Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

Leaving her with the unenviable task of moving on with her life and forgetting about him, leaving her to deal with a separation made even more intolerable by the simple fact that it was unexplained and — in her eyes, anyway — unjustified. And leaving her to deal with raising his child, a child he knew nothing about. A child she’d lied to for years. A little girl whose father, she’d told her, had died.

She’d lived with the lie for thirty years, and even after all this time, just thinking about it now triggered a clawing tightening in her chest. It was a hard thing to do, but she knew Mia would have gone out looking for her father if she’d thought he was out there somewhere, and Evelyn hadn’t wanted that. He’d been very clear about things. There was no need to expose Mia to a painful disappointment.

At least, she’d managed to keep that from the hakeem. Above all else, she couldn’t let him know that Mia was Tom’s daughter. He hadn’t yet made the connection; he hadn’t asked that question. If he had, she shuddered, she probably would have told him. And that would have set him off after Mia too, which was something she couldn’t bear to imagine.

Small victories. It was all she could cling to right now.

Something beyond her cell door caught her attention. A noise. Harsh, labored movements, footsteps shuffling on the stone floor.

She edged to the door and tried to peer out through the mirrored porthole, but all she saw was the harsh reflection of her own face. She plastered her ear to the door and listened intently. She heard a door being unlocked, followed by some movement and a cry that sent shivers down her spine, a young boy’s cry, a pained, pleading yell. The haunting sound was swiftly followed by an angry man’s bark, ordering him to shut up— “Khrass, wlaa” —and a sound that Evelyn was sure was a slap, quickly followed by a pained yelp from the boy’s voice, as if he’d just been hit. She could just about make out some whimpering before she heard the door slamming shut, and the lock sliding into place.

She waited a minute or so for the man to move off, counting down the seconds, her heart in her throat, wondering if she should try to make contact with the other prisoner. Another thought occurred to her: What if others were being held here? She had no way of knowing. The man who had led her back to her cell had put a black cloth cover over her head, only removing it once she was in. She had no idea of what lay beyond that door. And the thought, the possibility, that others were being held here scared her even more.

She decided to risk it.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Her whisper echoed in the silence around her.

There was no answer.

She repeated it again, this time a bit louder, more desperate. Still, no one answered her.

She thought she heard a low whimpering in the distance, but she couldn’t be sure. Her heartbeat was pulsing loudly in her ears, confusing matters.

She waited a few more minutes and tried again, but nothing more than a deathly silence came back. Shivering, and dispirited, she sank down to the floor and cupped her face in her hands, trying to make sense of the nightmare swirling around her.

Her mind hurtled back to the face of the man in the lab coat as he watched and listened to her story. His interest was visibly piqued when she mentioned Tom. He asked her all kinds of questions about him, wanting to know everything about the man. He was riveted and took notes, nodding ponderously as she spoke. Her instincts had been right. She should have kept Tom out of it, but, realistically, there was little she could have done to keep quiet. The flames racing through her body had seen to that.

Mia was safe, for now — at least, she hoped she would be — but Evelyn knew her captor would spare no effort in finding Tom Webster. And along with that unnerving thought, another one, even more unsettling, surfaced as she wondered if her daughter would be able to get anyone to help look for Evelyn half as diligently, and if she’d ever see her again.

The ambassador’s office was located at the back of the main villa, as far away as possible from the entrance to the compound and sealed off from the outside world by bombproof doors and thick, mirrored bulletproof glass. Marines and Lebanese army troops patrolled the pine forest to the back of the compound as well as the entry gate.

The precautions were obviously necessary, but no one had any illusions about their ultimate effectiveness. If a decision was made — more than likely, in one of the region’s capitals — to hit the embassy as part of some perverse political game plan, no barricade would be able to prevent it from happening. Everyone working here knew it, starting with the person at the center of the crosshairs, the ambassador himself. Corben had experienced how differently men dealt with being in that charmed position. The current ambassador, to his credit, took it with admirable stoicism.

Corben walked in to find the ambassador sitting with a man he didn’t know, who was quick to stand up and introduce himself as Bill Kirkwood. The man had a firm handshake, a sharp gaze, and a personable demeanor. He was tall, on par with Corben, and seemed to be in reasonable shape. Corben guessed Kirkwood was probably a few years older than he was, placing him somewhere around forty.

“Bill flew in from Amman this afternoon,” the ambassador informed Corben. “He’s here about the Evelyn Bishop situation.”

Which surprised Corben. A little too quick, for his liking. “What’s your interest in this?” he asked Kirkwood.

“I met her a few years ago. I’m with the cultural heritage division at UNESCO, and Evelyn was out here batting for us against the developers of the downtown area. She’s quite a whirlwind, not someone you easily forget,” Kirkwood added with an affable smile. “We’ve been funding some of her work ever since.”

Corben looked a question at the ambassador, unsure about where this was headed.

“Bill’s concerned,” the ambassador informed Corben, “from a personal as well as a professional point of view,” then turned to Kirkwood, leaving him to elaborate.

“Well, my primary interest is, of course, Evelyn’s well-being. That’s paramount. She’s someone we respect and care about, and I need to make sure everything is being done so that we can get her back quickly and safely,” Kirkwood clarified. “Beyond that,” he added with some hesitance, “yes, there’s an obvious concern about one of our most respected and visible professionals being tainted with something the papers will pounce on like relic smuggling — which, from what I understand, is how the Lebanese government would like to spin this.” He paused for a moment to slide a questioning glance at the ambassador, before adding, “And I can only assume we’re not too disinclined to go with them on that.”

“We need to weigh the pros and cons of how it comes out,” the ambassador replied with the composed defensiveness of a seasoned pro. “Lebanon is in a very fragile state right now. An American, especially an older woman, getting plucked off the streets for no reason — it would undoubtedly be seen as a terrorist, anti-Western act. And the timing couldn’t be worse. These people are desperate to regain the image of peace and normalcy they’d only just managed to bring back after all the years of mayhem. And with what happened this summer, the country’s now in desperate need of foreign investment, more than ever. The prime minister and the interior minister have both called me up on this already. They’re panicking. I don’t need to tell you a lot of it’s about perception when it comes to raising funding, and if this were to spiral out and inspire copycats…”