A man knelt beside him, putting down a kerosene lantern. He grasped Lamar's longish hair in his hand and pulled his head back. With his other hand the jailer forced Lamar's eyelids open.
"Look, look, Cross-Worshipper. Behold the light of Allah. If you cannot endure it, it will burn your eyes from the sockets of your very skull."
"Leave me alone," Lamar said resignedly. "I want to go home. I want my parents."
"And we want this unholy holy man, Eldon Sluggard," the voice hissed. "You do not know me, Cross-Worshipper, but I am the one who saved your life on the oil tanker, I knocked you into oblivion. I kept you alive. Now I will do you another favor."
"I wish you had killed me," Lamar Booe moaned, the light seeping past his eyelids. It was red. Everything was red. But the pain was lessening.
"I will take you back to America. Back to Sapulpa, Oklahoma. You would like that, Lamar Booe?"
"Please. "
"I will take you back, only if you lead me into this den of serpents where this Sluggard dwells."
"Why?"
"So that he will face his just punishment. He tricked you into invading the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now he has abandoned you. Do you not want to see him punished?"
"Yes," Lamar Booe sobbed. "I hate him with all my might."
"Not as much as I do," said Rashid Shiraz, yanking Lamar Booe to his feet and hauling him from the cell.
Chapter 11
The Reverend Eldon Sluggard had collapsed into his conference-room chair like a deflated balloon. His broad face was flushed with release. He watched Victoria Hoar quietly and expertly reapply the reddest lipstick he had ever seen to her moist mouth. Just watching that mouth redden got him going all over again.
Someone knocked at the door.
"Who is it?" Sluggard asked, placing his mock Bible on his lap so that his recurring problem didn't show.
"Head of security, Reverend Sluggard."
"Come in."
A man built like two linebackers welded side by side stepped into the room.
"Yeah?" Sluggard asked, wiping his face. Victoria Hoar retreated to a corner of the room and pretended to examine a bookcase.
"There are two men at the gate, Reverend Sluggard. They say they can solve your security problem."
"Do Ah have a security problem?" Sluggard asked.
"Not that I'm aware of."
"Yes, you do," a squeaky voice said.
"What is that?" Sluggard asked, clutching the Bible in his lap.
The security chief looked around, as if for a hidden loudspeaker.
"Your security problem," a deep male voice said. A different voice.
"That sounds like the two I mentioned," the security chief said frantically. "But they're being held at the gate. How can they be here?"
"Obviously, there is a security problem," Victoria Hoar said coolly. Her eyes darted from Sluggard to the security man.
"Don't just stand there like an oaf," Sluggard shouted. "They're in this room. Find them!"
The security chief crashed around the room desperately. It was a rectangle furnished only with the conference table and chairs. The walls were all bookcases and TV monitors. There was no place one person could hide, never mind two of them. The security chief flailed around the room anyway, his hands running over the walls, as if seeking a secret door.
"You're getting warmer," the deep male voice taunted.
"No, colder. He is getting colder," the squeaky voice said querulously.
"Be fair, Little Father. Don't make it any harder for him."
Victoria Hoar stepped away from the roaming security chief. "Where could they be?" she asked sharply. "There's no possible hiding place."
"Never mind that. What I want to know is how long have they been here?" Eldon Sluggard's face was desperate. He was seeing his name on the cover of next week's National Enquirer.
"We came in with the uniformed side of beef," the deep voice offered.
"Impossible!" Victoria retorted. "He came in alone."
"Dammit, man!" Sluggard raged. "Find those two! They're making an idiot of you!"
The security chief, his face reddening, pulled a .357 Magnum revolver out of a shoulder holster. His beefy fist made it look like a .38.
"Don't worry," he growled. "I'll get them."
He crashed around the room like a charging buffalo. Eldon Sluggard retreated to a corner. Victoria Hoar joined him. Panic was in Sluggard's face. Victoria's registered only a puzzled intellectual curiosity.
"They're not here," the security chief said after a thorough search. "It must be a trick. A radio transmitter or something."
"Try under the table," the squeaky voice suggested. "Of course, under the table," the security guard said. He bent at the waist to look. And when he did, a lean man in a black T-shirt was revealed. He had been standing behind the security chief. He smiled.
"Hi!" he said.
An Oriental head stuck out from behind the lean man's chest. He waved a long-nailed hand.
"They're right behind you!" Eldon Sluggard howled.
The guard shot to his feet. "What?" he said. To Sluggard's horrified eyes it looked as if the guard was suddenly standing alone by the conference table. The two men had vanished the instant the security chief straightened up.
"Behind you!"