“I’ll see you then.”
“Harley, your timing is good for our investigation. But bad for me.”
“Sorry, Matt,” he apologized, hanging up the phone.
“Sounds like you have to go,” said Leah.
“Yes, let’s go straight to the Bayatis, and then to the church.” Although events were moving quickly, Harley was glad that Omar would be put in front of the FBI before he could get cold feet. Within five minutes, they were at the Riverview Bakery, where the Bayatis were getting ready to drive to the jail. Omar protested when Harley said he would have to come with him, complaining that Harley had told him that they would meet in the morning. Harley told him that the schedule had changed and promised that he would be home to see his father that night. Fatima and Sarah said that there was nothing that Omar could do at the jail, so he should keep his promise and go with Harley. Reluctantly, the young man got in Leah’s car.
They picked up Harley’s car on the way to church, and Leah sat with Omar while Harley retrieved the camera from the trunk. Within a few minutes Matt pulled into the parking lot beside them. “Not him!” Omar hissed.
“He is our best connection,” said Harley.
“But his father killed my sister.”
“And his father is now in jail.”
Omar looked at Matt with loathing, and for a minute Harley wondered if he would be able to get the young man to go to the FBI. But then he asked Leah to step out of the car so that he could talk with Omar alone.
“Let me tell you how this can go. You can come with me and tell your story, which will keep you and your family safe and secure. Or I can go alone to the FBI, tell your story, and then you’ll be under investigation right along with the Woodbridge guys. Either way, these pictures are going to the authorities.”
Omar’s anger was now directed at both Matt and Harley. But he opened the door and walked over to Harley’s car.
“I guess he’s going,” said Harley to Leah and Matt.
Matt called ahead to his colleague Bianca Augustino, who was heading up the Prince William counterterrorism investigation. She met them at the Washington Field Office and thanked them for coming in. As soon as Harley saw her, he knew exactly who she was—the beauty with long black hair and olive skin who had been the object off Matt’s obsession.
“Reverend Camden and Mr. Bayati, Agent Carter tells me that you have information about an alleged terrorist cell in Woodbridge.”
Bianca Augustino was articulate and quite intimidating. Harley understood why Matt had fallen for her.
“I am in charge of an ongoing investigation in that area, so I am interested in what you know. Although Agent Carter is no longer part of my team, I would like him to sit in on this conversation. Is that acceptable to you?”
Harley nodded, while Omar just looked at his feet. He was still not happy to be anywhere near Matt Carter. But Harley elbowed him, and he said, grudgingly, “Okay.”
“What have you observed?” inquired Bianca.
“Omar, would you like me to do the talking?” Harley asked. The young man nodded and Harley continued. “In Omar’s circle of acquaintances is a group of six young men in Woodbridge. They are angry at the United States and are plotting an act of violence. When Omar first met them, they talked about blowing something up as a sign of their strength. They knew that Omar was a good photographer, so they asked him to take pictures of some targets at Fort Belvoir. Omar made it clear that he did not want to be involved in killing, and they assured him that their target would not be occupied by people. So he took some pictures from his boat.”
“What did you photograph?” asked Bianca.
“Mostly old landing craft,” admitted Omar. “If they blew up, no one would be hurt.”
“But then the target changed,” said Harley. “As you may know, Fort Belvoir is home to a stockpile of biological weapons. The group asked Omar to photograph these new targets, and he objected. But then they started to terrorize his family.”
Harley held up Omar’s camera. “In this camera are surveillance photos of the biological weapons site. They have never been turned over to the terrorist cell. We want you to have them as evidence of their intentions.”
“Do you know where these men live?” Bianca inquired.
“Yes,” said Omar.
“Omar is willing to cooperate completely with your investigation,” said Harley, “in exchange for immunity from prosecution. He wants this plot to be halted, and for his family to be safe.”
“Only a prosecutor can grant witness immunity,” said Bianca. “But I think that your cooperation will be very valuable to us, and that you will be able to avoid prosecution. Omar, I would like to take your camera into evidence, and have you write a statement, including everything you know about this group of six men. Include their addresses, phone numbers, and any other contact information that you have. We want to stop them and keep both you and your family safe.”
Omar found Bianca to be every bit as intimidating as Harley did, and he agreed to her request. While he wrote his statement, Harley stepped outside the office with Matt, and the two of them talked for a few minutes.
“What a day,” observed Harley.
“Probably the worst of my life,” said Matt. “I’m glad Bianca did all of the talking tonight. I’m a mess. Can’t stop thinking about my father.”
“Understandable.”
“I cannot believe he is in jail.”
“He’ll need you, now more than ever.”
Matt shook his head. “Just think of it, an FBI agent making regular visits to see his father in jail.”
“But look at it this way: His action is breaking this terrorism case wide open.”
“Yeah, but we would have caught them eventually.”
“Maybe not before they struck.”
“True,” admitted Matt. “Omar’s decision to come forward is going to help a great deal.”
“Do you know the story of Joseph in the Bible?” asked Harley.
“Joseph, the father of Jesus?” guessed Matt.
“No, the Old Testament Joseph,” explained Harley. “His brothers hated him and sold him into slavery. A terrible thing. He was taken down to Egypt and there he worked his way up in the Pharaoh’s administration. Finally, he was in charge of all of the food in the land, which became incredibly valuable during a time of famine. His brothers were starving and they traveled to Egypt to get food. He could have punished them for their evil, but he saved them. And then he said to them, ‘Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people.’”
“Interesting,” said Matt. “I’ve never heard that.”
“Your father’s intentions were not good. He did a terrible thing. But God has been working through this whole mess to save a lot of people.”
At that moment, Omar walked out the office door and said that he was ready to go home. Harley said goodbye to Matt and Bianca, and then drove Omar back to Occoquan. As they pulled up to the bakery, Muhammad Bayati was getting out of the family car, free at last.
CHAPTER 24
“I live in the apartments by the marina,” said the stranger to Harley. “I walked over here on Monday but the church was locked.”
Harley put his key in the front door and said, “Are you the only one around here who doesn’t know what happened this week?” The man shrugged. “Well, it’s been something. Come on in.” Harley flipped on lights in the narthex and then the sanctuary, and the stranger trudged along behind him. “What is it I can do for you?”
“I’ve been out of work for a month, and money is real tight. I could really use some food.”
“We’ve got a food pantry, and you are welcome to a bag of groceries.” Short and thin with a stubble of beard, the middle-aged man looked to be a smoker and a heavy drinker. “I’ll open the pantry for you, and you can fill a bag with what you want.” The stranger said thanks and followed Harley to the pantry on the lower level, next to the social
hall. Harley had a lot to do before the worship service that Sunday morning, and felt mildly annoyed that the stranger had ambushed him when he arrived. But he had been in the business long enough to know that ministry happened in and through interruptions, so he decided to try to be patient.
“I was delivering pizzas, but I wrecked my car,” said the man as he started to examine the shelves of canned food and dry goods. “They couldn’t keep me on without a car. I’ve been looking ever since, but it seems like nobody’s hiring.”
Harley stood nearby as the stranger slowly filled his bag, examining each food label. “Sorry to hear it,” he replied, wishing that the guy would make his selections a little faster.
“So, what happened this week in Occoquan?” asked the man.
“On Monday, a man from Lake Ridge confessed to the killing of Norah Bayati.”
“The Iraqi girl?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I thought her father did it,” he said, looking up from his bag of groceries.
“Many people did,” Harley acknowledged, “but he’s innocent. Then, on Wednesday, a team from the FBI raided three apartments in Woodbridge. They arrested six men and found a cache of weapons and bomb-making chemicals and equipment. It seems like they were planning a terrorist attack.”
“Muslims?”
“Well, yes, but not good ones. Islamic extremists.”
“I’m suspicious of them all.”
“You might want to rethink that,” cautioned Harley. “They were turned in by a young Muslim man right here in Occoquan.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“He saved a lot of lives, maybe even yours and mine.”
The man continued to fill his bag and Harley checked the time. He still needed to straighten up the sanctuary since the events of the past week had thrown his normal routine into chaos.
“That should do it,” said the man as he put a box of cereal in the top of the bag. “But I was wondering, pastor, do you have any money to help with a three-hundred-dollar electric bill?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Harley replied. “But you could check back next week. I might have something then.”
The Bayatis had told Harley that they wanted to return the bulk of the money that had been given to them for Muhammad’s defense, once they settled their account with their attorney. Harley told them that it wasn’t necessary, but they insisted—they wanted it to be used to help others. He had a sense that his pastor’s discretionary fund would be in good shape for the next few years.
“You know, I’m a pretty spiritual guy,” said the man as he stood in front of Harley with his bag of groceries. “I can feel things. People say I have a sixth sense. I knew the exact moment my brother died, even though he was all the way over in Manassas. I feel the Spirit is here, right here in this church.”
“Really?” replied Harley, surprised. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” said the man. “I appreciate the groceries.” And then he slipped out the back door of the lower level.
Harley walked up the stairs to the sanctuary level, wondering what the man had actually been feeling. Over the years, he had met a number of people with keen spiritual sensitivity, folks with built-in radios that could pick up stations no one else could hear. In his very first church, he had a member, an eighty-eight-year-old woman, who told him, “I’ve got the sight,” even though she was as blind as a bat. Given that she had incredible intuition and the ability to sense Harley’s fears and insecurities as a young pastor, he had no doubt that she was absolutely right. Bertha Washington. I wonder what happened to her? She was so good to me.
Bertha had told Harley, “You were born with a veil over your face,” which he never understood but assumed to be some kind of good omen. Enjoying the memory of her blessing, he turned on the lights of his office and picked up a stack of Sunday bulletins. The air conditioner had been fixed, so he cranked it up to cool the room. As he reentered the sanctuary, he looked up at black Jesus, whose stained-glass clothing glowed in the sunlight flooding in from the east. The window had never looked so radiant, and he wondered if it was the time or the fact that it was shaping up to be cloudless day. Dropping the bulletins on the ushers’ table near the entrance, he moved through the pews to pick up leftovers from the previous Sunday.
Harley’s days had been filled with a steady stream of people wanting to talk about Dirk and the Bayatis and the Woodbridge terrorists. Harley spent most of the time listening as church members expressed shock that Dirk, a lifelong Methodist, could commit such an act of brutal violence. Most were glad that Muhammad had been released, although they questioned his condemnation of Norah’s relationship with an American, a judgment that they felt laid the groundwork for the tragedy. Some wondered why Will had remained silent, and how Dirk and Matt could have miscommunicated so badly. And all were grateful to Omar for coming forward and making his statement, exposing the terrorist plot and sparing the region from a devastating calamity. Deep relief was just one of the many emotions expressed that week, as people unburdened themselves and found ways to understand what had happened.
On Friday night, Omar came to Harley’s house to pick up some clothes he had left in the guest suite. He told Harley about his father’s transition from jail back to home, and how something as simple as having the freedom to go outside for a walk, at any hour of the day, was a major adjustment for him. Fatima was happy, he reported, smiling and laughing more than she had since the day of Norah’s death. Omar admitted that he felt kind of guilty when the Woodbridge guys were arrested on Wednesday, but the burden was eased when it immediately took away the cloud of fear hanging over his family. He said that he had been hungry for the acceptance and support of the guys when he first met them, but he quickly discovered that they were using him for his boat and for his skill with a camera. And then, when they began to terrorize his family as a way of manipulating and controlling him, he saw how unprincipled they really were. By the time he wrote his statement for the FBI, he had concluded that they were Muslim in name only, with no respect for people or reverence for God.
“Still, I have some guilt,” Omar confessed to Harley. “Is that the right thing to feel?”
“It’s not right or wrong,” Harley told him. “It is just the thing you are feeling. Given the fact that you had a connection to these guys, I think it makes perfect sense.”
“But they were evil guys.”
“Yes, they were plotting something evil. But they were still people, capable of doing good. Your guilt tells me that you knew that.”
“I wish I could feel just one thing—relief.”
“Don’t we all?” Harley said to him. “It’s just not always possible.”
After passing through a half dozen pews, Harley glanced up at the stained-glass window and saw the deep blues and greens of the water, along with the frothing white caps of the waves. The sun brought the panes of glass to life in a new way. He had never noticed the colors of the storm before, focusing always on the faces of Jesus and his frightened disciples. He realized that the tempest was a major character in the story, threatening the lives of everyone in the boat until Jesus exerted his influence and calmed the wind and the waves. What blew across the Sea of Galilee was a very different wind from the Spirit of God; it was a chaotic and destructive force much more like the violent energy that drove Dirk and the Woodbridge terrorists to take the actions they did. Harley had felt that evil wind himself, every bit as much as he had felt the breath of God. He knew now that both forces were present and real, in Occoquan and around the world, and that they could blow up again in unexpected ways.
At that point, the front door opened and a figure appeared. “Good morning, Harley,” said Mary Ranger as she entered the church. Walking down the center aisle, she asked, “Do you have a minute?”
He sighed. “Sure. Can we talk right here while I am straightening up?”
“Sure,” she replied. “May I help you?”
As the two of them mo
ved through the pews, the postmistress admitted, “I’m terribly upset about Dirk. He’s all I can think about, ever since Monday.” She wiped away tears. “We have sat together in this church for years. We just had such a good time going in your boat to the baseball game. How could he kill that young woman?”
Harley paused and looked at her. “He thought he was helping Matt.”
“But how can that be?”
“For Dirk, nothing mattered more than protecting his family, his community, his country. He was taking action to do that, or so he thought.”
“But he was wrong to go after Norah.”
“Yes, it was a mistake. A terrible mistake.”
“What did Matt tell him that would send him after her?”
Harley thought for a second about what had been told to him in confidence, and what had not. Even though the details of the killing had emerged, he wanted to keep his promises.
“They weren’t communicating well,” he offered. “They were talking past each other. Assumptions were made.”
“Deadly assumptions.”
“Yes, indeed. People have got to communicate well, and really talk to each other. Horrible things happen when they fail to do so.”
Mary shook her head sadly, and the two of them returned to the work of straightening up the sanctuary. As they made their way through the last of the pews, Harley asked her, “Have I preached here about the power of words?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she replied.
“I’m convinced that words create reality,” Harley explained. “It’s a very biblical idea. Think of God creating the world in Genesis, saying ‘Let there be light,’ and there is light. Jesus is described in the New Testament as ‘the Word.’ When Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘I have a dream,’ people began to see a vision of a new world of equality. Words create reality.”
“That makes sense, I guess.”
“So the words we use are terribly important,” he continued. “Whether we say ‘I love you’ or ‘I hate you’ makes a huge difference. If I say to a friend, ‘I forgive you,’ it actually changes our relationship. The words that Matt and Dirk spoke were misleading words. The words that Muhammad spoke to Norah were harsh words. The words that Omar wrote in his statement to the FBI were lifesaving words.”
City of Peace Page 23