transferred Fitzgerald from the operating table to the bed. Now, as Qureshi busied himself checking the monitors, the former general leaned over the acting U.S. secretary of state. His face was less than a foot from hers as he watched intently, waiting for a sign of life. Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, and for the first time, he looked directly into the sea green eyes of the woman whose abduction he had helped orchestrate four days earlier. Their eyes locked for a few brief seconds, but Fitzgerald did not react. She seemed confused, distant, and completely unfamiliar with the man she was staring at. Mengal knew this should not surprise him; there was no way she could know who he was. Still, he felt oddly let down by the moment, which struck him as anticlimactic. Fitzgerald’s eyes drifted shut. Mengal hovered over her for a moment longer, then straightened and let out a low, disappointed grunt. Brushing past him, Qureshi approached his patient and touched her arm gently. She let out a soft groan, but otherwise, she didn’t react.
“Ms. Fitzgerald, can you hear me?” Qureshi asked gently. “If you can hear me, please respond.”
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then Fitzgerald opened her eyes once more. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Finally, she managed to croak a single, unintelligible word.
“Excuse me?” Qureshi asked. “I didn’t quite—”
“Water,” Fitzgerald said again, finding her voice. “Please . . .”
“Yes, of course,” Qureshi said hastily. He hurriedly went to the sink and filled a glass, then brought it back as Mengal looked on silently. Setting the glass on his instrument tray, Qureshi turned back to his patient. “Ms. Fitzgerald, before I give you the glass, you’re going to need to sit up. When I move you, it’s going to hurt. If the pain is too much, just tell me, and I’ll give you something for it. Do you understand?”
She seemed to consider his words for a moment, but she didn’t acknowledge them. After an interminable pause, her eyes cleared and she said, “Where am I?”
Qureshi hesitated, then shot a glance at Mengal, who simply nodded his permission. It didn’t make any difference if Fitzgerald knew where they were; in her current state, she was completely helpless to act on the information. “You’re in a town called Sialkot. It’s about an hour north of Lahore.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Said Qureshi. I’m a surgeon, the person who treated you.” Qureshi paused for a moment. “Ms. Fitzgerald, do you know why you’re here?”
Fitzgerald seemed to think for a moment, her eyes rolling up, as if she were trying to see the wall behind her. Then she regained focus. Hesitantly, she said, “There was an attack. . . .”
Qureshi waited for more, but Fitzgerald had lost her train of thought. “That’s exactly right,” he told her. “There was an attack on your motorcade in Rawalpindi. You were brought here, and I treated you for some injuries you sustained in the . . . incident.”
Fitzgerald considered this for about ten seconds. Then, without warning, she tried to sit up. Immediately, she winced and cried out in pain. Qureshi quickly eased her back onto the bed. Mengal, who was standing near the foot of the bed, didn’t react at all, his hard eyes fixed on his hostage.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Qureshi admonished her, checking to make sure that the catheter in her left arm was still in place. “Please, don’t try to move without help. I haven’t taken the chest tube out, so anytime you move suddenly, it’s going to hurt.”
“Chest tube?” she murmured. She looked up at him, her eyes filled with the obvious question.
“As I said, you were injured in the attack,” he told her gently. Qureshi paused, thinking about the best way to explain it. In his experience, some patients needed to hear things in layman’s terms, while others were capable of breaking down the most complicated medical jargon. He didn’t know much about Fitzgerald, but she was obviously a very astute woman; otherwise, she wouldn’t have risen to such heights in the American government. He saw no need to talk down to her.
“You suffered a pneumothorax of the left lung,” he continued,
“and a moderate hemopericardium. In other words, your lung was partially collapsed, and your heart was bruised, causing an accumulation of excessive fluid inside the pericardial sac. However,” he said quickly, seeing the alarmed look on her face, “you’re fine now. The operations—both of them—were a complete success.”
Qureshi paused and shot a glance at his watch. She’d be complaining about the pain shortly, and he was already thinking about how much Dilaudid she would need. Probably less than a milligram, he decided, but it was too early to make the call. He’d see how she felt in an hour or so.
“Now,” he continued, “I think you should—”
“Enough,” Mengal growled. Surprised by the sudden outburst, the surgeon stopped and turned to stare at him. “Just give her the water. I need to talk to you outside.”
Qureshi frowned but didn’t respond. Murmuring a few quiet words to his patient, he helped raise her into a sitting position. Fitzgerald managed the best she could, Qureshi noticed, but it was obvious from the tight look on her face that the effort had caused her a great deal of pain. When she was finally sitting upright, he handed her the water, and she drank deeply, draining the glass in a few seconds. She immediately asked for more, and Qureshi went to refill the glass. Bringing it back, he handed it to her and watched with satisfaction as she raised the glass to her lips again. Although she was clearly uncomfortable, she was alert, lucid, and coherent enough to ask the usual questions, all of which were excellent signs. At that moment, there was a sudden commotion outside the room, the sounds of violent squabbling in English. Fitzgerald stopped drinking and pulled the glass away from her lips, a quizzical expression coming over her face. Qureshi and Mengal both turned to look as the door burst open, revealing a tall figure framed in the doorway. Amari Saifi stormed into the room, followed closely by two protesting guards, both of whom immediately looked to Mengal, their dark faces tinged with apologetic fear.
The Algerian stopped a few steps away from the foot of the bed. Looking down at Fitzgerald, he smiled warmly, his brown eyes glittering with the wrong kind of happiness. “So, she’s finally awake,” he said in a syrupy tone. “How do you feel, Dr. Fitzgerald? It’s good to see you’ve come back to us. We were starting to worry.”
Qureshi looked from the Algerian to Fitzgerald and, in that fraction of a second, saw something that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Her eyes were wide and round, as if a camera flash had gone off right in her face, and her eyebrows were pinched together and raised to the edge of her reddish brown bangs. Her mouth was slack and gaping, her body completely still. Her face was a mask of pure terror. As Qureshi watched in mounting horror, the plastic glass slipped from her hand, rolled off the bed, and hit the tile floor. The second it hit the ground, Fitzgerald released a prolonged groaning sound, as if she were straining to lift an impossibly heavy load. Then her eyes rolled up into her head, and she went completely limp, her upper body slumping to the right side of the bed. For a few seconds, there was nothing but frozen disbelief as everyone stared at her unconscious form. Qureshi, a veteran of ER wards in Seattle and London, was the first to snap out of it.
“Get him out of here!” he screamed, flinging a finger in the intruder’s direction. He rushed to his patient’s side as Mengal pulled the Algerian from the room, the guards babbling their apologies to the general the whole time. Qureshi could hear arguing in the hall as he rearranged Fitzgerald’s position on the bed, then quickly checked her vitals. He was relieved to see that everything was in order. Apparently, she had not suffered an aneurism or a heart attack, as he’d initially feared.
Once he was sure she was in no immediate danger, the anger kicked in. For the first time since the general had shown up with Fitzgerald, fear was not an issue for the diminutive Pakistani surgeon. He crossed the room in five quick strides, pulled open the door, and stepped into the hall. The Algerian was nowhere in sight, but Mengal was standing a few feet away, berating the guards in rapid-fire Urdu. Catching sight of Qureshi, Mengal dismissed the guards and turned to face the smaller man. As the guards sulked down the hall, Qureshi stuck a finger in the general’s face and snarled, “What the hell did he think he was doing? We’re lucky she didn’t—”
Before he knew what was happening, the words died in his throat. He felt a hand crushing his windpipe, then a sharp, bursting pain as the back of his head bounced off the plaster wall. Suddenly, Mengal’s face was less than an inch from his own, his small eyes filled with rage and contempt.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
Qureshi couldn’t respond; he was too focused on trying to breathe. It had been less than a few seconds, but already it felt like his lungs were exploding. He began struggling involuntarily, his entire body screaming for air. His hands came up of their own free will and began clawing at Mengal’s iron grip, but it was no good. The man was just too strong.
“You will do as you’re told, Said . . . nothing more, nothing less.”
Mengal’s voice was low and harsh, like a shovel scraping across cement. “If you ever question me again, I’ll kill you without a moment’s hesitation.
