CHAPTER 30

On the way home from the Tribunal, Kevin tried to talk to Diane, but she remained sullen and silent. He explained again why he had decided not to use the evidence of Draga’s long-time cooperation with the CIA. Diane seemed unmoved.

Once home, Diane went up to their bedroom and shut the door. Kevin fixed some dinner for both of them, but Diane refused to come down to join him. Kevin sat in the dining room, eating by himself. It was 6:30, and he had a closing argument to give tomorrow. Why couldn’t Diane have waited for one more day to vent her anger at him?

Kevin tried to work on his closing argument, but he knew that he would not be able to concentrate until he had resolved things with Diane. He went up to their bedroom. Diane was lying on the bed. She didn’t move when he opened the door.

Kevin went over and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

Diane did not respond. She was lying on her stomach, her face pressed against the pillow.

“Come on, we have to face this together. Right now, we both need to do everything we can to get Ellen back. Hate me when it’s all over.”

Diane rolled onto her side, turning her back to Kevin. “There’s no point talking to you. You just go do whatever you please anyway, no matter what I say.”

“That’s not true. I do listen to you. I do respect your opinion.”

Diane turned around and glared at Kevin. “You always think you’re right, but Ellen and I have to pay for your mistakes. I’m tired of being a spectator while you play games with our lives.”

Kevin took a deep breath. “Look, I’m convinced I did the right thing today. We have a real good chance of winning this trial. We showed today that the people they spent the last month prosecuting had nothing to do with Draga.”

“Kevin, you are so damned blind. I’ve seen how those judges act. They’re going to find some way to find your client guilty. And Ellen is still out there, her whole life riding on this stupid trial. I just hate it.”

“Maybe the police will find Ellen. They had hundreds of volunteers out there looking for her today. They have a suspect, and a license number.”

“We would have had a call by now if they found her. They’ve had almost a month to find her. This is so discouraging.”

“Will you help me with my closing argument?”

“No,” Diane shot back. “You don’t listen to me anyway. Why don’t you get your buddy Draga to help you? You obviously value his life more than your daughter’s.”

Kevin winced. “That hurt.” He waited for an apology, but none was forthcoming. “I guess I’ll get to work.” He got up from the bed. “I’m going to prove you wrong about the verdict.”

“I hope you do. For Ellen’s sake.”

Kevin trudged down to the dining room and began spreading out his notes. He remembered wistfully the evenings when it was Ellen who had her work spread out all over this same table. How he sorely missed her.

He was trying hard to focus on his closing argument when the phone rang at about 9 p.m. He let Diane answer it upstairs, trying to back off from being the boss of everything.

After about ten minutes, Diane came downstairs. “That was Detective Weber.”

Kevin sprang from his seat at the table.

“They found the farmhouse where Ellen was being held, but they missed Ellen and the kidnappers by about five minutes.”

Diane came over and sat down. She had been crying.

“A girl from the American School saw Ellen peeking out from behind some curtains,” she went on. “The police arrested one of the kidnappers. The one whose fingerprints they have – Johan somebody.”

Kevin had a million questions. “Where do they think Ellen is now?”

“They don’t know. Johan told them that the other guy and the woman were driving a blue van. Detective Weber’s got everybody in Holland looking for a blue van and the two kidnappers.”

“How did they treat Ellen? What was the farmhouse like?” The questions gushed out of Kevin.

“I guess they treated her okay. A bunch of her drawings were pasted up around the house.”

“What else did Detective Weber say?”

“The Johan guy said that they were hired by some people from Serbia to do this. He claims that his partner had made the contacts with the Serbs. He says he doesn’t know who they are.”

“Who’s his partner?”

“I wrote down the name. It’s Pieter van Dale. And the woman is Christina Trent. They’re all connected with some Dutch left-wing political group.”

“Do they have any other leads on finding Ellen now?”

Diane shrugged. “I don’t know. She said that they expect that the guy, Golic, will contact the kidnappers after he flies in tomorrow morning. They’ll be following Golic and they’re hoping he’ll lead them to Ellen.”

“Damn! We almost had her back tonight.”

Diane didn’t reply.

“At least we know she’s alive and has been treated reasonably well,” he said.

“Maybe they’ll harm her now that they’re desperate and on the run.” Diane said, starting to sob.

Kevin walked over to comfort her, but Diane got up from her chair and went upstairs. He went back to the dining room table. There was no way he could concentrate on his closing argument now.

He went up the stairs and into the bedroom.

Diane was back on the bed.

“I want to see the farmhouse,” he said. “I want to see Ellen’s drawings. Do you want to come with me?”

Diane looked up. “Yes. I was thinking the same thing.”

Diane got dressed while Kevin called Detective Weber. She gave Kevin directions and said she would alert the officers at the farmhouse to let Kevin and Diane look around. She asked Kevin not to touch anything.

“Anything else new?”

“I think tomorrow will be critical,” the detective said. “If we follow Golic, he should lead us to Ellen. We also have the number of van Dale’s cell phone. I’m getting a court order to listen on that phone.”

“Thank you so much for everything.”

Kevin and Diane drove out to Utrecht in the darkness. Kevin tried to keep the topic on finding Ellen, although he couldn’t resist saying that he was glad Detective Weber would be spending her time tomorrow looking for Ellen instead of testifying about the CIA evidence. Diane had softened a bit; she was at least speaking to Kevin. But the sub-freezing temperatures were not the only chill in the Anderson’s car as they drove east toward what had been their daughter’s home for almost a month.

When they went inside the farmhouse and saw Ellen’s drawings, Kevin and Diane were both moved to tears. There was something about seeing these creations of their daughter that made her seem so much closer at that moment. They wandered around the house three times, each time seeing something new. When they had finally seen everything, they thanked the officers and drove off.

Diane slept most of the way home. It was almost 1:00 a.m. when they pulled up to their row house in Wassenaar.

Kevin was still too wired to sleep. He had a closing argument to give in a few hours in the most important case of his life. He went up to his office and began banging it out on his computer. When he was done, it was almost 5 a.m. There was no point in sleeping.

Kevin got on the Internet and checked the coverage of Draga’s trial. He saw the Reuter’s News Service headline first: “War Crimes Suspect Puts Up No Defense.” He read the story, which had apparently been put on the wires from a story written by Toma Lanko for the Bosnia News Service. The story revealed that for the first time in the history of the War Crimes Tribunal, an accused had called no witnesses in his defense.

Kevin found Lanko’s original story. Lanko made no mention of Bradford Stone or of Kevin’s cross-examination of Chief Investigator Jacobson. Instead, he quoted unnamed sources in Serbia decrying the Tribunal’s appointment of an American prosecutor to represent Draga. He also quoted the Registrar of the Tribunal as saying that it was the first time in the history of the Tribunal that no defense had been offered for an accused. He noted that thousands of dollars of public money had been disbursed to Draga’s defense team for experts and investigators, and promised to look into how that money was spent.