The Black Madonna (24 page)

“I'm okay.” Harry turned to Wadi. “We need to finish our discussion. We're out here in the middle of nowhere, and my offer is the only one you're going to get.”

Wadi squinted into the sunlight and said nothing.

Emma slipped onto the gunwale beside Harry. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“You don't look fine. You look . . .” She touched his face. “You're burning up.”

“Let's finish with this, then I'll go back and collapse.” Harry turned back to Wadi and said, “Something big is going down. Big enough to get the interest of some powerful people in Washington. These people are ready to make you a onetime offer. Give us what we need, and we'll do the same for you.”

“You know me so well, you can tell me what I need?”

Emma took a long drink from Harry's bottle, then said, “Mr. Haddad, the U.S. government is willing to grant you and your family permanent residency.”

Wadi said to the shimmering waters, “An agent we do much business with. He comes and says, ‘Make me something.' He offers very much cash.”

“What was the item you copied?”

“Very old painting. Religious. Woman and baby. Painted on wood. Both people wearing crowns. How you say?”

“Icon,” Harry said.

“Yes. Very hard work.” He extended his fingers like radiating light. “Many carvings on inner silver frame. But primitive. Very old.”

“A lot of time and effort,” Harry said.

“Too much work, too many days. The agent, he comes too many times. Always with the pressure. My daughters, they work all day, all night. Three months and two weeks they work. One gets very sick. The other sleep for three nights and days when it is done.”

“You know who the agent was representing,” said Harry. It was not a question. “You made it your business to discover. You figured there might be profit in it for you to know.”

“Big mistake,” Wadi muttered.

Emma asked, “What was the man's name, Wadi?”

“Vladimir Abramov.”

“Say that again.” When he did, she asked, “You're certain it was him?”

“What, you think they chase me for a wrong name?”

A slow puttering noise drew them around. Harry, Emma, Ahmed, and Wadi watched the approach of an inflatable landing
craft. The vessel was operated at low speed by a trio of dark-suited navy divers. They halted about twenty feet off. A woman called softly, “Agent Webb?”

“That would be me.”

The boat drew closer still. “You mind if I take a look at your creds?”

“Not at all.”

As the officer examined the badge and the picture ID, Wadi said, “I cannot swim.”

“No worries, sir. Not getting your feet wet is part of our job.” When she handed back Emma's badge, she caught sight of Harry. “Sir, are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“I'm only asking on account of how you look pretty far gone, sir. And there's nothing in my book about allowing one of my passengers to expire.”

“I'll make it.” Harry let Emma and Wadi cross first, then he said to Ahmed, “Where do we send your money?”

“We have not discussed the price.”

“That's right,” Harry said. “We haven't.”

The smuggler grinned and offered a slip of paper. “I was right to trust you.”

Harry shoved the paper into his pocket. “Will you be okay?”

“Oh, very yes. Is good time for housecleaning.” He studied Harry. “The lady is right. You are looking bad.”

“Between you and me, I feel even worse.” Harry slipped over the edge and eased onto the inflatable's reinforced side. He turned back and called across the waters, “Anytime, anywhere.”

Ahmed lifted a hand in farewell as the woman officer said, “Okay, Bert, take us home.”

T
HEIR INFLATABLE CRAFT RENDEZVOUSED WITH
a naval destroyer on Gulf duty. A chopper was prepped and winding up before they reached the main deck. They were still settling in as the machine lifted and swooped out over the azure waters. Harry pretty much shivered his way through the transfers.

They landed at the U.S. military base outside Jeddah, where they were placed in polite isolation with MPs for hosts. Harry barely managed to reach his bunk before collapsing. An hour or a day later—Harry had no idea—Emma arrived with a doctor in tow. The young woman had a thoroughly efficient military air about her. “Agent Webb informs me you're a little worse for wear, Mr. Bennett.”

“I'm feeling much better, now that I've had some rest.”

“Glad to hear it.” She inspected his face. “What exactly happened to you?”

“Bomb. Probably an IED.”

“Where was that?”

“Hebron. West Bank.”

“Who treated you there?”

“I was in a Palestinian clinic for a couple of days.” Harry swung his feet to the floor and leaned his back against the sidewall.
Keeping his voice steady and his face calm took about all he had to give. “They were great.”

“Did they scan you for internal injuries?”

“No equipment,” Harry replied. “And no need. I'm fine.”

“Are you.”

“Absolutely tip-top.”

Emma's phone chimed. She checked the readout and said, “I have to take this.”

When she stepped into the hall, Harry asked the doctor, “Think maybe you could help me lie back down?”

“That was all show for the lady?”

“Absolutely.” Even though the doctor took most of his weight, Harry groaned all the way down. He confessed, “I hurt right down to my toenails.”

“Where is it worst?”

He pointed at the space below his rib cage. “Here.”

“Can you take a deep breath?”

“Not anymore.”

She checked his vitals, listened to him wheeze, then probed his midsection. Harry huffed against the pain.

The doctor straightened. “Have you experienced any further trauma since the explosion?”

Laughing should not have hurt him so much. “You could say that.”

“My guess is you had a minor tear to the abdominal wall from the initial blast. This has been aggravated by your recent activities, resulting in internal bleeding.”

“Please don't tell Emma.”

“Mr. Bennett, I'm not sure you understand how grave your situation could be here. Peritonitis is as serious as it gets. You can die from this. And soon.”

“We have a friend who is in worse danger than I am. If Emma knows how bad things are with me, she'll stay. There's nothing she can do for me. But our friend's life hangs in the balance.”

Emma chose that moment to open the door. “How's our patient?”

Harry kept his eyes on the doctor. “Please.”

The doctor was in her midfifties, with graying hair cropped tight and stern features only slightly softened by age. She said, “Mr. Bennett, you are one very lucky man.”

Harry sighed his relief. “Tell me.”

The doctor checked her watch. “Your travel orders are being cut as we speak. In just over an hour our regular transport departs for Ramstein Air Base in Germany. I'll phone ahead and make the arrangements for Mr. Bennett here to be checked over at the Landstuhl base hospital.”

Emma exclaimed, “What's the matter?”

“Nothing much,” Harry said. “The doctor just wants to play it safe. Right, doc?”

“We need to make certain there's no seepage into the chest or abdominal cavity. That's common enough with IEDs. They'll check you out, maybe insert a catheter to drain the fluid.” The doctor swabbed Harry's arm. “This first part of your cocktail is an antibiotic. I'm also going to give you an injection to ease any congestion in your lungs, plus something for the fever and the pain.”

Emma said, “But he's all right?”

“Never better,” Harry said.

When the doctor was finished, she closed her bag and said, “A pleasure doing business with a gentleman, Mr. Bennett. Have a pleasant flight.”

WHEN THE DOOR SHUT BEHIND
the departing doctor, Emma said, “That was Tip who just called. Washington is doing a workup on this Vladimir Abramov. Tip expects to find he was one of Putin's KGB buddies. Apparently these guys are the new Russian princes. The line between politics and industry has been erased. Which leads us to the next problem. Are you sure you're up for this?”

Harry drifted on a now-familiar current, the pain receding with each shallow breath. “Sure thing.”

“Tip says the CIA is in a panic. Apparently they had Storm under electronic surveillance. She was attacked yesterday. Reports are confusing. They claim she was abducted, but I just checked my messages, and Storm claims she's fine.”

The military medicine was nowhere near as explosive as the ice injections the Palestinians had given him. But the results were pretty much the same. Harry felt the world begin to recede with the pain. He said, “You have to go help her.”

“What about you?”

“I'm fine.”

“You're anything but fine.”

“They can take care of me. Storm needs you.”

“And you don't?”

Harry watched Emma's hand drift up to caress his forehead. It required a world of effort to reach up and clench her hand with his own. “We're together even when we're apart.”

She gave him that same open yet fearful look. Harry held on to that as he drifted away, searching the cocooned darkness for something that might make it easy for them to do whatever came next.

T
HE FLIGHT FROM JEDDAH TO
the Ramstein Air Base in Germany took five hours. They were met planeside by a military green sedan, there to take Harry straight to the base hospital. Emma was politely but firmly shepherded through a swift farewell, then she was sped down the autobahn to Frankfurt's main airport. She barely had time for a German food-court meal before boarding the next flight to London. Once on the flight, however, she gave herself over to the big quandary she had been running from ever since Harry had been found. She could dress it up any way she wanted. Put it down to a dismal family life, the Washington grind, whatever she liked. But by the time the plane was descending into the London mist, Emma had returned for the dozenth time to the undeniable truth. She loved Harry desperately. If they did not grow as a couple, they would die. And she could not let that happen. But she was terrified of what came next.

Emma's internal argument carried her through customs and out the airport's main doors. She wished she could do what she had done a billion times before: flee from what she could not handle and bury herself in work. Only this time there was a new voice, soft as the English afternoon breeze, whispering that she
wanted nothing more than to become Harry Bennett's lifelong love.

Which was when they struck.

The snatch-and-grab defined slick. No training exercise she had been involved in even came close. She was walking toward the taxi stand, just another weary woman focused on internal dilemmas. Two men walked up with easy smiles and open jackets and leather ID wallets in one hand. One said, “Agent Webb, we were sent to meet you.”

“That really wasn't nec—”

One hand took her elbow to draw her toward the car that swept to the curb, lifting her arm just enough for the man's other hand to jab a knife at the nerve juncture below her ribs. The man said pleasantly, “Come with us or die. That is your only choice.”

The other man bundled into the rear seat, dragging her inside. She braced for a strike, but the man in the front seat planted the barrel of a silenced pistol on her knee.

The lead man slipped in beside her and reinserted the knife into her ribs. “Do not force me to press harder, Agent Webb. It is ever so difficult to clean blood from seat leather. Believe me. I know.”

The man's eyes were dark and fathomless. As clear a promise of agony as she had ever known. She froze.