A Sulta's Ransom

by White, Loreth Anne

  She turned suddenly, glared at him perched high and arrogant on his camel. “I don’t believe you!” she yelled. She just couldn’t. “It’s a lie! I think you want my work for your own reasons!” She pointed at his face. “You bear the mark of a rebel—”

  His patience snapped.

  In one fluid movement he swung his camel toward her. Hooves barreled towards her as he lunged down, grabbed her arm, hauled her roughly back up into the saddle.

  Paige screamed in shock.

  He kicked his beast into a fast gallop as she groped wildly, trying to hold on as her body beat against the animal’s and her skirt flapped at her ankles. He did nothing to help her.

  She managed to maneuver herself up, grasp hold of the saddle horn, pull herself upright, totally out of breath. “You bastard!” she hissed.

  He put his mouth to her ear and growled low. “You know what, Doctor? I don’t believe you either.”

  Chapter 4

  07:40 Charlie, Na’jif, Thursday, October 2

  Rafiq was now certain that Paige Sterling was the mastermind behind the pathogen. But he didn’t know what else to believe about her. Maybe she really didn’t know anything about the true nature of Nexus.

  Or maybe she was bluffing.

  Didn’t matter either way. They’d soon have full access to the Nexus computers and all of her work. Once the download was complete, his phase of this mission was over. The medical team in the Level 4 lab they’d set up on São Diogo could get busy analyzing the data, and he could get the hell out of this country.

  He’d never intended to come back here. Ever. And the sooner he was out, the better. For everyone. Each minute he remained on Hamnian soil was a minute too long, and an increased risk. If his true identity was discovered, the whole country would blow.

  And this mission would fail.

  Not even his FDS colleagues knew the depth of his history here. Rafiq drew his turban back over his face as they neared the walls of Na’jif. He looked like any Bedouin nomad now. And Paige Sterling was going to look like any Bedouin wife once he had her kitted out in a proper chador and jewelry.

  He leaned forward. “Keep that scarf over your face now.” He spoke into her neck, and it sent a small shudder through her body. He smiled slightly.

  The cool scientist was not beyond reacting to him, and the notion pleased him in a purely male way. He closed his eyes for a moment. She was an inconvenience, one he would abandon as soon as they crossed the border. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy her physical proximity. Or her beauty. The scientist was damn sexy when she got all fired up.

  And when those stormy gray eyes started flashing… He suspected they just might be his downfall if he wasn’t careful.

  Foot traffic increased as they neared the city gates. An old truck piled high with hay clattered along the road, leaving desert dust and diesel fumes in its wake. Paige coughed, pressed her scarf over her nose and mouth as it passed. It wasn’t even eight in the morning and already the heat was brutal. It made her body hot and damp against his, lifting her scent into the air. He guided his camel around a man bent over a rusty bicycle.

  Paige stared at the man and muttered something.

  Rafiq’s pulse accelerated slightly—it sounded as if she’d said there was no antidote. He leaned forward. “What was that you said?”

  But she sat silent.

  “Paige?”

  She shook her head. “It…it was nothing,” she said quietly.

  But it bothered him. There had to be an antidote—a whole stockpile somewhere. The Cabal simply would not risk what they were doing without a means to control the outcome.

  They entered the thick stone walls of Na’jif and the din of the city engulfed them, making conversation impossible.

  He’d have to wait until they got back to the apartment before he interrogated her further. And the Nexus computers would tell them what they needed regardless of what he’d thought he’d heard her say.

  He wove his camel through the throngs of people heading for the market, an historic trading center at the city center where one day’s sales were said to have equaled one month’s in Cairo back in the Middle Ages.

  He pulled the reins sharply to avoid a fruit cart that rumbled over the cobblestones. An apple bounced off the back and rolled into the street. Two small boys laughed, let go of their mother’s skirts and chased it, ducking between carts and the legs of camels. The vignette grabbed Rafiq by the throat.

  He slowed, turned to watch them, and a deep and painful nostalgia swelled through his chest. He and Nahla had hoped to have children. They’d talked about it while walking in these very streets.

  Rafiq sucked his breath in sharply at the sudden and visceral nature of the memory, and he killed the thought instantly. But it was too late. The damage was done—an old scar had ripped open, and now the hollow pain was back, lingering like low smoke trapped in a canyon, a pain he’d managed to quash for well over a decade.

  Rafiq swore to himself as he negotiated a mound of garlic piled almost six feet high at the entrance to a narrow alley. He’d misjudged his emotional fortitude. Coming back was going to be tougher than he’d anticipated.

  As they drew closer to the market square, the scents and sounds grew richer. Even through the fabric of his headcloth, Rafiq could smell tomatoes warmed by hot sun, salted fish, bergamot, lemons. Another cart rattled past them, this one stacked with bundles of mildly narcotic qat from the lowlands near Yemen. The local men still clearly loved to chew the leaves. Little had changed in fifteen years, yet much was different.

  As they moved deeper into the warren of city streets, Rafiq had to admit, as much as he’d tried to block it all out, as much distance and time as he’d tried to put between himself and his past, this place—its scents and rhythms—was still in his blood. It was still a part of who he was.

  He turned his camel into the wide main street, and a giant portrait of Sultan Sadiq bin Zafir bin Omar al-Qaadr blazed into his vision.

  Rafiq jerked the camel to a stop, glared up at the image of the Scarred Sultan, oblivious suddenly to the throngs around him and to the woman seated in front of him.

  The portrait hung right over the middle of the street, dominating the thoroughfare. And whoever had been commissioned to paint it had omitted the vicious puckered scar that Rafiq knew marred the man’s throat.

  The scar he’d put there.

  His fists clenched the reins and bitterness leached into his mouth as the sweet image of Nahla swam into his brain. Raw aggression spiked his blood and Rafiq’s eyes went hot.

  No!

  He blinked it away.

  He did not want to relive those memories. And now that he was actually back in Na’jif, he could see he was in trouble. He cursed bitterly. Just one sight of Sadiq’s image and his fingers were itching for his scimitar. He had to finish the damn download and get the hell out this country ASAP, before he did—or said—something he’d regret.

  He clenched his teeth, jerked the reins, and kicked his camel forward and down into a tiny alleyway where the buildings on either side loomed so close they strangled the sun.

  Paige stood in the alley holding the camel’s head rope. Rafiq had left her and the smelly beast waiting outside a tiny stockroom with Persian rugs stacked high behind murky windows. Even alone in the streets with a means of transport in her hands, she was still trapped. She wouldn’t make it beyond the city walls without the Land Command being alerted. She knew they had paid informants everywhere—usually peasants so desperate for cash or favor they were willing to snitch on fellow countrymen who defied the sultan’s orders.

  She pulled her scarf higher over her face, aware that she was garnering suspicious looks from the few passersby in this dark lane.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other as the minutes seemed to tick by interminably and perspiration trickled slowly down between her breasts. She had no idea what the time was, and the scent of sweet pastry coming from the bakery next door was making
her stomach twist in hunger. She was thirsty, too—for an ice-cold lemonade. Come to think of it, plain old water from a goatskin bag would do just fine.

  How could she be thinking of food now?

  She’d just been told that the work she’d devoted her entire life to was being used to threaten the most powerful nation on this earth. She was theoretically dead to the Western world, completely at the mercy of a dangerously enigmatic mercenary in a land as old and mysterious as time…and here she was wanting pastry?

  How was a woman supposed to react to all this, anyway? She shifted her weight again, her knee throbbing from her fall earlier. Why did she even have to think about how to react? Why did she have to analyze everything? Couldn’t she just react from her heart and gut like normal people?

  What was normal, anyway?

  She’d spent way too much of her life in a Level 4 lab to know what was “normal.” And before that, she’d been homeschooled in the wilds of places like the Congo jungle and Papua, New Guinea. She understood primitive tribes and wildlife better than she understood her peers.

  Her stomach growled again as another wave of warm, sweet scent drifted her way, and hunger once again took precedence over her thoughts.

  The camel jerked suddenly against his rope and peeled back fat lips exposing yellow overlapping incisors. Paige eyed his teeth warily. The beast was also getting impatient. She’d take a horse over one of these gnarly creatures any day. She tried to edge farther away from his teeth while still maintaining her hold on his rope. The animal grunted in protest. Next he was going to spit at her, she was sure of it. He had that look in his eyes.

  A breath of relief flew out of her as she saw Rafiq reappear in the doorway of the carpet store. This was not good—she was actually relieved to see her captor. Paige tried to tell herself it was natural—she was just scared and she was dependent on this man. For now.

  It had nothing to do with his glorious dark looks, or powerful magnetism. Or the way he’d made her feel on the ride across the desert.

  Rafiq exited the store and strode toward her with a stocky man at his side—probably the carpet dealer, Paige thought. He was dressed in a white robe and traditional red-and-white checkered head cloth. A ring of keys hung from a chain at his waist, and he walked with an air of authority. She guessed he was a boss of some sort, someone with status in Na’jif.

  He stopped in front of her, appraised her with eyes as dark and shiny as the black prayer beads he was rolling between his fingers. She stared defiantly back at him before realizing she should probably avert her eyes if she wanted to avoid trouble, at least while they were out in public.

  She slanted her eyes toward the ground as the carpet dealer selected a large key from his chain and slotted it into the wrought-iron gate that closed off a dark and narrow passage that ran between the bakery and the carpet shop. He creaked the heavy black gate open, motioned for her and Rafiq to enter. Paige hesitated, unsure of what to do with the camel.

  “Bring him,” said Rafiq stepping through the gateway ahead of her.

  She swallowed a spike of irritation. This was his camel, not hers. But she said nothing as she led the protesting beast through the gate.

  She followed the two men down the alley. It was surprisingly cool inside the thick whitewashed stone walls. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Paige could make out a large courtyard up ahead. A stable ran along the far end, and there was a pile of fresh hay in the middle. They entered the courtyard and a young boy immediately ran forward to take the camel from her. She handed it over with relief.

  Rafiq and the dealer had moved over to a secluded corner and were conversing in the local dialect in tones too low for her to pick up. They both glanced up at her—obviously discussing her. And this time she declined to look away, refusing to be treated like some second-rate citizen not worthy of an introduction or inclusion in their conversation. It was then that she noticed Rafiq, while still keeping his Tuareg-style turban wound over his mouth, had let the cloth drop just enough to expose the tattoo on his cheekbone. Paige’s heart quickened.

  She flicked her eyes over the carpet dealer, trying to gauge his reaction to the tattoo. To her surprise, she saw that he too sported a sign of the Silent Revolution. At the open neck of his robe was a leather thong and on it dangled a tiny gold scimitar—the stylized symbol of the scimitar the true king had used to slice the neck of his older brother Sadiq before fleeing the country, never to return.

  Paige frowned. So the Silent Revolution wasn’t so silent here in Na’jif. This had to be some kind of safe house, a nerve center of the underground struggle. But if Rafiq was happy to show his tattoo, why was he still hiding the rest of his face?

  The dealer said something and Rafiq nodded. Then he strode over to her, took her hand in his, possessively, affectionately. This startled Paige. So did the warm, electrical sensation of his skin against hers. He drew her closer to himself, his eyes warning her not to resist.

  He must have told the dealer they were a couple. And she hadn’t even thought of resisting. The sense of contact, affection, even if fake, was actually welcome in this strange and hostile environment. What in heavens was wrong with her? Stockholm Syndrome, that’s what it was called. She was bonding with her captor—her lifeline. She tried to convince herself that her reactions were perfectly understandable.

  Rafiq led her out of the courtyard, through a narrow arch-covered walkway and up a set of twisting stone stairs. At the top he unlocked a heavy wood door, opening it out onto the domed entrance area of an exotic rooftop apartment.

  He ushered her in, and locked the door behind them. Paige watched him pocket the key in his tunic. She noted the door was heavily reinforced with ironwork. Sun streamed through the stained glass dome above them, dappling them with oranges and reds and greens.

  To the left was a tiled passage leading to what looked like the living quarters. Rafiq motioned for her to move to the right and out onto a rooftop courtyard.

  Paige caught her breath as she stepped into the blinding sunshine.

  The view of the ancient city that stretched below the courtyard parapets was breathtaking. Minarets and mosques gleamed gold in the sun, and she could make out the marketplace in the distance, a wide square area that teemed with shimmering movement and color. “What is this place?” she whispered in awe.

  “Belongs to a Na’jif merchant. He’s away on business and I’m renting it for the week.”

  She turned full circle, taking it all in. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine growing in earthenware pots and trailing up ornate trellises. A small fountain splashed into a mosaic birdbath, and under an area covered with a canvas awning sat furniture upholstered with rich brocades.

  Then she saw the Halliburton case.

  It rested on an ornately carved dark wood desk. Next to it was what looked like sophisticated communications equipment—a rare and very dangerous sight in a country where even the possession of a phone was illegal. She glanced at Rafiq. He was watching her intently, an inscrutable look in his dark eyes.

  “What is that stuff?”

  “My equipment.” He pointed. “That’s a satellite transmitter over there. Computer is in the case.”

  “Is that what you were doing at Nexus? Installing a wireless uplink for download?”

  He nodded. “We plan to capture the entire system, relay the information back to the São Diogo base. Once the download is complete, we move out of Hamn. We’ve set up a Level 4 lab on the island, and we have a team of top scientists on standby to interpret the information. It would help, Paige, if you told us up front where Nexus and BioMed may have stockpiled vaccines.”

  Horror filled her. She knew nothing about vaccine stockpiles. She glanced at him, then back at the equipment. “You…you never intended to kidnap me, did you?”

  “No.” He twisted his turban off as he spoke. “Didn’t expect anyone to be in the lab at that hour.”

  “So I was just a loose end?”

  “Correct.�
�� He tossed his turban over the back of a chair, began to untie the belts at his waist. “Couldn’t leave you there. And couldn’t kill you—you’re a key player.”

  “Would you have…killed me otherwise?”

  He didn’t respond. He lifted the black tunic over his head, tossed it onto the chair with his turban, and raked his fingers loosely through his dark hair. It was so black it almost had a blue gleam to it, and it fell to his shoulders in loose waves. He was wearing a white T-shirt that showed every rippling muscle of his rock-hard frame and offset the duskiness of his skin.

  She lowered her eyes nervously, watching his hands as he resecured his dagger to his waist. She noted he also sported a handgun in a leather holster at his hips. That was something he wouldn’t have wanted the Land Command to find, either. She looked up at his face, at his tattoo.

  This man was a walking affront to the sultan.

  And he was capable of killing her.

  If he had complete access to the Nexus computers and a team of scientists to interpret the data, he would soon see that she was completely useless to him, that she had nothing to do with weaponizing the pathogen, that she had no knowledge of any antidote stockpiles.

  With a sinking feeling, Paige realized she would then probably be completely dispensable. The only reason she was alive right now was because he thought she might know something.

  She had to pretend she did if she wanted a bargaining tool, if she wanted to get out of Hamn alive. Otherwise she had nothing. And he had no reason to keep her.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to gather her fear. “And the carpet dealer?” she asked softly. “Who is he?”

  “Landlord,” he said as he strode over to the desk, flipped open the Halliburton case. “We stay here until the Nexus computer system is uplinked and the download complete.” He pulled out an aerial and began to link wires.

  Paige just stared.

  “This will take a while,” he said without looking at her. “Bathroom and bedrooms are back through the entrance hall and to the left. I’ve ordered food.”