A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  He heard a car pull into the driveway outside. His sisters were coming. His mother was dying. His heart was breaking. But at last he saw it clearly—the light in front of him, the chance to redeem something of his life. It was more perilous than any path he had ever taken. There would be casualties and collateral damage. But the potential reward was commensurate with the risk. If anyone could pull it off, he could.

  And if he failed, at least he would go to his grave with the knowledge that he had tried.

  PART SIX

  Joshua

  March–May 2015

  CHAPTER ONE

  EMIRATES FLIGHT 905

  OVER SAUDI ARABIA

  MARCH 16, 2015

  11:35 P.M.

  “Would you like some water, sir?” asked the flight attendant, balancing a tray on her hand.

  Josh took a bottle from her and twisted off the cap, taking a sip. He glanced at Rana in the seat beside him. His friend’s eyes were closed, his head propped against the headrest, the faint sounds of reggae emanating from the earbuds in his ears. For a moment, Josh considered joining Rana in sleep. He was exhausted after nearly twenty-four hours in transit. But he resisted the instinct. They would be on the ground soon. He could sleep at the hotel.

  He reached for his backpack and took out his iPhone and noise-canceling headphones, searching for the recording in the memo app. He knew every word of the conversation by heart. He had done most of the talking. His source had spoken only in riddles and occasionally for clarification. In the past month and a half, he had listened to the recording a dozen times. There was nothing left to glean. But the enigma of the man’s motives continued to gnaw at Josh. He pressed Play and sat back against his seat, remembering.

  The rain fell like flour sifted from the lightless sky. All was wet and cold, the kind of cold that shivers skin and seeps into the bones. Had he not been so distracted, Josh would have noticed that his teeth were starting to chatter. But his mind was on graver things. He huddled deeper into his anorak, his fists bunched inside damp pockets. His footsteps were the only sounds intruding upon the silence of the National Mall. It was two in the morning on a Monday in February. Before long, six million Washingtonians would rise from their beds and greet another gray winter workweek. For now, though, the city was only awake in the shrines of the dead.

  Which was why Josh was here. His source had chosen well.

  The Lincoln Memorial stood before him, robed in brilliance, like the shining citadel on a hill that had fired the dreams of the first Americans and haunted their progeny ever since. He scaled the steep steps in pairs, the faces of lions and eagles watching him from their granite chalices. At the top of the staircase, he slipped through the colonnade into the north chamber.

  A man stood with his back to him, looking up at the text of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. He was dressed in a dark suit, a wool topcoat, and a matching fedora—the sartorial stereotype of Washington’s professional class. But his skin set him apart. Even in 2015, the vast majority of DC power brokers were white. The man was black.

  “Joshua Griswold,” the man said, turning toward him, his voice resonating in the vaulted space. “You look different in the flesh. The stubble becomes you.”

  When Josh saw the man’s face, his stride broke in surprise. He had spent the last thirty hours turning over rocks on the Internet and reading everything he could find about Presto and the Millennium fire. He had guessed the source was a disgruntled midlevel functionary, either recently terminated or passed over for promotion. He could not have been more wrong.

  “I could say the same for you,” Josh replied, finding his voice. “I expected—”

  “Someone else,” Cameron Alexander interjected. He gave Josh an opaque look, then his lips spread in a wry smile. “An understandable mistake.”

  Josh stared at him for a moment longer, then tried to make conversation. “When I was at Harvard, I had your father for constitutional law. All of us were mesmerized.”

  Cameron’s smile disappeared. “Spells are curious—they conceal more than they reveal.”

  It was a peculiar statement, and Josh allowed it to hang in the air until the pause became awkward. It was a trick he had learned from a negotiator he once interviewed—stare at a person long enough and he’ll fill in the silence with something more than he meant to say. Cameron, however, seemed immune to the discomfort. Or perhaps he knew the technique.

  “What are we doing here?” Josh asked at last, realizing with a shudder how cold he was. The wet winter chill had circumvented his jacket, permeated his jeans, and risen up through the soles of his sneakers until he felt like he was standing in a refrigerator. He folded his hands and warmed them with his breath.

  “I’d have thought that a man with a pair of Pulitzers would tell me,” Cameron said.

  Josh looked past the barb and realized that Cameron was telegraphing something critical about the game they were playing. There were limits to what he could volunteer. But Josh’s questions—and the inferences he drew—were unconstrained.

  “All right,” Josh replied. “I’ll talk and you tell me where I’m wrong.” He organized his thoughts. “The Millennium fire was an accident, no sign of foul play. But the factory was a death trap. One entrance and exit through the storeroom on the ground floor. Three generators online, all within yards of flammable fabric. A short in a wall socket set the fabric ablaze. The generators exploded and sent flames up the stairwell. The workers on the lower floors escaped through the windows. But the people on the upper floors had no chance. The death toll, by last count, was three hundred forty-three.”

  “A nice soundbite,” Cameron said. “But nothing original.”

  “I’m just getting started,” Josh rejoined. “What makes the fire interesting is why the workers were at their stations at nine in the evening with the power out. Here the stories diverge. Activists alleged they were fulfilling a last-minute order for Presto. But Presto claimed that it hadn’t done business with Millennium in months. Reporters tried to get into the factory, but the owner sealed it off. The only evidence we have implicating Presto is the photograph of the girl.”

  Cameron looked down at the ground, his expression obscured by the brim of his hat. Josh waited. Moments passed. Then Cameron spoke again, and his voice was different somehow.

  “Sonia Hassan.”

  Josh narrowed his eyes. “What?” His heartbeat increased. “Is that her name?” When Cameron didn’t respond, he went on. “No one was able to identify her. There was too much blood and soot, and the pants were over her nose and mouth. Are you saying you found her?”

  Cameron was silent again, but this time he appeared to be calculating.

  “Is she alive?” Josh asked. “Where is she?”

  At last, Cameron said, “Her father is Ashik Hassan. Find him and he will tell you.”

  “It was your order, then. Millennium was making clothes for Presto.”

  The general counsel didn’t answer, so Josh took his reasoning a step further. “You knew how dangerous it was. You lied to the press. You covered it up.”

  Cameron seemed to bristle. “That’s too simple. And too small.”

  “So you didn’t know about it?” Josh demanded, allowing his incredulity to show.

  Cameron stared back at Josh, his eyes unfathomable. “We’re not a bad company. We’re more conscientious than many of our competitors. But we’ve lost our way.”

  Josh clenched his jaw, suppressing his frustration. “I didn’t come out here in the middle of the night for platitudes.”

  “You can walk away,” Cameron replied, holding out his hand toward the darkness and the rain. “Or you can accept this for what it is.”

  “And what is that?”

  Cameron spoke his answer evenly, without judgment. “How long has it been since you last wrote a column? Almost a year?”

  Nine months. But Josh didn’t say it.

  Cameron went on. “I came to you because I respect your work. I also happen
to believe that everyone deserves a second chance. But I can’t make you take it.”

  Josh steadied himself. “I’m listening.”

  “No, you’re not,” Cameron said. “You’re talking.”

  “Right.” Josh stood for a moment, thinking. He looked up at the wall inscribed with Lincoln’s luminous words and replayed in his mind everything Cameron had said. It was then that an idea struck him. It was outlandish, but it had a certain incontestable logic.

  “This isn’t about Millennium, is it? This isn’t even about the fire. This is about Presto. It’s about your supply chains, the way you make the things you sell to consumers.” Josh followed his intuition further. “Or perhaps it’s bigger. It’s about the business of retail in the global economy.”

  Cameron raised an eyebrow. “A bit grandiose, but not completely off base.”

  Josh took a short breath. At last he was beginning to understand. “You gave me a name—Ashik Hassan. I assume he’s still in Bangladesh. I can find out. But if this is about Presto, I’m guessing there are other names, other stories.”

  For a brief moment, Cameron’s wry smile returned. Slowly, almost reverently, he spoke two more names: “Jashel Sayed Parveen, Rightaway Garments, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Alya Begum, Sun Star Enterprises, Cyber City, Jordan.”

  “I need to write this down,” Josh said, reaching for his notebook.

  “No, you don’t,” Cameron contradicted him. “You’re recording.”

  Shit, Josh thought, even as the iPhone in his pocket converted his silence into binary code. “I’m surprised you don’t object.”

  Cameron shrugged. “You won’t use it. Not in public, at least.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because your sources are the last people in the world who still trust you. And because I have these.” Cameron reached into his topcoat and produced a small manila envelope. “I imagine you’ll want me to guard them with equal diligence.”

  Josh took the envelope and opened it. What he found inside stunned him. They were photographs, close-ups, and absolutely damning. He was with Maria in the lobby of the Hotel Caesar Park in Rio de Janeiro. She was wearing the sheer viridian dress that turned her eyes into blue-green lagoons. She was holding his hand, imploring him not to leave. She was leaning into him, and he was letting it happen, his fingers on her arm. And then she was kissing him, and he was kissing her, the good-bye he intended getting away from him, as so much had before.

  He closed his eyes. “How . . . ?” he stammered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cameron replied. “I know that’s where it ended. She left and didn’t come back. But that was only three months ago.” He reached into his coat again and handed Josh a folded piece of paper. “I also have this.”

  Josh stared at the page with trembling hands. It was a record of a wire transfer in the amount of ten thousand dollars. The name on the originating account was his. The destination account was Maria’s. The date was just before Christmas.

  “I don’t fault you for it,” Cameron said. “In spite of her indiscretions, the work she’s doing is commendable. But perception is reality. No one would understand.”

  Josh took a labored breath. “What do you want me to do?”

  Cameron met his eyes. “I want this to matter.”

  “The Post? 60 Minutes?”

  Cameron shook his head. “The media has the attention span of gnats. And the public is overwhelmed. It would get lost in the clutter.”

  Josh’s head began to spin. The meeting, the cold, the pictures—he felt depleted, almost despairing. If not the media, then who? What was he missing?

  “When I was a young man,” Cameron said, “my father told me about the great civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department, Robert Ames. They met at the March on Washington in 1963. Lewis was there too. He was just a boy. It seems he followed in Robert’s footsteps.”

  For a moment, Josh was confounded. What did Madison’s father and grandfather have to do with Presto? He racked his brain for an answer. The memorial. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The names, the factories, the foreign lands. Suddenly it came to him. It wasn’t Lewis’s past that interested Cameron. It was his present work—the public-interest lawsuits Lewis had brought against Goliaths in the government and the private sector and won against all odds.

  “You want me to start a war,” Josh said. “In the courtroom.”

  Cameron said nothing, but in his eyes Josh saw the truth.

  “I’m not a lawyer,” Josh protested. “I don’t know the law.”

  “You knew it once,” Cameron replied. “My father taught you. And you have your wife. From what I’ve heard, she’s a damn smart attorney.”

  Had, Josh thought. I had her. How in the world will I convince her—let alone her father—to spearhead a legal campaign against a multibillion-dollar corporation? But the longer he pondered the idea, the more he warmed to it.

  “And you?” Josh asked. “What’s your role in all this?”

  Cameron smiled again. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not your friend. I’m going to use every lawful means at my disposal to oppose you.” He paused. “But you must prevail. We have blood on our hands.”

  When the recording ended, Josh shook his head, as bewildered as he was before. He understood the guilt beneath Cameron’s words. He had met Sonia and Jashel. But he was just as certain that their exploitation was not the general counsel’s fault. Cameron was a Harvard-trained attorney. Presto was not only his company; it was his client. By disclosing information to a journalist and inciting a lawsuit against Presto, he had shattered more laws than Josh could count. What could possibly have compelled him to do it? And what, exactly, was his ultimate objective? If the lawsuit took Presto down, Cameron would go down with it. Yet his charge hadn’t seemed like a suicide pact. He was after something that Josh couldn’t see. But what?

  Josh put his headphones away and looked out at the night. The stars always looked different from the air, like snowflakes frozen in an obsidian globe. The desert below was an abyss as deep as space, the darkness total in every direction. Josh watched the horizon out the window, waiting for the appearance of light. They were scheduled to land in Amman in twenty minutes. Another flight, another country. But not any country—Jordan.

  The Middle East had changed profoundly since his last trip. The Iraq War had come to an end. The Arab Spring had ignited hopes of democracy and then dashed them again, toppling dictators only to open up vacuums of power that had drawn in villains under half a dozen black flags. The peace talks in Israel were in tatters, but the Iranians were negotiating a nuclear deal with the US. Syria was perpetrating its own holocaust, creating a humanitarian crisis beyond comprehension. Oil was gushing from shale wells in North Dakota, undermining the influence of petrostates like Saudi Arabia. Every week, it seemed, the world was treated to another Islamic State beheading. Across the Levant, the brutal stability of Cold War realpolitik had given way to uprisings, bloodshed, and chaos. Only a handful of states remained unscathed, chief among them the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

  Since the 1990s, when King Hussein agreed to end hostilities with Israel, Jordan had been a bulwark of peace, modernization, and reason in the region. Its citizens were largely educated, industrious, and tolerant, its women working in the marketplace, holding positions of power, and dressing how they wished—some in hijabs, others in the latest Western fashions. Its religion was Islam, but the faithful tended toward moderation. The barbarians of the Islamic State were literally at the gates, but they had yet to breach the Jordanian firewall. In all these ways, Josh admired the country. But there were exceptions to the rose-colored story. Freedom of press was an illusion and corruption was endemic. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that Cameron had directed him here. Underneath Jordan’s polished gleam, all manner of injustices lay festering.

  At last, Josh saw the lights of Amman sprinkled like stardust on the horizon. The plane came in low and fast and landed with barely a bump. When the
y began to taxi, he took out his iPhone and connected to a network. A number of notifications showed up, but he noticed only one of them—a missed call from Madison. Had it been anyone else, he would have ignored it. But a call from his wife meant one thing—something wasn’t right with Lily.

  “Hey,” he said when she answered. “Is everything okay?”

  She took a breath, and he heard its weight. “No, everything is not okay. Where are you?”

  His heart clutched in his chest. “Amman.”

  He could almost see her shaking her head. “Bangladesh, Malaysia, Jordan. When will it end?” She paused. “Forget it. Don’t answer that. I’m calling because of Lily. She had her clinic visit on Friday. She wanted you to be there.”

  The blade of guilt buried itself deep. “I wanted that too,” Josh said softly.

  Madison took another breath, and he heard her unspoken question. Then why didn’t you come home? But he didn’t answer it. He couldn’t. Not yet. Instead, she said, “Today was a bad day—the worst in a while. She misbehaved at school. She was mean to another girl. Her teacher called, and I picked her up early. I took her out for pizza. She asked where you were, and I told her I didn’t know. She flew into a rage. She threw her cup at me.”

  Tears collected in Josh’s eyes. “It’s the Dex. It’s not her.”

  “I know that,” Madison snapped. “But the medicine didn’t put words in her mouth.”

  He felt the knife twisting in his gut. “What did she say?”

  Madison sniffled, and he knew she was crying. “She blamed me for sending you away.”

  He massaged his face. “Shit,” he finally managed. “I’m sorry.”

  Madison laughed tersely. “And I thought you’d come up with something eloquent.”

  He accepted the jibe. He had earned it. “Is she there? Can I talk to her?”

  “Not now. She’s out at the stables with her grandmother.”