Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

“Why did he come to see you?” the man asked with his back turned. His English had a European accent. If she’d had to guess, she would have said Italian, or possibly Greek. But she had more pressing concerns at the moment.

Her instinct was to ask him who the hell he was and why he’d had a bunch of murderous thugs pluck her off the streets, haul her into the back of a car, and bring her here, but she reined in her indignation. Her mind raced back, processing the events that had led to her being here. She knew it had to do with Farouk, with his murdered friend. With the pieces from Iraq. And, if she remembered correctly, quite possibly with the Ouroboros. Which meant that the man in the lab coat probably knew exactly what he was after. And pissing him off would therefore be the wrong move right now.

“Why am I here?”

He turned to face her. In his hand was a syringe and a rubber strap. He nodded to the man behind her, who pulled over a chair and a small table for him and set them facing Evelyn. The man in the lab coat sat down and calmly placed the needle and the strap on the table. He turned to her and, casually, reached out and clamped his hand around her jaw. His grip tightened harshly, painfully, around Evelyn’s face, but he didn’t flinch and his voice didn’t waver. “If we’re going to get along,” he told her, “we need to establish some ground rules. Rule number one is never to answer a question with another question. Understood?”

He kept his eyes locked on her until she nodded. He released his grip, a faint smile breaking across his thin lips.

“So,” he went on, “and I would very much prefer not to have to repeat myself again — why, exactly, did he come to find you?”

Evelyn felt her skin crawl as she watched him reach over and roll up her sleeve. She could smell a subtle, musky aftershave on him. Annoyingly, it wasn’t half-bad.

“I’m assuming you’re talking about Farouk,” she replied, saying it in a way so as not to make it sound like a question.

A smile flitted across the man’s lips. For such a handsome face, it was disconcertingly threatening. “I’ll allow you that one.” He tucked her sleeve into place. “And, yes, I am talking about Farouk.”

She studied him, unsure about where to begin. “He needed money. He was trying to sell some pieces from Iraq. Mesopotamian artifacts.” She paused, hesitating, then ventured, “Am I also allowed to ask questions?”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Let’s see how we get along first,” he told her, his eyes fixed on her while he tapped two fingers on her forearm and beckoned a vein to reveal itself.

The hotel wasn’t far from the police station, and it made sense for them to have their chat there.

The bar — sorry, Lounge —was virtually empty at that hour. Mia consciously steered Corben away from the corner where she’d been sitting the night before with Evelyn, leading him to the patio terrace instead. October was a balmy, pleasant month in Beirut — not as stiflingly hot as the high summer months, and too early for the winter rain. Perfect for a chat in an outdoor café. Not so perfect when the chat meant reliving the most traumatic night of your life a mere few hours after the event itself.

She walked Corben through the events leading up to the kidnapping, starting with Evelyn’s preoccupied mood and her mention of meeting someone “from her past,” an Iraqi fixer from many years ago, his coming to see her “out of the blue,” how it was “complicated,” and — and this made her shiver with unease — the pockmarked android at the bar. With clarity slowly returning to her frazzled mind, she flashed forward to the man who was being kidnapped along with Evelyn and wondered aloud if that wasn’t perhaps the Iraqi fixer.

As she spoke, Corben listened to her with total concentration, alert to every nuance in her story. He scribbled a few things in a small black notebook and interrupted her several times, peppering her with questions about specific details that she surprised herself by remembering. Not that she felt they’d be of much use. The visuals scorched into her memory — the android’s face, the car’s grille, the man Evelyn was meeting — none of them felt distinctive enough. If one of the thugs had had a nasty scar running down one cheek or a hook for a hand, maybe. But nothing made these guys stand out from the crowd, not in this town. She couldn’t imagine that any of it was helpful to Corben and felt downcast as the chances of his being able to whisk her mom back to safety seemed to recede into the dark corners of her mind.

She mentioned Evelyn’s forgetting her cell phone and suddenly realized her own phone hadn’t been returned to her. She also remembered the odd phone call that came in to Evelyn’s phone when she was in the police station, the one Baumhoff had picked up. The incident intrigued Corben, who asked her to be as specific as she could about what she’d heard and observed. He also made a note to recover her phone for her as well as to get hold of Evelyn’s, and to check with Baumhoff about the call. It seemed to be relevant, which buoyed her spirits somewhat.

Corben asked her about the Polaroids, and she reiterated what she’d told Baumhoff and the detectives, that she’d never seen them before, that Evelyn hadn’t shared them with her. The last part of her story — the soldiers’ appearance, the shoot-out, and the car — was more painful to talk about. Corben was patient and empathetic throughout. His eyes exuded support and concern, and he helped her through it until she was done.

He didn’t look particularly comforted by what he’d heard. She saw him slide a glance around the room, and up at the back of the hotel over the patio, as if sizing it up.

Mia could see the concern creasing his brow. “What is it?”

Corben seemed to weigh his words carefully. “I want you to change hotels.”

“Why?”

“I think we need to take some precautions. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

He frowned, as if he preferred not to get into it but had to. He spoke slowly and calmly. “The guy at the bar saw you sitting with her, having a long chat. Then you show up in the alleyway and interfere with their plan. It seems to me like there’s a good chance they were also after Evelyn’s contact, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered grabbing him, and from what you tell me, it looks like he was able to break free and get away. Now if that’s the case, they didn’t get everything they wanted, and it’s because of — or rather, thanks to — you. But they’re not going to be happy about it, and they’re going to want to know why you were there. What your relationship to Evelyn is. And whether or not you’re part of whatever it is she’s mixed up in.”

Mia felt a chill slide down the back of her neck. “Are you saying they might come after me?”

“They don’t know what you know until they talk to you,” Corben speculated. “Which isn’t going to happen, so don’t worry about it,” he quickly assured her. “But we’re going to have to be careful.”

“Careful? What do you mean, careful ? These people don’t seem to have a problem with grabbing people off the streets.” Mia felt the walls of the terrace closing in on her.

“Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to frighten you, but you’re right. These guys aren’t messing around,” he confirmed gravely. “I’m going to have a couple of our men watch over you, but we’re not in control out here. Depending on how things pan out over the next couple of days, you might want to think about putting your research project on hold for a while and leaving the country until things are sorted out.”

Mia stared at him with mute dismay, then shook her head in disbelief, flummoxed by the turn of events. “I’m not going anywhere. My mom’s been kidnapped, for God’s sake.” She searched his face for a smile, a nod, something, anything to reassure her that the torrent of violent scenes her imagination was spewing out was just a paranoid overreaction. None was forthcoming. This was real.