“This is normal for the purpose of starting a negotiation. For them to know I am a serious man, I must start low. Ozan is shocked by this. He is very angry and goes to the kidnappers without telling me.”
I jotted down May 20 and $300,000 each on a pad, and May 27, give or take, and $50,000 per girl as a first offer.
“How much were you willing to pay?”
“Perhaps $100,000 each.”
I wrote $100,000 as he continued with his brother-in-law.
“They put a hood on Ozan’s head and took him to see the girls. The girls are in cages beneath a house, one cage for each girl. There is not much light and they are frightened and weeping and Ozan is shocked, but of course this is what the kidnappers want. Ozan tells them I am not as rich as they believe and in the name of Allah they must release his children. They say they know about the lawsuit for $2,000,000 against me, therefore I must have money. They repeat the demand for $300,000 each and make a deadline of tomorrow. When Ozan calls me, he’s crying. He is apologizing for going to them and frightened at what he has seen. He is a very weak man.”
A quick but strong emotion crossed his face and made me think what he was about to say disturbed him deeply.
“The next day the kidnappers sent a video of the body of my youngest niece lying in a gutter. She was the most beautiful girl and the favorite of my sister. When they did that, I canceled the wire transfer I was trying to arrange. I called a friend in Istanbul and asked him to hire people who could find and kill them.”
His lawyer interrupted. “You did not do that.”
“I did.”
He said that and stopped and, for almost a minute, stared through me. When he spoke again his voice broke.
“My brother-in-law blamed me. He told my sister I played games with the kidnappers and she went crazy with anger and sorrow. She stopped eating or sleeping. She refused my calls. She talks to herself, and the kidnappers no longer take Ozan’s phone calls.”
“This was what day?”
“May thirtieth. There was no need to kill my niece.”
“How do we contact your brother-in-law and what’s his last name?”
“Yildiz. Ozan Yildiz. He is gone into Syria to join with ISIS.”
The lawyer wrote down the name of the brother-in-law and slid it across the table. I pretended to focus on it, though we already knew Ozan Yildiz’s name. The Bureau was in contact with the Turkish National Police regarding Omar Smith and his family and all other known connections.
“I’m sorry I have to ask for this,” I said. “Can you forward me the video they sent of your niece’s body?”
The lawyer forwarded it to my e-mail, and Omar Smith looked away as I watched it. It was forty-three seconds and long enough to capture a tragic truth about all of us. A young girl who couldn’t be more than eight or nine was lying on her side in a gutter amid trash and filth. Whether she was Omar Smith’s niece or not, her throat was cut.
When Smith spoke again it was in a slower and quieter voice.
“They asked for proof that I didn’t have the ransom money. They wanted to see business records including bank statements.”
“Your computer records are in English. Did the people you were negotiating with speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Did that mean anything to you?”
“Not much. Many speak English.”
I thought about what was coming next and my heart skipped a beat as he worked through the mechanics of giving them remote access to his computer. A computer expert was consulted. Things were done to limit what they could see.
The lawyer slid me a business card with the consultant’s name. Smith’s banks were fed a story about ferreting out a hacker. The banks cooperated. I listened and took notes but inwardly urged Smith to just say it. Say what they focused on after they got in remotely.
“I gave them access on June 5 and they went through everything. The computer expert said they already know how to do this. He said this was not the first time for them. They asked me about future business, about what was already booked.”
Smith stared at me. He wanted my reaction, and though I was sickened I wasn’t going to show him.
“This is how they found the party for the drone pilots,” he said. “It’s how Ozan came to know also. In the schedule of signed contracts, it was called ‘Air Force Drone Pilot Party.’”
Smith said something to himself that I couldn’t hear but the lawyer did. The lawyer put an arm around him as Smith bowed his head. When he lifted his head again, he nodded at me.
“I am very deeply sorry that the drone pilots’ party is what they wanted to talk about. When I said no to that, they began working through Ozan. Ozan begins to speak around me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they are making a deal with Ozan, and I am remembering when he was at university how much he hated America. Like the Iranians, for him the United States was the great Satan. He is not a man who can think for himself.”