Cries of Penance (20 page)

“How did you meet her?”

“I was sent for her father, renowned anthropologist, philanthropist, and premier arms dealer. I was captured and awaiting execution when she released me with my promise to help her get to America. It wasn’t supposed to be complicated.”

“Meaning you weren’t supposed to fal in love with her.”

I nod in the dark.

“In the States, did you raise your children Orthodox or were they brought up Muslim?”

I don’t want to fight with him. Not here, not now, not while I am already dragging myself through the coals, second guessing every decision I’ve made over the last decade. I wonder if he’s even been inside a church since joining the agency. “When Lattie left this desert she turned her back on her heritage, on her faith. She embraced al the United States had to offer. And I raised my children in the church with her at my side.”

I expect more questions, arguments. I don’t expect him to admit, “I think I’m in love.”

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I glance over at his silhouette, realizing that although his head is tilted back, he isn’t gazing at the stars at al . His eyes are closed. Since I found him in her quarters at Lewd Larry’s, I jump to the conclusion he’s speaking of Morgana. I rub the back of my neck, considering al the complications that could come from his admission. Garrett is going to kil me. I chuckle under my breath. “Lust.”

He turns his gaze to me and although it is dark, I can see clean through to his soul when he says, “I’ve never dreamed of more, never even considered I might ever have the chance at a life other than what I’ve known. I know what I am, I know what I’m not, but when I’m in her arms I start to believe I might be more.”

I know that feeling. The papers I left with Sophia were as legal as any piece of paper can be, but they were not truth. I want Sophia to be my wife. I want her to be my children’s mother. That fact doesn’t take away from my love for Lattie, I wil find her, I wil deliver her to safety, but I won’t be living with her as my wife ever again.

We share a heavy sigh and go back to gazing at stars we don’t see while we think of the women we’d rather be with.

We spend the night together on the sand and share a sunrise. With each passing second, we both become more focused. Intent. Nothing happens in this land without everyone knowing it, and my enemies could be massing just out of sight. We have to keep moving and agree to head into the large, modern city of Khartoum.

Once there, traffic is congested and the heat is unbearable. The entire team is on edge. We’re being open, obvious, stirring the shit with a big stick, and 184

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general y painting a big target on ourselves in the hopes of flushing out Lattie’s captors.

No one is talking about what happened. It’s a sad day when bribes can’t even buy information. One thing is obvious. Fear. It’s permeated the very culture.

Of course there have been newspaper reports and some radio broadcasts, covering the assassination of a prominent archaeologist, but I could have stayed in the United States and known more about what is going on here than actual y being here.

Meeting up with Pepé about midday, we catch a break. “The BBC reported Charbonneau sent a col eague photographs and documentation on his latest discovery the night before his assassination. They believe there may be a connection.”

I’m skeptical. “What was it?”

“A scrol .”

“A scrol ?”

“It could prove to be the most important find since the Dead Sea scrol s. It might have actual y been written—” He whispers the last part. “—by Christ.”

Beside me, Nikos snorts and quickly covers his nose with a cloth handkerchief and pretends to sneeze.

Pepé excitedly tel s us, “No one is talking because to do so would be blasphemy.”

“Where is the scrol now?” I ask.

Pepé shrugs. “No one knows. Like your wife, it has vanished.”

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“Someone knows where she is and who has her,” Nikos says gruffly. Sweat drips down his cheek, and he swipes it away with the handkerchief. He’s not overly impressed that we didn’t come in guns blazing, he is hot and uncomfortable in the white dashdashas and turban he wears to cover his tattoos.

Dressed as a businessman in suit and tie, I am no more comfortable but am the less grumpy of the two of us.

If the scrol is what the kidnappers seek, they are correct in believing Lattie wil know its whereabouts. She won’t tel them.

Nikos stands and paces, while the rest of us sip tea. It seems to him we are doing a lot of sitting around, getting absolutely nowhere, and as I sip my fourth cup of tea I can see his point. I have to believe patience wil pay off. My only comfort is that everything happens slowly and methodical y here—even torture—

and though it is a sickening thought, I don’t believe I have to fear her imminent death. We stil have time to find her alive.

That’s stil my plan a week later.

It isn’t so unusual to awake to gunfire, but on our twelfth morning starting with zero leads a quick glance through the upper window of the hotel I’m staying in reveals an American security detail shooting rounds into the air to announce their arrival. “Great.”

From behind me Nikos asks, “What is it?”

“The Calvary is here.” I take the stairs two at a time, Nikos trailing close, and run through the lobby. The last thing I want is innocents injured because of some hero’s idea of how to flush me out. Nikos and the rest of the team stay in the 186

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shadows, guns trained on the Humvee caravan, while I step into the bril iant sunlight with my hands on top of my head. “Looking for me?”

One of the soldiers steps from the Humvee, machine gun pointed up. We walk toward each other. “Are there others inside that are of Guardian interest?”

His accent is thick Russian.

“Only one,” I answer, jerking my chin. Only Nikos revels himself, hands already clasped behind his neck to show he is no threat. He walks slowly to my side.

“We don’t have al day. Get in.”

Nikos and I climb into a rear seat, the Russian gets into the front passenger seat, and the vehicle is moving before we’re ful y seated. Another agent already seated in the back runs a scanner over the back of my neck, easily locating the identification chip embedded just under my skin. He speaks into a col ar mounted receiver, “Agent XKM-one-zero-one confirmed.”

He scans the back of Nikos’s neck and says into the receiver, “We have a problem.”

Nikos and I lock gazes. He admits, “I have trust issues,” but if he was implanted with a chip I was unaware of it.

“When?” I ask him in Greek.

“While you were making nice with the senator and I was asked to wait in the hal . It happened before I knew what was going on. It could have as easily been a bul et through my brain.”

I doubt that.

“No one asked permission to track me like a hound. I took it out.”

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I shake my head, sighing heavily. My brother.

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“I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence.”

Charles Dickens, Lit le Dorrit

Chapter 16
Garret

I awake to screams and realize immediately I’m alone in the bed. Heart racing, I hurry down the hal through the living room and into the kitchen where I find Olympia and Nikkos sitting at the bar happily eating cereal and Kitten and Athena-Sophia both sitting on the floor crying. Actual y, Athena-Sophia is screaming bloody murder and Kitten is crying silently. Both have tears dripping down their cheeks.

It is obvious what has happened, a bowl of cereal and milk hurled across the room, Kitten on hands and knees, trying to wipe up the mess, and Hektor, squatted, trying to console his sister with a bottle. But as the chubby toddler bats the bottle away for the third time, it is obvious she isn’t having anything to do with it…or anything else when her brother holds out his arms to her and she hits at him too.

“Hey, hey. None of that.” I scoop up the baby.

“Ommy, Ommy, Ommy.” She wails.

“She is crying for our mother,” Hektor explains.

“Ommy means mother?” I ask.

“Yes, and Abbi is dad but we always cal father Papa, al of us except Athena-Sophia, she does not know Papa.”

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Now that I have the screaming, combative baby in hand, Hektor climbs onto a stool and pours his own cereal. Standing, Kitten gives me a look and a heavy sigh before rinsing the cloth in her hand and returning to the mess in the floor.

She looks exhausted, like she hasn’t slept at al .

The baby bites my shoulder and I am certain draws blood.

“Hey!” I shout at her, startling her into silence. “No biting!”

Eyes wide, her bottom lip starts quivering but she is silent and not biting. So it’s a start.

From the floor, Kitten asks, “How long do you think he wil be gone?”

I hear the desperation in her voice. The children have only been awake minutes and already she is overwhelmed. What a mess this is. I shrug, not knowing. How long could it possibly take to storm the castle and rescue the girl…hours? Days? “I wouldn’t think very long.”

“Don’t leave me alone with them.”

I assure her I won’t. How could I?

* * * *

After four days, mornings are slightly calmer. Athena-Sophia has accepted a sippy cup in lieu of a bottle. Although it has a soft nipple, it is shaped like her older brother’s sports bottle. He convinced her she is a “big girl” or at least that is what he says he has taught her to say when she lifts her arms over her head and cries out, “Kah-beer Sha-bah.” I am trying to convince him to only speak to her in English so that she wil understand Celia and I as wel . For now, every time she throws her hands over her head and cries out, “Kah-beer Sha-bah,” one of the other children imitates her but says, “Big girl.”

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Nervously, I leave the children at home with Kitten and Enrique while I drive to the private Greek Orthodox school in the suburbs to enrol Hektor in second grade and Olympia in kindergarten. It doesn’t go wel . First, I am told Hektor wil have to take a placement test, seeing that he’s been away almost two years. I think he wil be devastated to not be able to rejoin the friends he left behind.

“Fal is always a time of transition for students,” I am assured by the principal.

Olympia wil be welcome join the other kindergartners, even though I feel she should be entering as a first grader. I am assured many parents wait until their children are six to start their formal education.

“Mr. Stephanopoulos wil be very disappointed if I report back to him that the children wil not be able to start classes immediately. Seeing that they have been in Sudan for almost two years he wants to get them acclimated to al things American as quickly as possible and reintegrating them into school to reestablish friendships is his first priority,” I bluff with Kitten’s sanity in mind. I pray the school wil al ow them to get started immediately.

Watching the principal’s face reveals nothing more than a man adept at hiding al thoughts and emotions. His eyes are a different story, and the gears are obviously turning in his mind. My relief is overwhelming when he final y says,

“Perhaps Monday morning would be best for al concerned.”

Having taken much longer than I ever anticipated, I drive like a bat out of hel back to the penthouse fearing the worst—tears, blood, destruction of property—

and am pleasantly surprised when I find that Athena-Sophia and Nikkos are down for naps and Olympia and Hektor are sitting quietly with Celia drawing pictures at the kitchen table.

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Seeing me, she smiles.

“Monday morning,” I say.

Evidently she revealed my errand to the children because they both give loud whoops of delight and dance around the room, chanting, “School, school, school!”

“I think you made their day.” Celia leaves her chair to hug me. “I think we seriously need to consider the bigger house Thomas asked us to look at. It’s been awhile, but hopeful y it’s stil on the market.”

I shake my head, feeling things are too up in the air right now.

Later I revise my thinking as I spend another night tucked between children, thinking about Celia sleeping in the other room alone. It occurs to me that after the twins arrive, every night could be like this. How did Thomas ever do it?

We need more bedrooms now, space just can’t wait…and a nanny…

Quietly, I creep out of my bed to find Celia isn’t in bed. I find her in the dark living room. I turn on the smal spotlights that are meant to highlight our artwork.

It provides enough light without being jarring. Sitting on the couch, wearing a nightgown I didn’t even know she owned, she stares into space.

I sit down beside her and coax her into my lap. “Are you al right?”

She shakes her head. “I never dreamed he’d be gone this long.”

I don’t admit I’m just as worried, even though I assumed it would take time to find Lattie and arrange her release from the kidnappers. Five days seems like forever because our world has been turned upside down. I worry that Kitten has gone back to not eating and not sleeping.

“Our bed is so lonely without you in it,” she says.

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“I know.” I kiss her temple. I consider sharing two of the four children with her, but she’d probably kil me if I suggested any such thing.

“If we get the larger house, they could each have a bedroom,” she implores and there is a desperation to her tone. “Or the boys could share a room and the girls could share a room and we’d have enough room for a nursery and a nanny’s suite.”

“I know.” I take her hand and kiss her knuckles. “Let’s look at the house Thomas emailed us about.”

She shakes her head. “That house is too big.”