The twins’ cheerful dispositions had returned the next day as Zeb drove them back to the Minters’ apartment. He didn’t mention the Triad link to them, it was something that needed more investigation.
‘Dad’s still fuming,’ Percy whispered as she showed them into the living room. ‘Most of it is an act. It’s the FBI he’s angry with.’
Meghan thanked her with a smile and seated herself on a couch, next to Beth, while Zeb leaned against a wall and became furniture.
Jack Minter stomped into the living room, a scowl on his face, his arms crossed. ‘What?’ he growled, no apology in his voice, his mouth still set in a tight line.
‘Sir, you were a war crimes investigator, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah, what of it?’
‘Your investigations put away several criminals, didn’t they?’
‘That’s what we do,’ impatience laced his words. Grace Minter entered the room and waved at the twins to remain seated, when they rose.
‘He’s all bark, no bite,’ she smiled wanly, apologizing for her husband’s attitude.
‘Did any of those war criminals get back to you? Threaten you?’
‘Several of them. Not just me, most of us received death threats, warnings. It was part of the job.’
‘Did any of them continue with the intimidation after you returned to the U.S.?’
Jack Minter uncrossed his arms, his face losing its hostile expression. ‘What’s that got to do with Cali?’
‘Oh my God,’ Grace whispered before Jack could answer, a hand going to her mouth, her face turning pale. She turned to her husband, ‘It can’t be him, can it? Tell them, Jack. Tell them everything.’
‘It’s not relevant.’ Jack Minter looked shaken. ‘The UN gave him a clean chit.’
‘Tell them, or I will.’ Grace raised her voice in a quiet warning. ‘We’ve lived a nightmare for long enough.’
Jack Minter ran a hand through his silvery hair with a sigh, sat heavily in a chair and removed his spectacles and polished them.
His face reflected his age and weariness when he addressed the twins. ‘For several years, when we were in Europe, and even when we returned to the U.S., we had a man dogging us. He was a devil. He was our nightmare.’
‘His name was Yusri Azzi.’
From the corner of her eye Meghan noticed Zeb’s body tightening for a second. What was that? Jack Minter’s eyes were on her and not wanting to interrupt him, she filed the reaction away.
‘Who was he, sir?’
‘Is,’ Jack Minter corrected her. ‘He’s still alive. He was a war lord with the Free Syrian Army, one of the opposition groups to the Assad government. He was too radical for that organization and they disowned him. That didn’t deter him. He had a core group of supporters and along with them, he carried on fighting the government.’
Minter took a breath, his eyes distant, remembering the heat and hardships of distant lands. ‘Azzi wasn’t fighting for freedom. He was a murderous, power hungry warlord who was fighting a land grab battle of his own, separate from all the rebel groups.’
‘He came to my attention when his men burnt Syrian policemen on a rooftop in Aleppo. They had captured the policemen and instead of following the Geneva Convention, they tortured them and burnt them.’
‘As if that wasn’t enough, he and his men filmed the atrocity and put it on the internet. The rebel groups couldn’t stomach this, they would lose international support and aid. They criticised Azzi, an unusual step for them.’
‘He claimed his actions were an inevitable outcome of war. I didn’t buy that and started my investigations and uncovered horrors; rape, coldblooded killings of people of different faiths, mass graves.’
No one spoke when he stopped to drink a glass of water. No one moved. He resumed, his low voice taking them back to Syria.
‘I interviewed hundreds of people, witnesses, families of victims in Aleppo, and some in Baghdad, and compiled an extensive dossier.’
‘That dossier resulted in six of his closest men being arrested. Four of them were arrested by the Syrian police, two of them faced war crimes charges and were convicted.’
‘Azzi was finished by the time the trials were completed, a lot of his men deserted and joined the FSA or other groups. A lot, not all. He still had a core group of thugs.’ ‘Surprisingly he had sympathizers in various parts of Europe and even here, in the U.S. The notion of a lone ranger is very romantic in some circles. I think these sympathizers funded him. It didn’t matter; my dossier finished his group as an effective fighting force.’
‘My investigation had a cascading effect. More people came forward with charges against Azzi’s men and there were several who were still being tried when we returned to the U.S. Those convicted, are still serving time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any evidence against him. People were too scared of him to speak up.’
‘Jack destroyed him,’ Grace spoke up. ‘Azzi never forgave him for that and hounded us. He sent threatening letters, called us in the middle of the night, he even kidnapped us one day.’
‘I didn’t know that!’ exclaimed Percy who had joined them and was listening quietly.
‘We kept it from you, honey, both Cali and you. We didn’t wish to alarm you,’ Jack Minter said uncomfortably, clearly wanting to move away from the subject.
His daughter was having none of it. A mutinous look crossed her face and with her hands on her hips, she challenged him, ‘you can tell me now.’
‘It happened just before Cali moved to the U.S,’ he began uncertainly, ‘it wasn’t as eventful as I made it out to be. You were at school, Cali was at her college, I was just leaving for the office, when these two vans cornered me.’
‘This was in Austria?’
‘Yeah, in Vienna.’
He went on to explain how six bearded men had rushed out of two vans as he was entering his car to drive to his office. Four of them had surrounded him and had hustled him into one van, the two others had brought Grace, kicking and struggling.
It had happened so swiftly, so suddenly, that he hadn’t been able to raise any alarm. Neither had Grace.
The men had bound, gagged, and blindfolded them. They had been driven to an empty farmhouse outside Vienna, where they had been kept the whole day. He had been made to call in sick while Grace had cancelled her engagements for the day.
‘You did as they said? You didn’t protest? Did they threaten you?’ Percy’s face turned red, her voice rising shrilly.
‘They didn’t have to,’ Jack Minter replied quietly. ‘They had two more men, one was outside your school, the other was outside Cali’s college. Those two men relayed live video feeds to a laptop in the farmhouse. One feed showed you entering the school, the other one showed Cali with her friends.’
‘They said they were Azzi’s men. They could reach us anywhere. They told your dad to back off,’ Grace added and rose and hugged her daughter who had whitened and was trembling in reaction.
Meghan went to the kitchen in the silence that followed and brought three glasses of water for the family. They were emptied rapidly and when some semblance of normalcy had returned, she questioned the father.
‘Sir, I take it you didn’t back off?’
‘No, though there were times I wished I had,’ Jack Minter smiled briefly, ruefully. ‘This happened before my final dossier was to be submitted as evidence. I reported the incident to my team leader and they arranged protection for all of us. Discreetly which is why our daughters never spotted them. We investigators have experienced this before.’
Grace returned to her seat, Percy following her, perching herself on the arm rest. ‘Those were tough days, that was an awful job. I was so glad when Jack got this posting. I baked him his favorite pecan pie the day he broke the news.’
‘Ma’am, earlier you seemed to refer to Azzi as if he were still a threat.’
Grace Minter rose without a word, left the room and returned with a plastic folder. She opened it, donned a pair of reading glasses and went through several papers before extracting an envelope.
She handed it wordlessly to Meghan and gestured at her to open it.
Meghan opened it and removed five slips of paper. She sucked in her breath sharply when she read the first one and laid all the slips on a table for all to see.
There was a single line on each of the slips, neatly typed.
They read, You will suffer. Yusri Azzi.