The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel (12 page)

19

The prince glared at me.

“You have to admit, Mr. Collins, the evidence is rather compelling, is it not?”

“How so?” I asked, incredulous but determined to maintain control.

“You really need me to explain it to you?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m afraid I do.”

“Very well,” the prince said. “As you know, the list of suspects
 
—the people who knew the summit was going to be held in Amman, at the Al-Hummar Palace, who knew the exact time, the precise details
 
—is a very short list indeed. What’s more, as you also know, most of the people on that list are dead, strongly suggesting that none of them were the culprits. But you, Mr. Collins
 
—of all the names that remain on that list, you’re rather unique.”

“How so?” I asked again, not sure what else to say.

“Well, of course, you are the only one who has ever met Abu Khalif face to face. You’re the only one to have spent time with him. Significant time. And not just with the emir of ISIS but with his senior commander in Syria, Jamal Ramzy. You know them both. You’ve spoken with them both, at length. You’ve been to their lairs. You’ve met their advisors. They’ve told you their plans. They’ve
instructed you to tell the world certain things, and you’ve done exactly what they asked of you.”

“That’s my job, Your Highness.”

“Some are beginning to wonder what that job actually is.”

“Are you actually accusing me of being an agent of ISIS? Don’t you see how ridiculous that sounds?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Mr. Collins. I just thought it was only fair to let you know what some are saying about you, so you can, shall we say, disabuse them of their concerns.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Why not? Being a foreign correspondent for the
New York Times
would be the perfect cover for a mole.” The prince stood and began to walk about the room as he explained the emerging theory of my crimes. “Who else has spent time with the leaders of ISIS and repeatedly lived to tell about it?”

“If I was plotting to kill the four leaders at the summit, why in the world would I have warned two of them in advance about such an attack?”

“There could be any number of reasons.”

“Pick one.”

“Very well,” the prince said. “To create plausible deniability. You certainly don’t have an alibi. You’re consistently in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet you keep surviving while everyone around you keeps dying. By telling His Majesty and the president that ISIS was about to attack
 
—yet providing no proof whatsoever
 
—you could make it look like you were only trying to help.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“And the wrong place at the wrong time? I myself was nearly killed each time.”

“Of course
 
—but you weren’t. You survived.”

“Yeah, but
 
—”

“Take Istanbul, for example.”

“What about Istanbul?”

“A car bomb goes off in the heart of an Islamic capital,” the prince said, still pacing. “A Jordanian national is killed, allegedly a good friend and coworker of yours, but somehow you survive. The prime suspect in the bombing is a mysterious woman you were having drinks with, yet you refuse to give the authorities her name or any details about her.”

He paused, but I said nothing. I was in shock.

“Or take Union Station,” he continued. “A terrorist group
 
—apparently an ISIS sleeper cell
 
—opens fire in the middle of the train station in Washington, D.C. The shooters target everyone on the top floor of the restaurant
 
—the, uh, the . . . What was it called again?”

“Center Café,” I said numbly.

“Right, the Center Café. The shooters kill every patron on the top floor of the restaurant
 
—every FBI agent and a former director of the CIA
 
—and you’re the only one who survives. Doesn’t that strike you as just a little odd?”

“Are you forgetting that I actually shot and killed one of the terrorists?”

“Oh, you’re ready to admit that, are you? I’ve seen the surveillance tapes. The FBI has seen them too, and from the various angles of the cameras and the lighting and the shadows, it’s impossible to tell who actually shot the female terrorist on the ground floor. Very convenient, isn’t it? Yet, remarkably, a few moments later, you go running through the crime scene, uninjured, unharmed. The FBI is still wondering, why exactly did you run? If you’re innocent, why didn’t you go to the police? Why didn’t you go to the FBI? Why didn’t you go to any of the authorities and explain to them what you’d done if it was really in self-defense and not to cover up a larger crime?”

My anger was rising, but I continued to hold my tongue.

“No, instead you didn’t just flee the scene of a crime
 
—the site of a major terrorist attack
 
—oh no, you actually fled the country,” the prince continued. “Using a false passport. Using fake credit cards. Using an alias, no less. Where does an innocent man get such things? And then you wind up in Baghdad on the very day
 
—indeed, the very moment
 
—of a coordinated prison break during which Abu Khalif escapes. You come back to Jordan and all hell breaks loose. Yet again, miraculously, you escape unharmed, or nearly so. You see where this is heading, Mr. Collins? You see why people are growing deeply concerned that maybe you’re not covering this story
 
—maybe you’re causing it?”

I couldn’t believe how quickly things were going south. I felt completely blindsided and disoriented, yet I realized there was no point answering the prince’s accusations. I was, in essence, being accused of treason, and as Colonel Sharif had recently made clear to me, treason was a crime punishable by death.

“I want to meet with the American ambassador,” I said as calmly as I could.

“No,” the prince said.

“I insist.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he’s dead.”

It was as if the wind had been knocked out of me. I suddenly remembered seeing the U.S. ambassador to Jordan in the audience at the summit, sitting with several dozen other ambassadors, most of whom had probably also been killed in the attacks.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I replied. “Then I would like to speak to the attorney for the
Times
.”

“All in due time,” said the prince. “I have a few more questions I’d like answers to first.”

“These aren’t questions,” I responded. “This is an interrogation.
I’m an American citizen, and I’m entitled to legal counsel before I say anything else.”

“You’re certain of that, Mr. Collins?” he asked.

“Quite,” I said.

“Very well, then; when this whole episode with the president is resolved, we’ll see if we can’t get the attorney for the
New York Times
to come over to Amman so the two of you can have a chat.”

With that, the prince instructed the MPs to handcuff me and take me immediately to the detention center. “Put him on level B, cell number three,” he said.

Then he turned and walked away.

20

The door slammed and locked behind me.

I was alone.

Cell number three was a narrow, dark, damp cinder-block room containing only an army cot, a metal toilet without a seat, and a small metal sink that dispensed only cold water
 
—very cold at that, and not much of it. The room was so narrow I could stretch out my arms and almost touch both walls at the same time, though not quite. Oddly, its ceiling was very high, perhaps five or six meters. There were no windows and thus no natural light, only a bare, dim bulb hanging by a thin cord from that high ceiling, far too high for me to reach.

There were no books or magazines or newspapers or reading materials of any kind. There was nothing on the walls
 
—no signs, no markings, and certainly no mirror. Indeed, as I glanced about, the two most noticeable features of the cell were how barren it looked and how cold it felt. One thin green blanket was folded up at the end of the bed, but there were no sheets on the threadbare mattress, and the tiny pillow was made of plastic and had no pillowcase. Nevertheless, I lay down and stared up at the lightbulb and tried to settle my nerves and gather my thoughts.

I’d not been allowed to bring a notepad or pen or any other
personal items into the cell. Everything had been removed by the guards when they first brought me into the detention center
 
—everything except my grandfather’s gold pocket watch. I’m not sure why they let me keep it. I guess they didn’t fear I could use it either to escape or try to harm myself. So I pulled it out, wound it up, and took note of the time. It was just before eight o’clock on the morning of Monday, December 6. The ISIS deadline was just forty-six hours away, and in the midst of the most important story of my lifetime, I was now in prison.

The prince’s last words to me rang in my ears. No one was coming to see me, much less get me out of here, until
after
the deadline was over and the president’s fate had been decided one way or the other. What was I going to do? No one even knew where I was. Allen knew only that I was in a secure, undisclosed location somewhere near Amman. He didn’t know exactly where, and he certainly didn’t know I was now behind bars. No one did.

For the life of me, I couldn’t even remember the name of the
Times
’ law firm. I couldn’t remember the name of a single attorney who worked there. And even if I could, how were any of them supposed to get to me? Amman’s only international airport was closed indefinitely, a smoking wreckage, its employees murdered by ISIS in a brazen and despicable chemical weapons attack, its runways completely unusable, pockmarked with craters left by enemy mortars and artillery. And even if a sympathetic attorney could physically get not just to Amman but to Marka, to this base, to this makeshift prison, to this cell, why exactly would anyone take such a risk? The forces of the Islamic State were running rampant. People were being slaughtered in the streets of America’s most faithful
 
—and until now, most stable
 
—Arab ally. The president of the United States had been captured by ISIS terrorists. What lawyer in his right mind would come here to bail me out?

Theoretically, much could be done by phone, but with whom
would a lawyer working on my behalf speak? The king was busy. So were the prince and everyone else on the base. Jordan’s minister of justice was on life support in a local hospital and not expected to make it. And even if the Jordanians assigned someone to discuss my case with my lawyers by phone, how likely was it that they were ever going to let me go? The prince was all but accusing me of espionage and treason, both capital crimes. I wasn’t going to be released on my own recognizance. There was going to be no bail. With Jordan in flames, I’d be lucky if there was even a trial anytime soon. And what would be my defense?

Upon that thought, I was suddenly on my feet and trying to pace. There wasn’t much room, but I certainly couldn’t rest. I was utterly exhausted, but sleep was out of the question. I had to figure this out. Someone was guilty of the crimes Prince Feisal had accused me of, and it definitely wasn’t me. But who was it?

I decided to make a list of every possible suspect. From the Jordanians’ perspective, clearly, I was at the top. Right beside me, apparently, was Yael Katzir. They didn’t have her name yet. Or rather, they hadn’t yet connected Yael Katzir, the Mossad agent who had just helped me save the lives of the royal family, with the “mysterious woman” in Istanbul they now considered the prime suspect in the car bombing that had killed my best friend in the world, Omar Fayez. But how much longer would that take?

If they suspected me, wouldn’t they soon be suspecting Yael? Once they did, they would undoubtedly “rewind the clock” and play out their theory to its logical conclusion. They would send her photo to the authorities in Washington to see if Yael was in any way connected to the shootings at Union Station. She wasn’t, of course, but then they would send her photo to the authorities in Istanbul and ask them to run her face against all surveillance videos of people coming in and out of the airport in the days surrounding the car bombing. Using state-of-the-art facial recognition software, how long would
it be before they identified that Yael had in fact been there? A few seconds? A few minutes? Of course, when the Turks cross-checked Yael’s face with all the passports processed during her arrival and departure, they wouldn’t find one bearing the name Yael Katzir in their database, would they? No. They wouldn’t. Why? Because Yael had been using a fake name and a false passport. Why? Because she was on a mission for a foreign intelligence agency. That would lead to even more suspicions by dragging the Israelis into the mix.

My heart was racing. My pulse was pounding. I splashed some water on my face, but it didn’t help. I was in danger of hyperventilating. I’d never been claustrophobic in my life, but now I felt like a caged animal, and I was desperate to get out. I needed my freedom. I needed to clear my name, and Yael’s, and get back to work.

For it suddenly dawned on me that whoever the mole really was, he
 
—or she
 
—was still on the loose, still at work. This person had already caused the deaths of thousands and could even now be getting ready to kill again.