The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  “I’m going after the codex,” she said.

  She picked herself off the floor and tugged at her yellow shorts. She grabbed her sunglasses and waist pack. “I’m going to the airport to find those two jerks who stole it. If anyone wants to come with me, fine. Otherwise, have a nice day.”

  Ari made a move to join her.

  “No you don’t, Ari,” Dean said. “I need you here.”

  Bruce stepped forward. “I’ll accompany you.” His accent had been replaced by a Southern drawl.

  “Is that your normal voice?” she said. The accent sounded forced.

  “Get used to it, honey,” he said, and took her by the elbow.

  Together, they rushed downstairs to the lobby to hail a cab.

  She still wasn’t sure the Southern drawl wasn’t fake.

  Bruce slid into the cab that pulled up and waited for her to jump in. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Is that what a South Carolina accent sounds like? I could swear there’s a Texas twang in there somewhere.” She wasn’t going to get into the car with an imposter.

  “Okay. You got me,” he confessed. “My daddy was from El Paso.”

  That sounded plausible. She got into the car.

  “To the airport,” Bruce ordered. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Mosh fahem,” the cabbie said. What?

  Rachel explained in Arabic to drive as fast as he could. He would get an extra 200 Egyptian pounds if they made it in time.

  The cabbie was an old man from a local tribe, but the concept of extra money translated perfectly.

  His creaky Renault left rubber on the hotel drive as they peeled off.

  The road followed the hotel-lined coast northward. Rachel recognized the airport from the day before. It was a modern, glass-walled complex with an airstrip that faded into the desert.

  “Departures,” she told the driver.

  She had already dug 400 Egyptian pounds out of her waist pack when they came skidding to a halt.

  The two goons were just emerging from a red cab several cars ahead. One held the portfolio under his arm.

  She threw the money onto the front seat and told the cabbie to wait.

  Bruce followed her, and they ran toward the men.

  One of the men spotted them and ordered his partner back into the cab.

  The two doors had just slammed shut and locked when Rachel and Bruce arrived. Rachel pounded on the window, but the man stared up at her with flat, expressionless eyes. The red cab pulled away and ripped the door handle out of her grip.

  “Ouch!” she said. That nearly tore skin off her fingers.

  “Back to our taxi,” Bruce said.

  Soon they were back in the Renault chasing after the puttering red cab.

  Rachel used the moment to take stock of her situation. Here she was with a total stranger in a tinny, foreign car chasing thugs across the Sinai. She had been hoping to use the fitness center that afternoon. Was this her life?

  The red cab was driving between pyramid-like mountains on the left and dry wasteland on the right.

  “Where are we headed?” she asked.

  Bruce pointed to a road sign. “This highway leads to Dahab, Taba, Eilat and Aqaba.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Those are resort towns on the east coast of the Sinai. Dahab and Taba are in Egypt, Eilat is in Israel and Aqaba is in Jordan.”

  “So they’re heading to Israel?”

  “Or Palestine.”

  “You mean they might be Palestinians?” That revived her original theory that the two men at the Silver Diner were part of the car bombing claimed by Palestinian terrorists. Maybe the men were Palestinian and wanted the codex pages for ransom.

  She remembered Dr. Saul Friedman talking about the Crusaders stealing the codex and ransoming it for money. Was history repeating itself?

  Thinking back to losing the codex pages in the hotel, she recalled how Dean had come to her room. He had grabbed her brutally and nearly smothered her so that she couldn’t yell out for help. But it turned out he was only trying to prevent her from attracting attention to them. If anything, he was trying to protect her.

  She had been hard on him and only made his life miserable by implicating him to the FBI and press, accusing him of planting the car bomb. Now she had let someone steal the codex pages from her, putting Dean’s operation at risk.

  Her Jewish grandmother was making another appearance.

  Retrieving the codex pages could help Dean accomplish his goal of bringing peace to the Middle East. That was reason enough to pursue the two thugs in the cab. She didn’t need guilt for motivation.

  Bruce looked at her as if trying to pry into her thoughts. “Can you explain exactly why we’re doing this?”

  “Those guys have part of the Aleppo Codex,” she said.

  The name didn’t seem to mean anything to him.

  “It’s an old Bible,” she said. “The first to decode the meaning of the scrolls. It’s valuable to the Jews, Christians and Muslims. Essentially, the codex is the Old Testament.”

  He nodded slowly and turned away. They were approaching the hills, but their taxi was making up little ground on the red cab. In fact, they seemed to be falling back and were already half a mile behind.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” she asked in Arabic.

  “How much?”

  Oh, that was it. “An extra 200 pounds if you catch up.”

  Suddenly, the taxi found more speed.

  Chapter 64

  The late afternoon sun warmed Carla as it lingered over Sharks Bay. From where she stood on the arched terrace of Dean’s penthouse suite, she could see yachts drifting into port and the mountains forming sharply etched shadows in the Sinai Desert.

  After the harrowing scuba diving experience in which she witnessed Dean attacking another diver with a spear gun, it felt good to know the truth. As he explained to her, he was only injecting a paralyzing agent. He wasn’t trying to kill the man.

  In addition to being relieved by his innocence, Carla had to deal with his effusive attention. She tried to relax. Every muscle of her body felt exercised. Her lungs were full of fresh air, and her skin had begun to tan. She took another sip of her rum and Coke.

  So this was the life of a spy.

  Dean was on the phone ordering the Four Seasons staff to collect her belongings at the Asia Star and check her out. Soon she would be able to slip out of her sarong and bikini and put on something more fitting for the luxurious Arabian setting.

  As Dean concluded the logistics of her move, she took the opportunity to reflect on her situation.

  She had fought to defend his reputation, but she had no idea he had such strong feelings for her. They had met only three times before, once in an interview, once in the parking lot and once over lunch in the cafeteria. Nothing in those encounters had given her any indication of such a strong attraction. But on the boat, he was a different man. He had warmed to her instantly. How could she know that, as he told her, he had been longing to see her?

  Seeing him was one thing. But being with him was something she would have to get used to. She had imagined him a shy man, perhaps a borderline case of social anxiety disorder. In actuality, he was a complete Casanova. He had come onto her from the start.

  He had put an arm around her on the walk back to the hotel. They had even kissed in the elevator up to his room on the top floor.

  She was still shivering from the dive, and her lips had felt cold against his. She hoped the glass of rum would alleviate all that.

  It was odd that a man could appear so quiet and unassuming in Virginia and then come alive in a whole new way abroad. If she were to put on her psychologist’s hat for a moment, she would say that there was an element of schizophrenia in him. Perhaps that came from living a double life.

  There were many well-documented cases of people with two distinct personas. For example, there were model students who were striptease dancers or escorts by night, and there was
that congressman who had an extra family stashed away in Washington.

  But a change in personality was a serious step up the ladder of psychosis. It occasionally led to split personalities and even multiple personality disorder. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing if it got one over the rough patches.

  She looked at his handsome profile. Of course there were other causes of split personalities, such as an alter ego. Was he another Dr. Jekyll?

  She wasn’t ready to make that diagnosis, but he did exhibit the characteristics of someone with dissociative behavior. There were many examples of people who were able to overcome and even profit from the condition. Take young pop stars who were able to suppress their dark side and win huge audiences with their wholesome personalities.

  In fact, in Dean’s case, she might even argue that he became a better person once he left America. He seemed more at ease.

  Which left her wondering whether she was a better person. She had become a scuba diver in one day. But was she more at ease? Could she ever live such a life abroad?

  Then there was Falls Church. How could she leave that?

  It was difficult to imagine how a man who was so happy in a place like sunny, carefree Sharm el-Sheikh could be just as happy in a place as driven by political fervor and steeped in history as her adopted hometown. But given his interest in her, perhaps she should get used to the idea of living abroad, preferably in a country with no extradition treaty.

  At last he was off the phone. “I managed to have your things sent over.”

  She cleared her throat and offered a welcoming smile. “Thanks.”

  “So remind me why you’re in Sharm,” he said.

  “Oh that.” It seemed so trivial now. “I came to warn you that the IRS has a warrant out for your arrest. They seem to think you committed tax fraud, and they’ll arrest you if you set foot in America.”

  That seemed to trouble the poor guy.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You always have Sharm.”

  “Maybe I should return to Cyprus tonight.”

  “You, uh, have a place in Cyprus?”

  “I own a villa on the coast outside of Nicosia.”

  This man wasn’t just suave. He was incredible. His double life was more like a fantasy life.

  “I have just one more job to do,” he said.

  She knew what that meant. “I’m sorry. But I do have a slight problem with that.”

  “With what?”

  “With that ‘aspect’ of your profession.”

  He slid a hand around her waist and began to rock her as they stared out at the fading light.

  “We do what we have to do,” he said.

  She couldn’t agree more.

  He was smelling her hair. “And sometimes we have to give in to our impulses.”

  She turned around in his arms and faced him.

  She looked into the sparkling blue eyes set in that handsome square face. “I’m ready,” she said. “I’ll give in to my impulses.”

  “I don’t think you’ll need this purple wrap,” he said.

  “It’s teal, actually.”

  “Whatever.”

  He unwound the fabric, turning her in languorous circles. Already dizzy from the drink, she lost her balance and he caught her. Once again, she was snug in his powerful arms. Their lips met with full force, and his firm hands took control of her.

  She was swept into the bedroom, where a Casablanca fan spun overhead and produced tiny wafts of breeze. She was transported to the distant shores of Cyprus. White rocks baked in the sun and cold waves splashed against them. There was a villa across a scrubby lawn. Music played as Dean stepped out onto a patio overlooking the sea.

  She ran across the rocky sand toward him.

  His white linen suit rustled as he stretched out his arms.

  Then she was lost in the heady scent of lavender and the dry heat of the desert. And her man lifted her to new heights of ecstasy.

  Chapter 65

  Greg Ferguson and Matt Nelson watched the computer screen intently. If Greg’s hunch was correct, someone in the CIA would attempt to reach Dean to warn him that the police were onto him.

  “That’s it!” Matt said, pointing at the screen.

  A call was underway between an extension in the CIA and a number in Sharm el-Sheikh.

  “Save the Egyptian number,” Greg said. “I’ll check out the extension.”

  He consulted a chart showing the office to which each extension was assigned. Then he turned to his team of agents. “It’s extension 2755 in room C-126.”

  A man consulted a map of the sprawling complex. “It’s the building next door. Follow me.”

  Greg put his suit coat over his shoulder holster and left down the stairwell.

  Four flights of stairs later, they reached ground level. They burst out the glass door and sprinted across a lawn to a low building used by the secretarial staff. The foyer was empty and typists quietly worked in rows of cubicles.

  “It’s the desk at the far corner of the room,” the agent with the map whispered.

  Gun drawn, Greg circled the room toward the suspect’s cubicle.

  Secretaries stood up in shock and their expressions turned to outrage. Greg motioned for them to keep their heads down.

  Weapon trained straight ahead, he closed in on the cubicle. There was no sound coming from within. He stepped into the entrance and pivoted his gun.

  There was nobody there. Only a phone on a desk.

  Another agent rushed in after him.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Greg said. “We need to lift the fingerprints.”

  The two of them slowly holstered their guns.

  So there was an informant in the CIA, someone who went out of his or her way to avoid detection.

  “Spread out and investigate,” Greg said. “Find out who was using this phone. Then dust the place for fingerprints.”

  Now he had to determine Wells’ whereabouts. For that, he returned to Matt’s office.

  “Find him?” Matt asked.

  Greg shook his head. “It was an empty cubicle in the secretarial pool.”

  Matt returned to his screen. “No further calls to Sharm el-Sheikh. Want to call the number and find out who answers?”

  Greg nodded. In a moment, he might be speaking with Dean Wells.

  “So where did he call in Egypt?”

  Matt zoomed in on the phone call. “It’s a hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh. The Four Seasons.”

  A hotel made sense. “You call the number and I’ll do the talking.”

  Matt turned on a set of speakers and had his computer dial the number.

  The phone rang.

  A woman picked up. “Four Seasons. May I help you?”

  Matt beckoned Greg closer to talk into the computer’s microphone. Greg hesitated. He didn’t want to give away the fact that he was from the FBI. He needed some sort of excuse for calling so as not to alert Wells. He’d pretend it was a wrong number.

  “Hello,” Greg said, leaning forward. “Is this a hotel?”

  “Yes it is, sir. How may I direct your call?”

  “Are you in Shakira Sheikh?”

  “Yes we are.”

  Greg’s voice was trembling with excitement. “Do you have a guest registered there under the name of Dean Wells?”

  “Let me check.” There was the clicking of a keyboard. “No, we don’t.”

  Greg’s elbow dropped. “Do you have American guests there?”

  “I imagine we do. We have over two hundred rooms.”

  “Is one guest a middle-aged American with short blond hair, five foot eight, 180 pounds?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. May I ask the nature of this call?”

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  Greg set the phone down. They had a hotel name, but Wells must be using an alias.

  He dialed the Criminal Investigative Division at the Bureau. “I know where Dean Wells is staying in Shaker Sheikh,” he told the division chief. �
�It’s the Four Seasons. But he’s probably using an alias. Alert the Egyptians at once, and make sure they have photos of Wells.”

  “I’ll contact them right away. Their police are very efficient.”

  Next, he phoned his team leader at the secretarial building. “Anybody there who could identify the mystery caller?”

  “Nobody. We asked around, and the secretaries were all busy. Nobody notices anything around here. They say anybody could have wandered in and used the phone.”

  “Did you find fingerprints?”

  “None. The phone was clean.”

  Greg sank into a chair, his energy sapped by the drama of the past half hour. He stared at Matt, who continued to monitor phone calls. “I don’t know much about foreign affairs or what kind of stunt Wells might be trying to pull in Egypt,” Greg said, “but I know something is wrong when someone is sneaking around CIA headquarters making anonymous phone calls.”

  Chapter 66

  Captain Malek sucked on what remained of his cigarette, exhaled, and watched the smoke trail upward.

  Security at the summit was going well. There was only one incident during the diplomats’ day off. The Palestinian minister had suffered a fish sting and been rushed to the hospital. News stations had just reported that Omar al-Farak was back on his feet and had checked out of the hospital.

  What a relief.

  But Malek had one overarching concern. The renegade American was still at large. It wasn’t what he knew that frightened him; it was what he didn’t know. The force hadn’t turned up any clues as to the intentions or whereabouts of Dean Wells. He hadn’t checked into another hotel, cashed any checks or made a single credit card purchase. The guy was lying low.

  Then his desk phone rang.

  He tossed the cigarette onto the floor and ground it out with the heel of his boot.

  “Captain Malek,” he answered tersely.

  It was Cairo calling. “The Americans traced a call to Dean Wells. He’s staying at the Four Seasons hotel. But he’s probably not registered under that name.”

  Malek brightened. “That’s good news, thanks God. I’ll apprehend him at once.”