She nodded to Sayed’s servant. “You may stop recording.”
Sayed stood. “I applaud you, Halima.”
Gupta beamed under his praise.
Sayed said to Bula. “I wish her placed with the other kafir women now—but she is not to have a veil. Let the women see the punishment for rejecting Allah. It will be a good lesson to them all.”
He had an idea and added, “I wish my soldiers to see her as she is. It is near the midday meal. Take her to the men. Parade her before them. Tell them that in a few days I will let them have her. In fact, let us hold a lottery for her. It will boost morale.”
To Gupta he said, “Halima, you have done well, and I wish you to oversee editing of the video. Please accompany my servant to his work area. Send word when you are ready to show the final cut to me.”
Gupta’s face fell. “I . . .”
“Yes?”
“I had hoped to spend more time with you.”
Sayed smiled. “Ah, but we must all do our part to see in the caliphate, mustn’t we? When the video is ready for release, I will bestow a rich reward upon you. Do not worry. I have chosen an honor befitting your loyal service.”
Gupta revived a little. “Thank you, Sayed. I will make certain the video is all you could wish for.”
WHEN LAYNIE’S CONSCIOUSNESS finished its long climb up and out of darkness, Bula was dragging her through the tunnel junction on the leash. The rope tore at her wrists and strained her arms, pulling at her shoulder sockets. Her shoulder blades bumped painfully over sharp stone points and edges. When Bula slowed, her head struck rock.
Her head. She felt its cold nakedness.
Bula dragged her into the cavern and up and down between the tables where Sayed’s soldiers were eating. Stolid expressions studied her. When Bula had their attention, he yanked on the leash, hauling Laynie up to sitting, stretching her arms over her head.
Letting them see the wares, Laynie thought. For a second time, she was grateful for the shapeless black abaya that covered her.
In that Chechen dialect Laynie did not know, Bula addressed the men. He emphasized a point by shaking her wrists, and the men cheered.
When he finished addressing the men, he dragged her away, down the narrow tunnel toward her cell . . . except he took an abrupt left-hand turn long before they reached it. The side tunnel did not go far. It widened dramatically and ended at a heavy, barred grate bolted across the width of the tunnel, from one wall to the other. Whatever lay beyond the bars disappeared into shadows. Bula lifted a key from a peg in the wall. He jerked Laynie over to the grate, unlocked a gate in it, and dragged her through.
Laynie heard rustling from the cave’s darkness to her right, far into its depths. Bodies shifting away from Bula. From her. Her nose twitched at the mingled odors of mildew and raw sewage. And campfire smoke?
Bula sat her up and held her hands in his while he teased open the loop around her wrists. He grunted as the loop loosened. He released her hands, and Laynie slumped sideways onto the floor.
“Do not move.”
He need not have bothered with the warning. Laynie was too tired, worn, and damaged to move.
Bula stepped out of the cell. With the barred gate still open, he turned and stared at her. “In a few days, when you have healed, you will be given to the men. Sayed has decreed it. I have announced it.”
She lifted her eyes to him. “Is this how godly men treat women of the Book?”
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, it was with a pragmatic sigh. “No, but Halima bint Abra has testified that you are a whore for the Americans, a spy who seduces men. One cannot be both a whore and a woman of the Book.”
“I was a whore,” Laynie answered calmly. “I was like the woman in the Bible who wiped Jesus’ feet with her tears—not merely a flawed, fallen individual, but a notorious sinner.”
“I have not read about this woman.”
Something in Laynie’s throat made her gag. She brought up a wad of blood and spit it out. She ran her tongue around her mouth, found where Gupta’s scissors had scored her lips, where the stone ashtray had struck her mouth and split it open. Felt the raw, empty socket where a canine was missing.
“That sinful woman came to Jesus—you call him Isa—in front of everyone. She came weeping and using her long hair to wipe his feet. The religious teachers knew who she was. What she was. They were upset when Jesus allowed her to touch him, that he didn’t immediately send her away. They thought that if Jesus couldn’t discern what kind of woman she was, then he surely wasn’t the Messiah the people hoped him to be.”
She looked up at Bula. “Of course he knew what she was—he is the Son of God! But because the woman approached him with penitent sorrow, he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’”
Bula shook his head. “No. Such stains cannot be removed. They remain to this day.”
“Perhaps in your eyes they do, but you are not God. You do not get to decide what he forgives. Only he does. This is how God’s nature differs from ours—it is higher than ours. Jesus also said that day, ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But whoever has been forgiven little, loves little.’”
Laynie swallowed a groan of pain. “I know what it means to be forgiven much, Bula. I was that woman, but I am not her any longer.”
“One cannot become someone else simply by wishing or choosing it.”
“You are right. I did not change who I am. Jesus did. He said I could be born again by the Holy Spirit. In that moment when I was born of the Spirit, the woman I once was died. She was buried, never to rise again. I am a new woman, a new creation made clean in Christ. All my sins are gone—as far as the east is from the west. I stand before God pure and holy, with no stain from my past upon me.”
He considered what she said and shrugged. “Then I am sorry for you, because you will be well used in the coming days. I doubt your God will be able to look upon you after that.”
“Jesus said he would never leave me. He said he would never forsake me.”
“And yet it seems he has. Do not your circumstances prove how powerless your Jesus is?”
Laynie shivered. The chillier air of the cell was working its way into her body. She lifted her hand, confused that her head seemed so cold . . . startled when her fingers encountered its rough, barren landscape.
Bula couldn’t resist goading her. “If Isa loved you as you say he does, if he were who you say he is, would he have allowed you to suffer this indignity, this shame?”
An aching wave rippled across her body, and she laughed softly through gritted teeth. “A servant is not above his master, Bula. My Jesus suffered a greater indignity than this, and he did it willingly, purposely, knowing that his blood and only his blood could cleanse away my filth. That is real love. I am not afraid to suffer the indignities others do to me, because Jesus comforts me in my fear.”
She looked up at him again. “Tell me something, Bula. Is Allah pleased with the sexual immorality practiced in these caves and tunnels? Is he pleased with men who have intercourse outside of marriage?”
Bula frowned and looked aside. “The men have needs.”
“Oh? Does that excuse their sin? Where is ‘the men have needs so it’s all right if they fornicate’ found in the Quran?”
Bula’s mouth hardened in anger. “Do not presume to lecture me on morality!”
“Very well, but I offer you a warning instead: You should think before defiling a woman who belongs to Jesus. You should consider well what Jesus thinks of the man who harms one of his own—what he will do to that man.”
Bula snorted with derision. “Oh, and are you one of his own? If you are, it seems he cares very little for you.”
Laynie locked eyes with Bula. “I am sorry for you, Bula. Not long from now, you will stand before Jesus and give an account for what you have done in this place.”
Part 3:
I Am Not Ashamed
Chapter 22
AT FIRST LIGH
T, COSSACK and two hardy soldiers, experienced mountaineers and guides, both a decade or two younger than their revered general, departed the militia’s stronghold. The three men wore webbed snowshoes in the shape of teardrops.
They carried packs containing food, water, and shelter, and they traveled single file, one of the guides always a few yards in the lead. The other guide took up the rear, which put Cossack in the safest position—between the two men. The lead guide broke trail for the others, dangerous and laborious work that compelled the guides to trade places every hour.
The grueling, punishing trek led upward into increasingly rugged terrain and deeper snow. Fatigue, physical and mental, was their greatest enemy. Fatigue tempted a man to be less observant and less careful—more apt to commit a fatal mistake. The guides knew all this and more. It was their duty to navigate Cossack through the mountain passage and all its perils. It was their responsibility to deliver him safely to the rendezvous point on the other side.
They did not speak of it—it was understood: Should one of the guides put a foot wrong or step into a hole and break a foot or leg, the other guide would lead Cossack on, leaving the injured guide to make his own way out of the mountains . . . or die trying. It was a brutal custom, but a necessary one if Cossack were to survive the crossing.
AFTER BULA LEFT HER, Laynie stretched out on the cold stone and let her head fall onto her arms to pillow it. Her mouth and face throbbed. Her scalp ached where her hair had been yanked and where scissor jabs stung and bled. Her wrists, shoulders, back, and the heels of her feet were scraped and bruised from being dragged through the tunnels. Blood clotted on her cheeks, lips, and inside her wounded mouth.
She couldn’t process the pain without groaning.
“Lord, please help me.”
I don’t want to have run in vain. Please help me finish my race, Lord.
The book of Philippians opened to her, the four chapters she had devoured and memorized the weekend she’d been under house arrest . . . back in her apartment, right before the Ukrainian hit squad had tried to kill her and Tobin and abduct Jaz. As much as it hurt to form the words, Laynie forced her lips to speak aloud, to make her personal profession of faith, again and again until the separating line between the verses and her prayers faded, then merged.
“Oh my Jesus! I consider everything in my life loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing you. For your sake I willingly surrender it all. But I have actually lost nothing, Lord, because before I knew you, I had nothing.
“And I know my suffering is transient—that my true citizenship is in heaven—so I eagerly await you, my Savior, my Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables you to bring everything under your control, will transform my lowly body so that it will, in that day, be like your glorious body. All these things done to me will pass away. Someday soon, you will transform my lowly body into one like yours, Lord Jesus!”
She shivered and shook, the cold seeping into her bones, making every injured part throb, wracking her with pain. Tears flowed from her eyes, soaked her arms, ran onto the stones.
“O Lord, I love you. Please help me.”
She vaguely heard rustling in the shadows behind her, footsteps that came near.
A form stooped over her. Got on its knees and leaned toward her.
“Lay-nee. Oh, Lay-nee. What have they done to you?” A young woman’s voice, a girl’s voice, speaking broken Russian.
The compassionate words reached into Laynie’s hurting heart. She sobbed once and opened her eyes. “Ksenia?”
The scarf Ksenia wore across her mouth before men was pulled down around her neck. Although the second scarf still bound her hair, Laynie saw all of Ksenia’s face for the first time. A young face twisted in sorrow.
“What have they done to you? They cut off your beautiful hair, Lay-nee.”
“I know, but I . . . cannot think on it, Ksenia. I mustn’t.”
Ksenia sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Come, then. I have a mattress and blankets against the far wall. A fire of my own away from the others.”
“Others?”
“The other kafir women. Come, Lay-nee.”
Ksenia helped Laynie get up. With her help, Laynie hobbled away from the grate and into the recesses of the cave. It was far deeper than she’d realized. Although she could see little into its depths, she heard whispers, a few, then more, followed by shuffling feet moving toward them.
“What are they saying?”
“They want to know who you are. Where you come from.”
“Oh.”
She was soon confronted by other young women, all clad in abayas and niqabs, “Alyona” among them. While they studied Laynie, she studied them back—appalled.
These are the kafir women? What these men consider women are mere girls! I don’t see even one who could be older than sixteen or seventeen.
Several of the girls pointed at her bare head. They clucked and hissed.
To be uncovered in this culture must be bad enough. To be shorn? Far worse.
One of the girls jabbed her finger toward Laynie and spoke roughly to Ksenia. Laynie might not have understood her words, but her tone and body language spoke well enough.
Others joined in.
It was clear that they didn’t want Laynie near them—and their demands were increasing.
Ksenia stomped her foot and shouted back at them. Waved her fist at them. She pulled the scarf from around her neck and, gently, lifted it over Laynie’s bare head where it settled.
To hide my shame from these women.
Laynie’s eyes watered. She told herself it was because of the girl’s selfless action. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about the loss of her hair.
Oh, my hair!
No. I cannot allow myself to mourn it.
I count all things as loss, Lord.
Laynie wiped away her tears as Ksenia helped Laynie navigate the dark cave, heading farther back and to the left.
“Here. Sit here, Lay-nee.”
Laynie sank down on a thin, mildewed mattress. She leaned back against the rock wall.
Ksenia added a few sticks to the fire in front of her mattress. She felt around and found a jug of water and held it to Laynie’s lips.
Laynie took a sip—it stung her mouth and lips. “What is it?”
“Only water with a little vinegar mixed in. It is what they give us.”
Ksenia moistened the tail of her scarf, then urged the jug again on Laynie.
“Drink more while I wash the wounds on your head.”
Laynie took a mouthful. Gritting her teeth against the sting, she swished the liquid around until the raw places calmed. She was able to drink again after her mouth had adjusted to it.
While Laynie sipped, Ksenia lifted her veil from Laynie’s head and dabbed the vinegar water over her wounded scalp. She then tucked a blanket over Laynie’s legs and feet.
“Ksenia, why are you over here by yourself and not with the others?”
“Oh. They are mostly Kurdish girls stolen from their homes in Iran, except the two from Azerbaijan. I am Yazidi. My family lived in the hills of Turkey, near Iraq.”
“Why does this matter?”
Laynie felt rather than saw Ksenia shrug. “Except for myself, the others are Kurds, Muslims who are not of a sect the soldiers approve. I am of Melek Taus. The Kurds call the Yazidi devil worshippers. They will not associate with me unless the soldiers make them.”
Laynie was careful. “And . . . are you a devil worshipper?”
Ksenia shrugged again. “We have one god, but his name is not Allah. I do not think either god sees us. Or why would we be here?”
Softly, she added, “The others, they do not speak Russian as I do. I am the only one. I heard what you said to Bula.”
“What I said about Jesus?”
“Yes. He is your God?”
“He is.”
“I think Bula is right, Lay-nee. Jesus does not see you—any more than Allah or my God sees us.”
“Maybe you are just crazy,” Ksenia suggested.
Laynie had to laugh, as much as it hurt her to. “I don’t think I’m crazy, but then again, do crazy people know they are crazy?”
Ksenia did not reply.
Laynie leaned against the wall, exhaustion overtaking her pain. She was drifting away when something roused her . . . Ksenia, keening softly. Seated beside Laynie, her hips against Laynie’s hips. Weeping. Holding her veil over Laynie’s bare head.
She is mourning for me. Over the shame of being shorn.
Laynie slept again.
IN THE PAST FORTY-EIGHT hours, Rusty, Brian, and Jaz had hacked every Chinese pharmaceutical and medical supply company they could identify, and they had failed to find any suspicious fentanyl orders. The orders they did find were well under six ounces and had been shipped legally through hazardous material carriers to various heart clinics or research institutes worldwide.
Frustrated, the three of them peeled off in separate directions, trying one line of investigation after another, in an attempt to find the source of AGFA’s fentanyl.
Late that afternoon, her face wearing a tight, triumphant smile, Jaz called out to the team. “Listen up, me hearties. I be the bringer o’ fine booty. Two things. First, I’ve found AGFA’s supplier.”
“Arrr! I could stand some good news, Cap’n,” Brian grumbled, “and I’m likin’ to savvy how you scored your booty—seeing as we had already scrubbed the records of every Chicom pharmaceutical and medical supply company out there.”
“Yah, this one’s sneaky, I’ll give them that. Here’s how I did it. First, I wrote a special little worm that, when released into a company’s inventory and order program, would sort orders for every given product in the past year—you know, all crutches in one pile, all hydrocodone in another, inhalers in a third.
“Once all orders were sorted by product, the program would compile and analyze the quantities of those orders and return a min, max, and mean. It would also return orders that exceeded the product’s usual quantity parameters, flagging outliers on the high end. Well, I ran that program through the networks of every Chinese company on our list.”
Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected Page 25