The Assassin (Max Doerr Book 1) (27 page)

“This
is it,” the driver declared.

The
house in front of them looked like a multimillionaire’s mansion. Escorted by
the driver, Doerr entered through the front door, and immediately there was a
large staircase leading downstairs. Doerr was led into the basement, and they
passed at least ten huge rooms. The space in the basement looked to be many
times larger than the house on top.

The
young driver stopped in front of a room and scanned his ID card on the scanner.
A red light flickered twice and then turned green.

“Here
you go. I will be upstairs if you need anything,” the driver said and walked
away.

The
door opened automatically, and Doerr walked in. Inside, Faizan lay on a
stretcher, wearing white pajama pants and a shirt, his head bandaged.

His
arms, legs, and head were strapped, so he could not do what he had done the day
before.

Doerr
stood in front of the bed; two other men were already there.

The
first man pointed to Faizan and said, “This guy is one tough bastard. Whenever
I ask something, he either says ‘I do not know’ or ‘only Allah knows.’”

“Did
you give him a dose of the truth serum?” Doerr asked.

“We
already gave him twice the allowed amount,” the second man said and was about
to smack Faizan with his elbow.

“Stop,”
Doerr said and brought his face right above Faizan’s. “Look, young man. I know
the game you are playing. It’s not going to work here. If you talk, you have a
chance to live, even go back to Egypt someday. If you play hardball, you are
definitely heading for the execution chamber.”

But
Faizan was unmoved; there was not even a flicker in his eyes.

“You
tell us where Halim is,” one of the two men, holding a wooden rod, said
angrily. “Tell us who helped you set up your attack. Or else we will crack open
your balls, just the way you opened the firecrackers to make your bomb.”

The
questioning, threatening and beating continued for another hour. Faizan had
bled from his head the day before, and now blood oozed from his arms and legs. There
were bruises on his knees and elbows. Faizan replied to some questions with a
grunt, but he remained silent to most. Occasionally he tried to shake his head
but stopped immediately; the metallic head restraint seemed to be hurting.

“Look,
we know the house on Al Omrani Road in Cairo where your parents live,” Doerr
said. “We can send someone to take care of them. In fact, your own government
will throw them into jail if we tell them to. And guess who gave us that info?
Ahmad. Remember him?” Doerr lied. “Ahmad has already turned into our informer.”

“No!”
Faizan tried to protest in a feeble voice.

“No?
Look at this,” Doerr flashed a photograph where Ahmad and Doerr stood together,
shoulder to shoulder, a photo Rosania had taken in the Dubai hotel.

Doerr
thought he saw a flicker in Faizan’s eyes, but he thought he could be wrong
about that. “I am going to leave now,” he said to the other interrogators. “And
I will come back in a few hours.”

“Our
psychiatrist will come at around noon,” one man said, pointing to Faizan. “We
will know more about what’s going on in this asshole’s head.”

Doerr
turned to leave. He walked upstairs, took out his phone and dialed the number
of a person he knew who could impersonate virtually any male voice.

AT
THREE P.M. the same day, Doerr was back at Faizan’s bed. Shamil, a man from
Mossad, Israel’s intelligence arm, was already there. Doerr had worked with him
years ago, on a project to extract information from two Libyan spies who had
been caught in Saudi Arabia and handed over to the CIA.

Shamil
had a reputation for being an extraordinary interrogator who pretended to be
sympathetic to the captive’s cause and extracted valuable details. Hamas had
tried to kill him many times. A year back, when he had been coming out of an
office in London, a 9mm bullet almost killed him. The bullet had flown by his
head, taking a few strands of his long hair with it. Mossad had hired Shamil
right after 9/11; a year back he had completed his PhD in psychology from
Oxford University.

Doerr
faced Shamil, towering over his short frame. “Anything new?”

“I
don’t know when you talked to him last. I have been conversing with him,”
Shamil pointed at Faizan, “for last two hours. I think he strongly believes
that Halim will come and save him somehow, and all he has to do is keep his
mouth shut. I also think he has remorse that he didn’t carry out the original
plan; he was to shoot into the crowd, then turn his gun on himself.”

“But
is he ready to spill everything he knows about Halim?” Doerr asked.

“That
I can’t tell right now. But he is one tough zealot.” Shamil paused and then
said, “Did your guys find out anything more on how he made the bomb and drove
to DC?”

“Yeah,
they found the remains of two rifles in the vehicle he blew up. The rifles are
badly burnt. They think they were loaded.” Doerr turned to Faizan, who was
trying to listen to their conversation. “Did he say who helped him set up the
goods in his van?”

“No,”
Shamil said. “It appears to me that he did a lot of the work himself. But it is
impossible for one person to get all the material and construct a bomb like
that without some good help.”

“Thank
you, Shamil.” Doerr looked at the Israeli man. “Now let me talk to him.”

“How
are you?” Doerr turned and said to Faizan softly.

Faizan
simply nodded.

“Where
is Zarin?” Doerr asked.

Faizan
didn’t say anything and didn’t move.

“What
did you do to the girl? Rape her?” Doerr shouted, anger creeping into his
brain. “Then kill her?”

Faizan
pointed his finger up, indicating that she was dead.

“Where
did you hide her body? You son-of-a-bitch.” Doerr took out a handgun and
pressed its barrel against Faizan’s lips. “Tell me now, or else I will shoot
you in the eye.”

“Tell
me,” Doerr screamed and smacked Faizan’s face with the gun. Blood showed on
Faizan’s lips. Shamil watched Doerr as he smacked Faizan again. Faizan spat out
blood on Doerr’s shirt, and Doerr slapped him again.

“You
think Halim is coming to save you? He won’t because he is busy trying to kill
Ahmad,” Doerr lied. “Ahmad is helping us now. He has landed in New Jersey with
his family.”

Faizan
shook his head; he didn’t believe it.

Doerr
took out his phone, pressed the redial button and put it on speaker.

“
Inshallah
.”
It was the voice impersonator that Doerr had talked to hours before.

“Talk
to him,” Doerr said to Faizan and held the phone close to Faizan’s ear.

“Ahmad?”
Faizan said in a shaken voice. “Where are you?”

“I
am in Patterson, New Jersey. I flew in today.”

“Are
you in touch with Halim?”

“No,
and I wish I had never met him. I heard he has hired someone to kill me. Son,
tell those men everything. They will let you live, and maybe someday you will
live freely in America, which is what you wanted. Allah never taught us to hurt
anyone, let alone kill people.”

Faizan
sighed. Doerr hit the red button on his cell phone, ending the call.

Doerr
crouched to bring his face close to Faizan’s ear. “Now tell me everything. I
will make sure you get a light sentence.” That was a lie too; Doerr knew Faizan
would never get anything less than life in jail.

“Okay.”
Faizan closed his eyes but did not say anything. Apparently he was thinking
hard, and then he started telling them everything.

The
confession was being recorded. Two FBI detectives and two CIA men joined Doerr
to listen in, and they stood silently behind Doerr.

Faizan
spoke for an hour. He detailed how he got into America, about the boat ride across
Rio Grande River, about the non-religious professor’s wife, and what led him to
kill Zarin, the teenaged daughter of the professor, and where exactly her body
was, and how he had assembled the bomb.

“Back
up, back up,” Doerr said. “Who was the man who gave you the firecrackers?”

“I
don’t know his real name. But Halim referred to him as Sigma.”

“But
you saw him. Correct? Tell me what he looks like.”

“He
is tall and had a scar on his right cheek. Halim said he worked for American
authorities before. But now works for him, for money.”

Samuel’s
face flashed in Doerr’s mind.
Tall and a scar on his right cheek.
Can that be Samuel, by any chance
?
Doerr wondered. It was surely worth a try.

“Where
did you meet him?”

“Virginia.”

“Where
in Virginia?”

Faizan
gave the Virginia address.

Doerr
turned to the FBI and CIA men who were standing behind him, who had been just
spectators so far. “I gotta go,” Doerr said.

“Come
on, Max,” one of the FBI men said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

“We
need you, Max,” one CIA man said. “You have all the background info. Don’t
leave now.”

“I’m
leaving the work to able colleagues like you.” Doerr hurried to the door.
“Shamil is here. He’s a great man to work with. You guys will do just fine. You
have my number, anyway.”

Doerr
did not wait for a reply. He thought he had enough to go after the mysterious
man who could turn out to be Samuel.

After
looking around in the facility for a few minutes, Doerr located the young man
who had driven him in the morning. The young man was in one of the rooms
upstairs. The room was full of security monitors. Along with three other men,
the young driver was watching one of the monitors and was talking to someone on
the phone in an agitated manner.

“Buddy,”
Doerr said to him, “I need to borrow the car, just for ten, fifteen minutes.”

The
man put his hand in his pocket, took out a car key and handed it to Doerr
without looking at him. Doerr took the key and rushed outside.

He
drove to the nearest rental company. On the way, he thought of talking to
Lazarus and telling him that he was headed for a house in Virginia, to look for
Samuel. Then he decided not to.
What if Lazarus decides to send someone else
to Virginia and tells me to go back to interrogating Faizan?
Doerr could
not risk that.

He
rented a Chevy sedan and headed immediately for the address Faizan had given
him. It was five p.m., and the lazy winter sun had already gone down. Doerr was
racing down the highway where traffic was getting thicker; hard-working people
were hitting the road to get back home after work.

It
took one hour to reach Interstate 95 South. By the time Doerr arrived at the
house in Emporia, Virginia, it was nine p.m. It was dark outside and inside.
Doerr parked his car in the driveway, seeing no other vehicle there.

Doerr
watched from his sedan. It was a large house for the area, perhaps four or five
bedrooms. Many rich people in Washington, who lived in tiny houses or condos, liked
to have a large house in a more rural area. Maybe the owner lived in Washington
and visited over weekends. Maybe the owner was Samuel. Maybe.

Keeping
the car headlights on, Doerr got out of his vehicle. He held a Glock in his
hand. An abundance of weeds in front of the house indicated the owner did not
care much about maintenance.

Doerr
stood at the door and peered inside. With the dim light, the only thing he
could make out was that the carpeted floor was fairly clean.

Doerr
kicked open the door. Glass shattered, and a piece of wood broke off. Doerr got
into the house and closed the door immediately. He moved his hand over the
wall, looking for a switch. He found it, turned it on, and light flooded the
hallway.

It
seemed like an average-looking house. First, he looked for any hanging frames
with photographs. There were none. Then he scavenged the house for any
receipts, letters, or magazines – anything that would identify the owner. It
appeared the owner took good care of eliminating traces. There was no landline
phone either.

At
last, he called his contact at the agency. “I am trying to identify the owner
of an address.”

“What
is the address, sir?”

Doerr
gave the address.

After
a minute the man at the other end said, “We don’t have the address in our database.”

“Can’t
you identify who owns the deed?”

“Yes,
but we can do that tomorrow only. Our computers are down for maintenance
tonight.”

Doerr
glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven p.m. “No, it can’t wait for
tomorrow,” Doerr said. “There is a killer on the loose. If we are going to
catch him, this has to be done tonight.”

“Don’t
get upset, sir. I am only doing my job. Tell you what, let me wake up some
people and see what I can find. I will call you back in about an hour.”