"Oh, please. Thirty-five isn't that old."

"Yes, it is. Maybe I don't want to get married, I don't know, maybe I don't even want to be a mother. What I hate is not being in control." She looked down with an ironic smile on her face. She looked at me. "This Friday was going to be my first date in a year. And I'm going to miss it." She didn't sound that disappointed. "He's probably not worth it anyway. It's just Freddy."

I frowned. "Freddy, the dentist?"

"Yes. The dentist. The balding dentist."

"Jeez, you must be desperate."

"You're a real encouragement, Mike. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it."

"You can't marry him. You're gorgeous. He's… Freddy."

Rachel stood up. "All right, I'll send him an e-mail and tell him our big date is off. I think he wanted to go look at coin shops or something anyway. I think he collects nickels. Buffalo nickels. What an incredibly interesting guy." She looked at me as she stood by the door. "Are we going to be up all night? Do we have the materials we need to fly to Paris to begin preparing for these depositions tomorrow? Are we out of our minds? Are you sure you don't want to go before the magistrate and beg for mercy?"

"Nope. Legal jujitsu. Take his energy and throw him over on his back. I expect to be up all night myself. Debbie doesn't even know I'm going yet. This'll go over well. I'll get your ticket. Assume we're leaving on the eight thirty AM flight. We can drive together, but we'll need to leave at about four o'clock. I'll call you at home as soon as I get the info."

I picked up Rachel, drove to BWI, and we boarded our American Airlines flight to Paris. Rachel had called Justin and had him load the documents we had so far onto CDs, which she had brought with her. We spent the entire flight reviewing the documents on our laptops plugged directly into the seats and prepared questions that we anticipated Hackett asking.

We checked into our hotel on the Left Bank, got a bad night's sleep, and went to WorldCopter headquarters the next morning by taxi. We spent the next five days preparing each witness for the questions that might come up. Each day we had lunch in the WorldCopter conference room where we were preparing the witnesses. The food was outstanding, and each night we would have dinner with one of the WorldCopter officers. Marcel was still in the United States investigating the accident, as were most of the investigation team. But most of those who were actually involved in building Marine One were still in Paris.

One night we were free and Rachel insisted on eating at a fancy restaurant, called George. I agreed as I was happy to eat somewhere other than the restaurant we had eaten at each night with the WorldCopter officers.

The restaurant sat atop the Georges Pompidou Center, a combination museum, display area, multicultural center, and concert center. Rachel had reserved an outdoor table for us overlooking Notre Dame. European techno pop music pounded in the background.

Rachel took a sip from her wine and asked, "How do you think the preparation is going?"

"I think we're on track. Hackett's going to be surprised. I think they'll stand up pretty tall."

She pushed her hair back. "Don't you feel like our time would be better spent out in the woods looking for tip weights? We're just playing defense here."

"Our entire expert team's going to be out at the scene all week. They'll be tearing it apart while Hackett is here listening to himself talk."

"Won't his experts be doing the same thing?"

"I doubt it. The fewer new facts they have, the better. They want to just roll into court, say, 'Tip weights,' and wait while Hackett rings us up for a few hundred million. Plus, I've asked our new guy, Brandon- "

"Braden."

"… to start preparing a summary judgment motion to dismiss punitive damages while we're gone. We'll get the rough transcripts electronically, incorporate the testimony into our motion, and serve it on Hackett the day he flies home. He'll say it's too early in the case, but let's put him on his heels a little bit. He's the one who's in a big hurry."

"I called the dentist before we left our hotel."

"Tonight? Really? What for?"

Rachel smiled and shook her head. "I just wanted to give him the details of why I missed our date. He said it figures. It's par for the course for him to be drilling the teeth of angry patients while I run off to Paris. Then he said he always figured I was out of his league anyway. He never thought he had much of a shot. He knew I'd come up with some reason not to go out with him."

I frowned. "That doesn't even make sense. He thinks you made this whole thing up so you wouldn't have to go out with him? So what, you persuaded Hackett to notice a bunch of depositions just so you could avoid a date with him?"

"I don't think he's quite that linear in his thinking, more like he knew events would conspire to make sure that I didn't go out with him."

"So when you said yes that was just a cruel joke of fate."

"Something like that. I don't think he's really my type."

"Don't worry, it'll happen. The right guy's out there."

Rachel looked up at me with a sharp glance. "I don't think so."

"Well, what are you looking for? What kind of guy is the right one?"

Our waitress brought our food and set the hot plates down in front of us. "Enjoy," she said as she turned away.

"There are good men out there. All my friends are married to them. They've been married for ten years. They have kids. They're happy. They're working or not working. It doesn't matter. They're happy."

We finished our meal in relative quiet, listening to the pounding, now annoying, music through the ultra-high-quality speakers hidden somewhere. I paid the shockingly large bill and stood. "We'd better get back to the hotel. You know who we meet with tomorrow."

"Jean Claude Martin. El presidente."

"Wouldn't it be la president?"

"Le."

"All I know is he's really not very happy. After that debacle at the Senate hearings, all he wants is to answer more questions from some American attorney. You sure we did the right thing by letting Hackett go at him this early in the case?"

"Hackett won't have our documents until the deposition. He'll do way less damage now than in six months when he's a lot smarter about WorldCopter. We've got to let him do this, and then start turning this case back on him."

JEAN CLAUDE MARTIN gave us all the time we wanted. But first he had to "express himself." He simply could not understand how in the American judicial system it was possible for Hackett to hand me several pieces of paper and show up the following week with a court reporter and videographer to take his deposition. None of this was allowed in France. It was clearly intended to harass him and WorldCopter.

I agreed. I told him that was exactly the purpose of the depositions. And the harder we fought and more we made of it, the more we were playing into Hackett's publicity-seeking hands. The more annoyed we got, the happier he was going to be. I told President Martin that since Hackett gave us virtually no notice, and we hadn't much time to prepare, Hackett would have to be satisfied with the answers he got. He only got to do this once.

From the top down, WorldCopter had zero faith in the American justice system. They all reminded me that the reading of the Michael Jackson verdict was on live television throughout France. Not because they expected great justice, but because it was like watching a circus. And there was absolutely no doubt in their minds, and I mean no doubt, that Michael Jackson would get off.

I think American juries get it right 90-plus percent of the time. I had no such confidence in other judicial systems, especially those that let judges decide everything, like the French system. I had seen enough tyrannical American judges to doubt whether tyrannical French judges or tyrannical British judges would somehow be remarkably fair and come up with the right result. I trusted juries. Sure, they could get it wrong, so could I, so could WorldCopter, so could a French judge. We all can get it wrong. But in federal court, where we were in this case, you had to get a unanimous jury. In my experience, a unanimous jury rarely got things just flat wrong.