Page 51 of Grave Danger
“My feelings for Ava are complicated.”
“Thank you,” said Beech, quick to shut things down.
“Crocodile tears,” Zahra whispered to Jack.
“One last question,” said Beech.
The final question was always well rehearsed, and despite the surprises along the way, Beech was not to be denied the power of those final words.
“Mr. Bazzi, why did you bring this action under the Hague Convention?”
He took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m not out for revenge. I don’t have hard feelings toward Zahra or Ava. My daughter was taken from me. I just want her back.”
“Thank you,” said Beech. “I have no further questions.”
Beech closed her notebook and returned to the table. Jack rose for cross-examination, but the judge stopped him.
“We are coming up on four thirty. Let’s call it a day and resume tomorrow morning at nine with cross-examination. The witness may step down. We are adjourned.” He brought down the gavel.
“All rise!” said the bailiff.
Jack and his client got quickly to their feet. Behind them, rows of spectators followed suit, their thumps and thuds in the wooden bench seats echoing in an otherwise silenced courtroom. Zahra looked at Jack, as if asking for his immediate assessment of how much damage Farid had done. Farid had done his job. Jack might even say he was a perfect witness. But that wasn’t what his client wanted to hear.
“The judge did us a favor,” he said quietly. “I have the whole night to prepare my cross-examination.”
As Judge Carlton exited through the side door to his chambers, the rumbling of a hundred different conversations broke the courtroom silence. The clock was ticking on Jack’s night of preparation.
Chapter 18
It was a ten-minute walk from the State Department to the nearest Metro station. A transfer to the Yellow Line would have taken Andie to Reagan National Airport in time to catch her flight to Miami. But the review of the classified dossier on Ava Bazzi was only part of the reason for her trip. Andie took the Red Line to Maryland.
“Next stop, Takoma Station.”
Andie rose with the robotic-sounding announcement. The metallic screech of steel wheels on steel rails brought her train to a stop, and she exited to the platform.
Andie had been planning this side trip since the night the woman showed up in a taxi outside her house in Key Biscayne. After the woman refused to tell Andie her name, Andie had jotted down her cab’s license plate number. A follow-up call to the driver gave her the name of the hotel where he’d dropped his passenger. A call to the hotel manager got her the name the woman had used at check-in, which was as phony as Jane Doe. She’d been careful enough to pay the cab and the hotel in cash, leaving no credit card trail. But there had been an outgoing phone call from the hotel room. The number was on the billing statement. It was to a landline, and belonged to a seventy-seven-year-old woman in Takoma Park, Maryland. Her name was Irene Guthrie. Irene’s address was Andie’s destination.
And people saidcell phoneswere the end of personal privacy.
The walk from the Metro station to Irene’s house was one of the crunchiest Andie had ever taken. Takoma Park was known for its tree-lined streets, and autumn had come late, leaving sidewalks covered in fallen leaves, with still more falling as Andie passed through the quiet neighborhood. The wood-frame houses dated to before World War II but were well maintained. Theyall started to look the same to Andie, distinguished only by the color of the latest coat of paint on the clapboard siding. Andie stopped outside a yellow house and checked the street number. She was in the right place. She walked up the sidewalk—crunch, crunch, crunch—and knocked on the front door. To Andie’s surprise, Irene didn’t even ask who it was before opening the door.
We’re not in Miami anymore, Toto.
“Irene Guthrie?” asked Andie.
“Yes, can I help you?”
It wasn’t kosher for an FBI agent to flash a badge on a personal matter, and it was a close call as to whether this visit was FBI business. Andie had played it conservatively and not used her FBI status when talking to the cabdriver and hotel manager. Years of undercover work had trained her to open doors without a badge. She played this visit the same way.
“Hi, my name is Andie. You don’t know me, but we have a mutual friend. Frankly I’m a little worried about her, and I was hoping you could help.”
Irene’s eyes clouded with concern. “Who are you talking about?”
Andie pulled a photograph from her purse. It was an image captured by video surveillance at the hotel. The hotel manager had been more than cooperative, though Andie doubted that she would have gotten the surveillance video if she’d been wearing her wedding ring at the time.
“This is a photo of her in Miami,” she said.
Irene took the photo and looked at it. “That is definitely Margaret.”