“Megiddo’s held his nerve—now it’s our turn to do the same.” Will spoke the words loudly while leaning over a map of Massachusetts. He was in the CIA safe house in Boston’s West End. Patrick and Roger were with him. Will jabbed at the map and looked up at Patrick. “There’s nothing else that can be done right now.”
“There’s nothing that can be done to undo your mistake.” Patrick pointed a finger at Will before thrusting his arms in the air. “She should never have been taken away by them. Megiddo could torture her.”
“I’m aware of that,” Will snapped, running fingers distractedly through his hair. He felt sick with frustration and failure and an all-encompassing fear for Lana’s safety.
“Then you’ll also be aware that if she’s tortured, she’ll reveal our hand and everything will be finished.”
“Is that all you care about?” Will shouted. “What about Lana? Her life? Don’t you care about that?”
“I care about the thousands of lives we might lose if she tells them what we’re doing. She knew the risks in working with us.”
“How could she? How could a woman like her know the real risks in the work we do?”
Patrick paced forward. “There is no excuse for losing her to them.”
Will banged a fist down onto the table before him. “I’m not the first person in this room to lose someone.”
Patrick shook his head quickly. “Don’t throw that at me. You’re deeply mistaken if you think that losing Lana to Megiddo is comparable to Alistair and me not capturing him in the first place.”
“It’s convenient for you to think that way now.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Patrick’s arms flew up in the air again. He spun around to face Will. “It’s not comparable.”
Will felt the anger increase within him. “Why not?”
Patrick spoke in an exasperated tone. “The comparison is flawed because you’ve done something that we could not do. We never had the young Megiddo in our sights. But you’ve managed to bring the older Megiddo, a man who is now the most wanted mastermind on this planet, to within a cat’s whisker of capture.” Once again he pointed at Will. “I’m angry with you because you’ve achieved far more than I or Alistair could manage to do and yet may have thrown it all away at the last moment. I’m angry because you are no longer in total control of events. I’m angry because we are now vulnerable to Megiddo’s view of Lana.”
“We’re not vulnerable.” Roger said the words quietly and calmly while staring out a window. “Megiddo will not torture Lana.”
He had gotten everyone’s undivided attention.
Patrick spoke up eventually, and his tone was tentative. “How can you be so sure?”
Roger shrugged. “All that matters to Megiddo is the successful completion of his mission. He could be suspicious of Lana, but he’ll be equally mindful that she could be telling him the truth. If he tortures her, he’ll lose her cooperation. His priority now is to get Will, and he’s totally reliant on Lana to make that happen.” Roger turned and nodded at Will. “It’s Will he wants to torture.”
Patrick did not move. “I hope you’re right.”
“I know Roger’s right.” Will rose to his full height and moved away from the map. He looked at Patrick. “Lana will call me to arrange a meeting. She knows it’s what I want, and I know it’s what Megiddo wants. We have to hold our nerve.”
Patrick sighed. “We don’t have time to hold our nerve. The other twenty-five men have entered the country.”
It was night now, and Will was alone. He stared at his cell phone. He desperately needed to hear it ring.
He wrapped his arms around his body. He wanted to believe his own words. He wanted to hold his nerve. But he felt helpless and hopeless.
He felt three bullets in his stomach, and he smelled New York grass. He saw Lana open the door of her tiny Parisian home and frown at him. He saw Ewan shake his head and fall down dead onto Bosnian snow. He saw a man who could have been Will or Megiddo holding a knife to Harry’s throat. He stood close but not close enough to a young Lana as she curled into a ball in a Balkan forest while surrounded by rapists, and he saw her look of fear and defiance. He looked over his father as the man he did not know stood on a lonely road near Bandar-e ’Abbās. He watched an old man no longer wish to be haunted by his past. And he witnessed a bomb rip through unknown lives somewhere in the United States.
Everything now seemed pointless, unreal, or inevitable.
He stood and walked across his hotel room and back again and did not know what to do. He heard noises. He looked at his phone. He stopped breathing. He stopped thinking.
Lana was calling him.