32
The curvy redhead seated across from him in the beige business suit adjusted her reading glasses, revealing the wrist tattoo.
“Mr. Shariak, my name is Kim Mather and I’ll be serving as lead counsel. The purpose of this meeting is to determine the best course of action in dealing with what has quickly become a P.R. nightmare for the president.”
“Is that why he flew to Beijing three days early?”
“President Trump asked the Chinese to move up trade talks so an agreement could be in place prior to November’s Climate Change Summit in Boston. I’m sure the change in schedule had nothing to do with you.”
“Of course not.”
Ignoring the comment, the redhead opened the sealed military file before her. “We’ve reviewed the Army’s report detailing your Apache being shot down over the city of Karbala, as well as a statement from your co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Jared Betz.”
“And you have my report?”
“We do. But I’d rather you tell us what happened… in your own words.”
Adam gazed around at the oval conference table at the other eight attorneys — all men. He wondered whether Ms. Mather would have been included in the “boys’ club” had his accuser been a male.
He directed his response to the woman. “The cockpit had collapsed around me. Jared attempted to move me but my left leg was badly injured, the femur had snapped on impact and the pain was pulling me in and out of consciousness. I vaguely remember him telling me that he was going for help. The next thing I know I was being removed from the wreckage by men wearing masks.”
“Was the woman with them?”
“You mean Nadia? She was fourteen at the time… hardly a woman. No. I didn’t meet her until I came to inside the cellar.”
The attorney checked her notes. “Ms. Kalaf claims that she and her father carried you up three flights of stairs to their apartment.”
“I don’t know who carried me or where they took me, but the place I was kept was quite small and definitely underground. They were using it as a weapons cache.”
“What makes you so sure it was below ground?”
“Concrete floor… concrete walls. No windows. Sound was completely muted; they never worried when either one of us screamed.”
Kim Mather paused from jotting notes on her legal pad. “Tell us about Abu Anas al-Baghdadi.”
“At the time all I knew was that he was a commander in Saddam’s Republican Guard. Years later our military hired him to recruit members of the Shia Badr militia into the Wolf Brigade, the 2nd battalion of the interior ministry’s special commandos. Essentially, the interior minister hired them to terrorize insurgents. They wore red berets and sunglasses and drove around in convoys of Toyota Landcruisers. They had a reputation for torturing Iraqi prisoners using electric drills. These are the same sick fucks who are now running ISIS.”
“Tell us about the girl.”
“She told me she had been kidnapped and made a sex slave. Nadia’s mother had been a nurse; in Ali’s mind that qualified her to keep me alive. My leg was in horrible shape… my foot had swollen to twice its normal size and gangrene was setting in. Baghdadi spoke to me in English, claiming he was negotiating a prisoner exchange. What he never realized was that I understood enough Farsi to figure out that his plan was to get as much information from me as he could, then take me to a bridge located just south of Baghdad and publicly behead me.
“He quickly grew frustrated as all I ever did was babble incoherently. Some of this was exaggerated, but by the end of the first week I was in such bad shape that they no longer bothered shackling me.
“I was close to death the morning two guardsmen arrived carrying boxes of fliers. They warned Nadia not to touch them and ordered her to prepare me to travel. They’d said they’d be back in thirty minutes and left.
“The two of us were alone in the basement, but we could hear men walking on the first floor above us. I knew they were going to kill us; I just had to convince Nadia. I begged her to read one of the fliers. She translated the Arabic for me: ‘This American soldier killed innocent Iraqis and raped the girl. He has been slaughtered in accordance with God’s will.’
“When Nadia read that, she knew they were going to kill her, too. Unfortunately, there were no weapons left, but there was a small wooden table and four chairs set up in a corner for cards. With Nadia’s help, I unscrewed one of the legs and then returned to my spot on the floor, covering my makeshift club with a blanket.
“When the two men returned, they found me unconscious and Nadia naked, in the process of getting dressed. She tried to fend them off, but they quickly had her bent over the table… never noticing the missing leg — until the table collapsed.
“Nadia and the guardsman who was sodomizing her went down in a heap. By then I was standing behind his partner, who was laughing hysterically. I took him out with one blow to the back of the skull. I had his gun in my hand before his partner could react. The girl took the table leg from me and beat him senseless.”
“You said there were soldiers upstairs… how did you manage to escape? Could you even walk?”
“My leg couldn’t bear any weight. I grabbed one of the guard’s weapons and made my way up the ladder leading out of the cellar. Nadia walked out ahead of me to draw the soldiers’ attention and I came out firing. We managed to make it outside to a main thoroughfare where she flagged down one of our Hummers. The rest is a blur.”
“Was that the last time you saw Ms. Kalaf?”
“Yes. Until she showed up yesterday, I had no clue whether she was dead or alive. But I certainly didn’t rape her or pour boiling oil over her scalp.”
Kim Mather finished writing a note before turning to one of the firm’s senior partners. “Sean?”
“Why do you think she showed up now, Mr. Under Secretary?”
“I think a fifth grader could answer that. This is a classic CIA counter-intelligence move designed to focus the public’s attention on my credibility and away from the investigation and the testimony my witnesses were in the process of disclosing.”
“And what was that, Mr. Shariak? What is the big secret?”
“You’re kidding, right? It’s not in your notes?”
The female attorney searched quickly through her folder… shaking her head.
“UFOs… extraterrestrials! These Unacknowledged Special Access Projects that have been secretly channeling trillions of dollars into covert programs which successfully reverse-engineered advanced alien technologies… and yes, I know I sound like a complete and utter asshole, but it’s all true. And the Intel organizations preventing public knowledge and access to these technologies — which include free, clean zero-point-energy generators — basically shut down the message, as they have done for the last seventy years.”
Adam’s gaze fell upon the redhead’s wrist tattoo. “Courage… Strength… sorry, I can’t see the last word—”
“Faith.”
“Faith… of course. Certainly words to live by, but words without action don’t effect change. I never claimed to be a war hero, Ms. Mather, but I think you can see I’m no war criminal… that Nadia has been coerced into doing this.
“The question now is whether the Trump Administration has the balls to see this thing through.”
33
It was late in the afternoon by the time Jessica returned to her suite. She had spent two hours in the gym and the last twenty minutes buying groceries from the mini mart. After setting the perishables inside the refrigerator, she grabbed a bottle of water and flopped down on the recliner.