In the shocked silence, he felt the truck’s every bump and lurch. Their lives depended on it, so he forced himself to pay attention. The truck’s speed was increasing. Buildings seemed farther away, and the sounds of voices and radios receded. They must be on a wider street. He noted traffic sounds and bits of conversation from the truck’s cab, but that was all.
His pulse throbbed guiltily at his temples. “Randi?”
Suddenly her face collapsed. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she remained erect and motionless. She had heard the words, but she could not understand the meaning. Pain seared through her. Sophia? Dead? Murdered? She rejected them. Impossible. How could Sophia be dead?
Her voice was wooden through her tears. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. I’m sorry. I know how much you loved her, and she loved you.”
Guilt overwhelmed her. His words were hammer blows. I know how much you loved her.
She had not seen Sophia in months. She had been too busy, too involved in her job. Other people needed her more. She had thought there would be plenty of time later to be close and really enjoy each other again. When they had both done what they had to do.
When Jon Smith no longer took up so much of Sophia’s life.
It felt as if her heart were shattering. Angrily she used the fingers of both hands to wipe away her tears.
“Randi?”
She heard his voice. Heard the truck… with a sudden hollowness below the wheels. Her mind quickly shifted, and as if from a great distance she realized they were crossing a bridge. A long bridge with the sound of the truck echoing off water beneath. She heard the rush of open air around them. The far-off cries of men who were night fishing. The bray of a donkey.
And then with an aching rush, she remembered. Sophia. She crossed her arms, trying to hold herself together, and she looked at Jon. There was devastation in his face. His grief looked so deep it could never be erased.
That face was not lying: Sophia was dead.
Sophia was dead.
She inhaled sharply, trying to control herself. Her sister’s face kept flashing into her mind. At the same time, she was looking at Jon Smith. She had just begun to think she could trust him. She wanted to believe he had nothing to do with it, but she could not help her suspicions.
His blind arrogance back when he had been treating Mike had led to Mike’s death. Had he killed her sister just as he had killed Mike?
“How?” she demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“I wasn’t there, not when it happened. I was in London.” He told her everything, from the time he met Bill Griffin to his discovery of the missing page and the needle mark in Sophia’s ankle. “It was the virus Sophia was trying to identify, classify, and trace to its source. The same virus I followed here to Iraq. But her death was no accident. The virus isn’t that contagious. She would have had to have made a very careless mistake. No, they infected her with it because she had uncovered something. They murdered her, Randi, and I’m going to find out who they are and stop them. They won’t get away with it….”
As he talked on, she closed her eyes, thinking about how much Sophia must have suffered before she had died. She fought back a sob.
Jon continued, his voice low and earnest, “…They murdered our director and his secretary, too, because I’d told them someone had the live virus and was using it on people. Now we have a global epidemic. How the new victims contracted the virus I don’t know, or how someone cured a few. But I’ve got to find out….”
He was still talking over the rumble of the truck, which was driving faster. The noises of the city had been left behind, and now it seemed as if they were in open country. There was only the occasional roar of a vehicle passing in the other lane.
Another surge of tears overcame her. He put an arm around her shoulder, and she pushed him away. She wiped her face with her sleeve.
She would not cry anymore. Not here. Not now.
“…They’re powerful,” he was saying. “Obviously, they’ve been here in Iraq. Maybe they still are. Which is one more reason to think they sent these `police.’ The people behind the virus seem to reach everywhere. Even into our government and the army itself. High up into the Pentagon.”
“The army? The Pentagon?” She stared at him in disbelief.
“There’s no other explanation for USAMRIID’s being taken out of the loop, shut down, and the lid clamped on. And then all the records that were erased through the NIH’s FRMC terminal. I was getting too close, and they had to stop me. It’s the only explanation for Kielburger’s death. He was calling the Pentagon to tell them what I’d discovered when he vanished. He and his secretary disappeared and were found dead hours later. Now they’re looking for me, too. I’m officially AWOL, plus I’m wanted for questioning in the deaths of General Kielburger and his secretary.”
Randi repressed a bitter comment. Jon Smith, the man who had killed her great love, was telling her the U.S. Army was somehow involved in her sister’s death and he had run from them in the noble cause of pursuing his investigation. How could she believe him? Trust him? His whole story sounded like some kind of enormous fabrication.
Yet any American who came to Iraq now risked his life. She had seen his courage as he had tried to protect Dr. Mahuk from the Republican Guards before he had even known she was Dr. Mahuk. Then there was the virus itself. If he had been the only one to tell her about it, she would be doubtful. But Dr. Mahuk was also a source, and she trusted Radah Mahuk.
As she was contemplating all this, she heard the truck cross another long bridge. Again there was the familiar hollow sound below, echoing from water.
What water? She came totally alert. “How many bridges have we crossed?”
“Two, as I recall. About fifteen, twenty miles apart. This is the second one.
“Two.” Randi nodded. “That’s what I counted. There should be a third soon.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. And another. They were all gone— her father, mother, and now her sister. First her parents in a boating accident off Santa Barbara ten years ago. And now Sophia. She wiped her eyes again as they waited, silent in their shared grief.
The truck drove onto a third bridge, and instantly she was back in the present. In the moment. At work. Right now it was her only balm.
In a charged whisper, she told him, “We must’ve crossed the Tigris in the middle of Baghdad. Then the second bridge had to be over the Euphrates. The third must be the Euphrates again. We’re not going south. We’re going west. If the land goes into a slow climb, we’ll know we’re heading into the Syrian Desert and eventually to Jordan.”
Impressed, Jon stared past Randi at the two policemen, who were talking quietly. Their rifles rested in their arms, the muzzles pointed casually toward their prisoners. It had been a long time since he had tried to break away.
He said, “Tell them I’m stiff. That I’m just going to stretch.”
She frowned, puzzled. “Why?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
She seemed to study him again. At last she nodded. “Okay.” She spoke humbly in Arabic to the two heavily armed men.
One responded in a bark, and she uttered more words.
At last she told Jon, “He says it’s all right, but only you can stand. Not me.” She gave a grim smile.
“Figures.”
He got up to his feet and arched his back as if his limbs had gone to sleep. He could feel the policemen’s intense gazes from the tailgate area. When they turned away, bored again and half asleep, he put his right eye to a long tear in the slope of the canvas roof. He looked out and up.
Suddenly the harsh voice of one of the policemen snarled.
Randi translated. “Sit, Jon. You’ve just been busted.”
Smith fell back to the bench, but he had seen what he wanted: “The north star. We are going west.”
“The Justice Detention Center is south.”
“So I was told. Besides, that had to be miles back. They’re not taking us to jail, and they’re not taking us to the center. You have any weapons they didn’t find?”
Her brows raised. “A small knife inside my thigh.”
He looked down at her sedate gray skirt and nodded. She would be able to reach it quickly.
With an abrupt lurch, the Russian truck slowed and threw them forward. Another lurch sent them against the cab in front. It slammed Randi into Jon. She quickly pushed away. The vehicle stopped. Voices talked roughly. Suddenly there were noises of men climbing from the cab and walking forward, talking.