Gods and Fathers

by Lepore, James

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Of course they suspect me in Damascus. That is the irony. Do you know a man named al-Haq, Mustafa? A Colonel Abdullah al-Haq.”

  “No, sire.”

  “He threatened me yesterday.”

  “I do not know him, sire.”

  “You may of course go to your dying brother.”

  “Thank you, sire. Will you stay in New York, sire?”

  “No.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “I will let you know.”

  “Yes, sire. One last item.”

  “Yes?”

  “Michael’s father has called Debra. He wants to meet her for lunch to discuss Michael.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “He left a message on the 2122 line.”

  “Where are they meeting? Did he name a place?”

  “At the Garden Restaurant at the Kitano.”

  “Just a few doors away.”

  “Yes. Shall I observe?”

  “No. She will hold herself together in the presence of her ex-husband. Where is she now?”

  “In the shower.”

  “She seems worse, does she not?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Perhaps we should change her medication, or the dosage. When do you leave?”

  “My flight is at six tonight.”

  “Leave the psychiatrist’s number on my desk.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Her son may go to prison. She is grieving.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Do you have children, Mustafa? I’ve never asked.”

  “No, sire, I do not.”

  Basil al-Hassan had been watching his servant’s face carefully during their conversation. It had been as lifeless, as appropriately subservient, as ever, until now. Did he have children? Was that why his eyes had narrowed slightly for an instant before answering?

  “And Michael?” Basil asked. “Where is he?”

  “In his room. Sleeping.”

  “You can go.”

  Chapter 32

  Manhattan,

  Tuesday, March 3, 2009,

  12PM

  “Debra,” Matt said, “do you know about the deal that Stryker wants Michael to make? Five years for rape?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Michael.”

  Matt had been sitting at a table in the rear right corner of the restaurant, his back to the wall, and was able to watch Debra as she nodded hello to the maitre d’ and walked slowly toward him—too slowly—and now he saw why. Her more or less permanent Hamptons tan was gone, replaced by a pale whitish-gray pallor that reminded him of the color of an opponent’s face who he had knocked down in the ring; that stunned, bloodless look. The drugs, Matt thought, trying to find his ex-wife’s once handsome features behind this white, listless mask, but not succeeding.

  “Did he tell you Stryker’s reasoning?”

  “The murder charge… the evidence.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “My son’s not a rapist.”

  “How do you think he’ll do in state prison?”

  “He’s not taking the deal.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He can’t.”

  “Did he tell you anything about a video?”

  “What kind of a video?”

  “Mustafa’s been videotaping everything in your Park Avenue apartment for the last six years. All the rooms.”

  “My God…”

  “Did he?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Mention videos.”

  “No.”

  Debra was even whiter now, ashen in the way a person would be whose most craven undertakings had been put on display. It’s true, he thought, and with that thought all of his anger at his ex-wife dissipated, melted away. After all the emotional torment he had suffered at Debra’s hands, he had assumed, having grimly daydreamed for years about a moment like this, that he would be happy to see her suffer one day, to see that the tables turned. But what he felt was pity, and sadness, and not just for her, but for Michael as well. In the way it has of doing such things, the universe had worked it out so that their terrible secret had been revealed, and now the price had to be calculated and paid by both of them.

  “Have you spoken to Stryker at all?” he asked, finally. He would have to rub salt in her wound now, but not for his own pleasure, or to make her feel worse. There were questions he needed answers to, regardless of how much pain they caused Debra.

  “No, never.”

  “Does Mustafa speak to Stryker?”

  “Mustafa?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  “Does Basil talk to him?”

  “Of course. Matt…”

  “Yes?” Do you want to tell me something? That you ruined our son?

  Debra, shaking her head, was crying. A waiter had been hovering nearby, but when he saw her face he went away. They both had sparkling water in front of them, ordered by Matt when he was seated. It was untouched.

  “I have to go, Matt,” Debra said, drying her eyes with her white cotton napkin.

  “Debra,” Matt said, “I think Basil or Mustafa, or both of them, are blackmailing Michael with one of the videos from the apartment. They’ll reveal it if he doesn’t take the deal.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Not Basil,” Debra replied. “It can’t be. He’s secretive. He has secret friends and he does things that he keeps from me. But he would not let Michael go to prison for no reason. He would not be involved in blackmail. It’s Mustafa.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw him hand something to a man in a car last week. I followed the car to Glen Cove. The man got out and put something under a car on Frost Pond Road…”

  “Davila,” Matt said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t come forward? You said nothing?”

  “I was frightened. I still am.”

  “He could have been acting on Basil’s orders. Basil’s a billionaire, Mustafa’s a servant.”

  “No,” Debra said. “It’s Mustafa acting alone. It has to be. He watches me. He listens in on my phone calls. He follows me. He’s the one who brings me my pills.”

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” Matt said. “There’s no time. This deal has to be stopped. Only you can stop it.”

  “When did you talk to Michael?”

  “Last night.”

  “What did he say?”

  “You mean what else did he say?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wants to make the deal.”

  “I have to go,” Debra said, reaching for her purse, which was on the chair next to her.

  “Debra.” Matt reached across the pristinely white-clad tabletop and took hold of Debra’s hand before she could pick up the bag. He meant to forcibly stop her from leaving, but he was shocked by the fragility of her flesh beneath his fingers, by the tremor he felt passing from her hand to his, as if he were holding a small, frightened bird. She looked down at their entwined hands and then back at Matt.

  “You can put a stop to this, Debra,” Matt said.

  “I know I can,” Debra replied. “And I will.”

  Matt let go of her hand and watched as she picked up her purse and left, taking her son’s future, and the remnants of her soul, with her. Their sixteen-year, post-divorce dance of anger and hate was over.

  She’ll do it, he said to himself, she loves him too much. And the price will be the loss of her son.

  Chapter 33


  Manhattan,

  Tuesday, March 3, 2009,

  2PM

  Two voices echoed in Debra al-Hassan’s head as she stood, key in hand, on the threshold of Mustafa’s office in her Park Avenue apartment. The first was Matt DeMarco’s, her first love, the handsome Marine who had fallen out of love with her and left her sixteen years ago.

  Mustafa’s been videotaping everything in your Park Avenue apartment for the last six years. All the rooms. Basil and Mustafa are blackmailing Michael.

  You can put a stop to this, Debra.

  The second was Basil al-Hassan’s, the dashing millionaire whose brilliant mind had turned to other things in the last few years, secret things he would not share with her, but who she could not, would not, believe, would ever do her any harm.

  I have spoken again to Stryker. He thinks he can make a deal for Michael.

  Adnan and Ali cannot be found. They are likely dead.

  There were no prints on the gun. No paraffin test was done. The evidence points to Michael, but is legally insufficient. His DNA—and only his—was found in Yasmine. Healy will be satisfied with a rape conviction.

  Now she knew the truth. Did Basil? Did he know about the videotaping? Was he part of the blackmail? Did it have something to do with his secret friends, his secret life? Or did he accept the high-priced Everett Stryker’s reasoning? Her family and friends—those she had left—were both in awe of, and sneered at, her marriage. But they did not know what she knew: that Basil loved her. She was a woman through and through, and thus she knew down to her bones that, though he hid many things from her, he loved her. Perhaps he knew about the videos and was forcing the plea bargain on Michael to protect her. No. Mustafa, she thought, Mustafa is behind all this.

  She had not taken her meds for twenty-four hours and felt slightly nauseous and jumpy, but otherwise lucid. Lucid enough, thank God, to have remembered that when she and Basil and Michael first moved to Park Avenue and she thought she was in charge of the apartment and her domestic affairs, she had had duplicate keys made of all the locks, including the pantry that was converted to an office for The Silent One, as she came to think of Mustafa. She inserted one of those keys now, and let herself in.

  The room was small, ten feet by ten feet, and windowless. It was dominated by a desk and a swivel chair that gave access to a computer on a shelf behind the desk and a small metal filing cabinet to the right. Basil had gone out and said he would be back in at five. Michael was sleeping, or brooding, in his room. Lying awake in her room, her senses sharp for once for lack of tranquilizers, she had heard him come in around two AM last night.

  The desktop was empty except for a blotter, a silver letter opener, a note pad, a dozen pencils in a round holder, and a large black molded plastic box. This was locked. She thought of carrying it back to her room, but decided that was a bad idea. The desk drawers were all locked as well. Should she turn on the computer? No, she would need a password to access anything important. Both drawers of the filing cabinet were also locked, but there was a slight movement of the bottom drawer when she pulled on the handle, enough so that she could see the top edge of two green and white Tyvek envelopes resting inside. Using the letter opener, she pried them out. Nothing else was reachable, so she pushed the drawer in and slipped back into her room, locking the former pantry door behind her.

  In the first envelope was a one-page document with the heading, New York Division of Parole. In a box on the upper right the word DENIED was stamped in red. She scanned the text: the prisoner, Wael Hakimi, NYSID 42325-63, remains angry and unremorseful. His next review date will be scheduled in 2015… In the second envelope were two DVDs, unmarked. She slipped one into her player and turned it on. Adnan and Ali were getting out of an elevator, walking along a carpeted corridor, knocking at a door, waiting and then entering an apartment, the number 1102 in a brass frame on the wall next to the door. The date and time were running digitally along the bottom of the screen: January 30, 2009, 1:18 PM, 1:19 PM… The day Yasmine was killed, the beginning of Debra’s descent into hell.

  She ejected the disc and was about to insert the second one, but was interrupted by a sharp knock on her door.

  “Yes?” she said. She was holding the second disc, hovering it near the DVD’s insert slot.

  “Mom. It’s me.”

  “Michael, I’m changing. I’ll come to your room.”

  “I need to talk to you now. Put something on. Open up. It’s important.”

  “Hold on.”

  She returned the discs to their envelope, slipped the Parole Board report in with them, grabbed a pen from her dresser and scrawled Matt’s name and Pound Ridge address across the front. She grabbed a pad of stamps from her desk drawer and hastily placed a row of ten on the upper right of the envelope. Then, carrying it, she walked to the door and pulled it open.

  “Put this in the mail in the lobby,” she said, “then come back up. We’ll talk.”

  Chapter 34

  Manhattan,

  Tuesday, March 3, 2009,

  9PM

  The phone rang in Matt’s apartment, and at the same time there was a sharp rapping at his door. Ignoring the phone, he undid the latch and opened it, thinking it was Jade. But it was Michael.

  “Come in,” Matt said. “Close the door.” Then he turned and went to the phone on a stand next to the entrance to the galley kitchen.

  “Jade?”

  “No, it’s Jack.”

  “Jack.”

  “Matt. Do you know where Michael is?”

  “He’s right here.” Matt looked over at his son, who had gone to look out of the window in the living room. His back was to Matt. His wavy hair fell in a sort of designed carelessness onto the collar of his stylish black leather winter coat. He was always designed, his son, but something was different about the design tonight, seen from the back like this. Standing there, not knowing Matt was looking at him, he could almost be a boy of ten again, lost in the painful divide that had opened between his parents. “Why, Jack?”

  “Debra’s committed suicide, Matt. Homicide North wants to talk to Michael.”

  Matt did not respond.

  “Sorry, Matt.”

  “How? When?” Matt said.

  “This afternoon. Pills.”

  “Where do they want him?”

  “It’s routine, Matt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll call you back.”

  Matt returned the phone to its holder. He had not taken his eyes off of Michael, who turned now to face him.

  “That was Jack McCann,” Matt said.

  “About Mom?”

  “Yes. You know?”

  “Basil called me. I went to the hospital, then I came here.”

  “What happened?”

  “Basil was at a meeting all afternoon. He came home and found her on the floor in her room. He said she was still breathing. I met him at Mt. Sinai. She was dead when I got there.”

  “Michael…”

  “Dad, listen. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Sit,” Matt said, gesturing toward the table.

  “No. Dad…”

  Matt remained silent, watching his son. Later he would remember, of all the things said in this brief conversation, something not said: the haunted look in Michael’s eyes at this moment, the first true inward look in those dark eyes that he could ever remember seeing.

  “When we first moved to Park Avenue… when we first moved there,” Michael said, “I slept with Mom a few times. Nothing happened, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I was sixteen, Dad. Too old.”

  “But what?”

  “I got aroused once. Mom…”
<
br />   “Mom what?”

  “She was happy. I don’t know. I stopped.”

  “Did you sleep with her after I left? When you were young?”

  “Yes, it was what she wanted… Dad?”

  “Michael… You were just a child.”

  Michael’s head had been sinking as they talked, but now he raised it and looked into Matt’s eyes. “There’s something else,” he said. “I saw it. The video of us.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Yes. We stopped, but…”

  “When did you see it?”

  “This morning. Mustafa showed it to me. He must have shown it to Mom. That must be why she killed herself.”

  “Sit down, Michael. We need to talk. The police investigate all suicides. They want to talk to you. I want you to be ready. Plus, you’re being railroaded. That has to stop now.”

  Chapter 35

  Stone Ridge,

  Wednesday, March 4, 2009,

  6AM

  In the first of the late winter daylight, Bill Crow put his Swarovski field binoculars to his eyes, and, with his ungloved right index finger, gently turned the ridged focus ring until the Fuchs homestead, nestled in a small clearing, surrounded on three sides by tall snow-clad pine trees, came sharply into view. A black SUV with US State Department Foreign Mission license plates was parked in front. Tire marks stretched behind it the length of the 200-foot driveway. Smoke was rising steadily straight up from a centrally located stone chimney. The lights were on in the two front rooms facing him on his hill a quarter of a mile away. Just above the horizon, the North Star—the heavens’ only fixed point—was pulsing and soon would be gone. In Indian lore, a young brave had climbed the highest mountain in the world. When he found he could not get down he was turned into the North Star, to honor his feat. Forgotten lore, Crow thought, meaningless, drowned in alcohol and casino money.

  In his pocket was the cryptic fax he had received a few hours ago from Langley:

  SD: no relatives in the US. Parents killed in the RH bombing in 2005. F: wife dead, no children; brother and nephews, all policemen, left Amsterdam 3/1, arrived NY. No return. Paternal grandparents, both dead, were owners of 10 RR 12, Stone Ridge, NY—coordinates: 41°50’45” North, 74°9’23” West (41.845867, -74.156494)—until 1996. Now owned by EJJ Trust of Rotterdam. Sources confirm EJJ beneficiaries are Erhard and Johannes F.