Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

“So what are we left with?” the ambassador asked. “Do we know where he stashed the pieces Bishop’s kidnappers are after?”

Corben shook his head. “I didn’t have time to get that from him. He was in shock, just rambling incoherently in Arabic before his body gave up on him.”

The ambassador nodded glumly.

Kirkwood kept his eyes locked on Corben. He wondered if Corben also knew that there was no stash to be found. The call from Abu Barzan had raised some troubling questions in Kirkwood’s mind, and since Farouk hadn’t been grabbed by the kidnappers, the other bidder wasn’t one of them. Which meant it was someone else. And the timing was too coincidental to discount the possibility that the other bidder was linked to Corben, if it wasn’t actually him.

Which threw up some disturbing realizations.

One was that Corben was, quite possibly, well aware of the forthcoming Turkish transaction. The other was that, given the ulterior agenda he seemed to be pursuing, getting Evelyn back safely might not exactly be a priority for him.

“You think the kidnappers will get in touch?” Kirkwood probed.

“They’ve got to,” Corben speculated. “Right now, they think we’ve got Farouk, which means they’ve got to assume we also have his stash. And that’s what they’re after. I’ve got to think they’ll make contact and offer to trade Evelyn for it. At least, I’m hoping they do. Right now, it’s looking like our only chance of getting her back.”

A sobering silence descended on the room.

Not good enough, Kirkwood thought. He wasn’t comfortable with the wait-and-pray strategy, nor with the potential danger of a bluff trade if they did call. He needed to instigate things. “We need to send them a signal,” he suggested. “A message. Let them know we’re ready to trade.” He turned to the ambassador. “Maybe you could make a statement to the press. Something along the lines of ‘We’re waiting for word from the kidnappers so that we can work things out and give them what they need to bring this matter to a mutually beneficial conclusion.’ That kind of thing.”

The ambassador’s expression clouded. “You know our policy on negotiating with terrorists openly. You want me to go on TV and invite them to make a trade?”

“They’re not terrorists,” Kirkwood reminded him. “They’re antiquity smugglers.”

“Come on, Bill. It’s a nuance no one’s going to pick up on. For most people who’ll be watching, they’re one and the same.”

Kirkwood frowned with frustration. “What about the Bishop girl? A daughter making an emotional plea for the return of her mother.”

“I don’t see a problem with that,” the ambassador conceded. “Okay. I’ll set something up. But it’s going to be tricky to pull off a bluff like that, given that we don’t have the pieces.”

“If we get that call and they want to trade, we’ll get her back, regardless,” Hayflick assured him. “We can set it up so it’s to our advantage.”

Kirkwood turned to Corben. He thought he spotted a hint of discomfort in his hardened expression, but the agent’s face wasn’t giving much away. He just acknowledged Kirkwood’s suggestion with a small, thoughtful nod.

At the back of Kirkwood’s mind, something else was vying for attention. More and more, he was feeling it would be inevitable. He and his partners were all in agreement on this. Do your best to get Evelyn out without exposing the project. But if you have to, then use the book. Not having seen the book yet, he wasn’t sure that giving it up would expose anything, but it could jeopardize their work and put a legacy that was hundreds of years in the making at risk.

It wasn’t a decision he had to make just yet. It was irrelevant as long as the kidnappers hadn’t made contact.

He felt a silent vibration in his pocket and fished out his phone. He glanced at the caller ID. It was his main contact at the UN. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” he apologized to the others as he got out of his seat and stepped away from the table.

The blunt voice on the other end went straight to the point.

“That thing you asked me about,” his contact at the UN said. “This hakeem. I think I’ve got something for you.”

The contrite words coming out of Omar’s mouth inflamed the hakeem.

“He got away, mu’allimna . The American has him.”

The hakeem seethed with disbelief. How could Omar have failed him — again? The man had all the necessary advantages. He had the resources, the contacts, the firepower, and still he failed.

Omar rattled off his explanation and his excuses, but the hakeem silenced him with a ferocious rebuke. He didn’t need to hear the details. He only cared about results. And he needed people who could provide him the ones he wanted. When this was over, he’d have to see about having Omar replaced. They’d need to get him someone more reliable. More capable. Someone who would get the job done.

He allowed his breathing to settle and focused on his next move. He knew he still held a trump card. They’d give him what he was after in exchange for the woman, he didn’t doubt that. But the trade would carry risk, and given Omar’s track record of late, pulling it off without leaving a trail was by no means assured. The hakeem was loath to take unnecessary risks, but Omar’s ineptitude had made a big one unavoidable. Hostage exchanges were never foolproof, not for either party.

Something else was coursing through his veins, something far more poisonous than the looming threat of the exchange: The American had humiliated his men yet again, which meant he’d humiliated him. It was a personal affront, a grave insult, one that the hakeem found intolerable and unforgivable. The transgression had to be punished. Order needed to be restored.

“Call your contacts. Do it now. I want to know everything there is to know about this American,” he rasped. “Everything.”

Cocooned inside her hotel room, Mia watched herself on TV with subdued detachment. She stared through the screen as her own face loomed bizarrely back at her, reciting the carefully worded plea that Corben had given her before handing her over to the embassy’s press attaché. The image on the screen wasn’t registering. It felt like an alternate reality, a surreal parallel universe that she was watching through a tear in some Matrix -like continuum, except that it wasn’t. It was real. Starkly, unquestionably real.

With a heavy heart, she’d called her aunt’s house back in Nahant just before the news conference. Her aunt had picked up, her sunny voice indicating that she hadn’t yet read anything about the kidnapping. Mia built up some courage with a brief exchange of banter, then, with great care, she told her aunt what had happened. It was a hard conversation to have, but her aunt was a strong woman who, though hugely concerned, took it stoically. Mia alerted her to the press conference while assuring her that every effort was being expended to find Evelyn and get her back safely, adding that, yes, she would be careful too. She’d hung up, feeling a constricting ache in her chest.

She turned the volume down and brooded over Corben’s grim update. With Farouk dead and his stash missing, there was nothing to trade for Evelyn. Which was really bad news. She’d thought about going back to Evelyn’s apartment, looking through her stuff, seeing if she could find another book, something with the tail-eater symbol on it that they could use, something to entice the kidnappers into a barter, but Corben had shot that idea down pretty quickly. He’d been there, done that. He’d found nothing in her apartment that they could substitute for the book.