24

Someone was circling her.

She had no doubt it was a man. What would a woman be doing in a Hezbollah unit? He was moving around in a clockwise direction. He made two full revolutions, then stopped in front of her. All was quiet. The Russian speakers had fallen silent. Then the boots reversed course. The man began walking in the opposite direction. This time, however, he did not make it all the way around her. He stopped. Right behind her. She could hear him breathing. It was creepy, to put it mildly. Yet she was determined not to show him the fear rising within.

“My name is Colonel Amin al-Masri,” the man whispered in heavily accented English. “Welcome to Lebanon.”

The room was silent. But the stench of body odor hit her hard, and she feared she might gag.

“Let’s start with your name.”

Willing herself not to vomit, Kailea said nothing.

“Don’t test me, little flower,” the man said softly in her right ear, his voice even and controlled. “I have neither the time nor the patience.”

The thug reached beneath the hood covering Kailea’s face and caressed her cheek with his finger. Revulsed, she felt her entire body stiffen.

“The last thing I want to do is harm one so fair as you,” he continued. “The others, perhaps, if they do not talk. But with you I am sure we can work something out—an arrangement—just between us.”

The man paused. Then Kailea heard his boots begin circling her again. He circled once, then twice. She sensed that he had stopped directly in front of her. A moment later, she was certain of his location, for he had moved his face just inches from hers. The body odor was his. That much was certain. It took everything she had not to lose it all over the floor. But there was something else. Something that made her smile. His title and rank meant nothing to her. But what gave her a flash of hope was hearing that there were “others” in his custody. That had to be Marcus and Yigal. They were alive. And they weren’t talking. Neither would she.

“All I want, for now, is your name,” said al-Masri. “Is that too much to ask?”

Kailea remained silent.

“Don’t you want me to be able to tell your superiors back in Washington whom I have in my possession?”

Nothing.

“Don’t you want your family to know that you’re still alive?”

Still nothing.

“Don’t you know who I am?” he asked. “Don’t you understand that I have the power to set you free, untouched, unharmed?”

His tone was becoming agitated. Kailea’s smile broadened. She was messing with him. And it felt good.

“I grew up in a Shia neighborhood in Beirut,” al-Masri told her. “Have you ever been to Beirut? Perhaps you have friends who have been there. Perhaps even some who have died there. Do you know any Marines?”

Al-Masri, she mused. Al-Masri. The Egyptian. That was a name she knew. She’d read it before, she was sure, but in the utter darkness and this stifling heat she could not place it. Not yet.

“I have to admit,” he continued, “when my men attacked that convoy, the last thing I expected them to bring back were Americans, and certainly not a woman and most definitely not one so lovely as this.”

She heard him turn and grunt something to his men in Arabic. She had no idea what it was about, but the tone was curt. This was not a patient man. This was not a man used to having his orders defied. Especially not by a woman. Which meant he was going to snap. And soon.

A moment later, someone yanked the hood off her head. Kailea blinked and squinted as her eyes tried to adjust to the light being thrown by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. She found herself facing the colonel, who was crouching, putting himself at eye level before her. Immediately she turned away and looked down at the floor. Yet she sensed he was smiling, even as he used the cloth hood to dab her face dry.

“Look at me,” he said softly.

Kailea refused.

“Look. At. Me.”

The tone was clipped and constrained. But the volcano was getting ready to blow.

“You understand that I could make your life most unpleasant, do you not?”

Through her peripheral vision, Kailea saw that she was in a storage room of some sort. There were wooden crates and cardboard boxes stacked along the walls around her. Off to her left were old car parts—rusty doors, what looked like carburetors—and boxes of tools. To her right she could see stacks of old tires. Then something else caught her eye. Behind the tires were rows of metal shelving. And on each of the shelves were stacked 122-millimeter Katyusha rockets. She raised her head to get a better look, but al-Masri suddenly took her face in his filthy, calloused hands and forced her to look him in the eye.

“The boy is talking, of course,” he said, apparently referring to Yigal. “It wasn’t hard. He’s told me everything about you and your colleagues. But I need to hear it confirmed by you. Names. Ranks. Serial numbers. And the name of the bigwig you were doing an advance trip for. He’s told us everything. But it’s your job to confirm what I already know. And believe me, if the boy is lying to me—or if you do—it will not go well for any of you. Not well at all.”

It had worked.

Nothing else had, until now.

Al-Masri was finally looking directly into this woman’s eyes. They were milk-chocolate brown. Gorgeous. Alluring. And without a trace of fear. Al-Masri could not remember ever having met a more beautiful woman. He had certainly never enjoyed such close company with one.

He decided at that moment that he really would spare her everything he was planning for the other two. This one could prove useful, he thought. Very useful. She would fetch a price far higher than the others. Double, perhaps. Maybe even triple.

Then again, al-Masri mused, why even sell her? His superiors were only asking for one hostage. He now had three. But they didn’t know that, did they? Not yet. Because he hadn’t told them. Maybe he wouldn’t. How could they miss her if they didn’t even know she existed?

Al-Masri hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he never expected to find a woman in that convoy, nor one as desirable as this. She was not glamorous. She would never walk the runways of Paris or Milan or land on the cover of magazines in the newsstands in New York or London. But he had never desired the anorexic skeletons of the model class. And he had never found a woman in Beirut or anywhere in Lebanon quite like this.

She was trim. Athletic. Without a trace of makeup. Without gaudy jewelry or the painted nails that he so despised. She was stunning. It was too bad she was not an Arab. Worse still, she was an American. His hostage. His slave.

And yet . . .