by Nathan Swain
“But you didn’t extend that courtesy to Hadi?”
“I had no choice. The client felt some human casualties were required for verisimilitude.”
“Verisimilitude, Pearl? You’re talking about a man’s life.”
“Yep, my own,” Pearl said. “My client would have killed me if I didn’t follow through on his instructions.”
“Your client. Who is your client?”
Chapter 81
Olivia’s eyes fluttered open. A ceiling fan whirred above her. She lay quietly for a few minutes trying to understand where she was. Cambridge. London. The mountainside, the cave, the monolith, the light ahead. A pain in my stomach, running out of breath.
Her thoughts were running away from her. She focused on the fan. If she could follow one of the blades around and around, maybe she could fix her thoughts. But she kept losing the blade in its never-ending, whirring circle.
She felt a terrible pain in her head. She tried to raise her hand to her temple, but it wouldn’t move. Her hands were restrained, tied with rope to the side of the bed. Her ankles were tied down too.
Was she back in Evin prison? Had the Iranians caught up with them? Had Sandwith ratted them out for favors from the Iranians? Maybe the Flaming Sword had followed them the whole way to Lake Hazar.
Where was Will?
Olivia looked around the room. There was one window. The shade was drawn half way. It was dark outside and she could hear the rush of traffic from the street below. A conical beam of street light streamed in through the window.
I’m in an apartment, somewhere in a city.
A chair was placed at the end of her bed. Olivia could just work out the title of a book sitting on the chair. It was David Copperfield.
Oh no. Samir.
Olivia stifled a scream. She struggled to break loose. But the bed frame clanked against the wall, alerting her captor that she had woken.
Samir opened the door. “Oh good, you’re awake. We have a lot to discuss.” Samir had shaved his head. He was wearing desert camouflage pants and black combat boots. He was also shirtless, and a thick bandage covered the left side of his abdomen.
“Samir, what have you done?”
“I stopped you from defiling the holy site. You should be grateful.”
“What holy site?” Olivia was digging for information.
“Your life’s work, of course. The Garden of Eden.”
“Tell Eatiq is in Iraq, Samir. You know that.”
Samir crashed his fist down against the table beside her bed, breaking one of its spindly legs. Olivia tried not to show her fear, but she felt her chin trembling. “Do not mock me, Olivia. What do you take me for?”
“No, Samir, I—”
“I was watching you, Olivia. You had no idea,” Samir said, running his fingers underneath her chin. “Then, the sacred tablet fell into your hands. I had to stop you—you and the American.”
“Did you kill Professor Allison?” Olivia asked, her eyes welling with tears of fright and rage.
“I did, and it was wonderful,” Samir said, smiling like a child. “You can’t imagine the thrill of killing, Olivia.”
“You’re a sick, demented bastard.”
“No, it is you who are sick. You’ve been corrupted. You’ve lost sight of who you are.”
“I know who I am,” Olivia said. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
Samir rubbed the silver edges of his ruby-studded pin, polishing it adoringly with a rag.
“You know, don’t you? You knew when you confronted me on the M11. I am one of the Flaming Sword. My family has been entrusted with guarding the Garden of Eden for millennia.”
Olivia shook her head in feigned disbelief.
“Who put you up to this?”
“My father,” Samir said, grinning. “He’s been guarding the holy site his entire life. He sent me to stop you.”
Samir kneeled down to Olivia’s eye level. With his left hand, he slowly pulled away the blanket covering her. She was undressed.
Olivia shuddered. “Samir, keep your hands off of me!”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he said, smirking grotesquely.
Samir leaned over and kissed Olivia aggressively. “I’m giving you one last chance to redeem yourself. I hope you’re grateful.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’ll be my wife. And you’ll honor and serve me.”
It was bad enough that Samir was the emissary of the Flaming Sword. But on top of that, it was clear he was mentally ill. Olivia believed that with one wrong word, he’d snap and kill her. She needed to change her approach. There would be a time and place for exacting revenge on Samir. Her immediate goal was survival.
“Samir, that’s what I always wanted,” she said, adopting a gentler tone. “I’m still in love with you, you know. Tell Eatiq got in the way. I stupidly put my career ahead of you. I know now how wrong that was. We can get back to where we were. Like those nights in your flat.”
Samir’s eyes widened and the muscles in his face relaxed. He sighed. “At last you’ve come around. I knew you would.”
Samir took off the rope binding Olivia’s hands and feet. He got into the bed and cuddled up next to her, placing his head on her chest. Olivia caressed the stubble on his scalp. “Yes, my darling. Of course.”
Olivia looked out the window. Where is Will?
“Samir,” Olivia said. “What happened to the American?”
“The American? Oh, I killed him. He cried for me to spare him but I showed no pity.”
Olivia turned away and nodded matter-of-factly. But inside, her soul screamed. She wanted to claw Samir’s eyes out.
She looked over at Samir. He was biting his lower lip and gawking at her naked form, as if she was not even there, as if she was merely a spectator to his assault.
The wrong man was dead, and a monster was at her side.
Chapter 82
It felt to Olivia like a week had passed in the apartment. But it could have been longer. She spent most of the daytime in a semi-conscious state. Samir was drugging her with a sedative, she assumed. But it didn’t appear that he planned to kill her. To the contrary, each night he talked incessantly about their future. “We’ll be married, Olivia,” Samir told her. “We’ll be so happy. We’ll be very rich.”
Olivia played along. “I know, my love, I know,” she would say. But even as she did, she thought of Eastgate. I know you’re still alive.
It was obvious to Olivia where Samir had taken her. They were in Istanbul. Samir droned on about how it had become his favorite city in the world, and how glad he was to be out of the UK. “We’ll make our home here,” he told Olivia. “East of the Bosphorus, of course. Away from any tourists or diplomats who might recognize your pretty face. I’ll work with the PKK, smuggle arms, do the dirty work the men in the public eye don’t want to bother with.”
But Samir’s past kept intruding on his dreams for the future. Reso called him every day. Samir got rid of his old cell phone, but somehow Reso tracked down his new number. Reso even sent more thugs to Istanbul to spy on him. They were set up in a white Peugeot van across from Samir’s flat. Samir could see a pair of clunky black binoculars poking through the driver-side window. He paid a street gang 200 liras to sneak into the back of the van and cut the throats of Reso’s spies.
Still, Reso kept trying to make contact. About a week after Olivia’s abduction, Reso called Samir again, and Samir finally had thought of a reason to answer.
“Hello, Father,” Samir said.
“Samir, don’t hang up. I have something important to tell you,” Reso said.
“I will listen to you under one condition. I need clients. You can connect me with them. People like you, who need men killed.”
“Fine, I will help you.”
Samir placed his hand over the phone and danced in a small circle, laughing at the ceiling. “Now, tell me, what is it you want?”
“You must releas
e Professor Nazarian to me. I know you have her captive.”
“Why does it matter to you? She’s no threat to the holy site. Let me do with her as I please.”
Reso sighed. “There is no holy site, Samir.”
“Of course there is. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The cave and the meadow with the cypress tree.”
“Yes, they’re all there. That doesn’t mean it’s the bloody Garden of Eden.”
“You told me in the mountains that it was the Garden told of in the Quran and the Bible, guarded by our family for thousands of years.”
“Samir, sometimes stories have purposes other than the conveyance of truth.”
“But what about the symbol in the tree? It was there, just as you said.”
“It’s there because I put it there. I carved it with my own knife. The knife that sits on the mantel behind my desk. That very knife.”
Warm tears collected around Samir’s eyes. “But why? Why would you make up these lies?”
“I needed you to believe, to be convinced. If you believed, I knew you would be fanatical in your mission. Too much was at stake for half-measures.”
“What do you mean? If the Garden is not real, what was at stake? What were you up to?”
“It was imperative that Professor Nazarian give up on her dig in Nasiriyah. Your job was to get her to do that. But she wouldn’t do it, would she? She insisted on moving forward.”
“No, she did fall in love with me. She’s in love with me now.”
“Yes, of course. You completed your mission. You diverted her away from Nasiriyah, from her dig there. And now she’s fallen in love with you. Well done.”
“I don’t believe you. You only want her for yourself. To serve as another wife to you.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Reso said, waiting to continue. “Professor Nazarian is my daughter.”
Samir was quiet.
“Yes, your sister. At least by adoption. I suppose you despise me now.”
Reso was correct. Samir could not imagine a greater betrayal. Reso had never been around when Samir needed him as a boy. When Samir had finally given up on winning his father’s respect, Reso entrusted him with protecting the Garden of Eden. Reso had needed him at last, even respected him. But it all turned out to be a lie.
“What is your real name then?”
“My birth name is Dashni Nazarian.”
“Then who is Reso Zana?”
“Reso Zana was my cousin. He died in my arms when I was ten years old. The life I have lived with your mother and your brothers and sisters is in tribute to him.”
“I’m sure he would be honored by your lies,” Samir said.
Dashni didn’t respond.
“What do you want me to do with her?” Samir asked.
Normally controlled, Dashni’s tense voice rose into an embattled howl. “You must bring her to Nasiriyah!”
Chapter 83
A Humvee with desert camouflage thundered down the empty highway in Southern Iraq. It was a strange sight to see—the GAZ 2975 Tiger was a Russian military truck. It was the best ride Pearl could find on short notice.
Nasiriyah was a dangerous place. Several soldiers and civilians had recently died in a major truck bombing. There were Shia militants guarding highways and roads. The potential for tribal civil war was growing.
Eastgate and Pearl were traveling with no cover. Pearl hired three retired CIA paramilitary guys to take them to Tell Eatiq.
The Humvee rumbled across the desert, ten kilometers outside of Nasiriyah. The sun had almost reached its zenith in the late morning sky. They were scheduled to meet at Noon.
Looking out the window, Eastgate was reminded of the last time he raced through the dessert in a military vehicle. It was on his trip to Baghdad, after winning the battle against Ansar al Islam. McQuistad wanted to tell him about a new mission.
At the time, he didn’t want to leave the battlefield for what seemed like a routine assignment. If he knew then what he knew now, he would have jumped out of the conference room window before McQuistad walked into the room.
“I still don’t understand why you won’t identify your client. There’s not much I can do to prepare for our meeting unless I can understand his motivation.”
“I can’t identify him. That violates my duty of confidentiality, which I hold sacred.” Pearl said. “Besides, I expect he’ll reveal himself.”
“When?”
“Very soon.”
Who had the motive to divert Olivia from her dig in Nasiriyah? Eastgate wondered. Maybe the US military was worried the dig could be a security threat, or used as a front for a spy ring. Perhaps an influential Shia cleric believed the dig offended Islam.
After several days of working to arrange a rendezvous with Pearl’s client, Eastgate still struggled to wrap his head around Pearl’s story. But after Pearl revealed the facts to him, it became clear to Eastgate that it was all true. He had felt the pull of the conspiracy ever since the tablet fell into his hands. All along, he had been a chess piece in a game played by an invisible master.
Pearl’s story validated the eerie feeling of powerlessness that had haunted Eastgate since that night outside the museum. But the truth was humiliating. He had been trained to detect efforts of manipulation by a foreign adversary. Yet he had been played, to the point that he doubted the loyalty of his brothers in arms, and put the lives of innocent people in danger. Three innocents died because of his mistakes.
A series of hills emerged from the desert floor in the distance. The Humvee turned off the highway and went speeding down a dirt road, towing a cloud of sand behind it.
Pearl looked over at Eastgate who was staring out the window. He could read the shame on his face. “You were suffering from PTSD, Jane” Pearl said. “Think about the facts. You just completed a secret military campaign against Ansar al Islam on which the success of the US invasion depended. You were chased through the Baghdad sewers by an assassin who you found dead. You were in a gunfight outside your own base and your interpreter was killed. It was all done to condition your mind to accept a conspiracy. It’s very natural and used all the time in counter-intelligence. You shouldn’t feel bad.”
“I’m an officer in the US Special Forces, Pearl. I should have asked more questions. I shouldn’t have been so naive.”
“You couldn’t have seen this one coming. It was the perfect set up.”
Pearl’s condescension left Eastgate with no comfort.
The Humvee eased to a stop next to three make-shift trailers. They looked to be offices for the Tell Eatiq dig. Beyond them, the flat expanse of desert gave way to a series of mounds. Pearl’s guns-for-hire got out of the car. Eastgate and Pearl followed.
The trailers were abandoned. The mounds were spotted with several small wooden huts. Forklifts, wheelbarrows, and hand tools covered by a thin layer of grainy sand were scattered around the site, as if the archaeologists using them had been sucked up into an alien spacecraft during the middle of their workdays. Except Eastgate noticed fresh patches of footprints around the trailers, and the marks of car wheel treads etched into the sand. These footprints would have disappeared after a few days. Someone’s been here recently.
A sign indicated in Arabic and English that the site was closed due to “recent events.” Just beyond the sign, only half-buried under the surface, were several plastic cylinders about the width of a wrist-watch. Eastgate recognized them as anti-personnel landmines. Someone was serious about keeping people out of this place, and not in a friendly way.
A black BMW emerged in the distance and came to a stop three hundred feet away. A man dressed in a black suit and white dress shirt stepped out of the car. He was about five foot ten inches tall, but his barrel chest, and the way his confident strides consumed the ground before him, projected the demeanor of king.
Pearl nodded at Eastgate. “My client.”
Chapter 84
“Looks like he’s outing himself,” Pearl said, nodding at Eastgate and walkin
g toward the man. “Let him come to us,” Eastgate said, blocking Pearl with his arm. “I’m tired of this guy dictating the terms.”
The man stopped midway to meet them. He put his hands on his hips. It was a display of inconvenience.
“I’m not crying for the guy,” Eastgate said.
The man continued walking with his head down.
“What’s our move here, Pearl?”
“I’ve got cards to play.”
“OK. Be sure to play them right.”
The man walked directly up to Eastgate. He made a point of kicking up dirt onto the toes of Eastgate’s boots.
Pearl wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Captain William Eastgate, meet Dashni Nazarian.”
At first, Eastgate thought that the name was an alias. An ironic handle used by another shadowy figure from Pearl’s world of spy craft. And then the man took off his sunglasses, and Eastgate looked at his face. He recognized him. It was Dashni Nazarian, British foreign secretary and the principal defender of his government’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Most disturbing of all, he was also Olivia’s father.
Eastgate had hoped this moment would bring clarity. Instead, his mind was blown. The theories he had formulated the past week, the bits of evidence he had been trying to fit together, had all come undone.
“You called this meeting,” Dashni said. “What do you want?”
Pearl glanced back at his posse of private security. “We want Olivia,” Pearl said. “She needs to be returned to the company of Mr. Eastgate. Alive.”
“Her welfare isn’t your concern. It wasn’t part of our contract.”
“Neither was her abduction. I’m modifying the contract.”
“And why should I care what you want? You’re a desk jockey. A data mole. There are a hundred men who do what you do.”
“You really know how to hurt a guy,” Pearl said, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. He turned to the paramilitary guys. “Does anyone have some tissue?”
“I don’t mean to be demeaning. It’s just that I deal with men far more consequential than you every day.” Dashni moved closer to Pearl. “Men who don’t just punch passwords into computers and watch satellites on the tele. They launch ships and move armies and determine which tens of thousands of men will live and which will die.”
