FIFTY-FIVE
F BI special agent Ben Riegert’s laugh filled the cramped interrogation room of the Hagerstown sheriff’s office. The story was just getting better and better. Mohammed Qasim was laying it on thicker as he went. Riegert’s partner, Jackie Immel, was questioning the other suspect, Abdul bin Kamal, in the next room. He hoped she was getting more out of her guy. This one wasn’t making any sense.
Riegert took another swig of coffee. He’d raced out to Hagerstown from the DC office along with twenty other agents as soon as they heard that a 911 call had come in claiming that a terrorist attack was taking place and a warehouse had blown up.
They found Qasim and Kamal beside the building behind a concrete retaining wall with a young woman and a man bleeding to death from shots to the chest and leg. The ambulance had taken the injured man away, and he was identified as retired Major General Sherman Locke. Riegert hadn’t gotten word about his condition, but the paramedics had said he might not survive. A chopper was flying him to the George Washington University trauma center.
The woman, Carol Benedict, was now being examined at a local hospital. Before she was taken away in the ambulance, she told the local police that she couldn’t remember her abduction, which made Riegert suspect that she’d been drugged. Rohypnol and other date-rape drugs usually caused short-term-memory loss, and the hospital would test for it, but it was probably out of her system by now. Riegert would head there to question her next.
Riegert took a seat opposite the suspect. “So, Mr. Qasim, you claim two guys busted into your house as you were getting your morning coffee and abducted you?” Riegert said without even trying to hide his disbelief. Usually these terrorist types were more than happy to come right out and show pride in their acts, but this guy was different. Qasim looked terrified, not the face of defiance Riegert was expecting.
“I swear that is the truth,” Qasim said.
“Where are you from?”
“I am from Saudi Arabia. I am attending the University of Maryland to get my degree in petroleum engineering.”
“Uh-huh. Why do you think these men kidnapped you?”
“I don’t know! They blindfolded me, put me in a van, and tied me up. Then they picked up Abdul.”
“You know him?”
“Only in passing. We go to the same mosque in College Park.”
“You weren’t associated with him in any other way?”
“We studied the Koran together several times, but that is all.”
“So they took you to this warehouse in Hagerstown. Then what?”
“Then they threw me into this room and locked the door. It had a bed and a bucket and nothing else in it. They gave me water and just a little food.”
Qasim was definitely hungry. Riegert had given him a candy bar, and he chowed it down in two bites.
“So you were in there for more than two days,” Riegert said. “Why?”
“You keep asking me why. Ask the kidnappers why!”
“The kidnappers, huh?” Riegert opened a folder and tossed a photo of a charred body over to Qasim. “The only other person we’ve found in connection with this is that guy right there. Was he a partner of yours?”
“No!”
“Mr. Qasim, a truck was hijacked not too far away the day you claim that you were kidnapped. The driver, a Clarence Gibson, says that two men stopped his truck, took him to a remote forest location, and left him for dead. The trucker said the men spoke Arabic. Know anything about that?”
Qasim stared at him, wide-eyed. “You think I was part of that?”
“You did disappear that day.”
“This is crazy, I tell you!”
“This morning, 911 got a call from a General Sherman Locke that he was being held by terrorists. The police arrive to find a local warehouse blown to hell, and the only survivors are two foreign nationals in the company of a frightened woman and a nearly dead man, who we believe is a newly retired two-star general in the Air Force. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t! I can only tell you what happened.”
“Okay. Take me through this morning.”
“Can I have another candy bar?”
“Sure. After we hear your story about what happened today.” By “we,” Riegert meant the recording apparatus and the eight men squeezed into the observation room behind the one-way mirror.
Qasim took a sip of his water and cleared his throat. “All right. I was sleeping in my prison cell when a noise woke me up. I think it was a fight. I heard a buzz and then shouting. It sounded like someone fell. And then shots. Many shots.”
“How many?”
“I can’t remember. There must have been more than ten.”
“Then what?”
“I heard a truck start up. Yes! I remember now. I got a glimpse of a semi truck inside the warehouse before they put me in the cell.”
Excellent. This guy was burying himself, and Riegert wasn’t going to stop him. “Did you get a look at the truck?”
“Only for a moment. All I can say is that the cab was blue and it had a long silver trailer.”
That matched the description of the one hijacked from Gibson.
“So the truck was there?”
“But I didn’t know it was stolen.”
“Okay. So the truck started. How did you get out of the cell?”
“It sounded like someone was crawling outside my door. Keys jangled, and then my door unlocked. I thought it might be the men who kidnapped me, so I stayed away. It swung open, and I saw an older man lying in a pool of blood. So much blood.”
Riegert appreciated Qasim’s training. He could make up a story on the fly better than most criminals he dealt with.
“And this was General Locke. Did he say anything to you?”
Qasim nodded. “He had a beard and his clothes were dirty, so I knew he was a prisoner like me. I rushed over to him, of course. He was very weak, but he said, ‘The building is rigged to blow. We need to get out.’”
“And that’s when you saw the explosives?”
“Yes. I’ve worked on oil-well blowouts in Saudi Arabia, so I could recognize what those barrels were. I took the keys from General Locke and opened Abdul’s cell. We heard the woman, Ms. Benedict, screaming, so we let her out, too. I carried the general out the nearest door while Abdul helped Ms. Benedict. We ran behind the retaining wall, and that’s when the building exploded. I still hear ringing in my ears.”
“And that is when the police showed up. Well, Mr. Qasim, that is quite a story. And you think Mr. bin Kamal is telling the same story?”
“He must, because it’s true!”
Two raps on the door, and it opened. Immel poked her head in. “Got a minute?”
“I’ll get your candy bar,” Riegert said, “and then we’ll go over this again, Mr. Qasim.”
The suspect nodded shakily and gulped the rest of his water. He was certainly nervous, and Riegert intended to find out why.
Riegert closed the door behind him. “You will never guess the fantasy this guy has cooked up.”
“I know,” Immel said with a chuckle. “I’ve got my own tall tale from bin Kamal. Some snow job about him being kidnapped right out of his house and then thrown in a locked room inside the warehouse.”
Riegert frowned. “And shots fired in the warehouse before Locke opened their cells with blood all over him?”
His partner stopped smiling. “You’re getting the same story?”
“Sounds like it.”
