Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

Chapter 13

The Hunt Foundation jet was cavernous enough when full. With only one person on it other than Charlie in the cockpit, the emptiness was disquieting. Sammi Ficatier tried to put it out of her mind. She pressed buttons in the armrest of her seat until she found one that dimmed the cabin lights and another that put on some music, and then she put her head back and tried to sleep.

But it was not to be. The music was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. It kept ringing till she found another button on the armrest labeled with a picture of a phone and pressed it.

“Miss Ficatier?” It was Michael Hunt’s voice.

“Yes?” she said, unsure whether he could hear her if she just spoke regularly.

Apparently he could. “You promised you’d answer my questions,” Michael said. “When you had the time. As you have a few hours ahead of you now in the air . . .”

“Certainly,” she said. “What would you like to know?”

“How do you know my sister?”

“We took classes together in Nice,” Sammi said. “We became friends.”

“And my brother?”

“We . . . met in Cifer’s apartment.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cifer’s apartment,” Sammi said. “Lucy. Your sister.”

“What are you talking about?” Michael said. “Cifer is a, is a computer hacker who has helped us out from time to time—what does Cifer have to do with my sister?”

“Cifer is your sister,” Sammi said. “She hacks computers, she calls herself Cifer. I thought you knew that.”

There was silence on the other end. Then the voice said, “No. I did not know that.”

Sammi’s heart sank. Had she just said the wrong thing? She knew Cifer didn’t get along with her brother, hadn’t spoken to him for years; she hadn’t known he didn’t even know her name. The hell with it, she thought. Saving your life is more important.

“So,” Michael said, softly, “tell me what happened to my brother.”

She filled him in, from the ransacked apartment in Nice and the chase by the police to the flight into Cairo and her kidnapping at the bazaar. She described how she’d escaped from the men who’d grabbed her and how she’d gotten back just in time to see Gabriel bundled first into a limousine and then into a private plane. She told him how she’d found out where the plane was headed. She didn’t tell him how it had ended, with her facing the man in the control room at gunpoint and realizing there was nothing to tie him up with and no way she could trust him not to sound the alarm. She’d thought one shooting in a day, and that in self-defense, was her limit. She’d learned she was wrong.

Michael asked many questions, forcing her to double back and retell parts of the story. He probed for details she’d forgotten or never known. But finally his questions petered out, like a wind-up toy running down.

“And you haven’t heard from Gabriel since you saw him board the plane,” Michael said.

“No. Have you?”

“I’m afraid not. I tried tracking his phone—nothing. The signal’s dead.”

“Maybe he has it turned off?” Sammi said.

“Not this signal,” Michael said. “It can’t be turned off.”

“Don’t worry,” Sammi said. “I’ll find him. I’ll find them both.” But she heard the empty bravado in her own voice.

“Marrakesh is a big place,” Michael said.

It was true—Marrakesh was large, and she’d never been there before.

“Do you maybe know anyone there who could help?” she said.

He hesitated before replying and even then seemed to be letting the words out only reluctantly. “There is . . . one man. I wish we had someone more reliable, but . . .”

“Anyone is better than no one.”

“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “This man . . . he did save my brother’s life once—he hid him in his cellar for nine days when the Royal Gendarmerie were after him. And he knows the country like a native. He is a native.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“He’s . . . Actually I don’t know what I’d call him. He’s a criminal, or at least he has connections to the underworld there.”

“That sounds perfect,” Sammi said. “The men we are trying to find are criminals too.”

“His ethics leave much to be desired. He only helped us because we paid him handsomely. If someone else had offered him more . . .”

“Well, then, don’t let anyone offer more,” Sammi said. “You’ve got enough money, don’t you?”

“Of course—the money’s not important,” Michael said. “If I knew for sure money was the only thing Reza cared about, we’d be fine. We can outbid pretty much anyone out there and he knows it. What worries me is that . . .”

“What?”

“Money’s not the only thing a man like that values, Miss Ficatier. There’s pride, there’s fame, there’s stature, power; there are sensual pleasures. Reza Arif is unpredictable, and that makes him dangerous. But he’s the only person we’ve got in Marrakesh.”

“Then I think,” Sammi said, “he’s our man.”

Michael sent an e-mail to the last address he had on file for Arif. To his surprise, he received a reply within a half hour. Arif supplied a telephone number and asked that Michael call him on a landline.

“Michael Hunt! As I live and breathe!” Arif bellowed jovially. “How many years has it been?”

“How are you, Reza?”

“Happy, wealthy, and in good health. And you, sir?”

“Not so well, Reza. I’m concerned about Gabriel. And Lucy. Our sister.”

“Oh? What is the matter?”

Michael briefly recounted the situation for him.

“Michael, you are asking an awful lot,” Arif said, his voice suddenly cagey.

“Are you saying you can’t help?”

“No . . . not ‘can’t.’ But—the Alliance of the Pharaohs . . . this is not a minor organization. Nor is it a government operative who, even when corrupt, plays by his own corrupt rules. These are killers, Michael, plain and simple. No, strike that—they are neither plain nor simple. These are killers who relish what they do and revel in making it as painful as they possibly can.”

“What are you saying, Reza?”

“Merely that I would need to be well incented before I would consider tangling with them.”

“You will be,” Michael said.

“Let us discuss,” Reza said, “just how well.”