Gadbois approached with a cobra’s speed and slammed his heel onto the rod.
“What is Hijira’s plan?” he shouted when Chapel had finished screaming.
“A bomb… they’re going to detonate a bomb.”
“Where are they going to strike?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don-” Chapel’s mouth froze, his teeth bared, muscles constricted by the pain. The light faded. He was drifting over a blue sea, back to the highway on the Big Island. Faster, he told himself. Faster. He lunged for the tape and fell into darkness.
Chapter 53
THe weekly shipment to the Philadelphia offices of the World Health Organization included three hundred cartons of Atabrine; four hundred fifteen boxes of Z-PAKs, the five-day course of azithromycin; and four hundred thousand aspirin tablets. A total of eight hundred thousand individual doses of medicine that had passed its expiration date and was to be returned to its manufacturers for immediate destruction. The traffic in expired drugs by certain dubious distributors to the impoverished nations of the third world had grown from a trickle five years earlier to a torrent. Measures had to be taken to protect innocent victims, and Claire Charisse was at the forefront of the effort.
“Paperwork in order today, Bill?” she asked, standing in the Global Trans offices on the grounds of Geneva Cointrin Airport.
“A-OK. Just sign off and we’ll get the stuff airborne.”
Claire scribbled a signature on the paperwork and tore off her copy. Looking out the window, she could see the pallet of medicine being loaded by forklift into a Global Trans container. From there, the container would pass through a cursory security check before being put aboard the morning flight to Philadelphia. Normally, all containers being shipped into the United States were made to pass through VACIS, the vehicle and cargo inspection system. The VACIS system used gamma rays emitted by cesium or cobalt and hundreds of advanced sensors to detect anomalies in density within the container and create an X-ray-like photo of the object inside. However, as the medicines were preclassified as radioactive and the property of a nongovernmental organization, they would forgo VACIS and pass directly to a U.S. Customs inspector, whose job was simply to verify that all medicines were accounted for.
“Look at you,” Bill Masters said. “You’re all spiffed up for a Saturday. What do you got going?”
“I’m taking a trip,” Claire answered crisply.
“You? Leaving Geneva? Who’ll man the offices? They’ll be lost without you.”
“I’m sure they’ll find someone to replace me.”
A concerned look darkened Masters’s face. “You’re leaving for good?”
Suddenly, Claire Charisse found it very hard to speak. Without answering, she turned and rushed from the office.
“Hey!” shouted Masters after her. “You didn’t give me a chance to say good-bye.” He looked at Doherty, his assistant. “I liked that gal. She had guts.”
Chapter 54
The lock groaned as a key was inserted. Tumblers fell. Adam Chapel huddled against the bone-cold wall, knees drawn to his chest, chin tucked in as if he were expecting a good pummeling and was determined to absorb the blows. He’d known they would return. As best he could, he steeled himself for another round of their stubborn, futile questioning. He willed his rational mind dead. He divorced his extremities. He withdrew to a black corner where a heartbeat signaled his survival and pain did not exist.
A few hours ago, they’d chucked in a soggy, moth-eaten mattress, and he’d collapsed onto it. His last thoughts before he fell into a dead sleep had been about what he could tell them that might draw them off. What precious salve he could offer to prove his innocence once and for all, and secure his immediate freedom. Some all-purpose solvent to erase the stain on his name. Gabriel’s stain. But no answer came. How could he combat evidence he’d never seen? What did words matter when no one was listening?
The door swung open, banging against the wall. Squinting, he raised a hand to shield his eyes and waited for the first impossible request.
“Been tough on you, have they?”
Chapel raised his head. The voice… the dry English accent… its promise of affection and sympathy and a return to sanity. “Not exactly the Plaza.”
Her arms engulfed him. He smelled her hair, and a current of relief rushed over him. Sarah was alive. She’d made it out of Cléopatre, after all. He wanted to smile, but he knew that if he did, he would break, so he held her hands and tried to gather his breath.
“How?” he began. “What hap-”
A finger silenced his lips. “Ssshhh. Have something to eat. Then we’ll get you showered and shaved.”
A soldier followed close behind and set down a tray of steaming food on the bench. Spaghetti bolognese. Steamed spinach. Bread and butter. Two bottles of Orangina. The rich smells awoke a gnawing hunger. Ripping off a chunk of bread, he doused it in meat sauce and chewed contentedly.
“I saw him,” he said after he’d caught his breath. “On the second floor. He was trying to get out of a fire exit but it was locked.”
“So did I,” said Sarah.
“He got out.”
“Yes, I know. Now eat up. We’ve got to go.”
“We’re leaving?” Already he could feel a change in her manner.
“Oh, yes,” she responded, as if it had been planned all along. “Air France’s noon flight out of Roissy. We’re flying home, Adam. Back to D.C.”
The plane was full, every seat, every luggage bin, every square inch of available space taken by the usual summer bandits. They sat in the rear of the aircraft and talked as mothers and infants strolled the aisles and restless children climbed the seats and the cabin lights were extinguished and the second-rate movies played one after the other.
“It was Leclerc,” she explained after they’d eaten their plastic dinners and purchased a Courvoisier to get the taste out of their mouths. “He took the hard drive that was found in Taleel’s apartment to a friend of his. Name doesn’t matter. A pro on the outs with the service. The hard drive was a mess, shattered into three pieces, but he was able to dredge up the ghost of some E-mails. There was the usual coded garble. You know, ‘going to beach tomorrow. Meet for ice cream.’ Chatter. Stuff we could decode, but it would take us weeks. And then there was something more personal. Something that was sent ‘in the clear.’ Correspondence between Taleel and a woman named ‘Noor.’ ” Sarah polished off the last drops of cognac and set down her glass. “Ready for this?”
“Shoot.”
“Noor was Gabriel’s younger sister. She and Taleel were in a relationship. A regular Romeo and Juliet. Seems Taleel was Gabriel’s cousin. Bad enough having an operative diddling your sis, isn’t it? Imagine if he’s your cousin, too. Gabriel would not have been pleased.”
“Was she in on it, too?”
“Noor? Given the Arab prejudices against women, I doubt it. But she knew something was going on. Noor mentioned that her brother was leaving this weekend. She said she would never see him again.”
“That jibes with what George told us, the apartment being deserted. Gabriel’s doing the dirty deed himself.”
Sarah nodded. “Taleel was supposed to accompany him. In one of his letters, he talked about needing to buy a ticket to go along. He was pleased that he didn’t need a visa to go to America. Noor was upset and tried to talk him out of it.”
“Ah, dissension in the ranks.”
“Love,” said Sarah pointedly, as if dismissing a bad habit.
Chapel reached out for her hand, but she was staring out the window and couldn’t be bothered. He had the feeling that they weren’t really partners in this; that they would never be. Sarah was always a step ahead, playing all the angles, while he worked with his feet planted firmly on the ground.