Money for Nothing Read Free Page B

Nimrin" — and four equally difficult names, under a photo of the eight seated at the defense table, bunched together shoulder to shoulder, almost moustache to moustache, and looking as glum as any character in Le Carré.
    Mr. Nimrin, as Josh still thought of him, following on Levrin's respectful references, should be fourth from the left. The photo wasn't that clear, and its reproduction on the computer screen didn't help much. Josh had an impression of a burly man, hawknosed above the moustache, with a high gleaming forehead and eyes that, even in this poor reproduction of a side-view medium-distance shot, seemed to glare in unrepentant rage and contempt in the general direction of the bench.
    All the other defendants, to one extent or another, seemed cowed by their circumstances. Mr. Nimrin seemed energized. It was hard to believe he wasn't a principal in the case, was just another spear-carrier, but judging from the news pieces that did seem to be the situation.
    As for the case, Josh couldn't make heads nor tails of it. Laboratory technicians had been bribed or coerced, allegedly. Secrets had been stolen, allegedly. Diagrams and other documents had been smuggled out of the country, allegedly. These eight defendants were somehow part of the plot, allegedly.
    But this was where it got tricky. The government lawyers, in presenting their case, asserted that national security was an issue here, and that much of the evidence against the defendants was too sensitive to be revealed in public; some was too sensitive to be revealed to a jury or to the defense attorneys; and some was so sensitive it couldn't even be revealed to the judge.
    What had brought these defendants from the "federal facility" where they were being held into this courtroom was not the trial, but a hearing as to whether a trial was even possible. The defense argued, and Josh could see the justice in the argument, that it was impossible for a person to defend himself against evidence he wasn't permitted to see or even hear described. The prosecution, speaking for the government, essentially argued that the defendants would get a fair trial because the government could be trusted — would they lie?
    Mr. Nimrin appeared by name only the one time, under that photo, but the story itself took up space in the
Post
for ten days, that space becoming briefer and briefer toward the end, then petering out before the judge had given his decision as to whether or not they could all, in a phrase Josh had grown used to in the coverage, "proceed to trial," which made it sound like, after the cocktails, they would go in to dinner.
    Nothing else about the trial, or the case, or the defendants ever appeared again, so far as Josh could tell from the
Post's
records. So it seemed unlikely there had actually been a trial. Still, this was clearly what had ended Mr. Nimrin's career, whatever that career had been.
    What else had Levrin said about Mr. Nimrin? That he had not been tortured, and that he was not dead. "Just… away. You could say, in retirement."
    By the time Josh had gone this far, it was time for lunch; today, an important one. Not in the world of Levrin and Mr. Nimrin, but in the somewhat more real world of Sewell-McConnell. A representative of Amalgamated Pulp, manufacturers of Cloudbank toilet paper, in objecting last week to a mock-up of a print ad, had described the clouds pictured there as looking "like white turds," which, given the nature of the account, had led to some unfortunate wordplay, ruffling the rep's dignity before maturity was reimposed.
    As Josh had not himself been guilty of ribaldry on that occasion, and had spearheaded the forces of seriousness, so it had fallen to him to take the rep to lunch and smooth his feathers. It was a thing he was good at, which was one of the reasons he'd been hired by Sewell-McConnell in the first place, and he handled it as well as usual, though in fact he was distracted throughout the lunch by the questions to which