The Sanctuary

by Raymond Khoury

  Mia was safe, for now—at least, she hoped she would be—but Evelyn knew her captor would spare no effort in finding Tom Webster. And along with that unnerving thought, another one, even more unsettling, surfaced as she wondered if her daughter would be able to get anyone to help look for Evelyn half as diligently, and if she’d ever see her again.

  Chapter 26

  T he ambassador’s office was located at the back of the main villa, as far away as possible from the entrance to the compound and sealed off from the outside world by bombproof doors and thick, mirrored bulletproof glass. Marines and Lebanese army troops patrolled the pine forest to the back of the compound as well as the entry gate.

  The precautions were obviously necessary, but no one had any illusions about their ultimate effectiveness. If a decision was made—more than likely, in one of the region’s capitals—to hit the embassy as part of some perverse political game plan, no barricade would be able to prevent it from happening. Everyone working here knew it, starting with the person at the center of the crosshairs, the ambassador himself. Corben had experienced how differently men dealt with being in that charmed position. The current ambassador, to his credit, took it with admirable stoicism.

  Corben walked in to find the ambassador sitting with a man he didn’t know, who was quick to stand up and introduce himself as Bill Kirkwood. The man had a firm handshake, a sharp gaze, and a personable demeanor. He was tall, on par with Corben, and seemed to be in reasonable shape. Corben guessed Kirkwood was probably a few years older than he was, placing him somewhere around forty.

  “Bill flew in from Amman this afternoon,” the ambassador informed Corben. “He’s here about the Evelyn Bishop situation.”

  Which surprised Corben. A little too quick, for his liking. “What’s your interest in this?” he asked Kirkwood.

  “I met her a few years ago. I’m with the cultural heritage division at UNESCO, and Evelyn was out here batting for us against the developers of the downtown area. She’s quite a whirlwind, not someone you easily forget,” Kirkwood added with an affable smile. “We’ve been funding some of her work ever since.”

  Corben looked a question at the ambassador, unsure about where this was headed.

  “Bill’s concerned,” the ambassador informed Corben, “from a personal as well as a professional point of view,” then turned to Kirkwood, leaving him to elaborate.

  “Well, my primary interest is, of course, Evelyn’s well-being. That’s paramount. She’s someone we respect and care about, and I need to make sure everything is being done so that we can get her back quickly and safely,” Kirkwood clarified. “Beyond that,” he added with some hesitance, “yes, there’s an obvious concern about one of our most respected and visible professionals being tainted with something the papers will pounce on like relic smuggling—which, from what I understand, is how the Lebanese government would like to spin this.” He paused for a moment to slide a questioning glance at the ambassador, before adding, “And I can only assume we’re not too disinclined to go with them on that.”

  “We need to weigh the pros and cons of how it comes out,” the ambassador replied with the composed defensiveness of a seasoned pro. “Lebanon is in a very fragile state right now. An American, especially an older woman, getting plucked off the streets for no reason—it would undoubtedly be seen as a terrorist, anti-Western act. And the timing couldn’t be worse. These people are desperate to regain the image of peace and normalcy they’d only just managed to bring back after all the years of mayhem. And with what happened this summer, the country’s now in desperate need of foreign investment, more than ever. The prime minister and the interior minister have both called me up on this already. They’re panicking. I don’t need to tell you a lot of it’s about perception when it comes to raising funding, and if this were to spiral out and inspire copycats…”

  “Whereas a smuggler caught up in some kind of dirty deal is not a reflection of political instability and therefore much easier to brush off,” Kirkwood observed, somewhat wryly, before turning to Corben. “You see what we’re dealing with here.”

  “I can’t imagine it would reflect well on your organization to have her paraded as a smuggler,” Corben countered.

  Kirkwood considered his comment for a beat and nodded guiltily. “Of course, it wouldn’t. I won’t deny that we’re also keen to avoid any tainting by association. The organization doesn’t exactly enjoy wholehearted support on Capitol Hill. We’ve only just managed to rejoin it as a nation, and that wasn’t easy to pull off.” The United States had, in fact, been one of the thirty-seven founding members of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The organization, which opened its doors in 1945 shortly after the end of the war, was set up to promote peace and security by encouraging collaboration among nations through, well, education, science, and culture. Over the next four decades, as it grew to include over 150 countries as members, its policies—primarily its foreign policy, which was deemed worryingly “leftist”—diverged from the United States’ own agenda. The rift reached a head when the United States finally withdrew from the organization in 1984. It only rejoined in 2003 in a bipartisan token gesture from President Bush, but you didn’t have to dig deep to realize that the organization was still viewed with the same skepticism and contempt in official circles in Washington as was its big brother, the UN.

  “This needs to be handled with utmost care,” the ambassador affirmed, “both in terms of getting Evelyn Bishop back and in terms of what we tell the public.”

  Corben studied the two men for a moment. “As far as getting her back, you know that’s our priority too. As far as the media is concerned, well…this isn’t political. We’re pretty sure of that.” He turned to Kirkwood. “I do think it has to do with Iraqi relics, but Evelyn Bishop’s role in that context remains unclear.”

  “Do you know what these relics are?” Kirkwood asked.

  Corben hesitated briefly. He didn’t want to say any more than he had to, but he had to tread carefully. “Statuettes, tablets, seals. We’ve got some Polaroids,” he informed them.

  “May I see them?”

  The question somewhat surprised Corben. Kirkwood was drilling deeper than he would have expected. “Sure. They’re in my office.”

  Kirkwood nodded. “Okay. So we think she got involved with these guys in some way. But was she a willing partner in the transaction, or was she out to stop it from taking place? Do you see what I mean? That’s the angle we need to adopt. She got wind of it somehow, she tried to stop them or turn them in, and they grabbed her. Knowing her, it’s probably what really happened.”

  “It would certainly work for everyone,” the ambassador noted.

  “The thing is,” Corben observed, “she didn’t contact anyone about this. If she really was out to stop them, she would have called someone—and given the smugglers a reason to silence her. Which is what my real concern is here. If this is actually what happened, and they’re out to silence her…they’re not going to come to us with any demands. We need to get through to them and offer them something for her safe return. Assuming they haven’t gone too far already.” He looked at them grimly.

  “I assume you’re going to put the word out through your channels, get the message out that we want her back, no questions asked,” the ambassador asked.

  “I’ve already got that going,” Corben assured him. “But our contacts are much weaker since the summer. The country’s divided right down the middle. One side won’t talk to us at all, and the other one isn’t of much use in this case.”

  “I have a lot of contacts in the area,” Kirkwood told Corben. “I’d like to work with you on this. There may be a different set of people I can reach out to than the ones you have access to. We have a lot of contacts when it comes to Iraqi antiquities. And it can be seen as a neutral, UN-led effort, rather than coming directly from the Great Satan,” he added, using the region’s favorite epithet for America.

  Corben
looked at the ambassador, who was clearly comfortable with the request. Corben wasn’t. He always worked alone. It was as much a part of his job description as it was a personal choice. And although he didn’t relish having someone looking over his shoulder, Corben couldn’t exactly refuse. Besides, Kirkwood could prove helpful. The UN did have extensive contacts in the area. And, after all, finding Evelyn would undoubtedly lead to the hakeem. Which was the endgame, though it wasn’t something he was too keen to share with either man before him.

  “Not a problem,” Corben agreed.

  Kirkwood surprised him with his next question. “I hear there was another woman involved. What do we know about her?”

  “Mia Bishop,” Corben informed him. “She’s her daughter.”

  Chapter 27

  T he living room was basking in the soft glow of dusk as Mia stirred out of her slumber on Corben’s sofa. Blinking her eyes open, she was momentarily confused by the unfamiliar surroundings, then it all came rushing back. She sat up slowly and mopped the languor off her face with her hands. She waited for her senses to reboot, then pushed herself to her feet and padded over to the French doors and out onto the balcony.

  The buildings across the street were uniformly gray and looked as tired and weary as she felt. Many of the balconies had been glassed in illegally, turning outdoor terraces into interior space, and shrapnel scars and bullet holes pockmarked virtually every façade. A forest of television aerials sprouted from the flat roofs, and telephone and electricity wires cobwebbed overhead, a constant reminder of the patched-up, makeshift feel of the place. From a strictly aesthetic point of view, this wasn’t an attractive city, not by any means. And yet, somehow, defying expectation and logic, it charmed anyone who visited it. Including Mia.

  She was drying herself off after a quick shower when she heard some noise coming from the front door. Her whole body went rigid. She listened intently, then quickly wrapped herself in a towel and crept up to the bathroom door. She inched the door slightly ajar and peered through the narrow slit. She couldn’t see the front entrance. Her mind flew into overdrive. Should she barricade herself in the bathroom? Bad idea. It didn’t have any windows. Should she scuttle over to one of the bedrooms, which had access to a balcony? Not hugely useful, given that the apartment was on the sixth floor of the building and that she didn’t feel like doing another high-wire act. She was running out of options when the dead bolt clicked noisily and the door juddered open. Every hair on her body went stiff for a nanosecond, before Corben’s voice rang out through the flat.

  “Mia?”

  She shut her eyes and breathed out in relief, chiding herself for letting her imagination run amok. “I’ll be out in a sec,” she replied, making a concerted effort to sound as unflustered as possible.

  She got dressed and found Corben in the kitchen. He had brought back her cell phone. She switched it on and saw that she had a couple of messages. That Evelyn was the abducted woman in the news was starting to leak out. The first message was from the project supervisor at the foundation. The second was from Mike Boustany, the local historian who was working with her on the project and whom she’d gotten to know quite well. She needed to call them both back and let them know what had happened, but decided it would keep until the morning. She also knew more concerned friends and colleagues would be calling as the news spread, so she set her phone to a low ring, opting to screen her calls. The only call she’d take, if it came in, was from her aunt in Boston. She wanted to discuss things with Corben more thoroughly first. He had also picked up some food on his way back, and she felt ravenous.

  They laid out the foil containers of lamb kafta skewers, hummus, and other mezes on the coffee table in the living room and sat cross-legged on cushions, digging into the food and sipping cold Almaza beers. Eating was, in Beirut as in the rest of the Mediterranean, an elaborate feast of delicately prepared dishes as well as a cardinal social ritual. Mia succumbed to the therapeutic charms of the food and the beer, and, for a while, the casual conversation between her and Corben—mostly about the meal—flowed easily, and she enjoyed the respite from the recent frenzied insanity and, she realized, his company, even though there was a guarded superficiality to what they talked about. She didn’t mind. Casual conversations, right now, were a welcome break, but as their plates emptied and the dusk’s golden light faded to black, so did the pretense of anything convivial about their ambrosial meal. The thousand-pound gorilla that had quietly been stalking them from the dark corners of its cage had clawed its way out and was now clamoring for attention.

  She’d used the time alone to go over everything that had happened, everything she’d seen or heard. She felt she was missing a lot. “Jim,” she finally ventured, after a pregnant lull. “What is this really all about?”

  She caught a small evasive skip in his eyes before they came back to meet hers. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t feel I’m even close to understanding what’s really going on.”

  Corben’s face clouded. “I’m not sure I know much more than you do. We’ve been kind of thrown into the deep end without warning, and so far, all we’ve been doing is reacting to events as they happen.”

  “But you have an idea,” she persisted. She felt her face flush. She wasn’t used to pressing someone like that, not in such a situation, but then, she’d never been in a situation like this. Not that she imagined many people had.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Come on, Jim.”

  “What?” he protested, spreading his hands questioningly.

  “Well, the file, for one thing.”

  “What file?”

  She gave him a clearly dubious look. “The one you took from my mom’s flat. I had a look at it when I was in her kitchen.”

  “And…?”

  “And of all the stuff in her apartment, it’s the one thing you zeroed in on. There’s this symbol all over it, the snake that’s curled around in a circle, like it’s eating itself. The same symbol I saw on the cover of one of the books in the Polaroids they showed me at the police station, the ones that were in her handbag.” Mia paused, scrutinizing his face, gauging him. She couldn’t read anything in his reaction, or rather, in his lack of one, but then, she didn’t expect anything less from an intelligence operative. But she was on a roll and felt a nervous energy crackling through her. She pressed ahead. “Then there’s the gangland level of violence. I mean, Christ, I know smuggling museum pieces isn’t exactly a white-collar crime, and I’m no expert when it comes to the underworld or to what passes for normal on the streets of Beirut these days, but it all feels pretty hard-core to me—grabbing people off the street, killing others, shooting up apartments…” She trailed off, summoning up the courage to venture even further. “Then there’s your involvement.”

  Corben’s brow furrowed. “My involvement?”

  Mia gave him a sly but nervous half-smile. “I didn’t think the CIA was really into recovering stolen loot from museums.”

  “An American national’s been kidnapped,” Corben reminded her. “That’s Agency territory.” He took a final, casual sip from his bottle and put it down coolly, before his eyes settled on her again.

  As inscrutable as the Sphinx, she thought, her mind sidetracking, thinking about how maddening it would be to face him across a poker table or, worse, to live with someone as sealed in. “If you say so, but…” She shrugged and didn’t sound convinced, not that she was trying to. “Come on, Jim.” She searched his eyes for a connection, a will to open up. “She’s my mom. I know you guys have this whole ‘need to know’ thing going on, and I get that, but my mother’s life and maybe mine are in the balance here.”

  She held his gaze as he clearly weighed whether to give in. She could almost hear his brain whirring, going through the worrying details of what they were involved in, and selecting what, if anything, to share and what to keep in the vault. After a brief silence, he pursed his lips and nodded almost imperceptibly, then got up an
d walked across the room. He brought back his briefcase and sat down again. He opened the combination lock and pulled out the file, and set it down squarely on the coffee table in front of him, resting his hands on it.

  “I don’t have a full picture of what’s going on, alright? But I’ll tell you what I know.” He patted the file. “Your mom had this out on her desk, an old file which at face value doesn’t seem related to her current work. It’s on her desk the same day she meets with someone from an old dig in Iraq. I think he might have given her the Polaroids that were in her handbag. Maybe he came to see her about selling them, maybe he hoped she could hook him up with some buyers. Maybe she was interested in them herself. Because of this.” He opened the file and pulled out a photocopy, one of the images of the Ouroboros, and slid it over to Mia. “As you rightly noted, the excavation in the file has to do with this snake symbol, the same one that’s on the book.”

  It was an old, black-and-white image of the coiled snake, taken from a centuries-old woodcut. Mia studied it more closely than she had before.The beast in the image was more than a snake. It had exaggerated scales and fangs, more akin to a dragon. Its eyes were cold and stared blankly ahead, as if the act of devouring itself were the most natural, and painless, of acts. It was a sinister image that harked back to a primal fear, a yellowed, weathered copy that reeked of malice.

  She looked up at Corben. “What is it?”

  “It’s called an Ouroboros. It’s very old, it’s been used at different times by different cultures.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t seem to have one specific meaning. I think it’s more of an archetypal, mystical symbol that meant different things to different people, depending on where it was used. I found many instances of it, from ancient Egyptian myths to Hindu legends, and later with alchemists and gnostics, and that was without spending too much time on it.”