The Witness Page 7

  As he ran through the house, he wondered what Marwan could be doing there. Was he running from something? Was he hiding? Had one of his dubious-background, high-powered clients turned on him? Were the police after him?

  Whatever the situation, two things were certain: Marwan was in trouble, and Kadeen was the one he had come to for help.

  He scanned the kitchen, looking for the butcher’s block. I really need to spend more time in this room, he thought, getting frustrated. There it is!

  Once he had the scissors, he turned to run back to the living room and almost stumbled over his eight-year-old daughter.

  Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that the four-year-old wasn’t up too, he said, “Laila, what are you doing—”

  “Who’s the man in the living room, Abi?”

  Kadeen squatted to look her in the eye. “He’s a friend of mine, my little simsimah. He’s hurt, and he’s come to us for help.”

  “Is he going to die?”

  Lord, please, no, he thought. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Can I help you?”

  A feeling of pride swept over Kadeen. Laila hated to see anybody or anything hurting—a wonderful quality in a little girl when directed at people, a little more difficult to deal with when she brought home the occasional mangy street dog.

  “You certainly can. Go to Maryam’s room and quietly get into bed with her. Sleep with her tonight. She’s too little to see this, so please make sure she doesn’t come out.”

  “Should I pray while I’m in bed?”

  Kadeen cupped Laila’s cheek in his hand. “Of course, simsimah, pray. Now scoot.”

  Moments later, Kadeen was back in the living room. While he was gone, Rania had managed to tear open Marwan’s shirt. Kadeen dropped the scissors into the pocket of the jeans he had slipped into before he had answered the door and looked over Rania.

  Marwan’s shoulder was a nightmare.

  “Sorry I took so long,” he said. “Laila was in the kitchen.”

  “I know. She heard the vase. I sent her there after you. This is not good, Kadeen.”

  “That much seems obvious.”

  “He needs to get to a hospital. This is too much for me to handle.”

  “He can’t go to a hospital.”

  She stood and faced Kadeen. “What do you mean he can’t go? Either we get him to a hospital, or he is going to die tonight on our couch!”

  Gently taking her by the shoulders, Kadeen said, “Listen, habibti, there is a reason he came here instead of going to the hospital. He is obviously in some sort of major trouble.”

  “He’s in trouble if he stays here! Dying on our couch is pretty serious trouble!”

  Kadeen released his wife and turned away. “I know, I know. Just give me a minute to think.”

  Brushing past him, Rania left the room. Moments later, he heard pots rattling and water running.

  Turning around, he stared at his friend. It was hard to know for sure, but it appeared that the years had aged him well. After all this time, this is how you step back into my life. That is so like you—always a flair for the dramatic.

  Rania came back around him. In her hands she carried a pot of water with several rags floating in it.

  As she knelt and began cleaning the wound, Kadeen asked, “You don’t think this is something you can handle?”

  Without turning, she replied, “It’s a gunshot wound. The bullet has to be taken out. Then all the fibers from his clothing have to be removed. Finally, it’s already infected, so we need to get him on heavy doses of antibiotics—greater amounts than I have access to.”

  Kadeen nodded. Please, Lord, guide me.

  19

  An airport security officer identified the stolen rental car just as the sun was coming up over Marseille. Fifteen minutes later, the area was surrounded by police, and by seven thirty, Inspector Jean-Claude Goddard’s cell phone was ringing in Monte Carlo.

  “Yes, yes, what is it?” he asked, startled out of a catnap in his office, where he had been all night. “You’re kidding. . . . Where? . . . Has the area been secured? . . . No, no, we’ll grab a chopper. . . . Have everything ready by the time we arrive. . . . Good work.”

  He called Colette DuVall to make the necessary arrangements, then called Lemieux and delivered the news. They had a lead.

  Goddard splashed hot water on his face, brushed his teeth and hair, and changed into a clean shirt from one of his desk drawers. He stopped in front of the mirror and realized that he still looked as bad as he felt. Then he gathered up his badge, sidearm, wallet, and keys and met DuVall out front. She drove him to the heliport to meet Lemieux.

  “You look horrible,” DuVall said as she sped through nearly empty streets.

  “I feel worse,” Goddard said.

  “Didn’t you go home last night?”

  “How could I?” he said, sifting through his notes. “Have you found any more on the four men who engaged in the shoot-out with Accad in Saint Michel?”

  “No. No identification, no fingerprint matches. There wasn’t even any registration for the vehicles. Just like the two from the Méridien; it was like they were ghosts that just appeared from the great beyond.”

  “That’s odd. Smells like professional security on a level that’s even beyond what Accad was doing. Probably Ramsey’s people. It’s almost too coincidental that they could be from another case he was dealing with. But we can’t rule it out either. What about the taxi driver?”

  “It seems that Accad killed him, then stuffed his body in the backseat. He was an immigrant from Algeria.”

  “No previous connection to Accad?”

  “Doesn’t appear so, sir.”

  Goddard drummed his fingers on the dashboard as he thought. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw DuVall give him a would-you-please-stop-it look. He ignored her and kept up the percussion solo. It helped him think.

  “So work this through with me. Accad kills Rafeeq Ramsey. Goes to the Méridien. Kills two mystery gunmen—”

  “Remember, one was a woman.”

  “Whatever,” Goddard said, dismissing her interruption with a wave of his hand. “I don’t care if one was a chimpanzee. They were armed and shooting. He goes back outside, kills his taxi driver. Steals the taxi. Is ambushed by four gunmen,” he continued, daring her to say anything, “whom he promptly dispatches. He goes to La Turbie, steals a rental car at the Trophy of Augustus, then drives to the Marseille airport, where he promptly disappears. That sound about right?”

  “Yes, sir,” DuVall answered matter-of-factly, apparently still stinging a little bit from Goddard’s sarcasm.

  “Pretty full day for one man.” Goddard began his dashboard drumming again. “Did you find any more background on him?”

  “The e-mail I sent you at four was all I’ve found so far,” DuVall said. “But I’ve got a conference call with Beirut and Paris at ten. I’ll call you as soon as I get more.”

  DuVall pulled into the parking area. The chopper was already warmed up and ready for takeoff. Goddard got out and grabbed his briefcase.

  “Sure you don’t want to take my place?” he yelled over the roar of the rotors.

  “A whole day with the Skeleton?” she yelled back. “Tempting, but I’ll pass.”

  “Very funny,” Goddard shot back. “Just get more on Accad—fast.”

  “Will do.”

  A few minutes later, Inspector Lemieux arrived, and they were soon in the air.

  “All right, Monsieur Goddard,” Lemieux said after they had been airborne for a few minutes. “What do you have on our suspect?”

  It was showtime.

  “His full name is Marwan Adeeb Musa Accad,” Goddard began as they flew over the French countryside. “He was born in Sidon, Lebanon, on February 14, 1978. His father, Adib, was a banker. His mother, Sarah, was a schoolteacher. The family moved to Beirut in ’83. Beyond that, it’s a bit sketchy. We know that Accad’s only brother, Ramy, was born in ’82. We know th
at Accad joined the army in ’96, and that he did well, got noticed, got promoted, and served in several elite units. He was then assigned to the secret services, serving as a bodyguard for the defense minister in ’98 and then on the prime minister’s protective detail from 1999 to 2001.”

  Goddard scanned through the printout of DuVall’s e-mail.

  “From there,” he continued, “Accad left the government in 2003. He set up Accad & Associates, an executive security company. That was right about the time that Ramy got out of the army and joined his brother’s business. As far as we can tell, most of their work is protecting Western oil executives and their staffs currently working in Iraq and helping track down victims of kidnappings. More recently, they’ve begun protecting Western oil company executives working in Libya. And apparently they’re developing quite a brisk business working with other Fortune 500 clients in and around the gulf. There’s no bio on his company Web site, just a client list and contact information for their main office in Beirut. My colleague, Colette DuVall, put a call into the office last night. It was closed, but she will try again in about an hour.”

  “That’s it?” Lemieux asked.

  “So far, yes,” Goddard said, taken off guard by Lemieux’s intensity.

  “You think I don’t know all that already?” The Skeleton’s voice dripped with disgust. “I got all that with a single phone call to my office. It took me all of five minutes. My secretary knows more about Marwan Accad than you do, Monsieur Goddard. Is this the best Monaco has to offer? Heaven forbid!”

  Goddard was determined to keep his composure. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes alone with Lemieux, no badges, no rank, he mused. But he knew he could not afford to lose his cool. Nor did he want to give Lemieux the satisfaction of knowing he was getting under his skin.

  “You asked me to pull together what I could,” Goddard replied. “We should have more in a few hours.”

  “In a few hours, Marwan Accad could be in either Japan or Alaska,” Lemieux said. “We don’t have the luxury of time. We have a killer on the loose, and at this point he has a twelve-hour head start.”

  Goddard felt his neck and face turning red and his ears growing hot. Everyone in the chopper had just heard him get chewed out, and he wanted to strike back. But now was neither the time nor the place.

  “I’m curious, Monsieur Goddard,” Lemieux went on as they continued toward Marseille. “Why did you say nothing about how Marwan Accad and his brother survived the 1982 invasion of Lebanon—hiding in the bathtub and in the hallways of their apartment building, huddled in the arms of their mother, trying to avoid getting hit by glass and shrapnel?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t—”

  “Why did you say nothing about the day Accad saw his two uncles and two aunts and their children killed by a mortar round during Ramy’s first birthday party?” Lemieux continued. “Did you know that Accad and his brother watched their own parents die in a car bombing on the streets of Beirut a few years later?”

  Goddard looked out the window at the barren trees and the muddy farms after a night of drenching rains.

  “Well, did you?” Lemieux demanded. “January 3, 1993? Does it ring a bell?”

  “No,” Goddard said. He felt humiliated. And what made it worse was that Lemieux was right. He should have had more. He should never have brought Lemieux bread crumbs instead of a full meal. Goddard knew how this guy operated, and he had only himself to blame.

  Unfortunately, Lemieux still was not done.

  “Accad was just shy of his fifteenth birthday,” the Skeleton said without a trace of emotion. “Ramy was not quite eleven. It was a day that would haunt them for the rest of their lives, a day of which they never speak. Not to each other. Not even to themselves. You want to solve this case? Then you had better come to understand the real Marwan Accad. You want to know how a man can be driven to blackmail? to murder? to terrorizing an entire community of innocents? Then you had better start by understanding the events that shaped him and the demons that drive him.

  “The narrative begins with the day his parents were murdered. Everything changed on that day, did it not? Accad at once ceased to be a brother. He was now a father. There was no one else left to raise Ramy. Their uncles were dead. Their aunts were dead. The rest of their relatives had fled Lebanon for Europe and the United States. All of a sudden, Accad had to raise his little brother all by himself. Feed him. Clothe him. Protect him from harm. Even in the army, Accad had to clear the way for Ramy. He got Ramy accepted into an elite unit. He got Ramy choice assignments, even a coveted spot on the deputy prime minister’s protective detail, just one step removed from the inner circle of power.

  “But why? What were they after? Was their real objective so noble, to protect the leaders of their country from harm and the children of leaders from having to suffer as they had suffered? Come now, Monsieur Goddard, tell me you are not so naive.”

  Goddard said nothing. He had had just about enough of this.

  “Marwan Accad is not driven by a love of country,” Lemieux said. “He is driven by pure greed. Believe me. I have spent a lifetime pursuing such men. I know them by sight. Accad wants what he believes is rightfully his. He wants what was ripped from his hands—riches, the indescribable sense of invincibility that goes with real wealth, fabulous wealth. And to satisfy his nearly insatiable hunger, he preys upon the rich and the powerful, lulling them into a false sense of security before bleeding them dry. Mark my words, monsieur, Marwan Accad is a son of the devil. He comes only to rob, kill, and destroy. Which is why we must find him before he strikes again.”

  20

  By the time Goddard and Lemieux landed in Marseille, the local authorities had gathered significant new evidence. The inspectors proceeded to the office of the director of airport security and began by reviewing surveillance tapes.

  The first showed Marwan Accad’s stolen rental car entering the airport grounds. Another showed Accad himself entering the airport a few minutes later. Other camera angles showed him emptying his locker, entering the men’s room, picking up his ticket and boarding pass, and going through security as Jack Cardell.

  “What’s that he just tossed in the trash?” Goddard asked.

  “Who knows?” Lemieux said. “It could be anything.”

  Goddard turned to the director. “Someone needs to go through all the trash collected last night and find what that was.”

  “But, monsieur, the inspector is right,” the director said. “It could be anything.”

  “Or it could be something,” Goddard insisted. “Find it.”

  Next, Lemieux called in the gendarme who had cleared Accad through security. He interrogated him so intensely that Goddard thought the man was going to have a nervous breakdown. The man was promptly suspended without pay.

  A review of computer logs, meanwhile, showed that someone using a Lebanese Internet provider had purchased the Royal Air Maroc ticket for Marwan online.

  “It has to be Accad’s brother,” Lemieux said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Goddard cautioned.

  “Who else could it be?” Lemieux asked.

  “I’m just saying, we are trying to build a case,” Goddard said, “one built not on conjecture but on solid facts, provable in court. If Accad is really guilty—and he may very well be—we need a lot more evidence than what we have. Right now, it’s all circumstantial.”

  “I have won many cases with less,” Lemieux boasted.

  And how many have you let die with more? Goddard wondered, but he said nothing.

  “Suit yourself,” Lemieux said. “But I am getting on the next flight to Casablanca to find our killer. I want you to go to Beirut. Find out who purchased that ticket. But watch your back, Monsieur Goddard. Marwan and Ramy Accad are dangerous men. The closer you get, the more dangerous they’ll become.”

  21

  Marwan ducked behind a plaster half wall. Bullets flew all around him, sending grit and white dust puffing up, stingin
g his eyes. Peeking around the side of the wall, he saw blood splash from the neck of one of his assailants. The man crumpled to the ground.

  Looking to his left, he saw another man firing at the enemies, but because of the angle, Marwan couldn’t see his face. At least I’m not alone, he thought as he began returning fire.

  He couldn’t miss. It was almost as if he had an angel on his shoulder directing each bullet. As quickly as an attacker came through the door or around a corner or up from behind a piece of furniture, Marwan took him out. But for each man he killed, it seemed like two more took his place. Soon, his arm began to ache and the smell of powder burned his nostrils.

  At long last, the last man fell. Then there was silence.

  My partner, he thought, realizing he hadn’t heard any shots from him for a while. With his gun trained toward the front door, he slowly sidestepped the length of the room. At the end, sitting with his back to the wall and his face turned away was the man who had had his back throughout this shoot-out.

  Marwan could hear his ragged breath—shallow and intermittent. He dropped next to him and took hold of his chin. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as he turned the man’s head.

  “No!” Marwan screamed.

  Kadeen al-Wadhi’s face was covered with blood from a wound to the top of his head. On his chest, Marwan could see three more bloody holes. His friend’s lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.

  “Kadeen! Hang on, my friend. I’ll get you help.”

  Marwan began backing up so he could get to the door, but a barely perceptible shake of Kadeen’s head froze him in his tracks.

  “What? I need to get you help!”

  Still his friend’s lips kept moving.

  He’s trying to tell me something! “What are you trying to say?”

  Taking two strides forward, Marwan squatted in front of Kadeen. His friend’s eyes showed no recognition of him. As he listened to his breathing, it became obvious that he was beyond help. Marwan had seen plenty of people die before; he knew the signs.