The Witness

by Josh McDowell

  She was laughing so hard she was practically crying, as was he, and he was suddenly stirred with a passion he never imagined he could feel for anyone.

  “Buy me something!” she said as they embraced.

  “Buy you something?” he asked, startled by the request. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she laughed, drawing him close to her and kissing him again on the neck and the ears. “Something special, something different, something I can remember you by when you vanish into the night and I never see you again.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, not sure if she was joking or not. “Why would you say that?”

  “Isn’t that what men do? Take what they want and then cut you loose when you least expect it?”

  She still had a playful look in her eyes, but her words—however innocently and laughingly spoken—had their intended effect. Tariq knew now that he was playing with fire. Someone had hurt this girl badly, and not that long ago, and here he was, stoking the still-hot embers. She was his for the asking, but she did not want to be toyed with or taken for granted, and within his heart it forced an issue he’d had neither the time nor the interest to confront thus far.

  Whatever he felt for her, he wasn’t really going to stick around for long, was he? How could he? In a few days or a few weeks or perhaps a month or two, Ramy would call, warning they were onto him, and he would have to disappear. He would have to “cut her loose” when she “least expected it,” wouldn’t he?

  It would be easier on him, of course, if all he wanted was a one-night stand or a weekend fling. But to Tariq’s surprise, he found her feelings mattered to him. There was something about this girl he really liked, and he didn’t want to hurt her.

  “Some men, maybe,” Tariq said as he pulled her close to him and kissed her gently. “But not me.”

  38

  Hoping to change the subject, Tariq led Dalia arm in arm down a street lined with shops and crowded with tourists, then finally into one of Cairo’s famed papyrus institutes.

  “All right,” he whispered as they first walked in. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy you anything in the store.”

  Dalia’s eyes lit up. “Anything?” she asked with delight.

  “Anything,” he said. “Just say the word.”

  She squeezed his arm and looked around the large shop whose walls were covered with the most beautiful paintings in the most vivid colors, all done on large sheets of papyrus.

  “May I help you?” a clerk asked, apparently able to see the “big sale” look in Dalia’s eyes. “I can give you a very good price today.”

  “Perhaps you could show us around,” Tariq said, and Dalia quickly nodded.

  “It would be my pleasure, sir,” said the young man, no more than twenty.

  He guided the couple to the back, where he began by giving them a brief demonstration of how stalks of papyrus are cut into long, thin strips; soaked in water to remove most of their natural sugars; pressed together in a crisscross pattern; and finally dried over many days to make the remarkably strong sheets upon which skilled artisans painted their dazzling scenes, many of them from legends of ancient Egypt.

  “Tell me about this one,” Dalia said when he was finished, pointing to one of the larger scenes of people and animals and hieroglyphics, painted in brilliant blues and reds and gold, all set in a hand-crafted wood frame and hanging on the wall beside them.

  “Ah yes,” the clerk said, “The Final Judgment. This one is very famous. Copies of this painting used to hang in homes and tombs and temples all over Egypt.”

  “Why?” Tariq asked. “What does it mean?”

  “Well,” the clerk explained, “ancient Egyptians believed that when people died, they would face a final judgment, a final reckoning for what they had done in their lives. You see the man up there in the top left corner, kneeling before all those figures across the top of the painting?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is man in the afterlife. He is kneeling before fourteen judges, swearing that he is not guilty, offering sacrifices to them, and pleading with them to let him go to paradise.”

  “What about the man down there?” Tariq asked. “Is he the same man?”

  “The one in the lower left?” the clerk asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes, he’s the same man,” the clerk said. “He’s being led into the palace of justice, where it will be determined whether he is good or bad, guilty or not. You see those giant scales before him?”

  “Yes.”

  “The heart of the deceased is placed on the left side of the scales,” the clerk explained, using his finger to identify the various parts of the picture, “and a feather of justice is put on the right side. If his heart is heavier than the feather, it means the man’s heart is full of sin. It means that he is not good enough for heaven and will be sent straight to hell. But if his heart is lighter than the feather, then he is a good man—a pure man—and he will go to paradise. This man in the painting? He was pure, so he is being led into the throne room of heaven by that figure holding the key to eternal life. Do you like it?”

  “No, I don’t,” Dalia said, visibly uncomfortable. “Show me something else. Something not having to do with hell and judgment.”

  She turned her attention to another painting, one with two doves perched in a large tree. But Tariq remained fixated on The Final Judgment, studying it with great intensity.

  “How can you know for sure?” Tariq thought out loud.

  “Know what for sure?” the clerk replied.

  Startled by the clerk’s response to his thoughts, he said, “Oh. Well, I was just wondering, how can you know for sure if your heart is pure enough, if you’re headed for heaven instead of hell?”

  But the clerk just stood there blankly. It was obvious he had never been asked that question during one of his tours.

  Tariq felt a wave of fear wash over him. The question echoed through his soul again and again. How can I know? Any moment now, I could have a bullet take my life away. Is my heart too heavy in the scales or not? What did Dalia tell me her father says—heaven is a gift and not a payment? Is it possible heaven is something God just offers us, not something I can earn? And what about Kadeen’s claim that the Bible contains the truth about life and death? He had to find the answer before his own fate was sealed.

  He bought Dalia a painting—a different one, of course, an exquisite and expensive one of two lovers sailing a felucca down the Nile—but Tariq could not shake the anxiety The Final Judgment had stirred within him. It was as if he could hear his mother’s voice in his head, weeping over all the foolish, selfish choices he had made in his life, begging him to change course and make a fresh start while he still could.

  But where would he start? To whom should he turn? He was ready to make a change. His life was coming undone. But “changing course” was easier said than done. When all this calms down, I think I’m going to have to spend an extended time with Kadeen, asking questions.

  On returning to Dalia’s flat, they showered and changed, and he took her to the Mövenpick Hotel. There the two of them had a candlelit dinner before Dalia worked the evening flight to London. She could not have been more happy. He could not have been more miserable.

  “Dina and Mervat sent me an e-mail last night,” Dalia said. “I forgot to tell you.”

  “Really,” he said without looking up from his plate of barely eaten dinner.

  “They’re still in New York. They just found a flat. Dina says they’re coming home next weekend to pack up their things and ship them back there.” She paused for a moment. “I can’t believe they’re really leaving. I guess I’ve got to find new roommates. I’ll never be able to afford that flat on my own.”

  “Right,” he said, picking at his beef fillet.

  “Tariq, are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, pouring himself a third glass of wine.

  “You seem . . . distracted, far awa
y. Not like this morning. Not like all weekend.”

  “No, no,” he said, “I’m just . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Just what?”

  He didn’t want to lie to her. He didn’t want his heart to be any heavier than it already was. The very thought bothered him now as it never had before. But then again, wasn’t his whole life a lie at this point? He wasn’t Tariq Jameel. He wasn’t a computer consultant from Brussels. He wasn’t setting up a branch office in Cairo or looking for a girlfriend or a wife. He wasn’t any of the things he had told her.

  “I’m just going to miss you,” he said, looking at her at last. “I’ve really enjoyed the past few days together.”

  “So have I,” she said, taking his hands.

  “You’re a very special girl.”

  Dalia was still smiling at him, but she seemed a bit skeptical as well. “Special as in ‘I want to spend more time with you’? Or special as in ‘That was fun; you’ll never see me again’?”

  “Special as in ‘I want to spend a lot more time with you,’” he insisted, squeezing her hands. “What time do you get back tomorrow?”

  “I should be here by lunchtime—noonish, I think.”

  “Perfect. I’ll be waiting.”

  “You promise?”

  He smiled. “I promise.”

  39

  Inspector Lemieux paced the floor of the hotel suite. The longer this dragged on, the more irrelevant became his people’s slight lead on the investigation. Goddard was good, and that woman, DuVall, might be even better. If they found Accad before he did, this whole thing just might lead to his own downfall. However, if he could ensure Marwan Accad’s permanent silence, then it was likely he could end up pulling this off after all.

  From the beginning, things had fallen apart. The death of Ramsey’s daughter was not supposed to happen, and if there was one thing that Lemieux regretted in this whole affair, that would be it. But what was done was done. It was too late to go back. Besides, why should he mourn Brigitte Ramsey when her own stepmother seemed to have gotten over her?

  Claudette Ramsey—she truly was a piece of work. Rarely had he met anyone so greedy, heartless, and self-focused. He knew he was ruthless—one had to be in his line of work—but he at least had some scruples, one or two lines he refused to cross. Yet she seemed to be completely without conscience.

  In one sense, that made her easy to work with. In the past, most women he had dealt with had cringed a time or two at the methods he had been forced to employ in order to get the job done. No such problem with Claudette.

  The downside was that her lack of any moral compass could make her careless. A temper tantrum could easily lead to violence, and violence, if not carefully controlled, could lead to discovery. Already he had been forced to commit two of his teams just to babysit her. If she didn’t hold the purse strings to such a large fortune, she would have become expendable long ago.

  Lemieux stopped at a long table situated under a window that looked out into the Casablanca night. The table was made of a rich, beautifully burled thuya wood, and its surface was bare except for a cell phone. He stared at the phone, as if just by the sheer strength of his will he could make it ring.

  He turned and began the slow walk to the other side of the elegantly decorated room.

  The worst of the mistakes already made had been allowing Marwan Accad to live. How could the snipers have missed him? And then somehow Accad had found a way to kill two of Lemieux’s best assassins in that hotel. The woman, Alix Pelletier, had been a special prize. No man could resist her seductive skills, including Lemieux himself a time or two.

  Accad had cost him resources and aggravation. It was time for him to die.

  Back at the phone, he again stared at it. As he was preparing to return to his pacing, he was startled when it actually rang. Smiling to himself, he picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “We have found him.”

  “Well, are you going to make me guess? Where is he?”

  “We spotted him on an airport security tape. He’s very good. He knows just where not to look to avoid the cameras, but finally we caught him as he boarded an EgyptAir flight from Casablanca to Cairo.”

  “Good work, Edgard. Where is he now?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Edgard replied.

  “Well then, you haven’t really found him, have you?” Lemieux shouted, his legendary short temper instantly in full bloom. “Cairo is a city of 7 million people, and the whole country of Egypt has, what, another 70 or 80 million on top of that! And you call to tell me that you have found him, you imbecile?”

  “My apologies, sir. I should have said that we know where he went from Morocco.”

  “You’re right, you should have! Words mean things, Edgard! Tell me what you are doing to find him!”

  “Again, we are looking for friends, girlfriends, relatives. We’re checking hotels and hostels. We’re also looking at flats and houses that may have recently been rented by an expatriate individual or a corporation.”

  “Don’t forget the possibility of a preexisting safe house,” Lemieux reminded his man. “Also, I want you to create a false rental car trail leading south to Asyût. Make it complex but discoverable. And do it quickly! If you found this lead, then Goddard’s people will be just behind you. We need to throw him off the scent.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I want you to send five of our two-man teams to Cairo. I do not want Accad getting away again.”

  There was a brief pause. Lemieux could hear Edgard sucking in his breath. “Sir, we only have four teams available. They are there in Morocco as we speak. The rest are either with Claudette Ramsey or searching for Ramy Accad,” Edgard said matter-of-factly. But Lemieux could hear the anxiety in his voice, which was exactly how he wanted it. When subordinates fear you, that is when they will follow you without question.

  “Take one of the two teams from the other Accad brother, then! Must I make every decision? I want you to listen to me closely, Edgard. You will find Marwan Accad, and when you do, you will make sure he is dead. I can’t go to Cairo without Goddard and his little minions following me, so I am counting on you. I don’t have to tell you what the consequences are for failure!”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll find him.”

  When Lemieux heard the click on the other end of the line, a smile spread across his bony face. You may have won when you knew we were there, Accad. But wait and see what happens when you don’t see us coming!

  40

  Tariq spent the night alone at Dalia’s flat. The cleaners and repairmen hired by his landlord had been working in his flat for most of the day, but one could barely tell. There was so much work still to be done. Besides, while Dalia’s flat was considerably smaller, it was far warmer (partly because her heaters worked and his didn’t), far better decorated, and actually felt like a home.

  She had curtains on the windows and fresh flowers in colorful vases on the kitchen table. She had clean linens on the beds with big, thick comforters and soft, fluffy pillows, and knickknacks of all kinds, collected from the many countries where she had traveled. What’s more, her dishes were washed, there was good food in the refrigerator and pantry, and her stove worked, which would have settled the issue had there been any doubt in his mind about staying there in the first place.

  Tariq made a hot cup of coffee and helped himself to some cookies he found in the pantry. Then he began poking through Dalia’s things, trying to get a sense of who she was.

  Beside her entertainment center, he found racks of hit CDs and DVDs of the latest Egyptian, European, and American films, all neatly arranged in alphabetical order. He found closets lined with new clothes and shoes, velvet boxes filled with jewelry, stacks of Vogue and Cosmo and other fashion magazines. He also found scuba and snorkeling gear and bookshelves lined with travel guides to resorts throughout the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, not to mention a complete collection of Naguib Mahfouz novels. And eventually
he found her stash of marijuana as well, to which he helped himself.

  What struck him as curious, though, was that he could find no diaries, no personal journals, not even a family photo album. There was nothing that could give him the kind of clues he was looking for. Who was Dalia Nour, really? Where did she come from? Where was she headed? He was intoxicated with her, but it suddenly dawned on him how little he really knew about her.

  He knew she had grown up somewhere in Jordan but didn’t know where. He knew she had left home at eighteen, but he didn’t know why. He knew she had graduated from a little college in France but didn’t know which one or what she had studied. He knew she had joined British Airways to see the world and travel for free. He also knew that she had already been to twenty-three countries and hoped to go to Australia later that year for her third vacation in as many years because, she said, the snorkeling was amazing there. But besides that, there wasn’t much more to go on. She was as much an enigma to him, apparently, as he was to her.

  In search of answers, Tariq opened a drawer in the small nightstand beside her bed, and there he found a stack of brochures for two- and three-day vacation packages to various resorts in Sharm el-Sheikh. She really was a traveler, wasn’t she? He couldn’t even remember the last time he had taken a vacation. But Dalia seemed obsessive about seeing the world and drinking her fill from the cup of life. It was as though she couldn’t sit still for more than a few days at a time. Whenever she had a few days off, she was jet-setting to another exotic locale. But why? What exactly was she running from?

  Tariq flipped through the stack. One was for the Hilton. Another was for the Ritz-Carlton. Yet others were for the Four Seasons, the Marriott, the Jolie Ville, and several more as well. At the bottom of the stack was a small notepad embossed with the British Airways logo. It was marked up with all kinds of notes, all of them in Dalia’s handwriting, with pricing options for three people staying in a single suite, possible dates for travel, and pros and cons for each of the various resorts.