wife claims you roughed her up. What do you have to say about it?”
The Somali man took a deep breath and replied, “It is not true.”
“You’re calling your wife a liar?”
“She does not speak the truth.”
“You didn’t beat her?”
“I did not beat her,” Wazir replied.
The detective smiled. “I think you’re full of shit. You know that?”
The Somali had seen this man’s type before. He was angry, coiled tight inside like a snake. He had become a police officer so he could lord his power over others. He had an inflated sense of self. He held himself out to be a protector of the weak when in reality he had pursued his badge so he could prey upon a sea of others with impunity. Insecure men with a patina of authority could be annoying. Give those same men actual authority and they could be deadly. Wazir had seen it time and again in Somalia. America pretended to be better. Wazir knew different. Men were men no matter what country they called home.
This man named Hoffman possessed a bearing beyond that of a simple police officer, one that he couldn’t immediately place.
“Does it make you a tough guy to beat your wife, Wazir?” Detective Hoffman asked.
“I did not beat my wife, sir.”
Hoffman placed the piece of paper he had been holding back into the folder and removed another. “Does Islam condone the beating of wives, Wazir?”
It was a rhetorical question. The Somali man understood that well enough to know that the detective did not expect a reply.
“For an infidel, I thought I was pretty squared away when it came to Islam and wife-beating.”
Infidel. It was an interesting choice of words. The detective didn’t refer to himself as a Jew or a Christian. He referred to himself the way Muslims would have referred to him. Wazir could now place the officer’s hostility, his bearing. He had served in the U.S. military and had probably seen combat in a Muslim nation. Maybe he had been shot. Maybe he had seen his comrades die. If so, he was much more dangerous than just an insecure policeman hiding behind a badge.
“The prophet Mohammed’s fathers-in-law slapped his wives Aisha and Hafsa for annoying him, didn’t they?” he asked.
The Somali paused for a moment before nodding.
“When Mohammed heard this, what did he do? He laughed. He thought it was funny.”
Wazir Ibrahim didn’t bother to reply. What the man was saying came from the Hadith.
“One night when Aisha left the house without permission, Mohammed punched her, right in the chest, didn’t he? His favorite wife. He struck her so hard that she claimed it gave her great pain. Correct?”
The Somali didn’t answer.
“The Qur’an specifically gives husbands permission to beat their wives, doesn’t it?” Hoffman asked. “So if you beat your wife, you’re only doing what the Qur’an gives you permission and the Hadith supports you in doing, right?”
“I did not beat my wife, sir.”
“Is the wife-beating subject a little boring for you?” the young man said, setting the paper down. “Why don’t we talk about something else? Let’s talk about what the Prophet Mohammed thought about nine-year-old girls.”
Wazir Ibrahim’s cool expression, along with his confidence that the police had nothing to charge him with, suddenly melted away.
The detective noticed the change instantly. “What’s wrong, Wazir?”
Panic began to build in the Somali’s chest. “We’re not talking about the Prophet Mohammed anymore, are we?”
“No, we’re not,” said the detective. “We’re talking about a group of Somali men from Minneapolis and the underage girls they brought to Nashville for sex. What do you know about it?”
Wazir looked away and replied, “I think I am done answering questions.”
CHAPTER 9
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* * *
USS FLORIDA
Placing the hood back over his head, Harvath and the SEALs transported Ahmad Yaqub from the dry deck shelter down into the USS Florida.
While they moved him, crewmembers were kept out of the gangways. This way, if ever asked, they could testify that they never saw a thing.
Yaqub was put in dry clothes, cuffed to a bunk in a private berth, and covered with blankets. A SEAL corpsman monitored him. When he started to come around, he was given warm soup and hot tea to help bring his core body temperature back up. Once the corpsman gave the okay, Harvath began to interrogate him again from the beginning.
He focused on Ismail Kashgari, the Chinese Muslim who had approached Yaqub for help in staffing the attack on the United States. He was probing for inconsistencies in Yaqub’s story. He pushed him