Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

“Hush,” he croaked. “Don’t worry. They don’t have anything. It’s all right, Pal.”

She stared at him, wincing at the sight of the wounds on his nose and cheeks. “But the envelope-I mean, if that wasn’t it, where-?”

He reached up to touch the gold locket on the chain at her breast and whispered, “Always-keep me close-to your- heart . Now get in the hayloft, Pal. Quickly!”

Close to her heart. Of course, she thought, feeling a sense of relief mixed with sheer triumph. Of course! Whatever they were looking for was in the locket.

She stood and went over to the door, brushing the tears from her eyes before turning to face him again. She fought another urge to bundle him out of the bed and carry him, drag him from this place. If only there were still horses here! Perhaps there was a handcart or a wheelbarrow…

“What about you?” she asked. “I can’t just leave you here like this. What will you do when they come in here and find him ?” She jabbed a thumb toward the other cot.

Despite his obvious pain, a little smile crept across his face. He withdrew his other arm from under the blanket and held up his hand. It clutched a gleaming silver gun, a snub-nosed revolver that looked almost exactly like her LadySmith.

“He won’t be needing this anymore,” he whispered. “Go!”

With a last quick smile for him, she slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. She moved swiftly through the archway into the cavernous barn, searching the loft platform for a ladder. There it was, at the back of the barn, five slats nailed between two support posts. She made her way over to it and grasped the rungs, pulling herself upward as the first sounds reached her from beyond the padlocked barn door. Voices, a foreign language. She arrived on the platform and dived forward into a pile of ancient, rancid hay. She heard rattling at the door now, a key working into a lock, as she landed on something solid, something concealed beneath a layer of straw. She brushed the straw away with her hands and reared back, rising quickly to her knees, staring down.

A man’s face stared blankly up at her, white and waxy. The dark eyes were clouded over behind the thick glasses above the generous mustache. Small gray insects swarmed across the pallid cheeks, in and out of the open mouth. The odor of decay rose up from him, mingling with the overripe scent of the hay. Even in this condition, he was immediately recognizable. She had found the missing Maurice Dolin.

She gasped, scrambling back from the corpse. She fell backward, directly into another solid object: another body, only this one was alive. An arm reached out from behind her, circling her chest, and a hand came around to clamp itself firmly across her mouth. She was pulled roughly back behind a pile of hay bales just as the lock clicked and the barn doors swung open, flooding the room with overcast light.

Nora leaned back against the warm body sitting behind her, relaxing in strong arms, feeling his heartbeat against her left shoulder blade. His legs extended out at either side of hers. She wasn’t surprised that he was here; she’d half expected it. The broken door, the dead guard, the weapon in her husband’s hands. Jeff was seriously injured; he hadn’t overpowered the guard. This man had stolen over the wall, dismantled the door, killed the guard, armed Jeff, and climbed up here mere minutes before Nora’s arrival. His presence was fine with her.

She nodded to let him know she wasn’t going to scream, then reached up and removed his hand from her mouth. His other hand, she noticed, clutched a big black pistol with a gas suppressor attached, extended straight out beside her right arm, aimed at the top of the ladder in front of them. Anyone climbing up here would be blown away. That was fine with her too.

Not moving, not daring to breathe, Nora and the young man she knew only as Yussuf sat in the hayloft, listening as the room below them filled with their enemies.

The men were quick and efficient. Nora couldn’t see anything from behind the hay bales, but she imagined there were eight of them, two men to a crate, two trips each. In a matter of minutes, their business here was done. She and her newest ally waited until they’d all left the barn, but she didn’t hear the final sounds she was expecting, the sounds of the barn doors being closed and locked. Their voices came from far away, out in the drive, as they loaded the crates into the two trucks, but they’d definitely left the doors wide open. The archway to the stables was on the opposite wall from the hayloft; she and Yussuf would have to cross this room in plain sight of the people in the drive.

And they’d have to do it now. Nora knew there wasn’t time to linger here, waiting for these men and their trucks to go away. Even now, Bill Howard and Nassim Gamal would be concluding their business in the farmhouse, and then Gamal would come out here to join his men and leave for the airfield. She glanced at her watch: 1:47. The Cessna was due to take off at three o’clock. Meanwhile, Bill and Craig Elder would be heading up to the bedroom, to fetch her and bring her here, to the stables. To cut her or burn her or tear out her fingernails while her husband was forced to watch, until he told them what they wanted to know. But they’d find the bedroom empty, the sheet ladder waving in the breeze…

Time to move, she decided.

The young man behind her obviously concurred. He leaned forward, pressed his lips to her ear, and whispered, “Follow me.”

Nora nodded, watching as he slid out from behind her and crawled over to the ladder. She felt a shock on seeing his face, the man who’d been her nemesis all this time, but she wasn’t surprised to see that he was all in black, as she was-jacket, T-shirt, jeans, boots. He swung down, grasping the top rung with his left hand while his right one still clutched the pistol. He dropped silently to the barn floor.

She was right behind him. She climbed down the ladder to arrive beside him, and they crouched behind it at the back of the barn, studying the strip of driveway they could see through the open doors. The men had finished loading the crates, and they were waiting by the trucks for their leader to emerge from the house. No one was looking this way.

The young man touched her arm, bent forward at the waist, and sprinted across the back of the barn to the opposite wall. Nora copied his movements exactly, flattening herself against the wall beside him. They waited a moment before edging slowly forward, their backs scraping the wall, until they arrived at the archway to the stables. He ducked and ran; she followed. They didn’t stop until they were at the door marked THE GROOM ROOM. He opened the door and called softly, “Mr. Baron, it’s us. Don’t fire.” Then he turned and motioned her into the room. They both knelt beside her husband’s cot.

Jeff opened his eyes and smiled. “Hey, Joe.”

“Hey, yourself,” the young man replied. “Are you up for a bit of exercise?”

“You bet-but I’m afraid I’m going to need some help.”

“No problem,” the young man said, reaching out a hand. Jeff took it, threw off the blanket, and began slowly, painfully sitting up on the cot. He was wearing a filthy white undershirt and boxers, nothing more, and he still clutched the revolver.

Nora was staring at the young man beside her. “Did he just call you Joe? I thought your name was Yussuf.”

Her husband grinned. “Oh, you’ll like Joe, Nora. He’s an actor like you. That’s why he’s so good at going undercover with terrorists.”

The young man gently swung Jeff’s legs over the edge of the cot and placed his bare feet on the floor. “Actually, it’s Josef-J-O-S-E-F. In Israel, we pronounce it ‘Yosef.’ Josef Abrams.” He jerked his head at the dead man on the other cot. “Strip him, please, Mrs. Baron. Shirt, trousers, socks, shoes. Check his pockets for a phone; we could use one.”