by Amelia Autin
* * *
At first Tahra waited in her suite after the explosion. She’d already figured out by what Angelina had said and what she hadn’t said that something was going on. “They’ve set a trap for the Zakharian Liberation Front,” she reasoned beneath her breath. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
And if the terrorists were taking the bait, as seemed likely, the true motive behind all the attacks didn’t have anything to do with the refugees. What had Marek said in his office? “It is nothing I can name, just a feeling there is something we are overlooking.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered as the realization dawned. When you swept away all the extraneous clutter, all you were left with was the oldest motive in the world—a grab for power. And hadn’t she just been thinking about this very thing after dinner? About the threat of assassination that hung over the royal family?
Including their son.
“Oh, no. No.” Not an innocent little boy. They couldn’t. They couldn’t!
Then she heard Marek’s voice in her head. “Why are you surprised? If people would kill dozens of children in a schoolyard—which you prevented—why should one child be any different?”
She had to find Marek. She had to make him tell her the crown prince was safe, that he’d already planned for this contingency. Because if not...
Tahra pressed her ear against the door and didn’t hear anything, but the solid oak was something of a sound barrier. So she opened the door and peeked out. She didn’t see anything, so she stepped cautiously out the door and turned in the direction that would take her back down the way she’d come up.
A sound behind her made her whirl around. Four men in coveralls she recognized as those worn by the palace staff were heading in the opposite direction, and her first reaction was to heave a sigh of relief. But then she realized the men were moving away from the explosion, not toward it as most people would have done—especially someone who worked in the palace. And the shock made her gasp.
One man heard her. Turned. And when their eyes met across the short distance, Tahra was suddenly rooted to the spot as her memory returned in waves. Those eyes. She knew those eyes. That face. And just as she had in the schoolyard, she knew why he was here. She knew.
But this time he didn’t turn and walk away. This time his hand reached for something beneath the coverall he wore. He muttered to the three men with him, who all swung around, also reaching.
And Tahra knew it was too late to run.
Chapter 21
Marek turned the corner and saw Tahra standing in the hallway, her back to him. Apparently frozen. Beyond her stood four men, garbed as members of the palace maintenance crew. Their right hands were moving inside their dark blue coveralls, reaching for what he instinctively knew were guns.
Time slowed to a painful crawl. Desperately running, Marek reached Tahra and shouldered her to one side, then stood in front of her and squared up in perfect professional stance, with two hands on his weapon. Took careful aim. And squeezed the trigger. Again. And again.
Three of the shots the men got off went wide, but the fourth bullet whizzed so closely to Marek’s left arm the fabric of his uniform was singed. Then four bodies thudded to the floor, one after the other, guns falling harmlessly from their hands onto the carpet runner. Marek moved on autopilot to kick their weapons away, his SIG SAUER still pointed at the men on the ground just in case any of them were still a threat. His breath rasped in his throat and his heart pounded as fear-induced adrenaline pumped through his body. All he could think of was Almost too late. Almost too late. A split second later, and Tahra would have been dead.
He went down on one knee and reached to check their pulses, then realized two of the men were still alive. He tapped his earpiece. “This is Captain Zale. I need an ambulance and emergency responders now. Second floor, outside Princess Mara’s suite. The four targets from the chapel are down, but two are still alive. Repeat, four targets are down, but two are still alive, and I need assistance now.”
Then he heard a voice he recognized. “This is General Miroslav. Forces under my command have just intercepted two troop carriers attempting to crash the front gates, and a third troop carrier was intercepted at the rear gate. Shots were fired, but all attackers are either dead or in custody. Members of the Zakharian Liberation Front also attempted to seize control of the Drago airport, the train station and the main communications hubs—television, radio, telephone and internet. All attempts failed. Preliminary casualty reports for our forces are light. Enemy casualties are heavy.”
Marek glanced up and saw Tahra clinging to the wall, her body shaking. He moved to her side, wrapping his left arm around her, but keeping his gun hand free and turning them so he could keep an eye on the four men on the ground.
“Shh,” he whispered against her ear as she clung to him, weeping softly. “You are not to cry in front of me, remember?”
“I remember,” she said, her tears still flowing silently. “Oh, Marek, I remember. I remember.”
He froze. “Say that again?”
“I remember. Everything. You. Me. The past eighteen months. I saw him and I remembered.”
“Him?”
“The man from the schoolyard. He was one of the four maintenance men. He turned around and looked at me a minute ago, and it was the same way he looked at me then. His eyes. His face. And I knew...” She choked on a sob. “But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t. I thought I was going to die and you’d never know... I remember you. Oh, Marek.”
He would have kissed her...if he’d dared. But until the terrorists were secured, he couldn’t risk letting himself be distracted. His arm tightened on Tahra instead, holding her so close he was afraid he’d hurt her. “Hush now,” he insisted. “Remembering is cause for rejoicing, not weeping.”
A statement that made her choke again, but this time on laughter, not tears. “That’s so like you,” she replied. “Telling me what to do. Well, I have news for you—I’ll cry if I want to, you hear me? You can’t—”
Whatever else Tahra was going to say was lost as a dozen men rushed up to them, carrying stretchers...and guns.
* * *
Two days later Marek and Angelina identified themselves to the guards outside a hospital room, then walked inside. The man in the bed, though he had non-life-threatening injuries, had been positively identified by his fingerprints as a onetime corporal in the Zakharian National Forces.
They’d learned a lot about him in the day and a half the doctors had said he was too doped up to talk, and everything they’d learned had done nothing but add ammunition to their case against him. He’d been a demolitions expert in the military, then had gone to work in construction. He’d lost his job a year ago, and his neighbors claimed he’d blamed that loss on the immigrants moving into Zakhar. No one knew what he was doing now, but he’d come and gone at odd hours of the day and night. He’d been mysteriously absent from his home for more than a week recently, before showing up out of the blue and then disappearing again.
The prisoner had been questioned by Major Stesha’s men more than once...and had refused to answer every time, not even to state his true name. Which was why Angelina and Marek had been called in. Now the man raised dull, listless eyes when they entered, then returned to gazing out the window. “I have nothing to say,” he told them.
“That may well be,” Marek told him. “But we have something to say to you.”
The man didn’t even bother to make eye contact again. “What?”
“Are you aware of the penalty for high treason?” Angelina said softly.
That got his attention. “High treason? What do you mean, high treason?” he demanded. “I—”
Marek knew his voice was hard and cold when he said, “Attempted regicide is high treason.” He and Angelina had agreed he would play “bad cop” against h
er “good cop,” but right now he wasn’t acting. This was the man responsible for putting Tahra in the hospital. This was the man who’d bribed a nurse’s aide to switch Tahra’s IV bag, to murder her in cold blood. And this was the man who’d been heading for the crown prince’s suite two days ago, intending to do what?
“Regicide?” The man seemed honestly horrified.
Angelina put a hand on Marek’s arm. “That is not yet proved,” she pretended to remind him.
“Do you think a jury would care? Every man in the Zakharian Liberation Front who goes on trial will be convicted of high treason. And the penalty is—”
“No, no,” Angelina protested, covering her ears as if she were too sensitive to hear.
“An easy death will not be yours,” Marek continued implacably. “You will be hanged. Drawn. Quartered. Disemboweled. Emasculated. Forced to watch parts of yourself burned before your eyes. That is the penalty for attempted regicide.”
“No!” The man was practically shouting. “I know nothing of any attempt to kill the king!”
“Perhaps he is telling the truth,” Angelina implored Marek, but he shook his head.
“He was heading for the crown prince’s suite. When you combine that with the armed attempt to storm the palace, the insurrectionist attempts to take over the communications hubs, the airport and the train station, only one conclusion can be drawn. And attempting to assassinate any member of the royal family carries the same penalty as attempted regicide.”
“No, I tell you. No! We did not intend to kill the crown prince. Kidnap him, yes. But only to force the king to accede to our demands. We would never have harmed the prince, no matter what—he is our future king!”
“If you could prove that,” Angelina said swiftly, as if trying to get a word in before Marek could. “Perhaps the king could be persuaded to grant you clemency.”
“There is still the assault on the palace to answer for,” Marek insisted. “That can only be an assassination attempt. And for that someone must pay.”
“I swear to you, I know nothing of any plot to kill the king. My assignment was to kidnap the crown prince. Hold him—safely!—until the king agreed to close the borders and expel the immigrants already here. That is all. How could the king do that if he was dead?” The honest bewilderment on his face was convincing to his listeners.
“There must be some way to prove your innocence,” Angelina said. “At least where high treason is concerned. The king, he forgave the men who tried to kill him before, remember? He commuted their sentences to life in prison.”
“It was Colonel Borka,” the man blurted out. “That is not his real name, of course. No one used his real name in the Zakharian Liberation Front. Too dangerous. But I have met him. I am positive I could identify him. I knew there was something the rank and file was not being told, but I never imagined it involved assassinating the king.”
Marek was hard-pressed not to smile at how guilelessly Angelina said, “Now, that is a good idea! If you could identify Colonel Borka...I would testify to how cooperative you were, how appalled you were to find out you had been duped.”
“Yes,” the onetime corporal said. “I was a sergeant in the Zakharian Liberation Front. Sergeant Thimo Vasska. Colonel Damek Borka was the name he used. I do not know his real name, although from the beginning he reminded me of... That is...” He trailed off, casting an uncertain glance at his two inquisitors.
Marek drew a stack of photographs from his breast pocket. “I have some photos. Would you be willing to look through them, to see if anyone seems familiar?”
“Of course!”
Marek pulled a wheeled table across the bed, then began laying the pictures down one by one in front of the prisoner. The stack included the face of every man on the Privy Council, but the one he wanted confirmation on—Colonel Lermontov—was buried in the middle.
Face after face was laid on the table, and after the first dozen were rejected the man began to obviously despair. “No,” he continued to say. “No. I am afraid... No.”
Then Marek placed Colonel Lermontov’s photo on the table.
“That is him!”
“Are you positive?” Angelina asked. “Look carefully. You do not want to accuse an innocent man.”
“It is him, I tell you. It is him. He resembles the king’s chief councillor, I know, but that is Colonel Damek Borka, the supreme commander of the Zakharian Liberation Front!”
Angelina darted a smile of triumph at Marek, then wiped the expression from her face before the man in the bed could see it. “Thank you, Corporal. Your cooperation is duly noted.”
Marek nodded approvingly to himself when Angelina didn’t mention the onetime corporal could still face the death penalty—no sense in reminding him while they still needed his cooperation. Someday he would tell the corporal...would take fierce pleasure in doing so...but not today.
* * *
“So once we received confirmation from the terrorist who set off the diversionary bomb and the other one who survived being shot,” Marek told Alec as the four of them—Alec, Angelina, Tahra and Marek—relaxed in the Joneses’ living room after dinner a week later, “we arrested Colonel Lermontov. And others.”
Alec glanced down at Angelina, who was nestled against his shoulder, then back at Marek, who had his arm around Tahra. “Is that really the penalty for high treason in Zakhar? Don’t take offense, but it sounds pretty barbaric.”
Marek smiled. “No offense taken. No one has died that way in over three hundred years, but yes, it is still the law.”
“Strong incentive not to commit high treason, I’d say.”
“That is exactly the point,” Angelina threw in before Marek could.
Marek frowned as he considered the issue for a moment, then he said slowly, “I will not say the king was wrong to acquiesce to the queen’s plea for leniency for the five men—including his own cousin—who conspired to kill him a few years back. The queen is not Zakharian, and she could not bear the thought of any man dying in that fashion. But it is possible his decision in that case had some impact on the men who attempted to assassinate the crown prince eighteen months ago. And on Colonel Lermontov’s decision to try to seize power now.”
“Especially on Colonel Lermontov,” Angelina concurred.
“You agree with that law?” Alec asked her, surprised.
“This is my king,” she explained, as if it should be obvious. “His wife. His child. The royal family.”
Tahra caught Marek’s eyes. “You agree with the law, too, don’t you?”
He couldn’t lie to her. “Yes. And yes, it is barbaric. But it had been an effective deterrent for three hundred years...until the queen begged the king not to impose the penalty. If he had—” Marek shrugged. “Who can say? All I know is no one attempts to assassinate my king or his family and gets away with it. No one. I would call down the wrath of God if I could on any man who so dares.”
Tahra looked across at Alec, who still appeared upset. “It’s not our country,” she said softly. “You and I, we’re Americans. So from our perspective, it seems...barbaric. But let me ask you this. How would you feel if someone tried to kill Drew? Or Angelina? Wouldn’t you want him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? And maybe...even beyond it?”
Alec opened his mouth, then closed it again, words unsaid. But Tahra wasn’t finished. “My sister shot the man who was trying to kill her fiancé. Angelina shot and killed a man defending you. You shot and killed two men in self-defense before you ever came to Zakhar. And Marek...” She turned to smile at him in a way that made his heart turn over. “Marek shot four men who were going to shoot me. Two of them died. Am I sorry they died? Yes, of course. But I’d rather it was them than me.”
Alec nodded slowly. “When you put it that way, I guess it’s all a matter of degree.”
They talked of other things for a few minutes, then Alec said to Tahra, “So now that your memory has returned, when should I expect you back at work?”
“Monday,” she replied promptly. She held up her right hand. “My computer skills won’t be up to par until this cast comes off. But other than that...”
“That’s great news. I can hardly wait.”
Tahra made a face. “Umm, there is one thing, though. I’ll need a week of vacation in about three weeks.”
Alec laughed. “Yeah, I figured. Won’t be a problem because I won’t be here, either.”
“I keep forgetting,” Tahra said. “My sister’s marrying your brother.” When everyone turned startled eyes on her, she said, “What?” Then she seemed to get it. “This is not amnesia,” she asserted. “This is just your average, ordinary kind of forgetting.” She smiled up at Marek, a smile that drove every thought out of his head except one—Tahra was his. Truly his. “I might forget that in three weeks I’m going to be related to my boss by marriage. But there are some things I’ll never forget. Ever again.”
Epilogue
“You’ve changed,” Carly told Tahra with a little note of gladness in her voice as she put the finishing touches to her wedding day makeup while eyeing her younger sister in the mirror at the same time. “You’re a lot stronger than I ever gave you credit for.” A shoeless Tahra was sitting cross-legged on the bed the way she used to when she was a nine-year-old girl watching her sixteen-year-old sister get ready for dates all those years ago.
This time, though, Tahra wasn’t wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She’d already donned the maid of honor dress she’d bought in Zakhar and brought home with her—a dress that made a definite statement without in any way detracting from the bride—and the frothy, rose-colored layers of her chiffon skirt were fluffed around her so they wouldn’t get crushed. When Carly was finished, she came to sit next to Tahra on the bed, taking her sister’s hands in hers.