I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she would have probably been killed by Eris had it not been for my efforts, but she was in no frame of mind to hear this. Besides, hadn’t I already berated myself for bringing bad luck to everyone I cared about?
I stood up and tried to think of a last word to give her some reassurance. “Try to keep up your strength, Laurie. I’ll find a way to get us out. All they want is the engraving.” I didn’t want to frighten her even more by telling her Tomas had made sure we’d never get it back.
A shudder spread through her body. She had one more bitter remark left for me. “Don’t fool yourself. We’ll never see each other again. That’s some kind of blessing, anyway.”
“She needs medical attention,” I said to Eris. “You have to release her.”
“Doctors are in short supply around here,” Eris shot back. “Time to go.”
Ward and the jester were waiting for us outside Laurel’s makeshift prison cell. “So, your part of the bargain is due now. Where is Tomas?”
I wasn’t about to give in that easily. “Tell me something first.
It was Eris who picked Laurel up, right? I assume Laurel was drugged?”
Ward nodded.
“So she probably hasn’t any memory of where this place is.”
“Yes,” Ward replied.
I was steaming, but I tried to keep a lid on it for Laurel’s sake. “And my guess is, she doesn’t know about you. Eris is probably the only person she’s seen.”
Eris let out an annoyed huff. “Forget it, Madison. We can see where you’re going with this.”
“We’re not letting her go.” Ward said this in such a matter-of-fact tone he may as well have been ordering up pizza. “At least not now. But I understand your thinking and you’re right, she’ll have next to nothing for the police to go on when we do release her. That should give you some encouragement. So you have a heaven-or-hell choice. It’s good to keep things simple. Cooperate with us and she’ll be free; don’t and she’ll end up dead.”
I had to admit my arsenal was empty. My only option was to wait for a new opportunity to open up. “He’s in Baghdad—I’ve got the address.” I felt in my pocket for the crinkled hotel memo on which I’d written the address I’d taken from Tomas’s room and handed it to Ward. He looked at it and passed it immediately to Eris. “Check this out,” he said.
Once Ward was certain I’d told all I knew, they took me back to Shim. An hour or so later, Ward and Eris returned and hurried me back along the corridor, the jester pressing my head down so I could see only Ward’s broad back, the muscles making his black suit jacket ripple as we followed in his tracks. “Where are we going now?” I asked him.
“To Babylon,” he said. “Lucky you.”
Twenty-seven
We drove to an airfield in what I guessed was New Jersey. Laurel remained captive in New York to ensure my cooperation. I could smell the tang of gasoline and glimpse pavement glistening after the rainfall. We’d stopped beside a small jet. Our destination was Baghdad, not the actual site of old Babylon. But Ward didn’t need me to locate the address I’d given him. Why go to the trouble of sending me to a country I was totally unfamiliar with in the midst of a war? I got absolutely nowhere with Ward when I lobbed questions at him about why he was taking me there. The fact that they’d held off torturing me implied they needed my cooperation for some future plan. What was it?
They hustled me into the rear of a Learjet 35. Ironic that I’d flown in a similar plane a couple of months ago to babysit an Italian ceramic one of my clients had purchased. In this one the back of the cabin was closed off with drapery and some seats had been removed. The windows were painted black. It looked as if I wasn’t the first person forced to travel in this plane against his will.
The jester snapped a metal cuff onto my right wrist, fastening it to a handle jutting out from the wall. My body ached nonstop. I sagged against the wall. The man buckled himself in. He wore a suit now, but it did nothing to improve on his lank black hair and deadly pale skin. He had the strangest eyes—almost yellow.
I could see the red tattoo on his wrist, but his sleeve hid almost half of it and I couldn’t tell what sign it was meant to be. I assumed Eris and Shim were up front with Ward. I mentally ticked them off: Venus, Mars, Jupiter. I’d concluded that Ward was Jupiter, the boss; Eris, Venus; and Shim, Mars. Laurel said that Hal was Saturn. By default, then, the jester must be Mercury. A very unlikely messenger of the gods.
Since I was going to be spending more than a day with this man, I decided to try lowering the threshold of hostility. “Which one are you?” I asked.
He misunderstood me and grunted, “Lazarus.”
“Is that your real name?”
“It is now.”
“How did you come by it?”
“Doctors brought me back from the dead. Sometime I’ll give you a description so you’ll know what to look forward to.”
“Where?”
“Chechnya.”
“Why would you be involved there?”
“You don’t know anything, do you? We’re in all those holes.
You flit around with your lattes and martinis selling your highbrow art and you know nothing about the real world.”
“You caused that accident in front of the cafe, didn’t you?”
“Ward said to make you afraid, not kill you.”
“Someone got badly injured. Doesn’t that even bother you?”
“You said it yourself—it was an accident. I was just trying to knock out the truck’s tire. Anyway, we’re not supposed to be talking.”
I was in here with him for the long haul. With one stopover the trip on a commercial jet would take almost a day. This smaller plane would need more refueling stops and at a lower speed the flight would take longer. Before, I’d faced a threat only from a specific group of people. In Iraq the danger would increase tenfold. There were no safe places in Baghdad.
Lazarus reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a knife. It had a cruel-looking, fat serrated blade. He played around with it, pretending to aim it at me and throw. When he tired of his stupid game he gave me a couple of cans of warm Dr Pepper, a soggy corned beef sandwich, and an empty plastic bottle to piss in. I was expected to manage all this with my free left hand.
I pictured the others: Ari dining in an upscale London restaurant; Tomas in Iraq, ensconced in some comfortable hideaway; the soothsayer, Diane Chen, humming along with the music, kibitzing with her customers. Her predictions were so accurate, she should go into the fortune-telling business. I felt the weight of Ari’s talisman on my chest. Even the sun god had failed me.
I slept fitfully and finally woke up completely disoriented and woozy. I knew we’d been in the air for many hours and had a vague memory of landing and taking off again at some point—that was all. My drink must have been spiked with a sedative.
The aircraft began its stomach-heaving drops. I listened to the thud of the landing gear engaging and soon after felt the contact with terra firma and heard the whine of the jets reversing. While we taxied to our destination, Lazarus undid my shackles. When I unwound my legs and tried to stand I almost fell. My joints protested like those of an eighty-year-old man. He opened the curtains. “Go up front. Ward’s there.”
Ward waved me over when he saw me and indicated a seat across the table from him. Lazarus posted himself behind me. No one else was in the cabin. I tried to get a glimpse out the windows but could see only a blank whitish wall and concluded we must be in some kind of hangar. Ward dug in his pocket and took out a wallet and a dark blue passport, the Great Seal of the United States on its cover.
