Rules of Betrayal

8

The first kick hit Emma in the side, and she heard a rib crack. The next glanced off her shoulder, and then he was on her, driving a knee into her stomach and grasping her clothing with his powerful callused hands, striking her chest with curled knuckles, just as they’d taught her at Yasenevo so many years ago.

“Who do you work for? The CIA? The Pentagon? You will tell me, do you hear? A confession is what I’m after. When I talk to General Ivanov, I will give him the truth!”

The prince was screaming, his handsome features made unrecognizable with rage. Between slaps to the face and yanks of her hair, Emma decided that he had no idea how to conduct an interrogation. Fear made a person talk. Violence made them shut up. And then she realized that this was no interrogation. The prince already knew the answers to his questions. This was sport.

They had driven for an hour into the desert, Emma in the front seat alongside Prince Rashid, her wrists cuffed in front of her. At one point he stopped the car and climbed out to bleed air from the tires. From there the journey proceeded off-road, sand dunes alternating with expanses of sun-hardened earth. They stopped, and she saw that there were two cars accompanying them. A dozen of the prince’s police poured from the vehicles, forming a semicircle on the hard-pack. Balfour was not among them. She recognized only one face: the hooded eyes and intense stare of the prince’s client.

“Who?” railed the prince. “Tell me and I will stop. You will die quickly.”

Emma didn’t respond, and her silence goaded him more than any lie.

“If you will not talk, then you will at least eat.” The prince scooped up a handful of sand and stuffed it into her mouth.

She thrashed violently, spitting it out. A new pair of hands held her as the prince forced her mouth open and filled it with fistfuls of sand. She spat them out, gagging, but he continued, undeterred.

“Some fine Arabian sand for my would-be executioner. I hope you enjoy the taste.”

Emma could not breathe. She could not swallow. She struggled and spat.

And then the powerful hands released her. Emma rolled away. She knew that at least one rib was broken. Something else was wrong. Something worse. A pain deep inside.

“Look at her,” said Prince Rashid, arms spread wide, turning to face his men. “Do you know what she is? She is a cow. A fat, lazy cow. And do you know what cows need? They need to move.”

“No,” she said. “It’s enough.”

A white-hot pain seared Emma’s back and a barbed current traveled up her spine, causing her body to shudder.

Prince Rashid withdrew the cattle prod. “There,” he said, looking at the man with hooded eyes. “That made her jump. Shall we try again?”

The prod touched her buttocks, and the odor of burned flesh filled the air.

“Move, American whore! Your friends in Washington can’t help you now. They sent you on a fool’s errand to kill me. Your errand is finished. You failed. It’s not so easy to kill a prince.”

Rashid struck her repeatedly with the prod. On her belly, her thighs, her breasts. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. The electricity coursing through her body had locked her vocal cords.

“Who’s your controller? It is a housekeeping matter, actually. I need to know where to send your body.” He stood laughing, and all his men joined him. All except the man with the hooded eyes. He stood apart, saying nothing, his unblinking black eyes never leaving her.

“Has this cow had enough exercise?” Prince Rashid turned a circle, imploring his men to answer. No one said a word. “I don’t think so either,” he said finally. “She still looks rather lazy to me. I think she needs a tour of our lovely desert. Strip her.”

Emma could offer only perfunctory resistance. When she was naked, someone yanked her hands above her head and passed a chain around her cuffs. She squinted, watching one of the policemen attach the other end of the chain to the rear bumper of the prince’s Mercedes.

“No,” she said, hearing a desperate voice cry out inside her. “Please. I’m-” She rose to one knee, but the car was already accelerating. The chain grew taut and yanked her to the ground.

The prince drove slowly across the desert floor. He dragged her over rocks and thistles and sage and sand gritty enough to peel paint. When the pain was too much, she lost consciousness. Against her will, the waking world found her. She didn’t know how many times she passed out or how long they drove, only that at some point she was no longer moving and someone had removed the handcuffs.

A hand slapped her cheek and she opened her eyes. Stars glistened like tears in the sky above.

The prince glared down at her. “If your friends know so much about me, surely they’ll figure out where I took you. The question is, my darling, will they find you before the sun dries you out?”

Emma watched Rashid climb into his car and drive away. The sound of the motor faded. In a minute the desert was silent.

She was alone.

And then pain began in earnest.

Emma put her hands to her stomach and cried.