“I think I should leave,” said Cooper.
“No. No,” said Rashid. He placed his hand on her wrist as if to insist that she stay. “What I have to say is in no way privileged. You are a prosecutor here in New York, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should hear me out as well. I don’t have much time right now as I have an engagement I must keep, but I will tell you this: Carla Spinova went to North Africa to take pictures that she thought would earn her a considerable amount of money. Instead that trip got her killed.”
“Go on,” said Madriani.
“On September 11, 2012, the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked and burned. The U.S. ambassador and other Americans were killed.”
“Yes.” Paul remembered the tragedy well, as it made headlines with widespread political accusations that were still ongoing.
“For nearly three weeks following those events, the consulate building — what was still standing — was left unguarded and largely open,” said Rashid. “There is also information that confidential and classified documents remained in the rubble. I have it on good authority that Spinova traveled to Benghazi to obtain photographs of the building and its charred interior. She found something when she was there, a document that would have given her what you call a juicy story, which she intended to sell to the news media with her photographs. But before she could do so she was murdered, and not by your client.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Madriani.
“Trust me. I don’t have much time to talk right now, but perhaps we can meet tonight at my office at the UN Plaza.”
“It’s Saturday. The UN building is closed,” said Alex. Her initial skepticism was butting up against details about the horrific tragedy in Benghazi, and the fact that the Spinova murder might have had international consequences rather than simply prurient ones.
“I will make arrangements for you to get in. Can you meet me there, say, nine o’clock?”
Madriani had a plane back to LA the following morning but his evening was free after this dinner, and to say that his curiosity was piqued was an understatement. “I’ll be there, just as soon as we’ve finished our meal.”
“And you, madam?” Rashid looked at Alex.
“I don’t have a stake in the Mustaffa case,” she said. “And I’m not sure that Mr. Madriani would want me…”
“You are a public prosecutor. You made a big deal in our discussion an hour ago about the court system not being a game, Alex. That’s your mantra, I think,” Madriani said. “You have a stake in doing justice, do you not?”
She nodded.
“Then please. You’ve been very outspoken about criticizing prosecutors who won’t consider exculpatory evidence right up till the time of a verdict.”
Alex hesitated as Madriani pressed the invitation. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go with you.”
Rashid gave them instructions to an underground parking facility at the UN building. He pulled a parking pass from his leather folio and gave it to Alex. “You have a car? Put this on your dash, it will get you past the guard.” He got up, bade them farewell. “Until tonight.”
Nine o’clock behind the UN building, Alex and Paul walked toward the monolithic tower, home of the United Nations Secretariat. Before they had gone fifty yards, a figure stepped out of the shadows and raised his arm waving toward them. He was still wearing the wrinkled white linen suit from earlier in the day.
“I trust you had no difficulty parking?” said Rashid.
“None,” said Alex. “You keep long hours.”
“No rest for the weary,” he replied. He led them toward a side entrance to the main building. Before they got there Rashid hailed a janitor who had the door open and was just going inside. “Can you hold the door for us? Thank you.” Rashid slid his keys back into his pocket and led the way toward a service elevator at the back of the building. He turned, smiled, and said: “I cheat. I’m not supposed to use it but it’s so much closer to my office than the main elevators.”
Two minutes later they were in his office, a spacious corner room on the seventh floor with large windows on two sides, overlooking the East River. Rashid’s nameplate was on the desk, a university diploma on the wall and a photograph — Rashid with his family, wife and, Paul counted them, five children. Two of them appeared to be adults.
Rashid took the chair behind the desk. “Please have a seat.” He gestured toward the two chairs across from him. “Unless, of course, you’d rather sit on the couch.”
“This is fine,” said Madriani. Paul was anxious to cut to the chase. He wanted to know what Rashid had and whether, in fact, it might have any impact on his case. And he didn’t have much time.
For the defense, the Mustaffa trial was going nowhere fast. Police had evidence that Mustaffa’s taxi was in the area of the murder scene the night that Spinova was killed. GPS data from the car’s tracking system placed the vehicle close to the vicinity where the body was found. But what was most damaging was the eyewitness testimony of the State’s principal witness. Madriani was still trying to figure out how to deal with it. He knew something bad was coming from documents he received during discovery. Perhaps the man would equivocate, but Paul doubted it. And the testimony could prove to be a killer depending on precisely what the witness said he saw.
“Can I offer you anything to drink? Coke? Water?”
Both lawyers shook their heads.
“Then let’s not waste time. As I told you, Spinova went to Libya about two weeks after the Benghazi raid on the consulate. But the story begins before that. Late January 2011, the so-called Arab Spring. There were deadly riots all over Egypt. People were dying in the central square in Cairo. You may have seen pictures,” said Rashid. “Camels trampling some, others being shot.”
Madriani and Alex nodded.
“Much of this, including fires, buildings torched, took place within a stone’s throw of the Museum of Cairo. Have either of you ever been there?”
“I have,” said Alex.
“Then you are familiar with some of the artifacts on display. In particular, I am talking about Howard Carter’s collection, the treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamen.”
“Yes,” said Alex.
“What does any of this have to do with Spinova’s murder?” asked Paul.
“Bear with me,” said Rashid. “On the night of January 29, 2011, under cover of the riots and fires raging outside the museum, thieves broke in and stole items from the Tut collection. What they couldn’t carry off, they vandalized. Included among the objects that were taken was a priceless gold figurine of the boy king standing on the back of a panther carved from black ebony. It was one of the premier items recovered by Carter from the tomb in 1922.”
“Of course,” Alex said. “It’s a spectacular piece.”
“There is no way to put a dollar value on the object other than to say that it is priceless. The thieves damaged the base of the statue, the ebony panther. They broke off the gold figurine and took it. We have reason to believe it is still missing.”
“Yes, but what does this have to do with Spinova?” said Paul.
“I’m getting to that. When Spinova went to the burned-out consulate building in Benghazi, she was intending to take pictures and perhaps write an article about what she saw there. She was hoping to be one of the first to visit the site with a camera and she assumed that she could benefit financially from the information. However, this all changed after she climbed through one of the open windows of the building because of something she found.”
“What was that?” Alex asked. She was all in now.
“A document,” Rashid said. “It was a classified memorandum from your CIA referencing items stolen from the museum in Cairo.”