The Wild Rose (43 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Seamie looked at the man standing before him. His name was Aziz. He wore a red head scarf and red robes. He stood, feet planted firmly on the ground, arms crossed over his chest, and demanded to know why he—Seamie—was insulting him with his questions and his presence.

Seamie, Abdul, Khalaf, and Khalaf’s men had ridden into the center of the man’s village only moments before. From some traders on their way to Haifa they’d learned they would find who they were looking for here. It had taken them four days to find the village.

Looking around from his vantage point atop his camel, Seamie thought that this place could hardly even be called a village. It was little more than a collection of stone hovels, twenty at the most, and some ramshackle animal pens.

Aziz had come out of one of the crumbling houses to speak with them just after they’d arrived. One of Khalaf’s men who’d bought Willa’s necklace at Umm al Quittan had told Khalaf that this was the man from whom they’d bought it.

“I want information on the woman,” Seamie said to Aziz now, for Aziz spoke some English. “The woman from the airplane. The one you kidnapped. What did you do with her?”

Aziz laughed. He spat. He said nothing.

Seamie reached behind himself into his saddlebag, slowly and carefully to show that he was not reaching for a gun, and pulled out a small leather sack. He shook it so that everyone could hear the coins inside it clink.

“Twenty guineas,” he said, looking Aziz in the eye. “It’s yours. If you tell me where she is.”

Aziz laughed. He let out a cry, sudden and piercing, like that of a falcon, and suddenly two dozen men came out of the houses, each one armed with a rifle.

“Mine if I tell you,” he said, nodding at the sack and smiling. “And also if I don’t.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

A minute? An hour? A day? A week?

Willa Alden had no idea how long she had slept. When she woke, she saw a man sitting in the chair near her bed. He was tall and handsome, with silvery blond hair, and Willa wondered, again, if she was seeing things. She closed her eyes, waited for a few seconds, then opened them again. The man was still there.

“Max?” she said. “Max von Brandt?”

The man smiled and nodded. “We meet in the desert this time, instead of in London, or in the Himalayas.” He leaned forward in his chair and touched the back of his hand to her cheek. “You feel much cooler,” he said. “You look better, too. Then again, you should. You slept for four days straight.”

“Max, I must tell you, this is a bit of a surprise,” Willa said. She tried to sit up and gasped with pain.

“Be careful, Willa. Your ribs are still healing.”

“What are you doing here? What am I doing here? What is this place?” she said, pulling herself upright with the help of her bedrail. The pain was intense. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her upper lip.

“To answer your last question first—this place is a hospital. For Turkish and German troops. In Damascus. You are here, in Damascus, because you are a spy. I am here for the very same reason.”

“You . . . you’re a spy?” Willa said.

“Yes, for the German secret service. I was stationed in London for quite some time, then Paris. Now Damascus. The situation here is critical, as I’m sure you know.”

“You’re sure I know? Know what, Max?” Willa said, putting a note of irritation in her voice.

She had quickly assessed the situation. She was quite certain now that her Turkish jailers had kept her alive on Max’s orders—though he didn’t know exactly who he was keeping alive until he’d seen her in the interrogation room. The Turks, simply following commands, hadn’t particularly cared if she lived or died, but Max was a different story. He’d had feelings for her once. Now he believed she was a spy, but if she could convince him otherwise, he might let her go.

Max didn’t answer her question right away. He looked at her for a bit, frowning slightly, then he said, “I’m being completely truthful with you, Willa. In return, I want you to be truthful with me. . . . Where is Lawrence and when is he planning to attack Damascus?”

Willa laughed. “Max,” she said, “you’ve got it all wrong. I’m not a spy. I’m a photographer, as you know. I needed money so I talked Pathé into footing the bill for me to come out here, and then I badgered General Allenby—I’m sure you know who he is—into letting me follow Lawrence around. I’ve been taking stills and shooting some film, too. It all goes back to London, gets cleared, and then goes into the newsreels shown at every movie theater in England and America. Hardly top secret spy stuff, is it?”

Willa had shifted in her bed as she spoke, waking up the pain in her ribs again. It was getting worse. She wanted some morphine to dull it.

“Hello?” she said loudly, leaning forward in her bed. “Is anybody there?
Hello?
Crumbs! Where’s that nurse?”

“She’ll come in a minute,” Max said.

His smile was gone. There was a slight hint of menace in his voice. And Willa, sweating, was suddenly chilled by the knowledge that Max had sent the nurse out and that he would bring her back only when he felt like it.

“Listen to me, Willa. Listen very carefully,” he said now. “You are in a great deal of trouble. I saved you from being very badly beaten the other day. And probably raped, too. But I cannot save you forever. I have only so much influence. A motion picture camera was found in the wreckage of your plane. The film inside it was of a Turkish camp in the Jabal ad Duruz hills.”

Willa’s heart sank at that. She’d hoped that the film had been ruined in the crash.

“You and the pilot were very brave,” Max continued. “You flew low and got some rather comprehensive footage.”

Willa did not answer him. Max stood. He put his hands on her bed rail and leaned in close to her.

“I can help you. I want to help you,” he said. “But you have to help me, too. I saved you from those animals in the interrogation room, and I can do more, but only if you give me something. I must have information on Lawrence.”

“I have none,” Willa said stubbornly. “Yes, you are right. I was on a recon mission, but it failed. As you know. As for Lawrence, he does not share his plans with me. Only with Auda and Faisal.”

Max straightened. He nodded. “Perhaps you would like a little more time to think about my request,” he said.

He walked out into the hallway and signaled for two orderlies to come into the room. They did. One was pushing a wheelchair.

“Where am I going?” Willa asked Max warily.

“Sightseeing,” he replied.

Wordlessly, the two men lifted Willa out of her bed. They were not particularly gentle and they jostled her. Though she tried not to, Willa cried out in pain.

Max dismissed the men, then wheeled Willa out of her room, down the corridor, and out of the hospital. The hot, dusty streets of Damascus sprawled out before her. She had never been to the city before, and she took mental notes now of which way they were heading and what buildings she passed. They traveled for five minutes or so, made two left turns, and then arrived at their destination—the prison.

Willa panicked when she saw it, and tried to climb out of the wheelchair, but a firm hand on her shoulder pressed her back down.

“Don’t worry,” Max said. “I’m not taking you back to your cell.”

He pushed her through the arched entryway, through which camels and horses and vehicles passed, over a cobbled court, past various buildings, to a dirt yard behind the prison. It was enclosed by a high stone wall and it was empty.

“What is this?” Willa asked. “What are we doing here?”

Before Max could answer her, a group of about eight soldiers marched past them. In their midst, shackled, was a Bedouin man.

“Howeitat,” Max said. “One of Auda’s and a spy.”

As Willa watched, the soldiers marched the Bedouin to the far wall. They tied his hands behind him, then blindfolded him.

“No,” Willa said, realizing what they were about to do. “Please, Max. No.”

“I think you should see this,” he said.

The soldiers raised their rifles. Their commander raised his sword. When he lowered it, they fired. The Bedouin arched backward into the wall, then slumped to the ground, twitching. Red stains blossomed across his white robes.

Wordlessly, Max wheeled Willa back to her hospital room, then helped her get back into her bed. She was shaking with pain and sick with shock. Max summoned the nurse and told her to give Willa a pill. She swallowed it immediately, wanting the pain to stop, wanting the images of the slaughtered man to go away, wanting to escape this misery with a deep, narcotic sleep.

When the nurse left, Max fluffed Willa’s pillow for her. Then he said, “What you just saw will become your fate. I cannot stop it. Not unless you help me. Not unless you tell me what I need to know.”

Max pulled the crisp white sheet over her legs. “I care for you, Willa,” he said. “I have since the first day I met you, and I do not want to see you standing in front of a firing squad.”

He kissed her cheek, told her he would see her tomorrow, and took his leave. He stopped inside the doorway, turned back to her, and said, “Think about my request, but not for too much longer.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Seamie raised his canteen to his lips and took a swig of water. His body swayed slightly as he drank, rising and dipping in the saddle with every plodding step his camel took. He looked ahead of himself, through the shimmering waves of heat rising off the sand, at what looked like an infinite expanse of desert. He’d been traveling across it for three weeks now.

“Do you trust him?” he asked Khalaf al Mor, who was riding next to him.

“No,” Khalaf replied, “but I don’t have to trust him. I know he will do as we’ve asked. There’s too much gold in it for him not to.”

Aziz rode about twenty yards ahead of them, flanked by two of his own men. They were riding north, to Damascus, but would stop at Lawrence’s camp first to rest and water their animals. No one knew where Lawrence made his camp—he changed locations frequently to ensure that—but Aziz claimed that he knew where Lawrence was now, and that it was on the way to Damascus. He said there was shade there, and a well that gave plenty of fresh, sweet water.

Seamie hoped Khalaf was right about Aziz. He had been right about many things so far. That they were here, heading to Damascus—that they were here at all, actually—was due entirely to him. Khalaf was the one who’d persuaded Aziz and his village full of armed bandits not to kill them.

Only minutes after Seamie and Khalaf had ridden to the village to ask about Willa, Aziz and his men had taken the bag of gold Seamie offered him for information on Willa, and were about to take everything else from Seamie, Khalaf, and Khalaf’s men—including their lives—until Khalaf told Aziz there would be more gold for him if he did not.

“Spare our lives, take us to the girl, and I will give you twice as much gold again upon our safe return,” he said.

Instantly the guns were lowered. Warm greetings and apologies for the misunderstanding were offered, and the visitors were invited into Aziz’s house for a meal. He told them how he had seen the British plane go down, had ridden to the wreck in search of plunder, found Willa, and taken her to Damascus.

“I almost did not,” Aziz explained. “She was badly injured. There was every chance she would die on the way, and then the whole trip, the time, the wear and tear on my camels—all of it would have been for nothing. But she survived. And I got two thousand dinars. So it was a profitable trip after all, thanks be to Allah.”

Seamie, enraged by the man’s callous cruelty, had nearly lashed out at Aziz. Khalaf’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“Do not allow your anger to lead you,” he said under his breath. “You can do nothing for Willa if you are dead.”

“Why?” Seamie asked Aziz, barely able to keep his voice even. “Why did you sell her to the Turks?”

Aziz looked at him as if he were a simpleton. “Because they pay more than the British,” he said.

The following day, Seamie and Khalaf set off again, joined by Aziz and two of his men. They had been traveling for three days now and were still another three days from where Aziz said Lawrence’s camp was. Seamie was weary. His wound was oozing and hurting him. He changed the dressings daily, but the strenuousness and constant motion of desert travel aggravated his stitches and slowed his healing. And getting to Damascus was only part of the battle.

“What will you do once you reach the city, eh?” Aziz had asked him, laughing. “Make an assault on it yourself? You are a fool, Seamus Finnegan, but I like fools. Fools and their money are soon parted.”

“He will get us to Damascus,” Khalaf al Mor said now, pulling Seamie out of his thoughts. “What we do once we get there, that is the question.”

“It’s a question I ask myself all the time,” Seamie said. “I never get an answer.”

“Then do not ask yourself. Ask Allah. With Allah, all things are possible,” Khalaf said serenely.

Right, Seamie thought. I’ll just ask God. I’ll ask Him to help me find the woman I love, the one who isn’t my wife. The woman with whom I’ve caused my wife and my best friend nothing but grief. The one I still dream about and long for, even though I know I shouldn’t. I’m sure He’ll understand. And oh, by the way, God, it’s me and Khalaf and a few of his men against an entire Turkish garrison. Will you see what you can do, old boy?

“Have faith, my friend,” Khalaf said. “Have faith.”

All right, then, Seamie decided. He’d do it. He’d have faith.

It was better than having nothing.