The words hovered in the still air between them. Sherlock didn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but not this. She shook her head. “You’re wrong, Nasim. Everyone who has both feet in this world fears death.”
“But you came after me regardless.”
No one had asked her about that. “Actually, the truth is pretty simple. Everything happened so fast. I only knew I had to stop you from killing Melissa and all those other innocent people. My job is to protect, you know that.”
“You even remember that woman’s name—Melissa. I should never have grabbed her. I should have thrown the grenade and ended it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I failed at the airport because I was afraid to die.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t fear that stopped you. Perhaps you couldn’t convince yourself to kill all those people.”
He began picking his thumbnail. “I heard the agents talk about your little boy. You have both a husband and a son, yet you acted, knowing you could die. Don’t you care about what would happen to them? How they would grieve for you?”
Where was this coming from? Did Cal and the agents in the living room wonder as well?
Then she understood. “My husband and my son are the center of my life. You have a family, children, you know what that means. What I don’t understand is what drove you, what you hoped to accomplish. You are an educated man, a journalist. Nothing you’ve written or done suggests you are a terrorist or a jihadist. You have no ties we could find to any terrorist organization, no history of speaking out for their cause or defending what they do. You’ve led a peaceful life, an admirable life; you love your wife, your family.
“So tell me, why did you take a grenade to JFK intending to kill dozens of people?”
“I had no choice.”
“Because they took your family from you, didn’t they?”
“How did you know that? How very stupid of me. By now you know my youngest son has a birthmark behind his knee. You know everything about me, don’t you? And about my family?”
“Not yet. But we do know your wife, Marie Claire, arrived in Boston with your three children three days ago. We have identified two men on the plane with them as having forged documents, very good ones. They were seen on airport security cameras leaving the terminal with your family.”
“So you don’t know where they are?”
“We saw them in a black SUV leaving the airport exit, but we have nothing else. Not yet.”
“Do you understand I had no choice? That I acted as you would have acted if someone held your husband and your son hostage, would kill them without a thought?”
There was no point in contradicting him. Sherlock said, “How long did they have your family before they sent you to JFK?”
“Three days and three nights.”
“Endless time to let your fear of their dying gnaw at you, to let you feel the grief of losing your family if you didn’t explode the grenade. Endless time to live with the knowledge of your own death.”
“They are ruthless and cruel, but all that makes no difference now. I am prepared to die, I will die. My only hope is that you will find my family before they are murdered.”
“You are under our protection here, Nasim. You’re safe here, you know that.”
“You Americans overestimate yourselves, Agent. My safety no longer matters to me, in any case. Even after I die, I fear for what they will do to my family.”
There was no doubt in his voice. He was certain he would die soon. “Tell me how all this happened to you, Nasim. Tell me who it was who put you here.”
“I will tell you all I know if you swear you will do everything in your power to find my family. Swear you will not let your government sacrifice them because they are of no value to them. I will tell you then, no one else. You.”
“I swear it, Nasim. I will personally take part in the hunt for your family. And we will hunt for them, you can be sure of that.”
He studied her face, slowly nodded. “You will not have much time.”
“Take me through it, then, Nasim. How did they approach you?”
“Approach me? I was walking home from the market on Lancaster Road when two men wearing nylon masks threw me in the back of a van. I never saw the driver. They struck me whenever I tried to move, didn’t say a word to me. They chained me in a dirty warehouse somewhere that smelled of rotten fish, left me there terrified, not knowing why this was happening to me or whether they would kill me.
“When they returned, always three of them, always in their masks, it was only to bring me enough food and water to survive. They wouldn’t speak to me or answer any of my questions, ignored my plea to call my wife so she would know I was alive and arrange for a ransom, hit me again if I said too much. From the few words they said, it was obvious they were Arabic. When they spoke in that language, it was with a Syrian accent. I might recognize their voices, perhaps, but that is all.
“After two days they sat me down and the man with the strongest accent told me I would be taking a trip to New York, said they had an assignment for me there. He showed me photos of my family on a smartphone, surrounded by men in masks, played a video of my wife, terrified, pleading with me to do as they asked. They had my passport, so I knew they’d taken my family from my home, since all my papers were there. He said I would learn later what I would be doing there, but that if I failed, they would murder my wife and my children.”
Nasim paused, looked down at his fisted hands. “The man told me he would do it himself, strangle each of them in turn, bury them all together in a single grave. I believed him. I demanded to speak to my wife, demanded proof she was alive. They said I could speak to her only after we were all in New York. That way no one in London could find them, even if I got word to someone. They had me purchase tickets for all of us myself, even left me alone during my flight to New York.
“A man approached me at Kennedy, took me to a waiting van, blindfolded me, and drove away. I believe there were three men. They did not speak, except for the destination: Queens. They held me in a small apartment there, I don’t know where in Queens. I spoke with Marie Claire for the first time that night. We spoke in French until one of the men struck me in the ribs, said we had to speak English. They let her tell me they were still all right, that they had made it to America. I heard my children in the background.”
Nasim Conklin looked toward the single window, darkened by the curtain pulled tightly over it. “They took the phone away. That was the last time I spoke to my wife.”
“You say ‘they,’ Nasim. You obviously saw them. Do you know who they were? Can you describe them, or the van?”
“There were three of them, their accents Syrian, like the first three. They were about my age and older. They looked pleasant and well dressed, all three in slacks and jackets. They were polite; their English was quite good. The license plate on the van? I didn’t see it.”
“I will show you photos, see if you can identify them.”
“Yes, I will try. I do know they had British passports, but perhaps they were forged as well.”
“And it was only then they told you what you had to do? Explode a grenade in the security line at JFK?”
He nodded. “Right after they took the phone, the nightmare became worse than I imagined. They showed me the grenade, showed me how to make it explode, and handcuffed me to a cot in the back room, expecting me to sleep. Of course I could not sleep at all. It was then I overhead bits and pieces of their conversation through the closed door, in Arabic. They didn’t realize I could sometimes hear them. That was when I heard them use the word Bella, a kind of code word for what they were doing. They mentioned a man they called the Strategist—there is no Arabic word translation, so they used the English. I don’t know who he is, but they spoke of him respectfully, almost reverently—as their mastermind or leader. And one of the men—his name was Rahal—mentioned a name, Hosni, called him his brother and Hosni was here in the United States, and was helping them. He laughed a bit. Do you think Hosni Rahal might be important?”
Sherlock’s heart kicked up. “Hosni Rahal. We will search for him. You have no idea at all who the Strategist might be?”
Nasim shook his head. “Other than the one who seems to have planned this Bella project, I have no idea. Those were the only names I heard. I do not know if that will help you.”
“The question we need to focus on, then, Nasim, is why did this happen to you in particular? Who picked you out to do this, and why? If we can discover that, we can find them, and perhaps your family.”
“I have hardly thought about anything else. What did I do, what did my family do to deserve this? Why didn’t they send one of the many misguided souls who are eager to die for jihad, someone they had thoroughly trained, rather than take the risk of choosing someone like me? I froze, didn’t I?”
“Exactly the question. Could they have picked you because they thought you couldn’t be connected to them? Expected that you would die without even knowing who they were? Or perhaps it was also something personal, someone wanted you dead?”
“I have no mortal enemies, so far as I know.”
“When they first took you, though, you believed it was for ransom? Because you were selling your father’s business and you would shortly be very rich?”
“That is true, but there is only my mother. Why would she want me dead?”
Sherlock nodded. “All right. Go back with me, Nasim. You returned to London about six months ago?”