He led her briskly to his car, a charcoal gray Grand Cherokee with dark-tinted windows and diplomatic plates that was parked among the Fuhud’s patrol cars and SUVs, and helped her in before jumping behind the wheel. He negotiated his way out of the station’s lot and, with a quick nod to the guard manning the gate, slipped into the midday traffic.
Corben glanced in his rearview mirror. “There are a couple of reporters outside the station. I didn’t want you to get caught up in that.”
“They know about me?”
Corben nodded. “There were a lot of witnesses last night. But don’t worry. So far, we’ve managed to keep your mom’s name out of it, and you haven’t been mentioned anywhere either, which is how I’d like to keep things, at least as far as you are concerned. The guys at the station have their orders. They know what to say and what to keep to themselves.”
Mia felt as if she were coming out of hibernation. “Mentioned — you mean in the news?”
“Your mom’s kidnapping made the morning papers. Right now, they’re just talking about a nameless American woman, but they’ll get her name later on today, the embassy’s going to have to make a statement. We’re trying to play it down, but it’s picking up steam. The government isn’t too keen on publicizing it either. It’s bad press for the country, and things are a bit sensitive right now, as I’m sure you know. They’re going to spin it as a deal for stolen relics that went bad, smugglers fighting over the spoils, that kind of thing.”
“That’s bullshit,” Mia protested. “My mom wasn’t a smuggler.”
Corben shrugged sympathetically, but he didn’t seem convinced. “How well did you know her?”
Maybe it was because she was exhausted and hungry, or maybe it was because there was some remote validity to his insinuation, but Mia didn’t really know what to think anymore.
“She’s my mother,” she shot back regardless.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Mia frowned. “I’ve only been here for three weeks, alright? I was in Boston before that. So I can’t say we’ve been two peas in a pod, but she’s still my mother and I know what she’s like. I mean, come on. Have you met her? She’s messianic when it comes to archaeology.” She heaved a tired sigh, then added, “She’s a good person.”
A good person. She knew how vacuous that sounded, but, bottom line, she believed it.
“What about your dad? Where is he?”
A distant sadness clouded Mia’s face. “I never knew him. He died shortly after I was born. A car crash. On the road to Jordan.”
Corben glanced at her and nodded, seeming to process her words. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright.” She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
She stared quietly out her window. People were out in the streets, getting on with the routines of their lives. A pang of envy tugged at her heart. She coveted their insouciance — before remembering that they probably weren’t as carefree as they seemed, given what they’d just been through, and the fragility of the country. She didn’t know what was going on behind their affable façades, and it made her think that maybe when it came right down to it, when it came down to the crisis points that define who people really are, maybe we didn’t really know as much about others as we thought we did. With a twinge of guilt, she found herself wondering if maybe Baumhoff and Corben could possibly be right. She didn’t really know her mother that well. She didn’t know what was really going on in her life. And that was where gut feelings and hard truths could easily diverge.
The car slowed and stopped, caught up in traffic in the narrow, single-lane road. She turned to Corben. “You can’t seriously think she could have been trading in looted relics?”
He met her gaze straight on. “The way I understand it, they were after her specifically, and unless she’s the first in a campaign targeting foreigners, which our intel suggests is highly, highly unlikely, it’s the only angle we have to work with right now.”
Mia’s spirits sank visibly as she digested his words. Corben studied her thoughtfully. “Look, it doesn’t matter why they took her. The fact of the matter is, someone’s got her, someone’s grabbed a woman, an American woman, off the street, and the reason behind it only matters if it’ll help us get her back. ’Cause that’s what we’re after, that’s the endgame. Getting her back. The rest we can deal with later.” A gentle reassurance had crept into his voice.
Mia managed to find a half-smile. Her eyes brightened with his resolve, and she nodded appreciatively.
“I know you’re tired,” he added, “I know you’re probably desperate to get back to your place and jump under a shower and wash the whole experience off, but I really need to talk to you about what happened last night. You were there. What you tell me could be crucial in helping us find her. Time is always against us in these situations. Do you think you can handle that right now?”
“Absolutely.” She nodded.
Chapter 15
An acrid, bitter smell speared Evelyn back to consciousness.
She jolted upright, shaking its sting away. Her eyes shot open, only to be assaulted by the fierce neon lighting in the room. It seemed to be coming at her from all sides, as if she were sitting in a white box. She squeezed her eyes back shut.
Slowly, hints of awareness broke through her daze. For one thing, she wasn’t stuffed in the car’s trunk anymore. She was sitting on a hard, metal-framed chair. She tried to shift her position and felt a burning pain from her wrists and ankles. She tried to move them, but couldn’t. She realized she was cuffed into place.
She sensed movement around her, and warily she opened her eyes. Inches from her face, a blurry hand was pulling away. Its fingers held something, a small cylinder of some kind. As she regained her focus, she realized it was a capsule. She thought it must be the smelling salts. She caught a final whiff of it as she followed the hand up. A man was standing there, facing her.
The first thing Evelyn noticed were his eyes. They were an unusual blue, and utterly devoid of any emotion. The word arctic came to mind. They were fixed on her, scanning her with detached curiosity, alert to every twitch in her body.
They never blinked.
She guessed that the man was in his fifties. He had a handsome, distinguished face. His features — the brow, the cheekbones, the chin and nose — were prominent, aquiline, and yet, finely sculpted. His skin was slightly tanned to a rich, golden hue. He sported a full head of undulating, salt-and-pepper hair, which he wore suavely gelled back, and he was tall, easily over six feet. What stood out mostly in her mind, though, was how slim he was. Not in a bulimic, waiflike manner. Just skinny, which his height only accentuated. He clearly looked after himself well and had his appetite on a tight leash and didn’t seem any weaker for it. His posture exuded confidence and influence, and his cold eyes presaged a steely, uncompromising disposition, which she found unsettling.
For some reason, her instincts were telling her he wasn’t Arab. Which was confirmed by his accent, when he finally decided to speak up. Not to her. To someone she hadn’t noticed, behind her.
“Give her some water,” he ordered calmly, in an Arabic that was definitely not indigenous but that, oddly, had an Iraqi tinge to it.
Another man appeared beside her and brought a bottle of cold mineral water up to her mouth. His features were dark and brooding, his eyes dead, like those of the men who’d grabbed her in Beirut. Her captor seemed to have a veritable private goon squad at his disposal. She stored the thought as she gratefully took in a few gulps, before this dark man pulled back and disappeared from view again like a ghost.