Excerpt
He finishes his breakfast and hails a cab to take him to the office.
As he walks in, he realizes it hasn’t been that long since he left this place last
night. He hangs his coat behind the door.
Mathew logs on to his personal media center and finds two messages. The
first one, is from his wife.
“Good morning Matthew, how is your morning? Call me as soon as you get
this.”
The other is from Tom, asking him to call him.
He decides to call home first.
“Hi, Matt. How late did you work last night?”
“Until about 8:30. It was a long day.”
“Are you okay? Are you coming home as you promised?”
“Of course I’m coming home on Wednesday. And of course I’m okay.” Why
all the fuss today, he wonders.
He forgets that this coming weekend is his birthday, however Emily
remembers it very well. She has made plans and preparations to celebrate. After
all, Matthew turns fifty-five years old this year but Emily doesn’t want him to
figure out her plans.
“Okay love, I’ll see you on Wednesday,” she says.
His mind immediately goes to Tom, as he’s in a hurry to find out what his
associate has found.
Tom walks into his office carrying an armload of papers.
“Have a seat, Tom. What do you have for me?”
“I reached my contact at the state department, and did some digging of my
own. This is how it is. The old man Hakim’s uncle Ibrahim Hazim Mahdi lives in
Baghdad. It appears Hakim’s father was Ibrahim’s younger brother, and there is a
middle brother who lives in Tikrit; three brothers—Ibrahim,Osman, and Saleem,
who was killed in the war. Ibrahim has no children. Osman has one son and two
daughters, all in Tikrit. Hakim is the only son of the younger brother, Saleem;
Ibrahim has taken the boy under his wing since the night his parents were killed
during the fourth night of bombing, before Baghdad was taken.”
“What else do we know about the old man?” Matthew interrupts.
“Well, we know he’s very wealthy; he’s the biggest shareholder of an oil
company, controlling half their exports.His company is the third largest in Iraq and
has turned public, since we pushed them toward this idea eight years ago. However,
he knows the ins and outs of the oil business since the days of Saddam.
Libros Libertad 