Nadia’s eyes flare for a moment, and Maggie can see she realizes what’s going on.
Nadia pulls her skirt back down.
“Too late,” Maggie says.
Nadia stays still. Maggie reaches out and grabs the hem of the dress and pulls it back up, once again baring her upper thigh.
“No tattoo,” Maggie says, before letting go.
Yep, screw playing it coy.
“Time to cut the shit, Nadia, and tell me what’s going on.”
Nadia opens her mouth, a lie undoubtedly coming to her lips automatically, but Maggie cuts her off by holding up the phone Charles Lockwood had given her. She took screenshots from Ray Levine’s website and has the photos lined up and ready to go. She only needs one, the first one, to make Nadia go still. Using her index finger, Maggie swipes through them, just to emphasize the point. The photographs are black-and-white, taken by Ray the day before the incursion that killed Maggie’s beloved.
Marc is in many. Trace is in many.
And in the background, trying hard it seems not to be the object of attention, is Nadia.
“You’re Salima,” Maggie says. “You’re the guide who led Marc and Trace to the TriPoint refugee camp.”
Chapter Seventeen
Maggie sinks into the plush sofa next to Nadia.
The two women sit side by side in silence, both staring out at the curtain. The music thumps into the room, but it seems hushed now, respectful almost, as though the entire club is receding into the backdrop.
“I know you asked for me,” Maggie says.
“Asked?”
“To be your surgeon. You requested me.”
“Yes.” Nadia stares out. A sad smile comes to her face. “We met before, you know.”
“I don’t.”
“No reason you would. I was eleven. In Libya. You probably treated a hundred girls that day, maybe more.”
“Salima—”
“I prefer Nadia, if that’s okay. I was both for a while, but Salima is dead now. She died in that refugee camp too.”
“You’ve been lying to me,” Maggie says.
Nadia doesn’t answer.
“That tattoo,” Maggie says.
“It was temporary, yeah.” She shakes her head. “I should have kept it on longer, I guess.”
“I’d have figured it out anyway.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Why did you do it?”
“The tattoo? Why do you think?”
“To mess with my head.”
“Yes.” Nadia still stares out, so that Maggie has the profile view. “Most of what I told you is true. I grew up in Libya during a time...”
She stops, closes her eyes, opens them again. “That’s not important. There were refugee camps. There were humanitarian crises. You were there. I don’t need to explain to you how bad it was. And yes, I sold my kidney. Just as I told you. The World Health Organization claims over two thousand kidneys were sold in India alone last year. That’s a small part of the worldwide black market. I have no regrets. I explained my reasons for doing so. It saved my family.”
“Nadia?”
“What?”
“Are you in any pain right now? I mean, from the surgery.”
Nadia chuckles at that. “A physician first.”
“I should probably examine you.”
“No, I’m fine. Really.” Then: “Charles sent you, didn’t he?”
“You know Charles Lockwood?”
“I work with him.”
“He didn’t mention that.”
“He doesn’t trust me right now. It’s why he sent you. He told you about the money laundering?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give you his whole theory on corruption — on how it starts small and it either grows like a cancer or it dies?”
“He didn’t use a cancer analogy.”
“But you get it. And if it starts with money laundering, you can probably guess the next profitable step.”
Maggie nods. “Selling organs.”
“I was in that refugee camp when I was recruited to donate my kidney. WorldCures was there too. After I agreed to be a donor, I was flown here. For the surgery.”
Maggie is puzzled by this. “To Dubai?”
“Yes. To a place called Apollo Longevity.”
Apollo Longevity.
Nadia is trying to read her face. “You’ve been there, right? At Apollo Longevity.”
“You already know I have.”
Nadia gives her a slow nod. “WorldCures has a relationship with Apollo Longevity.”
“Had,” Maggie says, correcting her. She tries to keep her voice controlled, even, though the memories are starting to rock her. “We had some space in their facility.” And then, because Maggie wants to change the subject and is tired of Nadia’s cute evasions: “Are you going to tell me my husband removed your kidney?”
“I wouldn’t care if he did, but no, I don’t know. What matters is that I got my family out. At a cost. Not just my kidney. The organ brokers, they would only provide two of us with identities to get into the United States. I gave them to my mother and my brother. They do live in the Midwest now, just like I told you. They are prosperous and happy.”
“And what about you, Nadia? What happened to you?”
“I stayed here. In Dubai.”
“On your own?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“Not really, no,” she says, but the words feel forced. “I, Salima, became Nadia. I did well here. I worked in clubs like this. Someone — a man usually — was always willing to take care of me. One Ukrainian benefactor gave me access to online education. He opened the door, and I walked through it. I learned quite a few languages, including Russian and English, which helped when I met Trace Packer one night at this club. He’d been drinking heavily. You know Trace liked nightclubs, right?”
“Yes.”
“He told me I looked familiar. I figured it was just a line—”
It probably was, Maggie thinks.
“—and I was going to tell him he was mistaken, but I, well, I remembered him. He was kind at the refugee camp. He was so nice to his patients. So I told him who I was.”
“You told him you were Salima?”
“From the refugee camp, yes. He said he remembered me. The next day, we met for coffee. He told me about WorldCures’ latest missions. So I volunteered to help out.”
Maggie tries to sort this all out in her head. Some of it she had figured out already. Charles Lockwood had hinted that laundering money was only the start — that that crime alone would not have been enough to make Marc flip on someone as deadly as Oleg Ragoravich.
But harvesting organs?
That would have been the proverbial straw for Marc. The money laundering — again, it was bad but once you cross that line, there really is no going back. Even if Marc wanted to flip on that, everyone who worked at WorldCures — especially their three founders — would be subject to prosecution or, at the very least, have their reputations destroyed. More than that — much more — Oleg Ragoravich would never let them sell him out and just walk away. If Marc or Trace had any delusions about that, one quick helicopter trip would have straightened them out.
“So you accompanied Marc and Trace on that last mission,”
Maggie says to her.
“Yes. I knew the area. I speak all the dialects.”
“So what happened?”
“We got overrun. A surprise attack. Just like you heard. It was a slaughter. Trace and I tried getting people to safety. We were mostly successful. But Marc” — she stops, shakes her head — “he was so brave. Just like you heard. He insisted we go without him. He stayed behind, tried to save more. But still...”
Nadia stops.
“Still what?”