Blink of an Eye (28 page)

They had missed Seth and Miriam by five minutes, and Clive knew it might just as well have been a week. Ten units had searched the streets of Ridgecrest for the next hour and turned up exactly what he expected them to: nothing.

Clive drove out of the church parking lot. With any luck, none of this would matter soon. He was putting the final touches on a plan to upstage Seth. The only way to deal with Seth was to put him in the dark; Clive knew that like he knew the walnut in his pocket was round. And if he was right, he was closing in on a way to do just that.

The first step was to track Seth's movements and establish, with as much confidence as possible, his destination. For that he needed more manpower. If he could determine the destination, Clive thought he had a pretty good chance of getting there without being seen in Seth's futures.

Peter Smaley had called an hour earlier and initiated a conference call with Secretary Paul Gray and NSA Director Susan Wheatly. Clive had talked to Susan before. The straight shooter took a personal interest in his unique position with the agency. It was his first time, however, to speak with the secretary of state, who was upset about having to tolerate Saudi diplomats running amuck in “this crazy manhunt down there.” The secretary understood the sensitive nature of the country's relationship with Saudi Arabia better than anybody, but it didn't mean he had to like it.

Clive patiently retraced the events of the last three days and then gave his estimation of the situation.

“You're saying that Seth rather than Miriam presents the bigger problem to us,” Susan had observed. “Not because he's assisting the princess, but because of this . . . this ability of his.”

“Yes. And I'm suggesting we make bringing him in the top priority.”

“You have over a hundred members of various law enforcement agencies directly involved now. And the rest of the country on full alert for this guy,” the secretary said. “Sounds like top priority to me.”

“I want more. He may try to take her from the country. I want all ports closed to private flights unless they've been thoroughly searched. I want to bring in Homeland Security and I want to set up interstate roadblocks. I'm suggesting we view Seth as a terrorist on the loose with an atomic weapon. And then I want you to give me authority over all resources. Nobody moves or talks without my saying so. That's top priority.”

The phone went silent for a few seconds.

“You really think a college student from Berkeley is that dangerous?” Susan said.

“I think he's the most dangerous man on the planet at this moment.”

Now, an hour later, Clive waited for their response. His patience was a formality. He already knew what the answer would be.

He slid into the car, fired it up. Hilal hadn't shown himself since their talk last night. He was probably headed for Nevada already. Clive now thought of him as an enemy of sorts. He had the will and the means to take both Seth and Miriam out. Clive wanted them alive. At the very least, he wanted Seth alive. No man could do what Seth was capable of doing. Killing him would be a mistake of the worst kind.

His phone rang.

“Yes.”

“You have it, Clive,” Smaley said. Amazing how his attitude had changed since Clive interrupted his meeting the previous day.

“Okay. I call the shots?”

“You run the show in-country. The border is being handled.”

“Good enough.”

Smaley breathed into the phone. “I have to say, I'm pretty skeptical about this . . . theory of yours.”

“Okay.”

“So. If you had to call it now, where would you say he's headed?”

“Las Vegas,” Clive said.

“Las Vegas,” Omar said, dropping the phone on the seat. “Drive.”

“How do they know?” Assir asked.

“They don't. But neither do we. The agency man believes they're headed for Las Vegas, and Hilal believes him. So we go to Las Vegas.

We stay with our plan. Sooner or later the student will make a mistake.”

After two days of cat-and-mouse games, it felt good to have a destination. He'd watched the meeting between Hilal and Clive Masters through binoculars at nearly a thousand yards and received the pertinent points of their conversation an hour later, when Hilal reported his suspicions to Saudi Arabia.

Now Seth and Miriam's entourage was headed for Las Vegas, and he would beat them there as well.

Omar laid his head back on the leather seat and closed his eyes. If the hunters were right about Seth's gift, then there was only one way to trap the student, and the agency man would be the one to do it.

But no matter how the scene played itself out, Omar would witness the end. He would be the vulture. And Miriam would be his prey.

His wife would be his prey.

chapter 25

s
eth called them the “eyes from the sky.” Helicopters. They were unquestionably the most annoying and most threatening factors in the route through Death Valley. Given the Cadillac's white paint, finding cover in the endless brown landscape was like trying to hide a mosque in the middle of the Rub‘ al-Khali desert. If not for Seth's three-hour sight into the future, they would have been apprehended long ago. He'd pulled the car into hiding no fewer than six times since their departure from the church yesterday morning.

The other annoying element was the heat. Particularly after the Cadillac's ancient air-conditioning unit quit functioning.

They decided Sunday afternoon that traveling at night might be a better idea. The darkness would provide cooler temperatures and hamper the helicopter's search. They freshened themselves up at a gas station manned by an old codger, purchased enough junk to fill the backseat, and went looking for a place to wait out the afternoon.

Seth's “old codger” was really just an older man who didn't care what was happening beyond his driveway, and the “junk,” as he called it, consisted of necessities like toiletries, food, water, and clothes. The food was arguably unhealthy, and the clothes didn't fit Miriam as she would have liked. But after washing and changing into a fresh shirt in the station's restroom, Miriam felt nearly giddy.

They found an outcropping of bleached rock off the road, parked the car under it, and did their best to sleep in the stifling heat. Seth certainly needed the sleep. Despite his insistence that all was “peachy,” she knew differently.

“You may say you're crisp as a fruit, but you can't hide your tired eyes,” she'd said. “You're taking the Advil as if it were candy, and your eyes are puffy.”

“Don't be silly.” He looked in the mirror and then sat back without comment.

“It's wearing you down.”

He looked past her with glazed eyes. “I'm sure that's what Clive is thinking. He's trying to push us to exhaustion and then close in. But as long as I don't sleep longer than three hours, we're okay.”

He picked up a battery-operated alarm clock they'd purchased with their other supplies. What if it didn't work? Or worse, didn't wake him? She decided not to worry aloud. He needed sleep, not her concerns.

The issue turned out to be moot. Seth couldn't sleep. They resumed their journey after dark, and Seth seemed his energized self again. They talked about fashion in terms Miriam didn't know were part of the fashion world's lexicon. His was a unique view of the world, to be sure. And then they talked about surfing.

She'd been to the beach in Jidda, of course. But always draped from head to foot in the black abaaya and veil. The notion of diving into the ocean wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt had never struck her as such an intoxicating idea until now, hearing Seth talk. For that matter, what would it be like to swim in the waves naked? What a lovely idea!

Constant detours forced on them by the pursuit made their progress slow. They must have avoided a dozen police cars in one four-hour stretch. By eleven o'clock that night, Seth could barely keep his eyes open. He gave up in defeat and rolled the car into a ravine well off the road. Clive and his group would not likely discover them before daybreak. They both fell asleep within the hour.

The alarm chirped three hours later. Miriam pulled herself out of sleep's haze long enough to turn it off. She was fast asleep within seconds.

Miriam was the first to awaken Monday morning. She pushed herself up in the rear seat. Seth was gone. She peered over the front seat. Nothing.

“Seth?”

The car moved under her and she realized that she was sitting on him. Alarmed, she clambered for the door, planting her elbows in his back and on his head in the process. That woke him. He rose groggy and grumbling, but none the wiser.

“We're safe?” she asked.

He looked around, waking. “Safe. What happened to the alarm clock?”

Only then did she remember. “I . . . I think I might have turned it off.”

He rolled his eyes. “That was smart.”

“Forgive me. I was depending on your infallible rising with the sun.”

He smiled and winked. “Touché.”

“Touché.”

They devoured three large bags of Doritos, pulled back onto Highway 178, and headed east. Today they would reach Las Vegas.

Seth had explained his plan the night before, and it sounded like something actors might try in a movie rather than a reasonable course for two international fugitives. Nonetheless, she couldn't deny that this city of sin had a certain appeal. Riding here next to Seth in the desert, she felt perfectly scandalous.

A voice within kept telling her she was throwing herself to the winds of iniquity even thinking such thoughts. She should have her head buried in the Koran, begging God for his grace. And yet she'd been to Madrid with Samir and seen the way the men from her country indulged themselves. She was not nearly so liberal. She was only doing what had to be done to survive for Samir.

Seth had said nothing more to suggest his affection for her. She thought he was only being courteous, because his eyes spoke clearly enough. Although she appreciated his discretion, she was surprised to discover that a part of her regretted his silence. She was indeed a beautiful woman, and he was a compassionate, strong, and handsome man.

Was she actually falling for Seth? She looked out the side window and forced her thoughts in a new direction.

The Mojave Desert was not like the great deserts of Saudi Arabia. Sand dunes rose in the distance, but mostly the land comprised rocky ground shifting in hues of red and white. Seth drove past a sight called Artists' Point, where the rock was green in parts. The Americans called Death Valley—over three million acres of this rugged ground—a “park.”

In a strange way, driving through the desert toward the mysterious city of Las Vegas with Seth at her side felt like a metaphysical passing from death to freedom. There he was again. Seth.

They'd driven for some time without encountering a single vehicle when a sly grin split Seth's face.

“I have an idea,” he said.

She looked at him. “This is new?”

He slowed and veered off the road. Gravel crunched under their tires. The desert was flat on either side of the highway here. Rough outcroppings of rock rose from the ground two hundred meters to their right.

“What are you doing?”

“We have some time. I've decided you need to really experience freedom.”

“Oh? I thought I was free already. Here with you.”

He put the car into park and looked at her. “You haven't even begun to experience true freedom until you have wheels, princess. In America, wheels are synonymous with freedom. Everyone knows this. Come on.”

He opened his door and climbed out.

“What do you mean?”

“Trust me. Get out.”

Miriam climbed out. She stood by her door and looked at him over the Cadillac's shredded vinyl roof. “What?”

“Over here.”

She walked around the hood, grinning with him, clueless to his intentions. “What are we doing?”