“None.”
“But in the meantime, my husband’s still looking for me.” Sienna’s stark tone made clear that whatever Malone felt, she herself was not reassured. “I keep worrying that he and his men are going to smash through that door any minute. How are you going to help us?”
For the first time, Jeb looked directly at her. “It’ll be my pleasure to show you I can do my job.”
7
After nightfall, twenty miles east of Nice, a van stopped along the narrow coastal road. Malone and Sienna got out, accompanied by Jeb and three other armed men. As the van drove away, they clambered down a rocky slope to where a motorized rubber raft waited in a cove. A half mile offshore, they boarded a small freighter and set out for Corsica.
“Two days from now, you’ll be transferred to a U.S. aircraft carrier on maneuvers in the region,” Jeb said after using a scrambler-equipped radio to verify the schedule. “From there, you’ll be flown to a base in Italy, and from there” – he spread his hands – “home.”
“Wherever that is,” Sienna murmured.
The three of them sat in the dimly lit galley while their escorts and the crew remained on deck, watching for any approaching lights.
“Can I get you anything?” Jeb asked. “Coffee? Hot chocolate? Something stronger?”
“The hot chocolate sounds good,” Sienna said.
“Same here,” Malone said.
“Coming up,” Jeb said. “And after that – given all you’ve been through, I’m sure you’re exhausted – there are bunks in the stern.”
“I’m too on edge to sleep,” she said.
“Then why don’t we talk about why we’re here.”
“Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” Malone asked.
“I’m not trying to force anything.” Jeb tore open an envelope of hot-chocolate mix. “Whatever Sienna wants.”
The smell of diesel fumes hung in the air.
“It’s okay.” She exhaled wearily. “Let’s get it over with.”
“This is going to take a lot longer than you think,” Malone told her.
The freighter rocked as it passed through waves.
“Chase, I’m trying to make this as pleasant as possible,” Jeb said. “We’ll move at whatever pace she wants.”
“Then I’ll go first,” Malone said, giving her a chance to rest. “I saw two men at the estate.”
Jeb paused in the midst of pouring the hot-chocolate mix into a cup.
“They were Russians,” Malone went on. “One of them brought in several crates of equipment via chopper. When the guards mishandled the crates, the Russian got very nervous, as if he was afraid of what might happen if something inside broke. I managed to get over to the building where the Russians were staying. I got a look through a window. The crates contained lab equipment.”
Sienna frowned, realizing how little she had known about what Malone had been doing at the estate.
“Lab equipment?” Jeb asked. “What for?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Describe the Russians.”
“I can do better than that.”
“What do you mean?” Jeb’s look of curiosity was matched by Sienna’s.
“Have you got any sheets of paper around here?”
Jeb freed the latches on several drawers and peered inside, finally locating a pencil and a pad of eight-by-ten yellow paper.
Malone ordered his thoughts, then began to draw, calling not so much on his memory of the men’s faces as on his memory of the numerous drawings he had done of them two nights previously. He had reproduced the faces enough times that he had little trouble replicating the strokes that filled in their features. On occasion, when the freighter shuddered from the impact of a wave, his pencil missed its mark, but he quickly erased the errors and added more details.
Time seemed to stop. Only later, when his pencil quit moving and the faces were complete, did he realize twenty minutes had gone by. Silence had seemed to envelope him. Now he shoved the sketches across the table to Jeb. “Look familiar?”
“Afraid not.” Jeb held them closer to the light. “But these are vivid enough, I’m sure somebody in the Agency will be able to identify them. Vivid? Hell, they’re close to being photographs. What you just did – I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Malone turned toward Sienna. “If you’re not tired, I’d like to try something.”
“What is it?”
“I think it’ll save time in your debriefing. But we can wait until tomorrow if…”
“No, you’ve got me curious.”
“Did the man your husband met in Istanbul ever give his name?”
The reference caught Jeb by surprise. He leaned forward. “What man?”
“I never knew the names of anybody Derek did business with,” Sienna said. “Whenever he used me as window dressing, the people he met avoided referring to one another even by their first names.”
“Istanbul?” Jeb asked. “When was this?”
Sienna gave him the details. “It was an important meeting. Derek was very tense about it.”
“We’ve been trying to keep track of your husband’s activities,” Jeb said, “but I had no idea about this meeting.”
“That’s not a confidence booster,” Sienna said.
Jeb looked down at his cup.
Malone readied his pencil. “Describe the man.”
Sienna nodded, understanding. “He was Middle Eastern.”
“Describe the shape of his face.”
She looked across the galley, focusing her memory. “Rectangular.”
“How narrow?”
“Very.”
“Any facial hair?”
“A thin mustache.”
“Curved or straight?”
As Jeb watched, Malone began putting a face to Sienna’s description. Most of his questions were based on geometry – the shape of the man’s lips, his nose, and his eyes. High or low forehead? How old was he? Late forties? Malone put crow’s-feet around the eyes and added wrinkles to the forehead.
“Is this starting to resemble him?”
“The lips were fuller.”
Malone made the correction.
“The eyes looked harsher.”
“Good.”
Malone tore off the page and started a new one, copying details from the first rough sketch, leaving out smudges from erasures and the clutter of needless lines. He went to work on the eyes, adding the harshness that Sienna had mentioned. “What about his cheekbones?”
“He often looked like he’d tasted something sour. His cheeks were sucked in.”
Malone’s pencil moved faster.
Jeb peered over Malone’s shoulder. “Jesus, I recognize this guy.”
“What?”
“When I was assigned against Bellasar, I had to familiarize myself with other black-market arms dealers. This is Tariq Ahmed, his main competitor. A couple of years ago, they agreed on which territories each could have without interference from the other. Bellasar took Africa, Europe, and South America. Ahmed took the Mideast and Asia. Bellasar cheated when it came to Iraq. Ahmed cheated in Ethiopia. But basically they got along, especially when they had problems with other arms dealers trying to take some of their territories. So what did they need to meet about? Is their truce falling apart?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Sienna answered. “My husband never talked about business in my presence. It was only indirectly that I learned how he made his fortune.”
“You’re telling me he never once mentioned a name or a detail about a transaction?”
“That’s right.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Very little. Once Derek married me, I was just another possession.”
Jeb looked frustrated. Obviously, he’d expected more.
“That’s why I wanted to give you these drawings right away,” Malone said. “They’re the only things of substance you’re going to get out of this.”
“Maybe not. Once we debrief the two of you, it’s hard to say what might turn up – something you remember, some reference you overheard but didn’t understand or think was important.”