“Listen,” the Saudi said, sweat on his brow, “I sold stocks, that’s all. That’s the extent of what I did. I adjusted our positions, as any money manager might do. That happens as a matter of course many times in a year. There’s not a jury in the world that would convict me of anything illegal. There’s nothing, nothing at all, to connect me to any of these horrible crimes.”
Hauck finally intervened. “This has nothing at all to do with any jury, Mr. al-Bashir. This woman is trying to save your life. Your family’s life. Don’t you understand?”
The Saudi glared back at him, about to challenge him. But the fight seemed to go out of him.
Naomi took his arm. “If I wanted to have you arrested, we’d already be having this conversation in a cell, Mr. al-Bashir. You have no way out. You’ve put yourself and your family at great risk. But what you don’t want,” she said, her tone softening, “is for there to be no way out and for you to end up dead.”
A cast of recognition settled over the Saudi investment manager’s face. He grew sullen. He ran his hand through his hair and glanced, seemingly out of answers, toward his wife and kids.
“What if I just walk away? Do nothing?”
“Then I’ll do nothing.” Naomi shrugged. “Other than maybe make sure that the transcript of that conversation I referred to gets in the hands of your employers. They may not feel the same way, I suspect, when it comes to how their investments are being handled. We’ll also let it be known that we had this conversation. About Mr. Hassani. Considering what just happened to Mr. Thibault, are you really willing to take that chance?”
The Saudi wiped his mouth. He released a long, deflating breath as the full measure of his predicament seemed to fall on him.
“I’m giving you a way out, Mr. al-Bashir. In our protective custody. For your cooperation. You can hold on to the majority of your assets. Those that were rightfully earned. But what we want to know, sir, is what was the extent of this plot? Who was involved? Where does it lead?”
He shook his head. “I need time.”
“You have no time, sir. Go back home. Talk it over. I’ve arranged a car from Scotland Yard to be stationed outside your house. I’m sorry for all this, sir, but the time to answer is now.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Behind the closed doors of their study, Sheera looked at her husband, aghast.
He had told her everything. How his roots with Hassani went back many years. To when he was a young student. Not even in the U.S. At the university in Riyadh. How they had singled him out. Educated him. Groomed him. For a purpose. For one day.
How his sensibilities had been so different back then.
“How could you possibly have gotten in with people like this?” His wife tearfully shook her head.
“I never thought about them for twenty years,” al-Bashir said. “It was before I went to the U.S. Before I met you. As time passed, I thought they had forgotten the debts. I thought life had let me be free of them.”
“These types of debts are never forgotten. Life will never let you be free of them.” Sheera sat forlornly on the couch. She looked at him, something angry and judgmental in her eyes. “You should have refused, Marty. You should have gone to the police.”
“They would have killed me, Sheera, if I didn’t comply.”
“And they will kill you now that you have.”
He wanted to go over and sit next to her, his wife for all these years, the most treasured thing in his life. But he was sure she would just pull away. This had drawn a line between them. Maybe forever. “I’m so sorry. We’ll get to keep much of what we have. I know what it is to give this up.”
“To give this up?” She lifted her eyes and regarded him as if she was horrified. “You think for one second this is what I care about giving up? This house? Your fancy position? The things it has brought us?” From out in the hall, they heard the sounds of their boys playing. “It’s them. Amir and Ghassan. It’s their lives that matter to me. Will they now be targets? Will we live in fear the rest of our lives? Wherever we are…These are debts that don’t get forgiven, Marty.”
He glanced, empty of all hope, out the window. There was an unmarked car parked across the quiet street. “I’ll call Arthur,” he said, closing the drape. Their lawyer. “He can arrange some kind of deal.”
“It’s not about lawyers, Marty. Not this time.” She picked up one of Amir’s Transformer robots from the floor. She smiled and looked up at him. Resigned. Even forgiving. Tears flooding Sheera’s eyes, she held out the toy. “I think we made our choices long ago.”
Marty al-Bashir nodded. Tears in his eyes too. Tears of shame. Of fading hope for them. “We did, didn’t we, Sheera.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Annie Fletcher picked out the set of spare keys to Ty’s house from where she knew he always left them, along the side of the house behind some flower tubs in a fake rock. She went up the stairs and let herself in.
The alarm signal beeped. She pressed in the code, 70794.
His daughter Jessie’s birthday.
Annie knew he wouldn’t mind. She’d let herself in many times before. The place looked clean and smelled fresh. It was a Saturday, and Elena, his cleaning lady, would have been in the day before. She was trying to find her gold hoop earnings, which were missing. She seemed to remember last leaving them on his night table when she’d stayed over a few nights before.
Before there suddenly seemed to be a widening gulf between them.
Maybe it had first begun with the attack on Jared. Ty had said maybe it was best if they kept apart for a while, for her safety, but Annie somehow felt that was Ty being Ty, maybe not wanting to face the truth, being noble. Or maybe, if she was honest, it had started some time well before. Maybe it went back to when they woke up in bed that Monday to the newscast of that family who was killed in town.
I knew her, he had said.
It was like something had changed in him since then.
She’d never pried. She’d never asked how. Or why. Never pushed him. That wasn’t her style. The last thing Annie would ever want was for someone to say that she was clingy. After all, they’d both agreed to keep things light.
From around town, he had told her. That was enough for her. He didn’t have to share everything with her. Though she may, in truth, have hoped that he would. She held a lot of things in herself-she’d left her own son out west until she could make a place for him here-and the truth was, while maybe she had fallen in love with Ty, just a bit, they weren’t exactly engaged.
He’d been away for four days, and she’d barely heard from him in that time. He said it was best that she didn’t know where he was going. But she had a clue. She had asked him, What are you getting involved in, Ty?
She had wanted to say, Okay, you don’t have to justify it with me, but in her heart, she worried. Worried something had happened. Somewhere. She worried he was getting himself into something over his head. He did that.
She worried something might have come between them. Something she couldn’t fight. Or even understand.
She went into the kitchen. Unable to help herself-what was it?-she put away a few dishes that Elena had left on the counter to dry. She almost tripped over a pair of running shoes. Then she went upstairs.
In the bedroom, she went over to the night table on the side of the bed she usually slept on, looking for her hoops. Damn. There was nothing on top. Where she thought they might be. Just a picture of Jessie and his boat, which Ty had just gotten out of dry dock-the Merrily.
She opened the drawer.
Nothing again. She sighed in disappointment. She had been sure they were there.
The room gave off an eerie feeling; it looked just like it had the last time she’d been there, a couple of nights before he’d left. They hadn’t made love that night. She’d felt something, distant, growing, separating them. And now he was gone.