At a little after 9:00 A.M. the heat was still bearable. The Red Sea was glassily flat, the red rocks of the shore reflecting in the blue water. In the operations room of the USS Ardèche, the smell of frying bacon drifted over from the galley. Scott Rich sat slumped over the desk as the sibilant voice of Hackford Litvak, the head of the US military operation, oozed over the system.
“We have had no movement whatsoever within the last four hours. The possibility of finding her alive is rapidly decreasing. What is your view, Rich?”
“Affirmative. In all likelihood she is dead,” he said, without moving from his slump.
“Oh, don’t be so bloody dramatic.” Widgett’s camp bellow burst out from the desk. “Dead? It’s only nine o’clock in the morning. She’s never been an early riser. Probably fast asleep with a Beja.”
Scott Rich straightened up, a flicker of life returning to his expression. “This particular GPS is sensitive to an unprecedented degree. It picks up movements during sleep and at certain ranges can detect breathing.”
“Oh la-di-da-di-da. You sure the bloody thing isn’t broken?”
“Professor Widgett,” purred Hackford Litvak, “in November 2001, your British security services berated us for delay in reacting to intelligence that bin Laden was hiding in the southern Afghan mountains.”
“Quite right too,” said Widgett. “Bloody bunch of idiots. Our lot were ready to go in, but oh no, you had to do it. By the time you’d finished arguing about who was going to do the honors, bin Laden had buggered off.”
“Which is why, this time, we want to move in immediately.”
“What’s that English expression?” said Scott quietly on Widgett’s private channel. “Hoist with one’s own petard?”
“Oh, do shut up,” said Widgett.
“Professor Widgett?” said Hackford Litvak.
“Yes, I heard. This is a completely different scenario. We have an operative on the ground, trusted by the target with whom she has a rendezvous. She is our best chance not only of finding him, but of finding out what he’s up to. If you lot go barging in with all guns blazing, in this case I fear, quite literally, we’ll get nothing. Hold back. Give her a chance.”
“You are suggesting we give a chance to a dead operative?”
“Jesus Christ, Litvak, you sound like a machine.”
“What is your view, Rich?” said Litvak.
Scott Rich blinked. It was a long time since he had found himself incapacitated by his emotions. He leaned forward, his hand on the microphone switch and paused for a second, collecting his thoughts. “Sir, I think you should send the Navy Seals into the Suakin caves,” he said. “And get undercover operatives into the hills immediately to retrieve the GPS and”—a split-second pause—“the body.”
“Oh dear,” said Olivia, “I’ve lost my earring.”
Clutching her bare earlobe, she pulled hard on the reins to bring her stallion to a halt and looked down, appalled, at the sand.
The Rashaida behind her slowed his mount, shouting to his companion to stop. “There is problem?” he said, bringing his horse alongside hers.
“I lost my earring,” she said, pointing first to one ear, then the other, in helpful illustration.
“Oh,” said the tribesman, looking genuinely concerned. “You want I search?”
As the other Rashaida, who was riding ahead of them, pulled up his horse and started to trot back, Olivia and the first Rashaida looked back across the landscape of sand and scrub they had spent the last five hours traversing.
“I don’t think we’re going to find it,” she said.
“No,” he said. They continued to stare. “Much money, he cost?”
“Yes.” She nodded very hard then frowned. Oh dear. This was very bad. The GPS cost very, very much money. They were not going to be pleased about this. Nor were they going to be able to find her.
She thought for a moment. There was a chance she could turn on the transmitter in the short-wave radio. Her orders were not to waste the battery and to use it only when she was transmitting an important message, but surely this qualified as an important message? Her bag was on the horse of the other Rashaida. The scarier of the two, he was dressed in a red robe and black turban. He was Bad Rashaida Cop. The Good Rashaida Cop, despite his fierce appearance, was turning out to be a sweetie.
“Muhammad!” she shouted. Both men looked up. Unfortunately they were both called Muhammad. “Er, could I get into my bag?” she said, gesturing at the back of Bad Rashaida Cop’s horse. “I need to get something.”
He stared at her for a moment, flaring his nostrils. “No!” he said, turning his horse back to the path ahead. “We go.” He dug in his heels, cracked his whip and shot off, at which the other two horses whinnied excitably and shot off after him.
Olivia’s exposure to higher levels of horsemanship had, hitherto, been limited to the occasional two-minute canter during a pony trek. The insides of her thighs were so agonizingly bruised that she didn’t see how she could go on. She had tried every conceivable position: standing up, sitting down, sliding back and forth with the horse, sliding up and down with the horse, and had succeeded only in bruising herself from every possible angle so that there was no millimeter left of her legs which didn’t hurt. The Muhammads, camel-like, seemed to require neither food nor drink. She had eaten three muesli bars since dawn. Nevertheless, the whole thing still struck her as something of an adventure. When else would she get to gallop through the Sahara alone with two Rashaida, unencumbered by tour guides, jeeps from Abercrombie & Kent, overweight Germans and people trying to sell you gourds and getting you to pay them to do dances?
But then, Bad Cop Rashaida ordered them to stop. He trotted a little distance ahead and vanished behind an outcrop of rocks. When he returned, he ordered Olivia to dismount and blindfolded her with a rough, evil-smelling black cloth.
Back on the USS Ardèche, Scott Rich was directing the onshore team towards the GPS. Three separate operatives, dressed as Beja, were approaching on horseback in a pincer movement. The line from Widgett in the UK crackled into life.
“Rich?”
“What?” said Scott Rich, eyelids lowering dangerously.
“Agent Steele, Suraya?”
“Yes?”
“She’s working for Feramo.”
“The source?”
“A Deniable in Tegucigalpa. He was taken in on another count. The poor half-witted fellow tried to claim diplomatic immunity by saying he was working for us. He told them he’d planted a bag of the white stuff in Joules’s room at our behest, then alerted the local police. The consular people got their local guys on the trail and it led straight to Suraya Steele.”
“Where is she now?”
“In custody. Debriefing. She spoke to Feramo late last night, it would seem. Maybe it was all for the best, eh?” said Widgett. “They bumped Agent Joules off pretty quickly, it would seem. No time for Feramo to, you know, get—”
Scott brought his fist down on the switch, cutting Widgett off in midflow.
Olivia spent the last stretch of the journey clinging to Good Cop Muhammad on the back of his horse. Once they had left the flat sandy base of the desert floor and turned into the hills, the route had become steep and was pitted with rocks. Olivia, on her own horse but blindfolded, had become a danger to herself and everyone around her. Good Cop Muhammad was being very sweet and gentle, though, encouraging her, telling her that Meester Feramo was waiting to greet her, that all would be good and that there would be treats when she arrived.
Hours later, Olivia was to remember that even at this point, blindfolded and captive, she was idiotically oblivious to the gravity of her situation. Had she been less carried away by adventure, she might have tried to press her advantage with Good Muhammad, squeezing her arms a little more tightly around his waist, leaning in a little closer, playing on the Rashaida’s gleeful lust for high-priced goodies by offering him the gold coins from her D&G belt. But she was light-headed from the heat and the jet lag, dehydrated, becoming delirious. Her imagination was full of the welcome ahead: Feramo with a bottle of chilled Cristal and a Bedouin treat prepared for the end of her journey—perhaps a torchlit feast with dancers, fragrant rice and three separate French vintages—in tented surroundings reminiscent of the trendier Marrakech holiday haunts featured in Condé Nast Traveller.
When she felt herself pass from sun to shadow, it was with relief. When Good Cop Muhammad dismounted and helped her down, even though her legs would barely straighten or bear her weight and her inner thighs were so bruised they were going to be black, she beamed with pleasure. She heard voices, both male and female. She smelled musk and felt a woman’s hand slip into hers. The hand was guiding her forward. Olivia felt the brush of soft garments against her arm. The woman put her hand on the back of her neck, forcing her to bend it as Olivia caught her head against rock. There were hands behind her, pressing her forward. She was moving through a narrow, jagged entrance. She staggered unsteadily ahead, feeling the ground moving steeply downwards and realizing, even through the blindfold, that she was in blackness. The air was cool and damp. It smelled stale and musty. The woman removed her hand from Olivia’s neck. As Olivia stood to her full height, the woman’s light tread retreated. It was only as Olivia heard the groan and crunch of a heavy object being moved behind her that she realized what was happening.
For once in her life, stop, breathe, think was of no use at all. Her bag was with the Muhammads. As she started to yell and grab at her blindfold, a hand caught her viciously across the face, flinging her against the rock. She was trapped underground without food or water, in the company of a madman.