Khaled streaked his fingers through her hair, smoothing it. “Perhaps it is right for many, Adara, but I know it isn’t right for you. I’m searching myself for what it is I really want. That’s why I’ve become so involved at the mosque. Your brother has helped me start to understand what it is I truly believe, and what those beliefs might demand of me.”
She appeared thoughtful. “Ali told me you were smart. You attended Cambridge and excelled.” She paused again. “So I hope you will understand. I’ve wanted nothing more than to get past all the endless rhetoric of my elders and search out for myself what I want to believe, what I need to believe and how I wish to live my life. We will speak of this again, but not now. You’ve exhausted me.” She kissed him on the cheek, rolled away from him, and fell asleep as easily as a child.
Khaled listened to her even breathing, leaned over her, and studied her face. She looked so innocent, her skin smooth and soft with youth and health. Had she come to him simply because she wanted him? Or perhaps to satisfy her curiosity about him? Or to test him? He doubted she did anything without a reason. She’d appeared pleased with him, so it had been a test. Had he passed?
Khaled dozed off, awakened when he heard her moving about. He opened his eyes to see her naked, smiling down at him, her bra in her hand. “Must you go?”
“Yes, I must.” He propped himself on pillows and watched her dress. She leaned down, kissed him, smoothed his hair. She straightened over him. “I didn’t tell you—Samir Basara and Yusuf were friends. Yusuf vowed revenge. I wonder if he will ever manage it.”
Khaled said nothing. He pulled on a tatty robe his mom had given him years before and walked with her to the front door. She kissed him once again, said, “Don’t call me, I will call you,” and was gone. He listened to her retreating footsteps.
Khaled locked the door and walked to the kitchen. He tipped up the kitchen table, twisted the table leg, and pulled out his burner mobile. He sent another text to John Eiserly telling him he had bedded Adara Said, or rather, she’d bedded him, and that he’d scheduled a meeting with Rohan al-Albiri, the imam’s accountant, on Monday. He slid the burner mobile back into the empty slot and twisted the leg closed again.
Chapter Forty-One
Rome’s house
Wilton Place, Washington, D.C.
Saturday morning
Special Agent Roman Foxe jerked awake, sat straight up in bed, and shouted to the ceiling, “The class ring!” He grabbed his cell from the charger on the nightstand and started to punch in Savich’s cell, then looked at the bedside clock. It was only 7:00a.m., too early to call on a Saturday morning. Sherlock was probably still asleep. He wasn’t about to wake her up. He remembered a pregnant friend telling him with a bun in the oven, you needed more sleep than a cat.
He fluffed up the pillow, leaned back, closed his eyes, and thought about his call to Mrs. Ballou—now Mrs. Cynthia Hendricks and a grandmother of four—to notify her as gently as he could that her first husband’s remains had been discovered after more than forty-five years.
She’d said in an emotionless voice, “Wilson was murdered, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am. Agent Ballou was shot through the back of the head and buried near the Calmett River outside Bensonville, Virginia.”
In the same emotionless voice she’d said, “I assume youpeople no longer believe I killed him, that I shot him in the head and buried him myself?”
“No, ma’am. It looked like a professional hit.” He wasn’t about to tell her Ballou had been tortured, bones broken, his skull fractured.
“I told the FBI I knew to my gut Wilson was involved with criminals, that he probably betrayed one of them, but no one believed me. Well, at last it’s over and done with. Send what’s left of him to me and I’ll see to burying him.”
“You were right, Mrs. Hendricks, about his involvement with criminals.”
“Of course I was right. I lived with him ten years, I knew what he was. He always thought he could handle anything, with his la-di-da FBI training. It was a game to him, going off the range, outwitting the people he was supposed to arrest. Well, he was wrong, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, this time he was.”
“I don’t suppose you’d like to apologize for making my life hell for six months? Even though it’s been over forty-five years, a nice groveling apology would still be nice to hear.”
Given what he’d read in those old files, he couldn’t blame her for that dose of snark. He’d said in a formal voice, “I would like to apologize for all the FBI agents who disbelieved you in 1978, Mrs. Hendricks. I checked the evidence locker, and we did recover his wedding ring. We also found a safe-deposit key in his shoe. Did you know he had one, at what bank?”
“Thank you. About the key, I have no idea, Agent Foxe.”
“We’ve finished examining the wedding ring. I’ll send it to you.”
“Thank you, Agent Foxe. I know you aren’t to blame for all the torment—your parents probably hadn’t even met yet when Wilson was killed. I’ll put the wedding ring in with his class ring. Perhaps his son will wish to have them, although I doubt it.His father was never around much and so he wasn’t important in his young life.”
Rome hadn’t paid any attention to what she’d said about the class ring, just hung up, glad that chore was over. But now, her words had popped back to him in his dream, flashing neon.
Ballou’s class ring hadn’t been with the remains, only his wedding ring rattling around on his skeleton’s finger. After the safe-deposit key was discovered in his shoe along with the long number scrawled on a torn slip of paper, his wedding ring was tested and examined six ways to Sunday.
But what of Ballou’s class ring? Some men’s class rings were splashy, large enough for a jeweler to make an enclosure in their crown to store a keepsake. Ballou might have used the class ring to store another number—a longitude to match the latitude he’d hidden in the heel of his shoe. It was possible—not likely, but possible. He tried to calm himself. The odds were, Ballou’s class ring was only a class ring, nothing more. But maybe—
Rome reached again for his cell, thought better of it. It was still early, too early to call Mrs. Hendricks to ask her to let him examine the class ring. And why should she? He’d have to come up with a good reason the FBI wanted to examine the ring after forty-five years. Somehow, he’d have to win her over.
