Jihad

CHAPTER 54

Dr. Ramil’s chest felt as if it were being poked by a thousand sharp pins. He bent over in the chair, trying to slow his galloping lungs.

The stress was just too much. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. He was losing his mind and all control over his body.

“Come on, doc. Asad’s downstairs,” said Charles Dean, looming above him.

Ramil forced himself to look at Dean. His head seemed to weigh fifty pounds. “I–I don’t know,” he stuttered.

“You all right?”

“I—”

Ramil grabbed at his chest, trying to make Dean understand. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do it.

“Come on, doc. Up,” said Dean, taking hold of him. “With me. Come on.”

Ramil’s legs refused to move. Suddenly he felt himself being lifted.

God has taken pity on me by striking me dead, Ramil thought. But it was just Dean lifting him up, chair and all. He carried him to the back door and slid him into the hallway.

“What’s going on, Charlie?” asked Chafetz.

“Ramil’s having some sort of freak-out. He’s hyperventilating and paralyzed.”

Dean went to the closet and grabbed a white coat.

“Get out of there, Charlie,” warned the runner. “They’re almost at the door.”

“No, it’s all right. I’ll do it.”

“Charlie—”

“Get the translator and a doctor ready. We’ll start by talking Turkish.”

A stethoscope and a thermal thermometer sat on the desk. Dean grabbed them, stuffing them both in his pocket. He could hear Asad’s men pounding on the door.

“Charlie, this is Telli Kabak,” said one of the translators. “How do you want to handle this?”

“I’m Ramil’s assistant, same deal as the other day. He called me and sent me over here. These guys don’t speak Turkish or Spanish. I don’t speak Arabic. We use English, like everybody else in Istanbul.”

“Okay.”

Dean pushed through the door to the reception area without waiting for an answer. A large man stood behind the glass entrance to the clinic, slapping a meaty hand against the door frame.

“Merhaba,” muttered Dean as he turned the lock. “Hello.”

The man pushed the door open, snapping it out of his hands. Dean hesitated. He didn’t want to seem meek, but he also needed to come off like a doctor rather than a fighter. He took one step back, then held his ground as the bodyguard shoved his face into his.

“You are the doctor?” demanded the man in Arabic.

“Anlamiyorum.” said Dean in Turkish. “I don’t understand.”

The man said in Syrian-accented Arabic that he had an important patient with him, and that, with God as his witness, if Dean made the slightest move to harm him, his skin would be slit open and his organs turned inside out. Once again Dean protested that he did not understand, this time adding a stutter to his Turkish.

“You’ve frightened the doctor,” said Asad in Arabic from behind the bodyguard. “Stand away.”

Dean held the bodyguard’s stare a few moments longer, then turned to Asad. The terror leader looked older than he had the other day. His head was bent slightly; he seemed to be in some pain.

“Doktor?” he said, speaking Turkish. “Do I know you?”

“D-d-dün,” stuttered Dean, as if he were truly shaken. “Hasteen. The other day at the hospital.”

The translator caught on, and gave Dean the Turkish phrases to explain that he had treated him yesterday at the hospital. Except that it wasn’t yesterday — she added an apology and a correction. Dean rushed through the words, slurring his pronunciation and then switching to English. Asad turned to his bodyguard and berated the man for frightening the doctor, saying he could now barely talk.

“Charlie, you’re doing very well,” said William Rubens, suddenly coming onto the circuit. “Continue in this vein.”

“This way, come on,” said Dean, starting toward the examining room.

The bodyguard grabbed his arm. As Dean turned in his direction, the man pushed the nose of his Beretta pistol into his neck.

“We check the other rooms first,” said the bodyguard. “If anyone else is here, you are a dead man.”