“Yeah…that’s good. Come in the other room. I’m so happy to see you.”
Emile led her into a sitting room—white walls, with divans and comfortable chairs. Low tables. The room looked out tall windows onto a rose garden, with a splashing fountain, busy bird bath, silver gazing ball. Opulent Persian rugs rested on the tile floor.
After they were seated India said, “I’ve left messages for Jack. Have you seen him?”
Emile glanced away, then turned to her. “He stopped by to see how I was, but he didn’t stay. I don’t know. He seemed kind of reserved. He’s not an effusive sort of guy, but he was even less so. Do you think he thinks we’re responsible for Nadia’s death? Because we happened to be interviewing her at the hotel?”
“So you got that feeling, too? And Jack hasn’t answered any of my messages. I don’t know. Emile. You tell me. He picked me up outside the hospital. He just happened to come across me outside. He took me back to his place and stitched me up. Did you know he was almost a doctor Went to med school and everything? But I was the one who had to tell him all that had happened. He took it hard. But he blames us down deep. I know it. He can’t help it. Even though we were all just doing our jobs.”
Emile looked out into the garden before he spoke. “It’s all over the Internet. I saw the footage on YouTube of the attack, all the shots I took that morning. It was pretty powerful stuff.” He glanced at her, then looked away again. “I wish the network hadn’t shown the part of the blast with Nadia. That was pretty hard to look at. I had to make myself look at it. Sick that others were seeing…everything. It’s still everywhere on the Internet.”
“I tried to stop it. I hated that they ran it. But I don’t have any leverage, Emile. Got into a tiff with my boss over it. But I’m still such a newbie. They aired the whole thing despite what I wanted.”
His shoulders sagged. “I knew it. I knew you’d be against it.”
She tried to make small talk with Emile, happy to see he was recovering, but eager to be away. Dammit, she’d stop by Jack’s and…and what? No, she’d stop at the embassy first.
When she was leaving, Emile took her arm. “Promise me you’ll tell Jack when you see him. About you trying to get network to leave the Nadia footage out. I think he’d appreciate that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE APARTMENT KITCHEN was small, but adequate, with a few meager utensils, one pot and a frying pan. When she moved in, the refrigerator had a half six-pack of Belgian beer, two iffy eggs and a half bottle of curdled milk that Brady had left. Her predecessor apparently wasn’t inclined to stay in and cook his meals. India hadn’t added much after she’d thrown his leavings away.
India stopped at a small neighborhood market to add to her meager provisions. She stirred a pot with lamb and rice, added a pinch of saffron. She felt restless. She’d missed Ambassador Masterson at the embassy, so she was still anxious to find out what was known about the suicide bombers of the hotel. The secretary told her that the ambassador and Jed Ellsworth had been called back to Washington for discussions about the attack. There hadn’t been any replies from Jack Spear to her messages and she was becoming more irritated by the minute. He blamed her for her part in Nadia’s being at the hotel. She now felt sure that was true.
Dammit, now she was mad. Who the hell did he think he was? It was simply a stroke of fate that she hadn’t been killed as well, Would that have made him happier?
Grumbling to herself, she dished out a portion of the lamb and set it on the table. Sitting, she stared at her plate. She wasn’t hungry, just kind of empty. Pushing back her plate, she threw down her fork and shoved back her chair.
Shrugging into a jacket, she fairly skidded down the stairs to her car.
The dinner hour traffic did not improve her mood. Vehicles choked the streets in the restaurant-rich Hamra District. The city had apparently absorbed the attack and was back to normal. Throngs of hungry tourists, revelers, diners, relaxed after the habitually prolonged local cocktail hour, seldom bothered to cross at traffic lights. They stepped off curbs and islands, wandered in and out of taxis, buses and cars on their way to anticipated dinners, sometimes deep in conversation, sometimes flirting, oblivious to an irritated India trying to tamp down her growing fury at the nerve of Jack Spear. Ignoring her messages. Harboring some kind of resentment toward her.
It took her some minutes to find a parking place near Jack Spear’s apartment. He’d better be home. She didn’t want to waste the mad she had on.
He was.
“India. This is a surprise.’ Pause. “Can I help you?”
She brushed past him, then whirled. “You’re going to explain to me why the messages I’ve left for you are so unimportant you ignore them.”
He remained standing at the door. “I should think you’d guess that I don’t have much to say to you.”
She fumed. “You’re blaming me for Nadia’s death. I find that grossly unfair.”
He closed the door and walked across the living room to stare out the window. In a few moments he turned. “That’s not true. You were both, Emile too, doing your jobs. You were all in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I can’t forgive you for is you allowing that monstrous video of Nadia being blown apart to be broadcast. All over the world.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“Of course you did. You took the footage that Emile had taken back to New York. I can just see the hot-eyed ambitious India Fox presenting that to your network. Did you get a medal? A raise? You Yanks are into that sort of thing, The rotten taste of it all lost on you for the big bucks you’ll get paid for the slobbering idiots all over the world who feed on that sort of thing.”
“You’re so damned sure of that, aren’t you?” Her voice pleaded. “I objected to airing it. I was outnumbered. I agree with you. It was unconscionable, and I said so.”
His voice was bitter. “Oh, sure. You could have deleted it. But you kept the camera running, getting every last bit of the horror.”
India gasped, her insides sick that he thought this.
“And tell me, India. Are you still on the payroll of World Broadcast News? Of course you are. Nobody ever heard of an American resigning because of conscience. Or a screw-up. Sometimes if it’s bad enough, they’ll throw the bastard out. But resign? Hell no. On to the next cock up! And it doesn’t matter in hell who’s crushed in the process.”
India stared at him, her head spinning with astonishment, anger, hurt. She started to speak, but no words would come. She turned and stumbled to the door, an overwhelming need to get away from his accusing words, the contempt on his face.
THE BUZZING IN her head didn’t go away until she got back to her apartment. Then a cold rage set in. The injustice of his words. From a man she had come to think could mean something in her life. How unfair he’d been. Cruel even. He wouldn’t listen to what she wanted to tell him. How sorry she was at the pain she knew the camera footage of the blast would cause the people who loved Nadia. How a small guilt that wouldn’t leave her that, kept her awake at night, had she not been interviewing Nadia at the hotel, the actress wouldn’t have been killed, while she herself had gotten off with a few bruises. Emile, too. How she’d tried to get the network to cut that part of the footage. She knew these things as beyond her control. She also knew that Jack Spear blamed her.
How dare he not listen! “To hell with him. And here I’ve been harboring warm and fuzzy thoughts about loving Jack Spear. Being with him. What possessed me?” Her voice was full of tears. “I’ve let my mind wander off my career in some stupid rosy fog. The career I’ve been single-minded about since I could remember. How weak! How stupid! Having sappy thoughts of a man filling my thoughts, getting in my way. My crotch getting all itchy thinking about climbing into bed with him.” Tears sprang in her eyes. “You idiot!”
She threw off her coat and checked her email. And stared at the terse, impersonal message from the network. She sank to her knees and read it again.
They regretted
informing her that World Broadcast News was replacing her as their rep in Beirut. With events in Syria, Lebanon was now in the crosshairs. The network needed a more seasoned journalist, one more versed in the politics of the volatile region. She was a valued employee and would be welcome back to her old job in New York doing the early news show. Her work in Lebanon had been excellent, but the news department had to look at a more experienced reporter. Please contact Finance for reimbursement for her recent expenditures in Beirut. Sincerely, World Broadcast News. She was to surrender the new camera to her replacement. Thank you.
She had been reeling from Jack Spear’s indictment of her concerning the Nadia segment. And now she was being fired. Sumner’s words came back to her. “I don’t like being disagreed with.” No hard feelings. Ha!
India stormed into her bedroom, ripping off her clothes. She scrubbed her teeth, slapped moisturizer on her face and flounced into bed. She would get a good night’s sleep and start tomorrow. As of this instant, India Fox was a freelance journalist who would find her own stories wherever in the fucking world she wanted to go. India Fox had some chops now. The video had put her on the map, given her an entrée to other networks, other media. And she had a camera she knew how to use. Well, mostly. Working with Emile would take care of that. Give the camera to her replacement? Fuck that.
She would get in touch with Mariam. Mariam knew things. She would make her tell who was responsible for the bomb at the hotel. And the now sensible, clear-eyed independent India would find the terrorists. Oh, yes she would. Do what was necessary to get a story. And she wouldn’t take her eye off the ball. And nobody would slap her around like today. Never again.
And if Jack Spear taunted her with not resigning from World Broadcast News, she could hurl this back at him. “I was fired, you sonofabitch. Is that good enough for you!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mariam’s farmhouse
India paced from one end of the kitchen to the other. Mariam sat slumped at the table.
“Mariam, if you can’t tell me, then I need to see your brother. Jamil will help me, won’t he? Don’t shut me out now. I need this. I’ve lost my job, but that doesn’t matter to me now. I know what I have to do.”
“These men you want to see, India. They are not…nice men. I cannot guarantee your safety.”
“I never wanted you or expected you to guarantee me anything, Mariam. Remember, you took me places American girls didn’t go. Americans didn’t go.”
“I worried. You were always reckless.”
“I’m not being reckless now. Determined is what I am. I’m a working journalist. Doing what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I have to go where things are happening.”
“Does your father know what you wish to do?”
“He would be all for it.”
“Your mother?”
“Oh, Mariam. How can you even ask that? What would she say? ‘Ah, India. You’re a journalist? I love it! I’ve always liked the way they dressed. Armani makes a wonderful looking trench coat. Burberry’s good, Brooks Brothers, too. Do try Aquascutem. Their matching hat is to die for.’ Or something like that. You know her.”
Mariam smiled.
“You saw it. I was always an afterthought to her. To be trotted out as the pretty child of the glamorous ambassador’s charming wife. Whenever the latest article or write-up touted her as a doting, loving maman. She considered me a distasteful nuisance that gave her morning sickness and ruined her figure when she was pregnant with me and our relationship went downhill from there. In my gestation I interrupted her affair with the handsome Italian movie star and by the time I made my appearance, he’d moved on to the French president’s mistress. She never did forgive me for that.”
“You don’t know all these things.”
“I do know these things. She told me herself. Mummy was always candid about my disruptions in her life.”
“Why did your father stay with her?”
“I asked him one time. He just shrugged and said he loved her. She was passionate, beautiful and he liked it that other men wanted her. I told him that was sick, but he only laughed and said he was no angel either. God. What a family I come from. Is it so strange I want to do big things?”
Mariam sighed and rose from the table. “I will tell Jamil. You will have to convince him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
En route in Lebanon
JAMIL HAD BEEN vague as they drove away from Mariam’s farm. Now, all India knew was they were somewhere in eastern Lebanon. It had been an hour since they left the main highway and begun a series of small, two lane roads, some paved, some not. But she made a mental note that they always they kept going southeast.
India glanced at Jamil. “We’re heading toward Syria, aren’t we Jamil? I’d thought you’d be taking me to a Hezbollah camp.”
He shifted into a lower gear to climb a small hill. “You wanted to talk to the people who were behind the attack at the hotel. Hezbollah was part of it. They didn’t plan it.”
“Are you telling me there’s another group responsible? Is it Al Qaeda?”
Jamil was silent, frowning at the road. Finally he spoke. “Yes.”
“And al Qaeda and Hezbollah don’t like each other.”
Jamil looked unhappy. “No.”
“This changes my thinking a bit.”
He brightened. “You want to return to Beirut?”
“No, no, no. I just want to know who I’m dealing with.” Then she added. “By the way, I had a little run-in with Assad a couple of weeks or so ago. He had me thrown in jail for a while. I was told never to come back in the country. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Jamil turned to her, aghast. “I am not happy about this, India. Mariam did not say.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Mariam didn’t know. It was really nothing.”
Jamil stared at the road over the steering wheel, grumbling. “Nothing. She says it is nothing.”
The route turned narrower, bumpy and rutted, with rocks that set the car shimmying. Jamil slowed the car so they barely crept along.
“I have only been here a couple of times,” he said. “Someone will come out soon to stop us. Visitors are not welcome, but they know you are coming.”
The sun was dipping low in the sky when the road opened out onto a tiny valley in the mountains. A bearded sentry in camo stepped out from a grouping of rocks. He carried loosely in his arms what India recognized as an assault rifle. His camouflage fatigues blended in with the arid landscape.
Jamil stopped the car and rolled down the window. The guard motioned for him to get out. He glanced quickly at India, his expression a mix of surprise and unease. Another man, dressed in camo slid into the driver’s seat.
India snapped at him. “Why are you leaving my driver here? I will need him to introduce me. It was agreed he would be my interpreter.”
The man did not look at India, just put the car in gear and drove slowly to another road that led downward. Tamping down her edginess, she looked around the scene that opened up. The sun dropped below the mountaintop as they approached a large tent of the kind used by the more prosperous desert people. Other small tents were in the complex. People could be seen moving around, men in camouflage, women in the black abaya, the shroud covering them from head to toe. One led a donkey burdened with what looked like water casks over to a trough where several women ladled water into pots. The camp looked primitive, but peaceful.
Did I expect an array of guns and firepower? Bombs stacked around? What did I expect?
India tried to quiet her anxiety, but this was what she had asked for—a meeting with one of the planners of the hotel bombing, or at least someone in the inner circle. She slung her camera strap over her head and settled it on her shoulder.
The car stopped and her guide went around and opened her door, motioning her to get out.
The early evening air was chilly. There was the aroma of meat roasting. The tent and valley had turned a rosy blush in the
setting sun. Shadows were darkening but she was able to make out the rocky path leading into the encampment. Where was Jamil?
The guide gave her a small shove through the largest tent’s flap. As India’s eyes adjusted to the interior she made out a man’s figure dressed in a dark robe, the Syrian dishdasha, his head encircled with a red and white checked kabbeyeh, held in place with a black band called a toggiyah. The man had an inky beard, short and curly. As India moved forward she judged him to be about forty years old, darkly handsome, his obsidian eyes sharp as he sat at a black, carved desk. Ebony? India had seen similar ones from India in the souk. A computer sat among several opened maps.
The man studied her for several moments. India heard the wind pick up outside as evening approached, making a high-pitched whine in the upper reaches of the tent. He spoke in nearly accentless English. “You are India Fox, a journalist from World Broadcast News? You wanted to speak to us?”
India was startled. She had expected him to speak in Arabic. Perhaps it would be wise to conceal that I speak his language. “I am no longer with the network. I am a freelance news-person. Yes, I wanted to interview someone who had planned the bombing of the hotel in Beirut.”
His tone was serene. “I understand you were at the hotel that day and witnessed the…incident.”
India tamped down annoyance. “I more than witnessed it. I was very lucky to escape injury. I was interviewing Nadia Rohbani in the lobby of the hotel at the time of the bombing. Miss Rohbani was not as lucky as I, however.”
“Ah, yes. Very unfortunate. She was very much loved. A fine actress.”
India stared at him. Then, “I am working on a project in which I wish to explain to the world the motivations behind these…incidents, as you call them.” She indicated her camera. “As I explained to your man in Beirut I will be able to record our conversation. He assured me this would be acceptable.”
“Of course. We welcome Western curiosity about our struggle. In good time we can discuss your concerns. Perhaps you need to refresh yourself after your long drive into these mountains. We live remotely here. Shall I say, our group must gather outside the purview of people who would discourage our activities.”
I Am India Fox Page 16