“Go ahead, eat,” he told him. “You will need your strength.”
For what? Ruhi looked back at the board. More of that?
But he said nothing. He didn’t even pause when he thought the food might be poisoned. As long as death came fast.
“You are a mystery to me,” Lennon said after watching Ruhi eat the last of the lamb. “You gave up the name of Elkins, but you never did give up the name of the agent. Your heart made you strong, didn’t it?”
Ruhi didn’t answer, but looked up from his plate, asking, “Was she really killed? Could they have faked it?”
“Believe me, Ruhi, they do not have a little Hollywood studio to fake that kind of crime. But we do. I did not want you dead, so I had my men use video of them threatening her with the sword that they put up on the Web. I wanted you to talk, and you did, in a manner of speaking. I can tell that she means a great deal to you.”
Ruhi filled with the biggest breath of his life. Immensely relieved, he asked if Lennon knew where the jihadists had taken her.
“We’re working on that. Your adopted country is trying to find her, too.”
My adopted country. The barbs were back. But Ruhi didn’t care. People were looking for Candace. There was hope.
“Eat,” Lennon said. “I’m telling you again, you really will need your strength.”
Ruhi helped himself to more hummus as Lennon went on:
“We are on the same side, in the bigger picture. Look, I do not like the way your country operates here, but I am a realist. So is the king. We were not nearly as concerned about Lana Elkins or Candace Anders as we are about AQAP, but if we do not stop them they will cut off her head. They have cut off many heads. On the other hand, we now know that you are not Al Qaeda.”
“I told you that right away.”
“Every suspect does. It means nothing. But I started believing you when you gave us Elkins. As I said, AQAP would not be likely to know that. But I was sure you were not with them when I saw your reaction.”
Ruhi looked over to where he had been shackled, but said nothing.
“AQAP has been getting all the rabble into the streets,” Lennon continued. “They want to take over our country.”
“That’s no secret. I’d know that from reading the Washington Post.”
“But they are very emboldened now, Ruhi. Since the U.S. went down, a lot of bad people are getting bolder, and a lot of us are not happy about that. There has always been an element of Saudi society that, let us say, is a bit unsettled, misguided, if you will. They are… susceptible.”
“Like the ones who attacked us on 9/11?” Ruhi couldn’t resist.
“ ‘Us.’ So America is truly more your country now than your homeland?”
Ruhi nodded. Lennon shook his head, went on:
“So, yes, then, like the men who attacked your country on 9/11. But do you think they would have spared the palace or our king if they had had a similar chance? They want to destroy the monarchy. I doubt you are a monarchist, though, are you, Ruhi?”
He didn’t respond. What he felt about the Saudi royal family would never help him here.
“It does not matter. I know your type. You are too American, too ‘us’ now. You cannot understand your birth country any longer. But I am sure you understand that the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know. That is an Americanism I have always treasured. It is not a simple world, but the monarchy is much better than Al Qaeda or any of the ayatollahs in Tehran. So we are going to let you continue with your mission with one huge condition.”
Here it comes. “Okay, what is it?”
“Every bit of intelligence that you gather will be shared with me — without exception. And you will not divulge any of our agreement to—”
“What agreement?” Ruhi interrupted. “I haven’t agreed to a damn thing.”
“But you will. Let me go on. You will continue to track down those cyberattackers who are destroying your country. We do not want to see America so weak. We get one billion dollars a year in arms from your generous taxpayers just for military aid. We need those fighter jets and tanks, and then there are all those American dollars for our oil. So go save your country. But you, Mr. Ruhi Mancur, are now working for your other country, the one that claimed you first. Or else you will have a very difficult time in the next few days.”
“Are you trying to turn me into a double agent?”
“Strictly speaking, the answer is yes. But you are not, in this case, playing one side against the other. Let me put it this way. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have a strong common interest at the moment.”
“You’re joking, right? You expect me to report to you? And how come you didn’t grab Ahmed?”
“We tried. We are holding your Uncle Malik for questioning. But your cousin was gone when we arrived, while you were sleeping. Ahmed is a slippery man. We are looking for him everywhere. Your uncle Malik is helping us. We are all Saudi Arabians. We are your family, first and foremost. That is my point. Do not ever forget that.”
Ruhi stared at Lennon, knowing that he himself had passed another test.
“Now I want to ask you about the tools of your trade,” the Mabahith man said. “We have our best people working on your computer at this very moment, and they are so frustrated that they want to beat it with hammers because they cannot get past the firewalls. They say you have the most sophisticated encryption system that they have ever seen. I am not going to ask who did that for you, though I have my suspicions. I am not even going to ask if you do that kind of encryption work yourself, but I think I know that answer, too. We will have ample time later, if you survive, to chat about your computer. But I will tell you that we think it is vital for us to leak information to certain quarters about the superb software that we have discovered in your possession. We think that might help you on your great quest and serve our needs as well.”
“How’s that going to help? You’d be turning me into a target.”
“That is right,” Lennon said, smiling broadly for the first time. “When we let it be known that you have these extraordinary skills, maybe strong enough to save your country from final destruction, they will come looking for you. They would be fools not to, and they are not fools, Ruhi.”
“Hold on. You’re not trying to turn me into a target. You’re trying to turn me into a piece of bait.”
“We already have, Ruhi.” Lennon’s eyes fell to Ruhi’s thigh, the one bearing the dog bite. “We embedded a tracking chip deep in your muscle. Only a highly skilled surgeon can remove it without doing crippling nerve damage and possibly even cutting the femoral artery. The chip is so close to it that you couldn’t pass a blood cell between them.”
“I don’t remember anything like that.” But he did recall staring at the wound in the shower, wondering if it had been tampered with.
“Of course you don’t. You were blacked out long enough for the surgeon to inject a drug to keep you under while he performed the operation. The painkiller will be wearing off soon. You will want these.” He handed Ruhi a bottle of Tylenol 3, just as Ruhi’s minder at the Farm had. “Don’t take too much. You need a clear head more than you need pain relief. Besides, from what I have seen, you handle pain very well.”
Lennon leaned forward and offered a paternal pat to Ruhi’s knee, then added, “We have our computer skills, too. Maybe a little crude at times, but they serve our purposes well. And now, Ruhi, so will you.”
CHAPTER 18
The Choir’s big blue bus encountered no traffic on I-295 north. The ringleader, the young man who sounded like he’d grown up in America, forced Emma to remain on the floor of the aisle right by his feet. With her back to him, all she caught were receding glimpses of the towering steel girders of the Delaware Bridge as they headed into New Jersey. But even if she’d been up on a seat facing forward, she would have seen only a police escort a few hundreds yards ahead of them and another cruiser trailing an equal distance behind. Law enforcement was giving the terrorists plenty of space. Emma worried that the cops were sure that the bus — and everyone inside it — was going to blow up at any second.