Treason (20 page)

Parker slipped another sheet of paper from a folder. “We believe Akbar also is responsible for shooting your uncle.” He handed her a grainy image from a security camera. “This was taken at the checkout counter inside the local rental agency where two men and a woman secured a flatbed truck. They used that rented truck to dump building supplies on the Jefferson Davis Highway to block traffic, as you already know.”

Brooke studied the two men and the woman photographed by the security cam.

“Facial recognition software identified Akbar based on mug shots of him at Gitmo,” Parker continued. “We believe the woman is Aludra, but we haven't been able to identify the other man.”

“So there's no question that Akbar is one of the kidnappers based on his DNA being on the paring knife and his picture at the rental counter. What evidence do you have that he shot my uncle?”

“It's circumstantial at this point but credible. Akbar was trained as a sniper by the Iranians before he was captured. Here's the scenario as we see it. The unidentified man at the rental counter was responsible for dumping the truck's payload on the highway, blocking traffic so Akbar could fire from the roof of a nearby apartment building. Someone, possibly Aludra, drove the getaway car, but rather than fleeing, she and Akbar took either Highway 50 or Interstate 66 out to your farmhouse, where Akbar murdered Ms. Okpara and abducted Jennifer while a different team of terrorists attacked the boarding school where they kidnapped Cassy Adeogo.”

“Do you think Akbar was fatally wounded when he was stabbed?” Brooke asked.

Parker shrugged. “Not sure, but I'm guessing she stuck him once and didn't hit any arteries because of the lack of blood splatter in your kitchen. Nothing on the floor or walls or her clothing. Probably a non-incapacitating jab at best. But we can't be sure.”

“What about the others involved in this? What about the driver of the flatbed truck and the men who murdered those students, their riding instructor, and the security guard at the girls' school?”

“We believe Akbar and Aludra had at least five accomplices, but we haven't been able to identify them yet. We suspect, however, that they are all tied in some way to the mosque where Al-Kader is the Imam. As you know, we recovered an abandoned van that had been stolen from an exterminator company—the one used during the attack at the girls' school in Potomac. It had blood inside that didn't match Cassy Adeogo's, based on her medical records, but we haven't been able to match it to anyone in our DNA database. That suggests one of the terrorists was wounded or killed. But no one showed up at area hospitals with a suspicious wound, and we've not found any bodies.”

“Fingerprints?”

“There were no fingerprints found.”

A knock on the door interrupted them. Parker waved in one of his command post team members.

“The agency has informed us that a helicopter carrying a six-man SAD team was shot down in Kenya near the Somali border earlier today—they are seven hours ahead of us,” the agent said. “Al-Shabaab is claiming credit for downing the helicopter with an RPG and moments ago posted photographs of six dead Americans on the Internet. Counting the two pilots, there were eight men on that helicopter, so there are two Americans still unaccounted for.”

Brooke felt her pulse quickening. “Do you know those two men's names? Have they been taken prisoner?”

“If Al-Shabaab captured them,” he answered, “they would have posted video of them. They're always proud to show off their prisoners. The agency doesn't know if they're dead or survived, only that they are missing.”

“My guess is the terrorists simply haven't recovered their bodies yet,” Parker said in a grim voice. “The odds of surviving when a helicopter is blown out of the air by an RPG are extremely slim.”

“The agency sent us the names of the six dead based on the Al-Shabaab video,” the team manager said. He handed Parker a printout. Parker scanned it quickly and then held it out for Brooke.

She reached for it and immediately began looking for Walks Many Miles's name. He was listed as being “Missing/Unaccounted For.”

“I noticed your friend, Walks Many Miles, is on that list,” Parker said.

“Yes, he is,” she replied, handing the sheet back to him.

“I'm sorry,” he said. He was watching her closely to see how she would respond.

“I wouldn't be in a rush to bury him,” she said. “Walks Many Miles is a survivor.”

Outside Rudy Adeogo's home

Tacoma Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

M
ary Margaret Delaney weaved through the reporters camped on the closed-off street outside Representative Rudy Adeogo's house. The D.C. Police Department had strung bright yellow
Do Not Cross
tape around the property's edge to keep the media from overflowing onto the front yard and peeking through windows.

Without breaking her stride, Delaney ducked under the tape and marched toward the front doorway where two police officers were stationed. One of them hurried down the porch's three concrete steps to intercept her as curious journalists watched.

“Ma'am, you need to move back to the other side of the tape right now!” the approaching officer warned.

“I'm not a reporter,” Delaney replied.

“Ma'am, move behind the yellow tape or I'll arrest you for trespassing.”

“Listen, I'm not some publicity seeker or a mental case. The congressman knows me and I need you to take him my card and show him the note that I've written on its back.”

She jabbed her card toward him as if it were a knife. He read it, flipped it over, and examined the handwritten note.
I know the truth about George, your brother.

“Just show it to him,” Delaney said as she turned and walked back to the street to wait.

“Who are you?” a reporter asked when she joined the media throng.

Delaney ignored him and watched the officer return to the porch where he showed her card to his partner. That officer read it and then spoke into a two-way radio.

For several minutes nothing happened and Delaney thought her request would be ignored. She was about to cross under the tape barricade again when the house's front door opened and a man in a dark business suit wearing a flesh-colored earpiece came outside to examine her card. One of the officers raised his hand and pointed at Delaney. The man, who Delaney assumed was an FBI agent, stepped back into the house, taking her card with him.

Ten minutes passed and the reporters who'd been curious about Delaney returned to what they had been doing before she'd arrived. At that point, the FBI agent reappeared and said something to the D.C. policeman who had first intercepted Delaney. He strolled from the porch to the street where she was standing.

“Come with me,” he said, lifting the tape barrier for her to slip underneath.

Suddenly, the reporters became interested again. Several took photos of her on their cell phones and sent them to their editors to find out if anyone recognized her. Within seconds word spread through the pack that Delaney was the Washington political consultant who had helped run defeated presidential candidate Timothy Coldridge's campaign. As she was climbing the front porch steps, one of them yelled: “Hey, Delaney, why are you here?”

She didn't respond and instead walked through the door into the house's large foyer, where three FBI agents were waiting for her.

“Does your note have anything to do with the abduction of Cassy Adeogo?” one asked.

“Heavens, no. This is a private matter between the congressman and me.”

“What does your note mean: ‘I know the truth about George, your brother'?”

“I said this was private, but if Representative Adeogo wishes to explain it, that's his prerogative. Now please show him my card because he will want to speak to me.”

The agent studied her for a moment and then told her to wait in the entryway. Still holding her card, he climbed a carpeted staircase to the second floor.

It was obvious to Delaney as she glanced around the house that Representative Adeogo and his wife, Dheeh, had rented the place furnished. An English grandfather clock was tucked into one corner of the foyer but its pendulum was not moving and its hands were stopped at six o'clock. It either was broken or the Adeogos didn't enjoy listening to its loud ticking and hourly strikes. Delaney doubted the couple had chosen the foyer's artwork, which consisted of two framed prints that showed English foxhunters surrounded by their hounds.

No one spoke to her. After several minutes, the agent who'd taken her card upstairs returned and said, “The congressman will speak to you privately in his study. Follow me.”

He turned to his right and slid open two wooden pocket doors. Adeogo's study was lined with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases. The carpet was dark blue. There was a photograph of Dheeh and Cassy on his large executive desk, but otherwise the room was empty of any personal touches. Delaney sat down in a high-backed red leather chair and felt smug.

Adeogo did not utter a word when he entered his study. It wasn't until after he closed the pocket doors that he spoke, and when he did, his voice was quiet but filled with contempt.

“You dare to come here,” he hissed, “to come into my home—to come into my house when my daughter is being held captive—to come into my house with my wife upstairs?”

His eyes were red, as if he had been crying, but they were filled with anger now, and she felt no pity for him.

“I have finally discovered your family secret,” she replied triumphantly. “I know your brother's identity.”

Adeogo's hands turned into fists, and for a moment it looked as if he might assault her, but he slowly opened his palms and walked to the front of his desk. Leaning against it, he crossed his arms as if he were a teacher facing an unruly student sitting before him.

“And what do you think you know?” he asked her.

“I have two legal documents. One is your younger brother, George Adeogo's birth certificate.”

The congressman shrugged. “Anyone can get a copy of a birth certificate, and it's no secret that I had a younger brother.”

“Which makes my second document even more valuable. It is a sealed juvenile court record that describes his arrest.”

“If it is a sealed juvenile record, how did you acquire it?”

“That doesn't matter, and neither does the petty crime that your brother committed as a teenager. It is the conversation between your brother and the judge that's important.”

Adeogo tried to appear nonchalant. “You're wasting my time,” he said.

“According to the juvenile court transcript, your brother informed the judge that he no longer answered to his slave name—the name on his birth certificate: George Adeogo. He insisted the judge address him by his Muslim name—
Abdul Hafeez
.”

Despite his best efforts to conceal his emotions, Adeogo flinched. Delaney had learned the painful truth from his family's past. George Adeogo was Abdul Hafeez, the Al-Shabaab terrorist who had executed a Canadian NGO worker in Pakistan and later led the successful attack on the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu. His youngest brother was the much-hated terrorist who had chopped off the hands of an American diplomat before executing him and another State Department hostage while being filmed for an Internet video.

“You knew your brother was wanted by the U.S. government for acts of terrorism and murder, but you didn't lift a finger to help our country catch him. You knew he was the second-in-command of Al-Shabaab working directly for the Falcon.”

“What do you want?” Adeogo asked in a quiet voice.

But Delaney wasn't finished gloating. “How do you think most Americans would react if they were told that the brother of a United States representative was a cold-blooded, radical Islamic murderer who'd pledged to destroy our nation? Would they trust you after you have been so deceptive? Or would voters want to impeach you and federal prosecutors charge you with criminally conspiring with an enemy of our country? What would happen if I walked outside right now and told the reporters watching your house that Abdul Hafeez was your brother?”

“Why have you come here to tell me this now?”

She rose triumphantly from her chair and walked toward him until they were so close that their faces were only inches apart. “You betrayed me during Coldridge's presidential campaign,” she whispered. “You agreed to help us and then you betrayed us. You slept with me and then you humiliated me.”

“Is this what your hatred is about? You're a scorned woman?”

Delaney tittered. “Scorned but not defeated.”

“You will expose me,” he said, “at the very same time my daughter is being held hostage by terrorists? You will throw even more pain into my life.”

“Oh no, sharing your secret now would be too quick and not painful enough. With this information, I now own you. I have clients who will pay me large sums of money when I tell them that I have you dancing on my strings. You are going to be my personal stooge.”

“And if I don't go along with your demands?”

“Do you really have a choice?” Delaney asked. “Because if you don't do what I say, I will tell the world about your brother and you will be ruined politically, possibly even arrested. You and your precious little wife will be despised regardless of where you go.”

She reached out with her right hand and gently caressed his cheek with her open palm, turning what normally would be an act of affection into one of pure mockery.

“Poor little Rudy,” she said. “What a naïve man to think you could come to Washington—into my house—and betray me.”