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Mustafa woke me up early in the morning. I could see from the size of his eyelids and the three mugs of coffee on the table that he still didn't sleep.
"You're not going to believe this."
"What is it, what?"
"Sami is getting regular transfers from the company's account to his bank account, and that could not be categorized under anything logical or legal, and this has been happening for the past ten years. I would say for the past fourteen years with no need to see the missing years."
"So, what? How does that help us?"
"That tells us Sami is blackmailing Tarek, and he's been doing it for the past ten years."
"But we already know that."
"We had our suspicions, but this proves we were right."
"Are you just happy your theory turned out to be true or is there something more important than this?"
Mustafa didn't like my interrupting his Eureka moment, but he had more significant findings.
"I have found documents that prove Rachidy Software has landed on some contracts in illegal ways and many payments can be proven to be bribes to get contracts at higher prices. They have a lot of illegal government contracts. I could build a whole corruption case on that."
I sat in bed by now trying to digest what Mustafa said to squeeze out a useful card to play with, but I couldn't see much hope in it.
"My friend, don't you remember you were Syrian before you are German?"
"What do you mean?"
"You want to come to Lebanon and threaten a politician with a corruption case. Each one of them has piles of these things. I can remember some of these big corruption files back from the days when I lived here and guess what happened to those accused of corruption stealing billions of dollars from the Lebanese treasury?" I was looking at Mustafa who avoided eye contact for a second, then he said it against his will, "What?"
"Nothing. Some of them are still alive in the same offices, and some of them are retired or dead, but their children have taken their place. Do you think we have a case here? We have nothing. My stupid idea is still much better than yours."
Mustafa knew I was right.
"Every time, I start to believe we're onto something, we start back from scratch. Maybe the idea of a gun to their heads forcing them to confess doesn't sound so bad after all."
Mustafa gave me the are-you-mad look, but I was grateful he didn't say it. As we were looking at each other saying a lot without uttering a word, there was a knock on the door and it was Franz. The poor kid looked like he had been running in a marathon.
"Guys, you won't believe what I have found." It must be damn important to drive Franz to call us guys.
"They had secure encryption on these private servers. It is advanced compared to what I saw on their public servers. That kind of encryption is a bitch..." Franz kept on talking about technical stuff, and we knew right away he had broken it, but we had to indulge him because the man was bragging.
When he was almost done, I asked him gently, but my patience had gone out five minutes ago, "What did you find, Franz?"
Franz took the drive from his pocket and triumphantly headed toward my computer, opened it without asking me for any password. I didn't bother asking him how especially after the long lecture he gave us about how he hacked their highly secure system. Franz brought my laptop and put it on the coffee table and came to sit on the couch between Mustafa and myself. If anybody could see the way we were huddling around that video, they would have definitely misunderstood what we were doing.
The video was coming from a hidden security camera feed in a small room that seemed to be reserved for intimate parties only. It was not a regular bedroom by any standard. Our jaws dropped when we saw the sliding door open, and behind it, there was a big office with the big mahogany desk we were in just two days ago. The time-code on the screen registered seven forty-three p.m. One of those ravishing girls from Tarek's collection, as he called them, came inside the room and closed the door behind her. We tried to remember where the door was. The feed dated a week ago, so it must be hidden in the wall somehow. The poor girl changed into an outfit that was more appropriate for the occasion. After about five minutes, as she was ready and waiting on the bed, the door opened again. We were all waiting for Tarek to show his face, but it was another face, less important, but still familiar. Sami came in and closed the door behind him, the girl jumped out of bed and covered herself. The voice was not clear, but we didn't need to hear, for as much as the scene was triumphant to our cause, it was tragic we could not watch it to the end. Even Franz moved his eyes away from the brutal rape scene, and it was no fantasy pornographic film made by some psychopath, it was reality TV.
The footage that lasted for about half an hour was over, and we sat speechless after seeing the butcher killing the pride of the poor girl who might have been willing to sleep with Tarek but was taken against her will as we saw it clearly in the video.
Mustafa was the first to speak, "Guys, this is hard evidence for a crime punishable by law. I guess we finally have a card to play with." Mustafa was also calling us guys now.
It was my turn to wake up from the shock, "Where did you find this video?"
"It was on Sami's private server, but I bet there are many more videos like it. I just retrieved the latest video I found."
"Are you saying there might be other videos like this one?" Mustafa asked
"I know there are more videos, but I don't know what's on them yet."
"Why didn't you get them all?" Mustafa asked.
I wouldn't ask that question, not after the long security lecture Franz gave us at the beginning, but Mustafa wouldn't know.
"He will have to use brute force and be exposed to their security system. He's doing it stealthily to bypass their security without being detected and shut out of the system. He will have to do it slowly because we don't have a second chance at doing this." I saved Mustafa from one super technical answer Franz was about to give.
"So how long would it take to get the rest of them or at least more of these?" Mustafa was more eager than I was because for him that might be our winning ticket out of this mess.
"It will take me a couple of days." Franz looked at the cold expression on Mustafa's face and knew he'd been talking for too long, "Yeah, right, I'd better get back to it." Franz hurried back to his room.
It was a moment of victory. At last, there was something we could use against them, we were briefly overjoyed, but then other ideas crossed our minds that ruined our moment.
"But what if Tarek knows about this?" Mustafa retrieved that serious worrisome look on his face
"Of course, he knows, but that is not our leverage point, my friend. We will use this as leverage against Sami. We will threaten to send this to the police and publish it online and make a scandal if he doesn't tell us what he's holding against Tarek." Then my forehead frowned, "But what makes him admit that he is the accomplice of murder to evade a rape case. This will never be enough. There has to be something more on this private server, or this will not be enough."
After a long heated discussion, we both agreed that we needed more dirt on them before we could step up and act, so we needed to play along for a few more days.