The Sanctuary

Chapter 23

Mia moved through her hotel room in a daze. Her mind was under siege, the twin barbarians of fear and fatigue at the gates. She was determined to keep them at bay a little longer. She needed to pack up and get the hell out of here. The hotel was definitely no longer safe.

She wasn’t sure anywhere else was, for that matter. These men she’d crossed twice now in less than twenty-four hours, these psychos — they didn’t seem to have a problem finding the people they were after, nor did they seem to suffer from stage fright. They showed up brazenly, in plain sight, and went about their dirty deeds as if they had an all-access pass to the city. And she’d messed up their plans. Twice.

Not something she wanted to dwell on right now.

She tried to calm her nerves and focus on the task at hand. Corben had told her to just grab the essentials, but she didn’t have that much to pack anyway — the bulk of her stuff was still waiting to be shipped over once she’d felt more at ease in the city and settled into an apartment. He’d given her fifteen minutes to get it done, and that was twenty minutes ago.

She was cramming her laptop and some paperwork into a backpack when Corben returned. He was carrying a laptop and a big, leather personal organizer, both of which she knew were her mother’s and thought she remembered spotting on her desk.

“You all set?” he asked.

She nodded.

He led her out. She gave the room a final parting look and followed him as they made their way down to the lobby and exited the hotel.

Cops and Fuhud officers were all over the street. Cars were slithering through the makeshift roadblock, the cops waving them on after a perfunctory glance. Curious locals were milling about in front of shops and on their balconies, taking in the disruption and — a local tradition, this — trading murky conspiracy theories that the shooting was already generating.

As they walked to Corben’s Jeep, Mia slid an uneasy glance towards the entrance to Evelyn’s building. She saw several officers gruffly keeping people at bay as some paramedics brought out a stretcher. The dead shooter’s body — she assumed it was that — was covered with a tattered old blanket that would have given Gil Grissom a heart attack. Forensics were clearly not a major priority right now.

She climbed into the passenger seat of Corben’s car and watched as he exchanged some words with a couple of the hard-faced men in civilian gear before sliding into his seat. She noticed them get into a dusty black Range Rover parked nearby. As the one closest to her got into the car, his jacket swung open and she spotted a holstered handgun under it.

Corben slammed the car into gear, and the big Jeep pulled out and raced down the street. Mia scanned the surroundings warily and saw that the Range Rover was close behind. It followed them down the one-way street for two blocks. She noticed Corben check his rearview mirror, and she looked back to see the Range Rover slow down abruptly and stop at a slight angle, blocking off the street behind them. Corben gave a small, satisfied nod and just drove on. An effective and simple way, she guessed, to make sure no one was following them.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“My place,” he answered flatly. “Until we know what we’re dealing with here, I don’t trust any of the hotels.”

The plan threw her. “You’re sure your place is safe?”

There was no hesitation in his voice. “Put it this way. It’s off the radar. And for those who have it on their radar, it’s off-limits and they know it.”

“‘Off-limits’?”

He thought for a moment before answering. “The only people who might know what I really do are other intelligence agents, and there are understandings in place, between governments. Red lines. Clearly defined. You don’t just cross them without risking serious repercussions. The order would have to come from pretty high up, and that’s not what this is about.” He paused, then added, “You’ll be safe there. Right now, this isn’t about you. They were after your mom, they wanted to check out her apartment. They didn’t necessarily see you clearly enough to realize you were also at the scene of the kidnapping, but we have to play it safe. If they have informants inside the police force, which they probably do, they’ll make the connection. Let me get you out of harm’s way while I check things out. You need to get some rest anyway. I’ll go to my office and make some calls, talk to our people. Then we’ll figure out the next step.”

Mia was too punch-drunk and weary to question his judgment any further. She just nodded to herself and stared ahead.

She remained silent for the rest of the drive. He clearly had a lot on his mind, and she wasn’t ready to discuss things. Not here, not now. Not in her present state of mind. She needed to catch her breath, allow the flood of adrenaline from the last hours to drain, and clear her mind. Then she’d want to talk about things. And that would take time.

Farouk waited patiently in the shadows outside Post Hall. Before him, students and staff ambled in both directions along the narrow drive that fronted the Ottoman-era stone building where the university’s Archaeology Department was housed.

He kept watch over the entrance, leaning against one of a few parked cars that were lucky enough to have campus passes, sheltered under a dark canopy of thick cypress trees. Scattered cigarette butts littered the ground by his feet. He’d been there for hours, and the cavernous growls from his stomach were getting more frequent.

He’d seen the reports of Evelyn’s kidnapping in the morning papers and had approached the building with caution. To his surprise, it hadn’t seemed any different to how it was on his earlier visit, the day before, when he’d been looking for Evelyn. He remembered that Evelyn’s name wasn’t mentioned in the papers, which explained the lack of reporters or camera crews, but not the absence of additional security — at least, there was none that he could see. Although he’d watched the two Fuhud detectives enter the building and then leave perhaps an hour later, he still didn’t feel comfortable walking into the building, as he had done the previous day, to find the assistant professor. He preferred to wait outside where he could keep an eye on the approaches and avoid any more nasty surprises.

His patience finally paid off when Ramez, Evelyn’s elfin colleague, made his appearance around lunchtime.

Farouk scanned the lane in both directions. He couldn’t see anything that gave him cause for alarm. With his heartbeat ringing in his ears, he emerged from his cover and walked towards him.

Less than four blocks away, Omar snapped his cell phone shut and looked out the navy E-class Merc’s windshield. The traffic on Rue Bliss was, surprisingly, flowing decently. The street, still furrowed by the old tramway rails, was usually a nightmare to navigate. It was a couple of miles long and bordered the whole length of the university. The campus wall ran along one sidewalk, only bisected by a couple of entrance gates. The other sidewalk was lined with hugely popular cafés, pastry shops, and ice cream parlors. Customers’ cars were double-and triple-parked with breathtaking insouciance — standard practice in Beirut — causing jams and the occasional brawl with metronomic reliability.

The chaos, in this case, was useful. It provided good cover for a casual chat. Which was why Omar was there.

He’d been denied free access to the old woman’s apartment. He’d lost a man in the chaos that followed. Worst of all, the hakeem wasn’t happy.

He knew he had to make amends.

Omar glanced into his side mirror. Several cops were standing by the entrance of the Hobeish police station.

He spotted his contact exiting the building.

The man looked down the street, in his direction, and saw the Merc. Omar flicked him a discreet, barely noticeable wave out the window. The ferret caught it, nodded casually to his colleagues as he walked past them, and made his way over to the parked car.

Mia took in her new accommodations with a heavy heart. She finished off the shawarma lamb sandwich they’d hastily picked up on their way to the apartment and crossed to the kitchen with a sleepwalker’s heavy step, still coming to terms with the events that had brought her here.

The apartment had two bedrooms, one more than Corben, who was single and lived alone, needed, but then smaller apartments were hard to find in Beirut, and rents were relatively cheap. He’d given her a quick tour — kitchen, bathroom, guest bedroom, clean towels — before leaving her here and heading out to the embassy. He’d said he’d be back in a few hours.

She felt strange being here. Staying with a man she hardly knew. Scratch that. A man she didn’t know at all. Normally — assuming, that is, that she was there because she was kind of seeing the guy, or interested in him in some way — she would have killed time by poking around, checking out the books on his shelves, the CDs by his stereo, the magazines on his coffee table. Old-world moves, for those of us without iPods or pages on Facebook that told you everything you needed to know and dispensed with the need for physical snooping. She might even have sneaked a peek inside the wardrobes in his bedroom, the side table by his bed, or the cabinet in his bathroom. It was shameful, but somehow expected. Basic human curiosity. You did it to get an idea about what made the other person tick. If you were lucky, it put a smile on your face and drew you closer to that person. On less fortunate occasions, it creeped you out and sent you running for the hills.

This wasn’t either.

She didn’t feel the urge to explore, even though the guy was a CIA agent. Imagine the possibilities. An Aladdin’s cave of gadgets and intrigue was beckoning from the recesses of her imagination, but she wasn’t listening. She hardly gave his apartment a cursory glance, and what she saw barely registered. Not that there was much to register. It was sparsely furnished, and the little there was had that distinctly single-male, dark-leather-and-chrome look. Everything in it seemed to be there for a reason. Nothing was superfluous or added for effect. It wasn’t necessarily a reflection of any blandness on his part. She guessed that guys like Corben, guys who did what he did, traveled and lived light. She didn’t think he kept mementos of favorite regime changes on his shelves, or photo albums of infiltrations and informants on the coffee table.

She threw the sandwich wrapper in the bin, washed her hands, and leaned back against the counter. The hunger was satiated, but she still felt awful. She was coming off her adrenaline high, and the exhaustion was kicking in big-time. She felt a wobble in her legs and closed her eyes for a moment to push it back. She filled herself a big glass of water, guzzled it down, and made it to the living room, where she curled up on the sofa.

Within seconds, her body had shut down without a fight, sending her crashing into a dreamless sleep.