Tess Awakening (37 page)

“Tess came to me because she wanted to be
with me. I did not have to deceive her. She married me, not you.
She also gave me my own child that died in the womb as a result of
the accident that you engineered. Then you put her in a coma for a
month. So, your problem is not only with Tess, but with me as well.
This is the end of the road for you. Even you must recognize that I
am right. So, tell me where the kids are and we will all go our
separate ways.”

“I will tell you nothing! I don’t care what
you do. I will die before I deprive my son of his heritage.”

Jake walked out.

Tess was sitting in the meeting room with
Carmen and Nicola. She looked at Jake expectantly.

“He is a stubborn son of a bitch,” Jake said.
To get him to spill the beans we will have to resort to very
unpleasant, desperate measures. The problem is that the CIA is
throwing us out of here. Things are getting too hot.”

Tess rose. “My turn.” She went to the jail
cell and opened the lock. She was going to beat Amir to death. Amir
saw what was coming. The instant she opened the iron gate he
slammed it into her, sending her flying to the floor. He rushed out
of the cage and charged into the other room, surprising the team.
He grabbed Carmen by an arm and threw her against the wall. Nicola
moved against him, but Amir kicked him in the stomach, making him
double over, then he kicked him again.

By this time, Jake had recovered from the
surprise and lunged at Amir. They collided and rolled on the floor,
landing blows on each other. Jake managed to get on his feet, but
Amir kicked him behind the knees, causing him to fall. Nicola was
still stunned on the floor. Amir seized his pistol and ran outside.
He surprised two CIA men and shot both of them down. He was ready
to commandeer a Humvee parked in front of the building until a
pistol shot missed his head by inches. Tess was now behind him.

“Drop the gun, Amir.” She cocked the gun and
pointed it at him. He hesitated and she shot again, grazing him on
the shoulder. He let go of the weapon, raising his hands. Tess came
closer. Amir was bleeding but not disabled. Tess approached him but
was momentarily startled by the guys rushing to the scene. They
were obviously hurt, but trying to come to her support.

She turned her head for a second, enough for
Amir to attempt jumping at her. Tess had superb reflexes; she
turned herself to the side like a matador. Amir missed hitting her
by an inch. He turned around facing her. Tess now became a fearsome
warrior. Her face turned to stone, her eyes icy, deadly. She
dropped her gun. It was no longer necessary. Amir charged her
again, like a bull. She sprang like a coil, recreating her lethal
ballet moves, swirling through the air. She hit Amir on the left
cheek with her combat boot, shattering the facial bones. Amir
reeled and tried to counter attack, grabbing a pole and going for
her. Tess flew in the air again and planted her boot on the same
side of his face, sending him flying on his back into the dirt.

Amir’s face now was grotesque. His cheek and
jaw were fractured and his eye socket had dropped, suggesting the
face of a monster in a horror movie. Still, he made another attempt
to get up, only to see Tess’s boot coming at him again, slamming
into his testicles. He collapsed and passed out.

Tess did not want to take any chances now and
tied him up. Then she looked after her battered team. They were
attending to the two wounded CIA men, applying bandages.

Carmen finally got up. “Tess, I wouldn’t like
to be on your bad side.” The battered team wholeheartedly
agreed.

The CIA boss of the facility assessed the
situation and quickly made arrangements. The wounded men were
placed in a Humvee to be brought to the military hospital. A medic
patched the rest of them in place. Amir was more of a problem. His
face was a ruin. Besides medical help, he needed a lot of plastic
surgery.

The medic explained the situation. “There is
not much that we can do about his face here. He needs to go to a
specialized facility, and there are none around. The best that a
doctor can do here is to try to patch him up until he is ready to
see a plastic surgeon.”

“We can’t let him go yet,” Tess said, “He
hasn’t told us what he knows.”

Jake pointed out the obvious. “He will not be
able to do anything for a while; in fact, he will die if we don’t
care for him soon. The problem is what are we going to tell the
Iraqi Army? They will want some answers.”

Nicola suggested a plan. “We will tell them
that we found the General in the desert. He was beaten up by the
terrorists that had captured him. He is so messed up that it will
take some time before he can tell them what actually happened, and
by that time we will be all be gone.”

Tess disagreed. “Jake, we still don’t know
where our son is.”

“True, we don’t know and Amir is not in a
condition to tell us. We have to find out another way to get the
kids.”

Tess looked at the battered team in front of
her. She kneeled in the sand and covered her eyes with her hands.
Total failure was a real possibility. ‘I messed things up again,’
she told herself. Jake came over and gave her a hug.

Chapter 60

The team paid some local men to take Amir to
a hospital. The Jordanian authorities believed the story that
unknown terrorists had left him for dead. The Iraqi army was
notified. They promptly sent a helicopter to Jordan, picked up the
wounded man and put him in a hospital in Baghdad.

Amir woke up sometime later. A morphine drip
helped reduce the pain. Most of his face was bandaged. He felt
absolutely awful.

Investigators tried to ask him questions, but
it was obvious that Amir was in no condition to talk. He could not
even write. Later, an Iraqi investigator asked him to tell him what
had happened. Amir was too proud to admit that a woman had done so
much damage to his face. He slowly wrote on a pad, stating that he
was seized by terrorists apparently looking for a payout; Amir had
refused, so they tried to beat him to death. He had no idea who the
men were because they were wearing masks all the time. The
investigator was satisfied and promised he would keep working to
find and arrest the evildoers.

Two days went by and Amir was able to focus
with his one good eye. Doctors told him the obvious. The left side
of his face was a mess. They were worried about damage to the eye
socket. They had patched him up as best as they could, but he
needed to go a clinic in Europe for facial reconstruction.

Kemal, Amir’s factotum, made the
arrangements. As soon as Amir could be moved, they loaded him on a
plane and flew him to Geneva. An ambulance took him to a
specialized facial reconstruction clinic. The doctors told him that
they could not start plastic surgery right away. They needed to
repair the most severe damage first. As expected, Amir went through
hell. The pain was excruciating, only slightly mitigated by
drugs.

Doctors prepared to repair portions of the
skull, nerves, eyes, facial bones, and facial skin. The team
included a head and neck surgeon for craniofacial reconstruction, a
plastic surgeon for the skin and face and a neurosurgeon for the
brain and nerves.

The surgeries were performed under general
anesthesia. Each procedure lasted four to twelve hours. The
surgeons cut and moved some of the bones of the face, moved tissues
around and reconnected blood vessels and nerves using microscopic
surgery techniques. They took some bone grafts from the pelvis and
ribs to fill in spaces where they had moved bones of the face and
head. Small metal screws and plates were used to hold the bones in
place. They wired the jaws together to hold the bone positions in
place. To cover the holes the doctors took flaps from the chest
wall and thigh.

The surgeries caused swelling of the face,
mouth and neck that lasted for weeks. During the early stages of
reconstruction swelling blocked air flow and they had to perform a
temporary tracheotomy, a small hole in the neck through which a
tube was placed in the trachea. This allowed Amir to breathe for as
long as his face and upper airway were swollen.

In the end, they were able to save the
damaged eye. Amir looked at the grotesque image in the mirror and
cringed. He finally asked Kemal to call his sister Fadime with the
news of his indisposition.

During his recovery, Amir was facing a long
period of pain and suffering but still kept obsessing about Tess,
remembering their more tender moments. ‘I am cursed’ he told
himself, ‘I am still in love with a woman that is more dangerous
than a wild tiger. Perhaps I am a masochist after all.’

Chapter 61

Jake, Tess, Carmen and Nicola flew to Naples
where they joined the rest of the team at Tess’s favorite, the
Hotel Vesuvio.

Joe Slezak, the geek, had some important
news. From the credit card receipts, it appeared that Fadime,
Amir’s sister, was now living in Sorrento, not far from Naples.
George Kimmel then did what Intelligence guys do: he drove to
Sorrento and visited several real estate agencies. He zeroed in on
the women working in the offices and charmed them with his boyish
good looks. He told them that he was looking to rent a big villa
because he was expecting a bunch of friends from America to join
him for a celebration. The star-crossed Signorine told him that
most houses were already rented for the season. George insisted on
the particulars on who was currently renting the places and when
the tenants were scheduled to vacate the premises. Then he snooped
all over the place, checking out large villas with high privacy
walls that had been recently rented, and narrowed down the
possibilities to five houses, one of which might be Fadime’s
residence.

The team moved to the Hotel Ambasciatore, a
Sorrento hotel located on a cliff, with a spectacular view of the
sea below and decided to monitor each house on the list. It took
them five days to work through a process of elimination. One house
was rented by Germans; a second one appeared to be a high-class
bordello. A third villa was taken over by a raucous group of young
people. A fourth was rented by an elderly Italian couple and their
extended family. The fifth villa had potential. George could see
nothing much there other than delivery trucks.

Tess was desperately hoping for a break this
time around. “George, you said that you and your people did not see
the occupants come out at all? It doesn’t sound like Fadime. She
can’t live without shops and restaurants. Being cooped inside is
just not like her.”

“She could be lying low for a while,” said
Jake, “but if it is Fadime. Sooner than later she will tire of
staying in the house, and will not be able to resist going out to
do what she enjoys. I would be willing to bet that if it is her in
that house, that shortly she will want to go to town.”

“Let’s make sure that we have the house under
surveillance around the clock,” said George. “I have flown in two
men to help us out. The villa is close to the hotel and it is also
built on a cliff over the sea, so we only have to monitor the front
entrance.”

There was nothing much to do but wait; the
team set out to check out the town. Tess, Jake, Carmen, and Nicola
went out to eat.

The small city of Sorrento is famed for its
sea cliffs; the town’s steep slopes look out over the Mediterranean
waters to Ischia, Capri and the Bay of Naples. It also offered some
excellent diving, great sea fishing, boat cruises and
restaurants.

The group took a walk on the main street,
full of chic stores and restaurants. They finally settled on
Ristorante Bagni Delfino. They started with a small glass
Limoncello, a local specialty and enjoyed the delightful fresh
lemon aroma of the liqueur. The pasta dishes were particularly
good, especially the seafood gnocchi, risotto and signature pasta
with clams, prawns and courgettes, tiny zucchini. They also had sea
bass, beautifully cooked and filleted at the table.

“You Italians know how to live,” quipped
Jake, looking at Nicola.

“It’s what we do best,” Nicola responded.
“Life is too short not to enjoy it.”

“Amen,” was the unanimous response. They
raised their glasses of wine and had a toast.

Tess could not relax. “I really hope that
George is correct and that we found Fadime’s house.”

“That’s all we have to go on at this time,”
Jake added.

They paid the bill and went out on the
streets. It was a pleasant walk, the storefronts modern and full of
luxury goods. The walked past a fine leather store and Tess froze.
Fadime was shopping for a bag inside.

The group retreated far enough to observe
Fadime without being discovered. They did not want her to recognize
Tess.

Fadime gave her credit card to the shopkeeper
and left with a bag full of stuff. She walked along the streets,
apparently enjoying the evening breeze. She eventually headed
toward her house, precisely the one that George had identified. A
guard let her in, and she walked through a garden path to go
inside.

Carmen was excited. “We got her. We know for
sure where she lives.”

“Yes we do,” Jake said. I just hope she has
the kids.”

Tess was ready to call the cavalry and charge
into the place. Jake, as usual restrained her. “Tess, we need to
plan this carefully; it’s our only chance to do this right.”

Jake got on the cell phone and told the team
to meet them at the hotel. They assembled on the outside terrace.
Jake told them that they saw Fadime in the town shops. They needed
to develop a plan of action and spent the next two hours working on
it.

Chapter 62

Fadime was doing her best act like a mommy
to little Morgan and Aara. It didn’t work out very well. She had
trouble spending more than 10 minutes with the kids before becoming
impossibly bored. She did not appreciate the joy and privilege of
interacting with young minds and helping children learn new things.
By default, most of their care was entrusted to nannies.