“I’m okay,” said Jonathan.
“Nightmares? Sweats?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“Hold out your arm.”
“Excuse me?”
“Come on. Stick it out straight in front of you. Hold your hand flat, fingers as straight as you can keep ’em.”
Jonathan extended his right arm. His hand shook visibly. He balled his fingers into a fist, and when he released them, the fingers were steadier. Connor eyed him, unsure.
“When I was younger, I lost a few friends climbing,” said Jonathan. “We were up high in dangerous spots, where things can happen quickly. Someone is there and then they’re not. It’s too fast to register what happened and what it means to you. I feel the same now. I’m freaked. Maybe I’m even in some kind of delayed shock. Part of me wants to give in to that, but there’s too much going on. I have to take care of the now, now, or else I’m not going to get down alive. Does that make sense to you?”
Connor considered this. “Yes, Dr. Ransom. It does.”
“Do me a favor. Would you stop calling me Dr. Ransom? My name is Jonathan.”
“All right, Jonathan.” One of the meaty hands rose from the table for a shake. “Frank Connor.”
“And that’s your real name?” asked Jonathan as he tried to match Connor’s grip.
“As far as my mother told me.” Connor laughed and loosened the knot of his tie. “Okay then, Jonathan, this is where we start. Everything I’m going to tell you from this moment on is classified, or a helluva lot higher than that. I don’t have any papers for you to sign. That can wait. But make no mistake, from here on out, you work for me, and by that I mean the United States government. Are we clear?”
“Yeah, but you can leave that military bullshit at the door. Are we clear?”
Connor’s eyes narrowed and a hint of red flushed his cheeks. “There’s something else I should tell you. The job I’m asking you to take is extremely dangerous. You will be going into the belly of the beast, and there is not going to be anybody there to hold your hand. You will be alone behind enemy lines, and I mean that in the real sense of the word. There is every chance in the world that you will be caught. And if you are, I can’t do a damn thing about it. The good news is that you won’t have to rot for fifty years in a Pakistani cell. The bad news is that you’ll be summarily executed.”
“Hey, Frank, don’t sugarcoat it. Tell how it’s really going to be.”
Connor didn’t appreciate the joke. “I will steer you where you need to go. I will tell you everything you have to do. Follow my instructions and you’ll make out just fine. The most important thing is to keep your wits about you. Are we cl-” Connor caught himself. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Jonathan. “I get it. It’s dangerous. Go ahead. If it’s something to help Emma, I’ll do it.”
“All right, then let me read you in on your wife’s activities. For the past two months-since September-Emma’s been stationed at the FSB’s residence in Damascus, doing penance for her role in the attempt to assassinate Igor Ivanov. They have her doing menial tasks-running Arab diplomats, low-level sneak-’n’-peeks, the occasional theft of corporate secrets. These days industrial espionage is a state activity, especially if you’re as far behind the eight ball as Russia. One of her jobs is handling Ashok Armitraj, a big-time gunrunner working out of South Asia. Armitraj is half Indian, half British and calls himself Lord Balfour. Ever heard of him?”
Jonathan said he hadn’t.
“Soon you’re going to know every goddamn thing there is to know about him. He’s going to be your bestest and closest friend. Anyway, a month back Balfour contacted Emma with a shopping list he wanted for a client. Usually no one cares who the end user is. Balfour gives us a country and we put that on the export documentation.”
“Us? America sells to this guy, too?”
Connor nodded. “We have a lot of fine companies to keep in business. Anyhow, the Russians don’t mind who the end user is. They’re shipping this stuff out the back door as it is.”
“What do you mean, the back door?”
“Think of them like the Mob. The stuff Balfour buys from the Russians has all fallen off the back of a truck. In this case, the truck is a government arms factory controlled by the FSB. There’s legit production and there’s the back door. Legit sales go on the books. The back door goes into the generals’ pockets.”
“So who was Balfour’s client-the end user?”
“We don’t know. What we do know, and what opened our eyes, was Prince Rashid’s involvement in the deal. According to Balfour, Rashid was brokering the sale and guaranteeing payment on his client’s behalf.”
“Prince Rashid from the Gulf? He’s a benefactor of Doctors Without Borders. He’s a good guy.”
“Oh?” Connor’s eyes darted away and he shook his head, as if somewhere there had been a gross misunderstanding. “Maybe we’re talking about two different people. The Prince Rashid I know is one of the world’s notorious terrorist financiers. He funnels money to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Laskar-e-Taiba, and any other Islamic organization bent on destroying the West, to the tune of two hundred million dollars a year.”
Jonathan sat back, chastised. “I hadn’t heard.”
“Of course you hadn’t. You’re too busy being wowed by his good works and his blond wife and his beautiful blue-eyed children. Rashid wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“If you know all this, why haven’t you made it public?”
“Think of what you’re saying. The prince’s family is the United States’ staunchest ally in the Gulf. The accusation alone would sour relations for years. This isn’t the kind of thing you air in public.” Connor leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “This is the kind of thing we take care of privately.”
“So you used Emma to get at Rashid through Balfour?”
“No comment.” Connor pursed his lips, as if struggling to decide what he might or might not say. His expression made it all too evident that something had gone terribly wrong. “All we know is that she disappeared while overseeing the transfer of weapons from Balfour to Rashid.”
Jonathan envisioned the scenario without difficulty: Emma acting as a Russian agent to get close to Rashid and kill him. She’d pulled off similar feats in Lebanon and Bosnia and too many other places to name, let alone remember. It was not an occupation without risk. “Is she dead?”
“We have good reason to believe that she’s not.”
To Jonathan’s ear, “good reason” sounded like spy-speak for a fifty-fifty chance at best. “So Rashid was onto her?”
“We don’t know. But before I tell you what we do know, I want you to get a grip on yourself. A temper isn’t going to help anyone, especially Emma.”
Jonathan drew a breath, tamping down his nerves. “I understand,” he said.
“Prince Rashid has a thing he does to people he thinks screwed him. Business, politics, whatever. He likes to take them into the desert and put the hurt on them. I’m not going to go into detail. It’s nasty stuff.”
“Like what?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Like what, Frank?”
Connor set his forearms on the table and sighed, as if he were going against his better instincts. “Chains,” he said. “Cattle prods. Cigarettes. Sometimes he drags them behind his car.”
“And he did this to Emma?”
Connor nodded.
Jonathan looked away, an ungovernable rage building inside him. The thought came to him that he would stop at nothing to punish the animal who had inflicted such punishment on his wife.
A steady ringing filled his ears, but he wasn’t sure whether it came from inside him or from the carrier. “You just said you had good reason to believe that she isn’t dead.”
“We have evidence that indicates she survived the beating.”
“Did someone see her?”
“No.”
“Then what? This is my wife you’re talking about. ‘Good reason’ doesn’t cut it.”
“We found what we believe to be her footprints walking away from the spot where she was left. It appears she was driven from the scene. At this point, that’s all we know.”