SIALKOT
Craig followed the armed guard down the narrow, musty hall, the walls crowding in on either side. A second man followed a few steps to the rear. He was also armed, and Craig had seen the wary, alert look on his face when he first stepped out of the room. Clearly, they expected him to fight or run, which he found interesting in a detached sort of way. Back in high school, Craig had read about the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst, his chosen topic for a required book report. He knew about Stockholm syndrome and thought it was a bunch of bullshit—he just couldn’t imagine empathizing with someone who’d kidnapped him—but now, walking between his captors, he wondered about the percentages. He wondered how many people tried to fight.
How many tried to escape.
He had considered it briefly, the instant the door first swung open, but he changed his mind when he saw the gun. Craig had spent his youth in the wooded hills of Tennessee. The place was a haven for Heston’s acolytes, the kind of people who thought the NRA was a government agency. He had fired all kinds of weapons, dozens of handguns, shotguns, and rifles. He had never served in the military, and he’d never fired an automatic weapon, but he could recognize the simple lethality of the submachine gun the man cradled in front of his body, and he knew better than to make a rash, unplanned move.
The gun made him wary, but it didn’t make him meek; he had expressed his anger with the stone-faced guard, who had simply repeated his first words: “Get up and follow me.” Craig had tried arguing, getting nowhere, until he realized that the guard’s English was probably limited to that one phrase. Finally, he decided to follow their instructions. Obviously, they had taken him for a reason; arguing wasn’t going to get him released, and it might just get him killed. Better to wait and see.
They descended a staircase, their feet beating a soft rhythm on the threadbare runner, then turned into a second hall. They passed a living room off to the left. Craig glanced into the room, saw no one, and kept moving forward. The first guard tapped lightly on the door, received a response, and pushed it open. Looking at Craig, he tipped his head to the right, indicating that he should enter. Craig hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward, past the guard, and into the room. It was then that he got the shock of a lifetime, his eyes falling on the man seated at the kitchen table.
“Said?” He heard the name come out of his mouth, knew it was right, but he still couldn’t believe it. Said Qureshi, here? It had been years since he’d seen the man. How the hell was he mixed up in all of this?
The Pakistani doctor stood and greeted Craig with a slow, sad nod of his head. His mannerisms were polite but grim; clearly, he wanted to apologize for what had happened but was afraid to do so.
“Randall.”
Craig wasn’t sure what to ask first. He looked to the other person in the room, a squat, stocky man with a full head of wiry black hair. He was leaning against the oven, neat in a tailored dress shirt, dark slacks, and a pair of thick-soled boots. The boots looked vaguely military, like something that might belong to an old soldier. And that was what the man looked like, Craig realized. A soldier. But not just any soldier. His gaze was calm and commanding, and there was a considerable intelligence behind the dark brown eyes.A man with a good mind and a laborer’s build, Craig decided. As he looked on, the Pakistani pushed away from the oven with his hips, walked forward, and stopped. He did not offer a hand.
“Randall Craig?”
“Yes . . . ?”
“Do you know who I am?”
Craig studied the older man for a half a minute, thinking back to newscasts and faces he’d seen on the street. Doctors he’d met at various clinics around the country. Members of the secretariat he’d met on a brief visit to Aiwan-e-Sadr, the presidential palace in Islamabad. Nothing was coming to mind. “No.”
The older man stared at him for another few seconds, then nodded in satisfaction. “You’ve been brought here against your will,” he stated in cultured English. His voice was gravelly, rough, but somehow distinguished; he reminded Craig of a professor he’d once had at Vanderbilt, a brilliant man with a lifelong two-pack-a-day habit. Ironically, the year Craig had graduated from medical school, the professor had been on the short list of nominees for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. “For that, I apologize. Believe me, you would not be here if it wasn’t important.”
Craig started to ask a question, glanced at Qureshi, and thought for a minute. “Who are you?” he finally asked, steering his words to the older man.
“My name is not important. Believe me, in the long run, it is better for you if you do not know.”
Craig nodded, not buying a word of it. Believe me . . . He’d used that phrase twice in a row. Craig had lowered his defenses for a second on seeing Qureshi, but now they rolled back into place, like a steel shutter sliding down the front of a street-level store. “What the hell am I doing here?”
“We need your help,” the older man said simply. “Said has agreed to perform an operation for us. He requires your assistance. We need you to help him—that part, I regret to say, is not an option—but once you are done, you will be released. You have my word on it.”
Craig looked at Qureshi, watching for some sign. The man looked nervous but composed, as though he were biding his time.Good man, Craig thought. Wait for the right time. Wait for your chance. He knew the Pakistani doctor well. They had met during a weeklong seminar at the University of Chicago, and they had hit it off over a long weekend on the town. A year later, in 1995, they’d ended up working together at the University of Washington, Qureshi on the tail end of a yearlong visit. Qureshi, Craig had learned in one of Seattle’s most raucous bars, was quick to flaunt some of Islam’s more stringent rules, but he was a good man and an excellent doctor. They had made a strange pair, Craig knew, the Tennessee farm boy turned anesthesiologist and the small, mild-mannered Pakistani, but their friendship had flourished in the face of their colleagues’ skepticism, even if it had not survived Qureshi’s move back to London. Through the usual channels, Craig had heard of Qureshi’s minor disgrace at Guy’s Hospital. There had been rumors of drinking and medical malpractice, but Craig had never taken them seriously; anything could happen during a surgical procedure, and often did. There was a good chance that Qureshi was not even responsible for the incident that had killed his career and a young boy on the same table. In short, he knew Said Qureshi as well as he knew any man, and there was no way he could be mixed up in all of this. At least, not of his own volition.
Craig looked back at the older man, his skepticism obvious. “You’ll release me if I help you? Just like that?”
The man nodded solemnly, his thick, square hands clasped over his ample midsection. “You have my word,” he said again. Which didn’t mean shit to Randall Craig. If this man was behind the kidnappings in the north and the attack on Brynn Fitzgerald’s motorcade—and Craig was fully convinced that he was—then the man was a killer. There was no way he would release two people who’d seen his face.
Still, there was no point in resisting. Not yet, anyway. Better to let them see what they wanted to see, namely, complete and total submission. Craig let his shoulders drop a fraction of an inch in defeat, a resigned expression sliding over his face. He looked at Qureshi and thought he caught a glimpse of defiance in his old friend’s eyes. He didn’t have to ask why he was there. If Qureshi was going to undertake a serious procedure—and it had to be serious to go to this amount of trouble—he would need someone to put his patient under.
“What’s the situation?” asked Craig.
Qureshi let out a shaky sigh and looked away. Finally, he looked back, his composure restored. “It’s better if I show you.”
He stood and turned to a second door leading out of the kitchen. He opened it, stepped out. Craig looked at the older man, who nodded and indicated for him to follow. Craig crossed the tile, his apprehension growing; something about Qureshi’s last expression was sticking with him. He felt a little shaky himself as he followed the small Pakistani through the living room. They skirted a dusty grand piano and entered another hall. Craig had not seen the outside of the house, but he could tell it was large, judging by the sheer number of rooms they had passed through. It also had a vaguely British feel to it, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Turning right now, passing a dark room the size of a coat closet, Craig glanced to the right and saw the outline of a ceramic sink and a tray full of instruments. His stomach tightened inexplicably. He had seen far worse than a tray full of sterilized instruments in his thirtyeight years, but something about the way it was sitting there in the dark made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. It was like an omen of some kind, a sign of bad things to come.
There were two guards outside the door, both standing ramrod straight, both holding stubby black submachine guns. Qureshi eased between them and opened the door, then stepped into the room. Craig followed, sensing the stocky Pakistani was a few steps to his rear. He stopped just inside the threshold, more out of surprise than anything else.
The room was large and square. Unlike the rest of the house, which was warmly lit, the surgical suite was thrown into stark relief by harsh fluorescent lights that ran the length and width of the plaster ceiling. The floor was a light blue tile with cement-based grout, easy to clean and maintain. The instruments common to all surgical theaters were clearly visible: a portable Medtronic defibrillator; an aging Hewlett-Packard EKG, the monitor sitting nearby; a transport ventilator with a cracked plastic shell. There was also an array of tools that anyone on the street could identify: an IV pole with 2-inch swivel casters, blood pressure cuffs, a box of surgical gloves. There was a scrub sink directly opposite the door and, to the left, a piece of machinery that Craig recognized immediately. He guessed that it had been purchased specifically for this procedure; if Qureshi had frequent need of an anesthesiologist, he would also have access to one, and he wouldn’t have needed Craig.
His appraising eye took note of the quality—judging by the array of medical supply stickers that lined the base, it was a refurbished model—but he had used the Drager before, and as long as it worked, it would get the job done. The Drager Narkomed 4 had been one of the better anesthesia machines available when it first hit the market back in the late nineties. Now it was considered hopelessly outdated, at least in the States. In Pakistan, it still represented the best of modern medicine. Craig could have dealt with far worse. Over the past ten months, he had learned how to make do with substandard equipment, and the Drager was anything but. The surgical table was off to the right, a simple, stainless-steel contraption with a circular base and hydraulic hand cranks. Twin Burton lamps were mounted over the table, a total of eight bulbs lighting the patient below.
The patient . . .
Qureshi was standing at the head of the table, partially blocking Craig’s view. He walked forward, took a single step to the left, and looked down. He saw the woman’s face and experienced that brief moment of recognition. Then came the split second of complete inaction before his instincts took over. He took a fast step back, his hands coming up to ward off the sight.
“Oh, fuck,” Craig heard himself say. His eyes went wide, and he took another quick step back, his right arm pointing accusingly at the table, as if he were the first to figure it out. “Jesus Christ, do you know who that is?” A stupid question, he realized a split second later, but he continued, anyway. “That’s the fuckin’ . . .”
Qureshi was pulling him off to the side, pushing him into a chair. It was a considerable effort, given his small frame. The older Pakistani was standing next to the door, subtly blocking the only exit. Craig heard himself protesting, swearing, but he couldn’t seem to stop. His mind was moving in a million directions at once, and part of him was saying, You knew what you’d find when you walked in. He ignored that part, reminding himself that he couldn’t have known. . . .
“That’s Fitzgerald,” he blurted out. He was still pointing the accusing finger. “That’s the goddamn secretary of state. The whole world is out looking for her, Said, right now, as we speak. What the hell have you done?” He whirled on Qureshi, shaking his head, his whole body trembling. “What the hell have you done? I can’t. . . .”
“You will,” someone said. The hard voice came from the door. Craig looked over, eyes wild. Qureshi said nothing, just looked at the floor. “You can and you will,” Mengal reminded them. “She is your patient. You are both responsible, and you will fix what is wrong with her.”
“No way,” Craig mumbled. “No fucking way. I’m not going to—”
Mengal was already crossing the floor, coming up from the rear. His left hand moved in a blur, snatching the hair at the base of Craig’s neck. His right hand came up, and he shoved the muzzle of a snubnosed .38 into the right side of the doctor’s temple. Craig froze at the touch of the gun, his mind sharpening, narrowing with the nearness of death.
“You listen to me,” Mengal hissed, his words cutting the cool, quiet air in the suite. Qureshi froze along with Craig; on the table, Brynn Fitzgerald remained motionless. She had barely stirred in thirty hours. “You will do what you were brought here to do. You will save this woman’s life. If you don’t, I promise you now, you will share the grave you dig for her.”
He shoved Craig’s head forward, releasing his grip at the same time. The pain was intense, so close to his earlier injury, but Craig was oblivious. He was too stunned to even react. The woman’s face was stuck in his mind, pale, calm, so unnaturally still . . . He just sat there, trying to see a way out of it.
The footsteps were fading behind him. He heard voices, a harsh, rapid exchange of Urdu. For the moment, he and Qureshi were alone in the room. Qureshi crouched before him, so their eyes were level. His expression was one of limitless sorrow.
“You gave them my name,” Craig said in a monotone. It was hard to know how he meant it. “You told them where to find me.”
Qureshi shook his head, but it wasn’t quite a denial.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Mengal,” the Pakistani murmured. “Benazir Mengal. He was a general in the Pakistani Army. He’s killed many people, and he’s behind everything that’s been in the news. The disappearance of those climbers on the Karakoram, the ambush of Fitzgerald’s vehicle . . . everything.”
“What about me, Said? Why am I here?”
Another hesitation. “You have to understand,” Qureshi began weakly, “I wasn’t given a choice. They were going to—”
“What’s wrong with her?” Craig cut in. His face was red, his tone suddenly harsh. He was embarrassed, Qureshi realized, ashamed that he’d allowed Mengal to get on top of him. Ashamed that he’d been bullied into submission.
“Blunt force trauma sustained in the attack on her car. She had a partial pneumothorax of the left lung, but I’ve already put in a chest tube. That was the lesser injury.”
“So . . . ?”
“So she needs a pericardial window,” Qureshi said quietly, “and she needs it soon. Preferably within the hour.”
Craig had only briefly surveyed the equipment in the room, but he didn’t have to look to know that Qureshi didn’t have access to a digital EMI. “You don’t have a—”
Qureshi waved it away, slightly annoyed. “It’s a physiologic diagnosis . . . I don’t need a CT scan to see the obvious.” He quickly went over his earlier observations: the abnormal blood pressure reading, the J-waves on the EKG, the specific complaints Fitzgerald had made when she was still lucid. “She’s sedated at the moment, but I need you to put her under all the way. I have everything you need. We can start as soon as you’re ready.”
“How do you—”
“I wrote the list out myself, and Mengal sent his people to pick up the items. It’s all here, ready and waiting. I’ve checked everything personally.”
Craig nodded slowly. He could see that Qureshi had sold him out, had provided them with his name, but he couldn’t summon the anger he should have felt. They would have put pressure on him, and while he wasn’t a coward, Qureshi wasn’t the kind of man to fight back. At least, not unless he was facing imminent death. Craig couldn’t blame him for what he’d done.
Craig looked up, directly into the other man’s deceptively placid eyes. “They want her for propaganda value, Said. In the end, they’ll probably kill her. And if they’re willing to kill her, we don’t stand a chance. You must know that.”
“Yes, I do.” Qureshi seemed to hesitate. “But I can help her, and for that reason alone, I have to do as they ask. I can’t walk away from that responsibility.”
Craig didn’t alter his steady gaze, just gave a short, understanding nod. “So you’re going to operate. Then what?”
Qureshi smiled in a resigned kind of way, but he never broke eye contact. “I’m not a fighter, but I won’t make it easy. I don’t want to die, but they are all over the house, the grounds, and one of them . . .”
“Yeah?” Craig was intrigued; Qureshi had gone away for a few seconds there, an expression of pure, unadulterated fear crossing his dark face. “One of them what?”
Qureshi shuddered and said, “One of them is the devil himself.”