Final Storm by Mack Maloney Page A

thinking about it, and he knew his lined face and baggy eyelids probably telegraphed his condition.
    But, if anything, Fitzie looked worse …
    He fetched a cup of coffee and sat down beside Hunter, clutching a videotape as if it contained an explosive charge.
    “What the hell happened to you?” Hunter asked, not quite believing that anyone could look worse than he did this morning.
    “Terrible things, Hawker,” he answered, neatly slipping a pint bottle of scotch from his pocket. With magician’s precision he deposited a splash of the liquor into his coffee cup, did the same for Hunter’s, then returned the flask to its original hiding place—all in one smooth motion. “I’ve been up close to forty-eight straight hours now, and still I have a full week’s work ahead of me.”
    Early in the planning for the trial, Fitz had been appointed as an Officer of the Court. Because he was not directly involved in the war’s hostilities (he was in the hospital at the time, recovering from an airplane crash), the Irishman found himself on the court’s “discovery” team, the group of men who would interrogate the ex-VP and report directly to the trial’s justices. As such, Fitz had been working day and night and he looked it.
    The stocky Irishman took a long swig of his coffee then put the videotape up on the table.
    “This tape is part of the Vice President’s testimony,” Fitzgerald told him. “ His deposition, you might say …”
    Hunter picked up the tape cassette and turned it over in his hands. “I knew he was being questioned,” he said. “But I didn’t realize you were videotaping it.”
    “Oh, yes,” Fitz answered, lighting a cigarillo. “By his attorneys’ request.”
    “That figures,” Hunter said. Just because the world had quaked through a third world war, plus five years of aftershocks, didn’t mean that all the fancy lawyers had been suddenly swallowed up.
    “And this is just six hours of about thirty that he gave,” Fitz said, taking the cassette back.
    He shook his head and looked straight at Hunter.
    “Hawk, you won’t believe what that bastard has told us,” he said gravely.
    “I’ll believe anything at this point,” Hunter answered.
    Before Hunter could ask him again, Fitzgerald blurted out, “It’s a terrible thing he’s done to us, he has.”
    “Of course it’s terrible, Mike,” Hunter said. “I mean the guy’s picture could replace Benedict Arnold’s in the encyclopedia next to ‘worst traitor.’”
    “You’re not getting the point,” Fitz said. “I’m talking about what he told us that we didn’t already know.”
    “Well,” Hunter said simply, “just tell me …”
    Fitz shook his head. “I cant,” he said. “I’m an officer of the court in all this, remember. You’re a witness. If I pass inside information on to you, it could screw up the whole trial.”
    Hunter suddenly felt his teeth clench. He knew that due to the intentionally strict guidelines set up for the trial, all it would take was one slip-up and the ex-VP could go free. Right or wrong, that was the American way and that was what the trial was really about. Preserving the American way …
    Yet Hunter could tell by Fitz’s demeanor that something big, something downright explosive was on that tape.
    “I’m afraid to ask you even for a hint,” Hunter said in a hushed tone.
    “Of this, you don’t want a hint,” Fitz said, finishing his coffee and getting up to go. If anything, he looked worse than when he walked in. “You’ll just have to wait until the bastard takes the stand. It will all be in the court documents they’ll pass out. You’ll see it right before you in black and white.”
    Fitz took a deep breath, then added: “But I will tell you this: We, here in America, are in worse danger now than we’ve been since the Big War.”
    And on that frighteningly cryptic note, Fitz walked quickly from the cafeteria.
    Damn, Hunter thought. Does it ever end? They finally kick the