Nayef waited several moments before he turned to face the woman.
“We will make a deal with you,” he said.
“We will allow you and your son to live. In exchange for your lives, you will tell us where the two prisoners are being detained.”
By the expression on Illah’s face, Nayef could tell that the young lieutenant was incensed over the fact that his orders had been countermanded.
“How do I know you will keep your word?” Andera asked.
Nayef waited.
“You don’t,” he said candidly, “but what choice do you have?”
Bogner moved closer to the voices. He knew he had to play his cards carefully. Much of the byplay between the two men had been in Arabic and he was guessing at parts of their conversation.
“If it were not for the woman’s intervention, we would all be dead,” he said.
“She pleaded with the village elders to spare our lives as well was that of the Iraqi officer.” Then he gambled.
“It seems like a fair exchange, the life of one of your officers for the life of the boy, and then when I am with the general I can tell him how shrewdly you negotiated.”
Nayef was still exercising caution. He motioned the woman toward him.
“I will send two of my men with you. Free the captives and bring them to me.” Then he glanced at his watch.
“You have twenty minutes, no more. If you have not returned with the prisoners by then, I will order Lieutenant Illah to shoot the boy.”
Chapter Eight
Sara Packer was still sipping her bedtime cup of tea when she walked back into the bedroom. Unlike most nights, she was frowning. Clancy Packer looked up from his book.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.
“I heard that intense conversation and I figured it must be one of your sisters or one of your girlfriends.”
Sara shook her head, sat down on the edge of the bed, took the book away from her husband, and laid it aside.
“No, that wasn’t one of my sisters or one of my girlfriends and you know it. It was Joy. She said she hesitated to call, said she hated to bother us, but she was wondering whether we had heard anything from T. C.”
Packer had muted the television while he waited for the eleven o’clock news, but he stared at it anyway and pursed his lips. It was a subject he had hoped to avoid, especially with Sara.
Clancy’s wife of thirty-nine years cleared her throat.
“Hey, it’s me, Sara, remember? What’s wrong? You aren’t usually like this. You buried your nose in that book after dinner and you haven’t said a word since. Something is bothering you. What is it?”
Clancy had gone from pursing his lips to chewing on his lower lip. It was a habit his wife had come to know meant he was worried about something.
More specifically, he was worried about something he either didn’t want to talk about or felt he couldn’t.
“Come on, Clancy. Level with me. You know something about T. C. and you’re not telling me, right?”
“You know I’m not at liberty to discuss some of the things that go down in the agency,” he reminded her.
“I also know you weren’t at liberty to tell me about the Bay of Pigs invasion, or the U2 incident, or the missile crisis down in Cuba, but you did, so why is this suddenly any different?”
“I guess it isn’t,” he said with a sigh.
“I just didn’t want you to be upset or worry.”
Sara sat her cup down on the nightstand.
“I’m a big girl now, or haven’t you noticed. You know something about T. C.” don’t you?”
Clancy pushed himself up in bed, turned off the television, and studied his wife’s face. After all these years and everything they had been through, Clancy still believed she was the most beautiful and caring woman he had ever known.
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, “I think we know something about T. C.”
“I know you too well. You put special emphasis on the word think. Why?”
“Because at this point we can’t be certain about anything.” He paused to reach for his pipe, tamped it, and laid it down again without lighting it.
“We know where T. C. was last Monday. He was getting on a plane to fly to a small village in southern Turkey with another agent and a man who was going to arrange a meeting with a rebel Iraqi general by the name of Salih Baddour. Then they were supposed to take a helicopter across the border into northern Iraq.”
Clancy saw his wife stiffen. She knew from the way he was systematically recounting the chain of events for her that he had begun to anticipate the worst.
“What happened?”
“We’re fairly certain that helicopter crashed somewhere just inside the Iraqi border. We don’t know when or why.”
“Toby was on that helicopter?”
“We can’t even be certain of that.”
“What do you mean, you can’t be certain?”
“T. C. was still in Istanbul the last time Banks contacted us. We agreed there would be no further word unless it was through our office in Bucharest.
I’ve had Robert monitoring that damn line for the last seventy-two hours, but we haven’t heard anything. Did the chopper make it through to Ammash, drop T. C. off, and head back, only to be shot down as it tried to fly back into Turkish airspace? Or worst case, shot down or had an engine failure of some kind on the way in with both T. C. and Concho onboard?”
“And there isn’t any way to get help from either the Turks or the Iraqis?”
“Not that we know of. Either way you look at it, we were violating border agreements that are already tenuous at best. The Turks don’t want anything to do with the Iraqis and vice versa. No help, no word, no knowledge.”
“So how do you know the helicopter actually crashed?”
“We’ve got satellite photos of a crash site in an area known as Koboli. What really makes me nervous is, it would appear to be the same kind of helicopter T. C. and Concho were planning to use to get to Ammash.”
“You can tell all that from satellite photos?”
“I’m afraid so. Those photographs are good enough that we can even detect the fact that there is fresh-dug ground near the wreckage, which would indicate someone has visited the crash site and maybe buried the bodies.”
Sara’s face turned an ashen gray.
“Bodies,” she repeated.
“Are you telling me you think Toby may be dead? You can’t just do nothing.”
“Damn it, Sara, we’re doing something,” Packer said, bristling, “but we’re being forced to do it without any kind of official sanction. The fact of the matter is, Lattimere Spitz has distinctly warned us not to get involved. The Administration thinks the current situation with the Iraqis is too dicey.”
Sara Packer waited for what she considered a long time before she asked the next question. She knew Clancy trusted her, but she also knew that when her husband was involved with something that didn’t have the stamp of approval by whoever authorized such matters, he was reluctant to talk about it.
“Let me ask it this way then. Is someone doing something?”
Clancy had picked up his pipe again. He was chewing on his lower lip again.
“Did anyone ever tell you you’re like a bulldog when you’re after something?” he teased.
“The reason I was late getting home last night is because Peter Langley and I had a meeting with a man by the name of Dr. Mikos Asonokov. Asonokov is a WPP but he still has connections. He believes those connections can get us into the crash site to investigate what happened.”
“Just exactly what do you mean by us?”
“Don’t worry, us doesn’t include me; I’m getting too old for that sort of thing. Peter Langley volunteered.