Corben’s somber look told her it wasn’t, but she knew that already. “His trail went cold north of Tikrit a few weeks after the discovery of the lab, and we haven’t had any leads since. Given that Evelyn had a connection to the Ouroboros through the chamber she found, and given the ruthlessness of whoever seems to be after the relics,” he said gravely, “I think it’s more than likely that either he’s got her or she’s being held by someone who’s linked to him in some way.”
Mia felt the air vacate her lungs. Her mom’s situation seemed horrible enough when she thought they were just — just — dealing with a gang of smugglers. This…this was too horrific to imagine.
She stared out into nothingness, her mind short-circuited by Corben’s grim revelation. The room seemed to darken around her, and everything in it shifted slightly out of focus. She sensed Corben picking up his phone and heard dialing tones at the periphery of her consciousness, followed by the same unanswered ringing tone as before and his phone snapping shut. It took a moment for her to emerge from her daze and register that he must have been trying Ramez’s number again.
A question drifted out of the fog. She turned to Corben. “Given all the fuss about WMDs and what you know about this man, I’d have thought you’d have a massive team of people on the case, working it with you. Surely, getting him is a huge priority, isn’t it?”
“It was,” Corben said glumly. “It’s not anymore. We cried wolf about WMDs once too often, and the word itself has become poison. We deserve as much, I guess, but no one wants to hear about them anymore, and if anything, the priority’s to disengage from Iraq, not commit more resources.”
“But he’s a monster,” Mia protested, clambering angrily to her feet.
“You think he’s the only one running around out there?” he countered with calm frustration. “There are plenty of other mass murderers out there, from Rwanda, Serbia, you name it — they’re living quietly in leafy suburbs of London or Brussels under assumed names, no one’s bothering them. The only people after them are investigative reporters. That’s it. They’re the new Simon Wiesenthals, and there aren’t that many of them, just a handful who care enough to devote their time and risk their lives tracking these butchers down. They’re the only ones making a difference. Once in a while, they’ll out one of them in a story that might get a few columns not too far from the front page, and some prosecutor will maybe pay attention and look into it if it creates enough of a stink, but generally, these guys get away.”
Which was true. Saddam and his decapitated brother-in-law were rare exceptions. The norm was that deposed dictators were often able to enjoy exile in blissful, unrepentant comfort while their underlings, the thugs who had overseen or actually participated in the killings, vanished into lives of placid anonymity.
“There isn’t a concerted, official effort to bring any of these people in,” Corben added. “Life moves on. Politicians step down, others take their place, and the crimes of the not-so-distant past are quickly forgotten. No one in the State Department wants to hear about this right now. The Iraqis themselves aren’t in a position to go after him, they’ve got bigger problems to deal with. And I can’t exactly see the Lebanese government getting involved given the mess their country’s in.”
Mia couldn’t believe it. “You’re working on this alone?”
“Pretty much. I can draw on the same Agency resources if and when I need them, but until I have a definite, and I mean definite, lock on this guy, I can’t call in the troops.”
Mia stared at him, stupefied. The news was getting bleaker by the minute, and the images he’d seeded in her mind refused to fade. “He experimented on kids?”
Corben nodded.
A realization thudded heavily into the pit of her stomach. “We have to get her back. But we also have to stop him, don’t we?” She felt tears welling up, but she bit them back.
His eyes were on her, and something warmer flickered in them. He nodded thoughtfully, taking in her words. “Yes.”
“We need to find Farouk. If we can get to him before that”—she paused, unsure about how to refer to the hakeem, then chose—“monster does, and if he has this book, then maybe we can trade it for Mom.”
Corben’s expression brightened. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
He picked up his phone and hit the redial button.
Chapter 30
Ramez stared worriedly at his phone as it vibrated with a low buzz that sent it skittering sideways across the coffee table in brief, tortuous spurts.
With each grating buzz, the phone’s LED screen lit up, casting a temporary, ghostly blue-green glow across the darkened living room of his small apartment. His eyes blinked to attention each time, transfixed by the bright display. The words PRIVATE CALLER — shorthand for a withheld number — stared alarmingly back, taunting him, before the display flicked back to blackness. His body went rigid every time the phone sprang to life, as if the device were hardwired straight into his skull.
Mercifully, after about eight spurts, it stopped buzzing. The room was plunged into darkness again, a bleak, lonely darkness that was occasionally interrupted by the reflections, from the headlights of passing cars in the street below, that scuttled across its mostly bare walls. It was the third time the anonymous caller had tried to reach him in the last hour, and the assistant professor wasn’t about to answer. Given that he hardly ever received such calls — withheld numbers were, oddly, a frowned-upon social faux pas in Lebanon — he knew what it had to be about. And it terrified him.
His day had started out like any other. Out of bed at seven, a light breakfast, a shower and a shave, and a brisk, twenty-minute walk to the campus. He’d read the morning papers before leaving home, and he’d spotted the story about the woman’s kidnapping downtown, but he had no idea it was Evelyn. Not until the cops had shown up at Post Hall.
He was their first port of call in the department, and the news had sucker punched the breath right out of him. With every word he uttered, he’d felt himself getting drawn deeper and deeper into a tar pit of trouble that he was keen to avoid, but knew he couldn’t. They were trying to find Evelyn, and he had to help. There was no way out.
They’d asked if he knew anything about her interest in Iraqi relics, and the man who had appeared in Zabqine immediately came to mind. They’d perked up at the mention of Farouk, and he’d given them his name — his first name, as he didn’t know the man’s full name — and description. From their guarded comments, he’d gathered that his description fitted one they had of a man who’d been seen with Evelyn when she was kidnapped.
The encounter with the detectives had already spooked him enough. Seeing Farouk emerge from behind some parked cars and approach him outside Post Hall a few hours later made him jump out of his skin. At first, he didn’t know what to make of it. Was Farouk working with the kidnappers? Was he here to grab Ramez too? The assistant professor had shrunk back defensively at his approach, but the Iraqi fixer’s supplicating and woeful manner had quickly convinced him that the man posed no threat.
Presently, sitting there in his darkened living room, he picked through that worrying conversation, every word of it still ringing with frightening clarity. They’d found a quiet spot to talk, at the back of the building. Farouk had opened by saying he needed to tell the police what he knew about the kidnapping, to help Evelyn, but he couldn’t go to them himself. He was in the country illegally, and, given what he’d seen in the papers, the stolen relics were already a point of contention. Ramez cut in by telling him the cops had already been to see him and informed Farouk that he himself had given them his description — admittedly, in the hope of helping find Evelyn.