Nemesis (FBI Thriller #19)(77)
“I am twenty-one years old, not fifteen!”
“No, you’re not, you turned twenty a month ago.”
“She is not my sister!”
Interesting, Kelly thought. His eyes fell to his hands, clasped in front of him on the scarred table, to the shackles encircling his wrists.
Sherlock shook her head, marveled aloud, “And you consider yourself a fighter? A professional? I don’t think so. I’ve got to say, though, that young girl you brought with you to set the bomb in the house? To burn all of us alive? She was the only one of you who showed some grit and courage. Is that how a fighter behaves, cowering in the bushes after sending a little girl to her almost certain death?”
She lunged forward, banged her fist on the table, making him jump. His eyes flew to her face. “You expected to kill me? You couldn’t kill this stuffed-shirt lawyer the British consulate sent to defend your wretched hide, not even if I handed you my gun.”
Young Mifsud Shadid yelled, “I will kill you myself, you whore! You are an enemy of Islam, a blight to be erased and forgotten, cursed in life and in death.”
What a lovely British accent, Kelly thought. It sounded to her trained ear straight out of Manchester.
“Yeah, yeah, quite your party line,” Sherlock said, and looked like she wanted to yawn. Then her face hardened. “Mr. Shadid, why did you bring along your sister to do the dirty work for you?”
“I told you, Kenza is not my sister!”
“That is enough, Agent,” Cal said. “You are bludgeoning this young man with accusations, insulting him—”
“We are not in a court of law, Mr. Clark-Wittier,” she snapped out at him, without giving him the courtesy of a look back.
Mifsud said, “Kenza is well trained, and her heart is with us. Not even you saw her slip into that house. You should not have heard her slip out. She would have succeeded if you hadn’t been waiting for us with those floodlights and so many guns.”
Sherlock was shaking her head. “And you can’t imagine why we were armed and ready for you? Did you believe us fools? Or didn’t you question it at all? Did you believe the Strategist and the imam are very sophisticated, that they know what they were doing? I mean, they did manage to blow up that high-speed train in France, did they not? But then look what the Strategist did—he sent only the three of you to attack me, a well-guarded FBI agent; I don’t think that shows much talent at all.
“The old man who died last night, Mohammad Hosni, was he your handler, your boss, your grandfather?” She paused for an instant, but got no reaction from Shadid.
“You spoke of Kenza being so quiet. Well, she wasn’t, because I heard her. I’ll tell you, Mifsud, I still can’t believe you had to rely on a little girl to plant the bomb so that you and grandpa could shoot us dead if we managed to come running out of the burning house.” She gave him a contemptuous look. “Impressed by the imam and the Strategist? I don’t think so, look at the three pitiful tools he sent.”
If you had a gun you’d shoot me dead, wouldn’t you, Shadid? But he kept himself silent. Sherlock gave a slight nod to Kelly.
Kelly picked it up. “Perhaps, Agent Sherlock, we’ve reduced the Strategist to using amateurs. I mean, after the three of you flew into New York yesterday, what did you do? Eat pizza and sleep in your rental car? Wouldn’t the Strategist and Imam Al-H?di ibn Mirza spring for a cheap hotel room?”
“See here, Agent Sherlock,” Cal said, jumping to his feet, “enough of these puerile insults. You are not asking legitimate questions of this young man—”
Kelly snorted. “Maybe you’d better define puerile for him, Mr. Clark-Wittier, he doesn’t look very bright. His actions sure prove me right, don’t they? What will the Strategist say about you, Mr. Shadid, after seeing the three of you screw everything up?”
Sherlock said, “I don’t know if you care, Mifsud, but Kenza will never use her hand again, too many bones shattered from my bullet in her wrist.”
“The Strategist will kill you!” Mifsud yelled, and leapt to his feet, shaking his fist at them, his shackles clanging. “There was no way for you to know we would attack, we were very careful when we followed you.” Tears came into his eyes, choking him. “It was a trap, you were waiting for us to come, you wanted us to come. We couldn’t know there would be so many of you—”
Sherlock gave him another push. “Of course we knew you were following us. The Strategist failed you, didn’t he? As did your precious imam. They sent you into a trap. Which one of those brilliant men selected Nasim Conklin to blow up the security line at JFK? Which one of them sent the three of you?”
Shadid flew out of control. “You shut your mouth, you accursed woman! Your laws are absurd, sending two useless women to insult me. As for the imam, yes, I know of him. So does every true Muslim in London. He is a great man, a holy man. The British will never be able to arrest him, he is too well protected by their own laws.”
Kelly buffed her fingernails on her sleeve as she said in a bored voice, “Sit down, Mr. Shadid, calm yourself. You should know that Imam Al-H?di ibn Mirza isn’t going to be giving any more orders. We’ve heard the good news that the imam has been formally arrested in London. MI5 is providing his lodging now, no cell phones or visitors allowed. Your great holy man has had his teeth pulled. Next comes his head,” and she made a chopping motion.