The Witness (17 page)

Rather than answer to the negative, Goddard replied, “How do you want to work this?”

“If Accad is half the man we give him credit for, then he already knows we are here. So you ring the buzzer while I cover the carport gate.”

Grateful to get a little distance from this man, Goddard quickly agreed.

“Remember—he is a very dangerous man,” Lemieux said as he trudged along the wall.

Goddard stared at the light behind the front window for a minute, trying to detect any shadows or movement. Seeing none, he pressed the button. He faintly heard the buzzer inside. After waiting half a minute, he pressed it again.

Still there was no answer. He looked at Lemieux, who signaled for him to go in. Goddard sighed as he pulled out a small leather packet with tools for picking locks.
A European policeman gains entry without permission into a house on Moroccan soil. Is this technically breaking and entering? I suppose that’s the one nice thing about having Lemieux along; I can’t imagine anyone trying to put cuffs on him.

With a click, the gate opened. After a couple knocks on the front door, he used the same tools to enter the house.

As soon as the door opened, he saw the damage. Pulling his gun, he dropped to a squat. A fight had occurred in the front room. Furniture was broken, and there was blood on the floor. The blood began in a small pool in the middle of the room by a broken table, then trailed down the hall.

After getting his bearings, Goddard stood and cautiously made his way through the house, sweeping each room as he passed it. The blood droplets he was following led to a closed door at the end of the hall.

He leaned with his back against the wall to prepare himself, then pushed hard through the door. Leading with his gun, he rapidly surveyed the small room. It was clear of threats, but not clear of people. Lying back across the desk with his legs still hanging over the side was a man with a bullet hole between his eyes. He had obviously been beaten, and he was now just as obviously dead.

Goddard fought revulsion at the sight. It didn’t matter how many dead bodies he saw, he still had a visceral reaction each time. Walking back to the front door—partly to alert Lemieux and partly to avoid the smell—he called the inspector in.

“What’s happened here?” Lemieux asked when he saw the damage in the front room.

Goddard pulled out his phone to check the photo DuVall had sent. Although his face had been disfigured, there was still enough resemblance that Goddard could be confident that this was the man in the back room. “Follow me,” he said.

“Marwan Accad’s killed him,” Lemieux said immediately upon entering the study. “We’re too late.”

Goddard was still stunned by the murder scene. “But why would Accad do it? Our information is that they were close friends.”

“That’s not the issue,” Lemieux insisted. “The only issue is hunting down Accad before he kills again. Get this place dusted for prints and searched for physical evidence immediately. But first, get Accad’s picture to every police station, bus station, train station, TV station, airport, and seaport in Morocco. He’s very likely still in this country. We cannot let him escape.”

37

At eight Monday morning, Tariq’s satellite phone rang, but he didn’t care. He was serving Dalia breakfast in bed and didn’t bother to answer it. An hour later, it rang again, but this time Tariq was in the shower and did not hear it. An hour later, it rang yet again, but this time he had left it in her apartment. He and Dalia were spending yet another day together, so all of Ramy’s urgent calls went unanswered.

Winter was almost upon them, but the romance of Tariq Jameel and Dalia Nour was blooming like the Nile Delta in spring. After breakfast that chilly morning, they headed to the Cairo Tower, 185 meters high, and held hands as they gazed out across the teeming city below and competed to see who knew more landmarks than the other. They quickly spotted the Egyptian Museum and the Citadel and the Rafeeq Ali Mosque and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, but after these the skyline began to blur into a never-ending sea of hotels and apartments and office buildings, all shrouded in a brown, dusty, polluted haze.

“Have you ever been to the pyramids?” Dalia asked.

“I’m ashamed to say it,” he said, “but no, I actually never have.”

“Me neither,” she exclaimed. “Let’s go! I want to see them up close and race camels in the desert!”

“You mean
ride
camels in the desert?” Tariq asked.

“No way—I mean
race
them!” she replied with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

Tariq was amazed by her energy and her passion for life. It was refreshing—and addicting—so he shrugged his shoulders. “Let the race begin!”

They took a taxi to Giza, where they climbed the shaft inside the Great Pyramid and peered into the great empty sarcophagus, imagining all the treasures this ancient wonder once held. Then they hired a guide and two camels and trotted deep into the desert.

Nothing more was said about Naguib Mahfouz’s brush with death or about Tariq’s parents or about the car accident he said he had been in or the injuries he had supposedly sustained in the wreck. There was no need to speak of Goddard or Lemieux or Monte Carlo or Rafeeq Ramsey. With her, he wasn’t on trial or under investigation or having to watch his back. They could just play like young lovers, and for Tariq, it was a cup of cool, refreshing water for a dry and thirsty heart.

“Hey, Tariq, bet I can beat you to the Sphinx!” Dalia shouted. “Loser pays for dinner!”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she gave her camel a good, hard slap on its backside and took off down the dunes.

Tariq’s competitive juices started flowing immediately, and he quickly gave pursuit, leaving their bewildered and not-too-happy guide behind, shouting curses into the fall breeze. Dalia was good, as if she had been raised riding animals. By now, she was forty or fifty meters ahead of him, her beautiful dark hair blowing wildly behind her. But he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He crouched, kicked harder, and began to pick up speed.

Up the first dune they went and down the other side. Then again and again, and as they approached the crest of the last dune, Dalia briefly vanished from sight. But only for a moment, as Tariq was closing fast.

Dalia was shouting back at him, taunting him, teasing him, making him all the more determined to win. He kicked harder and harder still, trying to extract every last bit of energy from the three-year-old camel beneath him, but in the end it was not enough. Dalia reached a startled group of tourists near the base of the Sphinx about half a length ahead of him and then veered back toward the desert to slow down and catch her breath.

She was laughing so hard she was practically crying, as was he, and he was suddenly stirred with a passion he never imagined he could feel for anyone.

“Buy me something!” she said as they embraced.

“
Buy
you something?” he asked, startled by the request. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she laughed, drawing him close to her and kissing him again on the neck and the ears. “Something special, something different, something I can remember you by when you vanish into the night and I never see you again.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, not sure if she was joking or not. “Why would you say that?”

“Isn’t that what men do? Take what they want and then cut you loose when you least expect it?”

She still had a playful look in her eyes, but her words—however innocently and laughingly spoken—had their intended effect. Tariq knew now that he was playing with fire. Someone had hurt this girl badly, and not that long ago, and here he was, stoking the still-hot embers. She was his for the asking, but she did not want to be toyed with or taken for granted, and within his heart it forced an issue he’d had neither the time nor the interest to confront thus far.

Whatever he felt for her, he wasn’t really going to stick around for long, was he? How could he? In a few days or a few weeks or perhaps a month or two, Ramy would call, warning they were onto him, and he would have to disappear. He would have to “cut her loose” when she “least expected it,” wouldn’t he?

It would be easier on him, of course, if all he wanted was a one-night stand or a weekend fling. But to Tariq’s surprise, he found her feelings mattered to him. There was something about this girl he really liked, and he didn’t want to hurt her.

“Some men, maybe,” Tariq said as he pulled her close to him and kissed her gently. “But not me.”

38

Hoping to change the subject, Tariq led Dalia arm in arm down a street lined with shops and crowded with tourists, then finally into one of Cairo’s famed papyrus institutes.

“All right,” he whispered as they first walked in. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy you anything in the store.”

Dalia’s eyes lit up. “Anything?” she asked with delight.

“Anything,” he said. “Just say the word.”

She squeezed his arm and looked around the large shop whose walls were covered with the most beautiful paintings in the most vivid colors, all done on large sheets of papyrus.

“May I help you?” a clerk asked, apparently able to see the “big sale” look in Dalia’s eyes. “I can give you a very good price today.”

“Perhaps you could show us around,” Tariq said, and Dalia quickly nodded.

“It would be my pleasure, sir,” said the young man, no more than twenty.

He guided the couple to the back, where he began by giving them a brief demonstration of how stalks of papyrus are cut into long, thin strips; soaked in water to remove most of their natural sugars; pressed together in a crisscross pattern; and finally dried over many days to make the remarkably strong sheets upon which skilled artisans painted their dazzling scenes, many of them from legends of ancient Egypt.

“Tell me about this one,” Dalia said when he was finished, pointing to one of the larger scenes of people and animals and hieroglyphics, painted in brilliant blues and reds and gold, all set in a hand-crafted wood frame and hanging on the wall beside them.

“Ah yes,” the clerk said, “
The Final Judgment
. This one is very famous. Copies of this painting used to hang in homes and tombs and temples all over Egypt.”

“Why?” Tariq asked. “What does it mean?”

“Well,” the clerk explained, “ancient Egyptians believed that when people died, they would face a final judgment, a final reckoning for what they had done in their lives. You see the man up there in the top left corner, kneeling before all those figures across the top of the painting?”

“Yes.”

“That is man in the afterlife. He is kneeling before fourteen judges, swearing that he is not guilty, offering sacrifices to them, and pleading with them to let him go to paradise.”

“What about the man down there?” Tariq asked. “Is he the same man?”

“The one in the lower left?” the clerk asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yes, he’s the same man,” the clerk said. “He’s being led into the palace of justice, where it will be determined whether he is good or bad, guilty or not. You see those giant scales before him?”

“Yes.”

“The heart of the deceased is placed on the left side of the scales,” the clerk explained, using his finger to identify the various parts of the picture, “and a feather of justice is put on the right side. If his heart is heavier than the feather, it means the man’s heart is full of sin. It means that he is not good enough for heaven and will be sent straight to hell. But if his heart is lighter than the feather, then he is a good man—a pure man—and he will go to paradise. This man in the painting? He was pure, so he is being led into the throne room of heaven by that figure holding the key to eternal life. Do you like it?”

“No, I don’t,” Dalia said, visibly uncomfortable. “Show me something else. Something not having to do with hell and judgment.”

She turned her attention to another painting, one with two doves perched in a large tree. But Tariq remained fixated on
The Final Judgment
, studying it with great intensity.

“How can you know for sure?” Tariq thought out loud.

“Know what for sure?” the clerk replied.

Startled by the clerk’s response to his thoughts, he said, “Oh. Well, I was just wondering, how can you know for sure if your heart is pure enough, if you’re headed for heaven instead of hell?”

But the clerk just stood there blankly. It was obvious he had never been asked that question during one of his tours.

Tariq felt a wave of fear wash over him. The question echoed through his soul again and again.
How can I know? Any moment now, I could have a bullet take my life away. Is my heart too heavy in the scales or not? What did Dalia tell me her father says—heaven is a gift and not a payment? Is it possible heaven is something God just offers us, not something I can earn? And what about Kadeen’s claim that the Bible contains the truth about life and death?
He had to find the answer before his own fate was sealed.

He bought Dalia a painting—a different one, of course, an exquisite and expensive one of two lovers sailing a felucca down the Nile—but Tariq could not shake the anxiety
The Final Judgment
had stirred within him. It was as if he could hear his mother’s voice in his head, weeping over all the foolish, selfish choices he had made in his life, begging him to change course and make a fresh start while he still could.

But where would he start? To whom should he turn? He was ready to make a change. His life was coming undone. But “changing course” was easier said than done.
When all this calms down, I think I’m going to have to spend an extended time with Kadeen, asking questions.

On returning to Dalia’s flat, they showered and changed, and he took her to the Mövenpick Hotel. There the two of them had a candlelit dinner before Dalia worked the evening flight to London. She could not have been more happy. He could not have been more miserable.

“Dina and Mervat sent me an e-mail last night,” Dalia said. “I forgot to tell you.”

“Really,” he said without looking up from his plate of barely eaten dinner.