The Exchange: After The Firm

Samir was all smiles as they settled in. And he was quick to announce, quietly, “A call from Tripoli this morning, my friend in the Foreign Service. Late last night he heard that the government decided yesterday to settle the entire Lannak dispute and to do so quickly.”

Mitch swallowed hard and asked, “For how much?”

“Between four and five hundred million.”

“That’s quite a range.”

“Excellent news, Samir,” Roberto said. “Can it be done quickly?”

“My friend thinks so, yes.”

They ordered coffee, juice, and eggs. Mitch glanced at his phone. A text from Abby. She had left Gatwick on time. Some new emails, none related to Giovanna and thus of little importance. He needed to call Omar Celik in Istanbul with an update. Settlement looked likely, but he decided to wait an hour.

He lost interest in breakfast.

An hour later all of the early euphoria over the likelihood of a quick settlement was shattered by a two-minute video that was sent by text message to two London newspapers, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph; two Italian newspapers, La Stampa and La Repubblica; and The Washington Post. Within minutes it was raging through the internet. A Scully associate in Milan saw it and called Roberto.

In the hotel conference room Mitch hurriedly opened his laptop and waited. Roberto hovered over his left shoulder; Jack over his right. Darian stood nearby. They watched in muted disbelief as the three hooded soldiers, in full Libyan commando garb, were knocked forward from the makeshift gallows and twisted violently at end of their ropes. Faras, Hamal, Saleel. They jerked more with each shot to the chest.

Roberto gasped at the image of “Sandroni.” Obviously a woman, in a skirt or dress, to the far right, standing bravely with a black shroud over her head and a noose around her neck. “Mother Mary,” he mumbled, then said something in Italian that Mitch had never heard before. Seconds passed, then, mercifully, the noose was removed and she was led away, her life spared for the moment.

They watched it again. When Roberto recovered, he called Bella and told her to keep Luca away from his phone, computers, and television. He and Mitch would be there as soon as possible.

They watched it a third time.

Mitch immediately knew it would kill any interest the Libyans may have had in writing a fat check to Lannak and its lawyers. He was almost certain Samir had passed along the secret that the kidnappers had made contact with Scully. It was not a stretch to believe the regime blamed the whole mess on Scully to begin with.

The cold-blooded murder of three more Libyan soldiers, on Libyan soil no less, would most likely provoke the Colonel into a fit of rage and revenge. Settling an embarrassing lawsuit, a nuisance to him anyway, had just lost whatever importance it had. He was now being mocked on the world stage.

Mitch closed his laptop and both lawyers stared at their phones.

Samir called from his hotel to make sure they had seen it. He told Roberto that he could think of no possible way the video could help them. He feared even more for Giovanna’s safety. He was talking to sources in Tripoli and would call if he heard anything of substance.

As the morning dragged on they worked their phones because there was little else to do. Jack had a long conversation with someone at the State Department in Washington, but it produced little worth discussing. Mitch talked to Riley Casey in London. Riley said not a soul at Scully & Pershing was working that morning. Everyone was staring at their computer screens, too stunned to do little more than whisper. Some of the women were crying. It was impossible to believe that the horrible image was really their colleague. Roberto was trying to find Diego Antonelli. Evidently, the Libyan diplomats who had been reluctant to talk over the weekend had suddenly lost interest in talking at all.

Cory was on a corporate jet headed to Marrakech to monitor Abby’s movements. Mitch was fretting about what could go wrong there when she arrived with no ransom. Darian took a call from Tel Aviv. A source in Benghazi said that Gaddafi had unleashed his air force and was bombing suspected targets near the borders of Chad and Algeria. Extensive bombing, with entire villages being strafed and leveled. Not a single soul on a camel was safe at the moment.

Sir Simon called Mitch from London and in a voice that was much too cheerful explained that, in his opinion, the terrorists had played a masterful hand. The image of young Giovanna on the gallows, with three freshly murdered soldiers hanging nearby, had shocked the nation. He knew for a fact that the prime minister had seen the video three hours earlier and had summoned the foreign minister to 10 Downing Street. Doubtless, they were talking money.