Kingdom of Strangers

by Zoë Ferraris

  The interior was large, and the items on offer were too sparse to fill even a quarter of the space. There were hoods, perches, and gloves, a few expensive cages and travel carriers. Behind the counter, a large assortment of telemetry equipment was hanging from the wall. The rest of the store was empty. It took Katya a moment to notice that the area was sectioned off. Behind a cordon, two rows of perches faced each other. It was an aviary.

  The men quickly but gently took the bird out of its cage, removed its hood, and laid it on one end of the sales counter. The bird didn’t seem to mind. The owner pulled a bucket labeled BROWN AND WHITE from a shelf. It held a dozen feathers. He fished through them until he found one that matched.

  “What’s he doing?” Katya whispered.

  “The falcon needs all of his feathers to fly correctly. He lost one, so they’re replacing it. I think they’re gluing it on.”

  It was clear the men had done this before. The owner talked to Nayir casually while he worked. “What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Sharqi?”

  Nayir slid the photos of the two suspects across the counter. “I’m wondering if you recognize these men.”

  The owner, who had been leaning over the hawk, straightened up and squinted at the photographs. “Yes, I do know one of them. Why?”

  “They may be able to help us find a killer,” Nayir said. Katya was quietly surprised that he had lied, but she could see that he was uncomfortable doing it. The owner seemed not to notice.

  “Well, I only recognize one. This man’s name is Hakim al-Adnan,” he said. “He’s a very rich man. Works for the General Investment Authority but lives here in Jeddah. He’s one of these guys who has his own private jet. Not the kind you want to mess with.”

  He had pointed to the photograph of the man who raped Jessica.

  “I work with the police,” Katya said. The Pakistani gave her a dour look, which made her think he was yet another righteous stickler, but he seemed to be listening. “This visit is off the record,” she went on. “I could always go down to the station, but we’re in a bit of a rush. Do you happen to have an address for Mr. al-Adnan? We just need to ask him some questions.”

  The Pakistani blinked a few times and nodded. He turned back to the falcon and finished setting in the new feather. Then he wiped his hands before disappearing into a back room. Katya checked Nayir’s expression. It was neutral.

  The owner emerged a few minutes later. “He doesn’t keep a credit card on file with us, and he’s never requested a mail order, so I have no address for him.”

  “Does he hunt often?” Katya asked.

  “Oh yes, every winter.”

  “Do you have any idea where he hunts?”

  “I know he owns a place up near Taïf. I went up there once. I could draw you a map if you like. Otherwise, you can probably find him online.”

  Back in the Land Rover, Nayir was thoughtful.

  “How far is Taïf ?” Katya asked.

  “You want to go there now?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  He looked surprised. “It’s nighttime. I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to see. And won’t your father—?”

  “I’ll tell him it’s work related.”

  “Won’t he think that’s odd, you staying out so late?”

  She gave him a direct look. “We’re getting married, remember? He trusts you.”

  Nayir turned to look out the window but shook his head. “The Taïf expressway is a dangerous road. We shouldn’t drive it at night. But I’d be happy to take you tomorrow.” He turned back to her. “Right now I think we should see if Jessica is home yet.”

  “The man the falconer just identified is the man who raped Jessica. It might not be worth going back there. We already know who the guy…” She trailed off.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  It had been bothering Katya: it seemed likely that Sabria had been kidnapped at her apartment, but how could one of the blackmail victims have found out where she lived? She wasn’t listed anywhere. Her visa had expired and the address was outdated. According to both Ibrahim and Rizal, she had protected her identity with paranoia. Jessica was the only one who seemed close enough to Sabria to know where she lived. And Jessica had been raped by al-Adnan.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s go to Jessica.”

  Rizal hadn’t given Katya an address—apparently there wasn’t one—only directions. About three blocks east of al-Andalus Street was a small convenience market with a bougainvillea painted on its window. Halfway down that block was an abandoned Hyundai missing its wheels. Somewhere nearby was a two-story apartment building with a garden in front. Rizal had memorized the location because she was determined to go there when she got out.

  Lights were on in the apartment now. Katya and Nayir crossed the garden and were surprised by a dog. It hadn’t been there the first time. A small black schnauzer trundled out to meet them, barked raggedly for half a minute, and then wandered back between two potted plants.

  “I guess someone’s at home,” Katya said.

  They rang the bell for the apartment on the left, and a young woman opened the door. Katya recognized her immediately from the tape.

  “Jessica Camerone?” Katya said.

  The woman nodded nervously. Like Sabria and Rizal, she had a beautiful face, but it looked tired.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Katya said. “I’m with the police, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about a friend of yours.”

  “Which friend?”

  “Sabria Gampon.”

  Jessica’s hand tensed on the door frame.

  “May I come in?” Katya asked.

  Jessica glanced nervously at Nayir. He moved back and said, “I’ll wait outside.”

  Katya stepped into the apartment.

  “What’s this about?” Jessica asked, motioning her to take a seat at the kitchen table. Katya sat, and Jessica sat across from her. She was shaking, but her face had taken on a look of suspicion.

  “Sabria is missing,” Katya said. “She’s been gone for almost a month. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  “Oh my God.” Jessica clapped a hand to her mouth and shook her head. Katya waited a moment before repeating her question.

  “I don’t know,” Jessica said, sounding a bit defiant. “Why are you asking me this?”

  “I know about the videos,” Katya said. “I know you were raped by a man named Hakim al-Adnan.”

  “That’s all over now,” Jessica said firmly. “I’ve put it behind me.”

  “How close were you to Sabria?” Katya asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve known Sabria for a long time.” Jessica stood up and went to the counter. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “I have reason to believe that Mr. al-Adnan had something to do with her disappearance. But Sabria was living quietly. It would have been hard for him to find out where she was.”

  “So you think I told him?” Jessica’s voice shot up a few notes.

  “There are two options here,” Katya said. “You can tell me the truth and help me find out what happened to Sabria and possibly put this man away, or I can arrest you and take you down to the station and they can force you to tell the truth. I think we both know that if they arrest you, they’re also going to charge you with inappropriate behavior.”

  “I was raped!” she cried.

  “It would be extremely hard to prove that in court,” Katya said. “I won’t arrest you as long as you tell me the truth about what happened.”

  “No,” Jessica said. “You’ll still arrest me. Any information I give you is going to be used in court, right? And they’re going to want to talk to me again to verify it. And then I’m going to have to admit to a judge that I was raped? No.”

  “You don’t have to go to court,” Katya said. “I just need information. This is the only way we’re going to find Sabria.”

  Jessica stood at the counter, arms rigid at her sides.

&
nbsp; “When Sabria sent you in to make the tape,” Katya said, “she paid you a lump sum. Was it a lot of money?”

  “Not really. I knew what she was doing. She kept extorting money from those men. She said she was giving it to all these women who needed help, but then I started noticing that she wasn’t doing so badly herself. She wasn’t working, and she was living in a nice apartment. She was doing just fine, and meanwhile I’m working two jobs just to be able to pay the rent for a room. There are four other women living here. It’s kind of tight, if you know what I mean.”

  “So you asked her for more money?”

  “She said no.”

  “And then what?”

  “You know, it was me he raped.”

  “It’s reasonable that you felt you deserved some of the money,” Katya said. “Did you contact al-Adnan yourself ?”

  Jessica took a moment to reply. “I did a deal with him. I told him I’d ask for less than Sabria did.”

  “How did you contact him?”

  “I followed Sabria to Chamelle Plaza and kept a tail on the women she sent for pickups.”

  “Explain that.”

  “She met these other women there. They would do pickups for her—get the money from the men she was blackmailing and bring it to her.”

  “How did the women get the money?”

  “The men were instructed to give it to their wives’ drivers. Most of these guys were married, and they employed drivers for their wives. The drivers would give the money packets to the women, who would bring them to Sabria at Chamelle Plaza. That was also where she gave out the money to women who needed it.”

  “So you followed her one day.”

  “Actually, it took a week,” Jessica said. “I kept following the girls to their pickup locations and then following the drivers back to their residences until I found al-Adnan. He’d moved since he raped me, so I had no idea where he was living. Anyway, I stopped his driver and gave him a note for al-Adnan explaining what I wanted. A few days later, al-Adnan got back to me. He said he would take my offer.”

  “But in order to assure him that Sabria wouldn’t reveal him to the police, you had to destroy her copies of the tape, or do a deal with her,” Katya said.

  “No, I just went and told her that if she didn’t stop blackmailing him, I’d give him her address. But I didn’t actually do that! You have to believe me. I was angry about the money, but there was no way I was going to throw her to the dogs like that. She was my friend.”

  “How much did al-Adnan pay you?”

  Jessica grimaced. “He didn’t.” She sat down at the table again.

  Katya knew she was lying. It didn’t make sense. “Why would al-Adnan go after Sabria and not you?” Katya asked. “You must have made a deal with him and given him Sabria’s address.”

  “No!” Jessica said.

  “Then how did the drivers not find out where these women who took their employers’ money were going? They could have come after Sabria at any time.”

  “I don’t know,” Jessica said nervously. “The women were careful, I guess.”

  “Were you careful?”

  Jessica was quiet.

  “Here’s what I think,” Katya said. “You met with al-Adnan. You made a deal with him. He gave you some money and you told him where to find Sabria.”

  “No, no! You’re wrong. He didn’t give me any money, and I never told him where to find her. I went to meet him, all right? And that’s when I realized that I’d made a mistake. I wasn’t going to take his money. I saw him across a parking lot and decided I was never going to speak to him again. So I left. I was in a taxi, and I told the driver to leave. I didn’t talk to al-Adnan at all.”

  “Where did you go after that?”

  Jessica exhaled and looked down at her hands. “I went to Chamelle.” Her voice cracked. “I knew Sabria would be there.”

  “So you went directly back to Chamelle. And his men could have been following you.”

  “I didn’t think about it,” Jessica said. A tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t know if they even saw me. I mean… I don’t know. I didn’t talk to them.”

  “Why did you go back to Chamelle?”

  “When I first went to Sabria about this, she offered me more money. But I was too angry to take it. After the whole thing with al-Adnan happened, I was angry and afraid. I realized I’d rather take money from her than have to deal with him.”

  Katya nodded. “What about Sabria? Did you see her at Chamelle?”

  “Yes.” Jessica gave a trembling exhalation. “She said she would get me the money a week later. I called her then, and she didn’t answer. I assumed she was avoiding me. I didn’t really think…”

  “So that meeting at Chamelle Plaza was the last time you actually saw her?”

  “Yeah. It was about a month ago.”

  “Al-Adnan’s men probably followed you from that parking lot back to the mall.”

  “But it was a women’s-only shopping mall,” Jessica said.

  “All they had to do was put on burqas,” Katya replied. “Did you and Sabria leave the mall together?”

  Jessica nodded, and the tears fell more freely now. She bowed her head. Katya watched the teardrops soak into her shirt.

  36

  Katya went to the lab early on Thursday morning. It was the weekend and the building was empty but she switched on her computer and ran a search for Hakim al-Adnan. The Pakistani falconer was right: in the government database, there was a photograph of al-Adnan that matched the still shot from the video. He used to be an accountant for the Ministry of Interior before his current position at the General Investment Authority. His home address was listed in Jeddah.

  Later that morning, Katya and Nayir stood in front of a pair of elaborately carved wooden doors. They were old and quite strikingly out of place on the front of the new stucco villa.

  A servant answered. He was wearing a butler’s uniform: a white shirt with cuff links, a black jacket and tie, and even a pair of white gloves. His hair was short and neatly trimmed, and when he spoke, his voice was unpleasantly affected.

  “May I help you?”

  Katya smiled politely. “Yes,” she said. “I’m a reporter with the Arab News. I’m finishing up a story about Mr. Hakim al-Adnan and his role in the revival of historic falconry, and I wanted to follow up with some fact-checking questions.”

  The butler looked askance at Nayir and said, “Yes, well, I’m afraid Mr. al-Adnan is not here.”

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” Katya said. “He told me to drop in anytime. I just haven’t had a chance until now.”

  The butler didn’t reply.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?” she asked.

  “Not for another month, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah, I see,” Katya said, trying to ignore Nayir, who was growing more tense beside her. She didn’t like lying so blatantly in front of him, and apparently he didn’t like it either. “I first interviewed him about a month ago. He said he was going up to the house in Taïf, but I forgot to ask him when he was leaving. I’m so sorry.”

  “He left for Taïf one month ago,” the butler said.

  Katya thought back. It had been almost exactly a month since Sabria had disappeared.

  “It’s rather odd,” the butler said with a wry look, “that he didn’t invite you up there. After all, that’s where he does his falconry.”

  “Oh, he did invite me, actually,” Katya said quickly. “I just didn’t understand his schedule and that he would be up there so long.”

  The butler pursed his lips. “He spends more time up there than he does here.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m sorry to bother you. Thank you for your help.”

  The butler nodded.

  Back in the car, Katya was certain that her cheeks were flushed.

  “He knew you were lying,” Nayir said.

  “At least I got the information I needed,” she said. “Al-Adnan went up to Taïf the same week Sabria disappear
ed. If he did kidnap her, he might have taken her up there.”

  Nayir nodded and cast a questioning glance at her. “I wouldn’t mind going to find out.”

  Nayir was right, the Taïf escarpment road was deadly. Just past al-Hada, the freeway began to undulate. It lifted them over sixty-five hundred feet in the short space of thirteen miles and with the daring use of more than ninety S-curves. By then, they were up in the mountains, with baboons darting into the crevices on one side of the road and the landscape stretching out beside them on the other, a vast scenery of sand-colored, rocky mountains. The other drivers seemed to think it was a racecourse, taking the turns at reckless speeds and passing the Rover wantonly on the two-lane road. The views were spectacular; the cliff drops alarming. Katya held tightly to the armrest and prayed silently while Nayir steered them safely to the city.

  The map the falconer had drawn led them to a paved road just outside the city. That road led them higher into the mountains and abruptly turned to dirt before pitching them back down into a valley. Below, nestled in a wadi and sheltered by the mountains, was a succulent strip of green earth governed by a single white stucco villa. As they descended, the scent of roses filled the air.

  The road ended at a gate, where they were met by a security guard. He asked no questions but simply waved them through with a friendly nod. Mountain hospitality, Katya supposed.

  She was beginning to feel nervous. She wasn’t sure how they would confront a wealthy, powerful man like al-Adnan. She should have told someone at work about identifying him. She could have mentioned it to Ibrahim, at the least. But she wanted to find Sabria without the police knowing.

  They stopped in front of the villa and waited.

  A few minutes later, a young man in a brown robe came walking around the side of the building. He smiled and welcomed them with a wave. He had short hair, sun-darkened skin, and enormous hands, which he used to greet both of them, shaking Katya’s hand as easily as Nayir’s and introducing himself as Yusuf, the caretaker of the rose farm.

  “We are always happy to have guests,” he said. “Where are you from?”

  “Jeddah,” Nayir replied.

  “Ah, that’s a lovely drive.” Beyond that, he wanted nothing more from them than their names and to know whether they’d like to stay in the villa that evening, since the past few nights had been cold, and the campsite was not as hospitable as it was in spring.