The news made Farouk panic. They had his name, his description, and it looked more and more as if they were after him for smuggling relics. His eyes took on a haunting, cornered gleam as he asked Ramez to help him. He was in desperate need for money, and, yes, he was trying to sell the valuable relics — he had initially hoped that Ramez would help him in that, but that was moot. All that mattered now was survival. He filled Ramez in on what he knew, what he’d seen — the men who came after him in Iraq, the book, the drill marks on his friend Hajj Ali Salloum — and with each of his revelations, the assistant professor’s blood curdled with dread.
Farouk asked Ramez to act as a go-between. He wanted Ramez to talk to the cops, make a deal on his behalf: He’d go in and help them as much as he could with finding Evelyn, but he didn’t want to end up in a Lebanese prison, nor did he want to be sent back to Iraq. More than that, he wanted their protection. He knew the men who kidnapped Evelyn were really after him, and he knew he wouldn’t survive for long out on his own.
Ramez demurred, not wanting to get involved, but Farouk was desperate. He pleaded with him, asking the assistant professor to consider Evelyn’s situation, to do it for her sake. Ramez finally said he’d think about it. He gave Farouk his cell phone number and told him to call him the next day, at noon.
Which would be noon, tomorrow.
Not ten o’clock.
Not tonight.
Ramez’s eyes were still glued to his cell phone as his weary mind tried to divine who had been calling him. If it was Farouk, he didn’t want to take the call. He still hadn’t made up his mind about whether he would help him. On the one hand, he felt he owed it to Evelyn, and, beyond that, he had to. He couldn’t exactly withhold such crucial information from the investigating cops. On the other hand, Beirut wasn’t exactly famed for its rigorous observance of legal process, and Ramez, above all else, wanted to stay alive.
If it wasn’t Farouk calling, Ramez didn’t even want to begin to think of who it could be. A wave of paranoia surged through him as he imagined men with power drills about to burst in and take him away. He shrank back into the sofa, his arms wrapped around his knees, his chest heaving, the walls of the small room closing in around him.
It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 31
Mia watched Corben click his cell phone shut. He turned to her and shook his head. He checked his watch and frowned thoughtfully.
“I don’t like leaving this till morning,” he said, “but I don’t think we have much choice. If they’re onto him, then we’re already too late. If they’re not, then I’d rather not alert them to him at this hour. I’ll call the guys at Hobeish first thing in the morning,” he added, referring to the police station where Mia had been held, “and take it from there.”
“We could go to the university, early,” Mia suggested, “and get to him first thing.”
Corben did a double take. “‘We’?”
“You don’t know what he looks like. I can point him out to you,” she protested.
“I can just ask for him at the department.”
“I’ve met him. He’ll feel more at ease if he sees a familiar face,” she insisted, her voice alive with nervous energy. “Besides, I don’t want to stay here alone. I’ll feel like a sitting duck.” She paused, catching her breath. “I want to help, okay?”
Corben looked away, clearly weighing his options and seemingly not liking any. After a moment, he turned to her cheerlessly. “Okay,” he relented. “Let’s see what he has to say and take it from there.” He went to the fridge and pulled out two more beers and offered Mia a bottle.
She took it and crossed over to the balcony. She stood there and sipped at it, staring pensively into the night. The lights from the densely packed buildings were burning brightly, crowning the city with a pale, whitish aura. She wondered where Evelyn was at that very moment and thought about Farouk and Ramez. Where had they bunkered down for the night? Beirut was a crowded city, and it knew how to keep its secrets. No one really knew what went on behind closed doors, but in this city, Mia suspected, the lurking malevolence was in a class of its own.
“I don’t get it.” She turned to Corben. “This symbol, the coiled snake. What’s he looking for, exactly? If it’s really this book that he’s after, why does he want it? He can’t just be some maniacal collector.”
“Why not?”
“He seems willing to go to some pretty extreme measures to get hold of it,” Mia noted. “It’s got to have some serious significance to him, don’t you think?”
“He’s a bioweapons scientist. These guys are into viruses, not relics that are hundreds of years old,” Corben reminded her. “I can’t imagine its relevance to his work.”
“Unless he’s looking for clues to some ancient plague,” she half-joked.
Corben didn’t dismiss it out of hand. Instead, his face clouded, then the faintest of smiles flitted across his lips. “Now there’s a merry thought to sleep on.”
She felt a ripple of concern. An outright dismissal would have been better.
They left it at that, finished their beers, and put the food away in a leaden silence. She watched Corben as he went about the nighttime routine of spinning the dead bolt on the front door and switching off the lights. She found herself wondering about what made someone take on a life like that: solitary, dangerous, mired in secrets, trained to manipulate and predisposed to mistrust. From what she could gather, he seemed like a pragmatic, clearheaded guy who wasn’t suffering from a righteous, save-the-world delusion. She couldn’t deny that his action-adventure hero side was alluring — she hadn’t exactly met men like him in the sedate academic waters she usually navigated. But there was also something dark, unknowable, and guarded about him that, while also somewhat attractive, was also a bit scary.
“Can I ask you something?”
He turned, curious. “Sure.”
She smiled, slightly uncomfortable with the moment. “Is Jim your real name? I mean, I read somewhere that you guys always seem to use Mike or Jim or Joe as cover.”
He breathed out a small chuckle and winced. “It’s actually Humphrey, but…it doesn’t exactly go with the job profile.”
She wasn’t sure for a second — then he smiled. “It’s Jim. You want to see my passport?”
“Yeah, right,” she mocked. “All of them.” She paused for a breath, then her face grew serious. “Thanks. For everything today.”
He winced uncomfortably. “I’m sorry I took you there. To your mom’s apartment.”
Mia shrugged. “We got to her stuff before they did. Maybe that’ll count for something.”
It was close to eleven by the time her head finally hit the pillow in the guest bedroom. She found it hard to fall asleep and just lay there, staring at the unfamiliar, impersonal surroundings, wondering how it had all gotten so complicated so quickly. She’d been warned about coming to Beirut when the offer had first come up, mostly by people who only remembered the city from the endless news reports about the civil war, the bombings, and the kidnappings, people who weren’t familiar with the country’s phoenixlike, if tenuous, return from the ashes — at least, the one that had been cut short a couple of months earlier. She could have pulled out from taking up her posting — she didn’t need an excuse, war being a pretty convincing reason for anyone to give a country a wide berth — but she’d felt drawn to exploring new directions and experiencing a more exciting life than the one most of her peers seemed more than happy to settle for.