The Names of the Dead

by Wignall, Kevin

  “My father thanks you for coming, despite the shame on this house, and begs your forgiveness.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Mr. Berrada. You lost a son.”

  Mr. Berrada responded with a look of gratitude and reached out to take his wife’s hand. Wes turned his attention to Hamdi.

  “I’m sorry to get right to the point of my visit. I’m sure you’ve had visitors from the American embassy or the consulate here in Seville, and I just wondered . . .”

  He stopped because Hamdi was shaking his head.

  He sounded bitter and bemused as he said, “But we haven’t, Mr. Wesley. Not one. It’s strange, is it not? My brother was radicalized, so we might expect many people from your government, but none, not after the attack.”

  “I see.” And then Wes caught up with the words. “Not after the attack? You mean . . . ?”

  Hamdi looked across at his parents, then stood and left the room. Wes could hear low voices elsewhere in the apartment, while all was stillness here, like people awaiting a train that wouldn’t arrive.

  Hamdi came back in and said, “My sisters are making tea, but perhaps we could take a walk, you and I?”

  “Sure.” Wes stood and turned to Mia. “Would you like to come, or wait?”

  She smiled. “I like it here.”

  He smiled back, despite the situation, and nodded to her, then walked out into the hallway, following Hamdi. But the young man stopped at the door before he left, turning to Wes, fixing him with a fierce and urgent stare.

  “My brother was not a terrorist, Mr. Wesley.”

  It was something Wes had heard many times before. No one ever wanted to think that their brother, their son, sometimes their daughter, had become so disillusioned or so driven by hate that they’d been willing to kill themselves and countless others in the pursuit of some delusional objective.

  Looking at the bruised and earnest face of Hamdi Berrada, it was almost tempting to believe he was the exception, that his brother had been framed or tricked by persons unknown. But he was wrong, probably, and Hassan Berrada had been exactly what he’d seemed, an angry and pliable young man, easily indoctrinated into carrying out mass murder.

  “I believe you,” said Wes, with such conviction that Hamdi appeared satisfied, and they walked out and down onto the street.

  Nineteen

  Once they were walking, Wes said, “So, tell me about your brother.”

  “Hassan was simple, everybody knew it. He was so sweet-natured, but frustrating too, because he was so gullible. Moon landings, Roswell, all kinds of strange conspiracies he believed without a moment of doubt. But most of all, he wanted to be a spy. James Bond. He loved James Bond. And he was talking about it more than ever in the weeks before the attack.”

  “So you don’t believe he was radicalized.”

  “Of course not. We are a moderate family. My parents chose to come to Seville because they wanted to become part of Spanish society. And Hassan also loved America and American culture—he was so excited about being able to come and visit me there.” He noticed a glance from Wes and nodded in response. “I was planning to go to MIT next year, a grad program in electrical engineering and computer science. What chance do I have of doing that now?”

  “How did you get the black eye?”

  He smiled, an edge of bitterness. “A misunderstanding.”

  “What did you mean when you talked about Americans visiting before the attack?”

  Hamdi frowned, looking uncertain now. “I don’t know for sure that he was American. I never spoke to him. I saw him a few times talking to Hassan, firing him up with something.” Wes’s heart sank, seeing that this might just be a case of a young man desperate to exonerate his brother and rescue his memory. “He looked American.”

  “What does an American look like?”

  Hamdi shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t know, I mean . . . he looked American, and once or twice, Hassan slipped up and said it would be different when he was in the CIA, then everyone would know they’d underestimated him.”

  Wes let out a sigh, realizing too late how that sigh sounded, as if he felt his time was being wasted here, which was actually what he did feel. “So you think an American recruited your brother with promises of being in the CIA, and then presumably you think they gave him a mission to deliver a backpack to Granada, and because he was gullible he never would have suspected what was in the pack or that he was being set up to be a suicide bomber, to blow up a handful of random people in a random café. And all of that because . . . ?”

  Even as he said it, Wes acknowledged in his own mind that one of those random people had been a former intelligence analyst with the CIA, who might well have been working freelance at the time. It was as beguiling a thought in its own way as Hamdi’s belief that his brother had been duped rather than radicalized.

  “I know how it sounds, Mr. Wesley. But please, go back to my original point and consider it. If my brother was radicalized, that suggests somebody radicalized him, online or in person, so why has no one from your government visited or called us at all in these recent weeks? And I’ll tell you another thing—”

  Wes spotted a sudden movement as something flew towards them. Instinctively, he snatched it out of the air a couple of feet short of it hitting Hamdi. It was an apricot, but hard and unripe enough that it would have hurt, or maybe even wounded him—the impact had left the freshly healed wounds on Wes’s hand smarting.

  Wes spun around and spotted a couple of teenagers standing behind the partial cover of a tree on the other side of the street. One of them shouted something and the other laughed in response. It sounded abusive, threatening. Wes also had to admit, from where they were standing it had either been a pretty good throw or a lucky one.

  He turned to Hamdi. “You want me to have a word with them?”

  To his surprise, Hamdi looked back with barely concealed contempt. “A word? And what about tomorrow, and the day after? What good will your word do then? Our life here is over.”

  Wes stared across at them anyway, and something about his gaze persuaded the two young punks to walk on. Wes watched them slouch away, but despite Hamdi’s protestations he couldn’t resist one small lesson at least. He threw the apricot, hard, and felt a surge of satisfaction as it hit one of them on the back of the head.

  The kid staggered forward and both of them automatically broke into a run, shouting abuse as they disappeared.

  Wes’s smile fell away though, as Hamdi said, “You feel good? What you just did only makes more trouble for us.”

  “You said your life here was over anyway.” But he looked now and saw how much this young man was struggling to hold it together, and the burden he was carrying. “Look, I’m sorry. I just . . . Okay, this guy you saw hanging around your brother. Did you tell the police about him?”

  “I did better than that. I was suspicious, so one day I managed to take a picture of him. I showed it to the police immediately afterwards.”

  “But nothing happened?”

  “Oh, something happened. Both my phone and my computer got hacked and wiped clean.” He smiled bitterly, seeing the change in Wes’s expression, the increased interest. “Yes, but I’m smarter than them. I store all my university work in the cloud, and I stored the picture there too.”

  “Can I see it?”

  Hamdi looked ready to refuse, possibly thinking that Wes still didn’t believe him, resentful of having to prove himself. And to some extent he was right to think that, because Wes was skeptical. If an American had been hanging around Hassan Berrada in the weeks before the attack, maybe there was something in that, but Wes certainly couldn’t afford to waste time on a grieving brother’s conspiracy theories.

  Still, Hamdi took his phone and studied it for a minute, tapping the screen, swiping through a few pictures before handing it to Wes. Wes held it up, using his hand to shield the screen from the sunlight, then making sure to keep his face neutral despite the shock of what he saw there.


  There were two people in profile talking to each other. One was presumably Hassan Berrada, though he didn’t look much like the grainy pictures that had appeared on the news bulletins. The other was clean-cut, wearing chinos and a polo shirt and Wes kind of understood now what Hamdi had meant about him “looking” American.

  Wes zoomed in, expanding on the face, hoping to be proved wrong, but the close-up only told him what he already knew. The man looked American because he was American, and seeing him in that picture changed everything.

  Wes handed the phone back, but Hamdi was studying him carefully, and his tone was accusing as he said, “Who are you? You recognize that man. Who are you?”

  “I told you. Rachel was my wife. I used to work for the US government, and yes, I recognize that man, but I don’t know his name.”

  “But you know who he works for?”

  Not anymore. The man in the photograph was Scottie Peters, and until three years ago he’d worked for Wes. And Wes was making some immediate assumptions on the back of this discovery but wasn’t sure he trusted his own judgment—he needed space, to think it through properly, to be certain in his own mind at least.

  Scottie had always looked as clean-cut as he appeared in that picture, a look somehow at odds with his misogyny and his casual racism. Wes had imagined him to be loyal at least, but it seemed the loyalty had also been superficial, transferred now to his new team leader. And that was almost certainly Sam Garvey, which meant Scottie’s recruitment of the hapless Hassan Berrada had probably been on Sam’s orders.

  Hamdi’s voice became more strained, more high-pitched, as he said, “You hear me? Do you know who he works for?”

  Hamdi was becoming so tightly coiled that Wes started to prepare for things to turn nasty, but he kept his own voice calm as he said, “Yeah, I know who he works for, and as hard as it might be to accept, my advice to you is that you pretend you never saw him.”

  “You’re suggesting the US killed my brother, made him appear a terrorist, and you’re saying I should do nothing?”

  “Yes, for the sake of your family if not for yourself.”

  “No, I won’t do it. And I don’t trust you! You’re one of them. Why should I trust you? You don’t care about us!”

  Wes grabbed his shirt at the chest and pushed him against the wall of the building, so hard that Hamdi almost cried out.

  “You’re right, I don’t care about you, but you’re not the only person who lost someone here. I lost my wife, and my son is still missing.” As he said it, an icy fear coursed through his mind, that Sam Garvey might have Ethan too, but he pushed the thought away. “Now, I have no idea what’s going on here. The only thing I can tell you with any certainty is that the man in that picture will be dead very soon. So get smart—help your family rebuild and get on with your life. You hear me? Forget you ever saw him!”

  He let go of Hamdi’s shirt and stood back, seeing the fear in the younger man’s eyes.

  “Who are you?” The tone was different this time, and Wes knew he’d said too much, his own anger bubbling to the surface. Wes simply shook his head, because he wasn’t sure he had an answer anyway. Who was he? Who had he been, and who was he now?

  “We should go back.” He started walking, and after a few paces, Hamdi caught up with him. Wes’s ankle felt fine now, but the effort of throwing Hamdi against the wall had given him a twinging reminder of the bruised ribs. “I want you to know, most Americans would be outraged by what’s been done to your family.”

  “And yours.”

  “Maybe.”

  They walked the rest of the way back without talking.

  Twenty

  When they got back into the apartment, Wes could hear someone speaking in halting English. As he walked into the living room he saw it was the woman with the baby, Hamdi’s sister. She was talking to Mia, who looked blissfully content sitting there holding an ornate tea glass, apparently oblivious to the context of this visit.

  As well as the teapot, there were plates of small pastries sitting on low tables. Mrs. Berrada was looking with a slightly glassy smile at the baby, who was now awake and burbling happily. The two smaller children were sitting on the floor, engaged in some game while Mr. Berrada and the elderly lady looked on with fixed smiles.

  Mia said, “Hello, Wes.”

  “Hello.”

  “We’re having Moroccan tea. It’s really good.”

  “Great. Er, unfortunately, we have to leave.”

  “Now?” He nodded and she turned to Hamdi’s sister and said, “We have to leave now. I hope we can come again. This tea is very nice.”

  The delivery was once again like someone learning English in an evening class, and Hamdi’s sister appeared bewildered by Mia’s apparent detachment from the family’s all-too-apparent grief.

  They said their goodbyes and Hamdi showed them out of the apartment.

  Before leaving him, Wes said, “Thanks. That picture changes everything, and I know it’s not much of a consolation, but the people who did this, they’ll get theirs.”

  “Will Hassan’s name be cleared?”

  “No. No, it won’t. And you’d be wise not to talk about it with anyone else, as difficult as I know that will be.”

  Hamdi offered the slightest nod in response, then said, “You still didn’t tell me who you are.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother, that’s all.”

  Wes turned and followed Mia down the stairs, and once they were walking along the street, she said, “Where are we going?”

  He pointed to the busy intersection up ahead. “There’s probably a café or bar up there. I need time to think. And I guess we need to talk.”

  That was enough for her and she walked in silence, with a slightly beatific smile, almost like the one she’d had when she came back from her church visits. She was one of the oddest people he’d ever met and yet he’d miss having her around, but that was what they needed to talk about—and what he needed to think about—because it wasn’t safe for her to be with him now.

  The pieces had been clattering together in his mind and the scenario that had emerged was about as bad as it could be. Scottie Peters had apparently recruited a gullible young man of limited intellect and duped him into carrying out a terrorist attack in an unlikely location, where one of the victims happened to be the ex-wife of Scottie’s former boss.

  So, far from being a random victim, Rachel had most probably been the target, and that also meant it had likely been linked to Wes in some way. There was one other possibility, laden with a mixture of guilt and hope—that maybe Rachel had known she was in danger, and that was why she’d spirited Ethan into hiding.

  Wes thought of that picture of Scottie talking to Hassan Berrada and felt a searing sense of betrayal. He’d been good to his team, and had fallen on his sword when he could have fought his corner, as much to protect those working for him as to protect the reputation of the Agency and the USA.

  Had Rachel been investigating the events surrounding his fall from grace? If so, that would have set her on a dangerous course, to the point where Sam Garvey might have panicked and decided to shut her down. And was Garvey in Spain, too? If not, Wes couldn’t understand what Rachel had been doing here, or what she’d planned to do in Málaga.

  Wes had something else to consider, and that all depended on what kind of clearance Scottie had received for this mission, and who’d signed off on it. It if had been Sam, that was serious, serious enough for Rachel to go to great lengths to hide her child, serious enough that it wouldn’t be safe for Wes to find Ethan until he’d neutralized the threat that Sam posed.

  But if Sam had managed to poison the well to the extent that Wes’s removal had become an Agency-wide policy, then it might never be safe. Wes guessed he needed to stop thinking about the situation in such sweeping terms—he had to break it down into smaller problems that could be dealt with one at a time, and no matter what the scenario, Sam Garvey would have to be the first of thos
e small problems that Wes tackled.

  They’d reached the intersection now and saw a café on the corner. They took a table inside and Wes ordered a coffee. Mia asked for sparkling water. Wes wondered if it was safe for her to take him as far as Madrid, but instantly he realized he couldn’t afford to go to Madrid yet—if this was about him, he needed to go in better prepared than he was at the moment. He needed to pay a visit to Patrice’s contact in Lisbon first.

  “Mia, I think it might be dangerous for you to be with me.”

  She smiled like he’d said something ridiculous. “People tried to kill you. When you came out of the forest.”

  He understood what she was getting at, that she’d been aware of the danger associated with Wes from the moment he’d come stumbling and bloodied out of the woods. But the dynamic had shifted violently.

  “I’m not sure of the facts yet, but this is what I think happened . . .”

  “A hunch.”

  It wasn’t so much that she was being playful, more that she seemed to view life through a filter, with reality always at a step’s remove from her idiosyncratic internal universe.

  “Kind of, maybe more than a hunch. I think my wife—my ex-wife—was investigating the crime that got me sent to prison and I think she was murdered because of it. Hassan Berrada, he wasn’t really a terrorist, he was just a kid who got set up. I think I got set up too, my wife was looking into it, and they killed her. I think she knew she was in danger and that’s why she left her son somewhere.”

  Spelling it out like that made him feel spineless. While he’d been languishing in relative comfort for three years, trying and failing to improve his skills as a painter, Rachel had been trying to clear his name, even after she’d realized it might be putting her life in danger.

  “Will you find him?”

  “You mean Ethan?”

  Mia nodded, but the waitress brought their drinks over, and Wes waited until she’d left them alone again. Mia looked at him expectantly the whole time. It gave him a vital moment anyway, because he’d assured Hamdi that Scottie Peters would be killed, and right now Wes wanted nothing more than to kill him, and Sam Garvey and anyone else who’d been involved in this, but that wasn’t his key priority. His key priority was the same as Rachel’s had been, to make sure their son was safe.