James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

Her chin rose, and she looked down her nose at me as if she were of noble birth and I were a slave. “You could spend every day of the rest of your life studying me, Cross, and you would not come close to an understanding of who I am.”

“Some people are inexplicable,” I agreed. “But not you, Doctor. You are easy to explain. Even without more information about your shitty childhood or whatever drove you to the Family, I know you will ultimately be defined by your fanaticism. That is how people will understand you, and how they’ll condemn you: as an insane doctor, a terrorist willing to poison and bomb innocent people for her own twisted ends.”

The smile that Hala gave me raised the hair on the back of my neck and almost made me shiver. “I can live with that,” she said. “Because I know there are two sides to every story. And I promise you, Cross, for every American who believes your version of events, there will be five Muslims who accept my story: that because of a deep and abiding faith, I decided to live the words of my Prophet and take up arms against the infidels right inside their own center of power. Am I crazy? Or brilliant? Honestly, I don’t mind either interpretation.”

She didn’t. I could see it plain as day in her expression and in the cold tone of her voice. Hala Al Dossari was one of the most disturbing criminals I’d ever tangled with, super-smart but almost reptilian when it came to questions of life and death, able to extinguish a human as easily as she would a bug, as long as it was done in God’s name.

“Where have you been the past ten months?” I asked.

“Visiting old friends,” she said. “You?”

I ignored the question. “I can help if you let me.”

Hala laughed scornfully. “What can you do for me, Cross?”

“Let you see light,” I replied.

“I have already seen the light.”

“Yes, and that’s what will make not seeing the sun so debilitating for you,” I said. “You’re used to a life spent in powerful sunlight, Dr. Al Dossari. Where you’re going, there will be no sunlight, and eventually it will affect your serotonin levels and you’ll fall into despair, a state you’ll remain in the rest of your life.”

She looked at me, blinking but expressionless. “Or?”

“You tell me what this was really about,” I said. “What you were really doing inside Union Station.”

Hala cocked her head, said, “How many times do I have to tell you, Cross? I was fighting for Allah. It is as simple as-”

The interrogation room door opened. Mahoney returned, carrying a laptop computer with a seventeen-inch screen, and sat beside me. “Any progress?”

“We’re establishing a bit of mutual understanding,” I said.

“In other words, no,” Mahoney said. “Sorry, Alex, but I need to take over the questioning here.”

“All yours,” I said, and made as if to leave.

Mahoney put his hand on my arm, and I settled back into the chair. Hala shifted uncomfortably in hers.

“I understand you are in pain?” Mahoney said.

She nodded. “I am.”

He fished in his jacket pocket, came up with two small white pills, each stamped OC on one side and 10 on the other. He put them on the table where she could see them but not reach them.

Hala looked at the pills, and I could feel her leg jiggling on the other side of the table. “So, what? You withhold medical treatment so I talk? I think your ACLU will be interested to hear this.”

Mahoney smiled. “Who said anything about withholding treatment?” He slid the tablets over in front of her. “We’re not tribal savages a generation out of the desert here.”

Hala scowled at him but took up one of the tablets. I pushed a plastic water bottle across the table. She swallowed the painkiller but then said, “If you think I will talk because of these pills, you do not know me.”

“Hey,” Mahoney said, arms wide: Mr. Nice Guy. “We want to know you, Doctor. We want to hear what you have to say in your defense.”

“I’m saying nothing in my defense. I’ll wait for the lawyer.”

“Let us check a few things that are verifiable,” the FBI agent said, as if he were a clerk taking insurance information. “Where do you live in Saudi Arabia?”

Hala did not reply, but she watched him closely.

Mahoney typed on his keypad, rolled his lower lip between fingers, said, “Al Hariq? No, that’s where you were born, right out there on the edge of the erg, the sea of sand, right?”

He looked up at her. She said, “A place of terrible beauty.”

I said, “That where you became afraid of dogs?”

She smiled sourly at me. “I have no idea where that came from. It’s always just been there.”

“You’re smart though,” Mahoney observed, returning his attention to the screen. “King Saud University for one year and then four years at Penn, courtesy of the Saudi royal family. Impressive. Medical degree from Dubai. Children. A career. And then a sudden radicalization. But that’s what happens when God talks to you, right?”

She said nothing, rolled her eyes at me.

“Now,” Mahoney said. “Where do you live in Saudi Arabia?”

“I do not live in Saudi Arabia.”

“And probably never will again,” the FBI agent said brightly, still looking at his screen. “I guess what I was asking was…oh, here it is. Fahiq. It’s right there outside Riyadh, on the road to Mecca.”

For the first time since we’d been talking to Hala, I saw something resembling anxiety in her expression, just a glimpse of it, and then she turned stony once more.

I glanced at Mahoney, who seemed so confident now that I thought, What has Ned got on her? What about Fahiq could break her?

“We no longer live in Fahiq,” Hala said. “We sold that house years ago, long before we came to this-”

“There was a transfer of property,” Mahoney agreed. “But it was a gift, not a sale, to Gabir Salmann, who I believe is your uncle, the older brother of your mother, Shada?”

Something shifted in Hala. The coolness was gone. She studied the FBI agent the way a hawk might and made no reply.

“It’s right here in the Saudi records the embassy was good enough to send over by courier,” he said. “You want to see?”

No answer.

“Despite what you hear, Doctor, the Saudi royal family are, on the whole, keen allies of the United States,” Mahoney went on. “Why? They might have all the oil, but we have all the weapons and God only knows how many times the number of soldiers. In any case, the Saudi royals find it most embarrassing when one of their nationals goes off the reservation and starts killing some of the country’s best customers and friends.”

He paused and looked at me, almost cheery. “Very cooperative, the Saudis.” Mahoney held up his hand, set it down, looked back at Hala. “Not a lot of political freedom back home, is there?”

Hala said nothing.

“Not a lot of wiggle room in the judicial system in Saudi, right? Sharia law? Secret police?”

Mahoney leaned forward, began talking louder: “No constitutional guarantees of civil rights and humane treatment. What the Saudi royals want from their people, the Saudi royals get. Am I right, Dr. Al Dossari?”

“So what?” Hala snapped. “I am not in my homeland, and I think there is zero chance that your government extradites me.”

“I agree you are not in your homeland, nor are you likely to be any time soon,” Mahoney replied. He paused, glanced at me, then said to her, “But your children are there.”

I immediately saw a change in her breathing pattern: her respirations became shallow, more rapid. She straightened in her chair.