Nemesis (FBI Thriller #19)(38)

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?”





He nodded. “Yes, about six months ago, after the death of my father. My mother, Sabeen, took his loss very hard, begged me to move to London. To be honest, Marie Claire and I were happy in Rouen, both of us settled and looking forward to our future there. But my mother needed me, asked to have her grandchildren back in her life, and there was the family business in England to attend to.”

“She couldn’t come visit your children, stay with you in Rouen?”

“She and my wife, Marie Claire, do not like each other. My mother never approved of my marriage to a French Catholic, was especially upset about my children being raised Catholic. You see, my father was an atheist, and he allowed her to raise me in Islam. I lapsed in my beliefs long ago, and she was pushing me to come back to my faith.”

“And your father?”

“My father disapproved of us for different reasons. He owned a very successful chain of dry-cleaning stores, all over England and Scotland. He expected me to join the business with him, and when I told him I had no interest, that I wanted to be a writer, a journalist, instead, he was very angry. He severed ties between us.”

He shrugged. “Then he was dead and I felt I had no choice but to return to London, at least temporarily, and so we moved the next month. We found an apartment near enough to visit my mother but far enough away to suit my wife. Marie Claire was worried what my mother would say to our children about their religion if she left her alone with them.

“I told my mother I intended to sell the stores as quickly as possible. I was surprised she said she’d been very involved in the business for a number of years. She begged me not to sell the business, that I didn’t have to be involved at all. I could simply hand over the running of it to her. But I refused. I wanted nothing to do with the chain, I admit it, in part because I still felt great anger at my father for what he’d done to us. To me, my father’s business was an albatross around my neck. Besides, I soon had conglomerates lining up to make offers, and I had already been asked by the London Herald to write for them.”

“Surely your father must have realized your mother would want to keep the chain. Why did he leave his business to you?”

“My father always did exactly what suited him. For some reason, he must not have wanted my mother involved in the business any longer. I don’t know why. He must have known I would sell the business if he left it to me. In any case, he didn’t beggar her, don’t get that idea. He left my mother three houses and a great deal of money.

“Dealing with my mother was the difficult thing. I wasn’t in England more than a week before she was asking me to visit the South London Mosque with her and meet with the imam, Al-H?di ibn Mirza is his name. I finally agreed, for my own reasons, let me be clear about that. I was curious what it would be like to revisit my religion after so many years. The imam was all she could talk about with me—how wise he was, how his fire would bring Islam to the world, and the world to Islam. He was a genius, she said, at helping Muslims who had lapsed into the ways of the West with the greater jihad, their personal struggle to fulfill their religious duties. She was smitten.

“Finally I visited with Al-H?di ibn Mirza after prayers. He certainly had charisma, seemed comfortable speaking with people like me. He listened carefully to my concerns about the faith, blessed me for searching for my true path, invited me back to speak with him.

“To my surprise, the imam suddenly asked me over tea, to reconsider selling my father’s business. He said it was important to Islam that devout women like my mother continue in positions of power in England, that she was a pillar of the mosque and he needed her support. My mother obviously put him up to it, and it angered me. I was not very polite when I told him it was not his affair, and that it had nothing to do with Islam. He lectured me for a bit about my responsibilities, but when he realized he wouldn’t convince me, he bowed his head and apologized. I did as well, for being short with him. He changed the subject, spoke of my success as a journalist, and asked if I was interested in writing a piece about some of the young local men he had recruited to the faith. He said it might help me find my way.