthracite that was his heart and the cold canyon that was his conscience. Hence, Leon walked out of the courtroom virtually a free man. He had demonstrated to the corrections officers and to the court genuine contrition. Indeed, he had turned his life around.
If that represented the total of Leon’s misdeeds, he likely would have returned to his old line of work, replenishing the fortune that he had lost in the raids on Devil’s Anvil. But there was the second hoop, extradition, potentially the most dangerous, and the third and even darker branch, conspiracy to commit murder. Murder of more than 20,000 people.
The extradition process went first. The United States moved to have Leon extradited and brought before American courts for a determination of his involvement in the massive Colorado River attack (which was obvious to all) and the sentence that would follow (which was equally obvious to all). Extradition. Conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and mass murder. This was unfamiliar territory for Leon. The Americans wanted him tried in an American court, preferably in Texas. Criminal defense lawyers were not sophisticated enough to deal with this. He asked around. Blankstein deFijter. That was the firm, an enormous multinational law firm with branches in Vancouver; Ottawa; Washington, DC, and in major centers around the world. A firm with a tremendous record in international law, immigration, and within it, a highly specialized boutique dealing with extradition matters.
He approached Blankstein deFijter. They sent him an errand girl, Dana Wittenberg, still a law student preparing for her bar exam. Dana, though slender and attractive, looked pale and drawn. Her beauty was marred by a long, thin scar running across her forehead down to the right side of her right eye and into her cheek. Articling for a firm like Blankstein deFijter required at least eighty-hour weeks, and, on top of that, she was cramming for the bar. She stumbled her way through the interview, getting a vague sense of the various legal entanglements to come.
At length, Leon, impatient by nature, put out his offer. Ten million dollars, legal, legitimate, clean bank account money. Ten million. But Blankstein deFijter would need to represent him from beginning to end, through extradition processes and conspiracy trials and all appeals. A few days later, Dana returned to the prison with another lawyer. The management committee of the mighty firm had met, considered, and accepted the offer. At that precise point Leon made an uncharacteristic error. He assumed that a transnational law firm behaved similarly to a small criminal defense firm. You give them the money, they do the job.
But that’s not quite how the multinationals function. A monster firm like Blankstein deFijter is concerned—in fact, consumed—with “billable hours.” Someone had poured $10 million into the trough. It was feeding time.
At first Leon was pleased with the representation he was receiving. The aging