Nemesis

Kelly looked at the young man staring back at her, trying too hard to look uninterested. She turned to Sherlock. “Mr. Shadid and his imported fellow assassins tried to murder you last night, so why don’t you speak to him first?”

“A moment, Special Agent Giusti,” Cal said. “I would like to speak to this British citizen privately before you begin questioning him.”

Kelly, not looking away from Shadid, said, “You can forget that, Counselor. The man tried to kill federal officers, here on American soil. You’re here only as a courtesy.”

Sherlock was aware Mifsud Shadid was staring at her, hate beaming out of dark eyes, for her specifically and for her as simply one of the enemy. She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and pulled a full-bodied sneer out of her bag. “Mr. Shadid, how old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? Is that your sister in the hospital with a shattered wrist?”

“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-Hädi 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?”