The Sanctuary (15 page)

M
ia felt an unfamiliar vulnerability as she and Corben exited the hotel and crossed Rue Commodore. It was an odd sensation. Every pore in her body was tingling with discomfort, and she found herself scanning the faces in the busy street suspiciously, searching the surroundings for hidden threats,
even
eyeing the clutch of waiting taxi drivers with unease.

She stuck close to Corben as he stopped by his parked car and retrieved a small leather pouch from its glove compartment. Glancing at him, she noticed that he was also keenly focused on the people and movements around them. She didn’t know whether to take solace from that or whether to feel even more worried. Instinctively, she inched a bit closer to him as they headed back down the sidewalk towards the entrance of Evelyn’s building.

When Evelyn had first arrived in
Beirut
, the city was still dusting itself off after years of what the locals stoically referred to as “the troubles.” The central government was only there in name, and basic amenities such as electricity and phone lines were hard to come by. Living across the street from the Commodore was as good as it got. The hotel’s uninterrupted supply of services to its guests also extended to its camped-on neighbors. The university managed to secure Evelyn a decent apartment on the third floor of a gray stucco building literally across the street from the hotel, and she’d called it home ever since. It might not have had the best view in town—not the sea and its flaming sunsets, nor the monumental mountain range to the east—but at least she didn’t have to huddle by a little gas lamp to read after those same sunsets had burnt themselves out behind the horizon. Plus the hotel’s barmen could shake up a pretty decent martini, and the wine list was decent and fairly priced.

Mia had visited her mother there several times over the years. The apartment had become a holiday home for her until she’d gone to college. She’d been there a couple of times since taking up her posting in
Beirut
, but somehow it hadn’t felt the same. She knew it wouldn’t feel the same on this visit either.

As they reached the building, Mia pointed it out to Corben. He cast a casual glance up and down the street before leading her through the glass-and-iron doorway, which was open, and into the ground-floor lobby. The building was a typical 1950s, six-story structure with solid balconies running along its façade. It had a modernist, Bauhaus feel to it—which also meant that it didn’t have the electronic buzzers and other security trappings found on more recent constructions. The doors into the lobby would be locked at night, but were kept open during the day. A concierge was typically to be found sitting outside, playing backgammon or smoking a hookah while inevitably discussing politics, but he wasn’t around.

They got into the elevator, an older model with a creaking metal grille that had to be manually shut before the cabin would move, and rode it up to the third floor. The landing was dark with only a small, high window giving out to an internal well, but there was a light switch on a timer that Mia clicked on. There were two apartments per floor, and Mia directed Corben to the one on the left. He stood by the door and examined the lock for a brief moment. He looked across the landing towards the other apartment’s front door,
then
beckoned Mia over to it.

“Do
me
a favor and stand over here, will you?” He positioned her so her back was turned to the door.

“Like this?”

“Perfect.” He listened for a beat and, satisfied that they were alone, walked back over to the door to Evelyn’s apartment.

Mia didn’t quite get his little request. She watched as he unzipped his small leather pouch, from which he pulled out some thin instruments. He then casually started to pick the front door’s lock.

Mia turned her head cautiously and noticed that he had placed her so that the back of her head was blocking the peephole in the door behind her. She looked back at Corben, staring at him with curious amazement. “I thought you said you were an economic counselor,” she finally whispered.

He glanced sideways at her and gave her a nonchalant shrug. “That’s what it says on my business cards.”

“Right.
And breaking and entering is part of what business degree exactly?”

He screwed up his face in a final tweak of concentration, and the lock clicked open just as the overhead light clicked itself off. He flashed
her a
hint of a self-satisfied grin. “It was an elective.”

She smiled, rousing slightly from her unease. Any relief was welcome at this point. “And here I was thinking no one ever remembered anything they studied in college.”

“You’ve just got to pick the
right courses, that’s
all.”

She looked at him uncertainly,
then
the realization dropped into place. “You’re CIA, aren’t you?”

Corben didn’t rush to answer.

She studied his silence,
then
added glumly, “Why do I suddenly feel like things have gotten a lot more serious?”

His expression darkened alarmingly. “You already know it’s serious.” The words, and the way he said them, carved themselves into her mind. He seemed to sense her dread, as he then added reassuringly, “You’re in good hands. Let’s just take things one step at a time.” He looked for a nod of acceptance, which she eventually managed.

He slowly pushed the door open. It led into a small entrance hall, beyond which the living room was visible. He glanced inside. The apartment wasn’t overly bright, being on a narrow street and surrounded by taller buildings, and it was morbidly quiet.

He stepped in and motioned for Mia to follow him.

The living room was spacious and had a window and a pair of sliding glass doors that led onto a balcony that overlooked the street. It was as she’d always remembered it, comfortably furnished with deep sofas and Persian rugs. It bore the clutter of a lifetime of travel and exploration: framed manuscripts and etchings on the walls, relics and artifacts on small stands scattered along shelves and sideboards, and stacks of books everywhere. She cast her eyes across the room, drinking in its rich layers. Everything about it spoke of Evelyn’s full life, of her devotion to her chosen path. It had that cozy, slightly musty, cocooning feel to it and
reeked
of personal history, all of which made Mia’s last home, her sparse rental back in
Boston
, feel positively bleak. Her current accommodation—the room at the Commodore—didn’t even bear mention.

She wandered around the big room in a blur, dazed by the memories that swamped her mind. She paused in front of the framed manuscripts, drawn to their unusual depictions of the human body and the swirls of lettering surrounding them
,
then saw Corben moving farther into the apartment. She followed him and saw him emerge from her mom’s bedroom, glance into the guest bedroom and the bathroom, and head back out, past Mia, towards the living room.

Mia hesitated at the door,
then
entered her mom’s room. The afternoon light wafted in through the net curtains, suffusing the room with an inviting softness. She hadn’t been in there for years. As soon as she stepped inside, an unmistakable scent came rushing at her, vivid and warm. She felt as if she were ten again, padding into the room late at night, curling into her mother’s bed, cuddling up beside her. She took hesitant steps over to the dressing table. Pictures of her, at all ages, were pasted all around its mirror. Her eyes settled on one of them that showed her, in her early teens, with Evelyn, smiling among the ruins at
Baalbek
. She remembered that day well. She felt an urge to take it with her, but felt bad at the thought and left it there.

She felt a sudden sadness at being an uninvited guest in her mother’s sanctuary, and a spasm of worry about her mother radiated through her. With a heavy heart, she left the room and headed back to the living room. Corben was there, checking out Evelyn’s shelves. Wrapping her arms around herself for comfort, Mia edged over to the window at the side of the balcony and looked down into the busy street, watching the people idling by, willing Evelyn to reappear among them, safely and in one piece.

What she got instead was a navy blue Mercedes E-series sedan that glided unobtrusively past the building and pulled over slightly beyond the hotel.

C
orben sized up the room with an expert eye and realized another vist—a longer, more thorough one—would be necessary, as soon as he could get Mia settled somewhere safe.

He would also need to look in Evelyn’s office on campus as soon as possible. The local detectives would be checking out both places soon—they didn’t move as swiftly here as they did back home, which, on this occasion, suited him perfectly. He had a window of opportunity and he knew he had to make use of it.

It had all come about unexpectedly, and yet, ironically, he could just as easily have missed out on it altogether. He wouldn’t normally have gotten involved with a situation like Evelyn’s kidnapping, at least, not once he had ascertained that there wasn’t a political angle to it, which was pretty obvious to him from the outset. That he was here now, in her apartment, was due to something entirely different. He’d positioned himself, within the embassy and among his CIA colleagues, as the
Iraq
specialist.
As such, anything having to do with that country would inevitably wind up on his desk.
He’d made sure that everyone there knew it. Which was why Baumhoff had—in a cavalier manner, initially—told him about Evelyn’s kidnapping that morning and shown him the Polaroids.

The trail that had begun in that underground lab in
Iraq
had gone cold for more than three years. He’d changed countries and worked on several other assignments since then, but he’d kept a careful eye on that elusive ball, hoping that when a clue, a hint, something, popped up, he wouldn’t miss it.
And now, his diligence and commitment that had paid off.
With a bit of luck, maybe—just, maybe—the trail was warming up again.

Life turned on a dime. He’d been around long enough to know just how true that was.

He saw Mia standing by the window and headed over to the oak desk that sat in the far corner of the room. It was stacked with files, textbooks, and course materials. Corben was more interested in the laptop that sat to one side. As he unplugged it, he noticed Evelyn’s thick, weathered personal organizer. It was open to a two-page spread that encompassed that week. A slightly tattered, old-fashioned business card was lying on it. He picked it up. It was the card of some archaeologist out of
Rhode Island
. He used it to mark the page the organizer was open at, which he then closed and placed on top of the laptop. He’d want to go through that too.

He noticed an old jacket file under the organizer. Something about it drew his eye, and he pulled it out.

Its position on the desk suggested that Evelyn had been going through it just before leaving her apartment the night before. The first image, the woodcut of a snake-eater that leered out at him when he opened the file, sent a jolt of adrenaline through his veins.

The trail had suddenly heated up considerably. And right at that moment, a sudden outburst from Mia snuffed out his excitement with brutal efficiency.

“It’s them,” she blurted out, turning to Corben, her eyes alight with fear. “They’re here.”

Corben rushed over to the window and looked out. Mia was pointing out three men who were walking down the sidewalk, towards the entrance to the hotel. The blood had drained from her face.

“They’re already coming after me!” she exclaimed.

“They’re the guys you saw last night?”

Mia nodded. “The one in the middle’s the creep from the hotel bar. I think the one to his left was with him when they were chasing Mom downtown. I’m not sure about the last one.”

Corben took stock of the three men. His trained eye caught barely discernible hints in their body language that pegged the middle one, the one with the jet-black hair, as the gang’s leader. They moved fluidly along the narrow sidewalk one after the other, sliding discreet glances around the street, acutely aware of their surroundings. He scanned their bodies for signs of weapons, and even from the third-floor window, his practiced eye could make out a bulge under the lead man’s jacket.

Mia’s eyes were glued on them. “They’re just going to walk into the hotel and look for me? They can do that?
In broad daylight?”

“They can if they have Internal Security IDs.
Which they could well have.
Every militia was given its own quota of agents. They could be tied to any one of them.” A more worrying scenario was playing itself out in his mind as he reached for his cell phone and punched a number on his speed dial.

He had a dozen or so local “contacts”—a sampling of ex–militia members mostly, who had their own “circles of trust,” as well as a few officers of the Lebanese military intelligence, past and present—that he could call for muscle, if and when he needed it. Each contact had
his own
sphere of influence and was useful in a specific area.

After two rings, a man’s voice answered.