The man didn’t say anything for a few maddening seconds. Ramez shut his eyes and tensed up, expecting another blow. The shivering wouldn’t be cowed. Instead, it increased, and with it the burning in his wrists.
But the blow didn’t come.
Instead, the man finally spoke.
“Someone’s going to be calling you on your phone, in a couple of hours’ time. A man from Iraq who came to see you yesterday. True?”
Dread flooded his senses. How could they know this? I didn’t tell anyone. I only called the police.
The realization hit him like an anvil. They have contacts in the police station. Which means no one’s going to come looking for me. It was a false hope anyway. In all of the city’s grisly history, no kidnap victim had ever forcibly been rescued. They were either released or — in most cases — they weren’t.
He didn’t have any time to mull the bleak prospect as he felt the man grab his left hand and hold it firmly in place. His grip was rock solid. Ramez froze.
“I want you to tell him exactly what I tell you to say.” The man’s voice was unnervingly threatening, despite his calm tone. “I need you to convince him that everything’s okay. He needs to believe you. He needs to believe everything’s okay. If you do that for us, you can go home. We have no quarrel with you. But this is very, very important for us. I need you to understand how important it is. And to do that, I need you to know that if you don’t convince him, this—”
With a startling suddenness, the man snapped Ramez’s middle finger back, all the way back, ripping the bone off its cartilage until the finger touched the back of his hand.
Tears burst out of Ramez’s eyes as he recoiled against the straps and howled with pain, almost blacking out despite the endorphins’ hopeless rush, but the man was unmoved. He just held it there, pressed firmly backwards, and kept talking.
“—is what you can expect a lot more of before we allow you to die.”
Olshansky almost jumped out of his skin when the scream burst through the speakers of his system.
It went on for a few agonizing seconds before turning into a whimper and finally dying out. It even startled Corben, though he’d been expecting something like it. He knew what they would want from Ramez, and he knew they’d have to make sure he was scared enough to put in a convincing performance.
“Jesus Christ,” Olshansky muttered. “What the hell did they do to him?”
“You probably don’t want to know.” Corben frowned. He heaved a frustrated sigh, imagining the scene unfurling in some underground rat hole.
The scream and the whimper were now gone, replaced by the same, annoying ruffle. Olshansky rubbed his face, shaking his head. He looked clearly shaken.
Corben let him have a moment of quiet. “What about the location?” he then asked, turning to the screen to his right. It showed a map of Beirut, overlaid by the boundaries of the different cell zones covering the city.
Olshansky collected his thoughts. “They’re in this cell here,” he said, pointing at the map. Cell-phone usage in Beirut was heavy, and each cell in the crowded city only covered an area of just under one square mile. But even with the enhanced triangulation at Olshansky’s disposal, the hundred-meter diameter of the target zone was still a pretty big haystack in which to find the assistant professor.
Corben frowned. Ramez was in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah territory. A definite no-go area for a lot of Lebanese. Virtually a whole different planet for an American, especially one with the dubious job title of “economic counselor.” It was the one area where he didn’t have a local contact.
“At least we know where they’ll be coming from when the call comes in,” Corben noted. He checked his watch again. He’d need to get back to the city pretty soon. He got up to leave. “Keep me posted if you get anything clear?”
“You bet,” Olshansky confirmed without taking his eyes off the screen. “What time’s that call coming in?”
“Noon. I’ve asked Leila to come up,” Corben added, referring to one of the translators on the payroll, “for when you manage to get something clear.”
“Okay,” Olshansky said in a hollow voice.
Corben was headed for the door when Olshansky remembered something. “By the way. Your caller with the stage fright? He’s Swiss.”
Corben stopped. “What?”
Olshansky still looked haunted. “The call on Evelyn Bishop’s cell that came in without an ID that you asked me about?”
Corben had forgotten about the phone call he’d asked Olshansky to trace, the one that Baumhoff had taken on Evelyn’s phone that night, at the police station.
“It came from Geneva,” Olshansky continued.
Which surprised Corben.
“And check this out,” Olshansky added. “Whoever was calling really values his privacy. The call was routed through nine international servers, each one hiding behind a mother of a firewall.”
“But nothing that can resist your subtle ways, right?” Massaging Olshansky’s überhacker ego was never a bad idea.
“Not this baby,” Olshansky said glumly. “I managed to track it back to the Geneva server, but that’s it. This is heavy-duty code we’re talking about. I can’t get in. Which means I can’t pinpoint it any closer than that.”
“Geneva.”
“That’s it.” Olshansky shrugged.
“Well, let me know if you can narrow it down to something slightly more manageable,” Corben replied flatly. “Might be tough to put the entire city under surveillance.”
And with that, he walked out, the assistant professor’s howl still ringing in his ears.
Chapter 38
The project supervisor at the foundation sounded mortified as Mia related what had happened. He apologized profusely, as if his own family were responsible for the attacks, and assured her that he fully understood her position and would support any decision she took.
She hung up, and her eyes settled on the computer screen before her. She realized she’d been in e-mail exile since having drinks with Evelyn. Corben had asked a secretary to log her into the press office’s system, but as Mia reached for the keyboard, she decided she’d extend the exile a little longer.
She was, quite simply, overwhelmed. She glanced out the window at the lush forested hills behind the embassy, sorting out the confused, frantic scenes unfurling in her mind’s eye, and inviting some of the tranquillity outside the window to seep into her. All she got instead was a recall of the Ouroboros, which she soon found herself doodling on the writing pad in front of her.
She gave up trying to duck it. She pulled a number off her cell phone and dialed it. Mike Boustany, the historian she’d been working with on the project, answered after the fourth ring, his dulcet tones replaced by urgent, heartfelt concern. He hadn’t heard of Ramez’s kidnapping yet, and it took him by surprise. He was even more shocked to hear that Mia was present at both.
He asked what was going on. Mia didn’t feel compelled to hide anything from him. He stayed silent through most of it, clearly stunned by her experience.
“Maybe there’s something you can help me with, Mike,” she concluded. “What do you know about the Ouroboros?”
“The tail-eater? We’ve got some carvings of it, on some Phoenician temples. Is that what you mean?”
“No. The one I’m interested in is much more recent. Tenth century, maybe.” She filled him in about its appearance in the underground chambers and on the book.
He knew a lot about the Brethren of Purity, but couldn’t see a connection there to the Ouroboros. She wanted to go further, but felt she should avoid mentioning the hakeem and his house of horrors. Instead, she told Boustany about being a bit confused as to the symbol’s significance and brought up what she’d read about the Arab and Persian scientists of the era.