Divide and Conquer

TWENTY-SEVEN

David Battat felt frigidly cold and light-headed. He could hear his heart in his ears, feel it in his throat. He was aware of being wheeled somewhere. There were faces over him. Lights flashed by. Then he felt himself being lifted. He was placed on a bed, still experiencing a sense of forward motion. He was not strapped down, but there were raised metal gates on the side of the bed.

Battat shut his eyes. He did not know what had happened to him. He remembered waking up at the embassy, perspiring and shaking. Moore and Thomas brought him to the car, and then he must have slept. The next thing he knew, he woke up on a gurney.

He heard people moving around him. He coughed and opened his eyes. There was a white-haired man looking down at him.

“Mr. Battat, can you hear me?” the man shouted.

Battat nodded.

“We are going to undress you and put you in a gown,” the man said to him. “Then we need to get an IV into you. Do you understand?”

Battat nodded. “What… happened?”

“You’re ill,” the doctor told him as a pair of male nurses came over. They began lifting and undressing him. “You have a very high fever. We have to bring it down.”

“Okay,” Battat said. What else could he say? He could not have resisted if he wanted to. But he did not understand how he could have gotten sick. He had felt fine before.

The medical team worked on him for several minutes. Battat was not entirely aware of what they were doing. He only knew that he was being shifted and turned and poked. He felt a pinch in his right arm, at the elbow, and then there was no further pain. He was also shivering, and he felt cold. Sweat had soaked into Battat’s pillow. His fever warmed it quickly. His head sank into the down, muffling the sounds of the people and whatever it was they were doing. He shut his eyes again and allowed his mind to go wherever it wanted.

Soon it was quiet and dark. Battat began to feel a little warmer, more comfortable. He no longer heard drumming in his ears. He was awake, but his thoughts were dreamlike. His mind went back over the days. He saw short, blurry visions of the embassy in Moscow, the trip to Baku, the seashore, the sudden pain of the attack. A pinch in his neck. He was unaware of time passing or the hospital room. There was just a strange, not unpleasant sense of drifting. There must be something in the IV. Something that was relaxing him.

Then Battat heard something click. It sounded like a gun hammer cocking. He opened his eyes. There was a window to the left of the bed, but it was shut. He glanced toward the foot of the bed. The last time he had looked, the door was ajar. Now it was shut. A doctor or nurse must have closed it. The room was even quieter than before. It was nice. He shut his eyes again. There were no more visions, only darkness. Battat slipped quickly into a dreamless sleep.

There was another click. The sound woke Battat, and he opened his eyes. The door was still closed. But now there was someone in the room. He could see a dark figure standing in front of the door. The figure was black against the darkness behind it.

Battat was not sure he was awake.

“Hi,” he said. He heard his own voice. He was definitely awake.

Slowly, the shadow moved toward him. Someone must have come to check on him.

“It’s all right,” Battat said in a soft slur. “You can turn on the light. I’m awake.”

The figure did not speak. Battat could not make out whether it was a man or a woman. It appeared to be wearing a medical robe of some kind. And it was holding something long and slender. Battat could see the silhouette low at its side. It looked like a knife.

“Do you speak English?” Battat asked.

There was a monitor on the wall behind Battat. The green glow threw a faint light on the figure as it stopped beside the bed. It was a man. And he was definitely holding a knife. The long blade gleamed in the dull light.

“What is this?” Battat asked. It was beginning to penetrate his foggy mind that the newcomer was not a doctor. Battat tried to move, but his arms felt like they were full of wet sand.

The man’s arm went back.

“Someone!” Battat said, trying to raise his voice. “Help me—”

And then the man vanished.

A moment later, sounds came from the floor. There were low grunts, chattering, and then a long, slow groan. They were followed by silence.

Battat tried to raise himself on an elbow. His arm shook, and he fell back down.

Suddenly, someone rose beside the bed.

“There may be others,” said the figure. “We have to leave.”

The sharp, thickly accented voice belonged to a woman. There were an awful lot of people here.

“I thought this was a private room,” Battat said.

With swift, sure movements, the woman lowered the gate beside the bed, unhooked the IV, and raised Battat to a sitting position. She kept her hand on his back.

“Can you walk?” she asked.

“If you let go… I’m not sure I can sit,” he replied.

The woman lay Battat back down and stepped away from the bed. She was a tall, lean woman with broad shoulders. He could see now that she was wearing a police uniform. The woman went to the window and pulled the curtains aside. She turned the latch and raised the window. A cool, salty breeze blew in. It made him shiver. The woman looked outside. Then she grabbed a bathrobe from a hook behind the door and returned to the bed. She sat Battat up again and pulled the robe around his shoulders.

“What are we doing?” he asked. Without the IV in his arm, he was feeling a little more focused. His head was also hurting from sitting up.

“No talk,” she said.

“But wait,” he said.

“They’ve killed your companions, and they’re trying to kill you,” she snapped. “I was sent to get you out.”

“Killed them?”

“Quiet!” she hissed.

Battat stopped talking.

His head ached as the woman helped him stand. She grabbed Battat’s clothes, then slipped his left arm around her shoulder and helped him to the window. As they hobbled over, Battat tried to focus on what she had just told him. Were Moore and Thomas dead? If so, it had to be the Harpooner. Maybe he thought they knew more than they did. But if they were dead, who had sent this woman to help him? And how did he know that she was not working for the Harpooner? She might be taking him somewhere so the killer could finish the job.

But Battat knew he might as well trust her. He was certainly in no condition to resist. Besides, the woman was being gentle with him. And if she had wanted him dead, she could have killed him in the bed. Or she could have let the other intruder kill him.

When they reached the window, the woman told Battat to lean on the sill. He did, unsteadily. She kept a hand on him, helping to keep him upright as she slipped around him. She landed quietly among the hedges outside the window and then helped him down. She put his arm back around her shoulder and then crouched. They listened for several seconds.

Battat was shivering again, his teeth clattering. But at least he was more awake than before. After a moment, they were on the move again. He felt as if he was being carried through the night. They had emerged in back of the hospital and were making their way around to the north side. They stopped at a car. To Battat’s surprise, it wasn’t a police car but a small black Hyundai.

She probably was not a policewoman at all. Battat did not know if that were a good thing or a bad thing. But as she laid him across the backseat and climbed behind the wheel, he knew one thing for certain.

If he remained conscious, he would find out very soon.