“I was out. I didn’t hear anything.”
“Then you’ll just have to trust me.”
“Why should I?”
“The same reason I trusted you, even when you were lying,” he said.
She suddenly crushed the brake, pulling to the side of the road. “Get out of the car!”
“Sara, you’ve got to look past this.”
“Out!”
It killed him to see her in such pain. He sat there a moment, just staring at her, wanting her to change her mind, but she didn’t say another word. Angrily, he opened his door and got out.
She hit the gas even before he had closed the door, blasting down the street on squealing tires, as Jack watched in dismay. But as she approached the intersection she abruptly stopped, the van’s brake lights glowing in the darkness. The horn let out a short, angry blast and then she just sat there, the engine idling.
Jack jogged unsteadily to the van, still not quite having found his land legs after their across-the-rooftop run. He opened the passenger door to find her just sitting there, her eyes clouded, trying her best to keep from crying. One death can produce an anesthetic reaction that allows someone to function through a short period of mourning. But multiple deaths are like a landslide: it controls you. The hardened facade she usually presented was starting to crack and it took everything she had to hold back.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It will be okay if we don’t give up.”
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”
“I know,” he said.
“It’s what you said. Every time one of us falls I feel it all over again. The loss, the self-doubt, the questioning, wondering what I might have done to foresee this, to prevent it.”
“You’re not a professional. Neither am I. We’re making this up as we go along. Those guys.” He indicated the enemy with a backward jerk of his head. “They have years of training, limitless resources, and vastly superior numbers. It’s amazing you’ve gotten this far.”
His words seemed to cut through the grief and remind her why they were here. She wiped her eyes. The gesture was transformative: he saw the old Sara return.
He didn’t want to intrude on her sorrow but he knew they couldn’t stay here much longer. They needed to get rid of the van. The alert would have gone out and the police would be searching for them. Terrorists on the run, that’s the story MI6 likely fed them. Dangerous extremists who needed to be shot dead on sight.
Still, he sat there saying nothing, suddenly aware that despite knowing her for less than twenty-four hours he’d never felt this way about a woman. Not about Rachel or any of the one-nighters he picked up since the divorce.
And then the sadness seemed to pass. She put her hands back on the wheel.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known what they’d do. But I should have anticipated it.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda. This is where we are. Do we sit here or do we go and get those sons of bitches.”
“I’m trying to figure out how, ” she said. “The team is gone, the computers. All we have is the USB key, and even if we manage to get the information off of it, it could be worthless.”
“You ever hear of the wasp strategy?” Jack asked.
“The wasp? Like the insect?”
“Yeah. How do you kill eighty people and destroy fourteen tons of hardware with something that weighs a fraction of a pound?”
She nodded. “Set a wasp loose in the cabin.”
“Exactly. We have to be wasps,” Jack said. “You said you have contacts around the world.”
“Yes, but we kept all our information on our hard drives. That’s why Alain wiped them.”
“You told him you have the key-”
“But I have no idea where he kept the backups,” she said. “I was a field operative, not a techie. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“We still have the encrypted e-mails Alain gave you,” Jack said.
“Right. But the key word is encrypted. Do you know anyone we can go to?”
Jack thought about the Reb, wondered if he should call him. But most of his people were in Tel Aviv, and getting there would take too long. Encrypted or not, he didn’t want to chance sending data over the Internet.
“Not in Europe,” he told her.
She paused, a sudden light in her eyes.
“What?”
“I work at the College of Islam. That was my cover. There’s a student there-a young man who’s brilliant with computers. In fact, if I remember correctly, he’s even done some work with codes. Maybe he can help us. He’s Muslim and he’s very religious, but he’s not like Zuabi. He’s a good man.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“I think so. What choice do we have?”
“None, at this point,” Jack said grimly. “Let’s just hope he agrees to help.”
“He will,” Sara said.
Jack didn’t know whether she was alluding to the flirtatious stick or ballistic carrot approach. Not that it mattered.
Right now, nothing mattered but stopping Zuabi.
28
London, England
It was a cardinal rule of intelligence work that Sara had learned: if your cover has been compromised, either go deep undercover or hide in plain sight.
Going to ground was not an option.
Fortunately, Sara and Jack looked a mess and stank of perspiration from the torture, their flight, days without a shower. Any description MI6 might have sent out barely applied to the dirty, disheveled couple who showed up for the train ride back to London. They had taken the precaution of having a drink so their breath suggested a night of heavy partying. And they acted the part as they purchased tickets with the cash Jack had been carrying.
They reached London without a hitch and cabbed to the school.
The young man’s name was Faisal al-Jubeir.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty-six years old, and was an inch taller than Jack, with dark skin and a thick black beard. He seemed a bit irritated as he opened the door at nearly one in the morning. The moment he saw Sara his annoyance evaporated. He didn’t even seem to see Jack, not at first.
“Ms. Ghadah,” he said in surprise. “Sara. What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry if we woke you, Faisal.”
“Actually, no. I was studying for-” He paused, frowning at her. Like everyone else, he saw and was mesmerized by Sara’s face in those first moments. “Your clothes, your hijab… where are they? Why are you dressed like that?”
“It’s a long story,” she told him.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but I desperately need your help.”
He looked confused. “ My help?”
“May we come in?”
He hesitated, glancing at Jack as though seeing him for the first time. Then he stepped back and opened the door wide. “Of course,” he said. “Come in.”
“Thank you, Faisal.”
They stepped into a clean but modest flat full of furniture that looked as if it had come with the rental. Cheap
