The Exchange: After The Firm

A door opened and a veiled woman with a tray of food entered, nodded, and placed the tray on the table. She nodded again and left the room. The door lock clicked as she pulled it. A bowl of dried fruit — oranges, cherries, figs, and three thin slices of a bread that was similar to tortillas.

Giovanna ate like a refugee and drank half the bottle of water. The hunger pangs dissipated but she needed more food. Evidently, they had no plans to starve her to death. She hadn’t thought much about their plans because of her hunger, but now that her body felt more normal her thoughts returned to the possibilities. None were pleasant. There had been no hint of physical or sexual assault. Other than a few grunts here and there, they had not spoken to her in the past twenty-four hours. She had heard no language other than Arabic, of which she knew almost nothing. Did they plan to interrogate her? If so, what did they hope to get? She was a lawyer. She could discuss their legal strategies, but it was difficult to believe that these guys cared much about the law.

And so she waited. With nothing to read, see, do, and no one to talk to, she tried to remember the most important cases in American constitutional law. First Amendment — freedom of speech: Schenck, Debs, Gitlow, Chaplinsky, Tinker. Second Amendment — right to bear arms: Miller, Tatum. Third Amendment? It was useless because it protected citizens from being forced to house soldiers, barely a footnote in history. The Supreme Court had never considered a challenge to the amendment. Fourth Amendment — unreasonable searches and seizures: Weeks, Mapp, Terry, Katz, Rakas, Vernonia. The Fourth had always been laden with controversy.

She had aced Con Law at Virginia not too many years ago, primarily because she could memorize almost anything. During her final exam, she cited three hundred cases.

Law school was now far away. She heard voices and braced for a knock on the door. The voices faded and disappeared.

She had no idea what had happened to the others. After the horror of watching Youssef get shot in the face, she was thrown to the ground, handcuffed, blindfolded, dragged away, and thrown into the back of a truck. She was aware that other bodies were nearby — live bodies grunting, groaning, breathing. Probably the Turks. She lost all concept of time, but not long afterward she was removed and separated from the other hostages.

She could only hope and pray they were safe, but she had doubts.

Chapter 17

By 6:30 A.M. Mitch was well into his second cup of strong coffee and deep into the internet. For the third morning, he went from one tabloid to the next and marveled at how the Brits could make so much out of so little. The story itself was certainly newsworthy — an associate in the London office of the world’s largest law firm kidnapped by murderous thugs in Libya — but the scarcity of real facts did nothing to throttle the breathless headlines, photography, and speculation. If the facts were insufficient to carry a story, others were simply created on the fly. The thugs were demanding ten million pounds in ransom, or was it twenty? There was a deadline three days away before Giovanna would be executed, or was it four? She had been spotted in Cairo, or maybe it was Tunis. She had been targeted because of her father’s shenanigans with Libyan oil companies. A nut claiming to be an ex-boyfriend said she had always professed admiration for Muammar Gaddafi.

But the true sensation was, of course, all the dead bodies. Most of the tabloids continued to run photos of the four headless Turks hanging by their feet. Youssef, hanging by his neck, was still page-three news. Under the photo of him, one tabloid asked in bold print: Could Giovanna Be Next? The titillating tone left little doubt that the reporter would not be disappointed by more tragic news.

The Italian press was slightly more subdued and had stopped running photos, other than a portrait of Giovanna. A few of her friends spoke to reporters and said nice things about her. Luca got more press than he could have dreamed of, though not the kind he wanted.

The Americans were preoccupied with their invasion of Iraq and the unexpected insurgency that was causing headaches. Casualties were mounting. Each day brought more bad news, and for a country accustomed to bad news in the Middle East, the kidnapping of a British lawyer was not enough for headlines. The stories were being reported but only in passing.