Something shifted 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 embassy 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 God only knows how many times the number of soldiers. In any case, the Saudi royals find it most embarrassing 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 constitutional 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 hell for this. And my lawyers will see you in court.”
CHAPTER
92
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 grass. 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 reporter. I have reason to believe these are Saudi secret policemen. The only people they 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.