The Resurrection File (25 page)

“After getting the trial court to dismiss your defense of lack of actual malice, we will then proceed to ask the court to issue sanctions against you for asserting that totally unfounded and unsupported defense. The sanction we will demand is one-half of the attorney's fees generated by our firm on
this case thus far. I have calculated that sum as of yesterday—not including my legal performance for nearly five hours today. And we will be asking that the court assess our legal fees—not against your rather sad client. No, sir. Instead, we will be asking the court to assess these fees against you personally, as his lawyer.”

With that Sherman pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of his silk shirt and tossed it over to Chambers. Will opened it. It simply said,

Total fees of law firm for work on Reichstad case: $490,000.00

One-half of fees, to be assessed against Chambers: $245,000.00

Now there were two carcasses on the floor. And Will Chambers felt as if the vultures were already picking at his eyes.

Sherman's legal team gathered around him and shook his hand, murmering their hushed adulation at his tour-de-force handling of the deposition.

MacCameron was mopping the sweat off his face and managed a struggling smile toward his lawyer, who was standing at his side. As Will glanced at J-Fox Sherman's gloating smile, he knew one thing for sure. He knew that he couldn't give up the last word to this pack of wolves that had encircled his aged and isolated client.

Will looked at the piece of paper he still held in his hand, and he waved it toward Sherman.

“Gee, I really am surprised that your legal fees aren't higher than this,” Will said mockingly. Then he tossed the paper onto the conference table. “Now what's really going to be interesting, Mr. Sherman, is when Reverend MacCameron and I win this case,” and with that Will put his hand on MacCameron's shoulder, “and I send your law firm a demand for
my
attorney's fees.”

J-Fox Sherman mumbled something, turned, and left the room, sweeping with him his two legal associates and the law clerk, who followed dutifully behind. The court reporters quickly packed up their equipment and slipped out. In the silence of the conference room, there was only Angus MacCameron, attorney Will Chambers, and the small piece of paper that still lay where Will had thrown it on the middle of the conference table.

25

S
O FAR, EVERY LEAD THAT
J
ACK
H
ORNBY
had followed had turned into a dead end. He had still failed to uncover the nitty-gritty reality of what was going on between the United States government and the OPEC cartel. He had struck out with his contacts within the Energy Department.

As Hornby stood in front of the reporter's assignment board at the
Washington Herald,
he noticed that one of the religion reporters had been assigned to cover a seminar at the Smithsonian Institution entitled “The History of Islam and Prospects for Cultural Reconciliation with the West.” Hornby also noted that, at the event, State Department undersecretary Kenneth Sharptin was scheduled to receive an award for “Cultural Achievements in Peacemaking.” Hornby knew the reporter assigned to cover that story.

Clearly, he concluded, the newspaper wanted this to be a “puff piece” on the seminar and the fêting of Undersecretary Sharptin.

Across from Hornby's name on the chart was an assignment for him to cover a budget meeting of the D.C. control board. Here was yet another lackluster assignment that would end up being buried on page eight of the Metro section.

But the thought of financial issues triggered something. Not exactly something about the OPEC–United States oil story. But it triggered a thought of Hornby's longstanding “pickpocket rule.” Greed and financial gain were the common denominators of many a great news story. The question became, who is picking whose pocket?

So he started thinking back to the Reichstad lawsuit story being killed. Then he remembered how he had first talked to his city editor and then had marched up to the managing editor. And finally Hornby had gone back and nailed the city editor again as he was trying to leave for the day. He had said something very significant, and Hornby was surprised he hadn't clicked on
it before now. It was not the kind of thing an editor would usually admit to a reporter.

As the city editor had tried to dash past him he had blurted out, “Give it up, Hornby—when the owner and publisher want to kill a story, it stays dead.”

Why would the ownership of the
Washington Herald
care about a story on a lawsuit over an archaeological discovery of a Harvard professor? For the owners and publishers of the newspaper the top and bottom line was always financial. So, who was picking whose pocket? And what did it have to do with the Reichstad lawsuit? And why did Hornby suddenly have the hunch that it had something to do with the OPEC oil story?

According to the Energy Department's statement at the press conference, the State Department was the catalyst in breaking new ground with the OPEC nations of the Middle East. And Hornby was cognizant of how State Department Undersecretary Sharptin had been actively marketing himself as a kind of cultural peace-broker between the Islamic East and the Christian West. In fact, Sharptin had been portraying himself as a kind of diplomatic chief for religious reconciliation.

The veteran newsman took out his notepad. First, at the top of the page he wrote: REICHSTAD LAWSUIT.

At the bottom of the page, in the lower right-hand corner, he wrote: STATE DEPT./SHARPTIN.

Then Hornby wrote a third entry in the lower left-hand corner of the pad: OIL/WHOSE POCKET?

Hornby glanced at his notepad. Then he drew a line connecting the three points and forming a triangle:

Hornby picked up the phone on a nearby desk in the newsroom and called up one of his college buddies, who worked as an accountant down in mergers and acquisitions. He glanced at his watch. It was perfect timing for lunch. His friend answered. Hornby invited him to catch up on old times over lunch at the Federal Grill.

“Who's buying?” the accountant asked wryly.

“I owe you one from the last time we went out,” Hornby said.

“What decade was that?” the accountant asked. “You know, we work for the same newspaper. But you're too busy getting Pulitzer Prizes and ticking off the editors to take me out to lunch. It's about time.”

They grabbed a cab together and arrived at the Grill just before the rush. The two slid into a quiet booth and ordered their meals, then started catching up on personal things. His accountant friend sounded disgruntled about his position in mergers and acquisitions. For Hornby, the trail was getting warm.

Halfway through the luncheon special of crabcake sandwiches and soup the accountant started getting the drift. There was more to this meeting than just old college comradeship.

Hornby was asking about any big mergers that the
Washington Herald
had been recently involved in.

“It's constant,” the accountant said, hedging a little. “You know, mergers, acquisitions. Diversification. That's what my department is all about.”

Hornby could sense something lurking just under the surface.

“Tell it to me straight. If you become a source I won't divulge it to anyone.”

“What is this? Are you doing a story on me or what?”

“No,” Hornby assured him, “I'm just trying to get some answers on why one of my stories got killed by the ownership of the paper. You would feel the same way—after all the years you've put into the newspaper—if they knifed you in the back—you know, because of some big financial merger, as an example. Right?”

The accountant got a grim look on his face. “Yeah,” he replied, “which is exactly what I think they are going to do to me—give me the axe.”

“You're kidding,” Hornby said. “Why?”

“A major shakeup in ownership. We're into a big merger all right. And I can see handwriting on the wall. We'll put this merger together. New ownership comes in. And I'm out. I join the ranks of the unemployed.”

“Wow,” Hornby said with sympathy, “this must be a big merger. What company is taking over?”

There was silence at the table as the waitress refilled their water glasses.

“Look—I'm real concerned about telling you anything,” the accountant whispered.

“Hey, you know my reputation,” Hornby assured him. “I have never disclosed a confidential source. Remember when I spent thirty days in jail for contempt because I refused to divulge the source to the court?”

The accountant looked uneasy as he eyed his water glass. Then he said, “After all the years I put in with this newspaper. Boy, what a raw deal.”

“Yeah. Really raw deal,” Hornby added. “So come on, what's the name of the company buying out the
Herald?”

There was a moment of silence while the accountant looked around at the surrounding tables. Then he lowered his head, and in a low voice he replied, “Global.”

“Global what?”

“Global Geo-Technology, Inc.”

Hornby thought about it for a few seconds, and then he responded, “Never heard of them.”

“Sure. Not exactly a household word,” the accountant added. “You'd probably know the parent company that controls them.”

“Oh,” Hornby asked, “who is the parent company?”

“Global Petroleum.”

“So the
Washington Herald
is about to be purchased by a wholly owned subsidiary of Global Petroleum?”

“That's the deal,” the accountant said, looking over the check that the waitress had left.

“Hey, don't worry about that. I'm picking up the tab for lunch,” Hornby said. And then he asked his follow-up question.

“Isn't Global Petroleum owned by Warren Mullburn, the world's third-richest man? The reigning guru of religious synthesis? The master of evolutionary self-help?”

“Yeah, that's the guy. I've read some of his books. His science-fiction stuff is great. But his other stuff is kind of wacko. But you're right. If you can believe the business trade papers, he's number three in the whole world in accumulated wealth per net assets.”

Jack Hornby tossed the money for the lunch and a healthy tip on the table. But before the accountant could ask him about sharing a cab back to the newspaper building, the reporter, with his notepad in his hand, had already left the restaurant and was running down the street.

26

A
S PROMISED, THE DAY FOLLOWING THE DEPOSITION
of Reverend Angus MacCameron, the courier from J-Fox Sherman's law firm hand-delivered to Will Chambers a written motion under Federal Rule 11, seeking a court-ordered award of attorney's fees against Will Chambers in the amount of $245,000. The motion was conditional, however. In it, Sherman indicated that the request for attorney's-fee sanction would be withdrawn if, in return, within fourteen days Chambers formally withdrew, in writing, the defense in the lawsuit that MacCameron lacked “actual malice” at the time he wrote the article against Reichstad. In other words, Sherman was demanding, in return for dropping a demand for attorney's fees against Will Chambers, that Chambers admit that his client had been reckless in his writing of the defamatory magazine piece.

Sherman knew that the attorney's-fee motion would place Chambers and his client on the horns of an intractable dilemma. If Will Chambers agreed to withdraw his defense of “lack of actual malice,” he would be conceding one of the major issues of the case.

On the other hand, if Chambers refused to withdraw that defense in two weeks, he faced a great risk. He might be ordered to pay a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees to Sherman's firm, provided that trial judge Jeremiah Kaye agreed with Sherman that the issue of MacCameron's recklessness was clear beyond any question.

Sherman had also coyly attached to the motion, for Chamber's reading enjoyment, a copy of a recent decision by Judge Kaye under Rule 11 in another case. Just three months before, Judge Kaye had hit a losing attorney with an attorney's-fee sanction in the amount of $150,000 for making unsupported allegations in a lawsuit. J-Fox Sherman had been the winning attorney in that lawsuit.