Lutz walked through the room surveying the dead and dying and carefully removing souvenirs from the twenty OPEC leaders, Anis and Amanda. From Prince Abdul he took an intricately-carved ivory pipe; from Anis he took a heavy gold bracelet. From Amanda, he took her “good luck” ring.
Gathering all of the bottles, the wine steward carried them to the van that he had arrived in. He did not need to worry about the flutes—after twelve hours of exposure to the air Diablo was untraceable. By the time the bodies were discovered in the morning, there would be nothing left to detect.
He drove the van three miles into the desert where he buried the empty bottles in the sand. Loading the unopened bottles into the Lamborghini that was waiting for him, he removed his blond wig, false nose, mustache and blue contact lenses. From around his waist he unfastened the padded suit he had worn to make himself appear twenty pounds heavier. Then Josef Helmick drove back to his apartment at the Burj Khalifa.
Chapter 11
Melinda Sutton had been trying to call her daughter for the past five days, but the calls would not go through. Always they had gone straight to voice mail. Even though she and Amanda had plenty of disagreements, they talked at least every other day; it was not like her daughter to ignore her calls. Melinda was beginning to be genuinely concerned when her personal communication device rang. The number was blocked, but when she looked at the screen, she felt something very much like fear spring up in her chest.
“Is this Melinda Sutton?” the man’s voice on the other end of the line asked.
The question startled her. She had not used “Melinda” since she had graduated from high school. When she had started college she had become “Mel”. Mel had such a cutting edge. A masculine name for a feminine, sexy woman put men off balance. That slight name change had given her the advantage of seeming smart, savvy, and in control. All of her credit cards, her driver’s license, her bank accounts—everything was in the name of “Mel” Sutton. The only person who still called her “Melinda” was her mother.
“This is Mel Sutton,” she answered defensively.
“You are not Melinda Sutton?” the voice inquired.
“That’s my legal name. I never use it.”
“Is Amanda Sutton who resides at 1654 North Hampton, Apartment 6A, New York City your daughter?”
Mel’s knees went weak, and she sat down on the couch. “Yes, Amanda’s my daughter.”
“I’m calling from the State Department. I am sorry to inform you that your daughter was killed in a demonstration that took place in Dubai on Saturday. Her body has been cleared for transport back to the United States. If you will tell us where you want the remains shipped, I will make the arrangements immediately.”
“What? What are you talking about! Are you crazy! My daughter’s not in Dubai. I’m going to call the police and have you arrested, you sicko,” and with that Mel ended the call.
Immediately, Mel contacted her husband who was in a meeting with the franchise owners finalizing the purchase of four more restaurants. He was in a great mood; his fortunes were increasing; Amanda was settled in New York, Mel was preoccupied with her own life and pretty much leaving him alone. He had finally achieved everything he had hoped for. He was surprised, therefore, when he saw Mel’s number come up on his PCD, and he almost didn’t answer, but he knew that she wouldn’t be calling if it were not important.
The moment he heard Mel’s voice he knew that something was wrong. He had excused himself and walked away from the booth in his Baton Rouge restaurant to take the call, but he was unprepared for the barrage of words that poured out of his wife. “Mel! Stop! You aren’t making any sense. No, I don’t believe it. Have you called her agency? Give me the number. I’ll call them now and get back to you.”
With shaking hands Don Sutton punched in the agency’s number where he quickly discovered that they had not heard from Amanda for more than a week. “When you talk to her,” the woman on the line informed him, “tell her to call us at once. Her contract requires that she be available for all assignments and that she check in with us once every day. She has failed to meet those terms and is in danger of being terminated for breach of contract.”
The woman’s tone infuriated Don, but he did not want to burn any bridges—if Amanda called the agency, he wanted to make certain that they would tell her to call home. “I’ll tell her,” he said before ending the call.
Don immediately put in a call to his local Congressman, and while he was waiting for him to pick up, a call with a blocked number came in. He answered it immediately. “Is this Donald Sutton?” the man’s voice on the other end of the line asked.
A week had passed since those calls. Seven short days, but those 168 hours had changed everything. The Methodist minister from their church was saying something about Amanda’s being in a better place and reading a scripture about the hope we have in Christ, but Don Sutton was not listening; he was remembering.
He had been married to Mel for twenty years. She had been so beautiful when they met. She was still in college, and he had just opened his first Steak and More franchise. He had loved showing her off to his friends, and he had loved the prestige he achieved from having her on his arm. He was not sure that he had ever loved Mel, and he often thought that he probably would not have married her if she had not become pregnant, but less than six months after they met she had told him that she was going to have his baby. Don had been taught to accept responsibility for his actions, so he had never really questioned whether he should marry her.
In spite of the circumstances, Mel had insisted on a huge formal affair, and Don had spent every cent he had saved on it. Everyone had said that it was a “beautiful” wedding. No one who did not know her well would have suspected that she was almost four months pregnant by the time the ceremony took place, but Don was nervous. He had been raised in a very conservative home where that sort of thing was frowned upon, and he did not want her parents to know that she was pregnant until after they were married.
For a while Don had imagined that he and Mel were happy—as happy as married people can be. But it soon became apparent that Mel was restless. When Amanda was born, she took little interest in her daughter. By the time she was six months old, however, Amanda was an uncommonly beautiful baby, and Mel began to plan her daughter’s career as an actress/model.
It was then that Mel began to talk about her own aspirations to be an actress that had been cut short by her marriage to Don. “I gave up my career for him,” she often said. The truth was that she had never had any aspirations to do anything except marry a man who would pamper her and lavish her with gifts.
Don hadn’t even minded that. He had a gift for making money, and Mel was able to spend extravagantly even while he was growing the restaurants. But with each passing year Mel became more obsessed with Amanda’s career. Don suspected that Mel didn’t care about Amanda at all. She was living vicariously through her daughter, and she constantly tried to position herself so that the spotlight would fall on her. Don was nothing more than a means to finance Mel’s dream of fame and adoration to be supplied via their little daughter.
Unlike his parents, Don was not a religious man. He felt that he had been taken advantage of by a wife who saw him as nothing more than a bank account. He never considered divorce—he was not about to divide up his assets—but by the time Amanda was two years old Don was turning to other women for the attention he craved. He was never serious about any of them. They were casual, short-lived affairs that he ended within a few weeks. Thus, he enjoyed the thrill of the pursuit and the excitement of a new affair without the downsides of a long-term relationship.
Mel was beautifully turned out in a black designer dress and huge sunglasses. Her perfectly-groomed blonde hair glistened in the sunlight, and her large diamond rings sparkled. She looked like a not-so-grieving widow from central casting, but her tears were real. She was unable to hold back the deep sobs that came from her innermost being, but, ironically, it was not for her
daughter that she wept. She was mourning herself; she was mourning the death of her own dream.
From the moment she had realized that she could turn Amanda into a star, Mel had used her daughter as a means to put herself on the Hollywood A list. She had never actually been able to do that, but she had always believed that it was just around the corner. When Amanda had gotten the lingerie contract and fired Mel as her manager, Mel had been only a little daunted. She was certain that she would be able to make Amanda see that no one could take care of her the way Mel could. Amanda would realize her error and beg Mel for forgiveness. Mel would accept her apology and sign her to an air-tight contract drawn up by her lawyers. Anyone who wanted access to Amanda would have to come through her.
Mel was thinking that it was ridiculous that Amanda was the one who had been sought after when she was the one with the beauty and talent. Mel had to admit that Amanda was pretty—by some standards even beautiful—but she had never been as beautiful as Mel. Mel had class and charm. She was the one with the magic—not Amanda. Yet, she had devoted nineteen years to making this ungrateful, ordinary girl into a star. She had allowed some of her own light to spill onto Amanda, and now, without warning, Amanda had robbed her of her dream.
Mel had stayed married to Don so that she could devote her full time to making her dream come true. Don who had never appreciated her, who had never deserved her. Don with his Steak and More franchises whose main concern was the price of rib eye. Boring, predictable, Don who had stolen her youth. At the thought of what he had done to her, Mel’s sobs became uncontrollable. Six weeks later she left him and moved to California.
Chapter 12
Fred was sipping lemonade in a garden at the American Embassy in Dubai. Peacocks wandered among the trees and lush flowering plants tucked in among numerous fountains. The sky was hot and blue, but skillfully-placed misters among the foliage kept the guests cool and refreshed. This was Shangri-La, Lawrence of Arabia, and A Thousand and One Arabian Nights all rolled into one. Fred felt like pinching himself to make certain that he was not dreaming.
“When I talked to Charlie Byrd, I told him that I would give you whatever help I could, but you must understand that if you find yourself in trouble, the Embassy will make an official statement that we had no knowledge that you were in the country. We’ll leave you twisting in the wind,” Ambassador Walter Wainwright said as he glanced nervously about as though he expected to find someone eavesdropping on the conversation.
“Of course,” Fred replied. “Whatever happens I won’t involve you or the embassy. I just appreciate any information you can give me on a local by the name of Josef Helmick. We know that he’s retained his American citizenship, although he also holds citizenships in both Germany and Switzerland. We think he’s been in Dubai for the last fifteen years. That’s all the information we have on him.”
“Charlie said that you think Helmick’s involved in the murder of Prince Abdul and the other OPEC leaders. That’s pretty high-level stuff. I don’t think you can uncover anything that the combined police forces of the OPEC nations can’t do a whole lot faster.”
“The truth is,” Fred replied, “they’re not going to be able to tie anything to Helmick, although we’re one hundred percent sure that he orchestrated the whole thing. Oh, the investigators will arrest some poor schmuck and announce that he was part of a terrorist group who is trying to get control of the world’s oil, but none of it will be true. I’m not here to impede their ‘investigations.’ I’m here to find out the truth about Helmick.
“We believe that he furnished the movie-star lookalikes for the murders in the U. S. a few months ago. And we believe that Prince Abdul was the one who slaughtered those five women. Obviously, Prince Abdul is no longer a threat to anyone, but we were able to discover that fifty of the fifty-one women attending the party were movie-star lookalikes. The other one was Amanda Sutton, a nineteen-year-old lingerie model who also happened to be an American citizen. Two days before she arrived in Dubai, she received a fifty-thousand-dollar untraceable wire transfer into her bank account. We believe that Helmick used those funds to lure her to Dubai to sell to the prince as a sex slave. I want to keep a low profile, and I won’t interfere with anyone else’s investigation. I just want to get to the bottom of this.”
“Who do you work for, exactly?” Wainwright asked.
“It’s probably better that you don’t know. Officially, I’m not even here, and the less I tell you the less you’ll have to deny if anything does go wrong.”
The ambassador shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Right, right, that’s good. You’re not even here. I like that.
“I’m going to give you the name of a local who can help you. He’s a native and very well connected.” Handing Fred a business card, Wainwright continued, “His name is Hadad. I suppose that he has a first name, but I have never heard it. Everyone calls him Hadad. His number is on the card. Don’t tell him who gave it to you.”
“I thought the citizens were paid by the government to do nothing. Why is this Hadad guy so desperate for money?”
“It’s not about need; it’s about greed. Hadad would sell his own daughters for the right price. In fact, he might sell them for the wrong price if it were the only price he could get. Watch out for him because he’ll rob you blind if he can, but he knows everything that’s going on in the city.”
The ambassador stood and extended his hand to signal that Fred’s time was up. Fred shook his hand, thanked him for his help, and left the embassy through the back gate.
When he stepped through that gate, Fred entered a strange, hostile world. In spite of the soaring temperatures, the sight of the dry, dusty street and the ancient adobe houses in the distance sent a chill up his spine. The opulent garden of the embassy had made him feel secure. The foreign land into which he had just stepped made his heart race.
Fred immediately called the number on the card and connected with a woman who spoke heavily-accented English. When she determined that Fred was an American, she told him that he could come to their offices that same afternoon at 2:00. That gave him less than thirty minutes to find a taxi and drive to his meeting.
Fred headed toward what appeared to be a main cross street which he reached in a little over two minutes. As he scanned the street for a cab, he happened to notice that the building directly in front of him was the one that housed Hadad’s offices. He felt that arriving early was not a good idea, so he took a seat at a sidewalk café and ordered coffee. His stomach was churning, and he did not want the strong brew that the waiter delivered—he wanted a place to wait for his appointment. He paid the waiter for the coffee, gave him a generous tip, and shut his eyes.
Praying silently was difficult for Fred, but he did not want to draw attention to himself, so he pretended to be resting his eyes and began his unspoken prayer, “Oh, Lord, please help me. I don’t know what to do. I know that I shouldn’t be afraid, but I am. Please give me wisdom, and give me the courage to do what I need to do. Help me to be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove. Guide me, Jesus, so that I will know who to trust and who to avoid. Please put the people in my path who can give me the answers I need to find out exactly what Josef Helmick is doing and to give me the evidence I need to prove that he is involved in the cloning of these women.
And, Jesus, help me to be a good witness for you in everything I do. I pray that in this foreign land I will glorify you with my life and with my lips. Thank you for being with me.” Fred opened his eyes, and surveyed the street. A group of boys was kicking a ball in what appeared to be a game of street soccer. As Fred watched them his mind traveled back to Omar.
He was only twenty-two when it happened. Like so many other young Americans, Fred had joined the army within weeks after 9/11, and he had ended up in Afghanistan. Life there was hard; being quartered in a tent in 110 degree temperatures was reason enough to count the days until he would be sent home. The worst part, however, was living in circumstances where it was impossible
to identify the enemy. The woman walking down the street clad in a burqa might be wired with explosives. The teenaged boy standing in the doorway might be wearing a suicide vest. No one was what he appeared to be.
The afternoon it happened Fred was working at a checkpoint monitoring traffic. Five or six boys ranging in age from ten to thirteen were kicking a ball in the hot dusty street, and for a few seconds the sounds of their laughter had diverted Fred’s attention. Thirty-eight years later Fred could still see the scene as if it were frozen in time. A skinny boy of eleven was laughing loudly after having scored, and Fred turned to look. For an instant Fred forgot that he was in a hostile land, and a smile spread across his face as he shared that very human moment that transcended cultural and ethnic differences. He was simply a young man watching a group of boys at play, and his spirit soared. Instantly, the calm was shattered by the sound of a bomb exploding in a car waiting in line at the checkpoint. Before Fred could react he saw the child who had scored the point tossed into the air, his mouth open and a look of horror on his face.
Instinctively, Fred had lunged toward the boy hoping somehow to save him, but his limp body hit the ground with a thud. Civilians were running and screaming, and a man appeared from a nearby shop and picked up the boy. He caught sight of Fred and ran toward him holding his son in his arms. “Help me!” he pleaded.
Fred had taken the man and the boy to the combat hospital where the doctors began working to save his life. From the man Fred learned that the boy’s name was Omar, and Fred silently prayed for him before he left the hospital. Each day Fred checked on the boy’s progress, and after a few weeks he was surprised to learn that Omar was going to make a full recovery.
When Omar was able to talk, Fred began visiting him, and whenever he had the chance he told him about Jesus. Omar was silent when Fred mentioned Jesus, but he could see something in the boy’s eyes that led him to believe that one day Omar would become a Christian.
The Force (The Kingdom Chronicles) Page 6
