Send them up to the thirty-fifth floor, please. I’ll have someone greet them there.”
“Roger, Mr. Sanjore.”
The intercom faded. Saaid spoke. “It is madness to speak to these Americans. They must have learned something. The whole plan might be unraveling. They could be here to arrest us all—”
“Two of them? I doubt it.” Sanjore clapped his hands on the other man’s shoulders. “Have faith, Saaid! All is not lost. And if it is, then we shall meet again in Paradise.”
Nawaf’s words calmed his colleague. Still, Saaid spoke in worried tones. “They suspect something. Why else are they here?”
“It was the youth, Ibn al Farad,” said the architect. “He was weak and he was foolish. Most likely it was the Saudi who gave us away. It is good that Hasan moved the evacuation schedule forward. He must have sensed the danger.”
Saaid rubbed his hands. “The American intelligence agents are on their way up right now. What are you going to do about them?”
“I’m nearly finished here. These men”—Nawaf gestured to his assistants—“will purge the computers. Go to my room, take the suitcase and my PDA and go to the roof. Tell the pilot to start the engines. I will join you momentarily.”
“You must hurry! The Americans are coming—”
Sanjore raised a manicured hand. “Do not fear, my friend. We will leave this place together. Yasmina will deal with the Americans.”
The view through the glass elevators was spectacular, but Jack hardly noticed. He kept his eyes on the quickly ascending digital numbers above the door. The car began to slow on the thirty-first floor. On the thirty-fifth, the burnished steel doors opened.
The woman who greeted Jack and Nina was so petite Jack thought for a moment she was a child. A second glance revealed her age to be at least twenty-five. Slim, with a dark complexion and wide, black eyes, her tiny, perfectly proportioned frame was wrapped in a tight, sky-blue sari. Her small feet were encased in jeweled slippers. Her dark hair, piled high on her head and held in place with ornamental silver daggers, added inches to her height.
Still, she barely topped four feet. Jack doubted the young woman weighed more than ninety pounds.
Graciously, she dipped her head. “Shall I announce you? My name is Yasmina.” Her smile was warm, her voice light and melodious as wind chimes.
“I’m Special Agent Jack Bauer of the Counter Terrorist Unit. This is Nina Myers, my partner.”
“Mr. Sanjore is eager to help you if he can. Please follow me.”
The woman turned and walked in short, measured steps down the carpeted corridor.
After he spoke with the helicopter pilot, Saaid realized he had not retrieved his master’s things from the master bedroom, as commanded. He hurried down the spiral staircase, terrified he’d meet armed American agents around the next corner — or Nawaf, who would realize Saaid’s mistake.
He reached his master’s bedroom, found the Louis Vuitton suitcase on the bed, the PDA on the dresser. Relieved the task was so simple, he grabbed the items and hurried out the door. In the hallway he heard voices, froze.
Saaid stared down the corridor. Someone approached, their shadows dancing on the walls. He had to get out of there! Heart racing, he hurried across the hall to the spiral staircase. On the way he crashed the suitcase against a stone pedestal, tumbling a pre-Columbian sculpture onto the concrete floor. The shattering sound was like an explosion.
Jack and Nina were walking down a hallway when they heard the noise. Jack turned his head toward the sound, but Nina Myers faced the woman Yasmina— and that was what saved them.
As Yasmina whirled, her dainty hand plucked the ornamental daggers out of her thick hair. She hurled one at Jack’s exposed throat.
“Jack!” Nina cried, pushing him against the wall. Her movement put Nina in the path of the dagger. The silver blade sank deep into her shoulder, and Nina cried out.
In an agile and graceful movement, Yasmina spun through the air and landed, legs braced, in front of Jack while he was still regaining his balance. A second dagger slashed his forearm. But the blade caught the bandages already under his shirt, and with a reflexive strike from Jack, the weapon flew out of the woman’s hands.
A heavyset man burst past them and down the hall, barreling like an out-of-control train toward a spiral staircase. He clutched a suitcase in one hand, what looked like a silver revolver in the other. For a split-second, Jack thought it might be Nawaf Sanjore.
Yasmina took advantage of the momentary distraction, aimed a sharp kick at Jack’s knee, slammed his jaw with the palm of her hand, then reached for another pair of daggers secreted in her clothing. She pulled both blades, poised to impale Jack, when a sliver dagger plunged into one side of her throat and ripped out the other. A fountain of blood gushed as Nina tugged the weapon free, cutting through veins, arteries and cartilage.
Yasmina lurched forward, eye glazed, red lips curled back. The daggers dropped from her hands. Then her head lolled backward and she pitched forward.
At the end of the corridor, the heavy man thundered up the spiral staircase. Jack’s head swiveled wildly. “Nina are you all right?”
Clutching her wounded shoulder, Nina stepped over Yasmina’s corpse. “I’ll be okay, but you’ve got to stop him.”
Jack was up and running for the stairs before she’d finished her sentence. He grasped the handrail with one hand, drew the Tactical with the other. Before he reached the top he thumbed the safety off. The stairs led to a narrow catwalk and a steel door. He slammed his shoulder against it, and pushed it open. Dust and hot wind battered him as a helicopter rose from the flat roof, twisted in the air and soared away.
Jack ran across the roof, aiming his Tactical at the fleeing chopper. He almost squeezed the trigger when he saw the heavyset man. The man was poised on the edge of the roof, the Louis Vuitton suitcase sitting beside him, as he watched the helicopter fade into the bright horizon.
“Do not move!” Jack commanded. “Step away from the edge of the building and turn around.”
The man raised his hands in surrender, but he did not face Jack.
“Step back and turn around!” Jack repeated. In the large man’s hand, he saw the object that he’d thought was a silver revolver. It was actually a PDA, an item that might have belonged to Nawaf Sanjore. Jack knew he had to get it.
“Face me!” Jack commanded, moving forward.
At the sound of Jack’s approaching footsteps, the man lowered his arms, then jumped off the edge of the high-rise.
“
The diminishing volume of the suicidal scream reached Jack’s ears as the big man disappeared from view.
13. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 P.M. AND 6 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
Jack returned to the corridor where the fatal confrontation had begun. He found the body of Yasmina, but Nina was gone. He dropped the Louis Vuitton suitcase he’d found on the roof, drew his weapon and held it in ready position with both hands.
“Nina! Nina, can you hear me?”
Her reply emerged through hidden speakers. “Jack! There’s a staircase at the end of the corridor. I’m two floors below you, in Sanjore’s office. I think I found something.”
Jack made his way downstairs, found Nina hunched over a computer keyboard. She had dressed her shoulder wound with century-old cognac, wrapped it with shreds from a white, Egyptian cotton towel. The puncture wound
