Page 101
“That’s some serious note-taking,” he says. He reaches over and turns the pages. I ran through two yellow highlighters completely, and the blue and pink ones are on their last legs. The margins are filled with my notes. “You didn’t have to do that.” He pauses. “Technically, I don’t think you were allowed to do that. But you already knew that, and even though I am so tempted to relitigate, I’m not doing it.”
I look at the notes on page one and take a deep breath. “Well, you told me to tell you what I found. And the Fifth Amendment covers us now. We are legally one unit. What I know dies with me.”
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “This looks like a pretty detailed analysis.” He traces over a note I’ve written, circled, and put exclamations on. “Ultra vires. What’s that mean?”
“Beyond the powers. Outside the legal scope of an inquiry. There are so many instances that I actually used a different color just for them.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“And you know what really irritates me? I had to look that fucking word up. Your lawyer should have raised it. This was not a hearing. It was a fucking execution,” I say. “You were railroaded. Dr. Chen knows exactly how these hearings work, what questions establish what narratives.” I look back at the transcript. “He was pretty sly.”
“It’s over, though. Whatever it was, Ronald thinks they’ll clear me. So why are we going over this now?”
“Because they’re going to clear you of the thing that was never true, and you’re going to walk out of that room grateful. That’s what they built it to do.” I close the folder over my thumb to keep the page. “The verdict isn’t the point. It was never the point. There’s not a goddamned shred of evidence you touched Robby, and they know it. They still put you through this.” I take a deep breath. “I love you. I need you to know that before we have this conversation. I want you to never forget that.”
Bastien frowns at me. He shifts uncomfortably. “Well, that sounds ominous. What conversation is that?”
I reach for the pink sticky note I’ve used to tab an area. I have a whole color-coded system going. “I need to walk you through what I found,” I answer. “And I need you to really hear me. Can you do that?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good. You should be scared. And then you should be angry. Because what they did to you in that room was not okay, Bastien. And I don’t think you know that yet.”
“They were doing their job.”
“No, baby boy. They appointed a translator.” I try to emphasize how angry that makes me.
“I didn’t need one. I never asked for one.”
“I know. You have a PhD from Purdue. You’ve been publishing in English for a decade. You’ve been living here for—how long?”
“Eight years, on and off.”
“Eight years.” I look at him. “And they just… assigned you a translator. Without asking.”
“It’s standard procedure for—”
“For who, Bastien? For anyone with a French name? For anyone with an accent? No. It’s not standard. I can guarandamntee you Lincoln Preston has never had a translator appointed to his hearings. This was specific. This was deliberate.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know what it means when someone shows up to a meeting and there’s an interpreter they didn’t request. It means someone’s already decided they don’t really belong. It means someone wants it on the record that accommodation was needed.” I tap the transcript. “She didn’t say a word for four hours. Four hours of you speaking perfect English. And then you slipped into French for half a second under stress—which, by the way, is a completely normal response—and she pounced.”
“That was a little annoying,” he admits.
“It’s beyond annoying. It’s vicious as fuck. It’s a way of marking you,” I grind out. “Of saying: this person is other. This person isn’t quite fluent. This person might not fully understand the proceedings. It undermines your credibility before you even open your mouth. And then if you object to the translator, you look difficult. Uncooperative. Like you have something to hide.”
Bastien cringes, like he hadn’t thought of that before.
“All those people in the room,” I continue. “Chen running his little inquisition. Whitman letting it happen. Your lawyer—who, by the way, we need to talk about, because ‘I believe my client finds this offensive’ is not exactly a vigorous fucking defense. The other committee members, whoever the fuck they were—”
“I’m not sure. They didn’t say much.”
“They didn’t say anything. They watched a discriminatory line of questioning unfold and they kept their collective mouths shut. And then the translator, sitting there like a trap waiting to spring.” I close the transcript. “This wasn’t one bad actor, Bastien. This was a system. Chen couldn’t have done what he did if the system didn’t allow it, or if the other people in that room didn’t enable it by their silence.”
“Levi,” he says. “I understand that you are really feeling protective, but that’s not what happened.”
“That is exactly what happened. Do you think I’ve never seen this exact thing happen in the Army? The difference is that I always knew my rights, and you didn’t.”
