Blink of an Eye (36 page)

She walked forward. “You must know how much danger coming here—”

“Life is full of danger, Miriam.”

“But if I am to marry Samir, why couldn't we have the wedding in Cairo, or at the very least in Dhahran?”

“Sit, Miriam.” He glanced over her shoulder.

She followed the glance. Samir stood just inside the tent, looking at her with glassy eyes. He was crying? She faced her father, terrified.

“You will marry Omar,” the sheik said. “I have given my word for the kingdom and for God. Sit!”

Blood flooded her head and the tent tilted. “Omar?” She turned around and stared into Samir's eyes. “Omar?”

“We cannot put our desires ahead of God's, Miriam,” Samir said, eyes begging. “What we do now must be for the love of God. The kingdom is at stake. You have been chosen by God to deliver us. I am only glad to have loved a woman so chosen.”

“This is absurd!” she cried. They really meant to do this, didn't they? “What kind of God would force me into marriage with a beast?”

“Watch your tongue, woman!” the sheik said.

Panic deafened her. She glared at Samir. “Your love will
kill
me! You know that, don't you? Omar will kill me or keep me in a living death! And you will allow this?”

“He will not kill you!” Samir said. “Your death would sever ties with your father. Please, Miriam—”

“No!” Rage swept through her. She hated them. She hated them all! She flew at Samir, screaming. She landed on him, fists flying, beating at his face as he warded off her blows.

“Miriam! Please, I beg you!” She didn't care. No human could do this to her and claim to love her.

“I hate you!” she screamed and landed a blow on his cheek.

Hands grabbed her from behind and pulled her back. Something hit her back.

“Don't bruise her,” her father said. “She is to be married tomorrow night. The groom will not want her bruised.”

With those words, all of the life Miriam had found with Seth drained from her body. She surrendered. The horror she always feared had found her.

Sita was not the only one to die.

chapter 32

t
he deep sleep had made this intensified clairvoyance possible, Seth thought, and he thought it even as he slept.

He had gone to bed without the burden and sank into the first REM sleep he'd had since that last night in Las Vegas. Close as he could figure—in the way one figures things while dead to the world—the new and improved sight hit him while he was still in the REM state, spared from the barrage of concerns that pummeled him during the day. As a result, he could see with an unprecedented degree of clarity.

He was in the future; he knew that. But it wasn't like the future he'd seen before, focused on the events that might transpire in his life or in the computer models in the next few minutes. He was in a future that did not extend beyond one second, a future that didn't really have time to result in any event at all. He was in the next millionth of a second of a thousand possibilities.

He was in the very fabric of the future.

That's the only way he could think of it. If he had seen a computer chip before, he now saw the very circuitry of that chip, not as an event, but in its state of being.

And what he saw made him groan.

He had not seen it earlier, could not have seen it without this unique perspective.

Light roiled around him, like a translucent sea of fireflies. Each pinpoint of light was a possibility, and each was fueled by the same force that had brought them to life. Without this power of life, there could be no future, he realized. But it was the source of that power that turned his stomach. He groaned again, furious with himself.

He reached out his hand and brushed through the pinpoints of light. In the blink of an eye, a thousand blipped to blackness and another thousand sprang to life. It was how the future changed, in the blink of an eye, fueled by the creative force of the universe itself, yet so easily changed by the movement of his hand.

One of the tiny lights caught his eye, and he focused on it. It expanded until he was looking at a future the way he had become accustomed to seeing it.

He was about to turn away when the details of this particular future arrested his attention. Miriam.

Seth jerked up in bed, fully alert and breathing hard. The sheets were soaked in his sweat.

It was Miriam! The first time he'd seen her in the futures since Las Vegas. His pulse thumped through his veins. It wasn't just Miriam; it was Miriam and Omar. He knew that because he'd unearthed a picture of the Saudi prince on the Internet two days earlier. But the man of the future did not smile royally as he had in the picture.

“Oh, God!” he said. The words came out breathy and scratchy.

He threw his covers off and bolted from the bed. He'd cleared the door to his room before he remembered that he wore only his underwear. He slid to a stop, confused for a moment, and then raced back for his pants. That was enough for now. He ran down the hall toward the quarters that housed the other guests.

He crashed into Clive's room without knocking.

“Clive!”

He hit the light switch and an overhead fluorescent flickered and hummed. The agent bolted up in bed and instinctively clawed under his pillow for a gun they'd taken at the front gates.

Clive gawked at him. “What are you doing?”

“I just saw the future, Clive.” Seth paced past the bed and then back, grasping for words. He spun to the man. “I mean, I saw it like I've never seen it before.”

“You come crashing into my room”—he glanced at the bedside clock—“at three in the morning, to tell me—”

“I saw Miriam.”

“Miriam? You dreamed of a beautiful woman and you—”

“Stop it! Miriam's in trouble. She's marrying Omar. There's going to be a coup.”

Clive swung his legs to the floor. “How can you know that? You saw farther out than three hours?”

“I don't know how far it was. But I know the intentions. Her life's in danger.”

“How's that possible? I thought she was with Samir.”

“He must have betrayed her.” Seth closed his eyes. Why hadn't he seen anything in Samir at the casino? Because Samir really did love her. He was sure of it. And yet . . .

He rubbed his temples. When he opened his eyes, Clive was pulling on his slacks. “When do you think this will happen?”

“I don't know. But I have to go, Clive.”

“Forget it. You're staying here. We can tell the State Department to warn King Abdullah.”

“No. That won't work!” Seth palmed the sides of his head. “Warn them, yes, but I have to go! The State Department can't help her! You know that.”

“You can't go. They'll
never
let you go. And even if they did, you can't just hop on board the next United flight and sail into Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is a closed country.”

“So was the Nevada border.”

Clive paused. “That was before your clairvoyance became intermittent. Can you see now?”

“No. But I'll see again.” He had to find a way to make Clive understand. They were locked away in the world's most secure fortress; without Clive's help he was going nowhere. And Miriam needed him. If she ever needed him, it was now.

Assuming you can help her now. You're blind, Seth!

Seth paced. “I'm going. In a few hours, I'll be able to see again and I'll walk out. You know there's no way you can stop me.”

“Maybe.”

“No. Really. But I don't have a few hours!”

“Like it or not, you're the single most valuable asset this country has in its possession right now,” Clive said. “You're also the most potentially dangerous. If I let you walk—”

“If you
don't
, you'll be sentencing Miriam to death and the United States to a major political crisis!”

Seth slapped his back pocket. Still there. He pulled out a disk and held it up.

Clive squinted at it.

“Something I did on my own. It's a scenario I ran while the techs were going over this morning's battle results. This is the only copy.”

“So.”

“So, it's a look at what will happen if Khalid takes power away from King Abdullah. It isn't pretty.”

Clive shook his head. “How can you see what might happen in the Middle East without looking past three hours?”

“By stringing together consecutive three-hour segments.”

“How . . . You did that?”

“On the computer. I went out three months, and trust me, a lot of people will die if Khalid takes control. If I'd known it was important, I would've told you earlier. Now it is important.” He tossed the disk to Clive, who caught it.

“And how does this help you?”

“It helps me because I don't think there's any way for the U.S. to stop a coup without my help. You may think that I'm valuable in here, playing your games, but I may just be the only option you have out there, where it really counts.”

“There's no guarantee that you could even reach Saudi Arabia, much less stop a coup. The State Department—”

“The State Department will fail,” Seth said.

“You know that?”

Seth took a deep breath. “No. But what if I'm right? What if the only way to stop this whole mess is through me? What if this gift of mine has been given for that purpose? If you don't let me leave, your decision will go down in history as the greatest act of criminal negligence ever willfully exercised. I'll make sure of it.”

Clive stared at him for a few moments. “Do you have any idea what you're asking?”

“Yes.”

“Do you even know what you would do?”

“No.”

“No. Listen to yourself. You want me to let you walk out of here because God has handpicked you to save the world. And you expect me to explain that to the generals, three of whom are on their way here for a meeting with the secretary of state tomorrow.”

“Pretty much, yes. Show them the disk and tell them that if I'm wrong, I promise I'll come back and let them pry through my mind. Keep me here and I'm dumb. Your dog and pony show tomorrow morning will be a terrible embarrassment. In fact, I may just feed them with miscues. You'll wish you'd never found me.”

Clive chuckled at Seth's strategy, no doubt believing every word. He stood and walked across the room, hands on hips. “I can't believe I'm actually considering this.”

“You'd be an idiot not to,” Seth said.

“This is really about Miriam, isn't it?”

“Maybe. But where Miriam goes, Saudi Arabia goes.”

Clive looked at Seth for a long time. A frown settled on his face. “You have me in a box.” Seth nodded and grabbed Clive's shirt off the chair.

“Okay. You win. But if you're going to try this, whatever
this
is, let me at least help you get the papers you'll need to enter the country. Follow me.”

chapter 33

t
he morning came and went in a vague cloud that barely registered in Miriam's consciousness. She resolved to show no emotion. None at all.

The afternoon crawled by, bustling with activity, but distant—a nightmare to which she had resigned herself.

Because of the secretive nature of the marriage, the usual party of close relatives was absent. Instead, the sheik's wife, Nadia, and her servants made Miriam's preparations. They brought in an elaborate peach-colored silk gown, which Samir had purchased in Cairo, they told her. Miriam stood on numb legs while they pulled it over her head for a hasty fitting. The dress felt loose, and one of the wives ordered a maid to take it in at the waist. Miriam decided that peach was a ghastly color.

She lay obediently for the halawa ceremony, performed by the women. A sweet-smelling mixture of lemon juice, sugar, and rose water that had been boiled to form a glue was spread over her entire body and allowed to dry. When they peeled it away, her body hair came out with it. Under any other circumstances, she might have protested the pain, but it felt like no more than an abstract annoyance. The physical pain was easy to bear.

The women rinsed Miriam's hair with henna to make it shine and painted her nails a rose red—preparing their whore for this ungodly union. Two weeks earlier she had watched Sita endure the same preparations, encouraged her friend to make the best of her new reality. Sita had glared at her with glassy-eyed dread. Her friend had sentenced herself to death, and now the notion grew on Miriam. She could not fathom the idea of Omar touching her. She would die first.

But Omar would not kill her. No, instead he would keep her in a living hell, bound and gagged in a dungeon, maybe. Whipped and bleeding for his own pleasure, perhaps. If she could only find a way to die without killing herself. God would not smile upon suicide.

As night approached and the prayer calls crooned from the minarets, Miriam whispered a helpless, hopeless prayer under her breath.

Unable to maintain her resolve, Miriam began to cry. The gnawing horror that she'd ignored all day rose over her like a black dragon. The stupidity of her leaving Seth showed its true colors now, and it was nothing less than the most sickening kind of foolishness. She had willingly left the one man who truly did love her. Her savior, her love, who would be stealing her away to fields of flowers now instead of turning her over to a slaughter at Omar's hands.

She cried long and hard, alarming the two women who watched over her. She cried for Seth. She didn't care that she distorted her picture of his love into more than it was. She needed someone to love her now, and now there was only Seth.

A religious sheik came at dusk and asked Miriam's father for his consent to the marriage. They signed documents, and then the sheik left to repeat the process with Omar. Her father's will was sealed. In exchange for his daughter, he would receive the agreed upon bride price, in this case loyalty and power rather than money.