Saint (11 page)

“I once lived in the desert,” Kelly said. “In Ethiopia when I was ten. I was born in Israel and sold on the black market. To an Afghan warlord who loved me for my fair skin and hated me because I wouldn't do what he wanted. I escaped into the desert when I was fifteen and ended up in Hungary, where I met Agotha. I studied under her, you know.”

Another long stretch of comfortable silence filled the tunnel.

“You're scheduled to go on your first mission in two weeks if you succeed in your training,” Kelly said.

“I will succeed.”

She didn't immediately agree, and he wondered why.

“I've always succeeded.”

“The final test will be very difficult. If you fail, Kalman will kill you, assuming the challenge hasn't killed you already. Kalman doesn't want anyone to succeed—it's his way of making sure only the best enter the field.”

She tightened her grip on his hand. “But I want you to succeed.”

“I always succeed,” he said again.

“If you do, you'll be leaving this place.”

“But with you. And then we'll return.”

“Yes, with me. Always with me.”

“Will I always be in training?”

“Is there any other way to stay sharp?”

“Do you enjoy hurting me?” he asked.

Carl had no clue where the question had come from. He was talking without really thinking. Half of his mind was still in the darkness, focused on the current objective, listening for any sound of approach. The other half was asking this odd question.

She wasn't answering him.

“I know that your hurting me leads to strength,” he said, ashamed that he'd asked. “You're helping me be strong. I'm thankful for that.”

Kelly removed her hand from his. He'd hurt her feelings! She was upset with him. He wanted to shut his emotions down now, but he wondered if he really should. There was a strange life in this terrible empathy that had suddenly overtaken him. He wanted to comfort her heart. He was her protector, every part of her, which meant he could only protect her emotions with his own.

It was the first time he'd thought of his role this way. But he felt powerless to do anything, so he just sat in the darkness and let himself feel uncomfortable.

Kelly started to cry. The sound was very soft, a sniffing followed by a nearly silent sob.

Carl reached his hand into the darkness. When he found her, he realized that she'd rolled over to her side and had curled up in a ball. She lay on the tunnel's dirt floor, sobbing softly.

But why? Didn't she know that he loved her? Maybe she didn't.

Carl rested his hand on her hip, frozen by awkwardness. He couldn't remember her ever being so hurt. It reminded him of a time, long ago, when he lay sobbing on his cell floor, overcome by his training. They'd cut him and inserted needles into him and placed electrodes on different parts of his body and forced him to look into light for long hours and then left him alone in his pit for two days. These things had made him want to die, and he cried like Kelly was crying now.

It made him want to cry again.

Carl laid his head on her hip. Before he could stop himself, he was crying with her. He didn't know why.

She cried harder then, which made him feel an even deeper sorrow. A flood of anguish gushed from the darkest place of his soul, and he couldn't stop himself. He began to shake with sobs.

It must have lasted for a full five minutes. Strange and terrifying minutes.

Kelly sat up and wrapped her arms around him. She cried into his neck. “I'm sorry, Carl. I don't want to hurt you. I hate myself for hurting you. I just . . .” Her voice was choked off by sobs.

Carl sat back against the tunnel wall like an emptying sandbag, still unable to stop the flow of unidentified grief. He loved Kelly. He loved her so very much. The pain she was feeling was his fault. How could he have done this to the only person who cared about him?

They held each other for a very long time until their crying finally subsided. Then stopped. Then they sat in silence.

And Carl began to forget the way he'd felt. Englishman was out there somewhere, waiting.

“IT'S TIME,” Carl said.

They'd been in the black tunnel for almost a day, he guessed. Exhausted by his time in the pit leading up to this day, he'd fallen asleep and rested for ten hours. Kelly had slept through the night as well, although they couldn't tell day or night down here.

They didn't speak of their emotional outburst, but Kelly kissed him on the lips and assured him that it wasn't his fault. She loved him very much. They'd left it at that, much to his relief.

“Can you open the door that leads to the hospital?”

“You don't want to exit through the hospital.”

“My opponent, likely Englishman, is either there or waiting upstairs in my barracks.”

“How do you know?”

“He'll know by now that we hid close, beyond the reach of the GPS monitors, which he's likely examined. The monitors are in the hospital. My guess is that he's there, waiting for me to show my signature, or above, waiting for me to show my body. I'll show myself in the barracks, and if he's not there, I'll backtrack through here and come around behind him.”

“If Englishman isn't in the hospital?”

“Then I'll hunt him. Either way I have to go on the offensive.”

She considered this for a moment, then agreed. “I'll exit through the hospital and leave the door unlocked.”

Carl started to leave, but she held his arm. “No matter what happens here, Carl, remember that I love you.”

“I will.”

She reached up in the dark and kissed him on the cheek. “Remember.”

Carl waited until she opened the door at the far end before walking toward his pit. He hurried up the stairs, found the barracks empty, and waited by the window, eyes on the hospital a hundred yards away. From his vantage he would see anyone who attempted to leave the building.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Still no sign. If he was right, there should have been a sign by now. He had to change his course of action now, before—

The door to the hospital flew open. Kelly ran out. Still no sign of Englishman. Was there a problem? Maybe something had happened after they'd gone into hiding. Why was she sprinting toward his bunker?

He retreated to the stairwell so that his field of vision covered both the hall below and the door. If Dale came either way, he could make an escape under cover.

Kelly pulled up to the door and threw it open. “He's not there!”

She was telling him this? Ordinarily she would only observe, never report. She'd unlocked the door for him only at his suggestion, not hers. The games were always between the recruits, never the handlers.

Yet she was telling him that Dale wasn't at the hospital.

And then he knew for himself that Englishman wasn't at the hospital, because he stepped up behind Kelly.

Carl dropped into the stairwell. He landed on the fifth step and saw then that Englishman didn't have the gun trained on him.

He'd shoved it into Kelly's temple and was pushing her into the bunkhouse.

“You go, she dies,” Englishman said.

Carl's first thought was that this maneuver had been planned by both of them. Why else would Englishman have waited for Kelly to arrive before stepping out? The coordination was too tight.

Englishman smiled and jerked Kelly's head back by her hair. “She's right. I'm not in the hospital because I'm here, and I'm here because I knew within the hour yesterday that
you
were here, in your pathetic little pit. I've been waiting too. I didn't expect such eager assistance from your lover. In the middle of the room, or she gets a bullet.”

“He's lying!” Kelly cried. “What do you think you're going to do, shoot me? Agotha will kill you with the flip of a switch in a matter of seconds.”

“I didn't hear anyone say that I couldn't use you to get to him. I have more than forty bites on my body, and they all tell me I should kill Saint. Why not the woman who loves Saint as well? We all know she's nothing more than a mouthpiece for Kalman. I doubt he'd miss her that much.”

To Carl he said, “Get up here, wonder boy.”

Something was wrong, drastically wrong, but Carl couldn't identify it. Surely Kelly had no role in Englishman's appearance. She seemed genuinely frantic. Never mind that; she would never betray him!

He came out of the stairwell in two long steps.

“Knife on the floor,” Englishman said, pressing the gun into Kelly's cheek.

Carl backed toward the middle of the room.

“Knife on the floor!”

He raced through alternatives. In the moment Englishman removed his gun from Kelly's head to adjust his aim, Carl could and would throw the knife. Englishman knew this. A quick flip of Carl's wrist, and Englishman would have a knife buried in his eye.

Carl could throw the knife now, while the gun was pointed at Kelly's temple, but a simple spasm from Englishman and she would die.

There were several other alternatives, but the only ones in which both he and Kelly lived depended on Englishman. Would he really hurt Kelly? The man would kill him, Carl was sure of that, but killing a handler was another matter.

Unless there was more to it.

There was a way for Kelly, Carl saw. She might be able to get them out of this situation. But would she? If he dropped his knife now, he would be completely dependent on her to move at the right time, or Englishman would likely kill him.

Their eyes met, but he saw no encouragement in Kelly, only fear.

“Now I count, and her shoulder goes first,” Englishman said. “Please don't make this difficult on yourself. Just drop the knife.”

Carl opened his fingers and let the knife clatter to the floor.

Englishman smiled. He licked Kelly's ear. “Had to throw in some cliché, you know.”

Cliché? Something to be expected.

“Now it's time for me to shove her to the side. That's the way it always goes. The villain shoves the princess to one side, thus making a convenient opening for the prince to kill the villain without hurting the princess.”

His words seemed out of place. But that was exactly what Englishman wanted. Carl had been here before.

Englishman shoved Kelly to his left. “No interference, princess. I haven't hurt you, remember that. I simply used you the way Carl used you to escape. No penalties.”

He was right. She wouldn't interfere. She couldn't, not without facing consequences from Kalman. The training protocols were inflexible. Kelly glared at Englishman but stayed where she was.

The man leveled his gun at Carl. “You do know that I've been given permission to kill you.
Incapacitate
or
kill
were the words used, I believe.”

Carl said nothing.

“The fact that you stand there like a piece of wood makes me think I should just get it over with. On the other hand, a bullet through the leg would be a little more interesting, wouldn't it?”

For a long moment he stared at Carl. Then he tilted the gun down and aimed at Carl's thigh.

The room rocked with a thunderclap.

But it wasn't Dale's gun. It was Kelly's. She had a gun in her right fist, pointed at Englishman, who was looking at a bloodied hand. His gun had flown across the room.

“No,” Kelly said. “It doesn't end like this. Carl had you beat.”

The man lowered his hand and let it bleed on the floor. His face was white, but he showed no other outward sign of pain.

Kelly walked over to Englishman and slammed her gun into his temple. He dropped, unconscious.

She's broken the rules. She's saved me but only by breaking the
rules at terrible risk to herself.

“No one hears about this,” Kelly said in a low voice. She stared at him with shining eyes. “Not a word, you hear, Carl? Remove this from your memory. Remember only if you ever doubt my loyalty to you.”

“Why did you do this?”

“He was going to shoot you through the leg. I love you.”

“My leg would have healed.”

“Not in time for your mission. As far as Kalman's concerned, you shot Dale.”

“What will Englishman say?”

“What I tell him to. Agotha's waiting for you.”

Carl stepped past them, but he paused at the door and turned back. Kelly's blue eyes searched his soul.

He would die for her.

10

D
avid Abraham paced Air Force One's conference room, stroking his beard. Robert had never seen the man so bothered. Gone was that stoic confidence that came with his seasoned spiritual father persona. Gone was the calm and collected demeanor of wisdom. The man before Robert and CIA Director Ed Carter looked downright tormented.

“Please, David, sit. You're making me nervous.”

“And you should be nervous.
I'm
nervous.”

“I can see that. But I don't think I understand why. Nothing you've said sounds as ominous as you're suggesting.”

Robert had invited David to ride along for the sake of this conver-sation with the director, but he was beginning to think that it was a mistake.

Carter clearly wasn't comfortable speaking frankly with David in the room, and David hadn't clarified his concern regarding Assim Feroz in any way that made sense, perhaps because Carter was still present.

“Sit, David, I insist.”

David pulled out a chair and sat. “Forgive me, Robert. I simply don't have the kind of details that would justify my concern to any-one other than myself. I can only say what my son saw.”

“In this”—the president waved his right hand through the air—“this foggy vision Samuel had nearly a year ago.”

“Yes, it was quite some time ago, and yes, what he saw was admittedly rather general. But he's not given to visions. It's the first one he's ever had, I think. But what he saw is now knocking on our door.”