by Andrew Gross
“I had nothing to do with any of that. All I did was merely shift our portfolio.”
“Oh, I think you did have something very much to do with that, Mr. al-Bashir. I think you had something to do with it the minute you bedded down with individuals like this. But unfortunately”—Naomi shrugged and inhaled a breath—“that’s not even your biggest problem right now.”
He cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “What are you talking about?”
Naomi glanced over at the Saudi’s wife, now huddled with her boys, clearly worried about what was going on. “You have a lovely family, Mr. al-Bashir. I’m sure, like any husband and father, you would do whatever you could to keep them from harm.”
The Saudi’s gaze darkened. “What are you talking about?”
“Dani Thibault was murdered yesterday. He was shot, execution style. In Serbia. In a remote village we had traced him to. Thibault had recruited Glassman and Donovan with a series of payments that we can tie to Mr. Hassani. We believe his death was ordered by Mr. Hassani, to cover it up.”
Al-Bashir’s cheeks twitched. He swallowed and did his best to sound bold. “I still don’t know what that has to do with me, Agent Blum.”
“Well, it’s this: All the players in this plot, Mr. al-Bashir, are dead. Glassman, Donovan, now Thibault. All but one, Mr. al-Bashir…,” Naomi said, staring at him. “You. Puts a whole new meaning to the word, ‘reckless,’ doesn’t it, sir?”
“Listen,” the Saudi said, sweat on his brow, “I sold stocks, that’s all. That’s the extent of what I did. I adjusted our positions, as any money manager might do. That happens as a matter of course many times in a year. There’s not a jury in the world that would convict me of anything illegal. There’s nothing, nothing at all, to connect me to any of these horrible crimes.”
Hauck finally intervened. “This has nothing at all to do with any jury, Mr. al-Bashir. This woman is trying to save your life. Your family’s life. Don’t you understand?”
The Saudi glared back at him, about to challenge him. But the fight seemed to go out of him.
Naomi took his arm. “If I wanted to have you arrested, we’d already be having this conversation in a cell, Mr. al-Bashir. You have no way out. You’ve put yourself and your family at great risk. But what you don’t want,” she said, her tone softening, “is for there to be no way out and for you to end up dead.”
A cast of recognition settled over the Saudi investment manager’s face. He grew sullen. He ran his hand through his hair and glanced, seemingly out of answers, toward his wife and kids.
“What if I just walk away? Do nothing?”
“Then I’ll do nothing.” Naomi shrugged. “Other than maybe make sure that the transcript of that conversation I referred to gets in the hands of your employers. They may not feel the same way, I suspect, when it comes to how their investments are being handled. We’ll also let it be known that we had this conversation. About Mr. Hassani. Considering what just happened to Mr. Thibault, are you really willing to take that chance?”
The Saudi wiped his mouth. He released a long, deflating breath as the full measure of his predicament seemed to fall on him.
“I’m giving you a way out, Mr. al-Bashir. In our protective custody. For your cooperation. You can hold on to the majority of your assets. Those that were rightfully earned. But what we want to know, sir, is what was the extent of this plot? Who was involved? Where does it lead?”
He shook his head. “I need time.”
“You have no time, sir. Go back home. Talk it over. I’ve arranged a car from Scotland Yard to be stationed outside your house. I’m sorry for all this, sir, but the time to answer is now.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Behind the closed doors of their study, Sheera looked at her husband, aghast.
He had told her everything. How his roots with Hassani went back many years. To when he was a young student. Not even in the U.S. At the university in Riyadh. How they had singled him out. Educated him. Groomed him. For a purpose. For one day.
How his sensibilities had been so different back then.
“How could you possibly have gotten in with people like this?” His wife tearfully shook her head.
“I never thought about them for twenty years,” al-Bashir said. “It was before I went to the U.S. Before I met you. As time passed, I thought they had forgotten the debts. I thought life had let me be free of them.”
“These types of debts are never forgotten. Life will never let you be free of them.” Sheera sat forlornly on the couch. She looked at him, something angry and judgmental in her eyes. “You should have refused, Marty. You should have gone to the police.”
“They would have killed me, Sheera, if I didn’t comply.”
“And they will kill you now that you have.”
He wanted to go over and sit next to her, his wife for all these years, the most treasured thing in his life. But he was sure she would just pull away. This had drawn a line between them. Maybe forever. “I’m so sorry. We’ll get to keep much of what we have. I know what it is to give this up.”
“To give this up?” She lifted her eyes and regarded him as if she was horrified. “You think for one second this is what I care about giving up? This house? Your fancy position? The things it has brought us?” From out in the hall, they heard the sounds of their boys playing. “It’s them. Amir and Ghassan. It’s their lives that matter to me. Will they now be targets? Will we live in fear the rest of our lives? Wherever we are…These are debts that don’t get forgiven, Marty.”
He glanced, empty of all hope, out the window. There was an unmarked car parked across the quiet street. “I’ll call Arthur,” he said, closing the drape. Their lawyer. “He can arrange some kind of deal.”
“It’s not about lawyers, Marty. Not this time.” She picked up one of Amir’s Transformer robots from the floor. She smiled and looked up at him. Resigned. Even forgiving. Tears flooding Sheera’s eyes, she held out the toy. “I think we made our choices long ago.”
Marty al-Bashir nodded. Tears in his eyes too. Tears of shame. Of fading hope for them. “We did, didn’t we, Sheera.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Annie Fletcher picked out the set of spare keys to Ty’s house from where she knew he always left them, along the side of the house behind some flower tubs in a fake rock. She went up the stairs and let herself in.
The alarm signal beeped. She pressed in the code, 70794.
His daughter Jessie’s birthday.
Annie knew he wouldn’t mind. She’d let herself in many times before. The place looked clean and smelled fresh. It was a Saturday, and Elena, his cleaning lady, would have been in the day before. She was trying to find her gold hoop earnings, which were missing. She seemed to remember last leaving them on his night table when she’d stayed over a few nights before.
Before there suddenly seemed to be a widening gulf between them.
Maybe it had first begun with the attack on Jared. Ty had said maybe it was best if they kept apart for a while, for her safety, but Annie somehow felt that was Ty being Ty, maybe not wanting to face the truth, being noble. Or maybe, if she was honest, it had started some time well before. Maybe it went back to when they woke up in bed that Monday to the newscast of that family who was killed in town.
I knew her, he had said.
It was like something had changed in him since then.
She’d never pried. She’d never asked how. Or why. Never pushed him. That wasn’t her style. The last thing Annie would ever want was for someone to say that she was clingy. After all, they’d both agreed to keep things light.
From around town, he had told her. That was enough for her. He didn’t have to share everything with her. Though she may, in truth, have hoped that he would. She held a lot of things in herself—she’d left her own son out west until she could make a place for him here—and the truth was, while maybe she had fallen in love with Ty, just a bit, they weren’t exactly engaged.
He’d been away for four days, and she’d barely heard from him in that time. He said it was best that she didn’t know where he was going. But she had a clue. She had asked him, What are you getting involved in, Ty?
She had wanted to say, Okay, you don’t have to justify it with me, but in her heart, she worried. Worried something had happened. Somewhere. She worried he was getting himself into something over his head. He did that.
She worried something might have come between them. Something she couldn’t fight. Or even understand.
She went into the kitchen. Unable to help herself—what was it?—she put away a few dishes that Elena had left on the counter to dry. She almost tripped over a pair of running shoes. Then she went upstairs.
In the bedroom, she went over to the night table on the side of the bed she usually slept on, looking for her hoops. Damn. There was nothing on top. Where she thought they might be. Just a picture of Jessie and his boat, which Ty had just gotten out of dry dock—the Merrily.
She opened the drawer.
Nothing again. She sighed in disappointment. She had been sure they were there.
The room gave off an eerie feeling; it looked just like it had the last time she’d been there, a couple of nights before he’d left. They hadn’t made love that night. She’d felt something, distant, growing, separating them. And now he was gone.
Maybe it was just a stupid feeling. C’mon, Annie, what are you, ten?
It suddenly hit her that she should check on his dresser. There was a messy pile of photos, credit card receipts. Mail. Bills. Whatever came in, that’s where Ty threw it! If she didn’t want to intrude on his space, she would have organized it a hundred times.
In an ashtray, along with some loose change, were her gold hoops.
Hooray!
Annie wrapped them in a tissue and put them in her jacket. She was about to leave when something on the dresser caught her eye.
A voice inside her said to leave it alone. It’s Ty’s. Snooping’s not allowed. Another little voice urged her to take a look.
It was a photo. Left under the ashtray. Annie picked it up.
Her heart sank at what she saw.
Not so much because of who it was—it was a long time ago, and somehow, inside, she’d always had her suspicions.
As much as it was their relationship drifting away.
Her trust.
The photo was of Ty, smiling, a look on his face she had never seen when he was with her. On a bench. In a park. Other people around.
And next to him someone she recognized. Her head on his shoulder. Her hands wrapped around his arm. It didn’t make Annie jealous.
As much as it just hurt.
The woman’s face had been burned into her mind since the first day she saw it. On the TV. It was the one who had been killed. At that house.
April Glassman.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
The car that came to take al-Bashir and his family into custody arrived at just before nine the next morning.
Overnight, Naomi had been on the phone with her team back in DC. The plan was to get him to a safe house in the country, where he would be debriefed by Naomi and representatives from the British government, then flown out of the country. They needed to do this quickly and without notice, before Hassani or anyone else could intervene.
Hauck and Naomi arrived at the house in Mayfair a half hour early. An unmarked car from Scotland Yard was stationed across the square, having watched over al-Bashir’s house during the night. Otherwise, the street was empty. Like any quiet Sunday morning. Robins chirped in the trees. One or two families stepped out, dressed up, on their way to church.
The fewer people involved, the better.
Naomi flashed her ID by the two policemen in the car. Then she went up the stairs and knocked on the red paneled door. Hauck stayed on the steps, watching the square. A few houses down, a mother was dragging her cranky, whining son into the family BMW 330i for what seemed like a Sunday outing.
Sheera al-Bashir answered the door. She was dressed in a black blazer and designer jeans. It was hard, Hauck thought, not to feel sadness for her and her family. They had done nothing wrong. She could have been any modern, attractive young mom, dragged into a whirlwind in just a day. Now everything was about to change for them. Until Hassani was in custody—and maybe even well beyond that—they would always have to live in fear that people would find them.
Naomi smiled at her as best she could and glanced at her watch. “The car should be here anytime. Are you ready?”
“Shortly,” Sheera al-Bashir replied. She didn’t have any makeup on and her eyes looked drawn from a very difficult night. She managed a reluctant smile. “We’re just packing up a few of the boys’ toys.”
Naomi nodded. “Sure.”
Fifteen minutes. Naomi came over and sat next to Hauck, smiling, partly philosophically, acknowledging that there were no winners in this kind of thing, and partly with a glimmer of satisfaction that they would finally be able to get to the truth. People plotting against the United States. And who was behind the murders of Marc Glassman and James Donovan?
“You did good.” Hauck winked, proud.
“Thanks.” She exhaled nervously, as if there was some small detail she hadn’t checked. Or double-checked. But there wasn’t.
“Quite the three days, huh?” He grinned. “Be sure and let me know when you’re planning your next vacation.”
“I’ll do that,” Naomi said, with a smirk.
“The south of France would be nice. If there’s ever anything going on there…”
She glanced at her watch again. “Maybe I should check in with my contact at the Exchequer…”
“Relax,” Hauck said with a squeeze of her arm.
Then she pointed up the block. “There it is.”
A black Mercedes SUV with darkened windows had come into the mew from the direction of Knightsbridge. It drove around the square and pulled to a stop in front of the house.
Naomi was relieved.
The driver’s window rolled down. One of the police guards stepped out of the car and checked the driver’s ID. He nodded in confirmation up at Naomi.
She sucked in a breath. “Let’s get this done.” She went up and knocked on the door again. This time a housekeeper answered. “The car’s here.”
A short time later the door opened back up and Sheera came back out, a tote bag over her shoulder, clasping the hands of her two young sons. The little one was still in his pj’s and obviously had been crying, forced to leave his home. He clutched a stuffed bear. A few suitcases were dragged out to the doorstep. A second agent jumped out of the Mercedes. He looked up and down the street, then quickly went up the stairs, taking the bags, and loaded them into the back of the SUV.
“Don’t forget the ski bag,” Sheera said, pointing back inside. “It has some things for the kids in it.”
The agent nodded agreeably. “We should have room, ma’am.”
Seconds later, Marty al-Bashir came out onto the steps. He was dressed in an open plaid shirt, blazer, khakis. A bulletproof vest he had been given the night before. The second agent put himself in the line of fire. Al-Bashir’s demeanor was sullen and resigned. Yesterday, he had been running the largest investment fund in the world. Today, his fate was in the state’s hands. A computer case was slung over his shoulder. He stepped up to Naomi. “Can you tell us where we’re going?”
“You should hurry,” she said. The agent stowed the last case in the trunk. Al-Bashir followed him down. “Everything will be made clear on the way.”
Before he got in, he looked at Naomi with a final, deflated smile. “You called it ‘jihad,’” he said. “It was never about terrorism. You’ll see. This was much larger than terrorism.”
Naomi pushed him into the car. “You better get on.”
He climbed into the backseat next to his wife. The accompanying agent shut the door, waved officiously to the policemen. He hopped in front, and then, without a siren, as if it were
just a normal limo on its way to the airport, the Mercedes circled the mew and drove off through the grid of one-way streets back out to the main road.
It was done.
As it drove away, Hauck caught sight of the face of their youngest boy through the rear window, turning back a final time, grabbing one last look at his home.
Naomi exhaled. “That wasn’t exactly easy.” She nudged Hauck and they headed back down the street to their cab.
“Never is.”
His role was over now. She and the Feds would take it from here. He’d probably head back to the States that afternoon. He had a life to resume and a lot of things to explain.
Naomi’s cell phone rang. She checked out the display, saying to Hauck, “My contact at the Exchequer…”
She listened, then stopped, her face suddenly turning ashen. She looked back at Hauck, the blood rushing out of her face.
“What’s wrong?”
Naomi’s jaw fell open. “She said the government’s Range Rover is close by. It’ll be here in three minutes.”
Hauck’s heart stopped. He ran into the street, straining to find the black Mercedes moving away up the block.
He caught only the rear taillights as it disappeared around the corner.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
That wasn’t them! That wasn’t them!”
Naomi sprinted over to the detectives from Scotland Yard. “It wasn’t them. The car was bogus. Did anyone get a look at the plates?”
The two policemen looked at them, completely stunned. Then they jumped in their car, one with his cell phone out, the other spinning it around, siren beeping, and took off after the Mercedes.
Naomi started in after.
“No.” Hauck grabbed her by the arm. He remembered the maze of one-way streets that led out to Park Lane. The SUV could be on any of them. “Come with me!” He pulled her in the other direction. “This way!”
