Buddy Murphy, the young man who stole the boat from Cannons Marina, pleaded no contest to the boat theft. Since he had no prior criminal record of any kind, the judge withheld adjudication, meaning that he would do no jail time, and if he satisfactorily completed three years of probation, he would have no felony record.
“In many ways,” Dave said, “Wally Delmer was the most knowledgeable of those we interviewed. He was dying of cancer and told us everything he knew, including some things we didn’t know enough about even to ask the questions.”
“Was he the one who set up J.D. for the murder attempt?” I asked.
“Yes,” Dave said. “Wally had taken on a lot of things that normally would have been controlled by Frank Thomason. He was in direct contact with his Arab masters and was being placed in a position to take over the entire operation in case of Thomason’s death.”
“I take it Thomason’s death was fairly imminent,” J.D. said.
“Very much so.”
“And that didn’t seem to bother Wally?” I asked. “Taking his friend out?”
“I don’t think Wally even thought about it,” Dave said. “He’d started out on the right path. He was a Ft. Lauderdale cop, but a corrupt cop, and some very bad mob guys sidetracked all his good intentions. I think those events stole his humanity. By his own admission, he killed with impunity, without compassion or remorse.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“The cancer killed Wally three days after we picked him up, but he spent the entire time sucking up morphine for the pain and talking a blue streak. He told us all about Nazari and that was worth the cost of the morphine we provided.”
Ibrahim Nazari, the man who ran Ishmael’s Children, ordered his men in America back to Syria because he was afraid that after the disappearance of Thomason and Delmer, the CIA or FBI or somebody was closing in. Rahima, the Syrian-American butcher’s daughter from Brooklyn who had lived for a time with Frank Thomason, had become one of Nazari’s lovers and was living with him in his home, which Wally described as a small palace, in a quiet corner of Syria. Nazari was pretty sure that nobody in the American intelligence agencies knew much about him and were ignorant of the location of his house. He called his entire team to his home for a conference. They needed to regroup and reconstruct their American operations.
“Wally had visited Nazari a month before I sent Jock to Aleppo,” Dave said. “He used a false passport and other IDs, so our intelligence agencies weren’t aware that he’d left the country. He spent a week there and was briefed on the American operation. Nazari was preparing him to take over.”
As it turned out, Rahima had been an unwilling participant in turning Thomason into a recalcitrant partner of Ishmael’s Children. She did what she’d been hired to do, seduced the man and made him fall in love with her. Much to her surprise, she fell in love with Frank, and was shattered by the necessity of leaving him. She knew if she didn’t, both she and Frank would be killed. So Rahima left America and moved into what she thought of as Nazari’s harem. She could never go back to the United States or any other place in the world for that matter. If she left him, she would be hunted down and killed. Her death would be messy and painful.
While Wally was at Nazari’s home, Rahima approached him and asked if there was any way to get her back to America when he took over the operation. She told him that she’d truly loved Thomason, but she wouldn’t try to contact him if she returned. She just wanted to go home.
“Wally told us where Nazari lived and that Rahima wasn’t happy and wanted to leave,” Dave said. “We inserted an agent into the area and he contacted Rahima one day when she was in the market in the little village near Nazari’s home. She was willing to help. She also told us about the upcoming conference with Nazari’s top people.”
Over the next few days, the agent determined the exact GPS coordinates for Nazari’s house, and then arranged for Rahima to meet him in the market. He had a new passport for her and a new identity. He also had a Land Rover ready to leave the area. At the appointed time an American drone appeared and, using a laser-guided bomb, obliterated the Nazari home and all who were in it. The agent and Rahima left the area.
“Where is Rahima now?” J.D. asked.
“She’s in a safe house giving us everything she knows about the Ishmael’s Children’s operation,” Dave said. “We think we’ve got that bunch completely neutralized, but the information will help us with some of the others we’re looking at.”
“And Frank Thomason?” J.D. asked.
“Unfortunately,” Dave said with a grin, “Frank completely disappeared from the face of the earth. I’m pretty sure he won’t be seen again. There are consequences when one messes with one of my agents.”
“Okay,” Peggy Kendall said. “That’s enough shop talk. How’re you doing, Jock?”
Jock had sat quietly during our entire conversation, listening, but not engaging. Now he smiled. “I’m fine, Peggy. I know I was doing my job when I killed al Bashar, and it wasn’t my fault that I was pointed at the wrong guy. I’ve come to terms with that. Still, those little boys are going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I’m not sorry I killed the men they became, but I’ll never erase the mental image of them standing there pleading for me not to kill their father.”
The conversation turned to more pleasant subjects and we finished our meal and climbed aboard my boat for a cruise on the bay. It was a salubrious day, a time of renewal, of putting horror and death behind us, of looking forward to the days to come when life would once again be good.
The world wobbled no more. It had settled on its axis and brought a measure of equanimity to our island, reaffirming our place on the sun-washed speck of land surrounded by a turquoise sea. My best friend, with a little help from the agency shrink, had restored himself and rejoined reality. The wondrous Jennifer Diane Duncan truly loved me and made my life bright with anticipation of the years that would define our lives. As that old lawyer David Parrish once said in his measured Georgia drawl, “It just don’t get no better than this.”
Mortal Dilemma Page 33
