The Witness (20 page)

Tariq could hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth. He barely knew this girl. She barely knew him. He was in no position to settle down, but he couldn’t help it. There was something irresistible about her, something that seemed to be warning him not to let her slip away.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

“So do you forgive me?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I’m still trying to figure that out too.”

He took her face in his hands. Her eyes were red. Her mascara was smeared. But she looked more beautiful to him than ever. He kissed her until she began kissing him back. Soon she stepped away, took his hand, and led him to the elevator. When they got in, she punched the button for their floor. Then she wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into his chest.

He still could not for the life of him understand why she had reacted the way she had. But in the grand scheme of things, did it really matter? What did matter was that the woman he was falling in love with was herself falling in love with a computer consultant named Tariq Jameel. What would she do when she found out he was really Marwan Accad, high-priced security company owner and international fugitive wanted for murder?

The doors opened, and he followed Dalia down the hall. He knew he was wasting precious time. If he was going to make a move, he was going to have to do it soon. He had to get out of Sharm before Lemieux, Goddard, and the Egyptian police tracked him down and cut off every avenue of escape.

As he reached to unlock the door to their room, she pulled him against her. And in that moment, all thoughts of dead friends, live French inspectors, and narrowing international manhunts faded into the softness of Dalia’s kiss.

44

Dalia lit up a marijuana cigarette and offered one to Tariq.

“Is this your way of making up?” he asked with a grin.

She nodded and inhaled. “The second part, at least.”

He accepted her little peace treaty and inhaled as well. They sat together in silence for a few minutes, the bedroom slowly filling with smoke.

“Can I ask you a question?” Tariq began, a little hesitant to reopen a seemingly resealed can of worms.

“Sure, I guess.”

Tariq processed wording for a moment. “Why did you freak out on me like that?”
Well, that certainly came out wrong.

But Dalia only shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Sure you do,” he said.

Dalia took another drag on her cigarette. “I guess I was embarrassed.”

“About what?”

“About my dad being a pastor. About how far the apple has fallen from the tree. I mean, I think it’s fine that my parents are Christians. It’s just that it never really took with me. I acted the part when I was a little girl—I didn’t really have a choice. But I don’t think I ever really believed all that my parents believed. It’s one of the reasons I finally left home.”

“How long ago was that?”

“It’s been a while,” she said. “Since I left for college, at least.”

“And you haven’t been back since.”

“No.” Dalia turned her head down. But not before Tariq saw her eyes moisten.

“Don’t you miss your folks, your friends, your town?”

Dalia thought about that for a bit. “Actually, yeah, I do. My parents are good people, and I know they love me.”

“Then why don’t you go back?” Tariq asked.

Dalia sighed. “Because my father is a tyrant.”

“A tyrant? Wait, didn’t you say . . . ?”

Dalia laughed a little to herself. “Yeah, I guess that didn’t come out quite right. It’s just . . . he has all these religious rules and regulations, and it’s always been his way or the highway. I decided I didn’t want to live by them, so I took off and never looked back.”

Tariq could hear the bitterness creeping into her voice, but he pressed on anyway. “What kind of rules?”

“Does it really matter?” Dalia asked, getting up abruptly and walking to the window. Tariq waited while she stared out at the glistening water of the Red Sea. “You know,
rules
—no dating, no drinking alcohol, no using drugs, no this, no that, no, no, no. . . .”

“As opposed to the fathers who say, ‘My dear daughter, please drink alcohol; please use drugs’? What do you expect him to say?” Tariq joked, getting up to join her at the window. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder. “He’s a dad. That’s what dads are supposed to do—protect their daughters—right?”

“Hey,” Dalia said, trying to pull away, “whose side are you on?”

But Tariq held her close and gave her a kiss on her ear. “Come on, think about it. When you have a daughter one day, you’re really going to tell me that you’ll let her get drunk and smoke and date guys like me?”

They kissed by the window. Finally, holding her close, he asked, “Is your dad really a priest?”

Dalia laughed and pushed him away. “You’re just not going to let this go, are you?” She dropped into a cushy chair.

“I’m curious,” Tariq said, scooting himself up on a table next to her. “So?”

“He’s not a priest. He’s a pastor,” she said.

“There’s a difference?”

“I guess. Kind of.”

“Does he run the church, tell people about Jesus, care for the poor, that kind of thing?”

She nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Sounds like a priest to me.”

Dalia slapped him on the leg.

“So what’s Petra Bible Church?” he asked.

“Argh,” Dalia groaned, rolling her eyes. “It’s the church I grew up in. My dad’s been the pastor there since before I was born. It’s named for the ancient city of Petra, which is near Ma’an, my hometown.”

“Is it big?”

“What, the church?” Dalia shrugged. “It’s actually getting bigger. There were only thirty or forty people when I was a kid—and hardly anyone my age. But now, the last I heard, there were about a hundred and fifty people there, most of them young couples and families—and lots of kids.”

“And that’s where you met what’s-his-name? Kalim?”

She shook her head. “Hardly.”

“Then where?”

“College—my sophomore year. Some girlfriends and I went to Paris for a weekend. We met at a café.”

“Ooo, sounds romantic.” Tariq laughed, trying to cover his creeping jealousy. “So what happened to your
petit ami de Paris
?”

“He liked me. I liked him. We started to date. It didn’t work out. No big deal.”

“That seems to me like describing World War II as ‘These countries didn’t like each other, so they fought for a while; then it ended.’” Tariq leaned his back against the warmth of the window. “I sense you might be leaving out a few details.”

“Yeah, well, the detail you need to know is that my father hated him,” she said, ignoring his little dig. “Actually, I don’t think he
hated
Kalim. I think my father is incapable of
hating
anyone. But he certainly
disapproved
of him.”

“Why?”

“Because Kalim wasn’t a Christian. He wasn’t anything, really. He didn’t care about religion at all. That didn’t go over well with my father. Ever since I was a little girl, he has insisted that I marry a Christian, period, end of sentence, end of story.”

Ouch,
Tariq thought.
I don’t think Daddy’s going to be so happy to meet me.
“So if you knew that, why did you date Kalim?”

“Because who cares what my father says?” Dalia shot back with an air of defiance. “I’m going to date whomever I want, and I’m going to marry whomever I want, whether my father likes it or not. It’s my life. Not his. It’s really none of his business whom I marry or if I even get married. I certainly don’t intend to let him judge me for not living by all his rules and regulations.”

“You say you dated him despite how your dad would feel about him. Could it be that you dated him because you knew exactly how your dad would feel about him?” Tariq hypothesized with a barely suppressed smirk.

Dalia leaned forward in her chair and looked like she was ready to unleash on Tariq, until she saw his face. She dropped back into the cushions and chuckled. “Okay, Dr. Freud, you may be right. Now, can I make a suggestion?”

“Anythink,”
Tariq said in a bad German accent.

“Would the good doctor object to joining me in some outdoor activities, rather than wasting the day in here in deep analysis?”

“Ja, ja,”
Tariq said, sliding off the table.

But before he could get too far, Dalia caught his arm. “Oh, and, my dear, next time it’s you who gets to go under the interrogation lights.”

“You got it,” Tariq said with a kiss to her forehead, already mentally planning the day so that their busy schedule would “unintentionally” crowd out any opportunities for getting deep again.

45

Goddard walked out the front door of the Moroccan police headquarters and stopped under a large portrait of King Mohammed VI. His cell phone was ringing, and he didn’t want to take the call inside with all the eavesdropping ears around.

Lifting the phone to his ear, he said, “Tell me you’ve got something, Colette.”

“I think I do, sir. This might be big.”

“You’ve found Accad?” Goddard asked, anxious for some good news after days of nothing.

“No, sir, I’m afraid not.”

“Then what?” Goddard pressed, hearing the disappointment in his own voice.

“Well, sir, remember the surveillance video from inside Rafeeq Ramsey’s apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And remember the footage of Accad showing Ramsey something that he pulled out of a manila folder?”

“Sure, I remember,” Goddard said. “A photo of some kind.”

“Exactly.”

“What about it, Colette?”

“Well, sir, our tech guys were finally able to create a usable computer enhancement of that image. You won’t believe what they came up with.”

“What?” Goddard demanded, increasingly pressed for time. In a few hours, he would be on a plane to Beirut to interrogate Ramy Accad. He didn’t have time to play twenty questions with Colette DuVall.

“It turns out that image is a photograph of Claudette Ramsey,” DuVall explained. “It was taken by a security camera in a bank in São Paulo, Brazil.”

Goddard was stunned. Almost too stunned to talk. He sat on the low, whitewashed brick wall that surrounded the police station and leaned against the wrought-iron fence.

“Claudette Ramsey?” Goddard asked, his voice much softer than it had been before. “You’re sure?”

“It’s her all right—a 100 percent match,” DuVall said, her excitement evident in her words. “There’s a time and date stamp on the bottom of the photograph, and the bank’s logo is on the back wall, just over Mrs. Ramsey’s left shoulder. I e-mailed you all the details.”

Goddard could hardly believe it. This
was
a dramatic development, but what did it mean? He had no idea. He was still too shocked to process it, so he put the question to DuVall, since she, at least, had had a bit of a head start on considering the photo’s implications.

“I don’t know, sir,” DuVall conceded. “I’m just as stunned as you are.”

“What do you think it could mean?” Goddard asked again, unwilling to let her off that easily. “Give me your best guess.”

DuVall took a moment to consider her words. “Well, sir, it strikes me as proof that Marwan Accad knows where Mrs. Ramsey is, and therefore that Mr. Accad was, in fact, directly involved in blackmailing Rafeeq Ramsey. After all, why else would Mr. Accad have such a photo?”

“Maybe,” Goddard said, trying to consider the new development from every angle. “But there’s something about that theory that doesn’t completely ring true.”

“What would that be?” DuVall asked.

What would that be?
Goddard thought.
What
would
that be?
He stood and began walking—slowly moving past the various crests that hung on the metal fence. This was a good lead—an important lead.

He stopped in front of a newsstand and scanned the headlines of the daily papers. The most recent developments in the case hadn’t yet been fed to the press, but they soon would be. By tomorrow morning, Marwan Accad’s face would be plastered all over every newspaper and every news Web site, as would the story of the trail of blood from Monaco to Morocco and the rapidly intensifying international investigation. In twenty-four hours, most likely, Accad would have nowhere else to run.

Goddard bought himself a cup of coffee and kept walking.

“Colette,” he said at last to his assistant, who was used to waiting through his long pauses, “if Accad was really involved in kidnapping Claudette Ramsey, why would he go to Rafeeq Ramsey’s apartment and meet with him directly, face-to-face? Why would he risk exposing himself and his operation? And even if Accad were stupid enough to go mano a mano with one of the richest and most powerful men in the Arab world—and I don’t think of Marwan Accad as a stupid man—why in the world would he have Rafeeq Ramsey assassinated while he was standing in the room? Does any of that make sense to you?”

There was a long pause, and then DuVall said, “Maybe to give Mr. Accad an alibi.”

“No, that makes no sense,” Goddard countered. “If he wanted an alibi, he would have found somewhere else to be, not standing in the room while the murder went down. Besides, what about the car bomb? Why was Accad almost killed with the car bomb? And who tried to kill him at the Méridien in Monte Carlo? And what about those guys in Saint Michel? We still don’t know who they were, but there is little doubt that they were trying to kill Accad. None of that makes any sense if Accad is really involved in kidnapping, blackmail, and murder, does it?”

“No, sir, I guess it doesn’t,” DuVall admitted. “But why then would Accad have had that photo of Mrs. Ramsey? And what about that friend of his he killed in Casablanca?”

“
Allegedly
killed,” Goddard reminded her.

“Sir, with all due respect, Marwan Accad’s fingerprints were all over Kadeen al-Wadhi’s house,” DuVall said. “He was definitely there. The evidence is clear and incontrovertible. What’s more, there’s no evidence that anyone else was in that house until you. How do you explain that? What other conclusion can you draw except that Marwan Accad is responsible for those two murders?”