(Copyright National Post 2007)

The prosecution has spoken. So has the defence. This being America, the prosecution has spoken again. The diminutive judge is to give her instructions this morning. Moving with the dignified deliberation of a centipede, the jury will file out of the courtroom. The trial of the century (as it has been dubbed in Canada) will be over.

Like an usher in a movie theatre, a marshal is checking the empty benches. In the lawyers' conference room, a paper cup rolls on the floor. The printers and fax machines are silent. After the bedlam of the preceding 15 weeks, suddenly there isn't anything to do but wait.

What is it like? A French photograph from the late 1800s depicts a duel at dawn. The white-shirted antagonists stand at their barriers. Their weapons have been fired. Smoke is visible around the breech of the duelling pistols. They pulled the trigger as the photographer finished exposing the daguerreotype, and now they stand in the clearing, still intact, facing each other. In the next split second their invisible bullets will hit -- or miss -- their respective marks.

Conrad Black makes his way through a phalanx of reporters from the courthouse lobby to a curbside SUV. How does he feel? If anyone asked him such a silly question, he'd probably raise an eyebrow and reply that he feels fine.

He might add he's glad "the dawn patrol" is over -- the trial judge has been starting her court days at 8:45 and Conrad, who works late hours, has never been a morning person.

In reality, the founder of the National Post must feel like the duellist in that sepia-coloured photograph.

His enemy's bullet is flying toward his heart; his bullet is flying toward the heart of his enemy. There's nothing more to be done. The next instant will bring defeat or victory.

The "next instant" may not occur for some weeks. The jurors have to consider each and every one of a dozen or more counts against each and every one of four individual defendants: Conrad and his one- time management team, Jack Boultbee, Peter Atkinson and Mark Kipnis. The trial has lasted about three and a half months and produced enough paper to fill a warehouse.

E-mail from England to Conrad and Barbara Black: "God be with you both during the wait -- I love you both too much to be silly enough to think it isn't a nightmare." E-mail from Canada: "I hope and pray, as always and intensely, that victory will be in your hands very, very soon."

While waiting for the verdict, the Black family will stay within half an hour travel time from the courthouse. Conrad will be dealing with his correspondence (another sample: "I am convinced the jury will have concluded that the only fraud is the Prosecution's case!") He'll pour himself a glass of white wine after the sun slips over the yardarm. He'll go to Mass as he usually does, help Barbara shop for groceries and have long chats with his tall and slender tribe: daughter Alana and sons Jonathan and James.

He'll watch the sailboats from his hotel window overlooking Lake Michigan. He'll display the sang froid of a French duellist and continue being what he is: confident, patrician and serene. But he won't get much sleep.

Just like duellists in a forest clearing, courtroom duellists may miss. If a contest ends in a hung jury, the offended party --i.e., the government --may decide that honour has been satisfied and call it quits. "Beating the rap" would be insufficient, though, for Conrad. The biographer of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon hasn't been looking to the U.S. justice system for mere acquittal, but for vindication.

Is vindication available in Judge Amy St. Eve's court? Not from the judge herself. In America, trial judges facilitate justice rather than exercise it. The attractive 42-year-old blonde--a five- foot mixture between a soccer mom, legal scholar and Marine drill sergeant -- did what she had to do by offering defence and prosecution a level (well, after a fashion) playing field. Does it facilitate justice to offer an equal opportunity to truth and falsehood?

Can Conrad be vindicated by the prosecution's pack of nattily dressed Eliot Nesses? Ironically, yes, through the flimsiness of their case. The heavy rhetoric of the government's accusation ("muggers in business suits") has rested on the slender foundation of browbeaten government witnesses butting their beaten brows against documentary evidence. Some swear not to have meant what they requested in writing, while others claim to have signed on to what they hadn't bothered reading.

The sorry lot's dubious evidence implicates mainly David Radler, Conrad's long-time business partner. It's Mr. Radler, a man the prosecution itself has described as a liar, whose uncorroborated word is supposed to implicate Conrad in some kind of "silent conspiracy" to snatch US$60-million from the shareholders' cookie jar.

Will this fly? U.S. attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald's team of prosecutors has nothing else to offer, except whatever cheap shots Eric Sussman, Julie Ruder, Jeffrey Cramer and Edward Siskel, Chicago's champion recidivists of low blows, think they can get away with.

More e-mail: "Dear Lord Black of Crossharbour: In the unlikely event your old partner is elevated to the peerage, will he be known as Lord Radler of Double-cross Harbour?"

What about Conrad's defence team of portly penguins, waddling uncertainly among the high-tech props of a modern courtroom, looking slightly frayed around the edges? Can they get him vindicated? Yes, court watchers say, because The Eddies Two, Greenspan and Genson, mocked in the early days as Waddle and Twaddle by the slick prosecutors, have more than made up in old-fashioned advocacy skills for what they have lacked in gloss and energy. They've also had the support of the facts, not to mention their allies in three equally falsely accused co-defendants and their able lawyers.

Conrad's great social adventure is ending in a duel at dawn. The triggers have been squeezed; the bullets have left the muzzle. After suffering the flashy injustice of fashion, Lord Black awaits the sensible justice of his peers. It's ironic, but 12 people Conrad is unlikely to ever meet over dinner may restore to him what some of his erstwhile dinner guests have expropriated, including his good name.