The Sanctuary (29 page)

It was second nature to him.

He told them about Ramez’s abduction, painting Farouk as a dealer-turned-smuggler who knew Evelyn and had sought her help in selling the relics. He left out any mention of the book, and of
its
the connection to the hakeem, and surmised that some rival smugglers who were after the hoard had Evelyn and were after Farouk too. He told them about the call at
noon
, and about what he planned to do to try to get to Farouk first, in the hope of finding out who had Evelyn and having some leverage over getting her back.

None of this was ideal. He didn’t really want any interference. Even less ideal was that he wasn’t sure about
Kirkwood
. The man’s abrupt arrival and his keen interest had triggered some warning bells inside Corben, ones he had long ago learned to trust. He sensed the man was keeping something from them.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to look into it now.

FROM A WINDOW on the first floor,
Kirkwood
watched Corben head back to the annex.

He was already at the embassy when the call had come in informing the ambassador of the armed attack outside the university.

Another overt attempt, in broad daylight and in a crowded part of town this time.

Things were spiraling out of control.

He had to move with care.

Corben had walked him down to his office after their initial meeting with the ambassador the day before. He’d sensed that Corben wasn’t going to be particularly open or forthcoming, but then he expected that, given what the man did for a living. Obfuscation and deceit were to be expected. These guys couldn’t even share information with other law enforcement agencies. Still, Corben had agreed to let him check out the Polaroids, and seeing the photo of the codex had confirmed his suspicions. The two events—the call from the scout in Iraq, out of the blue, a little over a week ago, telling him about the book, and Evelyn’s call to the Haldane switchboard, five days later—were connected.

He played things out in his mind and didn’t doubt that whoever had kidnapped Evelyn Bishop was after the same thing he was. Someone else out there had, somehow, found out about it and was clearly willing to do whatever it took to get his hands on it.

Which complicated matters for
Kirkwood
.

He had some strong cards to play. But they involved trade-offs, and besides, he wasn’t sure he’d be given a chance to play them.

He pulled out his mobile phone and, making sure no one was within earshot, hit a speed-dial key. It took a few seconds for the signal to bounce off a couple of satellites before the slightly crackly, foreign ring-tone whined through. Two rings and it
was
answered by a man with a beefy, throaty voice.

“How’s it going?”
Kirkwood
asked.

“Fine, fine.
It took a bit longer than expected to get across the border.
So many people trying to get out of here.
But it’s fine now. I’m on the way.”

“So we’re still on schedule?”

“Of course.
I should be there in a few hours. We’re still meeting tomorrow night, as agreed?”

Kirkwood
wondered whether a change of plans was merited, but decided to stick with what they’d agreed. The timing was probably right anyway, and besides, he didn’t really see a shortcut that didn’t present dangers or complications. “Yes. I’ll see you there. Any problems, you call me immediately.”

“There won’t be any problems,” the man answered cockily.

Kirkwood
hung up, wondering if he’d made the right decision.

He looked out the window and thought back to Mia Bishop. He’d watched her earlier as she’d followed Corben into the annex.

The firmness in her step surprised him, given what she’d just been through. He wondered what was going through her mind, how she felt about being dragged into this. More important, he knew she was the last person to see her mother. How close were they? Did Evelyn confide in her? Was the young geneticist telling Corben everything she knew?

He needed to talk to her.

Preferably, without Corben present.

C
orben hurried up the stairs to the third floor, headed for the communications office. It was past
nine thirty
, and Farouk’s call was due in a under three hours’ time.

He’d already called Olshansky from the car and told him to start working on the tap.

The briefing hadn’t gone too badly. They were letting him get on with things, which was all he needed right now.
Kirkwood
had sat back and hadn’t asked any obtrusive questions.

He found Olshansky in his batcave, sitting in front of an array of three flat-screens. Muffled sounds and the occasional garbled voice were coming from the computer’s speakers. The middle screen had a number of open windows. One of them was a rolling graphic display of a waveform plotting the noise. Under it was what looked like an on-screen synthesizer, which Olshansky was manipulating using the keyboard.

“How are we doing?” Corben asked.

Olshansky didn’t look up, his eyes riveted to the screens. “I’ve managed to download the rover into his phone, but so far, I think it’s still stashed in someone’s pocket. It’s just garbled mumbo jumbo.”

Olshansky’s predecessor had hacked into the computers of
Lebanon
’s two cell-phone service providers without too much difficulty. Having a few of its employees on the payroll probably helped. Corben was hoping to use that access to listen in on what was going on within the pickup range of the microphone on Ramez’s cell phone, using a “roving bug,” a remotely activated wiretap. The technology was alarmingly simple.

Most cell-phone users didn’t realize that their phones weren’t necessarily fully powered down, even if they were switched off. You just needed to set the alarm on your phone for a time when it’s switched off and watch it light up to see that. The FBI, working with the NSA, had devised a surveillance technique—though it denied any existence of it—that allowed it to remotely download eavesdropping software onto most cell phones. This software would then enable the phone’s mike to be switched on and off on its own, anytime, remotely and surreptitiously, effectively turning the phone into a bug, whether the phone was powered up or not. They didn’t even need to have physical access to the phone to set it up. It was a clever evolution of an old and simple technique that was pioneered by the KGB, which involved upping the voltage on a landline just enough to activate the phone’s mike even when it was on the hook.

Corben listened to the noise coming from Ramez’s phone. It sounded like fabric rubbing against the phone’s mike, as if the phone was in someone’s pocket. In the background, some distant voices were barely audible.

“Can’t you boost the voices?”

“I tried. The distortion’s across the range. I can’t isolate them.” He shrugged at Corben. “This is as good as it gets right now.”

RAMEZ COULDN’T STOP SHIVERING. His chafed wrists pulsed against the plastic straps, the constant movement generating an irritating, burning sensation. At least, that’s what he imagined was happening. He couldn’t see out of the burlap sack covering his head.

They’d shoved it on seconds after stuffing him into their car, then—not that he’d resisted—they’d sadistically thrown in a couple of heavy punches to his face for good measure before pushing him down to the footwells of the backseat and pressing down on him with their shoes to keep him there.

The ride hadn’t taken that long, and although being in that car—with his head covered in that stinking sack, the occasional stomp to the ribs, and the muffled sounds of the city wafting by—was horrific enough, he would have preferred it to drag on if it meant delaying his current situation.

They’d dragged him out of the car, into an echoey building and down some stairs, then thrown him into the chair and strapped him in. The maniac with the concrete knuckles couldn’t resist landing another blow, which was all the more terrifying as, like those before
it,
it came unannounced, exploding onto his face through the stifling darkness of the sack.

He could hear occasional movement, footsteps around him, and there were voices a bit farther off, men’s voices. The accent was unquestionably Syrian, which didn’t bode well—not that anything else did. His mouth quivered as he tasted the sweat that trickled down his bruised face and mixed with the blood from his cut lip. The sack, which reeked of what smelled like an ungodly combination of rotten fruit and engine grease, wasn’t entirely opaque. A few tiny pinpricks of light found their way in, not enough to see anything, just taunting him with a hint of the outside world without allowing him any advance warning of the occasional incoming blow that his captors seemed to enjoy randomly inflicting upon him.

His body went rigid as he heard footsteps coming right up to him. He could feel someone’s presence, inches away, studying him. The silent shadow blocked out any light from outside, making Ramez’s world even darker.

The man didn’t say anything for a few maddening seconds. Ramez shut his eyes and tensed up, expecting another blow. The shivering wouldn’t be cowed. Instead, it increased, and with it the burning in his wrists.

But the blow didn’t come.

Instead, the man finally spoke.

“Someone’s going to be calling you on your phone, in a couple of hours’ time.
A man from
Iraq
who came to see you yesterday.
True?”

Dread flooded his senses.
How could they know this? I didn’t tell anyone. I only called the police.

The realization hit him like an anvil.
They have contacts in the police station. Which means no one’s going to come looking for me.
It was a false hope anyway. In all of the city’s grisly history, no kidnap victim had ever forcibly been rescued. They were either released or—in most cases—they weren’t.

He didn’t have any time to mull the bleak prospect as he felt the man grab his left hand and hold it firmly in place. His grip was rock solid. Ramez froze.

“I want you to tell him exactly what I tell you to say.” The man’s voice was unnervingly threatening, despite his calm tone. “I need you to convince him that everything’s okay. He needs to believe you. He needs to believe everything’s okay. If you do that for us, you can go home. We have no quarrel with you. But this is very, very important for us. I need you to understand how important it is. And to do that, I need you to know that if you don’t convince him, this—”

With a startling suddenness, the man snapped Ramez’s middle finger back, all the way back, ripping the bone off its cartilage until the finger touched the back of his hand.

Tears burst out of Ramez’s eyes as he recoiled against the straps and howled with pain, almost blacking out despite the endorphins’ hopeless rush, but the man was unmoved. He just held it there, pressed firmly backwards, and kept talking.

“—is what you can expect a lot more of before we allow you to die.”

OLSHANSKY ALMOST JUMPED out of his skin when the scream burst through the speakers of his system.

It went on for a few agonizing seconds before turning into a whimper and finally dying out. It even startled Corben, though he’d been expecting something like it. He knew what they would want from Ramez, and he knew they’d have to make sure he was scared enough to put in a convincing performance.

“Jesus Christ,” Olshansky muttered. “What the hell did they do to him?”

“You probably don’t want to know.” Corben frowned. He heaved a frustrated sigh, imagining the scene unfurling in some underground rat hole.

The scream and the whimper were now gone, replaced by the same, annoying ruffle. Olshansky rubbed his face, shaking his head. He looked clearly shaken.

Corben let him have a moment of quiet. “What about the location?” he then asked, turning to the screen to his right. It showed a map of
Beirut
, overlaid by the boundaries of the different cell zones covering the city.

Olshansky collected his thoughts. “They’re in this cell here,” he said, pointing at the map. Cell-phone usage in
Beirut
was heavy, and each cell in the crowded city only covered an area of just under one square mile. But even with the enhanced triangulation at Olshansky’s disposal, the hundred-meter diameter of the target zone was still a pretty big haystack in which to find the assistant professor.

Corben frowned. Ramez was in the southern suburbs of
Beirut
.
Hezbollah territory.
A definite no-go area for a lot of Lebanese.
Virtually a whole different planet for an American, especially one with the dubious job title of “economic counselor.”
It was the one area where he didn’t have a local contact.

“At least we know where they’ll be coming from when the call comes in,” Corben noted. He checked his watch again. He’d need to get back to the city pretty soon. He got up to leave. “Keep me posted if you get anything clear?”