while they were given oxygen, and given superficial exams for concussions, broken bones, and the like.
— Who do you work for? Moira said to Simon Herren.
He smiled indulgently. He had short brown hair, small rodent eyes, and bad teeth. The collar of his shirt was stiff with starch, and his rep tie was strictly government issue. He wasn‘t going to answer her and they both knew it. Anyway, what did it matter what part of the intelligence alphabet soup he belonged to? In the end, weren‘t they all the same? Well, Veronica Hart wasn‘t.
All at once, the hammer blow hit her and tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.
— What is it? Simon Herren looked around for a nurse. -Are you in pain?
Moira managed to laugh through her tears.
— Mr. Bamber is understandably shaken up, Herren said without a hint of sympathy. -Not surprising, since he‘s a civilian.
— Go to hell. Moira turned her head away from him.
— I was told you could be difficult.
That got her attention, and she turned back, catching his eyes with hers.
— Who told you I could be difficult?
Herren gave her his most enigmatic smile.
— Ah, yes, she said, — Noah Perlis.
— Who?
He shouldn‘t have said that, she thought. If he‘d kept his mouth shut he might have stopped the flicker of response in his eyes before it gave him away. So Noah was still just a step away from her. Why? He didn‘t want anything from her, which meant that he‘d become afraid of her. That was good to know; that would help her through the bleak days and weeks ahead when, alone and at risk, she would blame herself for Ronnie‘s death, because hadn‘t the bomb been meant for her? It had been slipped into the tailpipe of her rental car. No one-not even Noah-could have foreseen that Ronnie would be driving it. But even the small satisfaction that he had failed paled against the collateral damage.
She‘d been near death before, she‘d had colleagues or targets die in the field, that was part of wet work. She‘d been prepared for it, as much as any human being could be prepared for the death of someone known to you. But the field was far away, across one ocean or another; the field was at a certain remove from civilization, from her personal life, from home.
Ronnie‘s death was something altogether different. It was caused by a series of events and her reaction to those events. All at once a tide of ifs engulfed her. If she hadn‘t started her own firm, if Jason weren‘t — dead, if she hadn‘t gone to Ronnie, if Bamber weren‘t working for Noah, if, if, if…
But they‘d all happened, and like a daisy chain she could look back and see how all these events interlocked, how one led inexorably to another, and how the end result was always the same: the death of Ronnie Hart. She thought then of the Balinese healer Suparwita, who had looked into her eyes with an expression she hadn‘t been able to decipher until now. It had been the sure knowledge of loss, as if even then, back in Bali, he‘d known what was in store for her.
The insistent buzzing of Simon Herren‘s voice drew her away from the blackness of her own thoughts. Her eyes refocused.
— What? What did you say?
— Mr. Bamber is being released into my custody.
Herren stood between her bed and Bamber‘s, as if daring her to defy him. Bamber was already dressed and ready to go, but he seemed frightened, indecisive, shell-shocked.
— The doctor tells me you need to stay here for more tests.
— The hell I will. She sat up, swung her legs over the side, and stood up.
— I think you‘d best lie down, he said in that vaguely mocking tone of his. -Doctor‘s orders.
— Fuck you. She started putting on her clothes, not caring if he saw flashes of her body or not. -Fuck you and the broom you flew in on.
He could not keep the contempt off his face. -Not a very professional response, is-
In the next instant he doubled over as she buried her fist in his solar plexus. Her knee came up to meet his descending chin, and as he crumpled, she dragged him up, splaying him out on the bed. Then she turned to Bamber and said, — You have only one shot at this. Come with me now or Noah will own you forever.
Still Bamber didn‘t move. He was staring at Simon Herren as if in a daze, but when she extended her hand, he took it. He needed someone to guide him now, someone who might tell him the truth. Stevenson was gone, Veronica Hart had been blown apart in front of him, and now there was only Moira, the person who had dragged him out of the doomed Buick, the woman who had saved his life.
Moira led him out of the emergency room as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Fortunately, the ER was a madhouse, EMTs and cops trotting this way and that alongside their patients, giving reports on the fly to the residents, who in turn barked orders to the nurses. Everyone was overworked and overstressed; no one stopped them or even noticed their departure.
A contingent of Amun‘s men met them on the dock, where he held the young drug trafficker by the scruff of his neck. The poor kid was scared shitless. He wasn‘t one of the tough Egyptian youths who knew very well what they were getting into. He looked like what he was: an indigent tourist who‘d been hoping to score some quick money to continue his world odyssey. It was probably why he‘d been chosen by the drug runners in the first place. He looked innocent.
Chalthoum could have let him go with a warning, but he was in no mood to be magnanimous. He‘d cuffed his hands behind his back, then leapt back when the young boy had heaved up his last meal.
