The Last Judgment (8 page)

The sheikh paused for a moment.

“Tell him—I will take his call.”

As the assistant turned to leave, the sheikh added something.

“Tell him that I have carefully weighed and considered Mr. Mullburn's contribution to the field of ancient religious artifacts. And now, there is much to discuss.”

10

A
S USUAL
, B
ILL
C
OLLINGWOOD ROSE
at five and was out the door at six in the morning. His wife, Esther, though ill with malaria, had managed to get up and make breakfast. Their small cottage in the Virginia countryside was on the grounds of the one-hundred-and-fifty-acre Arabian horse farm of Roland Dupree and his wife, June. As manager of operations, Bill's responsibilities included everything from overseeing the stables and the horse groomers and trainers, to making sure that the horse transport vehicles were in good operating condition and the electric fence and security systems on the property were in functioning order.

Bill had a small office in the main stable. That morning he was reviewing the shipping documents relating to the anticipated arrival of a new Arabian.

But he was finding it difficult to concentrate. His eyes wandered to the small window over his desk, gazing out at the bright blue sky that outlined the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. He was disturbed that Gilead, who was such a God-fearing young man, had gotten himself into trouble with the law.

As a life-long missionary, Bill Collingwood understood his son's zeal to evangelize Muslims—particularly in view of his background. But Bill's philosophy was the classic missionary strategy. Patience and a loving approach to cross-cultural evangelism, with painstaking groundwork in planting seeds and building bridges.

By contrast, Gilead's incendiary oratory at the Islamic Center seemed to contain too much fiery prophecy and not enough of the gentle proclamation of the gospel.

Something distracted Bill, and he glanced over to the door leading to his office. Standing there was Dakkar, the senior horse trainer for the stables.

Born in Bahrain of Saudi parents, Dakkar had met the Collingwoods in Cairo through a mutual friend. Though he had always been a zealous Muslim, he had developed a casual friendship with the Collingwoods. Before leaving Cairo for the United States when Esther's health problems increased, the American couple had invited him to look them up in the States.

Then two years previous, Dakkar had come to the United States to pursue graduate school. But he had dropped out and asked the Collingwoods for a job. Bill had recommended him to Roland Dupree, knowing that the young Arab had had experience training and riding Arabians for a Saudi family—and later, for a wealthy family in Egypt.

Now Dakkar stood in the doorway, staring at Bill.

“You look like you've got something on your mind,” his boss said with a smile. He pushed himself back from the old wooden desk.

“What is it?” Bill asked, probing.

“Mr. Collingwood—I had a talk with Mr. Dupree yesterday. I'm very worried…about my job…you think that I'm doing a good job, right?”

Collingwood nodded. “Sure. I do. I'm a little concerned that sometimes you show up late and leave early. You know—you and I had a talk about your hours—”

“Right. Absolutely,” Dakkar added quickly. “And I've been trying to do better. Much better. But Mr. Dupree, he says he's thinking about firing me. Says he is tired of my not doing the right hours. Coming in at the perfect time. I had told him I couldn't work one Saturday…and I didn't think he'd been too upset about that. But now he says he doesn't know if he wants to keep me. Is there something—please, sir—that you can do?”

Bill Collingwood paused for a moment.

“I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll talk to Mr. Dupree for you. I'll put in a good word.”

The younger man's face brightened.

“Okay, thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Collingwood,” he said with relief.

Then he disappeared from the doorway.

Collingwood turned back to his paperwork, but he still couldn't focus. He was thinking about the implications for Gilead if he ended up being convicted of a criminal offense, even if it was a misdemeanor. A conviction would likely mean he would be disqualified from finishing at the mission school. Gilead had completed the first year before he'd dropped out and taken the position as pastor in West Virginia. Bill had been secretly hoping and praying that Gilead would complete his missionary training, and then return to the Middle East with the same missionary organization through which Collingwood and his wife had worked for more than two decades.

Though Gilead had spoken little of returning to mission school and completing his training, Bill had hoped it would be so. But now, with the criminal charges…

At least
, the veteran missionary thought to himself,
Will Chambers agreed to take the case. That was a blessing. But whether he can win the case remains to be seen.

11

V
IRGINIA
D
ISTRICT
C
OURT WAS IN SESSION
in the courtroom of Judge Lawton Hadfeld, where testimony in the criminal misdemeanor trial of Gilead Amahn had taken up most of the morning.

In his early forties, Hadfeld had been a judge for nearly a decade. His approach to the law was not particularly elegant, though it was thoroughly practical—having been shaped by general practice of law in Virginia, followed by his years on the district court bench. His court heard the mundane stuff of real life rather than the deeper mysteries of constitutional law—single welfare mothers being evicted, busy executives going eighty-five in a sixty-five-mile-per-hour zone on I-95, homeowners violating the brush-burning ordinances.

Hadfeld was leaning back in his judge's chair, rubbing his eyes.

The prosecution case had started with the testimony of the “imam,” who supervised the worship in the Islamic Center Mosque, and of the “mufti,” who was also in attendance at the Islamic Center at the time of the riot. The Commonwealth attorney had also called as a witness an attendee at the conference, a professor at a Florida university who had suffered a broken arm in the melee. His injury, according to the testimony, was likely to leave him with a small percentage of permanent disability.

Now the prosecution was wrapping up its case with testimony from the arresting officer who had obtained a statement from Gilead.

The prosecutor led the thirty-year veteran of the sheriff's department through a description of his presence at the Islamic Center that day. The deputy described the tensions with the two groups of protestors outside the Center. Then he said that a mob of angry Muslims had burst out the front door of the Center chasing after Gilead Amahn, whom he then identified as the man sitting at the defense counsel table next to Will Chambers.

Then the Commonwealth attorney went to the heart of the matter.

“And you arrested Gilead Amahn?”

“Yes, sir, that's correct. Then I placed him in the patrol car. And then after that, I proceeded to read him his rights, after which time he gave me a free, voluntary statement concerning his side of the incident.”

“Now tell the Court,” the prosecutor said, “exactly what Gilead Amahn told you in the patrol car after he was arrested.”

The deputy paused for a minute and turned to squarely face Judge Hadfeld.

“Mr. Amahn told me,” the deputy said in a slow, clear voice, “and this is his statement verbatim…‘I knew they would react—I was not afraid of violence.' ”

“And after Mr. Amahn told you that he knew the audience in the Islamic Center would react to his speech, and that he was not afraid of their violent reaction, what did you do?”

Will Chambers quickly rose to his feet.

“Objection, Your Honor,” Will said “The Commonwealth attorney is misstating the deputy's testimony.”

“Oh, I suppose Mr. Amahn's confession was fudged a little by the Commonwealth attorney,” Judge Hadfeld said, glancing at his notepad in front of him, “but this is not a jury trial. The Court is not misled. I'll instruct the Commonwealth attorney to be a little more careful in restating the testimony. Now let's get on with this.”

The prosecutor smiled and restated his question.

“After Mr. Amahn confessed to me he knew the audience would react,” the deputy said, “and that he wasn't afraid of violence, I informed him that I was taking him to a magistrate for the setting of bail, and that he would be charged with a criminal offense of disorderly conduct.”

“Your witness,” the Commonwealth attorney said to Will, and then sat down with an air of satisfaction.

Will was back on his feet but without any notes in his hand.

“Did you read something to refresh your memory before testifying today—so that you could memorize Gilead Amahn's statement word for word?”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” the deputy said, hedging a bit.

“Let me approach this from a different angle,” Will said in a casual tone. “As a deputy, you wrote out a formal incident report on this event, did you not?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And in your formal report you quoted Gilead Amahn exactly, word for word, as you recited in court today. Correct?”

The officer nodded.

“That's right. Word for word.”

“So my question is this,” Will continued. “Did you have with you that day, the day of the incident, a memo book?”

“You'll have to specify—”

“I mean a daybook. A notebook—a personal log that you keep, as most officers do, to write down events, statements, and observations on the scene. Then when you get back to the station, you use your log or memo book to reconstruct the information you then put in your formal report. Isn't that the way it's done?”

The deputy paused for a moment and smiled.

“Yes. I do have a logbook. If that's what you mean.”

“And you made entries that day—the day of the incident where you encountered Gilead Amahn at the Islamic Center?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Do you have that logbook with you today?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Please pull it out, Deputy,” Will said.

The deputy reached down into the small briefcase he had with him at the stand and retrieved a spiral-bound memo book. He flipped through the pages, glanced at a few of them for a moment, and then resumed his testimony.

“I do have a few entries here, if that's what you mean,” the deputy replied.

Will asked that the deputy hand the memo book to him, and the officer reluctantly complied. As Will walked back to the counsel table, the Commonwealth attorney swept up to his position and stared over his shoulder, reading the pages as Will examined them.

After a few moments, the other man shook his head a little, smiled, and resumed his position at the prosecution table.

But Will continued staring at the memo book, absorbed in something that he was reading there.

“All right, Mr. Chambers, let's get this show on the road,” Judge Hadfeld remarked.

Unperturbed, Will smiled, nodded, and resumed his cross-examination.

“Deputy, let's take the first of Gilead's statements—the statement ‘I knew they would react.' ”

Will was holding up the memo book in his right hand for emphasis.

“Would you agree with me,” Will continued, “that, according to your notes in your memo book, you asked Gilead Amahn this question: ‘You knew the audience would react'? And when you asked Mr. Amahn that, he simply replied that he knew there was a chance that the audience might react to what he had to say. Right?”

The deputy shrugged and said he couldn't say for sure without reading his notes again. So Will handed the memo book back, open to the appropriate page, to the deputy. After a moment he replied.

“I suppose that's one way to interpret my notes…they're a little sketchy…”

“You would agree that what I just said is the most reasonable interpretation of your notes? The most accurate interpretation of your notes?”

“I suppose so.”

“And as to the second statement by Gilead Amahn—the statement ‘I was not afraid of violence.' That was a statement prompted by your question, as indicated in your memo book. You asked Gilead Amahn this: ‘When the riot broke out, were you afraid of the violence occurring around you?' To which Mr. Amahn replied, ‘No, I was not afraid of the violence directed at me as I was being beaten and then chased out of the building.' ”

The deputy paused for a moment and then answered.

“Mr. Amahn told me he was not afraid of violence. That's what he said, and that's what I put in my report.”

“Prompted by a question, put to Mr. Amahn by you, as to whether he was afraid of the violence that was directed at him after the riot had already broken out.”

“According to my memo book…that's correct.”