“Which they never got.”
“Not a word. We never admitted any wrongdoing. We cut the relatives of the victims a few checks, but we never accepted responsibility, never apologized. Even worse, the guys on that ship got medals. Medals. For exceptional conduct. How’s that for a slap in the face? Bush senior, who was vice president at the time under Reagan, actually said, ‘I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.’ “
“The noble, measured words of a true statesman,” Tess said wryly.
“And we wonder why whackjobs like their current president get so much traction when they tear into us and call us the ‘Great Satan,’ ” Reilly added. “They got their revenge, though.”
“When?”
“The Pan Am jumbo that got blown out of the sky over Lockerbie,” Reilly told her.
“I thought the Libyans were behind that. Didn’t they try two of their agents for it, and one of them’s now dying of cancer or something?”
“He’s not dying. And you can forget what you’ve read. The Iranians were behind it.”
Tess went quiet for a long second. “So, do they give you history lessons at Quantico, or what?” she finally asked.
Reilly breathed out a dry laugh. “Some. But not about that. It’s not a great idea to lay out your dirty laundry for impressionable agents during basic training, is it? Hardly the best motivator.”
“What then?”
“Come on. Give me some credit here. Iran’s a hot button right now. Priority one. And I need to know the whole backstory of who we’re dealing with, especially when they’re trying to get their hands on nukes.”
Tess nodded, processing what he’d told her. After a moment, she asked, “So how does it feel? Knowing the bad guys you’re after might be the result of something we did?”
Reilly shrugged. “History’s one long series of one country messing with another. We’re as guilty of it as anyone else, and it goes on. So a lot of what I do has to do with dealing with blowback from the fuckups of others —usually the geniuses running our foreign policy. But it doesn’t change the fact that assholes like our Iranian friend need to be taken out. It has to be done, and I have no problem doing it. I mean, sure, maybe the guy has grievances that stack up, maybe we’re the ones who triggered whatever turned him into this bad motherfucker … it doesn’t change what he is now, or justify what he’s done.”
Tess frowned, deep in thought. “You think he might have lost some family on that plane?”
“Sounds like it. It happened in 1988. That’s twenty-two years ago. Say he’s in his mid-thirties now. That puts him in his early teens at the time. Not a great age to lose your parents, if that’s what happened. It’s easy to see a lot of hate coming out of that.”
“God, yes.” She pictured the Iranian, as a boy, being told that his parents or his siblings had been killed. Her mind drifted to Kim, and for a brief instant, she imagined her in the same situation. Then an idea dropped into her head and rescued her from that grim picture. “You guys must have a passenger manifest of that flight? A list of the victims?”
“There is a list. The one they used to pay the survivors’ relatives. But figuring out which one of them left behind a son, in a country we have zero diplomatic relations with, ain’t gonna be easy.”
“So even knowing that won’t help figure out who he is?’
“Probably not.”
“You don’t sound too hopeful.”
Reilly shrugged again, remembering his thoughts in the car, when Ertugrul had picked them up at the airport. “Ever since Ajax, every time we’ve gone head to head with the Iranians … we’ve lost. The embassy in Tehran. The choppers in the desert. The hostages in Beirut. Iran-Contra. The insurgents in Iraq. Even the goddamn World Cup, back in 1998. We’ve lost every time.”
“Not this time though,” she said, trying to believe it.
“Damn right,” he said, hugging her close to him.
She snuggled up against his chest, listening to his breathing, and something inside her stirred. An anger, a resolve, a hunger. She righted herself and turned to face him, then moved in and planted her mouth on his, lifting her leg to sit astride him.
“Hey,” he mumbled.
“Shut up,” she mouthed back.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think?”
Her fingers were working on loosening his belt.
“We’re supposed to conserve energy,” he managed in between hungry mouthfuls of her.
“Stop talking then.” She was now tugging down her own pants.
“Tess,” he started to say, but she interrupted him, squeezing his face in her hands.
“If we’re going to die here,” she whispered into his ear, lowering herself onto him as she tasted the saltiness of a lone tear that slid down her cheek and trickled onto her lip, “I want to die knowing there’s a big smile on your face. Even if I can’t see it.”
Chapter 47
Reilly was the first to stir. The silence around him was surreal, and it took him a moment to process where he was. He sensed Tess, asleep beside him on the hard ground, her breathing shallow and calm. He didn’t know how much time had passed since they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms and didn’t have a clue as to what time of day or night it was.
He sat up, slowly, twisting his head around to stretch the stiffness out of his neck, conscious that every movement he made—the brushing of cloth against cloth, the tiniest scrape of his shoe against the hard ground— was getting amplified out of all proportion. It made the natural isolation chamber he was in feel even more unnerving. He rubbed his eyes, then looked around, more out of instinct than out of necessity, given the stygian darkness around him—and something registered. Something he hadn’t first noticed.
There was an odd shimmer in the air, a kind of phosphorescence, floating across the walls of the cavern. It was barely visible, faint and ghostly. At first, he wasn’t sure it was actually there, or if it was just some kind of a reaction in his retinas, maybe due to being deprived of any kind of light. He tried blinking the tiredness away and focused on the wall again.
It was there.
A spectral glow of light, filtering through.
From outside.
Hope swelled inside him. He got up and, his arms outstretched to keep him from hitting anything, he advanced slowly across the cavern. The glimmer wasn’t enough to light his way, but he felt marginally more comfortable moving around with it there than without it. It seemed to be coming from a tunnel that led away from the cavern, one he and Tess had, he thought, checked out. He crouched and crept through the passageway, his splayed fingers feeling the walls around him.
They found an opening in the tunnel wall. It was waist-high, a round hole around three feet in diameter. The light seemed to be gliding in from there. Reilly ran his hands along its ledge, letting his touch do the exploring. The ledge was only about a foot and a half deep. Beyond it was a void. A void that dropped down—and rose up.
A shaft.
Reilly leaned right into it for a closer look. Light—daylight—was definitely seeping in from above. But there was something else. Noise, from below. The gentle murmur of water. Not a gush. More of a slow meander.
He backed out of the hole and got down on his haunches, his fingers searching the ground. He found a plum- sized piece of loose rock and picked it up. He leaned back into the opening, extended his arm over the hole, and dropped the stone. After about two seconds, and without bouncing against any bends in the shaft, it struck water with a clean splash that echoed up to him.
He knew he’d found a well that culminated in some kind of ventilation shaft. He guessed that the sun was
