“A better world for everyone,” Kirkwood replied, seemingly thrown by Corben’s cavalier attitude. “And I mean everyone.”
Corben shrugged. “So I guess we’re on the same page.”
“Except for one pesky little detail. I’m not prepared to kill for it.”
“Maybe you just haven’t yet had to face that choice.”
Kirkwood let it simmer. “What if I have?”
The insinuation intrigued Corben, but he masked the feeling. “Then I’d say I care more about making the world a better place than you do,” he replied nonchalantly.
“And where does Evelyn Bishop fall in all this? Collateral damage?”
“Not necessarily.” Corben glanced over at him. A motivational tool had just presented itself. “Help me figure this out, and nothing will give me more pleasure than taking the hakeem down and getting her back.”
Corben cocked an eyebrow, waiting for Kirkwood’s reaction, and smiled inwardly. He had him thinking, which was good. It meant he’d be spending less time trying to wrangle his freedom.
Corben decided to nudge him a little further in that direction. “By the way, when were you and Webster planning on telling Mia that her dad was still alive?”
Kirkwood stiffened at Corben’s jocular tone. At least Corben didn’t know the whole truth, he reminded himself.
At least he didn’t know that he was Tom Webster.
He thought back to what Corben must have overheard back in Diyarbakir and replayed the conversation in his mind. Corben assumed the formula didn’t work, not for anyone. Which was why he hadn’t made the leap.
Let’s keep it that way, he thought.
The name he’d used with Evelyn drifted his thoughts back to her. Guilt consumed him. If he’d told her the truth back then, in Al-Hillah, maybe she would’ve been more careful. She would have known dangerous people would be after this. They always were. They came out of the woodwork the minute they got a sniff of it. It was the way of the world. Had been for hundreds of years.
Evelyn wouldn’t have been kidnapped.
And he would have known he had a daughter. A daughter who would have grown up with a father. He’d have made sure of that. He’d have found a way.
He remembered the look in Mia’s eyes when he’d told her the truth, and it gutted him again, just ripped his insides out and left nothing there but a gaping black hole.
At least, he thought with a trace of solace — at least she was safe now.
Mia sat on a rickety chair in the smoke-filled room. She sipped from a glass of water as the wiry old man with bloodstained arms finished dressing Abu Barzan’s wound.
The antiques dealer had guided her through the back streets of the ancient town to the house of another of his contacts. Despite their occasional fratricidal tussles, the Kurds all shared a hated common enemy and helped each other out when it came to keeping out of the clutches of the MIT, the Turkish intelligence service — the local variant of the mukhabarat.
Three other men were in the room, all locals, all smoking. They were arguing vociferously among themselves and with Abu Barzan, in Kurdish. Mia couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they were clearly angry about what had happened. One of their own had been killed, after all, as well as Abu Barzan’s nephew, and the debate was clearly on as to what the repercussions — and potential reprisals — could be.
The doctor finished his work and left the room, taking the others with him and leaving Mia alone with Abu Barzan. A leaden silence hung between them as the wisps of smoke thinned out and vanished, then Abu Barzan turned to her.
“You still have the book,” he observed. It sat squarely on the table, in front of her.
She nodded, lost in her thoughts.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She’d pondered that question while the doctor had been working on Abu Barzan’s wound and hadn’t reached a conclusion. “I can’t go to my embassy. I don’t know who to trust anymore.” She told him about what had happened in Beirut and about Evelyn’s kidnapping. He flushed angrily when she filled him in on what she knew about the hakeem. Saddam had already used nerve gas on the Kurds. They weren’t exactly his chosen people. It was quite possible — likely, even — that he’d gleefully culled the hakeem’s guinea pigs from their ranks.
She told him about Corben, but avoided mentioning what Kirkwood had told her on the roof, merely painting him as a UN official who was trying to help.
She was still grinding that one over herself.
A skeptical expression crossed his sagging face. “This UN man. The one who was buying this”—pointing a thick finger at the codex—“you trust him?”
The comment surprised Mia, then she remembered seeing Kirkwood handing him the silver attaché case. It all fell into place. “He was your buyer all along, wasn’t he?”
Abu Barzan nodded. “Six hundred thousand dollars. Gone.” He heaved a desolate sigh.
Mia’s brow furrowed as her thoughts drifted back to Corben. At the back of her mind, something was clamoring for attention, and she couldn’t quite put a finger on it. She remembered seeing Corben carrying the attaché case, but something didn’t fit. He’d been alone. No backup, no SEAL team, no Turkish forces assisting him — and they were our allies, after all.
He was operating on his own. A rogue agent.
A tremor of concern rattled through her. Kirkwood. Corben had him. And if there was any chance of getting her mom back, it was with him.
She tried to imagine what Corben’s next move would be. Evelyn didn’t matter to him, that much was obvious. He’d killed the hakeem’s men, which wasn’t exactly the best “let’s get together” signal if the intention had been to make contact with him.
Corben was following his own, personal agenda.
Which meant that he’d be going after it. And that meant he’d be headed for one specific place.
“Do you want to get your money back?” she asked Abu Barzan, her voice alight with hope.
Abu Barzan raised his eyes to her, a dour and confused expression on his face.
“Can you get us across the border?” she added, breathless.
Chapter 63
The sun had arced into a hazy, midafternoon sky as the Land Cruiser crossed into Iraq.
Corben had pulled over at a makeshift fruit stand on the road out of Idil, close to the border, and picked up a couple of bottles of water and some bananas for him and his prisoner. He’d untied Kirkwood — having secured his right wrist to the handle in the passenger door to make sure he didn’t try to bail — and they’d both relieved themselves by the side of the road. He’d then driven past the long line of empty fuel trucks and buses waiting to cross into Iraq and pulled up at the Turkish border post. The loutish and overzealous soldier manning it was quickly subjugated by a more accommodating officer, who, his eyes flickering at the sight of several months’ salary being dangled before him, had generously kicked in a map of the region before allowing them to leave his country.
Corben and Kirkwood had then driven across the barbed-wired no-man’s-land that separated the two frontiers. The bleak strip was even more desolate than the flatlands it separated. A couple of hundred yards later, they’d reached the Iraqi border post, where a guard in flimsy camouflage fatigues had also gleefully pocketed a small roll of bills and hastily waved them through.
Corben stopped at a gas station just outside Zakho, once he was sure that his border bribe hadn’t backfired on him and that no one was following them. He filled the car and checked the map for Nerva Zhori. His eyes had trouble locating it, but after a twinge of concern, he finally spotted the small village, marked by the tiniest of letters, tucked away in the mountains, almost straddling the Turkish border.