Grains of Truth (17 page)

Mohamed threw up his hands and rolled his eyes in disbelief. “That’s all? To what purpose, Julia? To what purpose?”

“He was to, ah, pass some information about the Muslim Brotherhood. Something of great interest to the U.S.” She mumbled the words, fear fading into confusion and embarrassment at having believed for a single second that this would be a simple job. Guilt also began to overshadow all else at having allowed him to be used. But what choice did she have?

“Oh, my god! What could you have been thinking? Do you not understand the danger you place yourself in? The danger you create for me?”

“I’m sorry, Mohamed, really sorry, but honestly I had no choice. I will tell you how it all happened, but first let me tell you that it’s over. I have the message.” She attempted to swallow the bitter taste in her mouth. “I’m sorry that the man is dead. But my assignment is over. And we’re safe. Nothing more can happen. Please, just let me go to my cabin,” she pleaded. “I’m a complete wreck. I promise I’ll tell you the whole story later, when we’ve rested and have more privacy.” Her eyes shifted in the direction of other passengers nearby.

She drew a deep, ragged breath and reached out a tentative hand to touch his arm. His icy glare caused her to pull it back. “Everything will be all right.”

Far from pacified and unquestionably displeased, he gestured impatiently and she took advantage of the lull in the tirade to flee. Before reaching the stairs, she glimpsed Alexander Bryant’s profile in the near distance at the rail. She wondered how much of the heated conversation he might have overheard.

The thought of a hot bath was tempting—to try and wash away the memory of those staring eyes. But more than that, she needed time to think about what happened. And how much she should confess. Most of all, she needed to find out what those messages contained. The messages that may have caused a cold-blooded murder.

Chapter 21

Brad Caldwell strode down the long hall to the corner office. Bob Bronson rarely summoned him and almost never using the word “immediately.” He rapped on the door and waited until he heard a faint buzzing sound before turning the knob. It reminded him that the high level of Bob’s position made tight security more of an imperative these days.

His boss stood behind a littered desk, glasses balanced on the end of his nose, scanning a document in one hand while the other absentmindedly rubbed a bristly chin. The wall of windows behind him usually provided a panoramic view of the bay and Golden Gate Bridge. The present view was a gray blank, dense with the fog that had cloaked the city all day. Through its thick, damp blanket could be heard the steady moan of fog horns, warning ships entering the ports to proceed with caution. Good advice, thought Brad morosely.

“Sit down, Caldwell.”

Brad lowered himself guardedly into one of the chairs facing the desk, keeping his eyes focused on the weary, down-turned face. Whatever it was, the news was bad enough to rattle the normally unshakeable senior agent.

“Another man down.” Bob looked up with a scowl. “In Egypt. Zed was shot in broad daylight earlier today. Word came “unofficially” to our Cairo office from the Egyptian Security Service two hours after the incident.”

Brad didn’t need for it to be spelled out. If they received notification, that meant the Egyptians were onto Zed. They knew he worked for the U.S. It also meant that the leak in the Egyptian forces may have blown his cover, resulting in his death.

“Where?”

“Kom Ombo. At the site. Most of the groups from the boats were still there.”

This meant that Julia Grant, who Brad knew to be in Kom Ombo that day, might know that Zed had been eliminated. Or she might not. They might not have made contact. Both men were painfully aware they had not heard from her in almost two days. And they knew that there was probably no place for her to transmit anything now until the boat reached Aswan.

If she had the message. If she reached Aswan. 

Brad kept an impassive face as he asked, “Was there any mention of Julia from the Egyptians?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Well, that’s something, anyway.” 

“No further word from her backup on the boat?” Bob asked in turn, already knowing the probable answer. “Anything on Zahar?”

“Nothing since Luxor. And he’s a hard one to track, but we already knew that. I’ll put a message on the web for her to keep calm and stick strictly to the plan. Anything else?”

Bob jerked the glasses from his nose and rubbed tired, burning eyes as he flopped down in his chair. “Yes, damn-it-all-to-hell, there is something else!” he blurted out uncharacteristically. “Could you please tell me who for Christ’s sake we think we are, sending an untrained, innocent civilian into what amounts to a combat zone?”

Brad looked down at his neatly trimmed nails, unable—and unwilling—to answer his boss’s rhetorical question. America’s spying operations were in a big mess and everyone involved knew it. After September 11th, all fifteen of the unwieldy agencies, including the C.I.A and F.B.I., had been reorganized under the leadership of one man: the Director of National Intelligence. But the secret world of the U.S. was, and had been for a long time, in a ludicrous state of inefficiency and disorganization. 

The arcane agencies failed—time and time again—to predict impending disasters both at home and abroad. It was widely recognized that the agencies were guilty of not sharing information, poor management and shockingly inadequate intelligence collection.

Although this new director ostensibly possessed the authority to bring about some kind of cohesion, it was unclear who, in fact, controlled the budget. The buck, as always, was the bottom line. It would be some time, perhaps a very long time, before the agencies could function comprehensively and efficiently. Add to that the difficulties of dealing with the constant threat of terrorism, now being conducted in a global grass-roots-style Jihad, and their jobs had become excruciatingly difficult—if not downright impossible.

“My responsibility,” Brad said, “my bright idea.” 

“No, you know damn well where the buck stops. Now all we can do is wait.” Bob made a sour expression and shook his head in disgust. “Keep me informed of anything relevant. Day or night. That’s all.”

At the curt dismissal, Brad made a grateful—and hasty—exit.

~

Julia locked the cabin door with shaking hands and leaned against it with eyes closed, crushing the red blanket to her chest. “Oh, please,” she whispered, “please, dear Lord, Allah, Buddha and anyone else listening, please don’t let anything happen to Mohamed.”

She laid the blanket, laptop case and her purse on the bed. On unsteady legs, she crossed the cabin to close the curtains, noticing as she did that the boat was again moving up the river. Her hand shook only a little as she poured a glass of bottled water and drank it thirstily, in a vain attempt to relieve her painfully dry throat.

Finally sinking onto the bed, she unzipped her purse and removed the wad of bills Zed handed her. She shivered at the thought of the man’s hand touching them in his final moments. The money spilled out on the bedcover to reveal the single piece of paper, folded several times. After she carefully unfolded it, surprise raised her brows to see words written clearly in English. On closer inspection they didn’t make sense: something about the scent of the flowers of the prophet. Hmmmm. Curiosity began to supersede fear.

Her forehead wrinkled as she remembered him saying he hadn’t had time to put it in the final code. She turned to the case, removed the computer and switched it on. While it started up she picked up the blanket. Cleverly tucked into the last fold was the square envelope. It contained another, well-padded envelope, which in turn contained a Data Traveler—the same kind of flash drive Brad Caldwell had given her in what seemed like a lifetime ago. Huh, she thought, must be government issue.

With an almost steady hand, she inserted it. Following her instructions, she double-clicked on the Vocabulary icon then opened the flash drive. Only one file appeared on the screen. She opened it. Gibberish. Copying the text, she pasted it to a new document then saved it in Vocabulary. To be safe, she closed the flash drive file and removed it. In such an agitated state, it would be just her luck to accidentally erase the whole damn thing. 

Her throat was still so tight and dry she could barely swallow. She gulped water straight from the bottle this time. It took, once she clicked to open the saved file, an agonizingly long time before anything came up on the screen. This time the text was intelligible but was merely several pages of flowery descriptions of ancient Egyptian ceremonial rites. Certainly nothing that remotely pertained to terrorists or their activities.

Well, she thought with mixed feelings of disappointment and relief, she’d followed the instructions exactly. This must be right. The coding of the Vocabulary program was a total mystery but, as Brad said, the message would first be coded, then further encrypted by the program. Or something like that. This was definitely beyond her area of expertise, and Julia was not, as she considered it, devastated by not knowing the content of the real message within the message.

The handwritten note lay next to her leg on the bed. She picked it up and typed the words slowly, painstakingly inputting every letter exactly as written. First saving it as a new document in Vocabulary, she waited, expecting it to morph into more of the same coded prose on Egyptian culture. When the short paragraph popped onto the screen, it made her blink. And blink again.

~

WEAPONS SMUGGLING INTO ISRAEL FROM ALL SURROUNDING BORDERS CONFIRMED. JIHAD INVASION AND TAKING OF DIMONA NUCLEAR FACILITY TO BE AIDED BY DIVERSION OF DEADLY BIOCHEMICAL ATTACK ON JERUSALEM.  CHEMICALS TO BE SMUGGLED FROM EGYPT WITHIN NEXT WEEK.

~

“Oh, no,” she moaned, “no, no, it can’t be.” But of course it could. The room spun around—ceiling, walls and windows colliding without sound in the suddenly airless vacuum.

When she was able to refocus, one thing became excruciatingly clear: Julia’s entire adult life had been spent searching for and supporting rational, peaceful solutions to difficult problems. Everything she believed in before this moment and the harrowing realities of the past week crashed together and crystallized, in a blinding clarity.

Absolutely nothing and no one, including concern for her own safety, must prevent her from doing whatever she could to circumvent this horrifying conspiracy—this conspiracy to commit genocide.

Chapter 22

Passengers strolled the deck, taking advantage of the cool evening air, or sat in lounge chairs enjoying the scenery along the river banks as the boat glided steadily toward Aswan. Alexander rested his forearms on the rail, brooding over the day’s events.

The assassination in Kom Ombo was most unfortunate. The resulting unrest and police activity had prevented him from making his scheduled contact. He hoped this wouldn’t deter the customers from keeping the appointment in Aswan. Thus far, he’d learned bloody damn little of what was planned or needed. Once they reached shore, he fully intended to communicate with James to ascertain what, if any, knowledge he might possess about the possible role Julia Grant could be playing in all of this.

For, after considerable deliberation, he was convinced that she was somehow involved. Her behavior before and after the killing, as well as that of her friend Mohamed, had been peculiar—and highly suspicious. At present, the only course of action open to him was to get closer to the pair and see if he could find out what they were up to. Julia had made a point of ignoring him completely while they were confined in the lounge earlier. He hesitated to approach her directly. He would have to make an attempt to befriend the Egyptian. As he moodily mulled all this over, a strident voice trilled out his name, jarring him from his sober thoughts.

“Oh, Alexander, my darling man! How lovely to find you here in this delicious twilight.” Fiona MacDonald’s bright eyes shone with determination, as if zeroing in on a long-awaited meal. She flitted to his side, tucking her bony arm into his as she looked possessively into his eyes. “Would you mind awfully accompanying me on a promenade around the deck before dinner?” 

He looked down at the eager upturned face and experienced an unexpected pang of sympathy. Beneath her irritating aggression must lie a real and aching loneliness. He knew a great deal about loneliness and how it chipped away at your soul. The persistent pain of it manifested itself in many ways.

“Of course, Fiona, I’d be delighted.” This “promenade” might also serve his purposes quite well, he thought, as he saw Mohamed emerge from the stairs. No time like the present to put his plan into action.

~

Mohamed still harbored a bitter resentment of Julia’s duplicity, and he burned with questions concerning her strange and inexplicable behavior. He’d thought he knew this woman so well. She was a kind, caring, compassionate person who would never intentionally hurt anyone—man or beast. From the day they’d first met, he’d known her to be a staunch pacifist. She loathed politics. Her passions were for nature and beauty, in all its forms.

And for him, of course.

Guilt abruptly suppressed the inapt surge of ego, and the guilt was almost as quickly displaced by despair. This was the cycle—the pattern—that had tormented him for the past few years, from the day he’d set eyes on her—his beautiful, passionate, loving Julia.