“I thought you had everyone under constant watch. How did he and Ari slip past you?”
“We gave you maximum latitude to find the engraving. We don’t have limitless resources, so most of our surveillance had to be focused on you. We knew Ari Zakar flew solo back to London and we lost track of Tomas.”
“You people are fools.”
Ward moved surprisingly fast for a heavy man. His backhand whipped my head around.
The room wavered. My brain felt like it had been shaken loose from my skull. I had to wait until the ringing in my ears faded before I could hear what he had to say next.
“Now, we have some business to finish. Tell me where Tomas took the engraving.”
“Not until I’m released with Laurel.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. They herded me back to the elevator. We dropped to the basement. He and Eris marched me down a hallway and stopped when they reached the doorway to a small room. “Up to now we’ve been playing along with your puzzles. We had no intention of harming you, at least not irrevocably. You had your chance. That phase is done.”
They threw me inside. The room had a tiled floor and walls, no window, similar to the room in the video of Laurel. A weak light came from a fixture high up on the wall in one corner. The only feature giving the place any distinction was a niche cut into the back wall, arched at the top, about eight feet at its summit and four feet wide. It looked tailor-made to contain a life-sized sculpture. Inside it stood Shim, massive and silent. My own personal wrecking ball.
The door slammed shut with a clang of metal against concrete. I backed up to the wall farthest away from the Cyclops. He didn’t move a muscle. He just stared. The room was completely silent except for the jackhammering of my own pulse. I had no idea how long we stood like that, but we stayed in those positions, locked into a stalemate like the last two pieces on a chessboard.
They’d taken my phone and wallet, and with no watch or window to track the fading sunlight I quickly lost all sense of time. A few hours could have passed or the better part of the day. I focused on the tile floor and counted the squares, hoping to stem the messages of fright pummeling my mind. I noticed it was clean, almost too clean for a basement floor, and it smelled of bleach. I could see faint stains in the grout between the tiles.
At one point, my mind tricked me into thinking the brute really was made of stone. Shim was able to hold himself completely motionless. When not called upon to act, his mind simply shut down as if he were some giant windup toy. His one good eye stared unblinkingly straight at me like the homicidal gaze of a giant prehistoric bird of prey. I’d find myself dropping off, starting to slide down the wall I was propped against, when a surge of adrenalin would jolt me awake and I’d catch sight of Shim, who remained static, never uttering a sound.
I wondered what he’d been like before the explosion in his lab. A young genius anxious to make his mark on the world. Perhaps not even a bad man. He’d retained something of an emotional life. I saw that in his fierce attachment to Ward and Eris.
Every now and then I’d hear muffled sounds outside. Footsteps echoing down the corridor, two men’s voices in conversation, someone clearing his throat. Eerie, to hear those sounds of normalcy, imprisoned in this cell. What could be gained by prolonging my misery? Was this some kind of breaking-in exercise before they bled out every last drop of information they thought I had?
I heard the lock turning. Shim reached me in one giant step, forcing me against the wall, pinning my arms back. My shoulder screamed and my eyes teared up. I tried to prepare myself mentally for the torture I knew was coming. I was young and in reasonably decent physical shape. That would give them a fair amount of time before I broke down for good.
The door banged against the wall as Jacob Ward entered. “Let’s get started. You’ve had some time to think about your situation, so tell me where Tomas has gone.”
“I want to see Laurel first.”
“I thought we’d already dealt with that.”
“Not to my liking.”
A disabling pain hit my arm when Shim jerked it up. A gesture from Ward told him to ease off. “I’m willing to show some good faith,” he said. He motioned to Shim. The two of them led me out of the room and along a basement corridor to a similar room, but one with a cheap-looking cot and single chair.
Laurel lay on the cot. Eris rose from the chair beside the cot when I walked into the room.
I rushed over to Laurel, who lay face down, not moving.
“It’s John, Laurel.”
She stirred and rolled onto her side. I put my arm around her and helped her sit up, or rather, she slouched against my side, my body propping her up. Her eyes looked hazy; she blinked and peered at me as though she didn’t believe I was really there. I took her hand. It felt cold and sweaty. “Is it really you?” she said. “How did you get here?”
“They brought me here. I refused to talk to them unless I’d seen you first.”
She pulled away. “Don’t touch me.”
I remembered too late that her hands had been tied. “Your wrists must still be so sore.”
When she faced me I could see how angry she was. “What did you think seeing me would accomplish? You’ve taken everything away from me now. At least believing you were still out there gave me some hope. I wish I’d never opened the door to you that first time when you came, full of sympathy. So solicitous. Comforting me about Hal. Swearing you’d protect me. I can’t even stand to look at you.”
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she would have probably been killed by Eris had it not been for my efforts, but she was in no frame of mind to hear this. Besides, hadn’t I already berated myself for bringing bad luck to everyone I cared about?
I stood up and tried to think of a last word to give her some reassurance. “Try to keep up your strength, Laurie. I’ll find a way to get us out. All they want is the engraving.” I didn’t want to frighten her even more by telling her Tomas had made sure we’d never get it back.
A shudder spread through her body. She had one more bitter remark left for me. “Don’t fool yourself. We’ll never see each other again. That’s some kind of blessing, anyway.”
“She needs medical attention,” I said to Eris. “You have to release her.”
“Doctors are in short supply around here,” Eris shot back. “Time to go.”
Ward and the jester were waiting for us outside Laurel’s makeshift prison cell. “So, your part of the bargain is due now. Where is Tomas?”
I wasn’t about to give in that easily. “Tell me something first.
It was Eris who picked Laurel up, right? I assume Laurel was drugged?”
Ward nodded.
“So she probably hasn’t any memory of where this place is.”
“Yes,” Ward replied.
I was steaming, but I tried to keep a lid on it for Laurel’s sake. “And my guess is, she doesn’t know about you. Eris is probably the only person she’s seen.”
Eris let out an annoyed huff. “Forget it, Madison. We can see where you’re going with this.”
“We’re not letting her go.” Ward said this in such a matter-of-fact tone he may as well have been ordering up pizza. “At least not now. But I understand your thinking and you’re right, she’ll have next to nothing for the police to go on when we do release her. That should give you some encouragement. So you have a heaven-or-hell choice. It’s good to keep things simple. Cooperate with us and she’ll be free; don’t and she’ll end up dead.”
I had to admit my arsenal was empty. My only option was to wait for a new opportunity to open up. “He’s in Baghdad—I’ve got the address.” I felt in my pocket for the crinkled hotel memo on which I’d written the address I’d taken from Tomas’s room and handed it to Ward. He looked at it and passed it immediately to Eris. “Check this out,” he said.
Once Ward was certain I’d told all I knew, they took me back to Shim. An hour or so later, Ward and Eris returned and hurried me back
along the corridor, the jester pressing my head down so I could see only Ward’s broad back, the muscles making his black suit jacket ripple as we followed in his tracks. “Where are we going now?” I asked him.
“To Babylon,” he said. “Lucky you.”
Twenty-seven
Thursday, August 7, 2003, 10:30 P.M.
We drove to an airfield in what I guessed was New Jersey. Laurel remained captive in New York to ensure my cooperation. I could smell the tang of gasoline and glimpse pavement glistening after the rainfall. We’d stopped beside a small jet. Our destination was Baghdad, not the actual site of old Babylon. But Ward didn’t need me to locate the address I’d given him. Why go to the trouble of sending me to a country I was totally unfamiliar with in the midst of a war? I got absolutely nowhere with Ward when I lobbed questions at him about why he was taking me there. The fact that they’d held off torturing me implied they needed my cooperation for some future plan. What was it?
They hustled me into the rear of a Learjet 35. Ironic that I’d flown in a similar plane a couple of months ago to babysit an Italian ceramic one of my clients had purchased. In this one the back of the cabin was closed off with drapery and some seats had been removed. The windows were painted black. It looked as if I wasn’t the first person forced to travel in this plane against his will.
The jester snapped a metal cuff onto my right wrist, fastening it to a handle jutting out from the wall. My body ached nonstop. I sagged against the wall. The man buckled himself in. He wore a suit now, but it did nothing to improve on his lank black hair and deadly pale skin. He had the strangest eyes—almost yellow.
I could see the red tattoo on his wrist, but his sleeve hid almost half of it and I couldn’t tell what sign it was meant to be. I assumed Eris and Shim were up front with Ward. I mentally ticked them off: Venus, Mars, Jupiter. I’d concluded that Ward was Jupiter, the boss; Eris, Venus; and Shim, Mars. Laurel said that Hal was Saturn. By default, then, the jester must be Mercury. A very unlikely messenger of the gods.
Since I was going to be spending more than a day with this man, I decided to try lowering the threshold of hostility. “Which one are you?” I asked.
He misunderstood me and grunted, “Lazarus.”
“Is that your real name?”
“It is now.”
“How did you come by it?”
“Doctors brought me back from the dead. Sometime I’ll give you a description so you’ll know what to look forward to.”
What a shitface.
“Where?”
“Chechnya.”
“Why would you be involved there?”
“You don’t know anything, do you? We’re in all those holes.
You flit around with your lattes and martinis selling your highbrow art and you know nothing about the real world.”
“You caused that accident in front of the café, didn’t you?”
“Ward said to make you afraid, not kill you.”
“Someone got badly injured. Doesn’t that even bother you?”
“You said it yourself—it was an accident. I was just trying to knock out the truck’s tire. Anyway, we’re not supposed to be talking.”
I was in here with him for the long haul. With one stopover the trip on a commercial jet would take almost a day. This smaller plane would need more refueling stops and at a lower speed the flight would take longer. Before, I’d faced a threat only from a specific group of people. In Iraq the danger would increase tenfold. There were no safe places in Baghdad.
Lazarus reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a knife. It had a cruel-looking, fat serrated blade. He played around with it, pretending to aim it at me and throw. When he tired of his stupid game he gave me a couple of cans of warm Dr Pepper, a soggy corned beef sandwich, and an empty plastic bottle to piss in. I was expected to manage all this with my free left hand.
I pictured the others: Ari dining in an upscale London restaurant; Tomas in Iraq, ensconced in some comfortable hideaway; the soothsayer, Diane Chen, humming along with the music, kibitzing with her customers. Her predictions were so accurate, she should go into the fortune-telling business. I felt the weight of Ari’s talisman on my chest. Even the sun god had failed me.
I slept fitfully and finally woke up completely disoriented and woozy. I knew we’d been in the air for many hours and had a vague memory of landing and taking off again at some point—that was all. My drink must have been spiked with a sedative.
The aircraft began its stomach-heaving drops. I listened to the thud of the landing gear engaging and soon after felt the contact with terra firma and heard the whine of the jets reversing. While we taxied to our destination, Lazarus undid my shackles. When I unwound my legs and tried to stand I almost fell. My joints protested like those of an eighty-year-old man. He opened the curtains. “Go up front. Ward’s there.”
Ward waved me over when he saw me and indicated a seat across the table from him. Lazarus posted himself behind me. No one else was in the cabin. I tried to get a glimpse out the windows but could see only a blank whitish wall and concluded we must be in some kind of hangar. Ward dug in his pocket and took out a wallet and a dark blue passport, the Great Seal of the United States on its cover.
He dropped it on my lap. “There are credit cards and ID in the wallet too.”
I opened the passport and was shocked to see that it was my own. “Where did you get this?”
“Eris took it when you two had that little chat in your condo. At the time we thought it might be preventative, to make it harder for you to leave the country.”
“I’m going in under my own name?”
“Can’t take any chances with customs. Authorities are strict around here.”
I could hardly believe what he’d said. Taking me through customs would be a gift to me, an easy opportunity to break away from them.
As if reading my thoughts, Ward picked up a phone from the table in front of us. It was a large, clunky-looking piece, like a TV remote with an antenna.
Ward noted me looking at it and held it up. “A sat phone. Not too many viable cell towers where we’re going.” He punched in some numbers, waited for a minute or so, and greeted the voice on the other end. “Put her on now,” he said and held out the phone. “Someone wants to say hi to you.”
I snatched the phone from his hand and put it up to my ear. “John Madison here.” I waited but got no answer, only the sound of static across the airwaves. I held the phone out for Ward. “Nothing on the other end. Is this another one of your games?”
Ward grabbed it and almost shouted into it. “Talk to him as you were instructed to do or it will get even worse for you.”
Laurel had to be on the other end. It was a relief to know she still had the will to resist them.
She spoke to me when I took the phone back. “They’re making me talk to you. It’s not my idea.”
“It’s still good to hear you,” I said.
“Your voice is kind of funny. Like there’s a delay between when you say the words and I hear them.”
She’d freak out if she knew how far away I was. “I’m in a very large room on the top floor of the building. It’s cavernous. That must be causing an echo. You holding up okay?”
“Are you serious? Sure, I’m fine. I spend every minute wondering how they’re going to do it. Maybe they’ll do something to make it look like an accident.” Her voice broke off at that point.
“Laurel, if they were going to get rid of us, it would have happened by now. Try to think that way instead.”
I heard her laugh, but it was the kind of response that came from a deep gulf of disbelief and despair.
Ward held up his pudgy hand, indicating he wanted me to stop talking. I ignored him. “It won’t be long now, Laurie. They’re close to getting what they want. And I still have information to trade.”
I didn’t hear her reply because Lazarus yanked the phone out of my hand and gave it back to Ward, who shut it off and put it into the briefc
ase at his feet. He stood up. “You still have information to trade, do you? I’d like to hear it.”
“I said that to comfort her.”
“For once, I think I believe you. Anything happens in customs or anywhere in the airport and her life is gone. Yours too, of course. Eris has kept her drug supply with her.”
“You’re trying to suggest she’d inject me with heroin in the middle of an airport?”
“She has lots of other effective chemicals. You know what a taipan is?”
“A snake.”
“The deadliest land-based snake in the world. Its venom will shut down your respiratory system in less than a minute. Eris has a supply of it, along with a very effective delivery system.” He brushed off his jacket and fiddled with his tie. “Now, the reason for our visit here. We’re headed to a place called Afyon. Heard of it?”
“No.”
“It’s a famous carpet-weaving town. We’re on a business trip to buy some rare rugs. You can talk knowledgeably about that if you’re asked, can’t you?”
“You’re crazy. This is the middle of a war zone and you’re giving them some cocked-up story about buying carpets?”
“Let me be the judge of that.” Ward shut down any further conversation by walking to the exit. I followed with Lazarus stalking behind.
There was no sign of Shim or the pilots. We’d entered a hangar as I’d suspected and only Eris was waiting for us. She appeared wan and exhausted. Her usually perfect platinum hair was a mess; puffy dark circles ringed her eyes. Had Ward reamed her out for her mistakes? Or perhaps she had a conscience after all. Maybe it cost her something to do harm to other people.
A black Mercedes sedan was parked outside the hangar. But that wasn’t what brought me to a halt. In the mid-distance stood a gleaming contemporary building, international aircraft flanked like the spokes of a wheel around its exterior. Not an army vehicle in sight. Before Eris or Lazarus could lay a hand on me, I grabbed Ward’s shoulder and forcibly turned him around to face me. “This obviously isn’t Baghdad. Where are we?”
The Witch of Babylon Page 23