Fatal Convictions (22 page)

58

The ringing of his BlackBerry woke Alex out of a sound sleep Sunday morning. Without opening his eyes, he patted the nightstand to locate his phone. Success. He cracked open an eyelid and looked at the caller ID. Why was Shannon calling at 7:30 a.m.?

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” Alex said when he answered the phone. His voice was hoarse and gruff. “Tell me you’re not calling about work.”

“What were you
thinking
?” Shannon asked, her voice in midday form. And the energy . . . It sounded like she’d already chugged three cups of coffee.

“About what?”

“Have you been on the Internet?”

Alex dropped his legs over the side of the bed and ran his hand across his face. “I was sleeping,” he said.

“Alone?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was waking up now and getting a little perturbed.

“There’s a picture of you and Nara on the Internet.” Shannon’s voice was cold. “Lots of bare skin. Doesn’t look like it’s been Photoshopped. You’re definitely in some kind of embrace.”

Alex grunted. “We went paddleboarding yesterday. That photo was probably taken at the end of the day—late afternoon. She gave me a sympathy hug after rejecting my dinner invitation.”

“
She
gave
you
a hug?” Shannon said, as if she was certain that Alex had mauled Nara instead. “She’s the daughter of a Muslim cleric, and
she
gave
you
a hug?”

“Come on, Shannon. I already told you it was just a friendly hug. . . . She felt sorry for me after standing me up for dinner.”

“That’s not the way the press is playing it.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.” Alex was ready to get off the line. Go back to sleep. Crisis averted. “I’ve hugged women before, Shannon. I might’ve even hugged you a time or two.”

Shannon let out an exasperated sigh. She launched into a rapid-fire lecture about fraternizing with a client or a client’s daughter. She even referenced his grandfather’s list. Alex put the BlackBerry on speaker, placed it on the bed next to him, and crawled back under the sheets.

“Do you know why an honor killing is typically a beheading?” Shannon asked.

Where did that come from?
“Some verse in the Qur’an, I guess,” Alex replied.

“Not really,” Shannon said. “Beheadings invoke terror. Honor killings are terrorist acts, Alex. They don’t just kill women; they
decapitate
them. They want to strike the fear of God into anyone thinking about leaving the Islamic faith. And, Alex, they don’t just kill the women, either. The men die too.”

Alex stared at the phone for a second. Maybe Shannon had a point. The last thing Alex wanted to do was put Nara in danger. “I’m sorry,” he said, though it came out grudgingly. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“I’ve noticed that about men,” Shannon said. “Their brains shrink in direct proportion to the size of the bikini.”

If Alex hadn’t been so tired, he might have thought of a good comeback. Instead, all he could mumble was that it wasn’t a bikini.

He promised Shannon he would be more careful, hung up the phone, got out of bed, and surfed the Net. The picture was everywhere.

“Forbidden Romance?”
one of the sites asked.

The caption on another was even more demeaning.

“All in a Day’s Work,”
it read.

* * *

As if on cue, the next honor killing occurred four days later in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. A young Muslim woman had disappeared along with her alleged American boyfriend. The police manhunt concluded after forty-eight hours, when the bodies were discovered in a shallow grave not far from an evangelical church the two had been attending. As in the other killings, the woman had been beheaded. The man’s body was badly charred. The authorities grimly concluded that he had been burned alive.

The experts speculated with abandon about the religious symbolism. In the first honor killing, Martin Burns had been buried alive. Was this a mockery of the Resurrection? The second killing involved baptism. And the man in the third had been burned alive—probably an allusion to the fires of hell.

The nation was terrified—and angry. The hate mail to Madison and Associates quadrupled.

59

The flap over the picture proved to be relatively short-lived. Still, it changed the way Alex and Nara acted around each other. They now kept it über-professional. No touching. Little time alone together. Certainly no platonic hugs. You never knew when someone might be watching.

Alex normally enjoyed the fall, a time of year when the tourists left and the locals reclaimed the beach, but this year was different. It seemed he spent every waking moment at the office. Khalid’s case clung to him like a shadow, sparking pangs of guilt whenever Alex tried to relax and take some time off.

Though the media attention dissipated somewhat, Shannon still argued that she should now be the one to go with Nara to Lebanon to take Hamza Walid’s deposition. But even Khalid didn’t agree with her about that. They were already getting signals from Walid’s lawyer that he was skittish. He was a traditional Muslim. He would want a man asking the questions. And Alex wasn’t about to stay home on this one.

Alex did concede that he and Nara should fly separately. She left first so she could spend a few days with her friends. Three days later, on the second Sunday in November, Alex checked in for his flight to Beirut with layovers in New York and Paris. The deposition started Tuesday.

* * *

When he landed at the Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport around 10 a.m. on Monday, Alex felt as if he had been flying in planes for two straight years. It was great to stand up straight and stretch his legs, back, and neck.

He saw signs in French, English, and Arabic, but most of the words spoken around him were indecipherable. He had coffee breath and a stiff neck, and his face felt puffy. Like a lost sheep, he followed the herds of strangers through customs, picked up his luggage, and looked around for Nara.

He felt disoriented by both the jet lag and the unfamiliar culture buzzing around him. As he listened to the Lebanese men and women speak to each other in their hard-edged Arabic, he suddenly felt a little vulnerable. He was now officially in the land of Hezbollah. He didn’t know the language. He had no weapons. His American street savvy would be of little use. He was a surfer from Virginia Beach stepping onto the gigantic stage of a distant and dangerous world.

He spotted Nara, straightened his shoulders, and summoned a little of that famous Madison bravado.

“How was your flight?”

“Piece of cake.”

She almost gave him a hug but pulled back. “Welcome to Beirut,” Nara said with a proper and firm handshake. Her enthusiasm quickly chased away any lingering apprehensions Alex felt. “The Paris of the Middle East.”

Nara helped him with his luggage and hailed a small car at the curb that looked like a taxi. “It’s called a ser-veese,” Nara explained. “S-e-r-v-i-z. It’s basically a small car with a wild man for a driver who will ignore all traffic signals.”

After they threw Alex’s luggage into the trunk, Alex and Nara climbed in the backseat. “Taxi,” Nara said. Then she spoke to the man in Arabic.

“These cars operate as either a taxi or a serviz,” Nara explained to Alex. “A taxi costs a little more, but it means the driver doesn’t pick up other passengers along the way. A serviz means he stops and picks up others during the trip.”

On the way to the hotel, Alex found out that Nara’s original description of a serviz had been uncannily accurate. Traffic lights apparently served no purpose other than to illuminate intersections. Lines on the road were merely decorative. In twenty-five minutes, Alex saw remnants of five different accidents.

One ploy by the driver was particularly unnerving. On one of the streets in downtown Beirut, the driver stopped right in the middle of the road, got out of the car, walked to the sidewalk, and started talking in animated Arabic to one of the shopkeepers. Other drivers blew their horns and gave Alex and Nara dirty looks. Nara let this go on for about thirty seconds before she got out of the car and started yelling at the taxi driver. He talked back for a few seconds, then returned to the car, hopped in, and pulled away.

“What was that all about?” Alex asked.

“He was lost,” Nara said.

They eventually found the Ramada where Alex was staying, and Nara promised to return that afternoon to show him the sights. He checked into his room, threw his gym bag on the floor, and lay down on the bed to relax. The bed was lower than most American beds and hard as a rock. The only other furniture in the room consisted of two plastic chairs. The walls were painted a muted orange. The bathroom looked decent, though Alex had been told that you didn’t flush the toilet paper in Beirut; you placed it in the trash can.

He missed America already.

He turned on a small television set and surfed through the channels. Most of the programs were in Arabic. CNN had an English-speaking program, but the stories seemed to center around Europe. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. Within minutes, he was sound asleep.

60

Alex woke up at three o’clock to the annoying sound of his BlackBerry alarm. He felt like he had been run over by a Mack truck. He had been sleeping so hard there was drool on his pillow.

He staggered out of bed and into the bathroom. He had the air conditioner set as cool as it would go, but he had still been sweating in his sleep. He brushed his teeth, showered, and threw on a fresh pair of shorts and a T-shirt. When he got to the lobby, Nara was waiting for him.

“Good nap?” she asked.

“Like I was drugged.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were walking on the Corniche—the concrete walkway along the coast atop the cliffs of the Mediterranean. It wasn’t quite Virginia Beach, but Alex had to admit that this place had its charms. People lined the railings along the Corniche—talking, fishing, or just hanging out watching other people. Some folks were dressed in conservative Muslim garb and others wore next to nothing. Runners would occasionally pass by. Small groups of people smoked something through a long hose attached to a decorative bowl sitting on the sidewalk.

“What’s that?” Alex asked.

“It’s called sisha,” Nara replied. “They’re smoking fruit-flavored tobacco through a water pipe.”

“Sounds awful.”

“I’ve tried it a few times,” Nara admitted. “Tastes like perfume.”

As they strolled along and took in the sights, it seemed like Nara was walking closer than normal, their arms occasionally brushing against each other. Alex had an urge to reach for her hand, but he remembered the uproar created the last time they had touched.

They talked about Hamza Walid’s deposition. Alex explained how the process worked. He and Taj Deegan would both be there. Walid’s own attorney would also be present. A court reporter would take down the testimony, and a videographer would tape the entire deposition. Though Nara couldn’t go in the room, she could wait outside, and Alex promised to consult with her during breaks. He also knew that it would probably help fortify Walid if he realized that Khalid’s daughter had made the trip.

“There’s a lot riding on his testimony,” Alex said.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Nara suggested.

* * *

A few hours later, Alex and Nara got out of a serviz at Martyrs’ Square. The statues there were riddled with bullets and missing large chunks where mortar blasts had ripped them apart. Nara pointed out a nearby shell of a building that had been decimated by bombs during the civil war.

“That was a Holiday Inn,” Nara explained. “We’re standing in the Green Zone—the epicenter of the fighting. That building became the headquarters for one faction and then another, depending on who controlled this area.”

“How many years ago was that?” Alex asked.

“1980.”

“And they haven’t rebuilt it?”

“There are some things left as a reminder,” Nara said. “But in most areas, Beirut rebuilds quickly. My people are a resilient people.”

They sat on the concrete at the base of a statue, and Nara started talking about her family. “I was very young during most of the civil war, but I’ve heard the stories. My mother’s brother was killed not too far from here. It made her bitter and angry, in part because my father didn’t harbor the same level of hatred that she did.”

Nara leaned back and shook her hair out of her face. The sun was beating down on them, unhindered by clouds. “I can hardly remember a time when my parents didn’t fight at home. In public, my mother played the silent and obedient wife. But in private, she questioned my father’s commitment to the Muslim faith. When I grew up and rebelled against the oppressive rules in our home, my mother blamed it on my father.”

“I’ve never really seen your parents fight,” Alex said.

“That’s because you didn’t know them before the accident.”

Nara leaned forward, picked up a pebble, and tossed it absentmindedly. She gazed into the distance. “Any other Muslim man would have divorced my mother twenty years ago. That’s why this whole thing seems so bizarre and unfair. My father is the last person who would try to hurt a woman.”

“I know that.” Alex said. “And I intend to prove it.”

Spending time in Beirut seemed to be relaxing for Nara, causing her to open up more than usual. She talked about losing both of her brothers. Omar had been working in a refugee camp when he was killed by an Israeli bomb. “Naturally my mother blamed the Jewish infidels, even though it was Hezbollah who instigated the hostilities and stationed their soldiers among innocent refugees.”

Less than two years later, Ahmed was killed as part of a Hezbollah raid north of the border. “He was only sixteen,” Nara said sadly. “I felt like I never had a chance to tell him good-bye.”

Nara’s mother again blamed the Israelis. But Nara held Hezbollah and the radical imams responsible. “They brainwashed him, Alex. They had him running missions that they didn’t have the guts to do themselves.

“My mother rejoiced that her son had been found worthy to be a martyr. But after that, she was never the same. She had lost both sons, and she was left with a rebellious teenage daughter who despised her.”

Alex listened in silence. He sensed that Nara hadn’t been this vulnerable in a long time. Perhaps ever.

“I more or less left the Muslim faith when my brothers died,” Nara admitted. “Not physically, but emotionally.”

Alex had never heard Nara state it so bluntly.

“I studied your Jesus for a while, but I ultimately decided I should work within my family’s faith to help women find a voice,” Nara continued. “I believed then, and I believe now, that radical groups like Hezbollah and the Taliban have hijacked a faith that could have been a great blessing to the world.”

“A lot of Americans agree with that,” Alex said.

Nara turned to him. The contemplative look was gone. Therapy over. The spark was back in the almond eyes. “Yes,” she said with a tinge of sarcasm. “The enlightened Americans. How many female presidents have you had?”

“None. They’re too emotional.”

She swatted him.

“Case in point.”