“Yep, coulda been.” He was stating the obvious, and the conversation was superficial, but Bruger didn’t care. Lord-a-Moses, he was tired. It crashed into him all of a sudden, kind of like it did after he’d had one beer too many. As soon as he stood, he felt the results. His legs would hardly move. His brain’s function had fizzled. He didn’t want to have to think.
“But the plant itself … a big pollutant, wasn’t it? They’d been fined. For environmental violations. Good thing if it had to happen, it happened on a Friday afternoon when so few people were there.”
Vince smashed his hand over his eyes and rubbed like hell. It eased a little of the tension. But not nearly enough. “Er … yeah, I guess that’s a way to look at it. But one life lost is more than I’d like.”
“And I as well. But it is the way of the world — nature takes its toll, goes its course. And earthquakes … they are a natural event. They can’t be tracked, or prevented, can they? It’s almost as if it was a sign, do you think?”
“A sign?” Vince knew he was at the end now. The doctor’s conversation wasn’t making any sense, and he couldn’t form the words to reply coherently. He’d best get some sleep before getting back to this hellhole tomorrow. “Listen, doctor, it was my pleasure. I’ve got to finish a report and get home for some rest. I’ll be back tomorrow.” It was an effort just to get those words out, but he did.
And as he walked away, still rubbing his dry, creaking eyelids, the image of Dr. Varden’s intense green gaze stayed in his mind.
5
It was nearly two hours after Israt Medivir and his guest had disappeared into his office that Konal, secretary to the company president himself, took it upon himself to interrupt them.
It wasn’t that Medivir was late for a meeting, or that there was some urgent matter that must be addressed. Nothing like that. It was just that … Konal had a feeling. An odd, squirrelly feeling that he should knock on the door.
It had been so quiet. No voices. No laughter. No orders for food or drink or copies or reports or files.
So he did. He knocked and there was no answer.
He waited and then five minutes later knocked again, louder.
A warm rivulet of sweat rolled down his back. Did he dare open the door?
Fifteen minutes later, he could no longer contain his curiosity and the odd nervousness worming itself around in his belly.
Konal knocked one more time, and then turned the knob slowly, oh, slowly, so that if he heard the sound of voices, he could stop, pull the door back, and be satisfied and protected at the same time.
There was no sound of voices, and Konal became bolder. He turned the knob and pushed the door open three centimeters. And was greeted by silence.
“Mr. Medivir—” his hesitant greeting slapped to a stop when Konal saw the toe of a shiny black shoe protruding from the side of the desk that belonged to Israt Medivir.
Konal flung the door wide, dashing to the side of his employer. He did not need to touch the clammy, cold skin to know he was dead.
Working quickly, he scrabbled through the pockets of his inert employer and found the cash he always carried there. Only after stuffing the wad of riyals into his own pockets did Konal run screaming from the office to alert security.
Under the circumstances, it did not bother him one bit that his scream sounded like that of a woman.
Hamid al-Jubeir did not wear the traditional red beret that many of his colleagues in the muhabith, the secret police, sported. He preferred, when conducting his criminal investigations, not to call attention to himself.
He almost regretted that decision to be unexceptional when he reached the Medivir Building and was nearly trod upon by a collection of reporters and photographers. The word that Riyadh’s most successful rags to riches story had been found dead in his office had spread more quickly than the assignment to Hamid had been given. Not that that was saying much; for Hamid’s superior, Tirat al-Haebir, who was the director of the General Directorate of Investigation, was known for crossing every T and dotting every I, as the Americans would say, when he made his assignments.
It was fortunate for the GDI’s slow and deliberate director that his staff was quick and efficient, most particularly Hamid al-Jubeir. Which was, of course, the reason he’d been assigned to this most grievous task.
Hamid had never met Israt Medivir, but of course he knew as much about the self-made petroleum magnate as anyone else; including the fact that the dead man was younger than the investigator by more than ten years. And that he’d been a coffee importer before moving into oil and making billions of riyals in less than ten years.
Hamid had always wondered about the correlation between coffee beans and black gold.
The body was sprawled on the floor of his expansive office, ostensibly as he had been found; but from the unblinking, innocent eyes and the shiny, damp forehead of the man who found him, Hamid had reason to question that assumption. But later. First, the victim.
The reason Tirat al-Haebir had crossed so many Ts and dotted extra Is on this case was because it wasn’t evident that Israt Medivir was a victim of anything other than a bad heart or a faulty brain. So setting the GDI’s top homicide investigator on the case was a risk in itself for the Ministry of the Interior, which did not wish to have the word out that the oil magnate had died from foul play until and unless it was to its benefit to have that be common knowledge.
Hamid stood with pursed lips, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand rubbing against each other in quick small circles, as he stared down at the body. The medical examiner would determine the cause of death, and other members of his team would be collecting forensic evidence, but Hamid liked to have the moments of getting the feel for the scene first.
Whatever the case — foul play or natural death — Israt Medivir looked exceedingly comfortable. No protruding tongue or bugging eyes. Nothing to indicate spasms or pain before death. No pooling or stench of bodily fluids having been released. No blood.
But the man had been young.
Hamid crouched at last beside the body, and one of his associates, who’d been engaged in gathering fibers from the ground beneath the victim as if it were most definitely a crime scene, moved aside.
He snapped on gloves, then lifted Medivir’s head and gently rolled it from side to side and then paused. A tiny mark near the chin caught his attention. It was too perfect and round to be a shaving nick. It could be something, or it could be nothing more than a bite from a tsetse fly or mosquito.
But Hamid noted it, and then moved to the man’s trunk. Raising the left arm, he tried to push the Western jacket and shirt sleeve away, but it was too tight. Another investigator might have moved on, but Hamid was thorough. He found the buttons at the cuffs of the shirt and flipped them open, crinkling the crisp white cloth as he pushed it away.
When he saw the bare wrist and forearm, and the markings there, Hamid hissed a long breath between his teeth. Yes.
And then ….odd, odd. The blood, dried and ringing the small mark at the center of Medivir’s inner elbow … that spot where a phlebotomist might draw blood if he needed to … the blood was dark. Not brown and rust-colored as blood dries … but dark. Black.
Almost … oily.
Hamid snatched in his breath. He bent to Medivir’s limp arm and sniffed at the markings there. And when he smelled it, and touched it, he settled back on to his heels, still crouched next to the dead man.