56

With the lull created when the depositions of both Philip Kilpatrick and Daniel Reese were put on hold, it was time for the plaintiff’s team to pay a visit to Gazala Holloman. The Amtrak train left Norfolk for Washington at 6:10 Monday morning, and both Paige and Wellington were thirty minutes early. Wyatt, of course, showed up at the last possible moment. He slept for the first two hours and spent the last two on the phone, spreading out his stuff in the seat next to him so that nobody else would sit in his row. Once they stepped outside Union Station in D.C., Wyatt lit up a cigar that he puffed on during their walk to the Mediterranean restaurant a few blocks away.

Paige wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting from Gazala Holloman, but it wasn’t the woman who showed up about ten minutes late and joined the team at their table. She knew Gazala was a Muslim and half expected her to show up in a full-length black abaya. Instead, the woman wore jeans, sandals, and a tight-fitting blouse, with plenty of makeup to accentuate her striking Lebanese features.

Her personality surprised Paige as well. She’d expected quiet and submissive, but Gazala was engaging, bold, and loud. She prodded Wyatt to order something more “interesting” than the steak roti and pita bread he had his eyes on. It took her less than five minutes to begin trading barbs with the old lawyer, matching him wit for wit, sarcasm for sarcasm.

Gazala, like her husband, was a journalist. She wrote for Islamic periodicals and online publications. She was a crusader for women’s rights, especially in Saudi Arabia, where women couldn’t go out in public without an escort and were not allowed to drive.

“As it should be,” interjected Wyatt.

“How do you put up with this?” Gazala asked Paige.

“In small doses,” Paige said. She was the only one who wasn’t kidding.

When the meal arrived, Gazala turned serious. She talked about U.S. policies in the Mideast and how she and Cameron had wanted to pull back the veil on the shadow war that was alienating so many Muslims. “Yemen is the perfect example,” Gazala said. “Saudi Arabia has killed thousands of civilians. The U.S. and its drone campaign have taken out entire wedding parties. The average American citizen has no idea. We should be supporting the Houthis, not trying to restore a discredited dictator.”

The members of SEAL Team Nine all resisted the bait, no small feat for Wyatt. This wasn’t about defending America’s Mideast policies; it was about getting her on board as a witness. Nevertheless, Paige had never expected Gazala to be sympathetic to the Houthis. They had executed her husband and left his body to rot.

“The Houthis said your husband was working for the CIA,” Wyatt noted.

Gazala scoffed at the idea. “Cam hated the CIA. He compared it to the Nazi SS—the president’s own private army that can kill without any congressional oversight. His dream was to expose the CIA. Trust me, he was not working for them.”

She was convincing, but her protestations didn’t dispel all of Paige’s lingering doubts. The CIA chose its agents carefully. A journalist like Cameron Holloman, who let everyone know how much he detested the CIA, would provide excellent cover.

Wyatt quizzed Gazala at some length about communications she’d had with her husband during his last weeks in the Mideast. Gazala said she had anticipated the questions and had put together a copy of Cameron’s e-mails and Facebook DMs that she would forward to Wyatt. “I wanted to make sure I could trust you first,” she added.

Cam had called a few times, she said, but he was basically speaking in code because he had snuck across the border into Yemen. He was with a Muslim imam who was arranging meetings with the Houthi leaders.

“Do you know the imam’s name?” Wyatt asked.

Wellington was taking notes. He had hardly touched any of his food.

“Saleet Zafar. I met him at a conference a few years before Cam’s trip. He and Cam began exchanging e-mails. They shared a mutual loathing of Saudi Arabia and the CIA.”

“Do you know how we can contact him?” Wyatt asked.

“Ask the CIA,” Gazala said. “But if they find him first, he won’t be of much help.”

“He’s in hiding?”

“For his life.”

“Do you know any way to contact him?” Wyatt pressed.

Gazala thought about this for a moment and took a bite of her lunch. “Perhaps. But I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. You can’t just pick up the phone and call a guy like this or send him an e-mail. The CIA is trying to kill him.”

For Paige, the comment was chilling. If Gazala was right, Paige was neck-deep in a case where a critical witness was on the CIA’s designated kill list. They didn’t go over this kind of stuff in law school.

“I would like to talk with him,” Wyatt said. “I’ll fly anywhere and meet him anyplace he chooses. His testimony is critical.”

Gazala studied the three of them at length. “Your client’s husband was part of the military establishment, and at first I had no desire to help you,” Gazala said. Her voice had lost some its vibrancy, and her eyes darkened with sadness. “That’s why I didn’t return your calls or e-mails. But when Patrick Quillen’s grandfather stopped by just to pay his condolences, I realized that the SEALs’ families were hurting just as much as me. The men were only doing their job—trying to bring Cam home alive.”

Gazala turned to Wyatt, and Paige was surprised at how the two of them, so very different, had seemed to form a connection. “From the start, I thought this case was just tilting at windmills,” Gazala said. “But to be honest, Wyatt—and don’t let this go to your head—you’ve made some pretty big waves. I don’t think you can win, but you’re dredging up issues that Cam cared about, and now the American people are talking about them.”

“We can win, but we need your help,” Wyatt said.

“I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with,” Gazala cautioned. The banter was gone, her tone now subdued. “There are real lives at stake. We can’t afford to be reckless.”

Wyatt chose not to respond. The charge of him being reckless was self-authenticating.

“We know how to be careful,” Paige interjected. “And we are well aware of the stakes.”

A long silence followed while Gazala considered her options. “I’ll see what I can do to connect with some of the people Cam spent his final weeks around,” Gazala said. “And I’ll send you copies of his e-mails and DMs.”

On the way back to Norfolk, the three lawyers discussed their takeaways from the meeting. If Cameron Holloman was working for the CIA, his wife surely didn’t know it. Wellington speculated that the CIA had been monitoring the e-mail and text communications between Cameron and his wife. That’s how they’d learned about his meeting with the Houthi leaders.

Not surprisingly, Wyatt took a darker view. “They knew he was going to pull the curtain back on the CIA’s secret war in Yemen. They probably followed him around and then bombed the Houthi leaders he had met with. Then they leaked information to the Houthis to make it look like Cameron was working for the CIA. Then, after he was in prison, they probably leaked information about the upcoming raid so that the Houthis would move him before the SEALs went in. That way, the Houthis would execute Holloman so he wouldn’t be talking, and our government would look like they had tried to rescue him.”

There were a lot of holes in Wyatt’s analysis, but Paige didn’t bother pointing them out. When it came to conspiracy theorists, Wyatt Jackson could spin shadowy plots with the best of them. After all, he had plenty of practice as a criminal defense attorney. The cops planted evidence. The prosecutors rushed to judgment. The snitches just wanted a better deal. Other paranoid defense lawyers might have graduated from Conspiracy University, but Wyatt Jackson was the dean.