“Tidy up nothing, my brother. They are not people to try and impress. They will be people for whom I wish the warmest hospitality. A hearing, receptive audience for what they have to say. That is all, and no more.”
“Perhaps we can show our hospitality by helping them up here in the first place. Helping them see our views.”
“Helping them reach me would be more than sufficient. I realize, they will have no way to name me or identify me. They are coming for very mysterious and godly reasons. So please allow your most gifted colleagues out on the terrace tomorrow. Would you?”
“What are they?”
“What do you mean, ‘what are they?’ They are followers of Christ, that I know. They are adventurous, that I have heard. They are loving, that I can only hope. They are a man and a woman. And I have been told, on good authority, that they will be here tomorrow. That is all.”
LAGOS, NIGERIA
“What do you mean, ‘go home?’ I’m not going home. You go home!”
“Mr. Sherman, I understand your frustration and . . . dilemma. And pain. But our government no longer believes she is in the country.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying very hard to have that information released to me.”
“Well, would you leave your daughter in some third-world country on the basis of that? Of the blubberings of some third-rate consular bureaucrat?”
“Now wait a minute, sir. There’s no need to get personal—”
“You idiot, there’s nothing more personal than the well-being of one’s daughter. Are you married, by any chance? Got any kids?”
“I don’t see why that has any bearing—”
“Yeah. Didn’t think so.”
“I can tell you, sir, and this is entirely off the record, that we have engaged an unusual level of . . . let’s just say data-gathering capabilities, if you get my drift, to assist the Nigerian government in this search. Given the high level of media attention on this case, we felt it was only helpful. And those extensive capabilities have now given us ample reason to believe that she is no longer within these borders.”
“Then where do you believe she’s been taken to?”
“Sir, we do not believe she has been taken anywhere against her will. Given the amount of distance she has covered, as well as numerous other factors, we believe she is moving about of her own free will.”
“Look. You tell your bosses that I’m going to hire my own merry band of Nigerian mercenaries to comb the savannah for my daughter. I hear you can buy them by the pound out here. I may or may not stay myself in this godforsaken place. But if I leave, you can be extra sure I’ll leave behind a team so large and well financed that you’ll wish you’d called in the marines to find Abby. Do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, sir. Although I feel an obligation to warn you that the engagement of private militias for anything other than safe travel to and from various approved points within Nigeria proper is strongly discouraged by—”
A door slammed and Robert Sherman was gone. The consular official, clearly rattled by the encounter, allowed his sentence to trail off into the oblivion even he knew it deserved.
Beyond the door, Sherman walked away smiling. He knew his Abby was safe and sound, of course. But the leak-proof search teams would never know it until the end—not if he could help it.
Five minutes later, he was on the sidewalk, looking around impatiently for his hired security team.
They were nowhere to be seen.
Twenty seconds after that, a single black SUV raced up the street, swerved over to a stop, and produced three machine-gun barrels from its thrown-open doors.
Abigail’s father did not even get the chance to protest. A bystander rushed up from behind him and brutally shoved him toward the gunmen. His falling body was swiftly swallowed into the vehicle, which just as quickly screeched back up to speed and into the careening Lagos traffic.
CHAPTER
_ 57
BEN GURION AIRPORT —LAT E THAT AFTERNOON
Abby had fallen into a near trance of composing and rehearsing her cover story during the quiet four-and-a-half-hour flight. As a result, the only distraction strong enough to break her concentration turned out to be the bump of their actual landing. Startled back into an awareness of her surroundings, she looked outside and gasped. A deep blue sky and palm trees whizzed past her window.
She reached out for Dylan and clutched his arm, smiling.
While she climbed down metal stairs to the tarmac, Abby felt herself torn between vastly opposing emotions.
First, she was thrilled to be visiting, for the first time, the “home turf ” of her faith. It struck her as a powerful validation of her quest that it had now taken her to the very core of the Christian heritage. Even if her first sight of it was a large patch of concrete, the smell of jet fuel and a skyline of very Western, low-slung buildings. All around her, immigrants and Jewish seniors were kneeling and kissing the ground with loud, touching laments.
Second, however, she found her apprehension about the upcoming entry process climbing by the second. While she and Dylan waited on the tarmac for a cluster of security personnel to approach them, they both worked to mask their tension as simple travel weariness. But these were only cosmetic attempts. By the time Abby dared to look, only four people remained ahead of her.
A sheet of ice-cold fear descended upon her. She felt her heart break into a gallop. Her thoughts suddenly became sluggish and incoherent. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself into normalness. Perhaps, she struggled to tell herself, she could simply keep channeling these symptoms into the universal signs of a sleep-deprived flyer. A few yawns, eyes that refused to stay open, a twitchy agitation of the limbs . . .
The space ahead of her yawned clear.
Your turn.
“Madam?”
“Oh. Sorry.” She shuffled forward, almost grateful for the veil of awkward self-deprecation her slow approach afforded her. She caught up and offered her passport to a man in his forties. Short hair. Cool, gruff expression. He’d been here awhile.
“Miss Rawlins, what is the reason for your visit today to the State of Israel?”
“Uh, re-research.”
Great, Abigail, she chided herself. Stumble on the very first word. His eyes rested on her face; she strained to appear tired and unfocused. Anything but dishonest.
“What kind of research?”
“Sociohistorical, I guess. A doctoral thesis.”
“Please board the bus, ma’am. Thank you.”
She met Dylan’s gaze as they were heading to the bus, which had just lumbered to a stop beside them. “Is that it?” she mouthed.
He smiled with regret and shook his head no.
The fear returned full force. They rode the bus several minutes to the other side of the terminal, then disembarked. Dylan and Abby were both motioned into a door with the other passengers, then to the left side of a large, open room.
Abby blanched—it was full of interrogation kiosks.
Dylan reached out and gave her hand a friendly squeeze. “Just part of the Israeli welcome party,” he said to her as though they had never discussed the subject. She knew what he was doing. A little banter to cut the tension.
They were quickly separated and led to separate cubicles. Now a woman in her twenties awaited her, already scrutinizing her as she approached. Abby handed up her papers and stood, wearing a neutral expression and wondering if the skin over her heart revealed any sign of the wild pounding beneath it.
“Miss Rawlins, why are you coming to Israel today?”
“Educational research.”
“What are you researching?”
“Uh . . . the interplay of social, historical, and religious relationships between competing factions at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to put it succinctly.”
“What factions?”
“Well, all of them in general. But specifically, the Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Coptic monks.”
> Great, Abby exulted inwardly. I’m getting to tell the truth.
The young woman opened Abby’s suitcase and began tossing its contents on the table between them. All at once, Abby began to see gaps in her preparation—an unopened toothpaste tube here, an unremoved clothing label there.
“Did you come alone to do this research?”
“No, I came with a friend. He’s over there in the other—”
“What is your relationship?”
“Friends. Just good friends. He’s here to look out for me.”
“Did he buy you your ticket?”
“I guess, technically.”
“What do you mean, ‘technically’? Either he did, or he didn’t.”
“Well, he purchased it on his credit card, although I’m reimbursing him.”
“Miss Rawlins, I don’t see any sign of information-gathering devices here. No computer, no camera, not even a pen and paper. You say you’re here to conduct research?”
Inwardly, Abby groaned. What an oversight. She chuckled outwardly, trying to maintain an amiable facade. “I was told to pack light and cheap. They said a laptop wouldn’t be safe on such a long trip. And that a camera would attract too much attention. I planned to buy pen and legal pads here in Jerusalem, along with one of those cheap disposable cameras. I love those things; they’re so handy. Don’t you?”
The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the mess she was making of the suitcase. Abby just stood there, silently exulting at her deft handling of the crisis, and awaited the next one.
Just as quickly, Abby’s eyes darted up and caught sight of a camera, trained on her from just behind her questioner’s head.
She began to pray.
Across one of fifteen monitors lining the wall of a nearby command center, a series of thin, blinking red lines swarmed over a still image of Abby’s face like warring laser beams. Red dots blinked and tiny sounds emitted where vertical and horizontal lines intersected. Within seconds a biometric mapping of her facial features announced its completion with a low beep.
A panel glowed violently, angrily red. An alarm sounded.
A watching member of Ben Gurion Airport Security Service walked over and shook his head as the captured still-shot faded, whisked away to Interpol’s alert system. The shot was replaced by real-time footage of Abby’s face. Blinking readouts of her skin temperature, pulse, and pupil dilation.
“Biometrics are a little elevated,” the man said to a companion in the corner, “but it’s the actual features it really doesn’t like. They’ve triggered some Interpol watch list, but which one, it didn’t say.”
“Did it upload?”
“Yes. Just did.”
“Fine. Then just wait. This girl doesn’t trigger any serious profiles. I think she’s just tired. Unless Nadeena spots something, let’s just wait on Interpol.”
CHAPTER
_ 58
ISRAEL, DAVID BEN GURION AIRPORT
“Please, Lord,” Abby whispered, “let my fear and my guilt stay invisible to these people and their cameras. . . .”
Inwardly she repeated the plea over and over as she stood, her knees grown as rubbery as her brain cells. She could see Dylan standing at the far edge of the room. He was through. She could see that he was also sweating it out.
More than anything, she hoped he was praying.
“And what use will you make of this research?” the young woman continued.
Abby sighed. The truth, if possible . . .
“First and foremost, I’ve developed a practical goal. I want to help the Ethiopians win their fight. There’s an important war going on, one that’s far more important than a few square feet of church rooftop.”
There. It was vague and imprecise, but it was the truth.
“What made you choose this subject?”
That tack surprised Abby. She strained a moment for words. “Well, it’s quite a story, with roots stretching back over centuries. All sorts of implications and subtopics reaching into nearly every level of religious and social history through the ages. Dramatic episodes too. Even in our own decade, there’ve been violent—”
“What is your true relationship to the man you came here with?”
Ah, there it was. The tossed-in disruptor question.
She paused. An honest responder would have paused before answering that one.
What is the truth? Abby asked herself. What is an honest reply I can give to satisfy this woman?
She wanted to answer that it wasn’t any of her business. It was no concern of the State of Israel how she felt about Dylan. And she would have been right. But she would have also been inviting her own doom.
She sighed, the breath laden with reluctance.
She would speak the truth.
“I suppose it’s because . . .” she said finally, then pausing again, “because I have romantic feelings toward my friend. Feelings I have never disclosed to him. And I was hoping that on this trip, those feelings might emerge and turn into an actual . . . relationship.”
“Why would you hide such a thing from a public questioner?”
Abby almost guffawed out loud. “You’re joking, right?” she heard herself saying, despite her own better judgment and inner protestations. “Would you offer up such a thing to a public official, in this kind of setting?”
The young woman looked at her closely. She seemed to be searching, Abby imagined, for signs of a motive behind the outburst. Petulance? Impatience? Arrogance? A plea for sympathy?
Out of sight, the young woman’s right index finger trembled, poised over what they all called the “giveaway button”—the alarm that told every security person in Ben Gurion that a falsehood had been identified. A bad guy of some sort had been found.
The finger lowered. Its skin actually grazed the button’s top surface.
Something passed between them. The tiniest spark of understanding. Of course, Abby was right. It was ridiculous to fault somebody for not informing an interrogator of a private crush.
And yet, she had to say something.
“I suppose it’s because of my high regard for Israel and the religious heritage she represents. I’m very aware that I’m traveling alone with this young man. And of the . . . appearance of impropriety that might present.”
Perfect. Her voice had dripped with an altogether sincere reluctance and embarrassment.
Her confession had been truer than she’d ever intended.
Abby met the young woman’s gaze and tried to picture whether she too, somewhere in her past, may have harbored unspoken, possibly unrequited, feelings for a man she’d spent time with.
Please, Lord, deliver me from this nightmare. . . .
Abby leaned back and caught sight of Dylan, straining anxiously for a sight of her.
The young woman noticed the contact. Ever so slowly, her head turned until she got a glimpse of the man Abby had spoken of.
He was in mid-wave, smiling hopefully, when the young woman had seen him. He lowered his hand sheepishly.
Abby thought he had never looked more boyishly handsome.
The index finger withdrew. The young woman’s face softened and became human again.
“You’re free to go.”
Unable to process the words, Abby stared at the passport and ID being handed back to her. The documents shook imperiously, a gesture of impatience on the young woman’s part. Take them and go!
“Enjoy your stay in Israel, Miss Rawlins. And good luck.”
Because Abigail Sherman’s facial measurement did not reside in the fields reserved for criminal suspicion but rather for persons of interest, a rather hazy and more innocuous designation in Interpol’s menus, the alert was not automatically forwarded to the customs booth as it otherwise would have. As a result, it was delayed for twenty seconds while the command center staff decided whether to forward it to the booth for action or ignore it altogether.
Several moments later, a red alarm began to blink silently in the bottom left c
orner of the young Airport Security operator’s computer screen.
By then Abby was on the other side of the terminal, staring motionless at a suspended television as Dylan walked up briskly.
“Come on,” he urged her in a low voice.
“Dylan! Look!”
Compelled by the panic in her voice, he glanced upward.
The red-backed text crawling along the screen’s bottom read, Breaking news: Robert Sherman, New Media chairman and father of Abby Sherman, abducted in Nigeria.
Dylan shook his head in a brief concession to shock. “I’m so sorry, Abby. We can talk about this later, try to figure out what to do, but right now we have to move. Now. The cops are coming. . . .”
Security personnel spotted the pair just as Abby and Dylan disappeared onto the outside sidewalk, their bags in hand. Pursuers sprinting out to the sidewalk saw only a retreating taxicab, its license plate numbers and ID tags, only they were too distant for reading.
But Abby Sherman had not escaped. Not by a long shot.
Interpol knew, which meant that within an hour the entire world of secret organizations had learned she’d been spotted in Israel.
A half hour after that, an enhanced Annihilation was issued to every Brother of the Scythe around the globe. With blood stirring and adrenaline surging through their veins, every one of them stopped from fifty different ordinary activities. Twelve were in the act of harvesting victims, and even those ecstatic rituals went unfinished.
Fifty killers turned their homicidal gazes on Jerusalem and hurried there, as though their own lives depended on it.
CHAPTER
_ 59
JERUSALEM, THE ROOFTOP —MORNING
They found her that morning standing, as motionless as a statue, facing out across the rooftops of the Old City. The monk came up behind her and she spoke without turning, without giving any sign of how she’d detected his approach.
“Brother Brehan,” she said, still staring ahead, “I hope you’ve brought me some reinforcement.”
“Indeed I have, my Sister.”
“It is I, Sarha,” called the female voice beside him.
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