by Randy Singer
How could she ever explain it to Sarah if Ahmed got away?
For reasons Nikki could not yet put her finger on, she knew the case had now become personal. Something had snapped in her when she saw Sarah’s distressed reaction to Ahmed’s photo. She had to serve this man. He had to be brought to justice. He must pay for what he had done to Sarah and undoubtedly to hundreds of others like Sarah.
He would not get away with it again; not on her watch.
Two hours was too long. She explained her plan to Bella, who immediately shook her head in protest.
* * *
Twenty stories up the phone rang. Barnes watched Mack answer it in a huff. He enjoyed seeing lawyers flustered.
“I told you to hold my calls. You know I can’t be interrupted in this meeting.” Mack listened and frowned. “Okay, put her through.” Another long pause while he listened some more. His voice dropped, but not out of Barnes’s hearing. “Bring me a copy immediately. Thanks for the heads-up.”
He put down the phone and looked at Barnes.
“We’ve got some trouble here,” Mack said. “One of our paralegals just returned from federal court. It seems an amended complaint naming Mr. Aberijan as an individual defendant has been filed. The plaintiffs also requested process papers so that Mr. Aberijan can be served personally with the suit while he is on American soil. This is the very thing I was talking about earlier when I explained that Mr. Aberijan should stay out of the country from now on. We’ve got to get him back to his plane before the plaintiffs serve him.”
Barnes spoke to Ahmed in Arabic. Ahmed nodded his head and responded vigorously.
“He left some items at the hotel,” Barnes explained. “I can go pick those up if you can get him to the airport.”
“I’ll call a limo to meet us in the basement. We’ll be at the airport in twenty-five minutes.”
* * *
Nikki got off the elevator at the twentieth floor and stepped onto the thick Persian rug of the reception area. Lavish testaments to the prowess and wealth of the boys at Kilgore & Strobel surrounded her. Polished oak floors, mahogany trim, stylish antique furniture. Even the receptionist, barricaded behind a beautiful oak workstation sporting the firm’s gold logo, looked like she had just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine.
She flashed Nikki a blinding white smile and asked with sickening sweetness, “May I help you?”
Nikki returned a smile with her own lips closed—no sense trying to compete with those teeth. “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. . . . um . . .” Nikki shook her head in frustration at her own stupidity. “I can’t believe I forgot his name. . . . I was just in his office a few weeks ago.”
The receptionist gave her a wary look.
“Oh, you know,” Nikki continued, “I’ve got his name in here somewhere.” She started opening up the manila envelope she was carrying. She read a few lines of one document. “Here it is . . . that’s right. The guy I originally came to see was a Mr. Strobel—” she pointed down a hallway toward her left—“but then he hooked me up with the guy whose office was right next to his, and I can’t remember his name . . .”
The receptionist checked some papers in front of her. “Actually, the office right next to Mr. Strobel is one of our female associates, Andrea Gates.”
Of all the luck—the Kilgore firm couldn’t have more than a couple female lawyers total, and one of them had to be next to Strobel.
“Are you sure—,” the receptionist began.
“Which side of his office?” Nikki interrupted. “His office is in a corner, right?” That’s a safe bet. She motioned to an area behind her, on the northwest corner of the building. Where is Bella? What’s taking her so long? Can’t she even do a simple thing like—
“Right, but it’s this corner over here,” the receptionist said helpfully, motioning to the southeast corner. Nikki gave her a puzzled expression and an innocent shrug.
“Okay . . . right,” Nikki said, turning a half circle as if getting her bearings.
“And the guy next to him on the other hallway is Brett Aikens,” the receptionist said. “I’ll give him a call.”
Don’t bother, Nikki wanted to say. Instead, she forced out a thanks. Still no Bella. She’d kill her later.
“Your name?”
“Oh.” The request caught Nikki off guard. She’d forgotten to plan an alias. In the pressure of the moment, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “Bella Harper.”
“Thanks.”
The receptionist called the lawyer, and to Nikki’s great relief, he was not in. But Nikki insisted on waiting for him to return. It was a very important meeting, Nikki said. So she took a seat in the reception area, checked her watch, and began silently cursing Bella.
Five minutes later, precisely seven minutes behind schedule, Bella stepped off the elevators. Nikki picked up the manila envelope lying next to her on the floor.
The receptionist was on the phone and lifted a finger, indicating to Bella that she would be right with her. Bella glanced over at Nikki, who glared back, jaw clenched, showing her displeasure with the timing. Bella responded with a quick roll of her own eyes and a little headshake that just made Nikki steam even more.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked.
“Yes, I’m Bella Harper, and I’m here—”
Nikki nearly jumped out of the chair. What kind of idiot gives her own name when she’s part of a scam and hasn’t even been asked her name?
The receptionist’s puzzled look lasted only a moment, for in the very next instant a bigger problem demanded her immediate attention.
Bella clutched her chest and groaned loudly. The eyes of the receptionist widened. Bella’s face turned red, and she began staggering, fighting for air. With a fitful gasp Bella collapsed in a heap on the floor, falling thunderously and gloriously on the Persian rug, then flopping on her side, still clutching at her chest.
The receptionist put a hand to her mouth, stifling a scream. She looked down at Bella and frantically dialed a number. “Are you all right? Are you all right?” she kept saying.
Nikki wanted to watch this drama play itself out, but that was not the plan. “I’ll go get help,” she called out and bolted for Strobel’s office.
She had taken no more than five or six steps down the long hall—a virtual gauntlet of secretaries at computer terminals and open workstations—when three men emerged from the corner office at the end. She recognized one of the men as Mack Strobel and one as Ahmed Aberijan. The third man she couldn’t place. They huddled outside the doorway momentarily, talking to each other, no more than eighty feet away.
Nikki fixed her gaze straight ahead and quickened her pace.
She was halfway down the corridor when Mack Strobel noticed her coming and took a step in her direction. The shorter man grabbed Ahmed’s arm and steered him down the perpendicular hallway, away from Nikki.
“Who are you?” Strobel demanded, walking toward her. Some secretaries stopped typing; others put a momentary freeze on their phone gossip; almost all of them glanced up. “What are you doing here?”
When she was just a few steps away, Nikki started speaking rapidly, motioning wildly with her hands to emphasize the urgency of her message.
“Dónde está la oficina de Señor Aiken?” she blabbered. A puzzled look crossed Strobel’s face; they were now standing no more than two feet apart. “No entiendes ni una palabra que he dicho verdad, tonto?”
Strobel gave her a blank stare, and the muscles in his face relaxed ever so slightly. “Anybody know Spanish?” he asked, glancing around.
Sensing her chance, Nikki exploded past him, shoving him slightly with her free hand, deftly sidestepping the startled lawyer. She broke into a sprint, quickly turning the corner.
“Stop her!” Strobel yelled.
The shout got the attention of Ahmed and his sidekick, who were still half a hallway ahead of Nikki, ready to turn a corner down another adjacent hallway. They both pivoted on their
heels, a brief look of astonishment on their faces. Nikki locked eyes with Ahmed and ran straight toward him.
Before she reached Ahmed, his burly sidekick barreled into Nikki with a force that sent her crashing against a wall. Nikki gasped as the air left her lungs, and she collapsed to the plush floor. Pain shot through her left shoulder, which had hit the wall first, bearing the main brunt of the brute who assaulted her. He stood over her now. Her world spun, and she blinked to fight back the converging blackness and stars.
Dazed but still conscious, Nikki realized she still held the envelope containing the suit papers. She threw the envelope across the floor so that it slid within inches of Ahmed’s feet.
“Congratulations,” she gasped. “You’ve been served.”
Ahmed sneered, his lips curled ever so slightly into an arrogant little smile, and the eyes sent an unmistakable message of their own. She had seen the same eyes before, the same pent-up fury, the same smoldering violence. It was the look of her own father, remembered across a decade of time, as if it were yesterday. It was the look she remembered from that split second in time before he would strike out at her mom . . .
“Get up,” the stocky man barked as he yanked Nikki to her feat. Mack Strobel was telling shell-shocked secretaries to call security.
“Get your hands off me,” Nikki shouted back. “You’re hurting me. Someone call the cops!”
But the man just twisted her arm tighter, and with pain shooting through her shoulder, Nikki stopped resisting. One gawking secretary found the presence of mind to get security on the phone and hand the receiver to Mack Strobel. With the envelope still lying unopened on the floor, and Mack Strobel preoccupied on the phone, Ahmed came over to Nikki and leaned so close to her that the hot stink of his breath brushed across her face.
“You will pay,” Ahmed said slowly and emphatically.
The words shot through Nikki’s rattled nervous system, putting her flight instincts on full alert. Yet her sense of bravado never betrayed her.
“Promises, promises,” she snapped back.
She stared hard at Ahmed, unblinking, until his friend yanked her back down the hallway and toward the lobby, ignoring her threats to sue the pants off him. He marched Nikki right past Bella, who was now sitting in a chair, wet paper towels plastered on her forehead, breathing fitfully. Nikki glanced sideways at her compatriot, who in turn acknowledged Nikki with an almost imperceptible nod of the head, then resumed her tortured performance as a heart attack victim and her loud complaining about how long it was taking the ambulance to arrive.
Ahmed Aberijan had been served.
13
A SPECIAL SENSE OF RELIEF washes over the body of a law student as she puts down her pen at the end of semester exams. Sagging shoulders straighten, a smile replaces a furrowed brow, and a bounce in the step replaces the exam week shuffle.
For Leslie Connors, this invigorating relief was underscored by the anticipation of spending the evening with Brad. He had asked her to dinner, ostensibly to discuss her work on the Reed case. But Leslie believed—and hoped—that the real reason had more to do with personal motives. Leslie had not seen Brad since she started exams two weeks ago, and she did not look forward to spending the summer away from him in England, separated by the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Chesapeake Bay.
Leslie was nearly thirty years old and experiencing emotions from her schoolgirl days. She felt a bit guilty for craving his attention so much. Though her tidy life plan left no room for a relationship with Brad, her emotions suggested such a relationship was exactly what she needed.
Tonight she vowed to throw caution to the wind and enjoy herself. Brad had insisted she choose the restaurant. It was an easy choice. The most romantic restaurant around was The Trellis, a quaint and elegant throwback to another era in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg. The Trellis sat on prime real estate, fronting on Duke of Gloucester Street, strategically located in the middle of Williamsburg’s historic district.
Duke of Gloucester Street, or “Dog Street” in the parlance of the locals, was a passageway to a simpler time. The colonial architecture, the gravel road, the manicured lawns, the authentic historical costumes of the workers, and the exact replicas of the colonial buildings, all combined to make visitors a part of history. Any tension remaining from exams left Leslie’s body entirely as she strolled down Dog Street, killing time. It was the perfect setting for a promising night.
* * *
Like all drivers in Tidewater, Brad despised the bridges and tunnels that surrounded Norfolk and Virginia Beach. He hated them most when, like tonight, he was running late and heading north, because traveling in that direction meant crossing the Chesapeake Bay through the mother of all traffic jam generators: the Hampton Roads tunnel. The tunnel never backed up on those rare occasions when he was on time. But somehow, the desperation of his personal situation seemed to trigger the most gnarly jams. Tonight, with Brad running late, a stalled car performed the honors of backing up traffic for nearly a mile.
Inching his way along, Brad whipped out his cell phone and dialed.
“Strobel here.” The words blasted. Strobel was on his speakerphone, and the echo made him hard to understand and louder than life.
“Take me off the box,” Brad said.
“Who’s this?” Strobel bellowed. He had the tone of a man who was not used to taking orders from a stranger.
“It’s Brad Carson, returning your call, and I’m not going to talk to you if you don’t take me off that blasted speakerphone.”
“Bradley, thanks for calling back.” Strobel was still on the speakerphone. Brad simmered. Nobody called him Bradley. “Look, old boy, as you obviously know based on that cute little stunt your paralegal pulled, we’ve been hired to defend the Reed case, and I thought I owed you a courtesy call before we file the kinds of motions we’re preparing. You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m still here,” Brad responded. He had now put his cell phone on speaker mode and laid it in the seat next to him. Two could play this game.
“What types of motions are you talking about?”
“Say what?” Strobel shouted.
“I said, what kinds of motions are you going to file?” Brad said it slower and louder, emphasizing each word.
“Well, Bradley, I’ve been practicin’ law a long time, and you’re a good lawyer, but I’ve never seen a case more desperate than this one, except maybe some of those pro se cases filed by prisoners complaining about jail food. Unless I’m missing something, you don’t have squat. Am I out in left field here? Are you aware of some case law or authority I haven’t stumbled across?”
Strobel was obviously on a fishing expedition, trying to flush out Brad’s best arguments so he could address them in his opening brief. Brad was not about to bite that hook.
“You’re the expert on international law. You tell me.”
An audible sigh. Strained patience. “All right, Bradley, I will tell you. Your claims against Saudi Arabia are barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. In addition, the only witness you have to support your claim of torture is your own client. And her credibility is—how shall I say this?—shaky at best.” Strobel paused, apparently wanting the thinly veiled threat to sink in.
“Our only choice, under these circumstances, is to file a motion to dismiss and to also ask the court for Rule 11 sanctions against you and your firm for filing a frivolous claim. I don’t like filing such motions against my colleagues, Bradley. That’s why I’m calling. If you voluntarily dismiss the case by week’s end, we’ll forget the motion for sanctions. We all go home, on to the next case. Your choice, Bradley, what’s it gonna be?”
* * *
Mack stopped pacing and yakking long enough to listen. Only then did he realize that the sound on the other end of the phone line was a dial tone.
Mack had his answer. This case was about to get personal.
* * *
Leslie arrived ten minutes before seven o’clock and verified the res
ervation. By 7:15 there was still no sign of Brad. Leslie knew Brad typically began meetings and appointments by apologizing for being late. Tonight would be no exception.
As the minutes clicked by, she felt the magic of Dog Street waning. Leslie and Bill had eaten at The Trellis just once, a few months after the diagnosis. The evening was quite possibly the first since the disease became part of their lives that they spent the entire evening without mentioning it. Bill had resolved not to spoil a perfect date, and Leslie had followed his lead.
Now, as she sat here waiting for Brad, the memories of that night—the smells of fresh bread from the ovens, the sounds of laughing tourists, the sight of William and Mary undergrad just a few blocks away, the very feel of this area of Colonial Williamsburg—simply overpowered her. She felt a sudden need to be alone, to savor one more time the special relationship she had had with Bill, the one man who knew her completely—warts and all—and accepted her totally. She stood up to go home, pour herself a nice glass of wine, and unwind on the dock overlooking the Chickahominy.
She sighed and sat back down. All at once, tonight felt like such hard work, like it would be her job to impress Brad with an outgoing and fun-loving personality. She would have to guard against lapses in the conversation, against saying anything that might betray this building sense of depression eating at her. Why was it so hard to enjoy a night with someone she liked so much? Why did she suddenly feel so much pressure to make this work? And why, on tonight of all nights, was it so hard to get Bill out of her mind?
By 7:30, when Brad finally came jogging over from a nearby parking lot, Leslie’s anxiety was in full bloom. As he approached, she felt her pulse quicken, but she put on her poker face and did not smile, a little psychological punishment for being late.
“Hey, Leslie. Sorry I’m late,” Brad said, catching his breath. “Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
