Rules of Betrayal

12

It was one o’clock in the afternoon in the United Arab Emirates when the man pulled onto the shoulder of the highway from Dubai to Sharjah. He put the Land Rover into park and stared out the window. A sea of undulating dunes spread to all four corners of the horizon with nothing to differentiate one patch of earth from the next. For a final time he checked the coordinates of his handheld GPS against those he’d received two hours earlier from Frank Connor. The map indicated his position as twenty-six kilometers southwest of the Sharjah Free Trade Zone. He was in the right place.

Climbing down from the cab, the man made a circuit of the vehicle. He stopped at each tire, inserting a pen into the air valve until he’d bled fifteen pounds of pressure. Finished, he ran a sleeve across his forehead while looking in either direction for approaching vehicles. No cars were visible. Even so, he wouldn’t have been overly concerned. Tours of the desert were popular among visitors. The logo of Dubai Desert Adventures adorned the vehicle’s doors. To all passing eyes he was just one more guide. If anyone wished to look closer, the glove compartment held a valid guide’s license, his operating permit, and a log of customers dating back two years. As cover it would withstand a cursory inspection, but little beyond that. It was the best he could do on short notice.

The man slid behind the wheel and shoved the gearshift into first. The Land Rover lurched forward, the underinflated tires gripping the sand nicely. Sky filled the windscreen as the vehicle climbed a dune. The next moment the nose fell, and blue was replaced by brown as the car slid down the back side. His destination was an anonymous point in the desert thirty kilometers due west, where Emma Ransom had last been seen. Satellite imagery taken after her video feed was cut showed the heat signature of six vehicles departing from the airfield and traveling deep into the desert. Enhancement of the images identified five of the vehicles as belonging to the national police. The sixth was a Mercedes SUV and belonged to Prince Rashid.

“One of my operators is missing,” Connor had said when he’d called hours earlier. “This one is a priority. To be found at all costs.”

The man drove for an hour, his neck growing tense from the vehicle’s continual rising and falling. One kilometer from the destination, he crested a rise and braked before the Land Rover could plummet down the other side. Cautiously, he stepped out. The dune sea ended just ahead, giving way to a moonlike expanse of hard sand, rock, and scrub. With his binoculars, he scanned the landscape. Almost immediately his eye caught a patch of color where none should be. There, precisely where the satellite had last mapped Prince Rashid’s position, was a black garment impaled on a thorn bush.

Lowering his binoculars, he listened. The desert was a vacuum and sound traveled far. He heard nothing. Senses on alert, the man guided the vehicle down the last dune. Leaving the motor running, he walked to the bush and removed the garment. It was a cotton T-shirt, and he noticed at once that all of its labels had been cut out. It was a spy’s garment, and as such, verification that Rashid had brought Emma Ransom to this place. One corner of the shirt was dry and crusted, and when he ran a thumb over it, it came away the color of rust.

A few meters away, tire tracks raked the dirt. The man approached and observed a storm of footprints in a semicircle around a smoothed patch of sand. Cigarette butts littered the area. Kneeling, he ran his fingers through the sand. He came away with various rocks and pebbles and sticks. There was something else, too. A tooth. A human molar with a silver filling.

The man returned to his car and drove over to a dune that looked down on the spot where Emma Ransom had been tortured, and more than likely executed. Using his binoculars, he studied the area. After a moment he spotted a set of tire tracks leading farther into the desert and, centered behind the tracks, a rough furrow. He knew the rumors about the prince. It was not the first time Rashid al-Zayed had dragged someone behind his car.

The man followed the tracks until they ended abruptly one kilometer farther on. He stepped down from the car and surveyed the area, but he found only a single set of men’s footprints. One impression was exceptionally clear and showed a partial name of the shoe brand. He snapped a few photos with his telephone and sent them to Connor with the hope that some of his technical whizzes might be able to deduce something or other. He kicked around the sand, feeling miserable.

And then he saw it-a chunk of plastic no bigger than a thumbnail. He brought it closer. It was a cellular telephone’s SIM card, the all-important chip containing the telephone’s user information: numbers, addresses, photographs, and records of calls made to and from that apparatus. Near the SIM card, blood had dried into a hardened pool, as black as obsidian.

Rising, he made a final walk around. With a heavy heart, he placed a call to Connor.

“You were right. Rashid took her out into the desert with all his buddies and had some fun with her.”

“Any sign of her?”

“I found her shirt, a tooth, and a SIM card. There’s a lot of blood, too.”

“Jesus.”

“I wouldn’t hold out much-” The man stopped mid-sentence. “Holy shit.”

“What is it?” demanded Frank Connor.

The man bent at the waist and peered at something in the sand. “She’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m looking at her footprint. She walked out of here.”