Fatal Convictions (20 page)

54

According to the neuropsychologist, it was Khalid’s job to help Ghaniyah return to the normal routines of life. She was still having a little trouble with short-term memory and with what the doctor called “executive functioning.” The doctor had encouraged Ghaniyah to write down anything that came to her mind throughout the day that she needed to do. The lists would help her remember.

On Tuesday night, Khalid took it upon himself to make a list of all the things they needed at the grocery store and then went shopping with Ghaniyah. He drove to the local Harris Teeter and walked the aisles with his wife, checking off items as they put them in the cart.

Things went smoothly in the store until the Mobassars stepped into the long checkout line with their cart full of groceries. A moment later a few young men stepped into line behind them wearing cutoff jeans, work boots, tank tops, and frayed ball caps. Khalid could smell alcohol on their breath.

They were talking in the loud and obnoxious fashion of men who had downed one too many beers and therefore overestimated their own wittiness. The language was vulgar, and Khalid did his best to ignore it. He didn’t want any trouble. He just wanted to check out and get home with his groceries.

Things started escalating when one of the men apparently recognized Khalid. “Hey, ain’t that the towelhead who ordered those women beheaded?”

Khalid flinched but stared straight ahead. He could read the tension in Ghaniyah’s features. Her temper had always been more explosive than his.

“That boy right there oughta be in jail,” one of the men said. “The other prisoners would teach him a thang or two about submission.”

The men laughed; Khalid pretended not to hear.

“I’d have my wife wear one of those head coverings too if she looked like that.”

Khalid felt his face redden with rage, his muscles tensing. It took every ounce of self-control not to react. Others around him glanced nervously at Khalid and the men behind him.

“If the man had any guts, he’d turn around and say somethin’.” Khalid felt the speaker literally breathing down his neck. The man was taller than Khalid by a couple of inches.

Khalid wanted to turn around and nail the guy—make sure the first punch was a good one. But this evening, his focus was on Ghaniyah. Stress like this wouldn’t help her recover.

He took her by the elbow. “Let’s go,” he whispered, then began walking with her to the front of the store, leaving the full grocery cart in the line.

“Come on back, big man!” one of the men called out. “You want a piece of this?”

Ghaniyah didn’t say a word as Khalid led her to the car. He could tell she was irate. He thought about calling the cops, but that might end up as a black mark against his probationary status.

He started the car and turned to back out of the space. To his surprise, one of the men had followed him and was standing directly behind Khalid’s vehicle with his arms crossed.

“Wait here,” Khalid said to Ghaniyah.

He put the car in park and stepped out of the vehicle. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of my way,” he said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

The man laughed. “You already found trouble.” He moved toward Khalid as one of his buddies appeared from a different direction.

Khalid considered his options. There was a car parked directly in front of his. Within seconds, a pickup driven by the third man came screeching around the parking lot and stopped sideways behind Khalid’s vehicle, pinning him in.

“Call 9-1-1,” he said to Ghaniyah. “And lock the doors.”

He kicked his door shut and took a step toward the first man in front of him. “This is the part where you walk away quietly before the police get here,” Khalid said.

“No, this is the part where I kick your butt,” the man said. He was about six-two and easily weighed more than two hundred pounds. He waited while the third man climbed out of the truck and joined the first two.

“Why don’t you just go back to Afghanistan with the other towelheads?”

The man on Khalid’s right took a jab step at him, and Khalid jumped back. All three of Khalid’s tormentors laughed and spread out around him, forming a semicircle. Other customers in the parking lot watched but kept their distance.

“We ought to put him in Abu Ghraib so a female guard can strip him down and lead him around on a leash like the other dogs,” one of the men said.

Hearing no sirens, Khalid decided he had no choice. As the men taunted him, Khalid planned his move. He would go after the man on his right first—the smallest of the three. A quick blow to the crotch, and then whirl around toward the big guy in the middle.

“Yeah, get down on your knees and bark,” the guy on Khalid’s left said.

Khalid pivoted quickly and kicked the man on his right, bringing him to his knees. He spun toward the attacker in the middle, but the man was quicker than Khalid had expected. He caught Khalid with a hard right that cracked against Khalid’s cheekbone just as the third man came in with a flying tackle that drove Khalid to the pavement. Instantly all three men were on him, slamming their fists into his face and body. Khalid tried to curl into a fetal position for protection, but one man knelt over him and pounded Khalid while the others kicked the imam. He tasted blood and felt himself losing consciousness.

“What the—?” His attacker’s words were lost in a squeal of tires and the crash of metal. Khalid looked up. Ghaniyah had backed their car into the men’s truck.

“Are you crazy?” one of them yelled. The guy on top of Khalid jumped up just as Ghaniyah slammed the car into drive, pulled forward a few feet, then slammed it into reverse and floored it again. She crashed into the truck a second time, bending more metal and breaking more glass. The truck bounced back.

She had the full attention of Khalid’s attackers now. The driver of the truck scrambled toward it. “You freakin’ idiot!” he yelled.

Before he could get there to move it, Ghaniyah slammed into the truck a third time, pushing it out of the way. She jumped out of the car and started cursing at the men like a possessed woman. They gaped at her, astonished by her brazenness.

“Look what you’ve done!” she screamed, pointing to Khalid. “May your souls burn in hell forever!”

None of the men seemed to know what to do with a woman who was certifiably nuts.

“Get out of here!” she shreiked, taking a menacing step at one of the men. He held his ground but didn’t argue. The look in her eyes said Ghaniyah was ready to kill. She had always been intense before the accident, but Khalid hadn’t seen her show this much emotion since.

Khalid struggled to his feet and moved next to Ghaniyah. “C’mon,” he said. “They’re not worth it.”

Khalid could hear the sirens coming in the distance. “Look at my truck!” the biggest man yelled. “I’ll sue you for every dime.”

Only in America,
thought Khalid,
can you get beat up by someone who then threatens to sue you.

One of the attackers picked up his hat, dusted it off, and put it back on. “You’re quite the man,” he said to Khalid. “Had to have the old lady bail you out.”

The sirens were getting closer. The men glanced around and yelled at the people in the parking lot who had stopped to stare. “Show’s over, people! Get back to your pitiful lives!”

All three climbed into the truck. The man on the passenger side leaned out the window and promised Khalid that he had not seen the last of them. Then the driver squealed the tires, and the truck pulled away.

As the adrenaline began to fade, Khalid started feeling the intense pain in his face and ribs. “You’re going to the hospital,” Ghaniyah said.

He didn’t even try to argue.

55

Alex waited several days while Khalid mended before asking his client to meet with his lawyers and provide answers to most of the questions they had been asking. The imam brought Nara with him to the conference room at Madison and Associates.

For Alex, Khalid’s appearance was a grim reminder of how dangerous this case had become. The imam’s right eye was swollen nearly shut with a large half-moon of black-and-blue bruises around the outside and four stitches just above the eyebrow. His right upper lip was twice its normal size. Khalid winced when he took his seat and shifted around a little until he got comfortable. “It only hurts when I breathe,” he quipped. Fortunately, the X-rays had shown no broken bones.

By contrast, Nara looked composed and well rested. She wore a light blue blouse with a matching skirt and heels that accentuated her long, slim figure. She had used just the right touch of makeup to highlight her alluring eyes and full lips. Alex caught himself staring at her as she talked. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see that Shannon was giving him a disapproving look.
Jealous?

He had to admit that having Nara around had become less of a burden after their talk on Sunday. Now, sitting in the same room with her, he had to force himself to concentrate on the case.

There had been no further developments in the tepid investigation of Khalid’s beatdown. Alex’s firm had issued a press release explaining that Khalid had been assaulted in the parking lot of his local Harris Teeter. Neither the press nor the police seemed to care very much.

Once Alex and Shannon convinced Khalid that the conference room was not bugged, he agreed to detail the connections between the Islamic Learning Center, the Islamic Brotherhood, and Hezbollah.

The mosque in Norfolk was part of a grand strategy to build at least one flagship mosque in every major American city. According to Khalid, the Islamic Brotherhood had helped fund the mosque through a spiderweb of charitable organizations and NGOs it secretly controlled. Though Khalid didn’t know for sure, there were rumors that the Brotherhood received much of its funding through a maze of international NGOs that could be traced to various donors in Saudi Arabia and certain terrorist groups. You can’t build a $13-million mosque in Norfolk, Virginia, without some outside funding, Khalid explained.

Khalid had been asked to help lead the mosque because he was a prestigious professor at Old Dominion University and because he had been a high-profile leader in Lebanon. In the beginning, the Islamic Brotherhood also paid a stipend to other mosque leaders such as Fatih Mahdi.

Shortly after the mosque was completed, Khalid had a falling-out with the Islamic Brotherhood. The Brotherhood wanted to grow the attendance by using the tactics they had used in other cities, the same tactics used by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Brotherhood members would go door-to-door in the inner city and find families in need. They would provide groceries and assistance with rent. They would claim that Allah had sent them to bless the family. They would say that Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all pretty much the same theologically, all people of the Book, all worshiping the same God. They would tell single moms that Islam would teach their sons discipline and help them stay out of trouble in school.

“Mosques are being built all over the United States in this manner,” Khalid explained.

“What about yours?” Shannon asked.

“Not ours,” Khalid said. “Ours was different. From the beginning, we appealed more to university students and restless young professionals and those who had grown tired of the materialistic Christianity of the West. By that, Alex, I mean no disrespect.”

“None taken,” Alex said.

“We had professionals from as far away as Richmond and even northern Virginia who would come to our Friday salats,” Khalid explained. “When I began preaching serious reform, the Islamic Brotherhood withdrew all support. Yet at the same time, moderate Muslims started showing up in force. There were, of course, those in the mosque who were disappointed by my teaching. At first, the whispers were quiet. But after the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006, my critics started making their displeasures known.”

“Was Fatih Mahdi one of your critics?” Shannon asked.

Khalid thought about this for a moment, which gave Nara a chance to interject. “Most definitely,” she said. “Fatih was one of the most outspoken critics. He’s been vehemently opposed to many of my father’s teachings. And I’m sure—though Father has never said this to me—that Fatih was also extremely upset that my father would allow me to speak so openly about women’s rights.”

“It is true,” Khalid admitted. He was contemplative, not angry, speaking in the way family members talk about a loved one who has run into hard times. “But Fatih would always talk to me privately before he criticized me publicly. Even when we disagreed, we were friends. More like brothers. I cannot believe that Fatih is to blame for what has happened.”

“But you know he recruited for Hezbollah when we lived in Beirut,” Nara protested. “He’s still part of the Brotherhood. Even today, he’s recruiting for mosques all over the United States.”

“I know,” Khalid conceded. He said it with a tone that indicated the facts did not change his mind.

“It’s one of the challenges with my father,” Nara explained, as though her dad were not in the room. “He always sees the best in everyone. He can’t imagine that anyone would have anything but his best interest in mind.”

“Well . . . somebody was out to get him,” Shannon said. She flipped a page in her legal pad and took a sip of bottled water. “Can I ask a few questions about the flow of money?”

She spent the next several minutes questioning Khalid about church procedures and how he protected his passwords. Alex listened appreciatively for a while. This was Shannon at her best. Taking notes. Uncovering nuances. Drilling down for details that might escape others.

When she started asking about access to Khalid’s work computer, Alex began losing interest. He was busy studying Nara as she intensely followed the conversation. He had so many questions about her. What kinds of things made her smile? What did she like doing when she wasn’t crusading to free her father? Were there any men in her life? Was there anything she feared? How deeply committed was she to the Muslim faith?

When Shannon turned her focus to the recipient account in Lebanon, Alex began to focus again. They had to find out who owned that account. Yet even if they did, there was no way they could subpoena an account in a foreign country.

Khalid seemed like he wanted to share something but kept holding back.

“What is it?” Shannon asked. “Do you know something about this account?”

The imam looked at his daughter and shifted painfully in his seat. He winced, either from the pain of his bruises or the subject matter at hand—Alex couldn’t tell. “I’ve thought a fair amount about this,” he said. “I still have one very close friend inside the Hezbollah organization who plays a key role in the financing of the Islamic Brotherhood.” He pursed his lips and breathed in through his nose, as if he didn’t want to say anything else right now.

“What’s his name?” Shannon prodded.

“They need to know,” Nara said. “It’s the only way they can help.”

“Can we keep his name confidential?” Khalid asked.

Shannon looked at Alex. If Khalid gave them the name of a friend who could help, they would be duty-bound to procure that testimony by whatever means possible.

“I can’t promise anything,” Alex said. “But we’ll try.”

Khalid thought about this. “I would rather exhaust all other channels first,” he said. “The men who control the financing for the Islamic Brotherhood are ruthless and unforgiving. I am not willing to jeopardize my friend except as a last resort.”

“We’re already at last resort,” Shannon said. “In fact, we passed last resort about two weeks ago.”

“Then I’ll contact him myself,” Khalid said, “and see if he’s willing to get involved.”

Alex and Shannon wanted to play it differently. “Let me contact him,” Alex said. “He’s got to know that your freedom is on the line.”

But Khalid wouldn’t yield. Alex and Shannon both tried to dissuade him, but they were wasting their breath. The Mobassar family had stubborn down to an art form.

When the meeting was over, Nara pulled Alex aside in the hallway. “I’ll get that name for you,” she said.

“If you do, and if he’s willing to testify, we may have to go to Lebanon to depose him,” Alex said.

“I’ll go with you,” Nara said.

The intensity in her dark eyes was nearly impossible for Alex to resist. If he did go to Beirut, it would be smart to have someone with him who knew her way around. But his instincts were on red alert. The fifth admonition on his grandfather’s list read
This is a law firm, not a dating service. Don’t get emotionally attached to the clients.
But there was a spark of adventure in Nara’s eyes, and she was hitting all the right chords.

So Alex began doing what lawyers did best—rationalizing. Technically, Nara wasn’t even his client; Khalid was. And Alex was doing this for Khalid.

At least that would be his story when he explained it to Shannon. He pushed aside the mental picture of the framed yellow legal paper with his grandfather’s handwriting on it. “Why not?” he said.

* * *

Two days later, Nara came through on her end of the bargain.

“His name is Hamza Walid,” she said. “My father talked with him. Walid’s lawyer should be giving you a call.”

Alex smiled. It was the first real break in the case in weeks. “I’ve heard Beirut is beautiful this time of year.”