Kurt respected her history and her reflexes. “So the dead man,” he said. “The one who attacked us. Was he your suspect?”
“No,” she said. “We don’t know who he is. He obviously had no ID on him. He has no truly distinguishing marks and his fingerprints have been burned off—I would assume deliberately—nothing but scar tissue left there. We have no record of anyone matching his description arriving on the island. Normally, that wouldn’t tell you much, but with all the immigration and asylum seekers who come to Lampedusa, everyone gets documented thoroughly whether they land at the airport, come through the harbor or wash up onshore in a dilapidated raft.”
“So if the man with the gun is not your suspect, who is?”
“A doctor named Hagen. He worked in the hospital part-time. Hagen has a shady past. We knew he was waiting to take delivery of something and we knew it was to arrive today. We just didn’t know where it was coming from, who was delivering it or what exactly it was. But we were able to confirm his presence in three of the locations during and before the time of the other attacks. So we believe he was connected.”
Kurt put the parts together. “So the dead man with the gun was the courier,” he said, “bringing this nerve agent or toxin to your Dr. Hagen, when it literally blew up in his face.”
“That’s our theory,” she replied.
“And what about Hagen?”
She offered a dour look. “Of the roughly five thousand people on Lampedusa, Hagen is the only one currently unaccounted for. We had him under constant surveillance, but, unfortunately, the team was afflicted by the toxin like everyone else.”
Kurt leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, his eyes settling on a line where two different shades of paint overlapped, forming a third, darker color. “So a deadly cloud covers the island and the only two people apparently immune to its effects are your suspect and the man who tried to kill us.”
She nodded. “Correct. Does that tell you something?”
Of course it did. “They have some kind of antidote,” he said. “Something that blocks the paralyzing effects of whatever toxin caused these comas.”
“Our thinking exactly,” she said. “Unfortunately, we’ve found nothing in Hagen’s office or his home or his vehicle that can help us. Nor have we found anything in the dead man’s blood that would allow us to guess what the antidote was.”
“Is that surprising?” Kurt asked.
“Not really,” she said. “Since the nerve agent was short-lived, it stands to reason that any antidote would have a short half-life as well.”
Kurt could see the progression now. “So the antidote has already decayed. But if you could find your missing doctor, he might be persuaded to tell you where we can get some more.”
She grinned broadly. “You’re very sharp, Mr. Austin.”
“Stop calling me that,” he said. “It makes me feel old.”
“Kurt, then,” she said. “Call me Renata.”
He liked that. “Any idea where your suspect might be hiding?”
She gave him a sideways glance. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
“You’re not planning on looking for him, are you?”
“Of course not,” Kurt said. “That sounds dangerous. Whatever would make you think such a thing?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said coyly. “Only everything I’ve seen from you so far, backed up by a conversation I had with the Assistant Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency shortly before you broke into my temporary medical ward.”
Kurt offered a droll look. “You spoke to my boss?”
“Rudi Gunn,” she said. “Yes. Charming man. He told me you’d probably ask to help. And if I refused your offer, you’d get involved anyway and most likely muck everything up.”
She wore a permanent grin now, so pleased with the direction of the conversation that Kurt could easily guess what had transpired. “So how much did he sell me for?”
“I’m afraid he gave you away for a song.”
“O sole mio?”
“Not quite sole,” she said. “He threw in Mr. Zavala as a bonus.”
Kurt feigned indignation at being traded to the Italians like a minor-league ballplayer, but he was more than happy with the deal. “So do I get paid in euros or—”
“Satisfaction,” she said. “We’re going to find the people that did this and we’re going to stop whatever it is they’re up to. And if we’re lucky, the antidote that kept Hagen and the assailant from succumbing to the toxin can be used to bring the victims out of their comas.”
“Couldn’t ask for better compensation,” Kurt replied. “Where do we start?”
“Malta,” she said. “Hagen made three trips there in the past month.”
She opened a drawer, removed a file folder and pulled from it a set of surveillance photos that she handed to Kurt. “He met with this man several times. Even had a heated argument with him last week.”
Kurt studied the photo. It showed a scholarly man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches. He was sitting at an outdoor café, speaking with three men. It looked more like he was being surrounded.
“The one in the middle is Hagen,” she said. “The other two, we’re not sure. His entourage, I suppose.”
“Who’s the professorial-looking fellow?”
“The curator of the Maltese Oceanic Museum.”
“I don’t get it,” Kurt said. “Museum curators don’t normally rub elbows with terrorists and those trafficking in nerve gas and biological weapons. Are you sure there’s a connection?”
“We’re not sure of anything,” she admitted. “Except that Hagen has been meeting with this man on a regular basis, intent on buying some artifacts the museum is about to put up for auction after a gala party two days from now.”
Kurt didn’t like it. “Everybody has their hobbies,” he said. “Even terrorists.”
She sat down. “Collecting ancient artifacts isn’t one of Hagen’s. He’s never shown an interest. Not until now.”
“Okay,” Kurt said. “But surely he wouldn’t be stupid enough to go back there.”
“That’s what I thought,” she replied. “Except that someone just put two hundred thousand euros into Hagen’s account on Malta. An account he opened the day after he met with the museum curator. Interpol confirmed the transaction. It was initiated several hours after the incident on Lampedusa.”
Kurt saw the logic. There was no denying it. This Dr. Hagen was alive, he’d escaped Lampedusa and moved money into the Maltese account after the fact. Whatever the reason, it sounded like the fugitive doctor was headed back there for another meeting with the head curator of the Maltese Oceanic Museum.
“So the question is,” she asked, closing the file and crossing one leg over the other, “do you care to take a look?”
“I’ll do more than look,” Kurt promised.
An expression of appreciation came his way. “I’ll meet you there once I’m certain all the patients are properly hospitalized and being cared for. I have to ask you not to take action until I arrive.”
Kurt stood, grinning. “Observe and report back,” he said. “I can handle that.”
They both knew he was lying. If he saw Hagen, Kurt would grab him, even if he had to take him right off the street.
13
White Desert of Egypt, seven miles west of the Pyramids
1130 hours
The quiet of the White Desert was broken by the staccato beat of helicopter blades as a French-made SA-342 Gazelle raced above the scalloped sand dunes at five hundred feet.
The copter, clad in a desert-camouflage pattern, was an older model. It had once belonged to the Egyptian military before its transfer, at a marginal price, to the current owner. As it crossed the largest of the towering dunes, it turned sideways and slowed.
The odd style of flight allowed Tariq Shakir to watch a group of vehicles racing across the blistering sands down below. There were seven in all, but only five were moving. Two of the vehicles had collided badly and were now stopped dead in a trough between the last two dunes.
Shakir raised his expensive mirrored sunglasses and held up a pair of binoculars. “Two of them are out,” he said to another passenger. “Have the men go pick them up. The rest are still going strong.”
The remaining vehicles climbed the last immense dune, carving lines in the smooth surface, tires spitting sand, four-wheel-drive systems straining to the limit. One of them seemed to have left the pack behind, perhaps having found firmer sand and a better path to the summit.
“Number four,” a voice informed Shakir via his headphones. “I told you he would not be outdone.”
Shakir glanced into the aft section of the helicopter’s cabin. A short man in black fatigues sat there, grinning from ear to ear.
“Don’t be so sure, Hassan,” Shakir admonished. “The race is not always to the swift.”
With that, Shakir pressed the radio’s talk switch. “It’s time,” he said. “Allow the others to catch him and then shut them all down. We shall see who has spirit and who is prone to giving in.”
This call was received by a chase car trailing the group of racers. A technician listening in did as ordered, quickly tapping several keys on his laptop before hitting ENTER.
Out on the dunes, the leading SUV began to smoke. It slowed rapidly and then stalled completely. The others gained on it, spreading out and preparing to speed past the unlucky driver en route to the far side of the dune and the finish line of this strange race, which was itself the culmination of a grueling month of tests to see whom Shakir would choose to join the upper echelon of his growing organization.
“Quite unfair of you,” Hassan shouted from the aft section of the cabin.
“Life is unfair,” Shakir replied. “If anything, I have just leveled the playing field. Now we shall see who is a real man and who is unworthy.”
Out on the sand, the other vehicles stalled in rapid succession and soon the noise of roaring engines and grinding transmissions was replaced with cursing and slamming doors. The drivers, drenched in sweat, clad in grimy clothes and looking as if they’d been through war or hell or both, clambered out of their machines in stunned disbelief.
One opened the hood of his vehicle to see if he could fix the problem. Another kicked the quarter panel, leaving a nasty dent in the sheet metal of the expensive Mercedes SUV. Others committed similar acts of frustration. Fatigue and exhaustion seemed to have sapped their strength of mind.
“They’re giving up,” Shakir said.
“Not all of them,” Hassan replied.
Down on the sand, one of the men had made the choice Shakir was hoping for. He’d looked at the others, gauged the distance to the top of the dune and then taken off, running.
Several seconds passed before the others realized what he intended: to finish the race on foot and win the prize. The finish line was no more than five hundred yards away and, once he crested the dune, it would be mostly downhill.
The others chased after him and soon five men were charging up the dune, over the crest and down the other side.
In some ways, descending the soft sand was harder than climbing up it. The wind had shaped this dune into a steep wave and two men stumbled forward, fell and began to roll uncontrollably. One of them realized that it might be faster to simply slide, and when he reached the steeper section, he launched himself into the air and slid on his stomach for sixty yards.
“We shall have a winner after all,” Shakir said to Hassan. He then turned to the pilot. “Take us to the finish line.”
The helicopter turned and descended, following a long diagonal scar that cut across the desert in a straight line. That scar was known as the Zandrian pipeline. A pumping station at its base served as the finish line to the race.
The Gazelle touched down beside it, kicking up grit and dust in a swirling little sandstorm. Shakir pulled off his headset and opened the door. He climbed from the cockpit and kept his head low as he made his way toward several men in black fatigues similar to Hassan’s.
In another time and another place, Shakir might’ve been a movie star. Tall and lean, with a tanned face, coarse brown hair and a solid square jaw that seemed capable of withstanding a camel’s kick, he was handsome in the sun-burnished way of an outdoorsman. He exuded confidence. And though he wore the same uniform as the men who stood beside him, his bearing was as different from theirs as a king’s would be from a commoner.
In years past, Shakir had been a member of the Egyptian secret police. Under the Mubarak regime, which had ruled Egypt for thirty years, he’d been second in command of the service, hunting down enemies of the government and holding back the tide of insurgents until the so-called Arab Spring had come and turned Egypt upside-down, ushering in what seemed to Shakir and others like him an age of chaos. Years later, that chaos was only just beginning to subside, with no small amount of help from Shakir and others, who were rebuilding the power structure of the country from their new perch in the shadows of private industry.
Using the skills he’d honed in the service of his country, Shakir had built an organization named Osiris. With it, he’d become wealthy. And while it was not a criminal organization in the strictest sense, it conducted business with a certain flair and reputation. If Shakir was correct in his timetable, Osiris would soon control not only Egypt but most of North Africa as well.
For now, he focused on the race, the end of a grueling competition pitting twenty men against one another for the chance to become part of his special operative section. He had dozens of men, and women, already spread throughout North Africa and Europe, but to succeed he needed more, he needed new blood, recruits who understood what it meant to work for him.
Out on the dune, drivers one and four had separated themselves from the rest. As they reached the flat expanse at the bottom of the dune, they sprinted toward the pumping station. Number one was in the lead, but number four, Hassan’s handpicked favorite, was catching up to him. Just when it seemed Hassan would be proven right, number four made a fatal mistake. He miscalculated the nature of the competition, which had no rules and allowed for victory at all costs. Like life itself.
He took the lead, but as he did, the other driver lunged forward and shoved him in the back, sending him falling to the ground. His face hit the sand, and the other driver added insult to injury by stomping on his back as he continued on.
By the time number four looked up, it was all over. Driver number one had beaten him. The others came stumbling in, passing him by, as he remained on the ground, dejected and bitter.
When they too had reached the finish line, Shakir made an announcement.
“Each of you has finished,” he said. “Each of you has learned the only rules of life that matter: you must never quit, you must show no mercy, you must win at any cost!”
“What about the others?” Hassan asked.
Shakir pondered this. A pair of drivers had remained on the dune, unwilling to engage in the footrace after all they’d been through. And then there were the two others whose vehicles had collided. “Have them walk back to the prior checkpoint.”
“Walk?” Hassan replied in shock. “But it’s thirty miles from here.”
“Then they’d better get started,” Shakir said.
“There’s nothing between here and the checkpoint but sand. They’ll die in the desert,” Hassan replied.
“Probably,” Shakir admitted. “But if they survive, they’ll have learned a valuable lesson and I may reconsider and deem them worthy of enlistment.”
Hassan was Shakir’s closest adviser, an old ally from his Secret Service days. On rare occasions, Shakir allowed his old friend to influence his decisions, but not today.
“Do as I’ve instructed.”
Hassan picked up a radio and made the call. A host of Shakir’s black-clad warriors swooped in to direct the laggards on a journey that would most likely kill them. In the meantime, driver number four got up and staggered across the finish line.
Hassan offered him water.
“No,” Shakir snapped. “He is to walk also.”
“But he almost won,” Hassan said.
“And yet he quit so close to the finish line,” Shakir said. “A trait I cannot stomach in any of my people. He walks with the others. And if I learn that anyone has helped him, it would be better for that person to kill himself rather than suffer what I will inflict on him.”
Driver number four looked at Shakir in disbelief, but instead of fear, a defiant glare appeared in his eyes.
Shakir actually appreciated the anger in that stare and for an instant considered revoking his order before deciding that it must stand. “The hike begins now,” Shakir said.
Number four shook loose from Hassan’s grip, turned without a word and began the arduous hike without looking back.
As he walked off, Shakir read a communiqué handed to him by an aide. “This is bad news.”
“What’s happened?” Hassan asked eagerly.
“Ammon Ta is confirmed dead,” Shakir said. “He was killed by two Americans before he could get to the Italian doctor.”
“Americans?”
Shakir nodded. “Members of the organization called NUMA, it seems.”
“NUMA,” Hassan repeated.
Each of them spoke the acronym with disdain. They’d been in the intelligence business long enough to have heard rumors of the exploits this American agency had undertaken. They were supposed to be oceanographers and such.
“This can’t be a good thing,” Hassan added. “You and I both know they’ve caused more problems than the CIA.”
Shakir nodded. “As I recall, it was a member of NUMA who saved Egypt from the destruction of the Aswan Dam a few years ago.”