In one smooth motion, he pushed down on her shoulder with a weight that threatened to crush her bones into the floor and injected the contents of the shot into the fleshy part of her arm.
She thrashed under his weight, but he just pushed harder. Seconds later, a warmth spread out from her arm to the rest of her body. Her mind raced through the possibilities—she was well versed in a number of drugs from her work with the capuchins, and none were appealing. The warmth in her body took on a weighty quality, as if her blood had turned to liquid lead. Her attacker’s hand still pinned her to the cold floor, but she realized with a sickening in her gut that she was losing the ability to move. She glanced at her outstretched arm and tried to lift it. The lead flowing through her blood pinned it down. She saw the tips of her fingers quiver.
The man released her and sat back on his knees. She waited for the inevitable tunnel vision that would narrow down to complete darkness as she slipped into unconsciousness from whatever sedative he’d injected into her. Whatever this creature had in mind for her, she took some comfort that at least she wouldn’t be aware of it.
But something was wrong.
The fluorescent bathroom fixture on the ceiling burned as bright as ever. The face leering at her exposed body stayed in focus. His chapped lips parted in a smile that revealed a gap between his front two teeth. He was enjoying her terror. Drops of blood rolled from his forehead and fell onto her cheek. She felt them crawl toward her mouth. She desperately wanted to wipe her face, but now she couldn’t even move her head.
With a fear deeper than she thought it was possible to feel, a single realization shot through her mind: I’m paralyzed!
CHAPTER 31
NEW HAVEN
“Professor Lightman?” a deep voice asked from the other end of Ethan’s cell phone.
“Allen Wolfe?” He collapsed into the worn leather sofa in his apartment’s living room. He’d been trying to contact the director of the Neurological Advancement Foundation for the past week. He was relieved but also surprised that the foundation’s director was calling him at ten o’clock at night.
“First, let me tell you how sorry I am for taking so long to get back to you. I’ve been traveling, and I just learned about Elijah’s death this morning.” He paused, his words catching in his throat. “As I’m sure Elijah told you, we’ve been friends since grad school. I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
Ethan tilted his head back on the sofa’s cushion. Wolfe sounded genuinely saddened. “Something strange is happening that I can’t control and don’t even understand.” He should probably sound more confident, but he was out of options. Despite his disturbing discovery in the library of the true nature of Wolfe and Elijah’s history together, he sensed that the director was the only one who would be able to help him.
“I spoke with Sam Houston earlier today,” Wolfe said. “He is quite concerned about your program, and he mentioned an investigation into certain financial improprieties.”
The words spilled out of Ethan as he explained his discovery about the money in his account. He’d spent most of the day on the phone with the bank and still had no explanation of who had authorized the transfer of the money from the project’s account into his. He laid everything on the table for the director. He had no choice but to gain his trust.
“I really don’t know how the transfer happened, but I swear to you I had nothing to do with it.”
Then a thought ran through his mind that he didn’t care to explore. Was Elijah responsible for the financial irregularities? Could his death have been related to money? He couldn’t believe his mentor would be involved with anything so crass, but what other explanation was there? But then he replayed in his mind again the events in the library.
“Ethan, I think we should meet and discuss these events in person.”
“Yes, I would appreciate that.” A sense of relief passed over him.
“I’m tied up for the next few days and can’t make it to New Haven. Would you mind flying to me?”
“Not at all.” He remembered that the foundation’s offices were in Dallas, and the idea of getting out of New Haven to someplace warm and sunny appealed to him, especially if it also provided the answers he desperately needed. “I can make reservations now.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll have my assistant arrange a flight for you and send a car to pick you up first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Son. Your work is truly visionary, and after this tragedy with Elijah, it’s the least I can do.”
Ethan stared out of the window from the backseat of the Lincoln Town Car and into the mist that was the early New Haven morning. The events of the past few days seemed surreal. He’d dedicated his career to helping people and to studying the human mind. So why did he feel as if someone was deliberately trying to ruin his life? He wanted to take some action to fix his predicament, just as he’d thrown himself into his research after Natalie’s death. The long hours had paid off then; the Logos worked. But now he was being handcuffed from doing anything.
Turning the cell phone over in his hand, he dared to allow a glimmer of hope to pass into his thoughts. At least he’d get some answers from Wolfe. He pushed away the voice in his head that cautioned that maybe he wouldn’t want to hear the truth. But he had to know. Then he would act.
The motion of the car turning right brought him out of his thoughts. The driver followed the signs into the New Haven airport, but instead of heading toward the departure terminal, he pulled down a smaller side street labeled with a green sign that read “FBO.”
Never been this way before, he thought.
He dialed Rachel’s number. He wanted to let her know about his call with Wolfe and his trip, but the call rolled straight to voicemail, just as it had last night. She and her roommates must have been out late. He needed to hear her voice, but if he was honest with himself, Houston’s off-handed reference to speaking with her had also disturbed him. Could Rachel be playing a role in the bizarre events of late? He shook his head. He didn’t think her involvement was any more plausible than Elijah’s. He knew that if he closed his eyes he would be able to smell her hair and feel the way her skin felt next to his. No. He had to stop that line of thinking. He looked up to see the car pull around the side of a metal hangar building and stop at a gate.
He leaned over the leather seat toward the driver, a Middle Eastern man dressed in a dark suit. “Excuse me, but where are we going?”
“To your plane, Sir.”
My plane?
The driver rolled down the window and punched a call button on the gate’s security keypad. “I have Professor Lightman for his flight.”
The chain-link gate rolled open and the car pulled through. They turned right, following a concrete road past three airplane hangars. When the driver approached the fourth, he slowed. The large rollup hangar door was open, revealing a sleek white jet. The car stopped a few feet from the metal staircase that led up to the plane’s open door.
Wolfe sent a private plane to fly me to Dallas?
His confusion morphed into anticipation. He’d never been on a private plane before. He’d seen them parked along the runway, but usually they were much smaller than this—narrow metal tubes, low to the ground, with three or four windows. This one was the size of the commuter plane he and Natalie had taken to Maine one summer, but with jet engines rather than turboprops. Eight windows punctuated the flawless white paint on the fuselage, and the wingtips angled upward at right angles.
He grabbed his overnight duffel from the seat next to him. He hadn’t asked Wolfe how many days he’d be in Dallas, so he’d packed for two. Without waiting for the driver, who was walking around the car, he opened his own door and hopped out. A figure appeared at the top of the stairs and waved him up.
“Welcome aboard our G-V EP, Professor.” The man wore a cracked brown leather bomber jacket with patches that had various military and flight insignia on them, a white shirt
and black tie, and gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses even though the morning was gray.
Ethan climbed the metal stairs, taking care not to slip on the aluminum treads, which were damp with the morning mist.
“Uh, hello.” He stuck out his hand. “You’re the pilot?”
“Captain Jason Hart.” The pilot’s handshake was firm and his smile warm.
“I wasn’t really expecting this. I thought I was flying commercial.”
“Dr. Wolfe wanted to make sure you arrived without delay. He’s asked me to take good care of you.” He ducked his head of short black hair and entered the plane. “Let me show you in.”
After stooping to step inside, Ethan’s eyes opened wide. Every inch of the cabin was covered in creamy leather or polished blond wood. To his left he caught a glimpse of the cockpit, where the copilot was checking over an array of multicolored digital displays that looked considerably more high-tech than the rows of switches and blinking lights he’d seen in commercial planes. He passed a bar/kitchenette whose wood surfaces beckoned him to reach out and feel the silkiness of the finish. The fixtures were all a shiny gold without any sign of a smudge or fingerprint.
“Sit wherever you like.” The captain motioned to the various seats, which ranged from plush single recliners to sofas that were arranged to look more like a living room than a plane. “The lavatory is the door to the left there. The other door in the back leads to the bedroom, but it’s being refurbished, so it’s locked.”
The plane has a bedroom!
He plopped down in a club chair whose supple leather seemed to caress his body. Although money had never much mattered to him, he realized that he could get used to traveling like this—no security to go through, no baggage claim, no parents with screaming kids.
The pilot bent over, pulled the stairs up, and swung the door closed. He called over his shoulder, “Once we’re airborne and settled into our flight plan, I’ll come back and check on you. We can go over the food options in the galley then.”
“I’ll be fine with just a water. How long’s the flight—a couple hours?”
The whine of the plane’s engines firing to life filled the cabin.
“Couple of hours?” The pilot chuckled. “The computer is showing twenty right now, but that depends how long we’re on the ground in Paris. The French aren’t the quickest at getting us refueled.”
Twenty hours! Paris!
He sat up straighter. “We’re not flying to Dallas?”
“Dr. Wolfe hasn’t been in Dallas for some time,” Hart laughed. “You’re going to Egypt.”
CHAPTER 32
EGYPTIAN AIRSPACE
“Professor Lightman, we’ll be landing in ten minutes,” the captain’s voice crackled over the speakers.
Ethan yawned and pushed himself upright on the leather sofa. As luxurious as this plane was, traveling halfway across the world was still exhausting. He dropped his head first to the right and then the left, stretching his neck. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his face. The day-old stubble scratched his palms. He imagined that the bedroom under renovation in the back had a shower in its lavatory. He stood and walked to the door to test the knob, but as the pilot had said, the door was locked.
The flight had been uneventful, but his mind still revolved over and over the question of why Wolfe was flying him to Egypt. His questions to the captain had resulted in a shrug and a quip that “I drive where I’m told.” He’d considered getting off the plane as soon as he found out where he was headed—but other than Rachel, what was there to keep him in New Haven? He had been relieved of his teaching duties, and the Logos project had been suspended. But now more than ever, the book Elijah had pointed him to was taking on an ominous importance.
He glanced at his watch, but then he realized that he had no idea what time zone he was in. He lifted the shades covering the two windows behind the sofa and blinked his eyes against the piercing light that filled the cabin. The orange glow from the sun warmed his face.
The plane banked to the right. His only trips out of the country had been backpacking in Europe before starting med school and a couple of spring break trips to the Bahamas. When he thought of Egypt, he imagined pyramids, sphinxes, and tombs. The view out of the window, however, was of an endless beige desert that stretched as far as he could see. As the plane continued to bank and then descend, a break in the desert came into view. Blue fingers stretched into the undulating sand. Soon the source of the fingers appeared beneath the wing: an enormous lake.
As they passed over the lake, he saw that the northern edge was defined by an immense concrete dam, beyond which a wide river disappeared into the horizon. The Nile. He recalled some details about the river from his high school geography class. For thousands of years, the annual flooding of the Nile had deposited minerals for miles along the edges of the river, creating a rich soil that supported the cradle of ancient civilization. In the 1960s, the Egyptian government, under the leadership of President Nasser, had decided that the damage caused by the annual flooding outweighed the benefits for a society that had now developed cities along the banks. They’d dammed the river and created Lake Nasser, thus allowing the government to regulate the river’s water flow.
After they passed over the lake, the topography returned to desert. The lush vegetation around the lake and the Nile transitioned to lifelessness as if a line had been drawn in the hot sand; life was permitted on one side, but on the other not even a single weed grew. They passed directly over a cluster of five or six warehouse-looking buildings that appeared abandoned. A dirt road led from the buildings back to the lake.
Minutes later, the plane touched down. When they taxied past the main terminal, the large white letters on the side of the small building announced Ethan’s destination: Aswan. Although his knowledge of Egyptian geography was limited, he remembered that Aswan, along with Luxor, was one of the great Egyptian tourist destinations along the Nile because of its many ancient ruins. But when he caught a view of the far end of the runway, he felt a twinge of apprehension. A row of fighter jets was parked in front of two large bunkers built into the sand dunes at the end of the concrete. The small commercial airport also served as a military base.
“Hope you had a comfortable flight, Professor,” Captain Hart said as he exited the cockpit and unlocked the cabin door. The copilot stayed seated, flipping switches and shutting down the engines.
A blast of dry heat rolled in as if the pilot had just opened an oven door.
“Do you know when you’ll be taking me back?” He adjusted the bag on his shoulder.
Hart shrugged. “We’ll hang around until Dr. Wolfe says we’re needed again.” He pointed to two black dots approaching through the wavy heat rising off of the concrete. “Your next ride is here.”
As he stepped onto the runway, the two black SUVs continued toward them until they pulled up to the plane. The driver from the first one exited, walked around the car, and opened the rear door for him. He was an American with short hair, sunglasses, and a dark suit that seemed out of place in the desert. After Ethan climbed into the backseat, he turned to wave to Captain Hart. A movement from the rear of the plane behind the smiling pilot caught his eye.
Did the window shade just open?
He squinted against the reflection of the sun on the fuselage, but before he could confirm the vision, his driver closed the car door. The windows of the SUV were blacked out. His pulse quickened. The backseat was luxurious, limousine-like, with a divider between it and the front, but he suddenly felt trapped.
He buckled his seatbelt. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the bedroom behind the locked door. Or were the sun and his jet-lagged mind just playing games with him?
CHAPTER 33
ASWAN, EGYPT
Twenty minutes later the SUV stopped. Where, Ethan had no idea. When the driver opened the door, a wave of dry heat hit clashed with the air-conditioned interior, just as it had when he’d exited the plane.
“Professor, if you would follow me.”
He stepped onto a sandy gravel drive beside the black-suited driver. They weren’t in the town of Aswan. His unease grew. They were in the middle of the desert, surrounded by a sea of sand and rock. Unlike the desert of Arizona, where he’d spent time visiting his aunt, there wasn’t a single bush or cactus to break up the beige landscape. The only structure in sight was a rectangular warehouse with concrete walls the same color as the desert sand. The metal roof magnified the sun, whose intense rays were unobstructed by clouds in the indigo sky. He followed the driver toward a metal door in the center of the building’s front wall.
The building was longer than a football field but had no windows. He recalled the warehouses he’d seen from the plane. He looked over his shoulder in the direction they’d just come from, but there was nothing more than compacted sand forming a road that disappeared over a dune on the horizon. He recalled that it led to the lake a couple of miles away.
“This way please, Sir.” The driver held the thick metal door open for him.
Before he entered the building, he caught the sand-worn sign hanging above the door: “MDH Trading, Intl.”
An import-export company in the middle of the desert?
The foyer was small—a fifteen-foot-square room with a speckled vinyl tile floor and white walls that were empty except for a single framed poster that read “Customers first! MDH Trading.” A black leather sofa sat underneath the poster, and the glass coffee table held several issues of Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies and World Trade Magazine. In the upper left corner of the room, a security camera pointed at them.
“Professor Lightman, welcome! We’ve been expecting you.” The voice came from behind a Plexiglas window to his right.
The Jericho Deception: A Novel Page 18