Moondogs - Alexander Yates [115]
Reynato quit circling the table and went to stand beside Monique’s chair. He got down on one knee, moved his hand over the carpet and stood again. “Excuse me,” he said as he extended his cupped hand toward her. “You dropped this name. Do you need it back?”
She glared at him. “If you’re not taking this seriously, then I’ll request that someone else brief us.”
Reynato was quiet for a while, his hand still extended in mock offering. Then he gingerly pantomimed putting Director Babayon’s name into his pocket. “Forgive me,” he said, “but I take this very seriously. That’s why I ask questions—things just don’t seem real to me until I hear them for myself. But you’re right. I’m sure you’re all exhausted,” he nodded toward Alice, “and very busy, besides.” The room was quiet, and uncomfortable, and he seemed to revel in it for a moment before stabbing his pen at one of the maps of Luzon pasted to the glass wall. “This is the location of the Blue Mosque, some two hours south of Manila, in Cavite province. On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 12, a group of as-yet unidentified persons apparently entered this mosque and engaged the Imam in some discussion regarding Mr. Howard Bridgewater. Since then our detectives, myself among them, have thoroughly interrogated this Imam. Naturally we haven’t ruled him out as a potential suspect, but as of now there’s no credible evidence of his involvement. He’s been very forthcoming, and I try to be open-minded about these things. We can’t pigeonhole an entire people, after all. Frequency does not a rule make.”
Reynato paused a moment, presumably to let them all consider his fair-mindedness, before drawing an X on the map at the location of the Blue Mosque. Then he traced a big uneven circle around the city limits of Metro Manila. “Based on materials recovered from the mosque we have good reason to believe that your father is still being held somewhere in Manila, though we’re not sure he’ll be here much longer. The Imam was a little vague on the suspects but we’ve gathered that there were likely three men. Two Filipinos, and some kind of foreigner with a high degree of martial arts training.” He assumed a karate-chop stance to demonstrate. “We’ve had our best sketch artist working with the Imam for the past few days, but as of now we don’t have a realistic likeness of this individual.”
Alice looked up from her notes and blinked a few times, as though trying to clear her eyes of dust. “So, what do they want? I mean, they’re not ransoming Benicio’s dad, right?” She took a long breath. “Are they terrorists?”
“Not exactly.” Reynato flashed his braces. “We don’t believe they have any ideological or religious grudge against the United States. But they realize that there are plenty of people in the world, and plenty of people in this country, I’m sorry to say, that do. It’s to those people that they would like to sell your father.” He paused, only briefly, and the word sell filled the room. “The fact that a sight-unseen visit to a mosque was their first try is a good thing. It means that they’re idiots. And they don’t have leads.”
“Have they hurt him?” Alice asked.
The fact that Reynato didn’t answer right away was answer enough. His slick, too-cool-for-school persona dissolved and, for the first time since hearing the news, Benicio really started crying. He wasn’t even embarrassed about it, he just cried. Because this was so fucking awful. Because somebody had hurt his father. They’d probably hurt him badly. And they would maybe kill him. And his father’s best hope for being rescued was this guy, who, let’s face it, was looking more and more like a maniac.
“He’s not in immediate medical danger,” Reynato said. “The kidnappers left a mobile phone at the mosque with a picture