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Deleted Scene: Interview with the State Department
(Formerly in Chapter Two)
I considered myself fairly knowledgeable in the realms of law. Not only had I taken Intro to the Constitution at BYU, in an auditorium of 146 other freshman, but I had studied the subject extensively and independently of school: I’d read three John Grisham books, which is probably just as good as going to law school, but more importantly I’d watched almost every single episode of Law and Order. I knew the whole story about Lenny’s daughter. I knew which lawyer got written off the show by getting in a car accident and I knew which cop got written off by punching a defendant. I knew that whenever the grumpy judge with the stubbly white beard was on the show, things weren’t going to go well for the DA’s office. I even saw the episode when Anne of Green Gables murdered her kid.
What I didn’t know is that Law and Order doesn’t show you the painfully boring aspects of law, which account for about ninety-seven percent of it. Two percent accounts for business lunches – usually at crummy downtown restaurants – and the remaining one percent is the trial.
I hadn’t gotten anywhere near that last part. I was stuck in the ninety-sevens somewhere, wishing I was in the twos, because even lunch at the Golden Wok was better than getting interviewed for the fifteenth time.
Rebekah had just as many interviews as I did, but they never managed to be scheduled for the same times. It had been five months since everything happened, and we still ended up in Salt Lake City at least once a week.
In Law and Order, the criminal investigation takes half an hour. The trial takes another half an hour. All these awful meetings must happen during the commercial break.
When I arrived at the courthouse, Agent Harrop was already there. He met me just inside the front doors.
There’d recently been a rumor that Rebekah and I might not be safe. Neither of us put a lot of stock into it, because the FBI had informed us of similar rumors at least six other times, and they all turned out to be false alarms. Even so, every morning I had to call Special Agent Jeff Harrop, my personal knight-in-shining-armor, and tell him my schedule for the day. He’d agree to some activities and nix others, and generally be a pain in the neck.
I didn’t really like that my noble protector was named Jeff. Nobody tough is named Jeff. There’s Jeff, the sleepy guy on The Wiggles, and Jeff, the sissy mannequin on Today’s Special. There’s DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. And that’s it. No more famous Jeffs.
I wanted a bodyguard named Mad Dog.
Agent Harrop pushed the call button for the elevator.
“Who are we meeting today?” I asked.
“Somebody from the state department,” he answered, staring up at the unlit arrow over the elevator. “Same old routine, I imagine.”
“Any idea how long it’ll take? I have to be over at Abravanel Hall by six.”
He pulled a Palm Pilot out of his coat pocket. “Did we talk about this?”
“Several times.”
He tapped the screen a few times. “Oh, right. 6:00pm – Rebekah Hughes’ violin concert. That must be why you’re wearing a suit?”
“Yep.”
The arrow lit up and the elevator doors opened. We stepped in.
“Did you see the game last night?” he asked, leaning against the wall.
“Which game?”
“St. Louis,” he replied.
“I didn’t know they had a basketball team,” I said absently.
Agent Harrop stared at me as though I was the dumbest person he’d ever met.
“Do they?” I asked, pausing while I tried to remember. “Is that where the 76ers are from?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” I said, answering my own question. “They’re Philadelphia.”
“Baseball,” he said. “America’s national pastime.”
“I thought that was TV.”
“Which is where they watch baseball.”
“I like football.”
The elevator doors opened on the second floor and we stepped out.
“It’s not football season,” he chided.
“I know. It’s basketball season.”
“Have you ever been to a professional baseball game?”
“I don’t like apple pie, either,” I replied. “Are those things requirements to work for the government?”
We stopped at a receptionist, and Agent Harrop showed his ID. The woman behind the desk pointed down the hall.
“So tell me,” I said, as we walked to the conference room. “Is there anything to this? The new threat, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Better to be safe than sorry.”
“There is a point at which it stops being cautious and becomes obsessive.”
Harrop laughed. “Trust me – you’re nowhere near that point.”
“It gets worse?”
“It gets a lot worse.”
He opened the door, immediately resuming a professional FBI frown.
There were four people in the room, and none of them looked incredibly happy to be there. On the other side of the table were two men and a woman, all over sixty and not hiding their age well. On my side was a very tall man with black hair, who I recognized from several of my previous interviews.
They stood as I entered and I shook their hands. We all sat.
The man across from me spoke. “Thank you for coming this afternoon, Mr. Hopkins, especially on such short notice. We have a few questions – I’m sure you’ve covered all of this before, but we’d just like to go over a few things one more time.”
“Sure.”
The woman opened her notebook and readied her pen. “What do you know of the relationship between Edward Hughes and the man called Felix Hazard?”
I nodded. It was one of the major questions the news organizations had been tossing around. Unfortunately, I didn’t know much. “Edward is the father of my girlfriend, Rebekah Hughes. She probably knows more on the subject than I do.”
The woman tapped her pen on the paper. “We understand that, and we plan to meet with her as well. However, I understand that you had more contact with both Mr. Hughes and Mr. Hazard.”
“Not really.”
“Do your best.”
“First off, Felix Hazard is not a real name. He made it up. I don’t know how long ago, but it seems like a name he uses fairly often.”
The man in the middle leaned forward. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s the name that Isabella knew him by, long before he ever met with me. All I’m saying is that he didn’t make it up when he kidnapped us.”
The woman continued. “You mean Isabella Hakopian?”
“Yes. Isabella is – was – the personal assistant to Edward Hughes. My understanding is this: when he discovered that we’d gotten involved with Felix, he sent Isabella to help us. When that didn’t work, he came on his own.”
The man on the left – a round man with a push-broom mustache – rested his hands on the table. “And it was Isabella who told you about Felix?”
I nodded. “What little she explained, yes.”
“And what is that?”
“That Felix had worked for the USSR back in the seventies. He was an idealist who believed in total economic equality, but even the USSR wasn’t good enough for him. He started a new organization with more aggressive goals, the Novus Ordo Seclorum – N.O.S.. He wanted to destroy the US economy.”
The woman again: “And where does Edward Hughes enter the picture?”
“The best I can tell is that he worked with Felix at some point – in the N.O.S.. Felix said something about Edward taking all the money and running.”
“The counterfeit money?”“I assume so. They’d been building up a huge stash of counterfeits to release into the economy – what the N.O.S. doing right now – but Edward left with a big part of the money, and set the N.O.S. back quite a few years.”
“So Edward and Felix were business partners?”
“I really don’t know. The stuff I’m telling you I only overheard, and there were guns pointed at me at the time. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“We understand the circumstances.” It was the mustached man who said it, in the least understanding voice imaginable.
“In your opinion,” the woman said, “is it safe to say that Edward Hughes was part of the N.O.S.?”
There it was. The question. The one that decided whether Rebekah’s father was just a criminal, or if he was a full-fledged terrorist. The sad truth was that I believed he was. But I didn’t have any facts to support it.
I took a breath. “I really can’t say.”
“What is your opinion?”
“What does it matter? You’re the state department – don’t you guys have people who are paid to come up with opinions? I’m just a witness. I don’t know anything about terrorism.”
The man in the middle leaned back in his chair. “It matters because I want to determine how much of your statements are fact and how much are your own cloudy judgement.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your mental state,” the mustached man said. “We’re questioning your credibility.”
“My credibility? I’ve been interviewed by everyone from the FBI to the Secret Service, and now your doubting I’m telling the truth?”
The man in the middle folded his arms and frowned. “The problem, Mr. Hopkins, is that we have a big security problem here. No one knows exactly who Edward Hughes is, and what part he’s played in all of this – and the two people are best suited to answer that question never give their opinion.”
The woman, tapping her pen, added “And of those two people, one is his daughter, and the other is his daughter’s boyfriend. It makes us wonder.”
“You think I’m lying? Covering something up?”
I was getting angry, but the man in the middle didn’t seem to have any expression at all. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I glanced at the woman and then at the mustached man. Neither seemed the least bit sympathetic.
“You want the truth? The truth is that I’m just some idiot college kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This mess isn’t my fault. I’m sorry that the economy is failing, but that’s not my fault. I did what I could. And the truth is that Rebekah cries, all the time, because half the world thinks her family’s evil, and the tabloids slander her mom for being married to a terrorist. I don’t know who Edward is – I hardly know who Felix is. I just want this stupid trial to start so that we can testify and be done with it.”
The looks on their faces didn’t change one bit. No surprise, no embarrassment, no amusement – nothing.
I looked over at Harrop. He nodded his head just the slightest bit.
The man in the middle put his hands back on the table. “Are you going to answer the question?”
I shook my head and rubbed my face tiredly. “Yes, okay? Yes, I think he probably was working with Felix at some point–”
The woman smiled.
“However,” I continued, “obviously, Felix and Edward are not very good friends anymore – Felix tried to kill Edward’s daughter, for crying out loud. Whether or not Edward ever was in the N.O.S., I’m sure he isn’t anymore.”
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