Which was true. But he knew who had the book. And he now had his phone number.
Abu Barzan had told Farouk that he was on his way to deliver the goods, and he’d added that he’d have his money “tomorrow evening.” That gave Corben a little over twenty-four hours to track him down. If Abu Barzan was traveling and needed to stay in contact with his buyer, he wouldn’t probably have time, nor would he risk, changing phones. Corben felt reasonably confident that Olshansky would nail down his position.
Thinking about it now, Corben realized things hadn’t gone too badly. Sure, the discovery that another buyer was out there did complicate things. On the other hand, it also drew out someone Corben was just as interested in finding, someone who’d been hiding in the shadows successfully long before Corben had even gotten wind of anything. And that, in itself, was a welcome development.
Which left Farouk.
Sitting there, wheezing and groaning and bleeding all over Corben’s borrowed embassy car.
Corben knew wounds like this. He knew that on TV, people who got shot were always told they were lucky it was “just” a flesh wound and would be bouncing around a few days later with nothing more to show for it than a big white bandage. The reality was very different. Most shots needed hospitalization and IVs. Infections set in easily and were commonplace. And a wound such as Farouk’s would require, at best, a month of serious hospitalization. It was also highly likely he’d feel its effect, in some way, for the rest of his life.
And that was a problem.
As he had told Farouk, a hospital wouldn’t be safe, not from the hakeem, given his contacts in the Lebanese police force. Besides, the last thing he wanted was for the hakeem to know Farouk had been shot. And even if the hakeem didn’t grab Farouk outright, he’d find out what Corben now knew, and any leverage Corben had over the hakeem would be lost.
The Fuhud detectives would get involved. The head of station. The press too, probably. Every move, every choice Corben made, or wanted to make, would be poured over with a microscope. The ambassador and the Lebanese government would also get sucked in. If they found out about Abu Barzan’s pieces and managed to get hold of them, they might set up an exchange with the hakeem and trade them for Evelyn. The hakeem would have what he was after, he’d recede into the shadows, and Corben would be left with nothing but frustration and tons of paperwork. And if the hakeem couldn’t get to Farouk, or if no exchange went through, he’d also disappear.
That ruled out the hospital.
He couldn’t keep Farouk at the embassy either. They didn’t have the medical facilities there. It would be bad enough if Farouk died while in hospital, but if he died while he was at the embassy…The ambassador was a principled, honorable guy who wouldn’t keep Farouk’s presence a secret, not from the State Department, nor from the local authorities. Farouk’s death on U.S. soil would create a shitstorm that would ruin everything.
He wouldn’t get what he was after.
Thinking it through dispassionately, he couldn’t see that Farouk was of any further value to him. The man had only gotten drawn into this accidentally, and now that Corben knew what Farouk knew about Abu Barzan, the Iraqi had become obsolete.
More than obsolete.
He was a liability.
Whichever way he turned, all Corben saw coming out of bringing him in was questions, obstacles, complications, and grief.
Which didn’t really leave him much choice.
He turned to Farouk. The wounded Iraqi looked like a mauled animal, curled up and drenched in blood. His face glistened with sweat and looked even more ashen in the pale, diffused light of the forest. His whole body was shivering, and his trembling hands, caked thick with blood, still pressed down meekly on his wound. He was staring at Corben with scared, half-dead eyes that were barely managing to stay open.
He opened his cracked, dry mouth to say something, but Corben calmly gestured to him to stay quiet. He leaned over to him and said, “I’m sorry.”
Farouk looked at him with faint puzzlement.
Corben’s arms lashed out towards him. One hand went behind his head, holding it in place. The other slammed onto Farouk’s face, squeezing tightly, clamping his mouth and nose shut.
Farouk’s eyes rocketed wide and his arms flailed upward, but there was no strength left in them. Corben swung an arm down and darted a punch right next to Farouk’s wound, causing him to exhale in a muffled howl of pain as he bent forward. Corben shoved him right back against the seat and kept the lock on his breathing. Farouk started coughing and wheezing with a heavy, gurgling sound, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets as he stared at Corben in primal horror. Corben increased his vise grip on him, feeling the Iraqi’s strength drain, feeling the last wisps of life abandon his battered body until the futile resistance stopped altogether.
Chapter 46
Through the window of her room in the press office, Mia noticed the Pathfinder driving past the annex, headed for the rear of the compound. The driver’s-side window was down, allowing her to spot Corben as he guided the SUV into a parking slot in a covered bay that was kept away from the main building as an additional safety precaution against booby-trapped cars.
She sprang to her feet and looked out, her pulse racing as she concentrated her gaze on the car. The angle hadn’t allowed her to see anyone in the passenger seat. Interminable seconds crawled by before Corben finally appeared from behind the bay’s bunkerlike shelter.
Mia’s heart sank. He was alone.
Even worse, he was covered in what could only be blood. And as if that weren’t enough, the grim scowl that darkened his face said it all.
Mia felt her knees buckle. She slid back into her chair, feeling a great tearing deep inside her.
No Farouk.
No way of getting the book.
Nothing to trade for her mom.
Corben shut his eyes and let the torrent of hot water flush the weariness out of his aching body. The embassy’s gym was a windowless, isolated haven tucked deep into the basement of the annex, and right now, its shower cubicle afforded Corben a momentary respite from the blood and the grime of what had become his most intense day since being posted to this unsettled city.
He’d thought carefully about what he would tell his bosses — the station chief and the ambassador — before calling in and giving them a heads-up while driving back to the embassy. Farouk had been shot. Mortally. He’d died before he could get him to a hospital. And at that point, there was only one option open to him: He needed to make sure the kidnappers didn’t find out Farouk had been killed. If they did, they might assume that the relics’ location was lost with him, and if so, there’d be nothing to trade for Evelyn.
He couldn’t bring his body to the embassy, which was technically U.S. soil. He couldn’t hand him over to the cops either. Given how pervasively they seemed to be penetrated, the kidnappers would find out Farouk was dead long before his corpse went cold. He had to make him disappear. For a while, anyway. To buy himself some time to come up with another way to get Evelyn out.
So he’d driven deep into the pine forests east of the city and dumped his body there, off a small trail that was hardly used. No one had been around. If and when the body was eventually discovered, Corben and the embassy had total deniability. Yes, Corben had driven off with him, but the man had been wounded in the shoot-out and had bolted out of the car when it got stuck in traffic and run off. An entirely plausible theory would be that the men who were after him, and who had killed the assistant professor, had caught up with him. By then, the whole affair would probably be done and dusted, and no one would be too concerned with the fate of an illegal alien, let alone one from Iraq.