The Invisible (Ryan Kealey)

by Andrew Britton

  It was just that simple: he had to know.

  Having made his decision, he turned to walk back to his room, thinking about what he could use to pop the lock. He had taken two steps when he paused, then turned and went back to the door. His own door had done that the night before, he remembered, sticking when he’d tried to open it. It could have been something as simple as a slightly warped frame, but if it was like that on his, then maybe…

  He was right. Her door came open with a little bump of his shoulder, and he was in.

  The bathroom door was closed, the sound of running water louder inside the bedroom. She’d removed her clothes before going into the bathroom; her underwear was lying outside the door, along with a plain white blouse and a pair of dark pants. Pétain had picked up the outfit for her en route to Cartagena; Naomi must have changed into it the day before, while he had been sleeping in the next room. Ignoring the small pile, Kealey went round the side of the bed and found what he was looking for: the clothes she’d been wearing in Madrid.

  The shower was still running as he picked up her jeans. They were stiff with dried sweat, the denim covered with concrete dust and spots of dried blood. He checked the pockets quickly. There was a tube of cherry-flavored Chap-Stick in the left pocket, along with a few Euro coins and a receipt from a coffee shop. In the right pocket he found a plastic Baggie. He pulled it out and found it empty except for half a tablet. He tipped it out of the Baggie, held it between his thumb and forefinger, and examined it closely. Had it been whole, it would have been about the size of the nail on his little finger. It was white with numbers on one side: a four over a three and what might have been another three. He didn’t recognize it.

  Feeling a sudden draft, he looked up. Naomi was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, a white towel wrapped around her too-thin body. Her jet-black hair was damp, clear drops sparkling on her bare shoulders. The shower was still running behind her.

  “I heard a noise,” she said. Her dark green eyes were flashing, and her stance was confrontational; she was ready to fight. “What are you—”

  She broke off, seeing the Baggie in his hand. He was caught, but so was she, and he wasn’t about to apologize. Lifting the tablet so she could see it, he said, “What is this? Codeine?”

  She folded her arms across her chest, her face working. “That’s none of your business.”

  He flared instantly, taking a quick, menacing step forward. “Naomi, you—”

  “It’s morphine.” She took a step back and looked away, her mouth tightening. Her eyes were dry, but as Kealey watched, her face changed, her expression shifting from mild anger to complete despair in the blink of an eye. And just like that, it was gone again. It shook him to the core, but the transformation happened so fast, he couldn’t be sure he had seen it at all.

  “Where did you get them?” he asked quietly, holding the remains of the last tablet down by his side. “Were they prescribed?”

  She nodded slowly without looking at him, but it wasn’t a yes; she was simply considering the question. Wondering if she should lie, maybe. “Why does that matter?”

  “It matters, Naomi. If you—”

  “No,” she said, her voice barely audible. “They weren’t prescribed. I got them from a friend in Washington. She’s a physician.”

  “Some friend.” The anger was still there, but he was trying to think past it, trying to weigh the implications. “Does Harper know?”

  She looked up reluctantly, meeting his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “He knows.” Kealey felt his hands curling into fists, the muscles tightening in his arms. It was a completely involuntary reaction; he just couldn’t control the anger rising inside of him. “He fucking knew the whole time, and he sent you, anyway. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She shook her head, but he was right, and they both knew it.

  “How bad is it?” He held up the tablet. “How many of these a day?”

  “I don’t know. Between ten and fifteen. Sometimes I don’t…”

  He waited, but she wasn’t going to finish. “What’s the dosage?”

  “Twenty milligrams each.”

  “So…what? Two hundred milligrams a day? Two hundred twenty-five?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She was leaning against the door frame, her rail-thin arms still crossed over her chest. She was mumbling her responses at the floor. Kealey didn’t know if she was ashamed, embarrassed, or just sorry that she’d been caught. It was probably a combination of all three.

  “Naomi…” He waited for her to lift her head, but the silence seemed to stretch on forever. “You can’t keep this up.”

  She finally looked up, and he saw that the combative attitude was gone. Tears were streaming down her face, running over the pale, jagged scar on her right cheek. She lifted a hand to touch it, then subtly shifted her body to the right, turning the scar away from him. She’d been doing this since the day she was first released from the Agency’s private facility in Loudoun County, Virginia, and it stung him deeply every time. He didn’t think she knew she was doing it, which only made it harder to watch.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” And he really didn’t. He knew how important the Agency was to her, but he couldn’t let her continue in this state. He was tempted to throw the question back at her—What would you do in my shoes, Naomi?—but that would have been too easy. He had been trained to set aside his feelings in order to make hard, fast decisions, and in this case, the decision was already made. What had just transpired only served to reinforce it.

  “I’m not going to say anything,” he said quietly, “but you’ve got to fix this. I know you want to work, but if you keep going the way you’re going, it’s going to end badly. You’re going to get yourself or somebody else killed, and if that—”

  He didn’t catch his mistake until the words were out of his mouth, but he caught every part of what happened next. Her face crumpled, and her shoulders seemed to jerk forward slightly, as though she’d been punched in the stomach.

  “Oh, Christ.” He was instantly contrite. “Naomi, I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t talking about what happened in Madrid. You couldn’t have known it would turn out the way it—”

  He was wasting his breath; she had already turned in retreat. The bathroom door closed behind her, with a solid thump, and he heard the lock snap into place. He couldn’t get to her now; she was lost in her own little world, and Kealey knew that he wasn’t welcome.

  He looked at the pill in his hand, his mind a complete blank. A thought came: he should crush it, destroy it, remove the temptation. Instead, he tossed it onto the bedspread, turned, and left the room.

  CHAPTER 27

  SIALKOT

  Randall Craig stood in the harshly lit surgical suite. The room was almost completely silent, but he was aware of Said Qureshi’s tense, economical movements over by the scrub sink. He was also aware of the unnaturally still form of Benazir Mengal, who was leaning against the counter a few feet away. As Craig stared down at one of the most recognizable faces in the world, he was reminded of a patient he had once worked on, a minor celebrity and self-proclaimed socialite. To his knowledge, it was the only time he had treated a person of public interest, but that was different. This was different. Brynn Fitzgerald was much more than a glossy teen with a cult following and too much of her parents’ money; simply put, she was one of the most important people in the U.S. government. In the hundreds of procedures he’d attended, he had been able to maintain the necessary air of cool, calm detachment. Complete professionalism. He had always been proud of this fact, but not overtly proud; it was simply part of his job. Now he felt his composure deserting him. He was sweating beneath the scrubs that Qureshi had provided him with, and his hands felt hot and damp beneath a tight layer of latex; the surgical gloves felt like oven mitts, alien to his hands.

  He was consumed by the possibility of failure. Looking down at her, he didn’t see another patient; he saw the
woman whose face had graced the covers of Newsweek, Time, and Harper’s, all inside a three-month period. He saw a regular fixture on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. He saw the most powerful woman in the United States, and he was terrified by what he might do to her. All it would take was one mistake, one little slip, one minor allergy they didn’t know about, and she would be gone forever, killed at the hands of a Tennessee farm boy….

  “Randall?” Craig’s head shot up, and he turned to face Said Qureshi. The Pakistani doctor was looking at him with an expression of uncertainty. “Are you all right?”

  Craig tried to shake it off, feeling Mengal’s intense, suspicious stare. “I’m fine.”

  Qureshi walked over with a tray full of sterilized instruments. Setting it down, he reached up and adjusted the arm on one of the Burton Genie lamps, positioning the four bulbs directly over Fitzgerald’s upper abdomen. Snapping his mask into place, he looked up and met Craig’s eyes. “Are you ready?”

  Craig nodded slowly. He and Qureshi had not had the chance to decide exactly what they were going to do when the operation was over. He suspected that the Pakistani would fight for his life, as he’d indicated earlier, but no matter how Craig looked at it, he just couldn’t ignore the overwhelming odds they were facing. There were at least 8 armed men on the property, according to Qureshi, and more stationed at the end of the drive. He suspected—and Craig believed he was right—that there were more armed guards positioned at either end of the main road, which was located 150 meters south of the house. If Mengal’s background was any indication, Qureshi had said, the men who worked for him were ex-soldiers, probably drawn from the ranks of the SSG, the Special Services Group. The SSG was Pakistan’s answer to the Green Berets, and while trained to a lesser standard, they were still extremely proficient, particularly on their own ground.

  Craig knew that fighting them would only get him killed, but he wasn’t going to lie down, either. It just wasn’t his way, and besides, he felt he owed something to Brynn Fitzgerald and the people who’d been kidnapped on the KKH. A few of them were fellow Americans, after all, and his national identity was something that Craig held very close to his heart. If he could stand up for them, he would. But first, he had a job to do.

  “I’m ready,” he said, his voice firm. He glanced at the bank of monitors. The blood pressure cuff was already on Fitzgerald’s right arm. The catheter was in place in her left arm, and on her left forefinger, a portable pulse oximeter was clipped into place. This was used to monitor the amount of oxygen in her blood; if it dropped below 95 percent during the procedure, they’d have to increase the flow.

  Qureshi had explained what he’d been doing prior to Craig’s arrival. He’d been administering 5 milligrams of Midazolam every thirty to forty minutes to keep Fitzgerald calm and compliant, and so far, it seemed to be working. The cardiac monitoring they were using only allowed for six tracings—not as good as the twelve tracings a better EKG would have provided, but it would have to suffice. Otherwise, everything looked good. Craig had everything he needed: the anesthesia machine itself; an endotracheal tube, 20 millimeters in length, already smeared with Xylocaine jelly to ease insertion into the trachea; a laryngoscope with a No. 3 blade, which would be used to check the airway prior to intubation; and the drugs that would put her under for the duration of the surgery.

  The drugs, of course, were the most important element, and he had them all at hand. Fentanyl, an opioid analgesic eighty times more potent than morphine, would be used as the primary sedative, followed immediately by vecuronium, a paralytic compound. Both were contained in 12ml disposable syringes. Approximately thirty seconds after administering the vecuronium, Craig would intubate Fitzgerald. At that point, all he had to do was monitor her vitals. Qureshi would take care of the rest.

  A pericardial window was a fairly simple procedure, but like any surgical procedure, there were always risks. To keep those risks to a minimum, they would do everything in a predetermined order, following the established protocols. Surgery was much like a court decision; everything hinged on precedence. If something had worked in the past, it would likely be used in the future. The pneumothorax was a minor inconvenience, but Qureshi had handled it well; Craig had already noted the quality of the work. He was pleased to see that the lesser injury had already been taken care of, because waiting to start on the window clearly wasn’t an option. According to Qureshi, her blood pressure had dropped dramatically over the past several hours.

  Now, as Craig screwed the syringe of fentanyl into the port in Fitzgerald’s left arm, he checked the monitors and saw that her BP was eighty-three over forty, indicating that the blood filling the pericardial sac was beginning to put a great deal of pressure on her heart, decreasing its ability to pump blood to other parts of the body. Qureshi had been right when he’d remarked on the urgency of the situation. If they were to walk away now, Fitzgerald would probably go into cardiogenic shock in the next few hours.

  Once the syringe of fentanyl was secure, he pushed down the plunger, marking the time and dosage. Unscrewing the empty syringe, he replaced it with the vecuronium, then did the same thing. Unscrewing it, he watched and waited. Once twenty-five seconds had elapsed, he touched Fitzgerald’s eyelids. Nothing happened; she didn’t react at all.

  Looking up at Qureshi, Craig nodded once, then moved quickly to the head of the table. Standing behind Fitzgerald, he reached for the endotracheal tube, grabbing it with his right hand. Adjusting her head slightly, tipping it back, he opened her slack mouth and inserted the tube. He reached out with his left hand for the laryngoscope, which—like the endotracheal tube, or ETT—was smeared with lubricating jelly. Using the lighted mirror on the end to ascertain his progress, he moved the epiglottis out of the way, then slid the plastic tube down her trachea, stopping a few centimeters short of the point where the trachea split into the lungs. When he was done, approximately 4 inches of the tube protruded from her mouth, the end marked by a connection point. To this, he attached the clear plastic tubes that were already connected to the ventilator. Then he taped the ETT into place. Checking the monitors, he saw that the numbers were falling into an acceptable range.

  “That’s it,” he said, stepping back from the table. Mengal had already moved in and was practically leaning over Fitzgerald, but Craig ignored him; his words were intended for Qureshi alone. “She’s all yours.”

  Qureshi nodded and shot a practiced glance at the monitors. Then he approached the table. Fitzgerald was wearing a loose-fitting surgical blouse. The material was already pushed up to the lower curve of her breasts to expose her abdomen, which Craig had needed to see while putting her under. The rate of abdominal rise and fall was a good indication of the patient’s response to the intravenous drugs he’d administered.

  With practiced speed, Qureshi applied Betadine to the exposed abdomen with a few disposable swabs, turning Fitzgerald’s skin a sickly shade of orange red. That done, he draped sterile towels over most of the area, leaving only a small patch of skin exposed. As the surgeon’s fingers danced over the stainless-steel tray, searching for the appropriate tool, Craig tried to ignore what he was feeling inside. He tried to remind himself that at the end of the day, Brynn Fitzgerald was just another patient, a person in need of medical attention, but it just wasn’t working. It didn’t matter how he looked at it, because he couldn’t get his mind around her title. He couldn’t forget about all those magazine covers, about the dozens of times he’d seen her on the news. He just couldn’t forget….

  Qureshi had found the scalpel he needed, a long blade with a rounded head, mounted in a sturdy titanium No. 4 handle. Craig couldn’t help but wince as the Pakistani lifted the scalpel in his right hand, the razor-sharp steel flashing under the Burton lamps. He automatically adopted the palmar grip, which was ideal for larger, deeper cuts. Using the fingers of his left hand, he probed for the base of Fitzgerald’s sternum, then lowered the long blade to her skin, preparing to make the subxiphoid incision.

  A few sec
onds later it was done. There was little blood, but Craig had seen this done often enough that the absence of blood no longer surprised him. Qureshi used a pair of re-tractors to spread the 2-inch incision, then locked them into place. The next part was the worst, at least for Craig, and he had to turn away as Qureshi picked up a 16-gauge needle. To Craig, the surgical instrument looked like a long roofing nail, much like the kind he’d used when working construction in his teens. He’d never been able to dismiss the mental comparison.

  He was still looking away as Qureshi slid the tip of the needle into the small incision. Then, moving his arm slowly but steadily forward, the Pakistani pushed it in, angling the point up into Brynn Fitzgerald’s heart.

  CHAPTER 28

  CARTAGENA

  It was just after two in the afternoon as Kealey stepped outside, holding Naomi’s Globalstar sat phone and a glass of iced tea. The sky was a clear, brilliant blue, not a cloud in sight, and it was extremely hot, at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit and climbing. The second he closed the French doors behind him, he could feel the heat enveloping him, the air so heavy it seemed to cling to his exposed skin. He could hear the traffic moving on the other side of the trees, but it wasn’t too bad at this time of day. As he crossed the grass, moving past the aluminum table, toward the trees, he looked back at the house, his eyes flickering up to the second-floor balcony. No one was there. Satisfied, he punched in the number to Jonathan Harper’s office, adjusted the antennae, and lifted the phone to his ear, waiting for the satellite above to make the connection.

  One of the watchers from Madrid—the last member of Pétain’s team who was still in-country—had just left, having dropped off their bags and passports, all of which they’d left at the hotel the previous day. Kealey had gone through all of it, and everything seemed to be in order. He would have preferred to wait for new passports, not wanting to use the same ones they’d flown in with, but he and Pétain didn’t have time to wait. The day before, Amari Saifi had made his ransom demands public through a videotape sent to al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha. Now the whole world knew what the U.S. government had discovered barely twenty-four hours earlier, and so far, the fallout had been nothing short of catastrophic. Harper had said as much the night before, and Kealey, clicking through the various news channels that morning, had seen what he was talking about. The media speculation had been wild to begin with, but now, with this new development, almost nothing else was touched on. Even the burgeoning conflict between India and Pakistan wasn’t enough to derail the networks’ intense focus on the abduction of Brynn Fitzgerald, as well as the murky background of the man who had just eclipsed Osama bin Laden as the world’s most famous terrorist.