Set Free

by Anthony Bidulka

  Chapter 43

  “In his new book, Set Free, Jaspar Wills shares with us the nightmare of being kidnapped while visiting a foreign country, mercilessly beaten, and nearly starved to death. He recounts the terrifying night when he was bound, gagged and blindfolded, then forcibly moved from the prison where he’d been held captive for several days.”

  Katie recounted all of this, judiciously choosing each word and moderating her tone with great care. She knew that history would reveal what she was about to do as either cruel or compassionate. Her future depended on which. One wrong move and the audience would turn against her. No one would care that truth was on her side. In a situation like this, emotion reigned supreme, truth be damned.

  “Jaspar,” she said, intentionally switching to his first name, “believed he was being taken to his death. Instead, he was moved from one prison to another. One he came to call ‘the rectangle.’ We now know he was transferred to a location near the small village of Asni, in the Atlas Mountains—a barren, rugged, remote place.

  “Then, in heart wrenching detail, at times almost too difficult to read, Jaspar describes his late night conversations with the ghost of his daughter. With a father’s gentle hand, he attempted to guide his child toward what he knew to be her dark, dreadful, but ultimately inescapable future. He hoped to soften the blow of fate’s harsh reality. For some, this may be difficult—if not impossible—to understand. But for any father or mother out there tonight, any parent who’s been worried about a child, you’ll know exactly what Jaspar was trying to do.

  “Before any of this happened, he was like any other parent. He lived with constant regret: for things he’d done, and things he’d failed to do. He worried about making mistakes in raising his child. Like any parent, he sometimes wished he could go back and do it again. Like any parent, he promised himself he’d try harder, do better in the future. But there was no future. For Jaspar, all the typical worries and regrets of a parent were multiplied by a million the day his daughter was taken from him.”

  Katie’s eyes moved purposefully toward her guests. Having seemingly snapped out of his daze, Jaspar was staring at her, taking in every word, deep, blue eyes glistening. Lines that had permanently etched themselves into his face over the past, tragic-laden months had somehow dissolved. He appeared nearly beatific.

  Jenn, however, was frowning heavily. Obviously, she was not nearly as taken with the soliloquy. Katie didn’t care. Right now, it was all about her and Jaspar. And she knew Peggy was enough of a pro to catch the silent communion on camera, for all the world to see.

  Suddenly, the portable monitor, set next to where Jaspar and Jenn had been seated, came alive. Everyone watched in fascination as an umber-skinned woman with a thin, wizened face and large, brown eyes materialized, staring out of the screen as if from the bottom of a deep well.

  “Kwella,” Katie greeted the virtual newcomer. “It’s Kate Edwards. I’m happy to see you again. Can you hear me alright?”

  “I can hear.” The elderly woman spoke in rutted but comprehensible English.

  “I know it’s very early in the morning there, so I want to thank you for agreeing to speak with us today.”

  “I work always. No problem for me.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Katie shot a curious glance Jaspar’s way. His eyes were glued to the woman’s face, looking as if his life depended on remaining perfectly still. Jenn was once again vigorously whispering something into her husband’s ear, but his attention was lost to her. Katie suppressed a wholly inappropriate grin, as she imagined how discomfort and confusion were likely exploding in Jenn’s brain as she wondered if this nearly toothless woman, more than twice her age, could possibly be Jaspar’s Moroccan lover. Just as quickly, she realized that if she was thinking it, so was the TV audience. That, most definitely, was not the tone she wanted to set.

  “This woman is not Asmae,” Katie promptly announced. Looking first to Peggy for encouragement, then at Jaspar, she decided to take a risk and try for engagement: “Isn’t that right, Jaspar?”

  Katie counted off the seconds. More than five and she would switch tack.

  At four-and-a-half: “No,” he uttered. “It isn’t.”

  “But you and Kwella do know one another, isn’t that correct?”

  Hearing her name, Kwella said loudly: “What is it you say?”

  Katie felt frightened and excited at the same time. Her cheeks reddened as she realized that one false move in her delicate maneuvering of this increasingly complex and fragile interview would cause it to collapse…in front of millions. The sensation was nothing short of thrilling.

  “Kwella,” she addressed her new guest, “I’m talking with Jaspar Wills. He’s here with me, in Boston.”

  “I’m happy to hear.”

  Making a snap decision, Katie asked the screen: “Kwella, can you tell us how you and Jaspar first met?”

  “Ohhhhh, dear, well it was a bad, bad time. Very sad time. For him and for me too. It was very sad to see him that way.”

  “What do you mean by that?” She hoped the woman told the story just as she’d told it to her the day they sat together over tea in her home in Asni.

  “The man was very skinny. With many pains and, how do you say it…woundings...from beatings. And hungry. So hungry. And mostly sad. Sad like death.”

  This wasn’t quite what she wanted. “How did this happen? Where did you meet Jaspar?”

  “My house. He found my house.”

  “He came to your house in Asni?”

  “Yes. He came to my door. There he was.”

  “When was this, Kwella? When did you first meet Jaspar?”

  “Ohhhh, a very long time now. Long, long time when he found me. Then he stay with me for long, long time more.”

  Katie let the words sink in. She knew most viewers would not yet have begun to comprehend the implications of what Kwella was telling them. Their minds wouldn’t let them go there. They couldn’t believe it. They wouldn’t want to believe it.

  She turned to Jaspar, wordlessly agog as he continued to stare at Kwella’s kindly face. He had to be the one to do it, Katie knew. He had to hammer it home. “Jaspar, would you tell us about when you first met Kwella? Was it before or after your time with Asmae in the rectangle?”

  “Katie, this is over,” Jenn abruptly announced, anger seething through her teeth, her right hand rubbing a hole in Jaspar’s back. “I th—”

  “Jenn,” Katie countered, admirably holding back her irritation at the interruption. “I think we should give Jaspar a chance to answer the question.”

  “No, he needs—”

  “Jenn, it’s okay,” Jaspar declared, suddenly come back to life. Tortured eyes moved from wife to interrogator. His voice barely more than a croaked whisper, he said: “Just say it.”

  Katie held the gaze with all her might. With lips quivering, she returned the challenge: “Say what, Jaspar?”

  And then he did it. He spoke the words Katie had been waiting to hear since the interview began. “There is no Asmae.”

  Chapter 44

  For an electrifying moment, no one in the studio spoke, moved, or even breathed. Katie exchanged a satisfied look with her producer. Only she and Peggy knew what had been coming.

  Beyond everything else, Katie also knew that this was the moment. This was the grand pay-off. Every camera was focused on Jaspar Wills—guilt-ridden, lips grim, jaw muscles strained, slumped in his chair, looking like a boy caught doing something naughty. Frozen at his side, was the speechless, disoriented, misled wife. This was the splice of film that would play over and over again, on countless newscasts in countless countries the world over, for days and maybe weeks to come, as the story was retold and sensationalized for a public in love with controversy and spectacle. From now on, this would be the centerpiece whenever stories surfaced denouncing author Jaspar Wills…or celebrating investigative journalist Kate Edwards.

  Katie knew, in the days to come, viewers
would remember this moment for two things: Jaspar Wills admitting his grand deception, and Kate Edwards revealing it. The next seconds were crucial. Of any point in the interview, Katie was now the most vulnerable. Public opinion was at the apex of being swayed. The tipping point was here. Katie did not want to become the newest incarnation of James Frey and Oprah Winfrey: author caught lying in his autobiography, interviewer outraged by the deception. Jaspar wasn’t Frey. Jaspar was beloved, not only for his books but for being a father torn apart by his daughter’s disappearance. And Katie was not Oprah. Oprah hadn’t done the catching. All she’d done was be hoodwinked.

  Katie had a rare opportunity. Today she would shape how she’d forever be defined as a journalist.

  And that definition was going to be epic.

  Her next move was another bold one, another first. With all cameras swiveling to follow her, Katie abandoned her post on set. She walked the short distance to where Jaspar and Jenn were now seated, near the camera line, an area typically out of view to the TV audience. She pulled over a nearby folding chair for herself, positioning it perfectly to allow the cameras unobstructed views of all three faces. This was even better than before, she decided. Without professional lighting and expensive on-set furniture, the look and feel of the interview had been transformed, grown perceptibly less shiny, less produced, more…real. It was just them, three old friends, who’d been through hell together, facing this latest bombshell. In front of millions.

  Jenn was the first to break the reverie. “You lied?” she uttered, bloated with tears, looking as if she’d just woken up from a long, fitful sleep. “None of what you wrote in the book was true?”

  This was perfect, Katie realized. Let Jenn instigate the blame game, rally the outrage of a public led astray and fooled into paying good money for fiction disguised as truth. Nothing made people angrier than thinking they’d been defrauded of their hard-earned cash.

  Katie waited a moment to let the question resonate. She was, after all, still the interviewer here. She couldn’t entirely step out of the picture. She needed to direct the conversation, drive Jaspar to say what everyone wanted—needed—to hear. “Did you lie, Jaspar?” she asked, keeping her voice low, almost reverential.

  Ignoring her question, Jaspar had eyes only for his distraught wife. “Jenn, I’m so sorry.”

  Not good enough, Katie knew, not by a long shot. First, he needed to own up. Then he could apologize. To everyone. “What are you sorry for, Jaspar?”

  It was no use. The couple were intent only on each other, disregarding the suddenly-gone-crazy world vibrating around them like a high tension wire about to snap.

  “Why?” Jenn wanted to know. “Why would you do this?”

  Now it was Jaspar’s turn to be speechless. He tried to spit out a word or two, but couldn’t, only managing to shrug and shake his heavy head.

  Katie was not giving up. “You’ve admitted Asmae never existed. Isn’t it true you also made up the entire time you claimed to have spent in the rectangle?”

  From behind the eyes of the camera, Peggy began to move closer, looking worried.

  Katie could read the signs too. Jaspar’s hands were quivering. The skin around his usually firm jaw had grown slack and sprouted pinpricks of angry red dots. His breathing had grown shallow and he was continuously licking his lips and swallowing hard. The man was either about to go into a full blown panic attack or keel over. She had to move quickly.

  “When the kidnappers took you to Asni, it wasn’t to lock you up again. They knew their plot had failed. They’d wanted Qasim Al-Harthi released. But after days of threats and beatings and failed negotiations, they knew the American government would never give them what they wanted. Fortunately, killing you was never in their plan. But they couldn’t just release you in the middle of Marrakech where you’d immediately be recognized or run to the police. Instead they took you into the mountains and dumped you there. They hoped that by the time you found your way back to civilization, they’d be long gone.

  “They had no interest in keeping you captive. Why would they? You were no good to them. You were a liability. A liability who needed to be fed and cared for and could potentially put them in jail one day. It wasn’t in their hearts to be murderers, so they let you go. Isn’t that the real truth?”

  Jaspar pulled his aggrieved gaze from his wife to behold this brand new torturer. Although Katie appeared just as she always had, he now knew he was looking into the face of a dangerous stranger. “I don’t know what they were thinking, or why they did what they did.”

  Katie was impressed with the answer. Despite the tense circumstances, despite his physical symptoms and what must be excessive distress in the face of being caught in a lie, this was still Jaspar Wills. This was a man long used to being in the public eye, familiar with interviewers, and how best to manipulate them to his advantage. She’d do well to remember that, Katie inwardly warned herself. She wasn’t dealing with a helpless, broken man. At least, not yet.

  “You’re right, Jaspar. We can only guess at the reasons for the kidnapper’s actions at that point. These men have not been apprehended nor identified, as far as we know. But Jaspar,” she paused dramatically and arched an eyebrow. “Let’s talk about what we do know. Let’s talk about the truth. The truth is that after they brought you to Asni, they let you go, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was no rectangle?”

  “No.”

  “There was no pedestal?”

  “No.”

  “There was no Asmae?”

  “No.”

  “There were no late night talks with your daughter Mikki?”

  Tension crackled like a tumbleweed of thorns in a blender set to ‘destroy.’

  Very slowly, Jaspar said, “Keep Mikki out of this.”

  “But you’re the one who brought her into this. By writing about her in your book. A book which we now know is less autobiography and more…well, what is it, Jaspar? Creative fiction? Dreamscape reality? Filled with whatever you believe bestsellers have to be filled with these days?”

  “Katie!” The shout came from Jenn. “Stop it!”

  Katie bit her lip. Had she gone too far? As upset as Jenn must be with her husband, she was still his wife and, at least for the time being, still in love with him. But Katie was representing the people now. It was the people she wanted to please—her viewers, her fans—not Jaspar and Jennifer Wills. It was hard-hitting questions like this that people wanted answered. It was getting those answers that would keep them on her side.

  “This is over,” Jenn declared, abruptly standing up.

  Cameras scrambled to reposition in order to catch the action.

  Jenn held out her hand to Jaspar. He stared at it. He was surprised at the kindness of the act, given the atrocity of his own. So were viewers, watching from all corners of the country, mouths no doubt agape.

  “Coming?” she whispered.

  He nodded and stood.

  Together, Jaspar and Jenn Wills, hand in hand, microphone cords trailing behind them, left the studio.

  When they were gone, every camera turned to Katie. The interview had gone on far longer and delved much deeper than she or Peggy had ever dreamt it would.

  Not the least bit fazed, Kate Edwards moved on. “What we do know is this,” she reported in a disturbed voice, perfectly matching the expression on her face. “From my recent investigations in Marrakech and Asni, I discovered that after being dropped off in the mountain village by his kidnappers, Jaspar Wills inexplicably decided not to come home. He did not inform officials in either Morocco or the United States, or even his wife, parents, or other loved ones, that he was alive and set free. Instead, he decided to live a lie.

  “From where he was abandoned by the side of a road, Jaspar Wills eventually found his way to the village of Asni. There he met a woman named Kwella, who we talked to earlier this evening via satellite. Unaware of who he was or what he’d been through, Kwella took pity on the
stranger. He was wounded and bleeding, half starving to death, and in desperate need of help.

  “Kwella admitted to me that Jaspar Wills had convinced her that he was a foreign traveler who’d been mugged while hiking in the mountains. He told her that after the muggers had taken all of his belongings, he’d been beaten and left for dead. She agreed to take him in. She fed him, clothed him, and gave him a place to recuperate.

  “Over the next months, Wills did recover. Eventually he was well enough to work in Kwella’s gardens and do odd jobs for her friends and family in the village, in exchange for his remaining in her home. She told me the only time Wills ever asked for money, was to buy paper on which to write. It was while living in Kwella’s home that Wills first began to write the words that would one day become “Set Free,” a book which begins with fact—his kidnapping in Marrakech—but quickly devolves into what we now know to be a fictional tale of a fantasized, imagined captivity.”

  Katie paused for an uneasy breath. She allowed her gaze to momentarily drift from the camera, her expression communicating sadness, betrayal, pity, disappointment in a friend. “It was only when he was finished with the manuscript,” she kept on, “after six months of hiding—six months of allowing his wife, friends, family, all of us, to believe he was dead—that Jaspar Wills finally came home…and sold us his book of lies.”

  PART III

  Chapter 45

  Excerpt from the novel Truth Be Told, by Jaspar Wills.

  Leaving the studio after the Katie Edwards interview was more ambush than media scrum. The crazy scene brought us back to the awful days following Mikki’s abduction. Except now there was a notable difference in how the rampaging newshounds jockeyed for pictures and juicy sound bites. Last time, they’d maintained a respectable distance, kept their enthusiasm in check behind a veil of compassion, shared humanity, and joint dismay over a child gone missing. We were part of a team, undoubtedly on the same side, rallying against an evil, unknown enemy. It was as if Mikki was everyone’s child, a daughter of Boston, a city willing to do whatever it took to bring her home. Now the tone was changed, grown adversarial, jeering, ugly. Our team had fractured, with me, alone, standing against all others. Now I was the enemy.