The Witness (18 page)

“They’re still in New York. They just found a flat. Dina says they’re coming home next weekend to pack up their things and ship them back there.” She paused for a moment. “I can’t believe they’re really leaving. I guess I’ve got to find new roommates. I’ll never be able to afford that flat on my own.”

“Right,” he said, picking at his beef fillet.

“Tariq, are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, pouring himself a third glass of wine.

“You seem . . . distracted, far away. Not like this morning. Not like all weekend.”

“No, no,” he said, “I’m just . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Just what?”

He didn’t want to lie to her. He didn’t want his heart to be any heavier than it already was. The very thought bothered him now as it never had before. But then again, wasn’t his whole life a lie at this point? He wasn’t Tariq Jameel. He wasn’t a computer consultant from Brussels. He wasn’t setting up a branch office in Cairo or looking for a girlfriend or a wife. He wasn’t any of the things he had told her.

“I’m just going to miss you,” he said, looking at her at last. “I’ve really enjoyed the past few days together.”

“So have I,” she said, taking his hands.

“You’re a very special girl.”

Dalia was still smiling at him, but she seemed a bit skeptical as well. “Special as in ‘I want to spend more time with you’? Or special as in ‘That was fun; you’ll never see me again’?”

“Special as in ‘I want to spend
a lot
more time with you,’” he insisted, squeezing her hands. “What time do you get back tomorrow?”

“I should be here by lunchtime—noonish, I think.”

“Perfect. I’ll be waiting.”

“You promise?”

He smiled. “I promise.”

39

Inspector Lemieux paced the floor of the hotel suite. The longer this dragged on, the more irrelevant became his people’s slight lead on the investigation. Goddard was good, and that woman, DuVall, might be even better. If they found Accad before he did, this whole thing just might lead to his own downfall. However, if he could ensure Marwan Accad’s permanent silence, then it was likely he could end up pulling this off after all.

From the beginning, things had fallen apart. The death of Ramsey’s daughter was not supposed to happen, and if there was one thing that Lemieux regretted in this whole affair, that would be it. But what was done was done. It was too late to go back. Besides, why should he mourn Brigitte Ramsey when her own stepmother seemed to have gotten over her?

Claudette Ramsey—she truly was a piece of work. Rarely had he met anyone so greedy, heartless, and self-focused. He knew he was ruthless—one had to be in his line of work—but he at least had some scruples, one or two lines he refused to cross. Yet she seemed to be completely without conscience.

In one sense, that made her easy to work with. In the past, most women he had dealt with had cringed a time or two at the methods he had been forced to employ in order to get the job done. No such problem with Claudette.

The downside was that her lack of any moral compass could make her careless. A temper tantrum could easily lead to violence, and violence, if not carefully controlled, could lead to discovery. Already he had been forced to commit two of his teams just to babysit her. If she didn’t hold the purse strings to such a large fortune, she would have become expendable long ago.

Lemieux stopped at a long table situated under a window that looked out into the Casablanca night. The table was made of a rich, beautifully burled thuya wood, and its surface was bare except for a cell phone. He stared at the phone, as if just by the sheer strength of his will he could make it ring.

He turned and began the slow walk to the other side of the elegantly decorated room.

The worst of the mistakes already made had been allowing Marwan Accad to live. How could the snipers have missed him? And then somehow Accad had found a way to kill two of Lemieux’s best assassins in that hotel. The woman, Alix Pelletier, had been a special prize. No man could resist her seductive skills, including Lemieux himself a time or two.

Accad had cost him resources and aggravation. It was time for him to die.

Back at the phone, he again stared at it. As he was preparing to return to his pacing, he was startled when it actually rang. Smiling to himself, he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“We have found him.”

“Well, are you going to make me guess? Where is he?”

“We spotted him on an airport security tape. He’s very good. He knows just where not to look to avoid the cameras, but finally we caught him as he boarded an EgyptAir flight from Casablanca to Cairo.”

“Good work, Edgard. Where is he now?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Edgard replied.

“Well then, you haven’t really found him, have you?” Lemieux shouted, his legendary short temper instantly in full bloom. “Cairo is a city of 7 million people, and the whole country of Egypt has, what, another 70 or 80 million on top of that! And you call to tell me that you have found him, you imbecile?”

“My apologies, sir. I should have said that we know where he went from Morocco.”

“You’re right, you should have! Words mean things, Edgard! Tell me what you are doing to find him!”

“Again, we are looking for friends, girlfriends, relatives. We’re checking hotels and hostels. We’re also looking at flats and houses that may have recently been rented by an expatriate individual or a corporation.”

“Don’t forget the possibility of a preexisting safe house,” Lemieux reminded his man. “Also, I want you to create a false rental car trail leading south to Asyût. Make it complex but discoverable. And do it quickly! If you found this lead, then Goddard’s people will be just behind you. We need to throw him off the scent.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I want you to send five of our two-man teams to Cairo. I do not want Accad getting away again.”

There was a brief pause. Lemieux could hear Edgard sucking in his breath. “Sir, we only have four teams available. They are there in Morocco as we speak. The rest are either with Claudette Ramsey or searching for Ramy Accad,” Edgard said matter-of-factly. But Lemieux could hear the anxiety in his voice, which was exactly how he wanted it.
When subordinates fear you, that is when they will follow you without question.

“Take one of the two teams from the other Accad brother, then! Must I make every decision? I want you to listen to me closely, Edgard. You will find Marwan Accad, and when you do, you will make sure he is dead. I can’t go to Cairo without Goddard and his little minions following me, so I am counting on you. I don’t have to tell you what the consequences are for failure!”

“Don’t worry, sir. We’ll find him.”

When Lemieux heard the click on the other end of the line, a smile spread across his bony face.
You may have won when you knew we were there, Accad. But wait and see what happens when you don’t see us coming!

40

Tariq spent the night alone at Dalia’s flat. The cleaners and repairmen hired by his landlord had been working in his flat for most of the day, but one could barely tell. There was so much work still to be done. Besides, while Dalia’s flat was considerably smaller, it was far warmer (partly because her heaters worked and his didn’t), far better decorated, and actually felt like a home.

She had curtains on the windows and fresh flowers in colorful vases on the kitchen table. She had clean linens on the beds with big, thick comforters and soft, fluffy pillows, and knickknacks of all kinds, collected from the many countries where she had traveled. What’s more, her dishes were washed, there was good food in the refrigerator and pantry, and her stove worked, which would have settled the issue had there been any doubt in his mind about staying there in the first place.

Tariq made a hot cup of coffee and helped himself to some cookies he found in the pantry. Then he began poking through Dalia’s things, trying to get a sense of who she was.

Beside her entertainment center, he found racks of hit CDs and DVDs of the latest Egyptian, European, and American films, all neatly arranged in alphabetical order. He found closets lined with new clothes and shoes, velvet boxes filled with jewelry, stacks of
Vogue
and
Cosmo
and other fashion magazines. He also found scuba and snorkeling gear and bookshelves lined with travel guides to resorts throughout the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, not to mention a complete collection of Naguib Mahfouz novels. And eventually he found her stash of marijuana as well, to which he helped himself.

What struck him as curious, though, was that he could find no diaries, no personal journals, not even a family photo album. There was nothing that could give him the kind of clues he was looking for. Who was Dalia Nour, really? Where did she come from? Where was she headed? He was intoxicated with her, but it suddenly dawned on him how little he really knew about her.

He knew she had grown up somewhere in Jordan but didn’t know where. He knew she had left home at eighteen, but he didn’t know why. He knew she had graduated from a little college in France but didn’t know which one or what she had studied. He knew she had joined British Airways to see the world and travel for free. He also knew that she had already been to twenty-three countries and hoped to go to Australia later that year for her third vacation in as many years because, she said, the snorkeling was amazing there. But besides that, there wasn’t much more to go on. She was as much an enigma to him, apparently, as he was to her.

In search of answers, Tariq opened a drawer in the small nightstand beside her bed, and there he found a stack of brochures for two- and three-day vacation packages to various resorts in Sharm el-Sheikh. She really was a traveler, wasn’t she? He couldn’t even remember the last time he had taken a vacation. But Dalia seemed obsessive about seeing the world and drinking her fill from the cup of life. It was as though she couldn’t sit still for more than a few days at a time. Whenever she had a few days off, she was jet-setting to another exotic locale. But why? What exactly was she running from?

Tariq flipped through the stack. One was for the Hilton. Another was for the Ritz-Carlton. Yet others were for the Four Seasons, the Marriott, the Jolie Ville, and several more as well. At the bottom of the stack was a small notepad embossed with the British Airways logo. It was marked up with all kinds of notes, all of them in Dalia’s handwriting, with pricing options for three people staying in a single suite, possible dates for travel, and pros and cons for each of the various resorts.

He was about to put it all back in the drawer and continue his quest to learn more about this mystery girl when he noticed that the dates Dalia had circled as the best time to go—and then had crossed out—were coming up soon, between Christmas and New Year’s. Just then he realized why Dalia wasn’t going. Dina and Mervat had been transferred. Dalia was barely going to be able to pay the rent on this flat, much less spend a fun-filled weekend in Sharm. And that got Tariq thinking.
What if . . .

By the time Dalia returned home, the plans were set, their tickets were bought, their suitcases were packed, everything—including Dalia’s snorkeling gear—was loaded into a waiting taxi, and Tariq was on the front steps of the apartment building with a big bouquet of flowers.

She couldn’t believe it. Dalia’s eyes said it all: They were both going to Sharm? Really? Right then? All expenses paid? How had he known? How had he made all the arrangements so quickly? How could she be so lucky to be falling for a guy like this?

Tariq answered all of her questions—except the last—as they boarded the one-hour flight to the Sinai Peninsula. He laughed at Dalia’s joyful, playful, amazed reaction. Tariq had never been so spontaneous in his life, but it felt right, and he suddenly hoped this was just the beginning. Getting out of Cairo would be good for so many reasons. He needed the sun and the sand and the surf to get his mind off all his troubles. And he needed as much time with Dalia as he could possibly get.

“This is incredibly generous,” Dalia said at last. “I still don’t understand why you did it.”

“I missed you,” he told her as their plane was coming in on final approach.

She squeezed his arm and nestled close to him. “Really?” She smiled.

“Really. You’ve got a great little place in Cairo, but it’s not the same without you. I was getting lonely in there, and then I found your calendar and noticed you had the next couple of days off. I couldn’t resist. I hope I wasn’t being too forward to plan this whole thing on the spur of the moment.”

“You absolutely were,” she replied. “And I couldn’t be happier.”

41

They checked in at the Ritz-Carlton, and for the next two days they played like newlyweds. They slept in late and had breakfast in bed. They sunbathed by the pool. They spent their afternoons snorkeling in the Red Sea, just off Tiran Island, not far from the coast of Saudi Arabia, and then went to fancy restaurants before retiring to their suite for nights of unrestrained passion.

The temperatures during the day hovered in the mideighties, with a slight breeze coming in from the north. At night, it never dipped below sixty.
No clouds. No rain. No smog. No pollution. No phone calls. No e-mails. No guns. Nobody trying to kill me. It couldn’t be more perfect. Does this really ever have to end?

On the third day, he got up early and went jogging in the cool morning air. His body was recovering nicely from the wounds he had sustained in Monte Carlo. He was steadily regaining his strength, and in many ways, he had never felt better. He was laughing. He was singing in the shower. He was flat-out drunk with love. It was the only explanation he could come up with.

Tariq had never experienced anything like this with any other girl. Sure, there had been relationships in the past—even one brush with an engagement. But for some reason, it was different with Dalia. She wanted him. She needed him. And she made him feel special. He was falling for this girl, and it was all going so fast.

After a four-mile run along the beach, Tariq got back to the Ritz and slipped into their room as quietly as he could. Dalia was still sleeping. She looked like an angel—so beautiful, so peaceful, it had to be a dream.