Sudden Deception (A Jill Oliver Thriller) (10 page)

Pulling out her mobile, she turned it on. Jill waited, glancing at herself in the mirror. On the screen came two words … NO SERVICE. “Shit,” she blurted when she looked around to see if she was alone. She suspected that this pay-as-you-go phone would not get international service. She needed to get in touch with Leila and Karine, and with fading hope … David. She needed to get intel on the Chechens that were following her. She was, however, feeling a bit more comfortable with Zayed assisting her in Afghanistan, and for that she was thankful. There was hope in finding David, she thought to herself as she looked at the phone. There was. And she was going to figure out how. She did not know if the phone was unlocked so she could use a different country’s sim, and turned it off to save battery power. She adjusted her hair one more time and exited the washroom.

Zayed leaned against the wall to her right. He didn’t see her at first and Jill could tell by his facial expression that something was not sitting well with him. Walking through the crowds of people, something felt off-kilter.

Suddenly, Jill stopped fast, just as the airport began to shake as if she was in an earthquake. Jill looked around; no cups on tables were moving, none of the crystal glass in the gift shop ahead shifted nor rattled. Jill was stuck as if someone had hit pause on a DVD.

Zayed calmly walked over to her and said, “Sea legs. It’s you, not the building.”

What a strange sensation. Jill felt as if she was teetering uncontrollably.

“Come, Jill,” Zayed said in a soft, soothing tone.

“I need to find a phone to call my office. See if anyone has heard anything,” she claimed.

“Zein,
fine
, I’ll be here.”

Jill found it hard to hold his glance and turned away. The giant, tiled circular roof, in bright lime-green, made her think that the architect was smoking some strong shit when he designed the building. Small shops were all around and she could only count twelve gates. Airport-style chairs were scattered everywhere. Jill saw a security guard and walked up to him to ask about a public phone. To her dismay, he didn’t seem to know what she was asking for.

“What airport doesn’t have public phones?” Jill snarled to herself. Then she saw a bunch of men standing around an array of computers.

Jill didn’t see a connection for her laptop, so a public terminal would have to do. She couldn’t log into VPN but she could check her e-mail using the US Marshall secure webmail system. She hoped for some news. Jill silently crossed her fingers that the servers were not blocked, given the state of affairs in the Middle East. As she began to log in a strange thought crept into her mind. Slowly, Jill looked up and around then over at Zayed, who was puffing on a fag and getting ready to light another. A quick, soft surveillance scan. The airport was busy and nothing caught her eye. Paranoid. If she had more time she would spend it profiling. First Zayed, then the Chechens. It was when she profiled that her instinct would push her into the tunnels. Push her to find the answers that she was looking for. She needed her notebook to do this, and Google was always a bonus, but she also needed privacy. Perhaps on the plane she would find some reprieve.

Logged in, Jill saw several messages regarding work updates. One was from Eric stating that the missiles had been transferred successfully. She was in luck when she found one from Karine. The e-mail contained more information confirming that her destination should be Kushka.

In 2005, US operatives discovered a biological weapons laboratory under construction in the Kushka foothills, with evidence that Russian scientists were helping Al Qaeda develop anthrax.

Karine reminded Jill that it was 300 miles through mountainous terrain, and attached two articles on recent bomb attacks by the Taliban. Jill quickly read them and noted several of the town names. I must look at the map once I get settled on the plane.

No word from David or Leila. As for Zayed, Karine said only that she could not find any information and that she had placed a call to Jeff, David’s editor, to see what information he knew about him. She asked if he was possibly using an alias. The e-mail ended with: Please be careful Jill.

Jill sent a quick e-mail with Zayed’s full name that she heard him tell the captain of the boat. She noted that bin meant “son of” in hopes that it helped her search.

'Zayed Mohammed Bin Saleem'

Jill gave Karine her flight itinerary in case David got in touch. Just as she was about to close her webmail a pop-up told her … New Mail.

It was from Stan Brown again. But this time his e-mail was a little more pointed.

Jill,

I know you are reading my e-mails. Why are you not calling me? Please, it’s important.

Stan

What could he possibly want? Jill knew that it could not be about David’s whereabouts. If anything happened to David, she or her office would be the first to know. Maybe the newscasts were now disclosing David’s name?

She e-mailed Leila.

Leila, please e-mail me. I will explain later why I had to leave the hotel. Hostile.

Jill

Jill looked around for any sort of television and wondered if that was what Stan was contacting her about. Two large screens to her right zapped the logo of CNN. Jill clicked send. Having Karine call Stan Brown was her best bet, as every now and again they would hear from David’s family about some new melodramatic crisis in the hope of getting David’s attention. Jill couldn’t deal with anything like that right now.

Jill closed the browser, erased her history, and walked closer to the TV that was entertaining a large gathering of brown men in casual shirts and trousers. Standing there, she looked over to where Zayed sat. He was intently watching her. After about ten minutes of taglines on CNN, Jill resigned herself to the fact that there was no new information released about David yet.

Zayed continued to stare at Jill as she walked in his direction. His scrutinizing affirmed for Jill her thoughts of uneasiness about him. Or was she just being paranoid again? Paranoia was a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder and Jill had to work hard at deciphering between paranoia and instinct. Most days it was easy, but when stress raised its ugly head, it was hard. She chalked her thought up to paranoia. Well, for now anyway. Shifting in his seat, he softly scratched his ear and asked, “Any new information?”

Jill hesitated then plopped down beside him, still feeling slight unease about what Karine had just told her, or rather hadn’t told her about him. Jill was still puzzled by his presence. Then without giving it another thought, she said, “My contact confirmed that the LSA briefs came from a town called Kushka. She also sent me directions and how to get there.”

“Kushka?” He was surprised.

“Do you know of this place?”

“No,” he said, sounding a bit evasive. “Where is it?”

“On the Turkmenistan border. Right on the border actually.” They sat in silence.

“How long do you think that will take us?” Jill asked Zayed, shattering the lull.

He wasn’t sure and said it would depend on the condition of the roads.

“The last time I was in Afghanistan, most of the roads were well paved on the main routes anyway,” he said. “The question is … is Kushka on a main route?”

To her, he sounded like he already knew.

“Karine sent me a map and I have it on my laptop. When we get on the plane we can take a look at it. But I do need to find a phone. I should call Stan, David’s father.”

There was an immediate shift in Zayed’s body language. Jill looked him straight in the eye and said pointedly, “You know Stan Brown?”

He hesitated; his eyes darted left up then left down. He was searching. Jill knew it. He was about to tell her a lie. “David’s spoken of him,” he said matter-of-factly.

“David spoke to you about his father. Why in the hell would he do that? What did he say about him? Was this recent?” The questions came fast.

His eyes darted again. “I don’t recall. Something about contacting his father. He never said why.”

“That’s it?” Jill sat back and considered this unexpected reaction as Zayed nodded. Why would Zayed lie? And who gives a shit about Stan Brown? Was Zayed just being polite about it all? There were just too many questions now, and Jill needed some time to herself, some time in the tunnels.

It wasn’t long before their flight was called. As they had bought last-minute tickets, Zayed and Jill would not be sitting together for this. She was grateful for this as she pulled out her notebook. The Captain announced over the scratchy PA that the flight would be 34 minutes. Not enough time … not enough time.

08:20 Zulu Time—TEHRAN, IRAN

Tehran’s airport terminal was very different from Abu Dhabi’s. It was a massive building, similar to any major U.S. city. Inside, the terminal was sparkling clean with high ceilings and walls brushed with a deep rust color that complemented the beige marble floor tiles.

Jill and Zayed didn’t speak as they made their way to the next gate. Once there, Jill sat on a hard orange vinyl chair, opened her laptop and looked at the map. The clock at the gate said 13:12. She knew Afghanistan had mountainous terrain, but the satellite images did not do it justice. Jill would have to be connected to the Internet to see the terrain from different angles and she kicked herself now for not doing this earlier when she had the chance.

“There appears to be only one road to get to Kushka,” she told Zayed, showing him the map.

As he studied it, she noticed how long his eyelashes were as they blinked against his olive skin. The veins in his strong forearms bulged as he held her computer. After several minutes he turned the computer back to her without a word. Jill looked up and down the map and ran her finger along the route to Kushka. Along the way she noticed one of the cities Karine told her had been attacked by the Taliban. It appeared to be about fifty miles from the route they were taking. A hint of relief hit Jill knowing she would not be close to those areas.

Jill lifted her gaze from the computer to the large windows showcasing the aircraft, and her mind began to drift to thoughts of David. Jill pictured him in Kushka at a local hotel, working madly on his story. She remembered watching him many times at the eleventh hour, in his office, intensely punching the computer keys. David was always too enthralled in his writing to notice her standing there. She never disturbed him. She was hoping that was what he was doing, and she could picture there not being a phone in northern Afghanistan. Well, she prayed for that ideal scenario anyway.

“Zayed, you said you’ve been to Afghanistan. What are the hotels like there?”

“Jill, why do you think of such things right now?”

“Never mind.”

Darkness began to cover her thoughts when Stan Brown invaded them. Why was he trying to reach her? She did not know. She felt a twinge of anger and regret when she thought of David’s parents. They seemed normal enough when she first met them. But the too-perfect impression was truly a façade. When David was younger, he later told Jill, he would often find himself hiding in his room to avoid being whipped by his father’s belt. His father never hit David’s sister Margarita, though; she was always the loved one. Jill teared up at the memory of their conversation. David was a proud individual, and it took him a while to let Jill into this part of his past.

“He used to lock me in my room like a dog and wouldn’t feed me for the rest of the day. Sometimes he would turn off the power in my room and on hot summer Texas nights it was almost unbearable,” David had recalled. “That was his way of punishing me for not getting my homework done on time or not putting out the garbage. He would taunt me, especially if I had friends around, and especially when he was drinking.”

Jill often wondered if some of David’s quirks, like being an obsessive neat freak, were caused by such an unyielding upbringing. When they spoke about his family, it reminded her of how her father had abandoned her mother when she was pregnant, and how much Jill felt blessed that she had cool grandparents. With Jill, the craving for self-discovery and closure would briefly flare up, but just as fast as the notion came, it left.

From the outside no one would have guessed at the underlying dysfunction. David’s father was a successful businessman in Texas. Margarita was two years older than David and as the family favorite she got the first car and pretty much the first anything. “She had all the new clothes and annoying rich friends, compliments of Mother,” David had told Jill. “Mother is a doormat for my father and she has never stood up for me. I always found a way to separate myself from her. She was emotionally vacant and sometimes extreme in the way she thought. I could never do anything right in her eyes and she let me know it with her scathing, hurtful remarks. Margarita is the same—a younger version of my mother.”

When Jill met his sister she had no choice but to agree. Jill profiled her, and came to the conclusion that she had borderline personality disorder. Recently, they had been notified by other family members that she was being treated for a psychopathic disorder. Probably a good thing, since she had more plastic surgery than Joan Rivers and been married more times than Elizabeth Taylor. Jill couldn’t help but think of them right now. She wondered sometimes why she hadn’t known more details about them before she married David. She wanted a family that was as great as they first appeared; now she couldn’t help but feel ripped off somehow. She would call Stan. She would put her disgust aside because she needed to stay focused. She needed to find David.

Jill came out of her daydream at the barking words of a loud gate agent. While Jill was standing in front of the gate, in the absence of a PA system, the man yelled in vague English something that sounded like, “Boarding now!” Zayed and Jill boarded together.

This time the flight was just under one hour and they sat together. The plane was much smaller than the Airbus 330. Reaching in the seat pocket in front of her, Jill filed through the glossy cards, past the little white barf bag, and pulled out the airplane description card. It was a ritual of hers; she always looked at the card describing the exits and then confirmed how many rows she was from the exit.

This Boeing 727 was an older and more inferior plane than the ones she had flown on recently. She began to feel a little nervous. The name alone, Afghan Air, made her wonder how safe they were. She assumed that airlines in Afghanistan were more worried about the Taliban than about ensuring the maintenance was done properly. With this thought, she looked over at Zayed, then her body lurched back as the sound of the roaring engines drowned everything out.

They both gripped the armrests as the plane vibrated. The plane angled up and Jill felt a tickle from the hair on his arm touching hers. He didn’t move, nor did she. Jill laid her head back and, just as she began to close her eyes, the engine’s hum lulling her to sleep, Zayed spoke up.

“How long have you known David?” he asked. This was the first time on the trip that his voice held a hint of kindness. She’d come to accept the intensity and gruffness of his personality. “You seem very devoted to him, to go to an unsafe place like Afghanistan.”

Jill sensed an air of sadness. “I’d do anything for David. Besides, I’m a US Marshall and I think I can handle a little heat in Afghanistan. If the trip was too dangerous my colleagues would have insisted I not go.”

Without reserve, Zayed rested his warm callused hand on her forearm. His dark probing eyes peered into hers. “Maybe your friends knew that already and didn’t bother to try.” Their eyes locked for too long of a second and then they both looked away.

As the plane positioned for descent, the captain came on and said something in Arabic. Zayed looked at Jill with concern and warned, “Tighten your seat belt.”

Jill was about to ask why when the plane banked hard to the left and the nose angled downward. They descended fast, turning sharp lefts. It felt like they were on a corkscrew. One man actually shrieked. The plane suddenly leveled and you could cut the relief in the air with a knife when the tires bounced the plane onto tarmac. Jill’s eyes bugged out when Zayed said, “Surface-to-air missiles. They have to be careful to avoid another incident.”

When the plane came to a full stop, she looked at Zayed and said softly, “Do you think we’ll find him, Zayed?”

He offered no response.