The transfer didn’t take long. With the plane’s turboprops still beating the air, the boxes of codices were loaded up first, stacked behind the backs of the two rear seats. Then it was the human cargo’s turn.
Reilly.
He was hustled up to the plane and dumped behind a partition at the very back of the cabin.
Still unconscious. But alive.
Which was how the Iranian wanted him.
Less than four minutes after touching down, the Cessna was airborne again. An hour and eleven minutes later, it was back on the ground at Diagoras. It didn’t spend more than twenty minutes on the tarmac. The handling agent who drove up to the plane was the same man that Steyl had dealt with when he’d first landed in Rhodes. He didn’t need to check the plane again. Zahed sat out the formalities silently huddled behind the partition, alongside the inert Reilly. Steyl filed his flight plan and signed the forms, got the all clear, and took off again.
Iranian airspace was less than three hours away.
Chapter 60
Sitting in the back of the Jandarma Humvee, Tess felt pulverized. After what had felt like an interminable run of horrors, she’d finally found something to feel good about. A crack of light had somehow found its way through the dark shroud that had been suffocating her since that fateful day in Jordan, but just as quickly as it had appeared, it was now gone again. All the elation, relief, and excitement—wiped out in a few minutes and replaced just as quickly with more foreboding and gloom.
She hated the helplessness, the sense of defeat, the fact that yet again, she and Reilly had been bested. Most of all, she dreaded finding out what had happened to him and couldn’t help but imagine the worst. The Iranian now had what he wanted. There was no reason for him to hang around. There was also no reason for him to show any restraint in whatever it was he had planned for Reilly.
The thought made her stomach turn.
The local police had shown up soon after the shoot-out, alerted by the gunshots. The Jandarma had swooped in shortly afterward. The Iranian and his thugs had taken away their dead crony’s body, but there was still plenty of evidence of the bloody shoot-out in the old woman’s house, all of which had only made the Jandarma officer angrier. Tess had sat there passively as he’d bawled her out for having left the hotel in Zelve without authorization, and she’d played dumb, saying she’d only been following Reilly’s lead. She also concentrated on keeping the old woman’s role in all this under wraps and made sure the woman understood to follow her lead and not mention the gospels the Iranian was after or the stash of troves in the underground crypt.
It seemed to be working. They were taking her and the old woman to the local police station for their own safety, as well as, undoubtedly, more questions. It hadn’t been a comfortable lie, since she knew that her only hope was with these local cops, but she didn’t think that added level of disclosure was relevant to their efforts. All she could do now was wait—and hope. Maybe they’d manage to lock down the country before the Iranian made it out. Maybe they’d get lucky and stop him at some roadblock. Maybe they’d catch him at some border crossing or at some local airfield.
She rubbed her eyes and tried to massage the worry out of her temples. The thoughts weren’t offering her much solace, not when all they were doing was conjuring up harrowing images of a bloody confrontation that ended in disaster for the man she loved.
“I’m sorry,” the old woman said, her soft-spoken words pulling Tess out of her swamp of despair.
“For what?”
“If I hadn’t sent my granddaughter … If I had stayed hidden … none of this would have happened.”
Tess shrugged. Of course, there was truth in her words. She and Reilly could well have been flying back to New York right now. But, she also knew, life didn’t work that way. Unintended consequences were part of its fabric, and there was little point in wallowing in regret.
“It’s not over yet,” Tess told her, trying to believe her own words.
The old woman brightened. “You think … ?”
“There’s always a chance. And Sean’s usually pretty good at spotting them.”
The old woman smiled. “I hope you’re right.”
Tess managed to give her back a half smile and tried to block out the gruesome worst-case scenarios that, she knew, were not only possible, but probable.
Chapter 61
Reilly woke with a start, flinching backward with a sudden intake of breath. An acrid smell was spearing his nostrils, an intensely vile odor that reminded him of rotting corpses. His eyes flared wide, and his vision snapped to attention and broke through the tarlike mire inside his skull.
The Iranian was right there, up close and personal, mere inches away from his face. His hand was hovering under Reilly’s nose, holding the small ampule there far longer than was necessary. The man was sweating and was blinking with nervous energy, and he seemed to be visibly enjoying the discomfort he was causing. Then he flicked the ammonia tab away and pulled back, giving Reilly a fuller view of his captor.
“You’re back,” the Iranian said. “Good. I really didn’t want you to miss this.”
Reilly didn’t know what he was talking about. There was a distinct lag between the words coming out of the Iranian’s mouth and his absorbing their meaning. They didn’t sound promising. His thoughts spun off to Tess and he looked around, worried he’d find her there too. He couldn’t see her anywhere.
“No, she’s not here,” the Iranian told him, as if reading his thoughts. “We didn’t have the time to go looking for her. But I’m sure I’ll bump into her again sometime. I’d like that.”
Reilly felt his blood boil, but he kept it hidden. There was no point in giving the Iranian the satisfaction of seeing him unsettled. Instead, he grinned and tried to say something, but felt his lips crack. He moistened them with his tongue, then said, “You know, that’s not a bad idea. She doesn’t have any gay friends.”
The Iranian’s hand flew up and punched Reilly across the cheek.
Reilly kept his head turned away for a moment to let the pain settle, then faced the Iranian again and managed a slight, lopsided grin. “My bad. Guess you haven’t come out of the closet yet, huh? Not to worry. It’ll be our little secret.”
The Iranian raised his hand again for another strike, then pulled back and smiled. “Maybe she can convert me. What do you think?”
Reilly felt heavy-headed and decided there was no point in riling the man up any further. He focused on taking stock of his surroundings and saw that he was in a small aircraft, one with a cabin he wouldn’t be able to stand upright in. A prop plane, judging by the engine noise.
One that was airborne.
That last point struck home and goosed his blood pressure. It didn’t help his condition, which was pretty damn awful. His head was pounding from the inside with what felt like a polonium-level hangover. His breathing was hard and painful. Blood had caked inside his nostrils, blocking most of the airflow to his lungs, which were also hurting from the battering his rib cage had suffered. He could also taste a foul mix of mucus and blood that was sitting in his throat. The sensation was soon replaced by the pain that was being telegraphed from every corner of his body as his neurons came back online. His eyelids felt heavy, and one of his eyes, he now realized, was half- shut, no doubt from swelling. His lips also felt swollen and had scabbed cuts in several places. He knew he had to have busted ribs and had probably lost a tooth or two as well. Weirdly, his socks and shoes were also missing.
He was laid out on some kind of cushioned seating at the very back of the cabin, an L-shaped banquette that abutted a wood-paneled partition that separated the small niche from the rest of the cabin. He tried to move and realized that his hands and feet were tied. His hands were behind his back, so he couldn’t see what was holding them together, but his ankles were bound together with some white string. All four joints were already hurting from the strain, and he could see the swelling and bruising where the string was biting into his flesh. An odd thought
