SIALKOT • CARTAGENA
The light was searing and shockingly bright, even through the opaque, fluttering shields of his eyelids. It burned into his brain, lighting the gray matter, illuminating every neuron, axon, and synapse between. The light joined the dull ache behind his right ear, the twin sources of pain coalescing, bundling right in the middle, preparing to radiate. The pain was intense, clouding out all thought. Dizzying, crushing, mobile waves of pain, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes yet . . .
Randall Craig stirred, and his eyes snapped open. He pushed away the agonizing thump in his head, trying to think it through. An impossible task right from the outset . . . Christ, it hurt. He sat up, looked around, blinking away the confusion. The light wasn’t as bad now, and it was warmer than he’d thought at first. Not fluorescent light, so it wasn’t an office or warehouse. He was in a house, he realized, his impression confirmed by the comfortable surroundings. A scarred desk, built of sturdy oak and stacked with paper; a chair covered in cracked faux leather; small watercolors on two of the walls. A home office, maybe, but there was a bed. He was sitting on it now, a narrow bed with brass railings at the head and feet. Sitting up a little more, he swung his feet to the floor. The movement caused his head to thump savagely.
“Motherfucker,” he groaned. He dropped his head forward, leaning over his knees, trying to stretch the pain at the back of his head.
It was too centered; he needed to move it around a little. He clamped his eyes shut and reached back, gingerly feeling the lump. It was big, but his hand came away clean. He looked back at the pillow and didn’t see blood. He hadn’t been consciously afraid, but something came off his chest regardless: the absence of blood was vastly reassuring. “Motherfucker . . .”
No blood, and his head was starting to clear. He tried to focus on those positive signs, wondering what they had hit him with. It was all coming back now; the little flashes of memory were starting to cooperate, the images lining up in the right way, forming a picture. He had been walking out to his car . . . He could remember the van, the frightened face of the young man. He could remember the pang of doubt, the little spark of uncertainty, but he’d stepped into it anyway, drawn in by the man’s tangible fear. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Twelve American tourists kidnapped in the north, the secretary of state ambushed in Rawalpindi, abducted in plain sight of dozens of witnesses . . . He should have had his guard up. Should have been thinking. He started to shake his head before realizing his mistake, the pain thumping back into place. It was okay if he didn’t move too much, but it was still there, like the worst part of a migraine. The part right before the peak and the slow ride down. He wanted to shake his head, the self-disgust like a living part of him. Should have been thinking . . .
He had to think now; he knew that much. Okay. He stood up, fighting back the nausea, and checked his watch instinctively. It was gone. He frowned; that didn’t make sense right there. Why would they take his watch? It was a cheap, plastic piece of shit, worthless unless . . .
Unless they wanted to isolate him, to bar him from the outside world. He nodded to himself, ignoring the pain this time. He was pleased with his realization. There were no windows in the room. He had no idea what time it was; it could have been day or night. If they were trying to cut him off, they had done a damn good job. He wondered how long he’d been out. What had they hit him with? Something hard, but the skin wasn’t broken, so what was it? He shook his head sharply, ignoring the pain once more, frustrated with his wavering train of thought. Why had they taken him? That was the important question. There had to be a reason, but he just couldn’t get to it. He was nobody special. He didn’t have any famous relatives, and he wasn’t connected to anyone with any real power. Basically, he was just another foreigner, and yet, he knew that the same could be said of the dozen tourists who’d gone missing over the past several months.
This had to be somehow related. But they had disappeared far to the north, Craig reminded himself, and from what he had read, they had been taken in groups in isolated areas. If he had been kidnapped by the same organization, why would they change their mode of operation so drastically? There was also Fitzgerald, of course, but he had absolutely no connection to the secretary of state, so that didn’t make sense, either. What was it? What was the connection? He had to think. . . .
He pushed it aside; there would be plenty of time for that later. First things first. He had to know where he was. There was only one door. He walked over, his legs shaky beneath him, and checked it. Locked. He was tempted to pound on it. He wanted to call for help but knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere. Instead, he turned and looked at the desk. There was a lot of paper. It was strewn about, obviously a work area. There had to be something there. A name, an address . . . something. He checked the drawers first. Two hardcover books: an ancient copy of the Koran and a recent edition of Gray’s Anatomy, both in English. Strange to find the Koran in English, he thought, but that was assuming he was still in Pakistan. There were a few other medical books, some written in English, others in Urdu. Otherwise, the drawers were empty. Frustrated, he sat down on the bed to think it through. He was still sitting there, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his head, when he heard a sound at the door. Startled, he stood up, unconsciously bracing himself as the key scraped in the lock, and the door swung in on its hinges. . . .
More than 4,000 miles to the west, Naomi Kharmai sat on the floor in the small bedroom on the second floor. The room was pitchblack, warm, and quiet. She sat in the corner on the far side of the bed, her back pressed into the spot where the walls formed a right angle, her arms wrapped round her knees. The house was completely still; no one had moved for more than an hour. She was looking down, her eyes not quite closed. She was staring into the black emptiness, immobile, unseeing.
She had shed her tears, and though she had tried, she could not summon more. She was exhausted, but she could not sleep. The faces were too clear in her mind. Some were imprinted from the news coverage, the blurred, disbelieving features of the people out on the street. Their stunned eyes and gaping mouths. The others she had conjured herself, her guilty conscience summoning the faces of its own accord. Imagined faces, imagined lives, but as real in her mind as they would ever be. The happy face of a young woman, glowing with the thought of a child on the way, her first. The innocent face of a twelve-year-old boy, a child walking home after a football match. The wizened face of a widow in her sixties. All of them dead, stripped away before their time. Three others dead. Countless injured.
She was responsible. Not responsible in some abstract manner of speaking, like the general who authorizes the bombing of a target in some distant country or the executioner who pushes the plunger in the death chamber, but actually, physically responsible. She had killed 6 people, and for what? She just didn’t know. She could never justify it, that much was certain. On the whole, the DCI was pleased; the Agency had been spared public humiliation, spared the need to explain the arrest of at least two operatives on foreign soil. Overall, the president was pleased; his administration had narrowly ducked an international incident, the kind that cropped up on a regular basis. The kind that would be forgiven in six months regardless. For this, she had taken innocent lives. For this, she had killed a pregnant woman and a twelve-year-old child.
Naomi felt sick. Sick of her life and the things she had done. Sick of herself.
She had waited as long as she could. Groping blindly for the jeans she’d been wearing earlier, she dug into the pockets, finding the plastic Baggie by feel. She pulled out three of the tiny white pills, hesitated, then swallowed them dry. Her third dose in as many hours, too much, even for her.
She tipped her head back against the wall and waited for sleep or dawn, whichever came first.