'You disappointed us the other day, Mohamed,' Khalid said. 'I asked you for help in the name of Allah, and you refused. I told you that you might wish to reconsider. And what did you tell me, Mohamed?'
'Th-that I would see what could be done.'
'And I told you that you would do what we required, or your family might suffer. You remember?'
Ghailiani nodded.
'I gave you a cell-phone number to call when you were ready to cooperate.'
'Please, Mr. Khalid. What you ask simply is not possible!'
'It is possible. All I need are the appropriate clearance codes, and an approval from the Purser's Office. You have them in your computer on the ship. I am afraid you are going to force us to use… stronger measures.'
'Please, sir,' Ghailiani said. 'Please, for the merciful love of Allah!'
'The love of Allah has very little to do with this, Mohamed,' the man said. He began opening his briefcase. 'This is about jihad. It is about the martyred dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is about justice.'
'Please.. please… I tried to do what you told me, Mr. Khalid,' Ghailiani said, sputtering. 'I really did! But the security measures are simply too tight! I cannot — '
'Mohamed, you are the second-ranking security officer on board that ship, are you not?'
'Yes, but…'
'Then you will find a way to do this. If not, the consequences might well be unfortunate. For you… and for both of them'
'Wha — ' Mohamed blinked, confused. 'Both of…?'
Fresh terror took him. He'd been so focused on Zahra, he'd forgotten about their daughter. She was supposed to be at school for several more hours, but…
Khalid dropped the photographs on the kitchen table in front of Ghailiani. There were three of them, horrifying and brutal, digital photos printed out in color on white stationery. Each showed a slightly different angle of two women sitting on a bed in an unfamiliar room. Both had their hands tied behind their backs, and both had strips of white cloth pulled tightly between their teeth and knotted behind their heads. Nouzha's blouse had been ripped open, exposing her bra. Zahra had what looked like a bruise on her right cheek, dark beneath the gag.
They stared up at the camera, the fear and the pleading evident in their moist eyes. To one side, a standing man was partly visible, though his head was cropped in each photo. He was holding a newspaper — the Sun — folded so that the date, today's date, was visible.
'Zahra and Nouzha,' the man told Ghailiani. 'We picked up your daughter on the street this morning, as she was walking to school.' He shook his head sadly. 'Education is wasted on females, you know. And it is such an unwholesome environment for an innocent girl.' He gave a theatric sigh. 'In any case, Mohamed, their lives truly are in your hands now.'
For an instant, rage flared in Ghailiani, overpowering the fear, and he started to rise. 'Where are they, you devil? What have you done to — '
One of Khalid's men put his hands on Ghailiani's shoulders and slammed him back down on the chair.
'They are in a safe place, and we've done nothing…
yet.' Khalid's emphasis of the final word was chilling. 'But if you do not get us the results we require, we have several interesting options.'
Mohamed's momentary defiance shriveled. He knew he could not fight these men, and he knew that he would do anything, anything, to secure the release of Zahra and Nouzha. 'Please…'
'Do we need to discuss those, options? Which one of these two shall we begin to work on first, Mohamed? Your wife?' He turned one of the pictures to look at it. 'She really is quite attractive. Or shall we begin with your daughter?'
'Please, I beg of you…'
'I imagine our people will want to start with your daughter. So pretty. She is what, sixteen?'
'Fifteen! She's… fifteen. Look, Mr. Khalid — '
'Fifteen? Such a tender age. It would be a shame to see her… spoiled.'
'Please, no! I'll try to do what — '
'You will do more than try, Mohamed! You will do everything we demand of you! Everything! Otherwise, the next things we show you will be photographs demonstrating step-by-step exactly what we are doing to them… and perhaps one of your daughter's fingers as well! Or an ear? A nose?'
Ghailiani screamed. The man standing over him swung his arm, catching Ghailiani's face with a vicious open-handed slap. The seated man subsided into a series of deep, choking sobs.
'The first shipment will be arriving late this afternoon,' the man told Ghailiani. He nodded, and one of the others scooped up the photographs and put them back in the briefcase. 'If you want your wife and daughter back again, unspoiled, you will see to it that that shipment gets on board the ship, with no questions, no alarm. If you fail, or, most especially, if you approach the police or your employers with any of this, your wife and daughter will suffer terribly, I promise you! Do we understand one another?'
'Yes. Allah… yes!' 'Good.'
The three visitors let themselves out Ghailiani's door. Behind them, the man continued to sob.
Chapter 3
'Wow, mommy! this must be the biggest boat in the whole world!'
'Well, I don't know about that, sweetheart. But it is big, isn't it?'
'And Daddy's going to meet us here, right?'
'That's what he said, dear.'
Nina McKay leaned against the railing on the main promenade, looking down at the line of passengers coming up the gangway and checking in with the ship's officer standing at the entrance. She still wasn't at all sure this cruise idea was a good one, Her mother could be… commanding at times, and often going along with her pronouncements was the simplest course of action.
'Mommy?'
'Yes, dear.'
'When is Daddy going to come back and be with us?'
She sighed. 'I don't know if that's going to happen, Melissa. We talked about that, remember?'
'I know, but I want him to come back home.'
'I don't want to talk about that right now.'
'You never want to talk about that.'
'That's enough, Melissa. Mommy's tired!'
She looked up into the gray overcast, watching the wheel and plunge of seabirds. She didn't want to talk about it. Maybe it was time for that last phone call to her lawyer. It was time to end this.
'Daddy!' Melissa shrilled, standing on tiptoes and waving wildly. 'I see Daddy!'
Nina looked down and saw Andrew McKay emerging from the glass doors to the cruise ship terminal and security area.
She resisted the momentary urge to wave.
It didn't look like he'd seen them up here in any case.
Andrew McKay crossed the pier toward the banner-bedecked gangway leading up to the Atlantis Queen's quarterdeck, and wondered again what the hell he was doing here.
Well, of course he knew. Nina's mother had explained it all to him quite carefully, in words a three-year-old could understand. The woman could be incredibly forceful when she put her mind to it — the perfect image of the rich, southern matriarch.
Nina had left him four months ago, and taken Melissa with her. Eleven years of marriage, flushed down the pipes for no rational reason that he could see at all. Nina's mother apparently thought that a little Mediterranean
