Truth, by Omission

by Daniel Beamish

  “You’re not,” she replies spontaneously.

  “If I am?”

  She pauses to consider the question. “If you are—and you haven’t told me the truth—I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.” She watches me, trying to read me, and then asks, “Are you?”

  “I’m thinking of pleading guilty just to get it all over with. Get what’s due me.”

  She erupts in a sudden fit that scares me as she shouts loudly in my face, “Are you guilty? Did you kill those nuns? Are you guilty or not? Tell me the fucking truth, Alfred!”

  The bluster of the arguments I had made to myself a few minutes ago vanishes amidst the intimidation I am now feeling. “Anna, of course I didn’t kill them. But I didn’t stay to help them, either.” I try to repeat aloud the debate that I had just worked through in my mind, and it comes out sounding lame and pitiful, more so in front of a professional lawyer.

  “Freddie.” She has calmed down and speaks slowly, as if I am a child needing extreme clarity. “You weren’t there. You didn’t do it. You will not plead guilty. We will fight this. Period.”

  New Year’s

  Thursday night the marshals picked me up, just as Steve predicted. The rest of the night was spent traveling across the country as any other common prisoner would, courtesy of the JPATS airline. They delivered me to this US Immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, to await pickup by the Kingdom of Belgium. Now, after two days stuck here, it is New Year’s Eve, and I’m finally able to speak to Steve by phone. He tells me that Bartholomeus Verbeke, the lawyer he’s arranged for me in Brussels, left him a message saying that the prosecutor’s office there wants me picked up as soon as possible. He tells me that probably means Wednesday. Today is Sunday, and tomorrow will be the New Year’s Day holiday, so they’ll likely fly here Tuesday and take me to Belgium on Wednesday.

  I lay down early for bed, contemplating my first New Year’s Eve alone since before I met Anna. I’ve spoken to her only once in the last few days since leaving Denver. Her parents worked hard to convince her to go to their place in Colorado Springs while I am held here, in limbo. My mind starts twisting, running through scenarios of what might be happening there with her parents. Perhaps they’ve convinced her to stay away from me. She’s very close to them, and she must be having doubts about me. Maybe they’ll convince her not to come to Belgium. These negative thoughts keep me awake most of the night.

  I have it in my mind that Wednesday will be the day that I leave, so I am surprised when the next day, New Year’s Day, the door to my cell swings open and a guard hands me a plastic bag and instructs me to change into my own civilian clothes.

  “Am I going somewhere?” I take the package from him.

  “Out.”

  “Where?”

  “No idea. They told me to get these to you and to have you put them on. Let’s go,” he says.

  It feels good, dignified, to have my own clothes back on. I’ve been wearing the same prisoner attire that the marshals gave me four days ago when they picked me up at my home. I assume that they must be taking me to a hearing of some kind, and I follow my guard’s instructions to walk ahead of him, back to the entrance of this facility. A new set of US Marshals await. After verifying me, I’m ordered to remove the jacket I’m wearing, and a set of handcuffs is affixed to my wrists.

  “Can you tell me where you’re taking me?”

  “We’ve been instructed to get you to the airport. That’s all we really know. Sorry.”

  This is a short ride, retracing the route of the bus that brought me out the back of the Newark airport a few days ago. We drive through the same security gate before entering the terminal building through an area marked secure personnel entrance. TSA staff are managing the area but there are no long lines here. My handcuffs are removed and replaced by a set of plastic ones, and I am directed into the body scan machine, instructed to hold my hands above my head, and then motioned out the other side where I am greeted by my same marshal escorts.

  These two have obviously done this before because they know exactly how to find their way through the maze of corridors in the depths of the terminal. They have an electronic card which they scan outside a windowless door that allows us into a small lounge which is furnished with comfortable-looking plush chairs and a sofa. There is a table set with an assortment of drinks and snack foods. Two of the chairs are occupied by men who rise as we enter and greet my escorts. Neither of these men wears a suit jacket, and both are openly displaying holsters with pistols strapped to their torsos. The two men sound tired when they speak, making their guttural-accented English even more pronounced. No one bothers to introduce me, and I am left standing there while the four men do a verification and exchange paperwork. All satisfied that I am who I am supposed to be, they trade my plastic handcuffs for a traditional metal set, and the marshals leave me with my new escorts.

  “Azikiwe Olyontombo, I am Inspector Dirk Herweyer, of the Belgian Federal Police. This is my partner, Philippe Brossard. We are escorting you to Brussels tonight. As of right now you are considered to be under the custody of the Belgian government and all laws of the Kingdom of Belgium will prevail. This includes that anything you might say to us can be used in prosecution against you. You have a right to a lawyer and one will be made available as soon as we can upon arrival …”

  He continues with the full Belgian equivalent of the US Miranda warning and then hands me a sheet of paper with it all printed out in English and French. Steve had already explained the process to me, the basics of the Belgian court system and the process of prisoner transfer. Commercial flights are the most common method of moving international prisoners. It’s done with discretion, and other passengers on the plane rarely even knowing that a transfer is happening. The airline personnel and the air marshals on the affected flights are the only ones aware. As an added measure of security the exact transfer flights are kept confidential, even from family and lawyers. This has left Anna with no way of knowing when I will be sent to Belgium.

  “All right, with the formalities out of the way, Olyontombo, we all know what you’ve done,” the inspector says. “We’d probably be considered heroes if we could find a reason to shoot you, so feel free to give us one. And one is all we need. You won’t be given a second chance. Unfortunately, we do have to demonstrate some discretion on a commercial flight, so be on your best behavior. The most likely reason anyone should have to suspect that you are a prisoner in transport is that I have shot you. Do you understand all this?”

  I nod while trying to assess these two. The one that has done the talking, Inspector Herweyer, is quite a bit older than I am, almost retirement age, I think. The other one is quite a bit younger, not even thirty yet. I had anticipated more refinement from European police, not the surliness that this one is demonstrating. I’m not sure why I expected that.

  “I’d like to make a phone call, if I may, Inspector.”

  “I just told you, you are now under Belgian law. Forget the American TV crap. You don’t get a phone call,” Herweyer says.

  “I just wanted to call my wife and let her know what’s happening.”

  “Not from here you don’t. Have your lawyer call her when we get to Belgium.”

  Tentatively I ask, “May I sit?”

  “There.” He points to a hard straight-back chair. As I take it he flops onto one of the comfortable lounge chairs opposite me. Then, as if to deliberately rub it in, he takes out his cell phone and sets it on the table beside him.

  I interpret everything so far to mean that I need to be very careful. This man obviously knows the charges I am facing, but I can’t decide if he is just a jerk with a personal chip on his shoulder, or if this is an indication of something bigger, of which I’m just unaware. The younger man, Brossard, seems to have a more amenable temperament, but defers the lead to Herweyer.

  Less than five minutes later, Herwe
yer nods to Brossard who tells me to get up and shows me how to place my arms so that they can drape my jacket over my handcuffs, keeping them out of view.

  “We’d prefer if you don’t draw attention to these. We’ll keep the jacket here. If you’ve got to take a shit, do it now, because these cuffs won’t come off until we land.”

  From the back corridors of the terminal we are led by a security guard to the boarding ramp of a Brussels Airlines 777. The plane has not yet started general boarding, but we are let on, and Brossard follows me all the way to the second to last row, where he directs me into the window seat on the right-hand side of the plane. Herweyer has a short conversation with the pilot at the front and then comes to the back taking the window seat directly behind me in the last row. Brossard sits in the middle seat right beside me.

  It is a while before other passengers start boarding, beginning with some elderly people and others needing assistance, then those with kids, and finally the general public. Boarding takes a while; this is a big plane, and it’s New Year’s Day, but the flight appears full with the exception of the one seat to the left of Philippe Brossard and the two beside Dirk Herweyer in the row behind us.

  Waiting on the tarmac for the plane to take off, my thoughts drift back to the first time I went through this airport. We were young and flush with optimism. Arriving from Paris we had a quick stopover in Newark on our way to Denver. Anna was going home, and I was on my way to meet her family for the first time. We were both about to start our studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and we were brimming with idealism. I was sure that coming to America was my opportunity to put the sins of Africa behind me, which I wanted to do so desperately. And with each passing year they sank further and further into the distance, less of a distraction, less of a burden. Our lives were charmed, each year better than the one before—until Steph got sick. Now, I’ve returned to this same airport that was once my gateway to freedom, leaving the accomplishments of the last sixteen years, heading toward a reckoning with the past.

  Shortly after we are airborne my escort behind me leans in to let his partner know that he is going to take a nap. When I am sure by the sounds of his light snores that he is asleep, I venture to make conversation with Inspector Brossard beside me.

  “I hadn’t expected to be transferred so soon.” I speak in French to make it easier for him and friendlier. “Just yesterday my lawyer told me that it probably wouldn’t be until at least Wednesday before you came for me.”

  “We just got lucky,” Brossard says.

  “Lucky?” It’s an odd choice of a word for this situation and I am curious.

  “Yeah. We’ve known about this assignment for a while, and as soon as it came up last week we jumped on it.”

  “Jumped on it? Why?”

  “I’ve always thought it’d be cool to do New Year’s Eve in Times Square. The timing was perfect. That’s why we’re a little tired. Dirk doesn’t do the late-night partying so well anymore. Says he used to be able to drink all night and then work the next day no problem. I think he’s full of shit. I don’t think a hard-ass like him was ever a partyer.”

  “Why did he want to come, then?”

  “A personal feather in his cap before he retires.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “A little prestige before he goes out. You’re going to be a big deal when this comes out in the news. He wants to be able to say he was the one who brought you in.”

  “Really …”

  “Yeah, I was just a little kid when you killed those nuns, but he was on the force. He’s been telling me how the whole country was sickened, first when the peacekeepers got slaughtered, and then just a week later when you killed the sisters. Dirk says that every man in Belgium who was alive when that stuff happened will want to drop the guillotine on your neck. He says there’ll probably be a public call on Parliament to bring back the death sentence—just for you.”

  This is quite enough for me to drop the idea of conversation and I sit silently, thinking about what I’ve learned. He’s already convicted me and is convinced that everyone else will, too. I don’t know when my case will become public, but it sounds like when it does it’s going to be big news. Perhaps it’s better if Anna isn’t there. Maybe she doesn’t need to be dragged through all this if the outcome is already a fait accompli.

  Some time passes in silence before I ask my escort for the time.

  “That depends … New York time or Brussels time?”

  “Now. Wherever we are right now.”

  “A little after midnight,” he says.

  “A little after midnight. January second, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “My wife and I were supposed to be on a plane together today. We were going to Saint Martin. It was going to be our honeymoon trip. We never got to take one when we were married.”

  Herweyer laughs from the seat behind us. I hadn’t realized that he was awake and listening. Without even trying to keep his voice down he says, “What kind of a bitch would marry a pathetic bastard like you? Serves you both right.”

  The barb stings, and I regret more than ever having brought this upon Anna. I feel like weeping, but I don’t want to give these two the satisfaction, so I turn my head toward the window and wipe away the few tears that have escaped. I decide to stay silent the remainder of the flight, but an hour or so later I need to use the bathroom.

  “Monsieur Brossard, I’d like to use the restroom, please.”

  Brossard looks back over his shoulder at Herweyer who frowns and nods to him. Brossard waits for me to exit my seat and then follows me into the galley, which is right behind us in the back of the plane. As I am shutting the tiny bathroom door a boot is thrust into it, blocking it from closing, and then it is pushed wide open. Herweyer is standing there with two airline attendants busy behind him.

  “Door stays open. Security rules. I told you to go before you left.”

  The flight attendants are as embarrassed as I am, and they squeeze out into the aisle.

  “Go ahead, macaque. Hurry up and do your business.”

  Upon returning to my seat I resolve not to engage this man for anything anymore. Instead, I occupy my mind thinking about the last day I shared at home with Anna, before the marshals came to collect me.

  * * *

  Most of the day had been spent drafting notes for the clinic, getting updates from Steve, dodging calls from acquaintances, and seesawing in my mind about what I am due for my sins. I’d kept this debate to myself since I knew Anna’s position and wanted to avoid confrontation; our time left together was short and very precious at that point.

  I had no idea how long I might be away so I prepared notes for my colleagues at the clinic who would have to take over my patients. Most of what they need to know is contained in the patient files, but there are a lot of things that I store in my head, little personal things, like favorite sports teams and whatnot. There are a few patients I wanted them to pay particular attention to, especially those who require ongoing care. One of these is Ricky Nunez. He’ll just be starting his cancer treatments in the new year, and I’m hoping that whomever takes his case makes sure that he is actually getting to them. I’d also like them to be in touch with his mother, Pina, just to make sure that she is okay. She’ll need a lot of support. Anna and I had each other when Steph was sick, but Pina is alone with an apartment full of her other four children, who she also has to look after. I also wrote out notes of encouragement that I left to be delivered to Pina and Ricky.

  Steve showed up midmorning with his news from Belgium and the full complement of daily newspapers for us to read. He had spoken with Bartholomeus Verbeke in Brussels, getting familiarized with the Belgian judicial system, and a little more info on where my case was within that system. Steve explained that, not unlike the American system, all criminal felonies must go through a preliminary trial phase, rou
ghly equivalent to a grand jury, to determine if there are sufficient grounds to proceed with a trial. Bartholomeus had finally been able to contact the public prosecutor’s office, which would normally perform this role. But because of the exceptional public interest likely to be generated by this case, the prosecutor turned it over to a judicial inquiry.

  Bartholomeus claimed that this is definitely to my benefit, since the investigating judge in a judicial inquiry is responsible for looking for all the facts in a case, both incriminating and nonincriminating. If left to the prosecutor alone, they would only look for the incriminating facts. The judge also has powers that a prosecutor would not have, such as dealing with detention. Bartholomeus will be applying for bail but says that it is doubtful. He’ll try to get electronic monitoring if bail doesn’t work.

  Bartholomeus also informed us that these investigations are usually conducted without public involvement and without the public even knowing that they are going on. That’s why the media there didn’t know about it, or at least why they hadn’t published anything. But Steve told us that it’s only a matter of time, especially if the media outlets in the United States contact their counterparts in Belgium.

  Our review of the day’s newspapers told us that the Denver press had likely already been in contact with the Belgian media in order to get information about the murders of the nuns back in 1994. The day’s stories also contained a pretty bare-bones personal history of me and a much more extensive background on the situation in Rwanda at the time.

  It was from among these stories that we—Anna, Steve, and I—all learned the precise details of the murders at Notre Dame de la Paix. We were learning the facts at the same time the paper-reading public in Denver was getting them. Four Belgian nuns, Geert Grennerat, Marjon van den Bosche, Brechtie van Huejten, and Kaatje Simmons had all had their throats slit, and it appeared that at least two of them were also raped. Sisters Geraldine, Marie, and Brigit, and Mother Katherine, as I had known them, were all left stripped naked with crucifixes scratched into their flesh. The papers reported that just a few weeks prior there had been a savage murder of a French priest at the same school. At the time of the nuns’ murders in 1994 the Rwandan government was in chaos. Its president and prime minister had just been assassinated, and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force that was deployed there had lost all control. Only five days before the nuns were murdered, ten Belgian peacekeepers had been killed in another horrific slaughter. Public outrage in Belgium was off the charts.