Then she understood. “My husband and my son are the center of my life. You have a family, children, you know what that means. What I don’t understand is what drove you, what you hoped to accomplish. You are an educated man, a journalist. Nothing you’ve written or done suggests you are a terrorist or a jihadist. You have no ties we could find to any terrorist organization, no history of speaking out for their cause or defending what they do. You’ve led a peaceful life, an admirable life; you love your wife, your family.
“So tell me, why did you take a grenade to JFK intending to kill dozens of people?”
“I had no choice.”
“Because they took your family from you, didn’t they?”
“How did you know that? How very stupid of me. By now you know my youngest son has a birthmark behind his knee. You know everything about me, don’t you? And about my family?”
“Not yet. But we do know your wife, Marie Claire, arrived in Boston with your three children three days ago. We have identified two men on the plane with them as having forged documents, very good ones. They were seen on airport security cameras leaving the terminal with your family.”
“So you don’t know where they are?”
“We saw them in a black SUV leaving the airport exit, but we have nothing else. Not yet.”
“Do you understand I had no choice? That I acted as you would have acted if someone held your husband and your son hostage, would kill them without a thought?”
There was no point in contradicting him. Sherlock said, “How long did they have your family before they sent you to JFK?”
“Three days and three nights.”
“Endless time to let your fear of their dying gnaw at you, to let you feel the grief of losing your family if you didn’t explode the grenade. Endless time to live with the knowledge of your own death.”
“They are ruthless and cruel, but all that makes no difference now. I am prepared to die, I will die. My only hope is that you will find my family before they are murdered.”
“You are under our protection here, Nasim. You’re safe here, you know that.”
“You Americans overestimate yourselves, Agent. My safety no longer matters to me, in any case. Even after I die, I fear for what they will do to my family.”
There was no doubt in his voice. He was certain he would die soon. “Tell me how all this happened to you, Nasim. Tell me who it was who put you here.”
“I will tell you all I know if you swear you will do everything in your power to find my family. Swear you will not let your government sacrifice them because they are of no value to them. I will tell you then, no one else. You.”
“I swear it, Nasim. I will personally take part in the hunt for your family. And we will hunt for them, you can be sure of that.”
He studied her face, slowly nodded. “You will not have much time.”
“Take me through it, then, Nasim. How did they approach you?”
“Approach me? I was walking home from the market on Lancaster Road when two men wearing nylon masks threw me in the back of a van. I never saw the driver. They struck me whenever I tried to move, didn’t say a word to me. They chained me in a dirty warehouse somewhere that smelled of rotten fish, left me there terrified, not knowing why this was happening to me or whether they would kill me.
“When they returned, always three of them, always in their masks, it was only to bring me enough food and water to survive. They wouldn’t speak to me or answer any of my questions, ignored my plea to call my wife so she would know I was alive and arrange for a ransom, hit me again if I said too much. From the few words they said, it was obvious they were Arabic. When they spoke in that language, it was with a Syrian accent. I might recognize their voices, perhaps, but that is all.
“After two days they sat me down and the man with the strongest accent told me I would be taking a trip to New York, said they had an assignment for me there. He showed me photos of my family on a smartphone, surrounded by men in masks, played a video of my wife, terrified, pleading with me to do as they asked. They had my passport, so I knew they’d taken my family from my home, since all my papers were there. He said I would learn later what I would be doing there, but that if I failed, they would murder my wife and my children.”
Nasim paused, looked down at his fisted hands. “The man told me he would do it himself, strangle each of them in turn, bury them all together in a single grave. I believed him. I demanded to speak to my wife, demanded proof she was alive. They said I could speak to her only after we were all in New York. That way no one in London could find them, even if I got word to someone. They had me purchase tickets for all of us myself, even left me alone during my flight to New York.