“You are mistaken, Doctor, when you assume I was going to torture you.” He stood erect once more and took a step back, turning to leave the room.
Nehem’s mind raced. What was he insinuating? He thought fast, and one terrifying truth kept rearing its head in his eyes.
“I have no family,” he said finally. “My wife died years ago. I am all alone now.”
Mamoud stopped instantly and slammed his fist on the table. “Lies!” he yelled, his voice echoing through the high ceilings.
A tear formed in Nehem’s left eye. His head kept moving back and forth in one last attempt to deny his captor. “Please. I beg of you.”
“No more begging, Nehem.” Mamoud still faced the other direction, keeping his back to the older man. “I will torture your daughter until every last ounce of her will succumbs to me. I will give her over to my men first, before the old techniques are employed. They will have their way with her, at my insistence. And I have many, many men in my service. When they are done, Sharouf here will begin his work. And he is very, very good at what he does. Xerxes himself would have paid dearly for his services.”
There was no holding back the tears now for Nehem. They flowed freely like two broken dams. “Please. She’s all I have in this world. Do whatever you want to me, but don’t hurt her. Please.” There was surrender in his voice. Mamoud had heard it before, many times. He always got what he wanted. That was the simple way of it. People could hold out sometimes, but in the end, everyone had a pressure point that could be used.
“Tell me what the tablet says, and I will spare your daughter. Lie to me, and I will personally take her as part of my harem, for a while. After I’m done with her, all the other things I said will come to pass. Now,” he spun around and stared through his hostage, “are you going to tell me what the tablet says, or do I need to send Sharouf to the university where your daughter works?”
Nehem swallowed hard, tears still streaming down his already wet face. They hung momentarily in the tangles of his beard before falling to his thighs. He nodded. “Yes. I will tell you. But I have your word? No harm will come to her?”
“I swear it to Allah,” Mamoud answered.
The old man paused. He didn’t care what they did to him, but he couldn’t risk any harm coming to the only family he had left on the planet, even at the cost of the rest of civilization. She would find a way to survive, somehow.
“The translation is a riddle.”
Mamoud took another step closer. Sharouf’s eyes widened behind Nehem’s back.
“Go on,” the wealthy Arab said.
Nehem’s eyes began to dry out, and he wiped his face clean of the tears with his sleeve. “I don’t know both locations with any certainty. But from what I understand about the translation, the objects you seek were taken to two places, far apart from each other.”
“The first?”
“Again, I honestly do not know for certain. I only discovered the tablet shortly before your men showed up. I’d been working on the translation day and night. I only unraveled it this morning.”
“You’re sure you did the translation correctly?” The question left little room for doubt. If Nehem were trying to stall or fool Mamoud in any way, the consequences would be most dire.
The prisoner swallowed again. “Yes. I am sure. But the riddle is vague. I can only offer a guess as to where it might lead us. I need more time to figure out the first location.”
“More time?” Mamoud looked at Sharouf. “Find the girl. Bring her to me.”
Nehem shot out of his chair. The second he did, Sharouf’s hand smacked down on his shoulder and forced him back into the seat with a thump. “I am not lying to you, Mamoud. I know what you would do to her. Please, the tablet translation is only part of the puzzle. The riddle lends a clue, but there is more.”
“What do you mean, more?”
Nehem’s breath came quickly in big heaves. “The tablet is a grid of twelve spaces. When you put the symbols into the different spaces, it produces a different result, a completely new combination of letters. The symbols alone can spell out the riddle once you unlock the cipher, but it could take weeks to get the correct sequence in the grid to spell out a name of any significance.”
Mamoud considered what his hostage was telling him. He had no reason to lie at this point, unless he was stalling. He doubted Nehem would risk doing that, knowing what would happen if he suspected what the man was up to. The archaeologist was well aware of the actions Mamoud would take, and they would be severe. No, he was being honest. He could see it in the man’s swollen, reddened eyes. There were no lies in them. Still, a few weeks wasn’t good enough. He’d waited long enough for the war he was about to wage, and he couldn’t begin until he had the two relics.
“You said there are twelve spaces on the grid, and that each one combined together will produce possible names of the places where the relics are hidden?”
“Yes. I believe so. I swear. I can’t be sure. But I am confident.”
A few weeks. He didn’t have that kind of time.
“You have twenty-four hours.”
A short, low vibration sound echoed like a rumble in the vacuous room. Sharouf stirred behind the prisoner, sliding his hand into his pocket. He pulled out his phone and stepped away from the table to an archway leading into the adjacent room.
He answered the phone in Arabic. “What?”
Mamoud’s eyes narrowed as he tried to hear what the person on the other end of the phone call was saying, but all he heard was mumbled gibberish.
Sharouf nodded. “I see. Are you sure?”
He listened again to the report coming from the earpiece. When the person was done talking, Sharouf thanked them and ended the call. He put the phone back in his pocket and looked up at his employer. Mamoud stared at him expectantly, giving away nothing. Sharouf likewise kept his demeanor calm. Clearly, he was trying to hide something from their captive. He motioned with his head to join him in the other room.
Mamoud nodded and ordered the remaining guard to escort Nehem back to his room. “I would suggest you hurry, Doctor. The clock is ticking.”
The guard stood the man up and ushered him out another entryway, into a foyer, and up a set of stairs. Once the sound of their footsteps had faded away, Mamoud followed Sharouf into the kitchen. They both cautiously looked around to make sure no one was within earshot.
“What is this?” the head man asked.
Sharouf kept cool, but a twitch in his eye belied that something was wrong. “That was my man in Atlanta. The targets managed to escape.”
Mamoud’s expression remained stoic while rage boiled up inside him. “Where are they?”
“My men have been working to find out where they went. They believe they may have stayed at a safe house or perhaps their IAA building over the evening.”
“So you have no idea where they are right now?”
Sharouf looked down at his shoes for a second before locking eyes with his boss once more. “On a hunch, they were able to track the IAA jet late this morning.”
“And where did it go?”
“Israel.”
7
Fury burned in Mamoud’s eyes as he stared through his most trusted bodyguard. He had a million questions, but only one remained at the forefront of his mind. It hung on his lips like rain drops on the leaves of a tree, begging to drop from the weight of its burden.
“How did this happen?”
For the first time since Mamoud had met him, Sharouf’s face expressed worry. It was slight, barely noticeable, but it was there nonetheless.
He didn’t answer at first; instead, his eyes remained on the floor as he searched for answers. When he looked back up, his boss knew he had none. “I am not certain. But we know where they are headed.”