Jack hadn’t called his show Truth Tellers simply because it sounded good. Truth was the fire that fueled him. He’d spent his entire career cutting through the layers of horse manure that people often used to hide or deflect responsibility for their actions, always searching for the truth they were trying to hide. His interviewing style was direct and sometimes confrontational, but never without empathy, and he often thought of himself as “good cop/bad cop” rolled up into one. He believed truth was liberty’s Siamese twin, not her cousin. When truth was absent, liberty followed.
Jack suspected that Adam Swain’s cover story about al-Fida being an MI6 mole was yet another layer he had to cut through. And the only way he knew to do that was to confront al-Fida himself.
He had the cab driver drop him off in front of a small pub on St. George Road, which was sandwiched between a Laundromat and a Classic Kitchens store. He went inside and ordered a pale lager, taking a few minutes to again center himself and weigh his options.
According to Google Maps, al-Fida’s flat was located about two blocks down, in a modest Victorian-style building across from St. Angela’s Ursuline School. Deciding the direct approach was probably best-just knock on the door and start asking questions-Jack drank his lager in three quick gulps, then threw some money on the table and went back outside.
As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he nearly collided with an olive-skinned man with a wispy goatee. The man was moving briskly, obviously in too much of a hurry to see Jack coming. For a moment Jack thought it might be al-Fida himself.
But no-this man’s face was older and more angular than the one in the personnel photograph, and Jack dismissed him as just another resident of the area. He muttered a quick apology that got no response, then crossed the street and headed in the direction the man had just come from.
Less than five minutes later he found al-Fida’s building and stood in the shadow of a large oak tree, next to the beige brick wall that bordered St. Angela’s.
He knew that al-Fida lived in Unit 2, which faced the street, but the window was dark now and it looked as if no one were home.
Jack tilted his watch toward the light of a street lamp and checked the time.
Nearly nine P.M.
Too early to go to bed, he thought, unless al-Fida was an early riser. Tucking his hands in his pockets, he leaned back against the wall and waited, hoping a car would come along at any moment and deposit al-Fida at his front door.
He was still waiting forty minutes later, increasingly convinced his target was either out for a late-night rendezvous or wasn’t coming home at all.
Jack was betting on the latter.
So what should he do? Abandon this whole crazy idea or ratchet it up a notch? He may have been without a witness-or suspect-to interview, but there was no telling what the man’s flat might reveal. Jack hadn’t scooped up a handful of paper clips at the business center for nothing. Plan B had been in the back of his mind all night.
He didn’t fancy himself a burglar, but he’d assisted in a few break-ins as a kid, when he and his friends got their kicks rummaging around in homes, raiding refrigerators and purposely rearranging furniture. They were harmless pranks, but Jack wasn’t particularly proud of that time in his life. His father hadn’t been too thrilled when he found out about it, either, and Jack could still vividly see the disappointment in his old man’s expression, and the verbal tirade he had to endure because of it.
His dad wasn’t likely to approve now, but the Reb’s words about the greater good kept circling through Jack’s mind. After waiting another half hour, as windows went dark up and down the street, he checked for any unwanted eyes then crossed to al-Fida’s building and went to work on the entryway door.
Getting into the flat was easier than he expected. Picking a lock wasn’t exactly like riding a bicycle, but with patience he was able to make do with a couple of the unfolded paper clips. The main parts of this type of lock are small pins. All he had to do was simultaneously push the ones on top up and the ones on the bottom down and the lock popped open. He credited his work with watch mechanisms for his success. Fortunately, he hadn’t encountered any curious neighbors from across the hall in the process.
Pushing the door open, he listened carefully for any sounds of activity, but didn’t hear any. Stepping inside, he quietly closed the door behind him and looked around at what appeared to be a modest one-bedroom flat. There was enough light from the street lamps outside to reveal that al-Fida had decent taste in furniture, but the place had a kind of stark, spare coldness to it that didn’t particularly appeal to Jack.
Not that it mattered.
The living room was to his right, and a small uncluttered kitchen to the left, and beyond that was a narrow hallway that undoubtedly led to the bedroom. He was hoping to find a computer desk out here, but no such luck.
Jack crossed to the hall and stopped, listening carefully for any sounds of breathing or soft snores that might indicate that al-Fida was at home and asleep.
Nothing.
The bedroom was at the far end of the hall. As he worked his way toward it, he stopped at a door that hung ajar about halfway there. He carefully pushed the door open and checked inside. It was too dark to see much, so he fumbled for a light switch and flicked it on.
It was a walk-in closet but there was nothing hanging inside. No shelves or storage boxes. The closet was completely empty except for a compass and a mat on the floor. Set in a round brass frame about the size of a pocket watch, the compass was a qibla indicator, pointing the user toward Mecca. It lay in a corner of the closet, with a prayer mat carefully placed in proper alignment behind it. The order displayed impressed Jack. He could see how the simplicity and order of the Islamic faith appealed to so many.
This was al-Fida’s prayer room. A small, clean space free of distraction that he undoubtedly used several times a day.
The compass was compact enough to be used for travel, and its presence here led Jack to believe that al-Fida hadn’t left London. Which meant if he wasn’t dead, he might walk through his front door at any moment.
Flicking off the light, Jack continued down the hall to the bedroom. There was another window back here that opened onto an alleyway with very little light coming in. He didn’t want to turn on the overhead for fear someone might take notice, but he could hear the hum of a computer and was able to make out the edges of a monitor sitting atop what looked like a small desk in the corner of the room.
Stepping past the neatly made bed, he moved over to the desk, nudged the mouse with his finger, and an iMac screen came to life. He was hoping to do a thorough search of al-Fida’s desk drawers and hard drive, but what he saw on the screen stopped him cold.
It was open to a word processing application. And typed at the very top of the page were two simple words: Forgive me
Jack’s jaw tensed.
This looked suspiciously like a suicide note.
His heart racing, he spun around, looking past a closet slider to a closed door that was now illuminated by the light from the computer screen.
A bathroom, no doubt.
And then he saw it-a tiny sliver of light coming from the crack beneath the door.
Someone was in there. And he doubted they were using the facilities.
Grabbing a lamp as a weapon and moving away from the desk, Jack hurried to the bathroom and yanked open the door, freezing in motion at the horrific sight inside.
The tub was full, and Abdal al-Fida lay chest-deep in the bloodied water, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling-eyes that reminded Jack of his old friend Riley after their Humvee was ambushed. His dark skin had a pale cast. Both arms were concealed in the murky red water and there was no visible wound that Jack could see.