The Sanctuary (19 page)

She could still hear his parting words as if he were standing beside her now, whispering them into her ear.

I can’t stay with you. We can’t be together.

It’s not someone else. I wish it were that simple. But it’s not something I can talk about. Just know that if there were any way in the world that we could be together, I would do it.

And with that, he was gone.

Leaving her with the unenviable task of moving on with her life and forgetting about him, leaving her to deal with a separation made even more intolerable by the simple fact that it was unexplained and—in her eyes, anyway—unjustified. And leaving her to deal with raising his child, a child he knew nothing about. A child she’d lied to for years. A little girl whose father, she’d told
her,
had died.

She’d lived with the lie for thirty years, and even after all this time, just thinking about it now triggered a clawing tightening in her chest. It was a hard thing to do, but she knew Mia would have gone out looking for her father if she’d thought he was out there somewhere, and Evelyn hadn’t wanted that. He’d been very clear about things. There was no need to expose Mia to a painful disappointment.

At least, she’d managed to keep that from the hakeem. Above all else, she couldn’t let him know that Mia was Tom’s daughter. He hadn’t yet made the connection; he hadn’t asked that question. If he had, she
shuddered,
she probably would have told him. And that would have set him off after Mia too, which was something she couldn’t bear to imagine.

Small victories.
It was all she could cling to right now.

Something beyond her cell door caught her attention.
A noise.
Harsh, labored movements, footsteps shuffling on the stone floor.

She edged to the door and tried to peer out through the mirrored porthole, but all she saw was the harsh reflection of her own face. She plastered her ear to the door and listened intently. She heard a door being unlocked, followed by some movement and a cry that sent shivers down her spine, a young boy’s cry, a pained, pleading yell. The haunting sound was swiftly followed by an angry man’s bark, ordering him to shut up—
“Khrass, wlaa”
—and a sound that Evelyn was sure was a slap, quickly followed by a pained yelp from the boy’s voice, as if he’d just been hit. She could just about make out some whimpering before she heard the door slamming shut, and the lock sliding into place.

She waited a minute or so for the man to move off, counting down the seconds,
her
heart in her throat, wondering if she should try to make contact with the other prisoner. Another thought occurred to her: What if others were being held here? She had no way of knowing. The man who had led her back to her cell had put a black cloth cover over her head, only removing it once she was in. She had no idea of what lay beyond that door. And the thought, the possibility, that others were being held here scared her even more.

She decided to risk it.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Her whisper echoed in the silence around her.

There was no answer.

She repeated it again, this time a bit louder, more desperate. Still, no one answered her.

She thought she heard a low whimpering in the distance, but she couldn’t be sure. Her heartbeat was pulsing loudly in her ears, confusing matters.

She waited a few more minutes and tried again, but nothing more than a deathly silence came back. Shivering, and dispirited, she sank down to the floor and cupped her face in her hands, trying to make sense of the nightmare swirling around her.

Her mind hurtled back to the face of the man in the lab coat as he watched and listened to her story. His interest was visibly piqued when she mentioned Tom. He asked her all kinds of questions about him, wanting to know everything about the man. He was riveted and took notes, nodding ponderously as she spoke. Her instincts had been right. She should have kept Tom out of it, but, realistically, there was little she could have done to keep quiet. The flames racing through her body had seen to that.

Mia was
safe,
for now—at least, she hoped she would be—but Evelyn knew her captor would spare no effort in finding Tom Webster. And along with that unnerving thought, another one, even more unsettling, surfaced as she wondered if her daughter would be able to get anyone to help look for Evelyn half as diligently, and if she’d ever see her again.

T
he ambassador’s office was located at the back of the main villa, as far away as possible from the entrance to the compound and sealed off from the outside world by bombproof doors and thick, mirrored bulletproof glass. Marines and Lebanese army troops patrolled the pine forest to the back of the compound as well as the entry gate.

The precautions were obviously necessary, but no one had any illusions about their ultimate effectiveness. If a decision was made—more than likely, in one of the region’s capitals—to hit the embassy as part of some perverse political game plan, no barricade would be able to prevent it from happening. Everyone working here knew it, starting with the person at the center of the crosshairs, the ambassador himself. Corben had experienced how differently men dealt with being in that charmed position. The current ambassador, to his credit, took it with admirable stoicism.

Corben walked in to find the ambassador sitting with a man he didn’t know, who was quick to stand up and introduce himself as Bill Kirkwood. The man had a firm handshake, a sharp gaze, and a personable demeanor. He was tall, on par with Corben, and seemed to be in reasonable shape. Corben guessed
Kirkwood
was probably a few years older than he was, placing him somewhere around forty.

“Bill flew in from
Amman
this afternoon,” the ambassador informed Corben. “He’s here about the Evelyn Bishop situation.”

Which surprised Corben.
A little too quick, for his liking.
“What’s your interest in this?” he asked
Kirkwood
.

“I met her a few years ago. I’m with the cultural heritage division at UNESCO, and Evelyn was out here batting for us against the developers of the downtown area. She’s quite a whirlwind, not someone you easily forget,”
Kirkwood
added with an affable smile. “We’ve been funding some of her work ever since.”

Corben looked a question at the ambassador, unsure about where this was headed.

“Bill’s concerned,” the ambassador informed Corben, “from a personal as well as a professional point of view,” then turned to
Kirkwood
, leaving him to elaborate.

“Well, my primary interest is, of course, Evelyn’s well-being. That’s paramount. She’s someone we respect and care about, and I need to make sure everything is being done so that we can get her back quickly and safely,”
Kirkwood
clarified. “Beyond that,” he added with some hesitance, “yes, there’s an obvious concern about one of our most respected and visible professionals being tainted with something the papers will pounce on like relic smuggling—which, from what I understand, is how the Lebanese government would like to spin this.” He paused for a moment to slide a questioning glance at the ambassador, before adding, “And I can only assume we’re not too disinclined to go with them on that.”

“We need to weigh the pros and cons of how it comes out,” the ambassador replied with the composed defensiveness of a seasoned pro. “
Lebanon
is in a very fragile state right now. An American, especially an older woman, getting plucked off the streets for no reason—it would undoubtedly be seen as a terrorist, anti-Western act. And the timing couldn’t be worse. These people are desperate to regain the image of peace and normalcy they’d only just managed to bring back after all the years of mayhem. And with what happened this summer, the country’s now in desperate need of foreign investment, more than ever. The prime minister and the interior minister have both called me up on this already. They’re panicking. I don’t need to tell you a lot of it’s about perception when it comes to raising funding, and if this were to spiral out and inspire copycats…”

“Whereas a smuggler caught up in some kind of dirty deal is not a reflection of political instability and therefore much easier to brush off,”
Kirkwood
observed, somewhat wryly, before turning to Corben. “You see what we’re dealing with here.”

“I can’t imagine it would reflect well on your organization to have her paraded as a smuggler,” Corben countered.

Kirkwood
considered his comment for a beat and nodded guiltily. “Of course, it wouldn’t. I won’t deny that we’re also keen to avoid any tainting by association. The organization doesn’t exactly enjoy wholehearted support on Capitol Hill. We’ve only just managed to rejoin it as a nation, and that wasn’t easy to pull off.” The
United States
had, in fact, been one of the thirty-seven founding members of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The organization, which opened its doors in 1945 shortly after the end of the war, was set up to promote peace and security by encouraging collaboration among nations through, well, education, science, and culture. Over the next four decades, as it grew to include over 150 countries as members, its policies—primarily its foreign policy, which was deemed worryingly “leftist”—diverged from the United States’ own agenda. The rift reached a head when the
United States
finally withdrew from the organization in 1984. It only rejoined in 2003 in a bipartisan token gesture from President Bush, but you didn’t have to dig deep to realize that the organization was still viewed with the same skepticism and contempt in official circles in Washington as was its big brother, the UN.

“This needs to be handled with utmost care,” the ambassador affirmed, “both in terms of getting Evelyn Bishop back and in terms of what we tell the public.”

Corben studied the two men for a moment. “As far as getting her back, you know that’s our priority too. As far as the media is concerned, well…this isn’t political. We’re pretty sure of that.” He turned to
Kirkwood
. “I do think it has to do with Iraqi relics, but Evelyn Bishop’s role in that context remains unclear.”

“Do you know what these relics are?”
Kirkwood
asked.

Corben hesitated briefly. He didn’t want to say any more than he had to, but he had to tread carefully.
“Statuettes, tablets, seals.
We’ve got some Polaroids,” he informed them.

“May I see them?”

The question somewhat surprised Corben.
Kirkwood
was drilling deeper than he would have expected. “Sure. They’re in my office.”

Kirkwood
nodded. “Okay. So we think she got involved with these guys in some way. But was she a willing partner in the transaction, or was she out to stop it from taking place? Do you see what I mean? That’s the angle we need to adopt. She got wind of it somehow, she tried to stop them or turn them in, and they grabbed her. Knowing her, it’s probably what really happened.”

“It would certainly work for everyone,” the ambassador noted.

“The thing is,” Corben observed, “she didn’t contact anyone about this. If she really was out to stop them, she would have called someone—and given the smugglers a reason to silence her.
Which is what my real concern is here.
If this is actually what happened, and they’re out to silence her…they’re not going to come to us with any demands. We need to get through to them and offer them something for her safe return. Assuming they haven’t gone too far already.” He looked at them grimly.

“I assume you’re going to put the word out through your channels, get the message out that we want her back, no questions asked,” the ambassador asked.

“I’ve already got that going,” Corben assured him. “But our contacts are much weaker since the summer. The country’s divided right down the middle. One side won’t talk to us at all, and the other one isn’t of much use in this case.”

“I have a lot of contacts in the area,”
Kirkwood
told Corben. “I’d like to work with you on this. There may be a different set of people I can reach out to than the ones you have access to. We have a lot of contacts when it comes to Iraqi antiquities. And it can be seen as a neutral, UN-led effort, rather than coming directly from the Great Satan,” he added, using the region’s favorite epithet for
America
.

Corben looked at the ambassador, who was clearly comfortable with the request. Corben wasn’t. He always worked alone. It was as much a part of his job description as it was a personal choice. And although he didn’t relish having someone looking over his shoulder, Corben couldn’t exactly refuse. Besides,
Kirkwood
could prove helpful. The UN did have extensive contacts in the area. And, after all, finding Evelyn would undoubtedly lead to the hakeem. Which was the
endgame,
though it wasn’t something he was too keen to share with either man before him.

“Not a problem,” Corben agreed.

Kirkwood
surprised him with his next question. “I hear there was another woman involved. What do we know about her?”