Merry Christmas, Alex Cross Part 22

She nodded. "I am."

He fished in his jacket pocket, came up with two small white pills, each stamped OC OC on one side and on one side and 10 10 on the other. He put them on the table where she could see them but not reach them. on the other. He put them on the table where she could see them but not reach them.

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HALA LOOKED AT THE PILLS, AND I COULD FEEL HER LEG JIGGLING ON THE other side of the table. "So, what? You withhold medical treatment so I talk? I think your ACLU will be interested to hear this."

Mahoney smiled. "Who said anything about withholding treatment?" He slid the tablets over in front of her. "We're not tribal savages a generation out of the desert here."

Hala scowled at him but took up one of the tablets. I pushed a plastic water bottle across the table. She swallowed the painkiller but then said, "If you think I will talk because of these pills, you do not know me."

"Hey," Mahoney said, arms wide: Mr. Nice Guy. "We want to know you, Doctor. We want to hear what you have to say in your defense."

"I'm saying nothing in my defense. I'll wait for the lawyer."

"Let us check a few things that are verifiable," the FBI agent said, as if he were a clerk taking insurance information. "Where do you live in Saudi Arabia?"

Hala did not reply, but she watched him closely.

Mahoney typed on his keypad, rolled his lower lip between fingers, said, "Al Hariq? No, that's where you were born, right out there on the edge of the erg, erg, the sea of sand, right?" the sea of sand, right?"

He looked up at her. She said, "A place of terrible beauty."

I said, "That where you became afraid of dogs?"

She smiled sourly at me. "I have no idea where that came from. It's always just been there."

"You're smart though," Mahoney observed, returning his attention to the screen. "King Saud University for one year and then four years at Penn, courtesy of the Saudi royal family. Impressive. Medical degree from Dubai. Children. A career. And then a sudden radicalization. But that's what happens when G.o.d talks to you, right?"

She said nothing, rolled her eyes at me.

"Now," Mahoney said. "Where do you live in Saudi Arabia?"

"I do not live in Saudi Arabia."

"And probably never will again," the FBI agent said brightly, still looking at his screen. "I guess what I was asking was...oh, here it is. Fahiq. It's right there outside Riyadh, on the road to Mecca."

For the first time since we'd been talking to Hala, I saw something resembling anxiety in her expression, just a glimpse of it, and then she turned stony once more.

I glanced at Mahoney, who seemed so confident now that I thought, What has Ned got on her? What about Fahiq could break her? What has Ned got on her? What about Fahiq could break her?

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"WE NO LONGER LIVE IN FAHIQ," HALA SAID. "WE SOLD THAT HOUSE YEARS ago, long before we came to this-"

"There was a transfer of property," Mahoney agreed. "But it was a gift, not a sale, to Gabir Salmann, who I believe is your uncle, the older brother of your mother, Shada?"

Something s.h.i.+fted in Hala. The coolness was gone. She studied the FBI agent the way a hawk might and made no reply.

"It's right here in the Saudi records the emba.s.sy was good enough to send over by courier," he said. "You want to see?"

No answer.

"Despite what you hear, Doctor, the Saudi royal family are, on the whole, keen allies of the United States," Mahoney went on. "Why? They might have all the oil, but we have all the weapons and G.o.d only knows how many times the number of soldiers. In any case, the Saudi royals find it most embarra.s.sing when one of their nationals goes off the reservation and starts killing some of the country's best customers and friends."

He paused and looked at me, almost cheery. "Very cooperative, the Saudis." Mahoney held up his hand, set it down, looked back at Hala. "Not a lot of political freedom back home, is there?"

Hala said nothing.

"Not a lot of wiggle room in the judicial system in Saudi, right? Sharia law? Secret police?"

Mahoney leaned forward, began talking louder: "No const.i.tutional guarantees of civil rights and humane treatment. What the Saudi royals want from their people, the Saudi royals get. Am I right, Dr. Al Dossari?"

"So what?" Hala snapped. "I am not in my homeland, and I think there is zero chance that your government extradites me."

"I agree you are not in your homeland, nor are you likely to be any time soon," Mahoney replied. He paused, glanced at me, then said to her, "But your children are there."

I immediately saw a change in her breathing pattern: her respirations became shallow, more rapid. She straightened in her chair.

"What are their names?" Mahoney asked. "Oh, here it is: Fahd, ten, and Aamina, seven. Good-looking kids." He smiled at her. "The last time you spoke to them was when?"

Hala said nothing.

"Got to be ten, eleven months." Mahoney let that hang as he started typing again. "You use Skype, Dr. Al Dossari?"

"No."

"Amazing thing," he said, hitting Return. "You can look right into a compound on the other side of the world."

He slid the computer to his left, where all of us could see it.

Hala took one look and lunged at Mahoney. The chains caught her, but she strained hard against them, and she spit at him before hissing, "Allah will see you in h.e.l.l for this. And my lawyers will see you in court."

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MAHONEY RAISED HIS HAND AND SAID, "YOU'LL NEVER SEE ME IN COURT because there will be no evidence of what you are about to witness, Dr. Al Dossari. And I'll just have to take my chances with Allah."

With my uneasiness building quickly toward horror, I studied the screen: a terrace and part of a beautiful garden where purple and red anemones grew tall and stood floppy in a wide section of gra.s.s. There was a table in the foreground with a plate of pastries on it and an icy pitcher of water, or perhaps lemonade. In the background to the right of the garden was a high whitewashed wall. Two hooded men holding AK-47s flanked three wrought-iron chairs that were pushed up against that wall, facing the camera.

An older woman in traditional Arabic dress sat without her veil in the middle seat, tied to its arms and legs. She was gagged and looked petrified. A young girl sat to her left, an older boy to her right, each of them lashed to the chair and gagged as well.

Hala glared at me. "You speak of fair!" she screamed. "You let him do this to my mother? My children?"

"I had nothing to do with this," I said, turning to Mahoney. "Stop this, Ned. I won't be part of this."

"I couldn't stop it if I wanted to," the FBI agent replied. "This is not something we condone. It is not something we sought."

"Liar!" Hala screeched. "You can stop this."

Mahoney shook his head. "No more than al-Qaeda could stop its people from chopping off the head of that Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal reporter. I have reason to believe these are Saudi secret policemen. The only people reporter. I have reason to believe these are Saudi secret policemen. The only people they they take orders from are much higher up the food chain, men with mindboggling power." take orders from are much higher up the food chain, men with mindboggling power."

"In the hall, now, or you can forget my involvement," I said; I stood and went out the door.

Mahoney followed me.

"Are those children going to be tortured?" I asked.

"I don't know," my old friend said. "It's out of my hands."

"You asked for this!" I shouted. "You said you were going to wake somebody up, for G.o.d's sake!"

"Turns out, most of them were already already up," Mahoney shot back. "They were contacted by the Saudi government right about the time the good doctor was entering Union Station. The Saudis intercepted an encrypted e-mail from two high-ranking members of the Family earlier today. So far they've been able to decipher only three words in the whole thing: up," Mahoney shot back. "They were contacted by the Saudi government right about the time the good doctor was entering Union Station. The Saudis intercepted an encrypted e-mail from two high-ranking members of the Family earlier today. So far they've been able to decipher only three words in the whole thing: Dossari, train, Dossari, train, and and gas. gas."

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"GAS LIKE 'CAR GAS' OR LIKE 'CAR GAS' OR GAS GAS LIKE 'NERVE GAS'?" LIKE 'NERVE GAS'?"

"That's exactly what I'm about to find out, Alex," Mahoney said coldly. "It's why the Saudis offered to create the little telecast in there."

"Ned, you still can't condone the torture-"

"If the Family is plotting some kind of gas attack in the United States, I will do everything in my power to prevent it," Mahoney said sharply. "Does that include accepting help from a regime that does not give its citizens the same rights we have? Yes. I'll live with that if I can save even one American life. Now, you can come back in and help me so this goes only so far, or you can walk away and risk being partly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of people."

"That's bulls.h.i.+t and unfair," I said.

"In situations like these, life is bulls.h.i.+t and unfair!" Mahoney shouted, and then he lowered his voice. "I need you, Alex. I need you to help me crack her so we can stop whatever she's got planned."

I shook my head. There was no right answer here; neither position was n.o.bler than the other. Was I going to side with torture or with ma.s.s murder on the day after my dear Savior's birth?

Before I could decide, we heard a scream from the interrogation room. Mahoney spun from me and went back in. I hesitated as I heard Hala scream, "No, please!"

I entered the room feeling like a zombie, tired beyond reason and fearing that my soul might be permanently tarnished before the night was over. That sense was intensified when I saw what was happening on the screen.

The hooded men had left Hala's mother where she was, gagged and tied to the chair against the wall. But they had brought the children's chairs close to the table, where they were looking wild-eyed at the camera.

The secret policemen stood behind the children. One carried what looked like a heavy-duty marine battery hitched to jumper cables. The end of the black negative clamp was already attached to the metal chair Hala's son was sitting in. The second guy held the red clamp above it.

Hala looked at me, enraged. "You cannot do this! He's a boy!"

"There were plenty of boys here in DC when you tried to poison the water supply," I said. "But this doesn't have to happen, Doctor. You tell us about the gas attack, and we let your kids and mom go on with their life without you."

"I don't know what you're talking-"

The hooded man barely grazed the back of her son's metal chair with the clamp. The boy's entire body jerked hard and he began to scream and cry.

"Fahd!" Hala cried. "Be brave!"

The boy seemed to hear her, but that only upset him more. He began to squirm and make noises like an animal with a broken leg. One of the men released the boy's gag, and he began to scream in Arabic.

The translator said: "'Mama! Mama, why are they doing this to me?'"