The Sanctuary

by Raymond Khoury

  Corben and Mia flew down the stairs and rocketed out of the lobby and onto the sidewalk. Up the street was Corben’s Jeep and the hotel. Beyond the hotel was the killers’ parked Mercedes. Corben didn’t think he and Mia would have time to climb into the car and drive off before the killers hit the street, but he had a good chance of reaching his weapons cache, which would make a serious difference. With Mia at his side, he started to rush towards the Jeep, then spotted a man with the same hard expression striding towards them. The man’s hand was already reaching for the bulge under his jacket. The killers had left a fourth man guarding their car.

  Mia had noticed him too. “Jim,” she cautioned.

  Corben darted a glance down the street, mapping out their options. “This way.” He took her hand and they headed in the opposite direction, down the street, away from the hotel and the Jeep and its locked weapons cabinet.

  They hurtled down the narrow sidewalk, jostling through startled pedestrians who called out angrily after them. Mia saw Corben peering over his shoulder and followed his gaze. She caught a glimpse of the android and another killer as they emerged from Evelyn’s building and joined one other man. All three were now rushing down the street after them. Her eyes rocketed wide as she spotted the android looking right at her. His fierce glare hit her like a punch to the gut.

  He recognized her from last night. She was sure of it.

  She felt a wobble in her legs at the realization, but mustered whatever willpower she had left and kept moving.

  Corben was reasonably familiar with the area, and he knew their options were limited. The street was lined with stores and apartment-building entrances, neither of which would provide any cover. He knew the three killers wouldn’t back off, nor would they have any problem with gunning him down and grabbing Mia in plain sight. He also knew he had two or three rounds left in the handgun, which wouldn’t go a long way against stopping them. His eyes scanned the gaps and doorways for a miracle, and he spotted a dip in the sidewalk that announced an entrance ramp. A car emerged from the cavernous mouth of the underground garage, turned, and drove up the street, past them.

  “In there,” he shouted to Mia as he took her hand and led her in.

  They hastened down the curving ramp, their shoes slapping hard against the bare concrete surface and echoing like thunderclaps against the smooth walls around them.

  They reached the main parking area, which was dotted with a forest of columns. Cars were tucked into the narrow bays between them. There was no sign of any attendant around, no stash of keys to raid. Corben scowled. They were boxed in.

  The neon lights clicked off, plunging the underground garage into darkness. Corben turned to Mia, pointing at the other end of the space. “Go down to that far corner and hide under a car. Don’t make any noise, no matter what you hear.”

  She caught her breath. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll hold them off here. They’ll be exposed coming down the ramp, and if I can get one of them, I think the others will back off. Now go.”

  He watched her scamper off into the dark recesses of the garage, then slipped between the cars and positioned himself behind a big sedan that was directly facing the ramp. He pulled out the automatic and cradled it in both hands and aimed it at the entrance, which was backlit from the street above. He silently hoped he hadn’t made a mistake in his mental count of spent rounds, and if he had, he hoped it was in his favor. His heart was still trying to pound its way out of his chest. He took in several deep breaths through his nose, blocking out the stench of oil and grease around him, calming himself, preparing himself for the shot.

  He heard a clatter of footsteps hurtling onto the echoey ramp and suddenly dying out. The garage was bathed in silence. He knew the killers were now stealing down towards them. He flexed his fingers, then clamped them back onto the gun’s handle as he lowered himself into position.

  A long, narrow shadow scuttled down the wall of the ramp, followed by two other dark, ghostly forms that merged into it. From the angle of the shadows on the wall, Corben knew the killers were crouched low. His entire body went rigid as he adjusted his aim and brought his finger back from the trigger guard and prepared to fire. Every shot had to count, and even then, the odds were stacked against him.

  His pulse throbbing in his ears, he watched as the distorted shadow glided down the ramp wall and suddenly stopped. He ratcheted down his grip on the gun by a touch then retightened it, keeping the feel in his fingers on edge. He tried to edit out the sounds drifting down from the street and focus on any noise that would clue him into the killers’ progress, but there wasn’t any. He imagined what they would do, which depended on how desperate they were. Rushing in would probably lead to their overwhelming him, but they’d take a hit or two. Unless the gun he’d appropriated wasn’t fully loaded to begin with, which wasn’t even worth contemplating. He pushed the doubts away and concentrated on the shadow.

  It didn’t move. It just stayed there, ominous, stalking him, taunting him.

  Then he heard a sudden rush of footsteps and tensed up, his eyes scanning the wide opening like radars, his gun darting left and right across the narrow kill zone—a split second of adrenaline overload before he saw the shadow racing up, not down, the wall. The killers were retreating, and they were doing it in a rush. He kept his position, on high alert in case they were trying to draw him out, then he heard the distant wail of a siren getting closer.

  The backup. They’d made it.

  He bolted out from behind the car and charged up the ramp. He made it to the street in time to see the killers’ Merc pulling out of its parking space and tearing off into the distance. From behind him, two Fuhud cars came racing down and pulled up outside the Commodore. Cops armed with M16s poured out of the vehicles and secured the street while three officers charged up the steps and disappeared into the hotel.

  Corben exhaled deeply, tucked away his gun, and headed back down the ramp to inform Mia that they were safe.

  For now.

  Chapter 23

  M ia moved through her hotel room in a daze. Her mind was under siege, the twin barbarians of fear and fatigue at the gates. She was determined to keep them at bay a little longer. She needed to pack up and get the hell out of here. The hotel was definitely no longer safe.

  She wasn’t sure anywhere else was, for that matter. These men she’d crossed twice now in less than twenty-four hours, these psychos—they didn’t seem to have a problem finding the people they were after, nor did they seem to suffer from stage fright. They showed up brazenly, in plain sight, and went about their dirty deeds as if they had an all-access pass to the city. And she’d messed up their plans. Twice.

  Not something she wanted to dwell on right now.

  She tried to calm her nerves and focus on the task at hand. Corben had told her to just grab the essentials, but she didn’t have that much to pack anyway—the bulk of her stuff was still waiting to be shipped over once she’d felt more at ease in the city and settled into an apartment. He’d given her fifteen minutes to get it done, and that was twenty minutes ago.

  She was cramming her laptop and some paperwork into a backpack when Corben returned. He was carrying a laptop and a big, leather personal organizer, both of which she knew were her mother’s and thought she remembered spotting on her desk.

  “You all set?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He led her out. She gave the room a final parting look and followed him as they made their way down to the lobby and exited the hotel.

  Cops and Fuhud officers were all over the street. Cars were slithering through the makeshift roadblock, the cops waving them on after a perfunctory glance. Curious locals were milling about in front of shops and on their balconies, taking in the disruption and—a local tradition, this—trading murky conspiracy theories that the shooting was already generating.

  As they walked to Corben’s Jeep, Mia slid an uneasy glance towards the entrance to Evelyn’s building. She saw sev
eral officers gruffly keeping people at bay as some paramedics brought out a stretcher. The dead shooter’s body—she assumed it was that—was covered with a tattered old blanket that would have given Gil Grissom a heart attack. Forensics were clearly not a major priority right now.

  She climbed into the passenger seat of Corben’s car and watched as he exchanged some words with a couple of the hard-faced men in civilian gear before sliding into his seat. She noticed them get into a dusty black Range Rover parked nearby. As the one closest to her got into the car, his jacket swung open and she spotted a holstered handgun under it.

  Corben slammed the car into gear, and the big Jeep pulled out and raced down the street. Mia scanned the surroundings warily and saw that the Range Rover was close behind. It followed them down the one-way street for two blocks. She noticed Corben check his rearview mirror, and she looked back to see the Range Rover slow down abruptly and stop at a slight angle, blocking off the street behind them. Corben gave a small, satisfied nod and just drove on. An effective and simple way, she guessed, to make sure no one was following them.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “My place,” he answered flatly. “Until we know what we’re dealing with here, I don’t trust any of the hotels.”

  The plan threw her. “You’re sure your place is safe?”

  There was no hesitation in his voice. “Put it this way. It’s off the radar. And for those who have it on their radar, it’s off-limits and they know it.”

  “‘Off-limits’?”

  He thought for a moment before answering. “The only people who might know what I really do are other intelligence agents, and there are understandings in place, between governments. Red lines. Clearly defined. You don’t just cross them without risking serious repercussions. The order would have to come from pretty high up, and that’s not what this is about.” He paused, then added, “You’ll be safe there. Right now, this isn’t about you. They were after your mom, they wanted to check out her apartment. They didn’t necessarily see you clearly enough to realize you were also at the scene of the kidnapping, but we have to play it safe. If they have informants inside the police force, which they probably do, they’ll make the connection. Let me get you out of harm’s way while I check things out. You need to get some rest anyway. I’ll go to my office and make some calls, talk to our people. Then we’ll figure out the next step.”

  Mia was too punch-drunk and weary to question his judgment any further. She just nodded to herself and stared ahead.

  She remained silent for the rest of the drive. He clearly had a lot on his mind, and she wasn’t ready to discuss things. Not here, not now. Not in her present state of mind. She needed to catch her breath, allow the flood of adrenaline from the last hours to drain, and clear her mind. Then she’d want to talk about things. And that would take time.

  FAROUK WAITED PATIENTLY in the shadows outside Post Hall. Before him, students and staff ambled in both directions along the narrow drive that fronted the Ottoman-era stone building where the university’s Archaeology Department was housed.

  He kept watch over the entrance, leaning against one of a few parked cars that were lucky enough to have campus passes, sheltered under a dark canopy of thick cypress trees. Scattered cigarette butts littered the ground by his feet. He’d been there for hours, and the cavernous growls from his stomach were getting more frequent.

  He’d seen the reports of Evelyn’s kidnapping in the morning papers and had approached the building with caution. To his surprise, it hadn’t seemed any different to how it was on his earlier visit, the day before, when he’d been looking for Evelyn. He remembered that Evelyn’s name wasn’t mentioned in the papers, which explained the lack of reporters or camera crews, but not the absence of additional security—at least, there was none that he could see. Although he’d watched the two Fuhud detectives enter the building and then leave perhaps an hour later, he still didn’t feel comfortable walking into the building, as he had done the previous day, to find the assistant professor. He preferred to wait outside where he could keep an eye on the approaches and avoid any more nasty surprises.

  His patience finally paid off when Ramez, Evelyn’s elfin colleague, made his appearance around lunchtime.

  Farouk scanned the lane in both directions. He couldn’t see anything that gave him cause for alarm. With his heartbeat ringing in his ears, he emerged from his cover and walked towards him.

  LESS THAN FOUR BLOCKS AWAY, Omar snapped his cell phone shut and looked out the navy E-class Merc’s windshield. The traffic on Rue Bliss was, surprisingly, flowing decently. The street, still furrowed by the old tramway rails, was usually a nightmare to navigate. It was a couple of miles long and bordered the whole length of the university. The campus wall ran along one sidewalk, only bisected by a couple of entrance gates. The other sidewalk was lined with hugely popular cafés, pastry shops, and ice cream parlors. Customers’ cars were double-and triple-parked with breathtaking insouciance—standard practice in Beirut—causing jams and the occasional brawl with metronomic reliability.

  The chaos, in this case, was useful. It provided good cover for a casual chat. Which was why Omar was there.

  He’d been denied free access to the old woman’s apartment. He’d lost a man in the chaos that followed. Worst of all, the hakeem wasn’t happy.

  He knew he had to make amends.

  Omar glanced into his side mirror. Several cops were standing by the entrance of the Hobeish police station.

  He spotted his contact exiting the building.

  The man looked down the street, in his direction, and saw the Merc. Omar flicked him a discreet, barely noticeable wave out the window. The ferret caught it, nodded casually to his colleagues as he walked past them, and made his way over to the parked car.

  MIA TOOK IN her new accommodations with a heavy heart. She finished off the shawarma lamb sandwich they’d hastily picked up on their way to the apartment and crossed to the kitchen with a sleepwalker’s heavy step, still coming to terms with the events that had brought her here.

  The apartment had two bedrooms, one more than Corben, who was single and lived alone, needed, but then smaller apartments were hard to find in Beirut, and rents were relatively cheap. He’d given her a quick tour—kitchen, bathroom, guest bedroom, clean towels—before leaving her here and heading out to the embassy. He’d said he’d be back in a few hours.

  She felt strange being here. Staying with a man she hardly knew. Scratch that. A man she didn’t know at all. Normally—assuming, that is, that she was there because she was kind of seeing the guy, or interested in him in some way—she would have killed time by poking around, checking out the books on his shelves, the CDs by his stereo, the magazines on his coffee table. Old-world moves, for those of us without iPods or pages on Facebook that told you everything you needed to know and dispensed with the need for physical snooping. She might even have sneaked a peek inside the wardrobes in his bedroom, the side table by his bed, or the cabinet in his bathroom. It was shameful, but somehow expected. Basic human curiosity. You did it to get an idea about what made the other person tick. If you were lucky, it put a smile on your face and drew you closer to that person. On less fortunate occasions, it creeped you out and sent you running for the hills.

  This wasn’t either.

  She didn’t feel the urge to explore, even though the guy was a CIA agent. Imagine the possibilities. An Aladdin’s cave of gadgets and intrigue was beckoning from the recesses of her imagination, but she wasn’t listening. She hardly gave his apartment a cursory glance, and what she saw barely registered. Not that there was much to register. It was sparsely furnished, and the little there was had that distinctly single-male, dark-leather-and-chrome look. Everything in it seemed to be there for a reason. Nothing was superfluous or added for effect. It wasn’t necessarily a reflection of any blandness on his part. She guessed that guys like Corben, guys who did what he did, traveled and lived light. She didn’t think he kept mementos
of favorite regime changes on his shelves, or photo albums of infiltrations and informants on the coffee table.

  She threw the sandwich wrapper in the bin, washed her hands, and leaned back against the counter. The hunger was satiated, but she still felt awful. She was coming off her adrenaline high, and the exhaustion was kicking in big-time. She felt a wobble in her legs and closed her eyes for a moment to push it back. She filled herself a big glass of water, guzzled it down, and made it to the living room, where she curled up on the sofa.

  Within seconds, her body had shut down without a fight, sending her crashing into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 24

  K eeping an embassy in Beirut had been a major headache for the State Department for over thirty years. Although the pain had abated of late, anyone who worked there knew it was only a temporary respite.

  The old building on the busy corniche, overlooking the Mediterranean, was due to be replaced in the mid-1970s by a purpose-built facility. The civil war that began in 1975 put an end to that plan. Ambassador Francis E. Meloy was kidnapped while being driven across the city’s Green Line and assassinated in 1976, and by the time the fighting took the first of many breathers a year later, the city had been carved up by rival factions and the area the new embassy was being built in was no longer considered safe for Americans. The project was shelved, its abandoned concrete shell still standing to this day.

  The embassy staff soldiered on in the old building until a suicide car bomb—the first major use of the terror weapon, and a herald of many further devastating attacks against U.S. interests around the world—ripped its front half right off in April of 1983. Forty-nine embassy staff were killed, including eight CIA agents, one of whom was the agency’s Near East director, Robert Ames. Their deaths effectively wiped out the Agency’s capabilities in the country and paved the way for the string of high-profile kidnappings that followed. It took years to build up a presence there again, only for five of its agents—the team that had only recently started to delve through the mess that was Lebanon in the 1980s—to get blown out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 while on board Pan Am Flight 103.