"A lot could happen," Alex admitted, rubbing his temples. "They've been scared off a few times. A week ago, in the library, before some of my friends made a threatening move. Five days ago, in the shower, three men were approaching me when a guard showed up."

"I see."

"Look, I won't pretend I'm not worried. These are rough people, killers. They're watching me every day, looking for an opening. I know the odds."

"You have to get out of here, Alex."

"Believe me, that thought has crossed my mind. The past few weeks, I've lived in the law section of the library."

"There has to be something. You can't just let these people kill you."

About two cubicles down, a loud argument suddenly exploded between a prisoner and his wife. The woman was barely more than a child, maybe nineteen, dressed in a scant black leather skirt, black net stockings, a halter top that did more to reveal than conceal, false eyelashes that flopped like gigantic butterflies, and enough cosmetics to camouflage a battleship or capsize it. Only a moment before, she and the hubby had their faces pressed tightly against the glass panel, whispering sweet nothings back and forth, like they were ready to disrobe and grope each other through the divider. The husband suddenly recoiled backward, nearly tipping his chair to the floor.

"Oh yeah, you heard right. Your twin brother," the woman roared.

"My own brother. You're sleeping with my own brother," the husband wailed, slamming both fists like noisy gavels against the glass panel.

"Yeah, well… least I kept it in the family, since I know how much that word means to you. This time, anyways."

"You're a bitch. A whore. A backstabbin' whore."

She stood up and jammed her face up against the divider. "Hey, you noticed, finally. Guess what, idiot? I'm givin' it away to any fool who looks twice. They're thinkin' of naming a mattress after me. So what are you gonna do about it, huh?" she taunted.

Until this moment, the three guards in the room had looked on with an air of bemused boredom. Old hat, old story, happy days again in the visitors' room. A wife cheating on a locked-up hubby: what's new? A tired old scene the guards had observed a thousand times with few variations. Many marriages lasted a year, some more than two, very, very few beyond the third year of separation.

There was one inviolate rule, though, and this prisoner bashed it to pieces. He snapped, leaped to his feet, and, howling at the top of his voice, began trying to crawl and claw his way over the divider. Two guards lost their look of boredom and sprang into action. They yanked him off the glass, jerked his arms behind his back, and slapped cuffs on him. They began dragging him out as he hollered a bewildering array of curses at his wife.

His wife stood and loitered, arms crossed, watching it all with a smile that smacked of huge contentment.

Then, at the final moment before they yanked her husband through the door, she whipped down her halter, exposing two rather impressive breasts. With two hands, she cupped and then began juggling them. "Hey," she yelled at her husband, "remember these? Tonight your brother's gonna have a field day with 'em. And once I get bored with him, you know what? I'll bet I can get your father in the sack."

She tugged the halter back up, spun on her heels, and with a loud triumphant clack of high heels departed the room.

"Poor man," Elena remarked with a sympathetic frown after the tumult died down.

Alex bent forward and shook his head. "That's Eddie Carminza. He's up for bigamy. Five years in the joint, the max. She's one of four wives."

"My God, this place is crazy, Alex. You have to get out."

"Well, there is one thing we can try. Move the case out of immigration channels into a federal court. It's premature, though, and incredibly risky."

"You might prematurely die in here if we don't try something."

"I know. But there are two problems. Serious problems. One, federal court means different rules and procedures. MP isn't a criminal lawyer. Also he has no experience in the federal system. The rules of evidence and admissibility are stricter. It's too late to replace him, though."

"Can he handle it?"

"I'm not sure any lawyer can and MP is already holding a bad hand. And who knows how much ammunition our friends in Russia have provided the prosecutor over the past year."

"But Mikhail-"

"Mikhail hasn't found us the silver bullet. There's no legally acceptable proof that my money was stolen. No proof I'm being framed. Nothing to keep me from being shipped back to Russia."

"All right, what's two?"

"If we rush into federal court, and I lose, I'll be shipped right back here. We can try an appeal, and we will. But that takes time. I'll probably be dead long before."

"So it's a choice between very bad and awful?"

"More like between certain death and probable death."

"So what's this idea?"

"It's called a motion for habeas corpus. Technically, by shoving me into the federal prison system, they've created a loophole we should be able to exploit. It forces the government to show cause for my imprisonment. If a judge accepts it, the process happens very fast."

"How fast?"

"Three days after we launch it, we'll be in court."

"Oh… that fast." Elena stared at her shoes a moment. She began fidgeting with her hands. "Is it too fast?"

"Possibly," Alex told her. "We have a lot of enemies, here and in Russia. Everything has to happen at once. And everything has to succeed, or as my friend Benny puts it, it's game over. Also Mikhail will have to move up his time schedule. And we'll have to pray for a legal miracle."

"We're overdue for a miracle."

"I don't think it works that way. We'll have to produce our own."

"I'll call Mikhail the second I'm out of here."

"You have a busy weekend ahead of you. It's time to share everything with MP, then pray it's enough."

On September 18, 1996, one year and two months to the day since Alex's incarceration in federal prison, MP Jones bounced up the steps of the D.C. Federal Courthouse, one of the loveliest, most impressive buildings in a city littered to the gills with marble monuments. The day alternated between warmth and chill, the first hint that another long, humid summer in a city built in a swamp was coming to a close. Elena, along with a stout paralegal hauling a box of documents, accompanied him.

Two days before, Elena had called and frantically insisted on an emergency meeting. MP dropped everything and Elena arrived, pale, tired, angry, upset, and wildly determined. She told him Alex's idea and MP instantly launched a hundred objections.

It was too fast. Too risky. Federal court wasn't his thing. Besides, who knew what the Russian prosecutors and INS had cooked up, how much damning material they could throw at Alex? Elena insisted that she and Alex had entertained all the same reservations, told him about the four attempts on Alex's life, and that ended the discussion. MP called his clients with pressing cases over the next week and foisted their files off on other immigration specialists around town.

So they moved with deep nervousness through the wide, well-lit corridors, straight to the office of the federal clerk. MP signed in at the front desk, moved to the rear of the room, and waited patiently with Elena and his paralegal amid a clutter of other nervous lawyers until the clerk called his name.

He nearly sprinted to her desk. He proudly threw down a document and with a show of intense formality informed her, "I am introducing a motion for habeas corpus on behalf of my client Alex Konevitch. I ask the court for expeditious handling on behalf of said client, who has been incarcerated beyond any reasonable length and forced to endure immeasurable suffering."