NanoStrike

  Quinn downed his whisky and pulled a bill out of his pocket. “That’s for you, Yacob. Put the drinks on my room.”

  “Sure . . . thanks.”

  Quinn ran to the lobby and waved the concierge over. “I need a cab to the hospital.”

  “Are you sick, sir?”

  “I’m fine. I’m going to visit someone.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Quinn arrived at Yoseftal Hospital. He stood at reception and waited while the woman behind the desk finished a phone call.

  “Do you speak English?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Great. The girl they found in the desert last week. Is she still here?”

  “Are you a relative?” The receptionist turned her head and nodded. Quinn followed her gaze. She’d signaled a security guard, who walked toward them.

  “Not related, but I might know who she is, and if I’m right, her parents are desperate to find her.”

  “May I help you, sir?” The guard, a few inches shorter than Quinn, had a potbelly and a sidearm. His hand rested on his hip, near the gun.

  Quinn pulled out the picture of Adiba. “I met this girl’s father two days ago. Both of his daughters have disappeared. She’s the older one.” He showed the image to the guard and the receptionist. “I don’t have a picture of the younger sister, but she went missing from school last week. Here’s her name.” He flipped the photo over.

  “May I borrow this?” The guard held out his hand for the picture.

  Quinn hesitated. It was all he had. “I’ll need it back.”

  “And who are you?” the guard asked.

  “A friend of the family.”

  “And you came to Eilat looking for her?”

  “Not exactly, I’m here on business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  Quinn glowered at the man.

  The guard threw him a suspicious look, but at least the questioning stopped. “Wait here.” He made a call on the wall phone. Quinn heard Lana’s name. The guard went quiet and struck a waiting pose, holding the handset and staring at Quinn. A few minutes later he spoke again, then hung up, sauntered back to Quinn, and handed him the picture.

  “The girl answered to Lana,” he said.

  “Can I see her?” Quinn asked.

  The receptionist spoke to the guard. Quinn couldn’t understand the language, but her tone indicated she was rooting for him, so he smiled at her.

  The guard relented. “Follow me.” They took the elevator to the third floor.

  The guard found the duty nurse. “This way,” she said to Quinn. She spoke English with an American accent, causing Quinn to reflect on the positive influence of American TV and movies.

  He and the guard followed the nurse along a shiny hospital corridor that smelled of disinfectant—same the world over. She led them into a small ward with four beds, all occupied. They walked to the farthest one. The other patients, two old men and one middle-aged woman, wore headphones, watching CNN on a wall-mounted TV.

  The fourth bed had screens pulled around. The nurse slid them back, and Quinn saw the girl, head swaddled in white dressings so only her eyes, nose and mouth were visible. The bedcovers were tented. Quinn had seen the setup before. A metal cage under the sheets kept the material from touching her burned skin.

  When the nurse spoke to the girl, Quinn detected a different accent and guessed she must be speaking Arabic—English, Hebrew, and Arabic, impressive—the girl stared at Quinn for a few seconds before shaking her head.

  The nurse straightened and her demeanor became less welcoming. “She doesn’t know you.”

  “Please, show her this. Ask whether it’s her sister.” Quinn handed Adiba’s picture to the nurse, who held it in front of the girl’s face.

  “Adiba . . . Adiba!” The girl became agitated and tried to sit up.

  The nurse made calm-down motions with her hands.

  “I think she’s the missing girl,” Quinn said. “Her father’s phone number is on the back. Call him. He’s frantic to find his daughter. Maybe she’ll tell her dad what happened.”

  Quinn turned and nodded to the guard, who had relaxed his gun hand. The nurse punched the number into the bedside phone. After a long wait, she was connected and started speaking, using both girls’ names in the conversation. She listened for a few seconds, then put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Are you Quinnborne?” she asked. Quinn nodded.

  The nurse held the phone to the girl’s ear.

  “Baba!” Lana said. Tears trickled from her eyes.

  The nurse glanced at the security guard, then at Quinn. “Her father says to thank you.” Quinn smiled. “This girl was dumped in the desert like a piece of garbage. We think she may have been abused, but she won’t talk to us.” Her voice was thick with anger. “We have to sedate her whenever the doctor comes. She goes crazy when she sees him. We thought because he is a man, but she didn’t react negatively to you.”

  Quinn shrugged. He was glad he’d found Lana, but from his perspective, it was the wrong sister. He couldn’t imagine child abuse being in Ghazi’s playbook: too risky, too messy.

  Suddenly, Lana began screaming and thrashing. She dropped the phone, jerked upright, and knocked the drip stand into the nurse’s face. The woman jumped back in fright and upset the water carafe, which smashed on the floor. Even wrapped like a mummy, the girl bounced her body, trying to get off the bed. The cords connected to her monitor yanked free, triggering a high-pitched alarm.

  The security guard pulled his gun. Quinn wanted to hold the girl down, but didn’t dare touch her burned skin. He looked to the nurse for guidance. She was shouting the girl’s name, attempting to calm her.

  “Lana! Lana!” Her father’s frantic voice squawked from the telephone, which lay abandoned on the bed.

  Quinn read Lana’s eyes. The girl was terrified and staring straight at him.

  No.

  She was staring past him.

  He spun around. The TV showed a CNN press conference. A bank of microphones pointed to a sallow-skinned man with silver hair, sparkling green eyes, and a neatly groomed beard. His smiling face filled the screen. The graphic at the bottom read, “Gas from Garbage.”

  Quinn recognized Nazar Eudon.

  And so, apparently, did Lana.

  Chapter 22

  In Jeddah, Imam Ali listened to the mellow drone of afternoon prayers coming from the mosque beyond his office door. With two chair legs on the floor, feet on the desk, and arms behind his head, Ali leaned back and spoke into the phone, “The Saudis failed to send the third installment. The contract is canceled.”

  Ghazi sat on a grubby hospital cot in the abandoned wing of the West Bank medical facility in Israel, and replied to his friend. “They have no stomach for real warfare. They pretend to be Muslim, to care about our Palestinian brothers, but when a tough choice must be made, they cower before their American paymasters. No matter, I have the situation in hand.” Across the room, David Baker listened to Ghazi’s side of the conversation. “I sent the prisoner release demand again to the Londoners.”

  “And?” Ali asked.

  “No response yet, but be confident. The events in Seoul will change their thinking.” Ghazi faced David and raised his voice. “Thanks to Allah’s Revenge’s newest captain, Dawud Ferran, for the first time in fifteen hundred years the soldiers of Islam have a weapon to defeat the Crusaders.” Ghazi smiled at David. The young man’s face glowed with pride.

  “And if they don’t?” Ali asked.

  “We will use the weapon.”

  “Firman is expensive, we will need money.”

  “Don’t worry, brother. I will execute in parallel. We need money even if they do comply. This is only the beginning.”

  “Allahu Akbar,” Ali said.

  “Allahu Akbar,” Ghazi replied.

  David repeated the words, like an echo.

  Above, in Adiba’s room, Adiba and Abdul played their tenth game of chess. Ghazi had brought the board, and Abd
ul had yet to win. In fact, he had yet to cause her a problem. She moved her queen across the board to a protected square directly in front of his king.

  “Checkmate again, Mr. Junior Middle East Correspondent.” She grinned with delight. Abdul didn’t know which would be more enjoyable; winning, or losing again and seeing her victory smile. He leaned over and kissed her full on the lips.

  “What was that?” she said.

  “My reward for letting you win again.”

  With a crinkled brow, she wagged her finger at him in mock annoyance. He laughed. She looked so cute when she pulled that face.

  The door opened, cutting short his laughter.

  The terrorist who had snatched him from the hotel burst into the room. “Abdul-Haqq, you must come.”

  Abdul and Adiba disliked the man, whom they assumed was Ghazi’s number two. He always smelled of stale sweat, and his narrow eyes and crooked mouth gave the appearance of a permanent sneer. Ironically, they both trusted Ghazi, despite the atrocity they knew he had perpetrated in London. Yet they feared this man.

  Abdul stood, squeezed Adiba’s hand, and followed the terrorist across the landing and through the open door into his room. Ghazi sat in one of the plastic chairs.

  “Sit.” Abdul took the chair opposite. The grim look on Ghazi’s face reminded Abdul of their first meeting in Jerusalem.

  “How well do you know Nazar Eudon?” Ghazi asked.

  If Abdul had been asked to guess the hundred most likely reasons for this meeting, Nazar Eudon wouldn’t make a reserve list. The question surprised him.

  “We met in Eilat at a press briefing to clarify his announcement in London about shifting focus to alternative energy. He felt something of a kinship with me because our family backgrounds are similar. He invited me to supper.”

  “You went to his home?”

  Abdul suspected Ghazi was testing the verity of his story. “Yes, Adiba and I stayed the night.”

  “Can you contact him?”

  “He gave me a business card.”

  “Give it to me.” Ghazi held out his hand. Abdul fished out his wallet and handed the card to his captor.

  “You must call this Keisha.”

  “What’s this about?”

  Ghazi’s face hardened and he stared Abdul down. Abdul’s head began to tremble under the man’s fierce glare. For the past two days, the smelly man had delivered their food, and Abdul had spent every waking hour with Adiba, talking and playing chess. The fact that they were captives had slipped from top-of-mind. Ghazi’s angry face brought their predicament back into focus.

  “I can call. What do you want me to say?”

  Ghazi slammed a sheet of paper on the table in front of Abdul, handwritten in Arabic. “Can you read it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t understand what it means.”

  “Come.” Ghazi snatched up the note, stood, and walked toward the door. Abdul followed him down the stairs and into the office.

  Two men he hadn’t seen before sat at a small table, smoking and playing cards. They looked up when he came in the room. The terrorist they disliked was absent. Abdul worried that he might be upstairs bothering Adiba.

  Ghazi pointed to a chair beside his desk. Abdul sat, and Ghazi handed the business card to the younger of the two men, who stopped his game, pulled a cell phone from his inside pocket, and made a call. Ghazi placed the note on the desk in front of Abdul. The man with the phone entered a long series of numbers, perhaps using a calling card to disguise the call origin. Finally, he spoke in Arabic. “Is this Mr. Nazar Eudon’s office?” he waited for a reply, and then, “Please hold for Abdul Ahmed.” He passed the phone to Abdul.

  “Hello?” Abdul said.

  “I am Keisha, Nazar Eudon’s personal assistant. Mr. Eudon mentioned you, Abdul, but we understood you had been abducted. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Hello, Keisha, I’m—” Before Abdul could complete the thought, Ghazi’s calloused hand struck him hard across the face. The suddenness and ferocity of the blow knocked the phone from his hand and left his face throbbing. His heart slammed against his ribs, and he stared wide-eyed at Ghazi’s furious face. The terrorist jabbed a finger at the notepaper. Abdul picked up the phone. Hand trembling, he read with a quavering voice and through tearing eyes.

  “Ms. Keisha, I have a message to deliver.”

  “I am recording the call. Please continue.”

  “Allah’s Revenge possesses the only viable virginbots in existence. They are for sale. We require one million dollars in cash. I will call in two hours with details of the exchange conditions.”

  Ghazi snatched the phone from Abdul, ended the call, and barked across at the two thugs.

  “Take him upstairs.”

  Abdul’s face ached. Ghazi had hit him hard, and he hadn’t been ready. He felt sick to his stomach. The older of the two card players frog-marched him up the stairs and locked him in his room. He worried about Adiba. He wanted to shout across, to check if she was okay. But fear of angering Ghazi prevented him. He’d experienced the man’s temper: quick, ugly, and painful.

  In the bathroom, he checked in the mirror. Ghazi’s handprint stood out, white and red, on his cheek. He filled the sink with cold water, soaked a hand towel, and pressed it to his face to prevent swelling. Obviously, Ghazi’s change of mood was the result of a funding issue. Everything always seemed to end up being about money.

  Keisha had received the call from Abdul in Nazar’s plane, waiting on the tarmac at New York’s JFK airport. They had flown there from Phoenix after the grand opening. When Nazar returned from his meetings in Manhattan, they would fly to Washington, DC where Nazar would meet with the Senate’s Sub-Committee on Energy. Abdul’s call might change those plans, so she sent a text to Nazar.

  On the thirty-fifth floor of the Oppenheim building in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district, Nazar strategized with his underwriters about Eudon Alternative Energy’s planned public offering of stock. When his phone vibrated, he glanced down and immediately reacted to Keisha’s emergency code.

  “Gentlemen and lady. Please excuse me, I must make a call.”

  The attractive executive assistant responsible for managing the meeting, the only woman in the room, showed him to an empty office next door. Keisha dictated the message she’d received from Allah’s Revenge. How could anyone outside Phoenix know about virginbots? But the information was too specific to ignore. He told Keisha to stay by the phone, and called Professor Farjohn at the lab in Arizona.

  “Professor, do you have any issues with the virginbots?”

  “Issues, n . . . n . . . no, I . . . I . . . I . . .”

  When he heard the stammering, Nazar knew he had a problem. He cut the man off in mid-stutter. “Let me put it another way professor. What is the problem with the virginbots?”

  “W . . . w . . . we’re working o . . . o . . .”

  Nazar cupped a hand around the mouthpiece of his phone and lowered his voice. The underwriters might be listening in the next room. “In less than one hour I must decide whether to purchase new virginbots from another source. Find me someone who can speak without stammering!”

  “I . . . I . . . I . . .”

  “Professor, let me speak to David.”

  “N . . . not . . . here.”

  “Damnit, man!” he hissed, “what’s wrong with the virginbots!”

  Nazar dug nails into his palm. He shook with anger. His empire could be crumbling and the person with the key information was incapable of speaking a sentence. The more he pressed the less likely the professor would get a word out. Nazar waited. The professor took a series of deep breaths then blurted his words in fast, short, spurts as he exhaled.

  “David never returned from his vacation in February.”

  Nazar was staggered by this news. Why hadn’t he been told? He suppressed the tempest of anger he felt toward this pompous idiot. More panting preceded the professor’s next block of speech.

  “He’s contaminated our
virginbots stock, so they will auto-destruct at midnight on July 31st.”

  Nazar’s legs buckled, forcing him to perch on the edge of the desk and wait for the next stream of information.

  “He stole one vial of virginbots.”

  Nazar whispered into the mouthpiece. “So ethanol production will stop on July 31st unless we get new virginbots.”

  “Y . . . y . . . y . . .”

  Nazar hung up and called Keisha.

  “Send my car immediately.”

  He composed himself, made his excuses to the bankers, and left the building. His driver was outside when he exited the lobby, and he called Keisha before they’d pulled into traffic.

  “Who made the call?”

  “Abdul, the journalist from the Times.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Yes, but he sounded under duress. I could tell he was reading the message. I tried to ask about his safety, but the line went dead.”

  “Tell the pilot we’re returning to Phoenix. Call Senator Isley, make my apologies, we’ll call next week to re-schedule. When Abdul phones back, tell him we want to make a deal. Phone me immediately after you’ve spoken to him.” Nazar hung up and called his banker in Tel Aviv.

  He would need to find a million dollars in cash overnight? It had to be done; Nazar needed to buy time.

  Abdul sat on his bed with a cold cloth pressed against his throbbing cheek. Time dragged. Eventually, the older terrorist fetched him downstairs again and pointed to the desk. Abdul sat and waited. The room was silent except for the click of playing cards. Ghazi paced and checked his watch. Finally, he instructed the younger terrorist to make the call. Ghazi laid the phone on the desk in front of Abdul and turned on the speaker.

  “Hello?” Keisha said.

  He bent forward and spoke. “This is Abdul.”

  “Abdul, Mr. Eudon wishes to receive the terms of sale.”

  Ghazi, grim-faced, handed Abdul a note.

  Abdul read, “In two days, on July 23rd, bring the money in US dollars to Tel Aviv. I will call this number with details for the exchange. Any deviation from our instructions and further shipments of virginbots will be compromised.”