Maggie looks at him in pure horror.
“Then they grabbed Trace. Like they were going to do the same to him. They dangled him upside down outside the copter for five minutes, holding on to him by one ankle.”
“My God.”
Charles nods. “Anyway, message received. There was no leaving WorldCures. They were in too deep. Trace, I think he surrendered to that fate. But you know your husband. He was a problem solver. He kept looking for a way.”
She nods to herself at that. Marc believed that he could indeed find a solution to every problem. There was no quit in her husband, just a road not yet taken.
“That,” Charles says, “is where I come in.”
“Marc became your, what, informant?”
“Something like that, yeah. He put out feelers. Quietly. I came to him. I told him the only way out was for him to help us take down Ragoravich.”
“Did he agree?”
Lockwood says nothing.
“Did he agree, Charles?”
“Yes.”
Maggie feels the tears come to her eyes. “You said Trace is missing.”
“Yes.”
“And you also said he may be looking for Marc.”
Charles shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.” Charles lets loose a long breath. “There are three theories about your husband’s death. Would you like to hear them in order of believability?”
She wouldn’t. But she still gives a small nod. She knows where he’s going to go with this. She needs to hear him say it out loud.
“Theory One: Marc got caught up in the violence of a volatile region. That’s the most accepted theory, of course. It’s also, for the record, the one I most believe. It’s backed up by evidence and logic.”
“What’s Theory Two?”
“I think you can probably guess now.”
Maggie nods. “Oleg Ragoravich killed Marc.”
“Yes.”
“He found out that Marc had turned on him. He set it up to have him killed and made it look like he was a casualty of war.”
“Yes.”
“And Trace, what, he got away?”
“And that’s why he’s in hiding, yes.”
Maggie thinks about it, tries to stay detached, unemotional. “That actually seems almost as likely as Theory One, don’t you think?”
Charles doesn’t respond.
“I mean, Marc risks going up against this powerful, rich, evil man — and then he ends up dead.”
“I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Because then it would be in part your fault,” Maggie says. “My husband comes to you for help, and he ends up dead.”
“That’s not it.”
“What then?”
“Because if Oleg Ragoravich wanted them dead, he wouldn’t have had to jump through so many hoops. Did Oleg plan the slaughter at the refugee camp? Thirty-three people were murdered in that rampage. Seems like a lot of unnecessary collateral damage. And of course, he didn’t want to just silence Marc. There was Trace too. Trace, if you believe this theory, got away. Do you think Oleg Ragoravich would be that sloppy?”
All good points. But of course, Maggie already knew that.
“So,” Maggie says, “let’s get to it, shall we? What’s Theory Three?”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“But?”
Lockwood looks at her. “Did they spare you the details?”
“About?”
“About how Marc was killed.”
She feels her chest tighten. “I know about the” — Maggie is never sure of the right word to use here — “savagery.”
“To some people that seems odd.”
“A lot of victims got hacked to death.”
“I know.”
“And yes, maybe he was hard to identify. But a DNA test was done.”
Charles Lockwood tilts his head. “By whom?”
Maggie is not sure who did it.
“Did the local authorities do it?” Charles asks. “I mean, there’s no American embassy in that area. The closest was in Tunisia. So who ran the DNA test?”
“There were people,” she says. “Reliable people.”
“Right then. I mean, sure. It’s why that last theory is ridiculous.”
“So what’s your third theory, Charles?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not to me.”
“If Ragoravich found out what Marc had done, he would kill him, of course. And just to make sure the lesson stuck, Oleg would probably kill anyone and everyone close to him. Especially you, Maggie. Best-case scenario: Marc would have to look over his shoulder the rest of his life.”
“Did you tell Marc this? I mean, when you recruited him.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
“Because you didn’t give a shit about him. You cared about your case.”
“Yes,” he says calmly. “I put him in an untenable situation — after he put himself in one. But there was a way out. For you, at least. If Marc ended up ‘dying’” — he makes quote marks with his fingers — “in a refugee camp in Tunisia, then, well, you’d both be in the clear.”
Maggie feels the cold down to her bones. “You’re saying Marc faked his own death?”
“No, I’m saying that didn’t happen. I’m saying it’s a ridiculous—”
“That he, what, found another body that got hacked up there. That he pretended it was his, bought off whoever ran the DNA test. And now, what, he’s in hiding?”
“I’m saying the theory is ridiculous.”
“But that’s Theory Three?”
“Yes.”
“And to follow it through, Trace, what, ran off and hid — and now he is meeting up with Marc? And what’s the plan after that, Charles?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Theory Three, I admit, is pretty weak.”
“It is,” Maggie says.
“But one thing is true either way.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re very close to Trace.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve known him a long time.”
She nods. “We served together in combat.”
“Whatever theory you believe — One, Two, or Three — Trace Packer is missing. So my question is, How far would you go to find him?”
“As far as I have to,” Maggie says.
He nods, slaps his legs, stands. “When you’re strong enough—”
“I’m strong enough now.”
He thinks about it. “Okay. We leave tomorrow.”
“Where are we going?”
Charles smiles. “Someplace much warmer.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dubai
The Dubai heat starts in your lungs.
The sun is relentless, merciless. It finds you. It beats down upon you. It’s just you and the sun. You have a personal, one-on-one relationship with the sun. There is no middleman, no filter, no cloud cover, no escape. You get the purest hit of the sun. The sun love-bombs you. It’s dry and heavy and clingy. It swarms with an all-consuming furnace-like heat. It suffocates you from within and from without. It saps your energy first, then your spirit.
Maggie had experienced this kind of desert heat too often during her military service. She’d be walking on the tarmac where she could see the squiggly waves from the heat and feel it burn her feet all the way through her combat boots. She had experienced every kind of malady from this kind of heat — dehydration, rash, headache, dizziness, fatigue — during her WorldCures missions. The cold of Russia may have been deadly and awful. But this blazing sun? Maybe worse.