The Witness (16 page)

His frustration level had been slowly rising all day, and having Laila and Maryam running in and out of his office hadn’t helped his mood much. Finally he had pleaded with Rania to take the girls out for ice cream or shopping or anywhere as long as it was out of the house.

Rania had smiled, kissed him on the forehead, then collected the girls. The resulting silence had been helpful, but the work was still a long ways from done.

When the front gate buzzer rang, he ignored it. But when it rang a second time, he remembered about Rania’s gate opener. After the first gate opener had accidentally been crushed under the tires of his car, he had gotten her a new one. Unfortunately, that cheap replacement worked only about 50 percent of the time. In those times when it didn’t work, she would either have to use her key to open it or send one of the girls to buzz him so that he could open it for her.

As he got up from his desk, he looked at his watch.
They’ve only been gone forty-five minutes.
The frustration he had been feeling began to surface again.
Couldn’t she have kept them away a little longer?

Keep a smile on your face. Don’t let the girls think they’ve always got a grumpy daddy,
he thought as he swung open the front door.

Instead of seeing one of his smiling girls at the gate, he saw a tall, gaunt man in an overcoat.

“Can I help you?” Kadeen asked, trying to control his nerves. This man had
police
written all over him. Already Kadeen was running through the contingency plans he had laid out in case the Bible-smuggling operation was ever found out.

“Mr. Kadeen al-Wadhi?” the man asked.

“Yes, I am. May I ask who you are?”

The man reached into his coat and pulled out an ID wallet. He opened it and held it up, saying, “I’m Inspector Lemieux with Paris homicide.”

“Paris? Aren’t you a long ways from home, Inspector?” Relief flooded Kadeen as he realized that this wasn’t about the Bibles, but just as quickly it faded away when he put two and two together and came up with Marwan.

The inspector gave a humorless smile and said, “Yes, I am. I’d like to explain to you what I’m doing down here. Would you mind if I came in?”

“Of course. Please pardon my manners,” Kadeen said, his mind going a mile a minute. He had rehearsed many times how he would answer the authorities if they came regarding the Bibles.
Now you just have to apply that to Marwan’s situation.
He pressed the buzzer unlocking the gate.

As the inspector approached, Kadeen watched him glancing up and down the street, almost as if he didn’t want to be seen entering.
Watch out for this one.

The inspector held out his hand, and Kadeen took it.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. Is your family at home with you?”

The inspector’s icy grip sent chills down Kadeen’s spine. He quickly released the man’s hand. “No, they’re out for a while trying to give me some quiet so that I can finish a project for work.”

“Well, I promise I won’t keep you long,” Lemieux said, brushing past Kadeen into the house.

Closing the door behind him, Kadeen turned and said, “Welcome to my home. I will try to be of whatever assistance I—”

Suddenly Lemieux swung out with a small leather sap. The metal ball in the end caught Kadeen on the temple, causing his vision to blur momentarily. Then Lemieux was on him. He hauled Kadeen up by the collar and threw him onto the coffee table, which collapsed beneath him.

The air shot from Kadeen’s lungs as the inspector straddled his chest. His large hand grasped Kadeen’s windpipe and began squeezing. Kadeen tried to call out, but he couldn’t. Stunned, he watched as Lemieux pulled a silenced gun from a shoulder holster and pressed it against Kadeen’s forehead.

“Accad,” the inspector called out. “Accad, I know you’re in here! Come out now, or I swear I’ll put a hole in your friend’s head!”

Kadeen tried to shake his head to indicate that Marwan wasn’t there, but he could barely move. Already, blackness was starting to creep in from his peripheral vision.

“Accad! I’ll give you until three to come out! One! Two! Say good-bye to your friend! Three!”

Kadeen squeezed his eyes shut, ready to meet his Maker. Instead, the grip around his throat was released, and air came rushing back into his lungs. He coughed and gasped for breath, rolling onto his side when Lemieux stood.

“I guess that means Accad is not still here,” Lemieux said, sitting back on a chair and lighting a cigarette. Kadeen noticed that he kept the gun in his lap.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kadeen answered, his voice more gravelly than usual.

“Come now, let’s not play games. Your family will be home shortly, and I’m guessing that you would rather have me gone when they arrive, would you not?” Lemieux slapped the leather sap several times into his hand as he talked, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Lord, please get me out of this, but more importantly protect my family. Give me wisdom for their safety and Marwan’s.

“What makes you think Marwan was here?”

“Quit stalling,” Lemieux said, his lips spreading into that serpent’s grin again. “Time is something that is working against you right now. So please start by admitting to me what I already know—Marwan Accad was here.”

“Yes, Inspector, he was here. But he’s gone.”

“I can see that he’s gone. Please tell me where he has gone to.”

Finally a question that Kadeen had no qualms about answering honestly. “I don’t know.”

Lemieux leaned forward in his chair. He tapped ash onto the floor. “Come now, Mr. al-Wadhi. You don’t really expect me to believe that.”

“It’s the truth! I promise you. He stayed here less than a day. I tried to convince him to stay longer so that he could heal. . . .” Kadeen stopped himself, realizing he had said too much.

“Ah, so our Mr. Accad is injured, is he? Please relate to me the nature of his injury. And let me again remind you that every minute you waste is one minute closer to the return of your lovely family.”

“He was shot . . . in the shoulder. We patched him up as best we could. He left the next night.”

Standing to his full height, Lemieux towered above Kadeen, who had only managed to prop himself up on one elbow. The inspector dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with the toe of his boot, then picked up the butt and slipped it into a pocket. “I return to my previous question—where did Marwan Accad go?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

With speed belying his age, Lemieux was on him. Kick after kick landed on Kadeen’s head and stomach. Then, as quickly as it started, it stopped.

Kadeen gasped for air. He could feel the blood pouring down his face, and the pain when he moved told him he had multiple broken ribs.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Lemieux’s face inches from his own. The inspector was holding Kadeen’s head by the hair. In a menacing whisper that reeked of coffee and tobacco, he said, “Tell me where he’s gone, or I will do the same—and worse—to your wife and children.”

“I told you I don’t know where he’s gone,” Kadeen said, watching Lemieux’s face darken even more. “But . . .”

“Yes?”

“But he left me a number.”

“He left you a number?” Lemieux said, letting Kadeen’s head drop to the ground with a thunk. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

Grabbing Kadeen’s hair again, Lemieux lifted him off the ground. “Let’s make a call,” the inspector said with another vicious smile.

35

“My cell phone is in my office. That’s the number he’ll recognize,” Kadeen slurred through his swollen mouth. The rest of his face felt just as bad. Blood dripped to the floor as he stumbled down the narrow hallway. The silencer-extended barrel of Lemieux’s gun felt cold on the back of his neck.

Lord, help me to do the right thing,
he prayed.
Please watch over my family. Do what you will with me, but please protect Rania and the girls.

Upon reaching his office, he stumbled through the door. One of his eyes was almost completely closed, but through the other he saw his phone.
Is this the only way? Can I think of no alternative?

He stopped in the middle of the room and turned toward Lemieux. “I can’t believe you’re a police officer and you’re doing this. Can’t we even discuss this?”

“Tick, tock, Mr. al-Wadhi,” Lemieux answered, raising the gun so that it was between Kadeen’s eyes.

Kadeen reached for the phone, and the inspector lowered himself onto a wooden chair in the corner of the room.

“Before you call, let’s make it clear what you are to say. You will tell Accad that your family is in great danger and he must return. You must not mention my name! Are we clear on that?”

Kadeen nodded, but in doing so the room started spinning. He leaned against the edge of his desk.

“If you mention my name, your family will die. If you try any tricks, your family will die. And you’ll want to be sure to be persuasive, because if Accad refuses you, your family will most certainly die.”

The thought of his little girls in the hands of this monster was all the motivation Kadeen needed. Cradling the phone in his hands, he tried to focus his vision on the small numbers. When they began to clear, he started pressing buttons.

Lifting the phone to his ear, he waited.

“Marwan? This is Kadeen. . . . Yes, I know my voice is strange. You’ve got to help me. Remember how you said there might be people coming? You were right. . . . It’s really bad, Marwan. You must come back. . . . Please, my friend, you must. . . . But Rania and the girls—he’ll kill them if you don’t. . . .”

Kadeen watched as Lemieux leaned forward in the chair. He knew time was short before the inspector blew again.

“But, Marwan, you must come back. After all we did for you . . . I don’t know what to say. I thought—”

Suddenly Lemieux was off the chair. He snatched the phone from Kadeen’s hand.

“Listen, Accad, you better get back here, or I swear I will make those little girls die slow deaths! And what I’ll do to the woman, you don’t even want to know! Do you hear me, Accad? Accad?”

Lemieux held the phone away from his face and saw that the screen was black. He redialed the last number, and a moment later the house phone began ringing.

A painful smile spread across Kadeen’s battered lips as he watched the inspector try to figure out what was going on.

“What have you done? What did you do? What were all those numbers you were dialing?” Then a thought must have occurred to Lemieux, because he quickly began pressing buttons.

“What is this text you sent?” he said, grabbing Kadeen by the back of the neck and holding the phone in front of his face.

Relief washed through Kadeen’s damaged body as he saw the confirmation that his message did indeed go through. Written on the screen were the words:

To: Rania’s Cell

Acts 9:24-25

Kadeen

Slapping Kadeen’s face with the side of the gun, Lemieux again shouted, “What does this text mean?”

With a bloody grin, Kadeen said, “It means you will never see my family, Monsieur Inspector.”

A number of years ago, when Kadeen and Rania first got involved in couriering Bibles, they had worked out a code in case either of them was ever arrested. Both were well aware of the dangers involved in their work and found special meaning in the story of the apostle Paul’s escape from Damascus in the book of Acts. Rania would see the reference and immediately use the escape routes and safe houses established for them and other Bible couriers. Once they disappeared, they could stay underground for days, weeks, or months.

“Looks like your leverage is gone. What now?” Kadeen asked, no longer afraid of the answer.

A look came over the inspector that resembled that of the devil himself. Lemieux brought the handle of the gun down on Kadeen’s head once, twice, three times. But when Kadeen began to crumple to the ground, Lemieux held him up.

Kadeen was very near blacking out when he felt the inspector slapping him on the face and heard his voice as if it were coming from a great distance. “Wake up! Wake up! I’m not done with you yet!”

Kadeen’s mind was on autopilot as he teetered just this side of consciousness. “How may I help you, Inspector?”

The barrel of the gun pressed up against the bridge of Kadeen’s nose. He heard Lemieux growl, “I will give you one last chance to tell me where Accad is before I put a bullet in your brain!”

“But don’t you know, Monsieur Inspector? Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friend.” The peace Kadeen felt in his heart overwhelmed the pain in his body.
Lord, I am yours. . . .

“Well, if that’s true,” Lemieux said through clenched teeth, “you’re about to show a whole lot of love.” Then he pulled the trigger.

Part Three

36

Goddard finally arrived in front of Kadeen al-Wadhi’s house.

“What took you so long?” Lemieux sniffed when Goddard got out of his cab.

“It’s a long way from Beirut,” Goddard replied, refusing to take the bait. “Any sign of Accad?”

“No, it’s been quiet.”

“What about the family?”

“I said it has been quiet.”

“But you’re certain they are in there?” Goddard pressed.

“I am not certain of anything at this point,” Lemieux said. “From the look of the carport, one vehicle might be gone. But we must not waste any more time. We need to go in now. I’ve circled the house, and cut glass tops the entire wall. If anyone is in there, the only way out is through one of these two gates.”

Goddard walked around one corner of the wall. In the shadows of the setting sun, he could see that the cut glass did surround the villa as Lemieux said. However, it seemed to him that a heavy rug or rubber mat of some sort, if it were thrown on top of the glass, could easily provide safe passage over. Looking at the impatience on Lemieux’s face, though, caused him to decide to keep that thought to himself. Instead he mentally prepared himself for a possible foot chase.

As he approached Lemieux, the inspector sneered, “I trust my analysis of the situation has met with your approval?”