Saving Sophie: A Novel (21 page)

“You want me to go talk with them?”

“Absolutely not. People who talk to them don’t seem to live much longer.”

“I suppose the police are out of the question?”

“The police, Marcy? Seriously?”

“Then who’s the person you need to talk to?”

“He’s a private investigator who came to see my sister. I know him. I met him once. He says he’ll help me get Sophie if I help him get the missing money.”

“Missing money?”

Sommers grimaced and nodded. “There’s a lot of money missing.”

“And you’ve got it?”

He tilted his head from side to side. “Not exactly.”

Marcy stood. “Wow. Missing money, kidnapped children, dangerous criminals, private detectives, and a friend from my past sleeping at my house. I’m on the set of an international spy thriller.”

“I’m sorry, Marcy. I’m a big mistake for you, right now.” He stood to leave. “I need to get back to the city.”

“Wait. That was a joke.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re not a mistake. Don’t say that. I want to help. Sit down.”

“You need to stay out of this. For me, it’s just a matter of time. Maybe in a month, maybe a few months. I only hope for enough time to rescue my daughter, spend a little time with her, make sure she’s okay, and get her to Deborah. It’s only a matter of time and it’s not going to end well for me. You don’t want to be involved.”

“Maybe you’re not the final authority on what I need to do. I think I should decide what’s good for me, and right now I think I want to be the person to help. For Alina, for Sophie. For you, Jack. Give me a chance to do something that I can feel good about. I’ll be careful.”

“You have no idea what you’d be getting yourself into.”

“So, tell me and let me decide. Like Paul Harvey says, ‘And now the rest of the story.’”

Sitting on the porch swing, finishing their second cup of coffee, tears rolling down both their cheeks, Sommers finished telling his story. He left nothing out. Now his sister had called with the news that an investigator working for the law firm had proposed a meeting. Did Taggart have the wherewithal to recover Sophie? Would he do it? Could he set up the exchange, make the payoff? Bring Sophie back to him? Could Jack trust him? Kind eyes?

“I can go meet with the investigator.” Marcy said. “He doesn’t know me or where I live. I’ll meet him in some neutral, safe place, like LA.”

“I’d be the biggest coward of all time if I let you go instead of me. I need to go myself.”

“Coward? You may be a lot of things, but you’re no coward. Nothing scares you. Trust me on that. Down went Randy.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “You’re wrong. I’ve been scared since the moment they took Sophie. Scared that I’ll fail her again. I know she’s counting on me and I can’t let her down. I’m her father, Marcy; I’m all she’s got in this world.”

“Maybe you’re not all she’s got. I’ll go meet with Taggart. I’ll meet him in LA in a busy restaurant. How risky can that be?”

Sommers looked into her eyes and smiled. “You’re a great friend. You shouldn’t be doing this, but thank you. I’ll tell Deb to set it up. I want you to be very careful. Strict parameters.”

Marcy nodded.

“Of all the bad decisions that I’ve made lately,” Jack said, “deciding to take a ride out to McDuffy’s wasn’t one of them. How lucky was I to have stumbled across you in the middle of nowhere? Pure dumb luck.”

“Maybe not. Maybe things happen for a reason.”

“That’s what Alina used to say.” He put his arm around Marcy. “I love you for what you’re doing. You know, you’ll be sticking your neck out?”

“I’ll be careful.”

She got up from the glider to refill the coffee cups. As she bent to pick up Jack’s cup, her robe fell open. In a moment of unintended intimacy, her nightclothes and her midriff were exposed.

Jack sat mesmerized.

Marcy felt his stare but didn’t move. She looked into Jack’s eyes. The moment froze and then the moment moved on. She rebelted her robe and walked toward the kitchen. “We’ll get her back, Jack. Together, we’ll get her back.”

T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

L
UBANNAH STOOD DEFIANT, HER
hands on her hips, her jaw high and pointed at her husband. “You will not mutilate that little girl, do you understand me, Arif?”

Al-Zahani put down his newspaper. He spoke calmly, like a professor. “Circumcision is sunna. It is part of the
fitra
. Would a hajj have her as a wife if she were not circumcised?”

“A hajj? A hajj? What are you talking about? It’s barbarism and you will not do it. This is the twenty-first century. You will not cut my granddaughter.”

“Woman, do not tell me what I will do.”

“It is banned by all enlightened society; the mufti himself has banned it.”

“The mufti in Egypt.”

“He is my mufti.”

“Look, Lubannah, I am a doctor. It is a simple clitoridectomy. There is no danger to her health. I would do nothing to harm our precious little girl. It’s for her own good. It will stabilize her libido. She will not be sexually reckless.”

“You’re only saying this because of Alina, because she married a man you did not approve of. She was in love, Arif, and—”

“Do not speak of her in my house!” Al-Zahani stood. “If you hadn’t interfered with me when she was a child, she never would’ve run off with the first man she met. Do not tell me what to do.”

Lubannah shook with emotion. “I will tell you this. If you mutilate that child, I will never respect you again. For the rest of your life I will curse you.”

“Aaah! You and your threats. You are a foolish woman. We will talk of this again next month after my business is concluded. But I have to tell you, it will be done this summer, so you’d better get used to it.”

Al-Zahani stormed from the room. “Bashir, get my car.”

Al-Zahani parked three blocks from the group’s apartment and took an indirect route to the back door, where he was once again greeted by the teenager in the soccer shorts.

“Am I the last to arrive, Dani?”

“Everyone is upstairs.”

“Thank you, Dani, you’re a good boy.” Al-Zahani took one last look around, opened the door, and climbed the steps to the apartment.

“Once again the famous doctor keeps us all waiting because he is so much more important than we are, so indispensable to the operation,” Nizar said with exaggerated facial expressions.

Al-Zahani spun around sharply.

Fa’iz spoke softly, “Stop. When will you stop acting like children? April sixteenth is rapidly approaching. What remains to be done?”

“The strain is slow to replicate,” al-Zahani said. “Although the required concentration per IV bag is small, we have only fifteen hundred sixty bags under refrigeration. We are working day and night at the lab.”

“Fifteen hundred?” said Nizar. “We are going through all this to infect maybe a few hundred people? We might as well throw firecrackers at them.”

“Soon there will be more. We are going faster now. We can make forty a day. Before long, maybe fifty.”

“Everyone here knows I have lost all patience with you, Arif,” Nizar said. “But I ask this question sincerely: How do we know your solution will work?”

“I’ve tested it. It’s virulent and unstoppable. It’s a superbug, resistant to all known antibiotics. What’s more, because of the incubation period, the pathogen is undetectable for several days, and when the victim does become sick, it’s too late. The bacteria have done their work. Hemorrhagic fevers. Internal organs are damaged beyond repair. It is the most terrorizing weapon ever developed because people waste away before their loved ones’ eyes. They are the walking dead. It will strike such fear, such panic, such horror, in the hearts of the public that they will bow to our wishes. I call it Canaan’s One-State Solution.”

“Is it like Ebola?”

Al-Zahani shrugged. “Ebola is a virus. Our strain is bacterial and will be injected directly into the body through an IV in a hospital. It’s not airborne and must enter the body through injection. But the effects are similar. Backaches, headaches, nausea in the beginning. Then bleeding from the nose, eyes, and rectum. Coma. Shock.” He shrugged again. “Similar.”

Nizar held up his index finger. “But you have tested it on lab animals, right? Rats?”

Al-Zahani nodded. “Yes, several different subjects. The results are all the same.”

“But, rats. Not humans. How do we know it will work, and how fast it will work?”

“There is no reason to suspect it will not perform just the same.”

Nizar stood and faced the group. “There are many variables to consider. The level of concentration necessary per subject, the weight and age of the subjects, and the fact that humans, even Israelis, are not rats, am I right?”

Al-Zahani nodded. “I have considered those criteria and more.”

Nizar looked to the elder. “Fa’iz, we are foolish not to do a trial run on a human subject. The success of our whole operation depends on it.”

“Nizar is right,” Fakhir said. “Myself, I would like to see how it works.”

“This is not a new cell phone, Fakhir,” said Ahmed, leaning against the wall. “To see how it works you must kill someone.”

Al-Zahani agreed. “First, why waste a perfectly prepared IV? We only have fifteen hundred sixty. Second, it’s medically immoral to use a human subject as a guinea pig.”

Al-Zahani’s comment brought laughter to several among the group. “Immoral to kill one, but perfectly acceptable to kill a thousand?”

“An operation this globally significant cannot end in embarrassment because we failed to properly test the solution,” Nizar said.

“Maybe you’d like to volunteer?” al-Zahani replied.

Fakhir chuckled. “Why did I know that was coming?”

Fa’iz held up his hands. “Nizar is right. The solution must be tested. We must find a martyr.”

“What about old Jabir? He is dedicated to jihad.”

“He is the perfect subject,” Rami said. “We have no doubt of his commitment, and he is old, weak, and suffering from cancer. He will die soon anyway. It will be a blessing for him to give his life to the cause.”

“For those reasons, he would not be a proper subject,” Nizar said. “If you’re going to run a test, you need to run it on someone young and healthy. Am I right, Arif?”

Al-Zahani nodded. “I’m afraid so. Jabir would succumb too readily.”

“If you infect one of our brothers, won’t you start an outbreak here in Hebron?” asked Ahmed.

Al-Zahani shook his head. “I told you, it has to enter through injection. Essentially, it is not contagious.”

Nizar spoke softly. “What about Dani?”

Fa’iz looked directly at al-Zahani, who nodded. Fa’iz raised his finger and gave a sharp nod. “Of course, Dani is a perfect subject. He is young, he is strong. He is one of us. Dani, it is.”

T
HIRTY
-F
OUR

L
IAM AND FOSTER SAT
at a corner booth at Portillo’s. Liam had talked Foster into an Italian beef-and-sausage combo with sweet and hot peppers. Large bag of fries. Several paper napkins.

“You eat this stuff very often?” Foster said, wiping his mouth. The crown of his head was sweating from the hot peppers.

“Every chance I get.”

“How did the morning session go?”

“Dizzying.”

“You mean the volume of the information?”

“Well, that, and she was practically sitting on my lap in that little office.”

“You’re a lucky man. Lot of guys in the department would pay big money for that privilege.”

Liam smiled and nodded. “Kayla’s an impressive woman in a lot of ways. She certainly knows her history. She’s telling me more than I can absorb, but I’m also getting a good background on the al-Zahanis.”

“We know a lot more about his father and grandfather than we know about Arif. His profile is scant. Kayla says he consorts with Fa’iz Talib, who’s an Agency watch-list favorite, but we’re not sure exactly how extensive this Sons of Canaan group is and where they operate. They’re careful about where and how they meet. So far we haven’t been able to infiltrate their organization. That’s why we’re hoping you might pick up some information, not only who the members are, but what they’re up to. Obviously, that’s why she wants you to go over there.”

“I figured it was broader than the ransom exchange, but I don’t know if I’m comfortable being Kayla’s operative.”

“Well,
operative
’s a little strong. Right now, we just want you to learn whatever you can.”

“And you’ll give me names, starting points? People to contact?”

Foster nodded. “Kayla knows people. Jamal Abu Hammad, for one. He’s an old-timer who owns an antiquities shop in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem. For a long time he lived in Hebron, and his grandchildren are still there. If something’s going on in Hebron, Abu Hammad is likely to know about it. His family is said to have ties to the al-Zahanis. But Abu Hammad won’t talk to anyone from the Agency. Not even Kayla. That’s why your cover is perfect.”

“It’s not perfect. If Sommers already has a deal in the works, then why would he send me over there to find out about the deal?”

Foster shrugged. “To find out about his daughter? To make sure the deal has no snafus?”

Liam shook his head. “And what about the language barrier?”

“That old fox speaks perfect English when he wants to. As to anyone else you need to talk to, Kayla will go with you. She knows her way around.”

“She speaks Arabic?”

“Perfectly. Also Hebrew, Farsi, and Kurdish, and she can get by on Jordanian Levantine. But I think you’ll find that most people will talk to you in English, if they choose to talk at all.”

“Getting back to my ‘perfect’ cover, what reason would I have to talk to Abu Hammad?”

“You’ll figure something out.”

Liam checked his watch. “I better leave. Professor Cummings will give me a detention if I’m tardy.”

Foster blotted his mouth with his sixth napkin. “Quite a sandwich.”

“Around here, we call it a
sammich
.”

They shook hands, and Liam left to make his way back to the Federal Building. As he walked down Clark Street, his phone rang. He looked at the screen: 502 area code.