Sudden Deception (A Jill Oliver Thriller) (22 page)

“I don’t think it was such a good idea to tell Zayed where we are staying.” Jill voiced her concern to Leila as they walked through the hospital lobby. “We can’t trust the little prick. I wonder if he has ever met David really. And what was all that smoke and mirrors bullshit?”

“We can take care of ourselves from Mr. Hotty Pants. You said you shared a room with him. Yummy!” Leila licked her lips in an exaggerated fashion. “Anyway, don’t pay attention to what he was saying about David. The guy's an idiot, all that independent contractor crap.” They walked a few more steps before Leila asked, “Where are we going now?”

Jill stopped abruptly. “Let me see your phone. I need to call Karine.”

“I don’t think she’s up yet.” Leila pointed to the clock on the wall that read 6:43 p.m. Jill sat down on one of the bright blue chairs and Leila found one next to her. “Why do you need to speak to Karine all of a sudden?”

“I found a drawing in Kushka. It was in Russian. Karine was having it translated.”

“What was it a picture of?”

“It could have been anything. It had boxes and arrows and Russian words. It was a computer printout, I think.”

“You found this in that guarded villa? Why would they leave something if it was that important?”

“Well, David’s notebook was there. The schematic was crumpled up like it was trash.” Jill squished her hands together miming snowball and continued, “Maybe David left it as a clue, like the writing in the notebook.” Jill hesitated. “Maybe.” But she really didn't know what to think. Her mind was on Zayed. Her mind was somewhere else. Could she have been so stupid? After seeing Zayed and hearing what he had to say, she’d felt something when she stood in his room. The nagging feeling was doing more than annoying her. A shot of pain pulsed in her head. She needed to get back into the tunnels. She needed to think this through.

“Why would someone be guarding an empty villa full of trash?” asked Leila.

“I wouldn’t call it guarding; he was more like a watchman.”

The two sat for a few more minutes before deciding that they were hungry. They needed to wait until Karine was able to get into the office anyway, and Jill couldn’t handle Karine when she was tired and grumpy. She would likely have to contact the translation department anyway, which didn’t open until nine o’clock.

They walked outside. Jill hadn’t realized that the hospital sat in the middle of a construction zone. They needed to hail a taxi, but there were none in sight. In the distance beyond the construction site fence was the main road. The streetlights were already burning brightly.

“Shit, it's like breathing in water,” Leila complained in the humidity of the evening air.

“It’s hot, but let’s walk over there.” Jill pointed towards the road past the construction lot. “We might be waiting here all night and the sun is almost down.” Jill’s stomach grumbled. She hadn’t eaten much in the past week and her clothes were beginning to droop.

“Your rib okay?” Leila asked, casting a worried look at Jill. Jill just nodded.

They turned the corner, walking past large tin signs, then further past tall tin paneled fences that housed the construction site. Leila saw it first. Dust flew as a black SUV screeched to a stop fifty meters in front of the curb. Coming up fast behind them was a white Land Cruiser with dark tinted windows. Two men jumped out of the first car and shouted at them.

Before Jill could think, before she could plan, she yelled, “Run!” She turned and darted in between the two pieces of metal fence. Her shoulders brushed the metal and Leila followed.

Jill’s heart raced and adrenaline overcame her tiredness. She had to hold her stinging side as she jumped over pieces of concrete. They were zigzagging through the construction obstacle course when Jill heard the second car squeal to a stop. She heard someone yell in a Slavic language. Even with a good head start, a bullet whizzed past Jill’s head. It was too dark for her to have seen the water before she tripped over the edge of the bank and fell in. The putrid water met her nose as she spat it out of her mouth. Her feet hit rock in the waist deep pool. What the hell … and where the hell is Leila? “Shit!”

Jill crouched further into the water when she heard more yelling. Chechens. Jill could swear she heard a car racing away. She concentrated on her heavy breathing; she had to be silent, but she needed air. Will they hear me, can they see me? She had no way to defend herself. She was a sitting duck in the water. She had to move, she had to find Leila. She had to survive.

All she could see was the darkness of the land. She was no more than five feet from the water’s edge. Shouting. They were getting closer. Think, Jill, think! She looked around and hoped for some recognition of her surroundings. She saw streetlights at a short distance, but the bank she fell from blocked her view of the men with the silent guns. Jill slowly turned around to scan her perimeters, and as she looked behind all she could see was a large body of water, a river. Maybe she could feel a current. There were lights on the other side of the shore. She couldn’t swim with her rib; it was too far. Jill searched her brain for answers – where was she and what should she do next?

Jill was about to swim closer to the bank when she was startled by the sound of pebbles tumbling and plunking into the water with her. She dared not move as she crouched in the water. Then she heard a whisper. “Jill?” It was Leila, who squatted below the four-foot bank. Jill stood, showing herself to Leila. Then she silently lowered back into the water. Inch by inch she began to move in Leila’s direction. Time moved in slow motion.

As the sounds of boots smacking dirt grew louder, she thought her heart had stopped—Am I breathing? The fear was maddening; she felt she was going to burst out of her skin.

And then there he was. He stood on the top of the bank and looked out in her direction, only hesitating for a moment, before scanning the rest of the water. He was standing only three feet to the left above Leila. He couldn’t see her. Can he see me?

Even in the dusk she could tell he was dressed in black with a black cap just like that guy in Doha, and like the guy at the Hamburg airport. He moved slowly and turned. It sounded like he was swearing. Definitely swearing. He began to walk away and then abruptly stopped. More swearing, before he turned and looked back in Jill’s direction. She did not move. She did not breathe, and for a moment Jill thought she should close her eyes. The man hesitated and continued to walk away. It seemed like an eternity before she noticed Leila waving her hand. Even with the moonlight, Jill thought not even Leila could see her. Minutes passed and upon hearing nothing more, Jill slowly continued to inch her way back to the slimy rocky bank.

“You okay?” Leila whispered.

“Yeah,” Jill whispered back. “Come on.” They waded along the edge of the shore, their feet half in the water and half on the rocks trying to not make any noise. An eerie feeling surrounded Jill’s soul and she stopped and held her breath, listening for the slightest sound that would ignite a sprint.

“What?” whispered Leila. All Jill did was lift a finger in front of her shushing lips. They heard only the silence of night and a hint of the city’s hum in the background. Where were they? They began to walk again, punctuating their steps with frequent stops, hoping for continued silence from the men. The shoreline seemed endless. They needed to climb the bank. Jill motioned Leila to look over the edge. Leila stood, peeked her head and gave Jill a thumbs-up. They dug their feet into the walls of hard sand and pulled themselves over the ridge.

The construction site was meagerly lit by moonlight. Dark shadows cast gloom everywhere. She didn't know if any of them were the men. Then Jill heard shouting and the crunching sound of gravel underfoot as the men moved towards them.

“Come on, Leila.” Her waterlogged boots were heavy. She tried to get her hesitant legs moving, but her surroundings were hard to see. They were running now and Jill found a makeshift path amongst piles of pipe and concrete. No time to think, no time to plan. Just run.

The sound of boots was getting closer; they were gaining on them! With only the moonlight as their guide, they fled as fast as they could. Jill’s only saving grace was that their pursuers couldn't go too fast on the treacherous slope, which would risk a hazardous fall—but neither could they. Adrenaline flowed fast. She didn’t feel any pain; she didn’t feel anything but raw fear. The men were gaining on them. She had to think, she had to be smart. She prayed for inspiration and it came.

Jill and Leila took the corner. Jill darted an immediate right and saw stairs leading up from the pit to the street. She dog-paddled up the concrete stairs, Leila following.

When they reached the top, they sprinted across a dark street and crossed the road into another construction site. Jill was startled when her feet hit piles of garbage—bags full of litter. The sounds, she knew, would alert them. They kept running left, and left again, then right, then they zigzagged in the maze of dark side streets. At last, just as Jill’s lungs felt about to burst, they ducked into a door-well and huffed for air. They waited for any sign of the trackers dressed in black. Silently Jill fumbled though her wet clothes to get Leila’s phone, but hope faded as her numb fingers pushed the powerless buttons on the waterlogged phone. “Shit!”

They stood catching their breath and Leila snapped, “More friggin’ people trying to capture us. This friggin' time they wanted to kill us, Jill. Hanging out with you, is just so much fuuuuunnnn.”

Jill didn’t retort. She needed to figure out where they were.

“Well, I guess they know you’re in Dubai.”

“They were probably watching the hospital,” Jill pointed out.

“Ya think?” Leila mocked.

Jill held up the phone, her breathing starting to slow. “We need to get one that works. Sorry.” She handed the phone back to Leila. The edge of adrenaline was beginning to fade as her torso began to throb. The air had a humid haze as Jill looked down the dark street. The streetlights were about a mile away.

“They’ll be looking for us still,” said Leila. “Two chicks in a construction site? Seriously. And how big is this f'n mafia? They got cronies everywhere.” Leila took a final huff before sticking her head out and peering down the street. “Clear.”

They began to move in the direction of the streetlights and decided to cut across a construction lot to get them off the street. They ducked in and out of darkness around large piles of dirt and rock. They stopped when they heard a car slowly pass on the other side of the fence behind them. After it passed they continued. They were almost to the gate that crested the well-lit street. Between them and the gate sat a large backhoe. On the other side was a small guardhouse that could only fit a chair. Jill could see by the streetlight shining down that there was no one in it. They stopped and Leila looked between one of the tall tinned panels. The space between the panels was held up by large cement blocks. Leila stuck her head through and then glanced back at Jill.

“It’s clear, Jill, but the road has streetlights. It’ll be easy for anyone to see us. There aren’t any sidewalks either, so we’d be right on the road. And it doesn’t look like a place where taxis would be trawling at night.”

Jill looked through the break in the fence. “Maybe we should try and stop a car or something. Hitch a ride to a taxi stand.” The fence was about ten feet from the road. “We can watch from here.”

Leila was taller than Jill and they both watched the first car that was coming up the road. A white Land Cruiser with tinted windows. They ducked back as it passed. Within seconds a second white Land Cruiser drove past.

“Is that all people drive around here—white Land Cruisers?” Leila said. The next car was a white Toyota pickup truck with brown stripes and no tint on the windows. It had a round orange hazard light that wasn't glowing on top of the roof.

Leila leaped in front of Jill, through the panels, and onto the lit road and waved to the driver. Jill scanned up and down the road and followed her. A white bald man, early fifties, rolled down the passenger window.

In a British accent he said, “Been dragged through a hedge backwards, mate?” As he looked in Jill’s direction, she looked down at her soggy pants that now stuck to her legs, and the dirt on her belly. Jill did another scan while Leila pitched their quest to find a taxi. There were no other cars. Not any that Jill could see, anyway.

They squished into the front seat of the small-cabbed truck and sped out of the construction site. Jill was concentrating on watching the quickly passing scenery to ensure that they weren't being followed.

“What are you two birds doing in a construction site?” Leila gave him some song and dance about getting lost while trying to find a taxi.

“Why didn’t you just get on with the concierge and get a taxi from him?” he asked.

“Hospitals have concierge services?” Leila replied.

“Spot on they do, even valet.”

As the two continued to chat, Jill tuned them out. Looking out the side mirror, there was more traffic now that they were on a main road. Nothing seemed too suspicious to anyone else. But to Jill everything did.

She thought of what Zayed had told them. About the pipeline in Grozny. About the Chechens. What do they think David has told me or given me? She did not know. It must have something to do with that schematic, Jill decided. Then another thought entered her mind. What if it doesn’t? Then what? She’d been chased around this Goddamn hemisphere by Chechens and she’d had enough. But what was she to do … ignore what she knew, or thought she knew, about Stan? Ignore her viewings? She could be wrong. She hoped she was.

“Can you drop us off at a mall?” Jill abruptly asked the driver. “We need to find a phone.”

“You can use mine.” The pudgy driver held up a Blackberry.

“It’s an international call. We need one anyway.”

Several traffic lights later, they approached a flyover and saw a sign. MALL OF THE EMIRATES. The mall looked vast and had a massive odd-shaped structure protruding like a bulky arm. The driver noticed they were staring and said, “Indoor ski slope.” He giggled. “It’s quite the picture seeing Arabs in their dishdashas with a jumper over the top, skiing.” He finished his sentence with the words. “Only in Dubai.” After what seemed to be endless speed bumps, they pulled in front of the bling doors and thanked the driver with a grateful good-bye.