Suburban medical building
Fairfax, Virginia
The Al Arabic network’s newest Washington, D.C., correspondent peered through the heavily tinted windows of an unmarked white van outside the Fallen Oaks Rehabilitation Center’s front entrance.
“She isn’t going to speak to me if she knows we’re filming her,” Ebio Kattan warned her camera crew. “Let’s shoot first from the van.”
“We can’t get a clear shot through these windows,” her camera operator complained.
Kattan pinned a brooch on the lapel of her bright red, one-button, Alexander McQueen patchwork blazer. “We’ll get additional footage and sound through this,” she said, referring to the miniature camera lens and microphone concealed in the costume jewelry. “The shaky images will add drama to my story.”
A crew member fiddled with switches on a console until images from the brooch came into focus on his monitor. He shot her a thumbs-up.
“Good, because here she comes,” Kattan said.
Major Brooke Grant was the first to exit the revolving glass doors, followed by Jennifer Conner and her Ghana-born nanny, Miriam Okpara.
Kattan slid open the van’s passenger door. “Still good?” she asked as she stepped around the vehicle onto the sidewalk.
“Yes,” she heard through her earbud.
“Major Grant!” she called out.
Brooke, who had been speaking to Jennifer, glanced over her shoulder at the figure approaching them from behind.
“I thought it was you,” Kattan chirped, pretending she had simply been passing by. She extended her hand toward Jennifer as she neared them. “You must be Gunter Conner’s daughter.”
Brooke stepped between them, blocking Kattan from Jennifer. As she did, her eyes swept the parking lot where the white van with D.C. plates and tinted windows was parked. The glass button in Kattan’s brooch confirmed Brooke’s immediate suspicions.
“You’re filming us,” she snapped. “Miriam, take Jennifer to the car. Now!”
Grasping Jennifer’s hand, Okpara hurried toward Brooke’s Jaguar XF sedan, one of the few luxuries that she afforded herself.
“How dare you ambush me,” she said.
Having overheard Brooke’s comments through the brooch microphone, the film crew emerged from their hiding place and started toward them.
“In America, you can film anyone out in public,” Kattan replied.
“No one with any ethics ambushes an underage child,” Brooke replied, turning her back as she walked toward her Jaguar sedan.
“Speak to me and I’ll block out her face,” Kattan said, giving chase. “I would have telephoned you, but you would never have agreed to an interview.”
“You’re right. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
Kattan’s camera crew dashed ahead of them toward the car, but Miriam had already tucked Jennifer into its backseat and covered the teenager’s face with a shawl. Frustrated, the cameraman turned the camera on a visibly angry Brooke, who was now only steps away from the driver’s door.
“Get away from my car,” she ordered.
“You owe me,” Kattan said. “I helped rescue that girl’s father in Mogadishu. I got him an ambulance.”
“You also broadcast a documentary that revealed where he was hospitalized in Germany and the Falcon murdered him.”
“You can’t blame me for your government’s lax security. I simply report the news.”
“You told the world I was on a personal crusade to kill the Falcon.”
“Aren’t you?” Kattan asked, happy her crew was filming Brooke hollering at her over the car top. “Don’t you want vengeance?”
Brooke slipped into the Jaguar, pushed the car’s start button, and spun its console dial into reverse. Before its rearview camera had time to relay an image to the dash screen, Brooke hit the accelerator and the Jaguar shot backward, nearly hitting the camera operator. He yelped and leaped sideways as Brooke exited the parking lot.
Checking her watch, Kattan said, “We need to hurry.” It was ten a.m., which meant it was six p.m. in Al Arabic’s main Dubai studio. With any luck, she would be able to broadcast a live report from the network’s Washington studio in time for the network’s most watched seven o’clock news hour.
As the van sped east on the I-66 expressway, Kattan scribbled out her script, and by the time she hurried into Al Arabic’s bureau on Capitol Hill, she’d cleared her story with her editors and the government censors in the Dubai Media City compound, the hub for all broadcasts to the Arab world.
Kattan dashed into her dressing room, where she shed her western clothes for a modest, shapeless brown robe and drab hijab. She removed her makeup and with only seconds to spare, she mounted a stool behind a glass-and-chrome anchor desk next to the Al Arabic Washington bureau chief, Azim Basher, one of the network’s most popular broadcasters.
When the live news broadcast returned from a commercial, Basher announced, “Ebio Kattan recently joined our Washington, D.C., bureau after reporting for us from Africa, and she has an exclusive follow-up story.” Turning to address Kattan, he continued, “You first told us about this female American soldier nearly four months ago in one of our network’s most watched documentaries.”
The camera narrowed into a close-up of Kattan’s face. “Yes, Azim,” she said. “Last October, I reported that two Americans had avoided capture when Al-Shabaab fighters overran the American embassy in Mogadishu. Their names were Brooke Grant, a U.S. Marine, and Gunter Conner, who I revealed was the CIA station chief in Somalia.”
Pictures of Brooke and Conner appeared on a monitor behind Kattan. “Gunter Conner was seriously wounded in Somalia during a confrontation with Al-Shabaab and was flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where he was later assassinated by followers of an international masked figure known only as the Falcon. The other American—Brooke Grant—returned to the U.S. after preventing a suicide bombing in Mogadishu and freeing American hostages.”
Kattan looked down at her notes, pausing for a second, before continuing. “Brooke Grant was in the news again when she helped protect President Sally Allworth during last week’s attack. She tackled Fawzia Samatar, who had lit herself on fire and was running at the U.S. president. Fawzia’s husband, Cumar, detonated a suicide belt when the president was fleeing.” Footage of the mayhem outside the National Cathedral appeared. Those horrific images were replaced by jumpy footage captured by Kattan’s lapel camera as she approached Brooke, Jennifer, and Miriam.
“Only hours ago, Major Brooke Grant refused to answer my questions when I attempted to interview her about a new fear gripping America—the fear of so-called homegrown terrorism by U.S. citizens who have sworn allegiance to jihadist organizations, such as ISIS.”
Images of Brooke hurrying to her parked car now flashed on the screen. She could be heard saying, “I’ve got nothing to say to you!” Next came footage of Jennifer hiding under a shawl inside the Jaguar.
“The teenage girl covering her face is Jennifer Conner, the only surviving child of CIA agent Gunter Conner. Major Brooke Grant is now this girl’s legal guardian. This teenager suffered brain damage nearly five years ago when a bomb hidden in their family car exploded in Cairo, killing her mother and brother.”
The camera returned to a close-up of correspondent Kattan. “Major Brooke Grant became an orphan when her own parents were killed during the 9/11 attacks. Jennifer Conner became an orphan too.” Kattan hesitated to let her viewers absorb the significance of what she’d just revealed and to add suspense to her closing comments. With the monitor behind her showing Brooke speeding backward in her Jaguar after nearly striking the camera crew, Kattan said, “Brooke Grant is in hiding because she is terrified that she and Jennifer will be the next victims of the Falcon who, sources tell me, has pledged to hunt them down and kill them even if they are in the United States. There is no place safe for them to hide.”