by David Archer
He followed her out of the room and pointed to another door across the basement. “There is a bathroom in there, and I have already left some clothing in it for you. There is soap for your body and your hair, so that you may at least feel clean. Go and wash, and I will have food brought to you.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said. She limped toward the door and opened it, then stepped inside and pulled it closed behind her.
The man who had been guarding her raised an eyebrow at Lom, but said nothing. “Leave her alone,” Lom said. “She is not to be disturbed as she bathes.” He walked over to the bathroom door and slid a bolt into place, locking her in, before he turned and went back up the stairs.
Inside the bathroom, the girl heard the bolt slide home and then slowly began stripping off the filthy clothing she had worn since being taken from the prison. They stank, both from her sweat and the fact that she had been locked in a box with her own urine. She sat down naked on the toilet and made use of it, resenting the gratitude she felt for being allowed such a small touch of dignity.
When she was finished, she stood and stepped into the bathtub beside it. There was a curtain on a rod, and she pulled it across out of habit as she turned on the water and set it to be as hot as she could stand before pulling up the lever that would redirect it to the shower head. It came out cold at first, and she gasped, but then the hot water made it up the pipe and she let it flow over her head and down her body. The heat felt good.
After a moment, she pulled her head out from under the shower and looked around. There was a bar of soap and a small bottle on a shelf, and it wasn’t long before she had scrubbed herself red. Once her body was clean, she used a handful of shampoo on the short remnants of her once-flowing blonde locks.
By the time she had rinsed herself off, the water was starting to cool. She turned it off and pulled back the curtain, found the towel that was hanging beside the tub, and rubbed herself dry. She tossed the towel onto the floor and stepped out onto it, then picked up the pair of jeans from the back of the toilet and slid into them before pulling the t-shirt over her head. They fit fairly well and were comfortable, despite the fact that she had no bra or panties.
She heard the bolt slide back, and then Lom opened the door just a crack. “Are you dressed?”
“Would it matter?” she asked. “Since when do animals like you have any respect for a woman’s modesty?”
There was no answer. A second later, the door opened the rest of the way and she saw that he was holding a tray. There was a bowl on the tray, along with a bottle of some kind of juice.
“I brought the food anyway,” he said. “As I told you, you will be going on a journey. I don’t know how soon you will be able to eat again, so I suggest you take advantage of the opportunity now.”
She glared at him, but then reached out and picked up the bowl. It was full of rice, with fish and pork and some sort of sauce mixed into it, and when she lifted a spoonful to her mouth she realized that she truly was hungry. Perhaps that was the reason it tasted so good. She’d read somewhere that hunger was the best sauce of all; it might have been true.
Lom turned and pointed, and she saw that he had set up a small table with a chair, so she carried the bowl over and sat down. She took another bite as he set the tray on the table, then looked up at him.
“So, where am I going?” she asked. “Somewhere close by? Some rich man’s playground?”
“I’m afraid I cannot give that answer to you,” Lom said. “I can only tell you that you will be leaving Thailand by boat. Someone has paid a very high price for you.”
“For me? Then somebody is going to be disappointed. I’d rather die than become somebody’s little sex toy, and not everyone has had the kind of training you have.”
Lom’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Sex toy? I’m afraid you might soon prefer that fate to whatever awaits you. There may be many reasons behind your buyer’s insistence on purchasing you, but I am quite certain that not one of them has anything to do with sex.”
The girl looked at him askance. “Why not? Isn’t that what you bastards do? Round up girls and sell them as sex slaves?”
“That is indeed a profitable business, but you have proven to be far more valuable than that. Are you truly surprised to find that there are those who will pay well for a captured American agent?”
She managed to keep the surprise out of her face, but her eyes gave it away. Despite her denials, she knew exactly what he was saying. “American agent? I’m just a girl who got busted for trying to buy some drugs.”
Lom smiled at her. “Ms. Child, please do not think me stupid. We know exactly who you are, and who you work for.”
She looked him in the eye for another second, then lowered her gaze to the bowl in front of her as she took another bite. “Boy, have you got the wrong girl. My name is Kayla Maguire, and I work for Dempsey’s Department Store back in Omaha.”
The smile didn’t waver. “No. Your name is Sarah Child, and you are an agentF of the United States organization known as E & E. Your duties normally include being the driver for the American assassin whose code name is Camelot. We know this because the information was provided to us by a CIA informant who was involved in preparing the plan for your insertion into the prison, and it was quite costly.”
Her eyes rose slowly back to his face, and he could see the defeat in them. She stared at him for almost a minute, then put another bite into her mouth. She picked up the bottle of juice and took a long drink from it, never letting her eyes move from his own.
“CIA sold me out?” she asked. “Who was it? Can you tell me?”
“I do not have that information. However, does it truly matter? The fact is that you have been compromised. As I understand it, your government will never acknowledge your existence. Should they ever admit that you and your compatriots were in Thailand to perpetrate an escape from our prison system, it would create an international incident, and could well be considered an act of war. Once you are captured, you become useless to them. Your only value now is in the information that can be extracted from you.”
“Then you’re still screwed,” Sarah said. “As you pointed out, I’m just a driver. I don’t exactly get briefed on any important state secrets.”
“I’m certain you do not, but you know, at the very least, what your mission objective was, and I’m certain you know a great deal about the organization you work for and how it functions. I would naturally suppose that this is the information your buyer hopes to obtain. Considering how valuable such information seems to be, there is little doubt that those who bought you will stop at nothing to get it.”
The fear in her eyes shone through for a moment before she could hide it, but then she put on a brave face. “I don’t know that much,” she said. “They can do their worst, but they’re not going to get anything worth having.”
Lom shrugged his shoulders. “That does not matter to me, of course. My duties only involve getting you ready for the journey. If you have finished eating, then I should be taking you to the docks.”
“Keep your panties on,” Sarah said, and she picked up the spoon again. “Like you said, I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to eat again.” She shoved another bite into her mouth, then cocked her head to the left. “And just so you know, while my government might do nothing to try to get me back, that doesn’t mean I won’t be rescued. Remember that assassin, the one known as Camelot? His number one rule is that he never leaves anyone behind. I feel sorry for you when he finFds out I was here.”
“I don’t think I have anything to worry about,” Lom said. “You see, he was here just an hour ago, and he was taken to the temple and shown evidence that you are dead. Our contact says he is already making preparations to return to the United States.”
Sarah stopped chewing. “No,” she said, “that’s not possible.”
ONE
The flight from Pattaya back to Denver took nearly a day and a half, with a total of four layovers
along the way. It was already after ten PM when Noah and the rest were finally able to leave the airport and head back to Kirtland.
Jenny and her team had come back with them, but they had a van of their own waiting in long-term parking. By pure coincidence, it was parked only three spaces away from Neil’s big Hummer, so they drove out of the parking lot and hit the highway together. Dave Lange drove the van, and kept it on Neil’s tail until the Hummer peeled off the exit and onto the highway that would take it to Noah’s house.
“What do you think will happen now?” Neil asked as he drove along the dark road. “Will there be a funeral, a memorial service?”
“Of course,” Marco said. “Neverland never forgets her people. Sarah was one of its best, so you can be sure Allison is planning something big for her.”
“Won’t matter,” Neil said, and there was a sniffle in it. “Sarah’s gone, and it just won’t be right to have someone else in her place. Especially not right after we lost Moose, y’know? She shouldn’t have even been in that prison, they should’ve sent Jenny or someone like that in there. Not Sarah. She was just too—she was too nice, y’know what I mean?”
“Let it go, Neil,” Noah said. “There’s nothing you can do, and it wasn’t your fault. You have to let it go or it’ll eat you alive.”
“Yeah, and that’s from the man who can’t even grieve over the woman who loved him. Forgive me, boss, if I don’t think you’re all that qualified to advise me on emotional matters, okay?”
“We all grieve in our own ways, Neil,” Marco said, but Neil cut him off.
“Not him,” he said. “Noah doesn’t grieve at all. He doesn’t even know how.”
The kid shook himself, then, as if he was just hearing the things that were coming out of his own mouth. “Noah,” he said, “man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any of that...”
“Let it go, Neil,” Noah said.
Noah and Jenny had both called in before leaving Thailand, and both were scheduled for debriefing the following morning, Noah at nine AM and Jenny at eleven. Noah climbed out of the Hummer and walked into his house without even saying goodbye to Neil and Marco. Marco got into his own car and drove away while Neil cut across the yard to park beside the trailer he rented from Noah.
Inside the house, Noah dropped his luggage and went into the bathroom. He took a quick shower, then walked into the bedroom and pulled the covers down on the bed and climbed into it. He set an alarm on his phone and closed his eyes, drifting to sleep only a few minutes later.
Noah Wolf dreamed only rarely, and most of his dreams involved the afternoon his parents had died. That was the tragic event that had shaped the rest of his life by leaving him completely devoid of emotion. It was a rare form of PTSD known as histrionic affect disorder, but rather than cripple him, the condition had allowed him to form a code of ethics all his own, one that made him the incredibly efficient soldier and killer he had become.
On this particular night, however, he had a dream that was completely unrelated to that tragedy.
He was lying in bed, and suddenly felt Sarah’s arms go around him. He turned his head to look at her and saw her face. It was bruised and bloodied, and the expression it wore was a pleading one.
“I’m not dead, Noah,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t leave me behind.”
“I won’t,” he replied. “But I have to find the trail before I can come for you. I won’t give up, I promise you. Stay strong, Sarah, and I’ll find you.”
She stared at him through bloodshot eyes for a moment, then shook her head. “No, you won’t,” she said, and then she was gone.
Noah awoke instantly and turned to look at her side of the bed. For the first time in many years, it took him almost an hour to get back to sleep.
When the alarm went off, Noah rose and dressed quickly, then made himself a cup of instant coffee and carried it to the Corvette. He started the car up and backed out of the drive, then hit the road toward Allison’s office in the conference room.
He arrived ten minutes early, but Allison’s secretary told him to go on in. Donald Jefferson was already there, just setting out the doughnuts, and Allison came in only a moment later.
“Report, Camelot,” she said. “Tell me what the hell went wrong out there.”
Noah had not shared his suspicions with anyone yet, and especially not over cell phones that were on two separate continents. When he had called in, he’d simply said that he would make a full report during his debriefing.
“Somebody sold Sarah out,” he said. “I haven’t figured out who yet, but I suspect it was someone on my team. While I don’t believe Neil would ever betray her, I haven’t ruled him out as a suspect. If it was one of mine, I’d have to put my suspicions on Marco.”
Allison didn’t seem surprised, but Donald Jefferson leaned forward. “Sold out to whom?”
“I have no information about that,” Noah said. “While it may have been coincidental that Sarah was taken from the prison, the fact that she was in the possession of the Nay Thas and was then sold to someone before she was broken and trained tells me that the buyer had to have known something about who she really is. When I saw what was obviously lots of her hair scattered among ashes at the temple, I realized that she had not only been compromised, but was being turned over to someone for interrogation.”
“And yet you did nothing about it before leaving Thailand,” Allison said. “That sounds odd, Noah, especially for you.”
“Pak involved the monks of the temple in the deception, so that tells me this is a lot bigger than just trying to cover up a girl sold into sexual slavery. While I might have gotten some information on where she was taken by torturing him, the people he surrounds himself with make it more likely that we all would have died in the attempt. I had to decide whether it was more important to attempt to retrieve her or to find out how she was compromised and identify the traitor, and I chose the latter. The security of E & E has to take precedence over the life of any particular agent. Once I know how this happened, I’m going to request permission to go back after her.”
“Then you believe whoever has her was told who she is and who she works for?” Allison asked.
Noah nodded. “Logically, it’s the only scenario that makes sense. I’ve gone over the mission repeatedly, and every member of both teams had at least one opportunity to make contact with someone, and that includes our people in Thailand.”
Allison nodded back. “I agree with your conclusions,” she said. “I’ve already got CIA working on our people over there, to see if any of them might have been compromised, but the reports thus far are clean. As for your team and Jenny’s, I frankly find it hard to believe that any of them could have betrayed us this way, but I can’t deny that I’ve seen it happen before. Agents who seem loyal and trustworthy may harbor feelings of resentment or dissatisfaction that lead them to betray teammates, organizations, even the country. At this point, no one is above suspicion.” She looked him calmly in the eye. “That includes you, Noah.”
Noah nodded. “Of course. I’ve been considering possible avenues of investigation, but I wanted to discuss all of this with you before making any recommendations.”
Allison shook her head. “First, you made the statement a moment ago that every member of both teams had at least one chance to make contact and sell Sarah out. Explain.”
“There are three logical possibilities.” He held up one finger. “First, the people who took Sarah out of the prison may have known already who she was, and the roundup of girls may have been nothing but a smokescreen to hide the fact that they were after her in particular. If that were the case, then the most logical scenario would indicate someone from the E & E station in Bangkok, or it could be that either Marco or Neil made contact with a foreign agent and revealed that she was coming in. Marco was out of my sight twice before she got to the prison, and Neil is capable of making contact with anyone through his computers, possibly even right under my nose.”
Noah he
ld up a second finger. “The second possibility is that the roundup actually was coincidental, and that the unknown persons who took her were contacted after the fact. Marco and Neil are still possible suspects, but now we have added factors: Jenny and her team. Jenny spent several hours inside the prison posing as Sarah’s sister, and it’s possible she was compromised and gave up information to save herself, or sold it to benefit financially. David Lange went out with Neil to purchase some equipment, and could have made contact while he was out of Neil’s sight. Randy Mitchell and Jim Marino also had opportunities to communicate with someone unobserved.”
“Have any of them displayed what you would consider atypical behavior?” Jefferson asked.
“Nothing that I can specifically identify. Neil has acted perfectly normal for Neil, and while it’s possible he could have done this, I personally find it inconceivable. Marco seems occasionally dissatisfied with my decisions, but he never offered me any argument and always obeyed my orders. Jenny’s team is unfamiliar to me, but their behaviors were consistent from the moment I met them.”
“What about the third possibility?” Allison asked.
“At Jenny’s suggestion, we involved two women from the E & E station in Pattaya. It’s entirely possible that one or both of them have some sort of contact with Pak and the Nay Thas. If so, the fact that an E & E agent had been captured in the roundup might have been too tempting an opportunity to pass up. That information would undoubtedly be extremely valuable.”
Allison leaned back in her chair and looked at him. “I detest the thought that any of my people could have done something like this,” she said, “but I can’t find any flaws in your deductions. As I mentioned previously, I have CIA going over all of the communication and activity logs of our people over there, and they haven’t found anything yet that could be a discrepancy. What do you recommend as the next step?”