“We have already checked the stairs several times now,” the lead officer informed him.
“And now it is my turn,” Tariq responded.
The officer shook his head and breathed deeply, disturbed by the nuisance of the hired hand. Nevertheless, Tariq had served on the UAE police force for many years himself, as well as earned a law degree, which helped him to solve many high-profile cases in and around Dubai. So he had earned a great deal of respect from the police chiefs at the headquarters. Realizing as much, the officer stood down and allowed Tariq to perform his methodical investigation.
The lead officer nodded to the other men. “Let him be.”
“Thank you.”
Tariq entered the barren cement stairway that was without railings and studied the outside walls for fingerprints. More than halfway to the bottom, he found a small grease smudge in the middle of the outside wall. He leaned in and sniffed it before pressing the smudge with his finger to get a better whiff and feel.
“Fish oil,” he confirmed.
When he had visited the scene of the crime earlier, Tariq had discussed the dried fish oil with higher-ranking officers, but he had not yet studied the exit staircase. He wondered if the investigation team had found the small grease mark as well.
Tariq walked out of the building’s fire escape exit, where the police and bystanders remained abuzz out of the sidewalk and street. As they all watched him, he looked right and then left, imagining which way the assailants could have run. Then he spotted a tall brown trash can to his left. It stood waist high and toward the back of the sidewalk. As he walked over to investigate it, the police officers and the crowd all watched.
“We checked the perimeter of the building already,” one of the officers commented.
Tariq looked inside the trash can, searching for more fish oil.
“What are you looking for?” the officer continued to question him.
Tariq ignored him and found a plastic shopping bag with another grease stain on it. But as he searched for more evidence, he could not find the additional items that he anticipated—a mask, a knife or a pair of leather gloves.
“What is that?” the officer asked him.
Tariq shook his head and refused to reveal his thoughts or evidence.
He dropped the grease-stained bag back into the trash can and answered, “Nothing.”
One of the two men must have been ready to throw away the evidence and was told not to, he assumed. So there was definitely a professional and an apprentice involved.
Tariq knew more than the investigating officers. He then looked back out into the crowd of men.
Some of them know who did it, I am certain. But they are all silenced by fear, he mused.
As Tariq looked out into the crowd, Abdul’s man, Hakim, continued to watch him while listening to the rumblings and speculation of bystanders.
“Who is he? And how long will they be here? Will there now be a constant police watch in Deira?”
Some of the men were concerned about their privacy. A heavy police presence in their neighborhood only drew attention.
As Hakim eavesdropped from the crowd and watched Tariq perform his work, Saleem, the militant Pakistani man, spotted Hakim amongst the mob of men, and he watched the construction overseer who watched the private investigator.
Not trusting Hakim’s intentions, Saleem backed away from the crowd and thought of checking in on Mohd Ahmed Nasir in the building up the street. Would Mohd feel comfortable with so many UAE police officers combing through the area, where his armed men carry deadly assault weapons? Saleem imagined not. As soon as he arrived at Mohd’s building, he had his answer.
Several men hustled the respected Egyptian leader into the back of a white moving van that had pulled quickly into the dark alley of the building. Saleem had arrived there with perfect timing to see it. But he was not the police, nor would he be a willing witness. In fact, he smiled and nodded to himself.
“The area is now too hot to handle,” he mumbled. “Even for me.”
He figured with Hakim snooping around, the police might have been swayed to interrogate him like they had done with many other laborers who lived in the area.
But where could I move to with no money? he pondered.
“Saleem,” someone called him.
The Pakistani turned to his right, alarmed, and faced a stout Egyptian man who held a folded note in the shadows. Saleem immediately recognized him as one of Mohd’s men from the night of the meeting.
“Yes,” he answered calmly and stepped forward into the dark. It was an obvious conversation of privacy.
The man quickly handed him the folded note. “Mohd said to contact him there. And leave this area as soon as you can. It is not safe here.”
Saleem frowned and breathed deeply, thinking about his lack of income after quitting the construction job. He could hardly buy himself a good meal to eat, let alone move to a new place to live. But before he could open his mouth to explain his situation, the Egyptian man handed him a thousand dirham.
“Use that to move your things tonight, and stay at a cheap hotel room downtown. And call the number first thing in the morning.”
Saleem stuffed the money and the note into his pants pocket as the man walked away and disappeared into the night. The Pakistani militant liked the Egyptian leader even more now. However, he remained baffled.
“I wonder what they have planned,” he muttered to himself. He knew that something was going on. There was too much unexplainable activity for there not to be a plan. A sound explanation was likely to be revealed in his phone call to Mohd that next morning. But at the moment, Saleem agreed with the urgency to vacate the area.
He took two steps out of the shadows toward his building to the north, and a big commotion broke out in the street from the crowd that was now a block away behind him.
Someone pushed, pointed and shouted, “You! I saw you speak to them on the street—two masked men from my window.”
With a frantic push and a shove, the crowd of more than thir ty turned to face a small Asian man from Laos. Hakim was close enough to the crowd to witness the panic that flashed across the man’s face.
With all eyes on him, the Asian man shook his head and responded, “No, no, no me.”
He raised his hands in innocence but lacked the fluent English to explain himself. And once the crowd began to advance aggressively toward him, the man could imagine the angry mob attempting to rip him limb from limb, so instinctively, he took off running before it could happen.
“Get him!” someone yelled.
In two seconds flat, the crowd of more than thirty men began to chase behind the delirious suspect, including the alerted UAE police.
“Get him! Get him!”
Saleem watched from the distance and felt sorry for the man. It looked like another chain reaction of planning. The Art of War says create confusion. He did not know what to expect from anyone. Every action was suspect, and the Asian man seemed to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He then doubled back, away from the police, and fought his way through the crowd as he started to run in Saleem’s direction.
Saleem’s eyes grew wide with panic of his own.
“Shit!” he cursed.
He’s bringing the crowd and the police straight to me!
He swiftly crossed the street, hoping that they would catch the man before they arrived near him, but it was wishful thinking. The man from Laos was running for his life, and not even several men could bring him down or stop him. He looked like a professional track star and kickboxer, outrunning those who could not keep up with him, while bashing the others who could with vicious kicks and fists. But that only made him look guilty as charged. So the police drew their guns, tired of the clumsy and frenetic street chase.
“Stop or we’ll shoot!”
Saleem watched again as the poor man raised his hands high to surrender. However, as soon as the first police officer reached him to secure hi
m in handcuffs, he spun the officer around in a twist move and pushed him into the others. Then he took off running again.
Hakim and Tariq watched the entire scene in amusement from the opposite end of the street. Hakim had even studied the Asian man’s face to see if he had worked for the company, but as far as he knew, he had not.
“Crazy,” Tariq finally commented. He had gotten close enough to Hakim to no longer ignore him. “It looks like they’ve found the perfect man for a diversion.”
Hakim smiled and chuckled. “I thought the same thing myself. That man had no idea what was going on. He only knew that they were accusing him of something and were ready to attack him.”
In the short distance, once the man from Laos had made it around the corner to escape the angry mob, several UAE policemen had clear shots at him.
“Shoot him!” the chief commanded. Bullets flew.
That was all that Saleem needed to hear before he continued moving. There was no need to look back. There was only more trouble there. Maybe someone in the crowd would point him out as the next scapegoat to chase down and kill.
Something is definitely going on, he thought. That’s four deaths now in two nights … and all for what?
Hakim and Tariq were inquisitive themselves, standing a block behind him.
“Who was the first man who accused him?” Tariq asked. “Did you see him?”
Hakim shook his head. “I don’t believe he wanted to be seen. It could have been anyone. You just heard someone shout before the pushing started. Then they took off and chased after him.”
Tariq grinned, expecting as much. “This is all elaborate scheming.” He then eyed Hakim and asked, “So, how much do you know about Mohd Ahmed Nasir?”
Hakim became reflective and thoughtful. “He was a very proud and intelligent man,” he answered.
Tariq listened thoughtfully himself, while bringing his hands to his lips in prayer. From what he knew about Mohd, he had indeed been a wise and peaceful man who had only helped people. Cold-blooded murder did not fit his MO.
“Would you say that he believed in violence?” Tariq asked Hakim.
Hakim was visibly perturbed by the question. “In my first thought of him, I would say no. But then again, any man can become violent when provoked.”
Hakim had a guilty conscious, remembering all of the peaceful immigrant men who he had pushed around and bullied over the years to speed up construction.
As if reading his mind, Tariq placed a soft hand upon his shoulder.
“May Allah have mercy and forgive us all.”
Hakim could not agree more. He nodded eagerly and added, “Allah is forgiving. Praise be only unto Him.”
Chapter 17
Abdul could not sleep that night. In his Abu Dhabi home and bedroom, he sat up in bed in his white silk bedclothes and continued to think about Mohd Ahmed Nasir and how he had wronged him years ago. Maybe the man’s wife would have still died from her ailments, but at least Mohd could have seen her, held her, talked to her and kissed her during those final days and nights of her life. So Abdul continued to feel sick about it.
Merciful Allah! All because of the pressures of my first building, he told himself.
“What is wrong, Abdul?” Hamda, who was beside him, asked.
Abdul shook it off and said, “Nothing.”
Hamda sat up with him in their large and elaborate king-sized bed. It had gold trimmings along the head and footboard as well as the sides.
“Abdul, I am your wife. I know when something is bothering you. Who would you rather tell than me? I know all of your most intimate secrets and will die with them. And no form of torture could ever break me.”
Abdul eyed his wife and chuckled. “Hamda, you are so overly dramatic.” Yet he loved her for it. He knew that she had the courage and devotion to back him on anything, even when she disagreed with his methods. But her use of the word “torture” alarmed him.
He asked her, “Why are you thinking about torture?”
“What are you thinking?” she asked him back. “I am only reading your restless energy. And something seems to be torturing you right now. Is it work again? Is it the meeting tomorrow with your uncle and the council members?”
Abdul frowned and denied it all. “No, I am not concerned about that. I already know what they will ask me.”
“Then what is it?” Hamda pressed him.
Abdul breathed deeply and contemplated. He had already revealed more to his young wife than he could ever feel comfortable with other men knowing. So he smiled at her, soothingly.
“Most men would laugh at me if they knew how much I have told you and trust in you.”
“And those men are fools who envy how much your wife loves you,” Hamda insisted with intensity. She placed her soft hand on her husband’s shoulder. “If I were a man, I would pray to Allah for a woman like me.”
Abdul laughed hard enough to wake their son in his room down the hallway.
“Why do you laugh?” Hamda asked. She had concern on her face. She meant what she said and did not consider it a joke.
Abdul continued to smile and held his wife’s chin.
“I laugh because I am so fortunate and blessed to have you.” And he pecked her lips with his.
“You would patronize me so late at night, would you?”
Abdul smirked. “Of course not. A man always tells his wife the truth at night.”
Hamda knew better than to believe his healthy sarcasm.
“That is blasphemous. A million women around the world could only wish that it were true.”
“And a million women could only wish to have me,” he countered with another kiss.
Hamda continued to grin, but she was not distracted by his charm. “All of your flattery will not make me forget what I have asked you.”
Abdul shook his head again. “You are a tough wife to crack.”
“That is why so many suitors were not able to have me,” she told him. “They all left my father’s house disappointed, all except you.”
Abdul felt good inside.
But then he asked himself, And what if Allah were to take you away from me far too early?
It was such a horrifying thought that he dared not to voice it. But his pause of thought was pounced on again by his wife.
Hamda persisted, “So tell me, what is still troubling you? There is nothing more that we can do about the Indian worker and his family,” she alluded. “We have been very generous to them, but we cannot bring him back. Only Allah has the powers to heal them now.”
Abdul nodded. “I know, but it has now become more than that. Investigator and private counsel, Tariq Mohammed, now believes that there is a vendetta against me. And three men have already been killed in the working-class district of Palm Deira.”
Suddenly, Hamda became serious. She squinted and asked him, “When did this happen? And who would have a vendetta against you?”
She could not believe that any man would have the gall to go up against the celebrated young developer of the Emirates, especially not with violence and murder. Who would dare such a thing?
“Just last night. And they were all men who used to work for me … two of them on my very first building, the International Suites. They were both older men, much closer to their retirement than their prime.”
Her husband had her full attention now. In her lime-green silk nighty, Hamda sat up taller in alert.
“So who is it? Who does Tariq believe?”
Abdul took another deep breath. Now his wife would not be able to sleep. But she had asked him for it and had pressed him to tell it.
“I told him a story today about Mohd Ahmed Nasir, an Egyptian engineer who I denied from seeing his wife during her operation and while on her deathbed back in Egypt. At the time, we were too close to finishing the hotel, and I did not want to chance my best engineer not being available to help us complete it. So I advised him to leave his wife’s health in the hands of Allah until we could finish the work on
the building. That was several years before I ever met you. And Mohd’s wife died only weeks after her operation from complications in her healing process.”
Abdul looked into his beautiful wife’s passionate, dark eyes. “That is why I waited so late in life to be married. I was obviously shaken by it. And I tried to drown it all out with more work.”
Hamda thought fast. “Abdul, you cannot punish yourself for the decisions of Allah. Only He chooses who lives or dies on this earth.”
Abdul shook his head and grew incensed. He even climbed up out of bed to make his point more firmly.
“But it was my decision to forbid him not to go. I cannot absolve myself from that responsibility. And I fired the man when he disobeyed me and left anyway. But by that time it was too late. His wife died before he could make it back home to Egypt.”
Realizing her husband’s discomfort on the matter, Hamda climbed out of bed to join him. She walked over and placed a soft hand on his chest.
“Abdul, you were young. We all make mistakes in our youth.”
“Yes, but I seem to have forgotten. And I have pressed on to build more buildings with the same insensitive temperament.”
In agreement with his assessment, Hamda stood speechless. Abdul had continued to push forward in his work like a vigorous bull. She liked that about him. However, his bullish demeanor was indeed a bit much at times.
“We shall pray on it,” she commented. “The Merciful Allah will forgive you. In the meantime, there is still much work to do. Imagine how many lives you have already saved by providing work and income for so many men with families to feed. Have you ever thought about that?”
“Of course I have. It is what we all say as businessmen: ‘I am giving the people work.’ But who do the new developments benefit more, me or them, their country or the Emirates? We must admit that they are only hired hands.”
“There will always be workers and those who hire them,” Hamda responded. “There is nothing you can do about that. But would you rather be the worker or the boss?” Hamda had heard enough of Abdul’s self-deprecation, and she wanted him to see himself as a confident and productive Emirati. “You are who you are, and Abdul Khalif Hassan is royalty.”