Nina stared at him, terror rising. ‘Oh God! Stop!’
‘Then come with us,’ the man repeated. ‘Now.’
It was a command that she had to obey. The two other men went back into the hall to form an escort. She stepped out after them, the man and woman falling into place behind. The latter pulled the door shut as they left.
They took her down to the street. She thought about yelling for help, but while the man had concealed his gun between himself and the woman, he was still pointing it at her back. And even if she did get help, their comrades had Eddie at their mercy. She gave the oblivious passers-by a last despairing look before being ushered into the rear of a van.
A large box, worryingly close in form to a coffin, occupied most of the space. Its lid was open to reveal a padded interior. ‘Get inside,’ said the woman as her partner closed the doors.
Nina stared fearfully at the confined space. ‘Are you insane? I’ll suffocate! I’m not getting in there.’
‘You’ll be okay,’ said the black man. The woman opened a small plastic case, revealing an ampoule of some colourless liquid — and a syringe. ‘We’re going to put you out for the journey.’
‘Fuck you!’ Nina spat. ‘You’re not injecting me with that!’
The woman’s mouth tightened, and she nodded to her companions. The two other men seized Nina by her arms, the African American tugging up her sleeve. ‘Clean it,’ the woman told him. ‘We can’t risk infection.’ He rubbed a sterile wipe over Nina’s pale forearm.
‘No, no!’ she cried, panic rising. ‘Don’t drug me, please! I’m pregnant!’
Her kidnappers froze. The woman looked at Nina’s belly, almost doing a double-take when she saw the small bulge. She examined it in profile, then straightened with an expression of dismay. ‘Simeon, I think she really is. We can’t drug her; we can’t risk killing an innocent. What do we do?’
‘I’ll call him,’ he replied, taking out a phone.
The two other men kept hold of Nina, tightly enough that she knew she couldn’t break free. Instead she used the unexpected pause to try to calm herself, and assess her captors. They were appalled at the thought of harming an unborn child — yet were more than willing to torture Eddie to force her to cooperate. And as she watched the man wait for his call to be answered, she realised that there was something very odd about his clothes. The woman’s, too. The style was modern, but the material was extremely coarse, as if they were made from burlap. That couldn’t be remotely comfortable, but they were apparently enduring it by choice. Who the hell were they?
Simeon finally got an answer. ‘Prophet,’ he said, the reverence in his voice suggesting to Nina that it was more than a code name, ‘we’ve got Dr Wilde, but there’s a problem. She’s pregnant. Anna thinks we can’t risk drugging her for the journey. What should we do?’
A man replied, his tone both thoughtful and authoritative, but Nina couldn’t make out what he was saying. ‘Yes… yes, we will,’ Simeon said when he’d finished. ‘Thank you.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Anna.
‘He agrees that harming an unborn child would be a sin, so we can’t drug her. But he doesn’t want her to know the Mission’s location.’ He gave the casket a meaningful look.
‘I am not getting in that box,’ Nina warned him.
‘You’re coming with us, no matter what.’ He raised his gun. ‘You don’t need your kneecaps to give birth.’
She felt a jolt of fear. His deadly earnestness warned her that he would have no compunction about carrying out the threat. But Anna spoke before he could do so. ‘We only need to blindfold her.’
Simeon nodded. He took off his tie and put it over Nina’s eyes, knotting it behind her head. It was made of the same rough, scratchy material as the rest of his clothing. She fidgeted, but was unable to shift it, her vision completely blocked.
‘Now what?’ she demanded, trying to hide her returning fear.
She heard movement as Simeon climbed into the front of the van and started it. ‘We’re taking you to the Prophet,’ said Anna. There was a thump as the coffin’s lid was closed, then hands pushed her to sit upon it. ‘Get comfortable — it’s going to take a while.’
3
Anna was not lying.
The journey to their final destination took several hours. The van headed out of New York to an airport; Nina had no idea which, but guessed it was a smaller satellite terminal rather than a major hub like JFK or LaGuardia, as they drove right up to a waiting private jet. She was quickly hustled aboard, and within minutes they were airborne.
Even in flight, she was not allowed to remove the blindfold. She lost track of time, only able to estimate that four or five more hours passed before the plane eventually landed.
The first thing she felt when she was escorted from the aircraft was heat — wherever she was, it was much closer to the equator than New York. The concrete had been baked by the sun, the only relief a wind blowing in from… the sea? There was a salty tang to the air. She was either on the coast, or very close to it.
She was also at a commercial airport, not a private field. The whine of idling airliner engines was audible over her own plane. But any hope of attracting attention was immediately dashed as she was bundled into a car and driven a short distance to a waiting helicopter. Squeezed between Simeon and Anna during the flight, she still had no opportunity to see where she was, although this leg of the journey was much shorter, barely fifteen minutes.
At last the helicopter touched down, ending the nightmare odyssey. It was searingly hot, and the ground underfoot felt like gritty sand. She heard the low crash of waves. Definitely on the coast — but where?
Gravel gave way to paved slabs as her captors guided her from the helicopter and up a slope. She entered shade. The rattle of a door being opened, then she was pushed into a building, the coolness of the air-conditioned interior like going from an oven into a fridge. ‘Wait here,’ ordered Simeon. The door closed behind her.
Nina stood still, listening. As far as she could tell, she was alone. She cautiously reached up to the blindfold and, when nobody challenged her, took it off.
After the increasingly frightening scenarios her mind had conjured up, the reality was almost disappointing. Her surroundings looked like any business traveller’s hotel suite, neat and comfortable but utterly characterless. The lights were off, the only illumination slits of daylight leaking through shutters outside the single window. But even this was dazzling after hours of darkness. Nina squinted as her eyes adjusted, then tried the door.
Locked.
She was unsurprised to find herself a prisoner. Going to the window, she discovered that it too was sealed. Even if she broke the glass, the metal shutter outside would keep her trapped. She turned…
And froze.
Hung on the rear wall was something that would definitely not have been found in a chain hotel. Instead of generic prints of landscapes and cities, she saw a tall cross, the wood raw and chipped. Crude iron nails jutted from its arms and base. The stylised symbol of an eye, six feet across, was painted on the wall behind it.
‘What the hell is this place?’ she whispered. The small relief on finding that the nails were speckled with rust and not blood did nothing to counter her unease and disorientation. Prophets, crosses, followers dressed in sackcloth — her kidnappers were clearly members of some religious sect, but what did they want from her?
She found a wall switch and turned on the lights, then checked the rest of the suite. Another door led to a bathroom, as anonymously businesslike as the main room, while a counter in one corner demarcated a small kitchen area. Cupboards contained an assortment of boxed and fresh ingredients, as well as pots and pans. Hunger pangs rose in her stomach, but she resisted the temptation to eat. First she wanted answers.