August 9, 2016, AN ABANDONED FIELD OUTSIDE MARRAKECH, MOROCCO
10:05 P.M.
They all broke in the end. Edward was no exception, although he fought like a true soldier. He was weeping and hysterical when the name “Timbuktu” finally slipped past his lips. Isadore had reassured him then, telling him he had done well, that he had lasted longer than many trained killers she had tortured.
She didn’t tell him this out of sympathy, because she did not allow herself that emotion. She told him out of respect for his strength. The man deserved to go to his grave knowing he had stood tall in the last moments of his life.
Then she ordered Brett to continue the torture. By that point, he had shouted himself hoarse, so she had Brett give Edward little slaps. Not too hard, just constant, like the infamous Chinese Water Torture where drops of water hit the prisoner’s forehead for hours on end until they broke. Edward was strong enough he might resist that, so slapping, that personal touch, was much more suited to his type of weakness.
They had been through many hours together, and Isadore had learned many things about the hacker. She knew when he told her about Timbuktu that she was finally getting to the truth, but she had Brett slap him for the rest of the evening to make sure. It was always good to be sure.
Edward never changed his story until he died of a heart attack just after dawn.
So now Isadore knew where the Atlantis Allegiance was headed. She had arranged her flights and would be in Timbuktu within twenty-four hours. Brett would come with her to act as bait. Considering Jaxon and her friends were going overland through some of the most barren terrain in the world, Isadore and Brett would probably get there before them. Good. It would give her time to set up.
In the meantime, she had another duty to perform.
She stood in the middle of an empty field under cover of darkness, far beyond the last agricultural settlement on the outskirts of Marrakech. A small grove of olive trees stood nearby, keeping them out of sight of a distant road. She used a shovel to dig out a grave for Edward.
Brett stood beside Edward’s body, not far off. She could have told him to dig the grave. With his tireless strength, he could get it done much quicker. She could even have browbeaten Amir and his two flunkies into doing it. Instead, she had them on lookout. Isadore didn’t mind doing the work herself. There was honor in burying a fellow soldier, even if he had been an enemy one.
She had already made it a couple of feet down. She’d give him another foot and then cover him up with stones. There were hyenas in this part of the world, and Isadore didn’t want them to get to his corpse.
Over the scrape of her shovel, she could hear Amir and his friends grumbling to each other. Their Arab sense of honor had been upset by the previous evening’s events. While they were perfectly happy to torture an equal, picking on someone they saw as a weakling made them look weak themselves.
Let them grumble. They weren’t around for Edward’s last hours. They would have seen that he had strength that outshone all their swagger and cheap posturing.
Isadore finished the grave and dragged Edward’s body into it. In lieu of a coffin, she had wrapped him in a sheet. She stood over him for a moment, thinking of some appropriate last words.
“You were a good soldier. By the end, you had earned my respect.”
As she started to toss earth on top of him, she heard the three gang members start reciting something in Arabic behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she found they stood in a line a few steps away, their hands lifted in prayer, paying their last respects.
She resisted the urge to laugh. Praying for someone you had helped kill? Perhaps they were trying to ease their consciences. More weakness.
God, how she hated weakness! She’d done the hacker a favor last night. She had put him to the test, and he had become strong because of it. It didn’t matter that he broke eventually, because all people broke if you knew how to break them. The important thing was that for a while, perhaps for the first time in his life, he had been strong.
Most people never got such a test. The Western world had become soft and was losing its place to more dynamic, tougher nations. The most appealing thing about General Corbin’s plan was that it would stamp out weakness in the American government. No more pandering to voters and special interests, no more diplomacy. And a strong government would lead to a strong people, not the weak, whiny excuses for Americans she saw these days. America would be an empire greater than any that had ever been seen in the history of the world, and she would get to be part of it.
Isadore finished filling up the grave and scattered some leaves and fallen twigs from the olive grove on the freshly turned earth to hide it from view.
Briefly, she considered ordering Brett to kill the three Moroccans before deciding against it. In addition to freelancing for General Corbin, they were local contacts for the CIA. While she made it a habit to rub out any witnesses, if these guys disappeared, it might cause a few ripples in local intelligence circles. For the moment, Corbin’s plans depended on stealth. America was so focused on threats from outside—Islamist terrorists, Russia, China—that they were blind to internal threats. Best to keep it that way until it was too late for the civilian government to save itself.
The next afternoon, she and Brett took a taxi to the airport. General Corbin had arranged for them to catch a flight to Timbuktu. Knowing how much she liked luxury, the old darling had even paid for first-class tickets—or what passed for first class on Air Maroc.
The taxi sped along the four-lane highway out of town. Soon, they left Marrakech behind them and passed by a shantytown of tin shacks and heaps of uncollected garbage. Isadore wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“Welcome to the real world, rich kid,” Isadore told Brett, who stared blankly out the window. “Bet you never saw a neighborhood like this. Oh wait, you used to go slumming with Jaxon. The Dynamic Duo fighting crime in the hood. Good for a laugh, eh? Well, no one living in these places is laughing. Trust me, I know.”
Isadore fell silent. She watched the slums passing by and spotted a little girl in a filthy djellaba carrying a yellow plastic jug of water on her head. She had just left a single tap sticking out of the ground at the end of a pipe and was heading home, the heavy jug of water balanced on her head as she steadied it with her little hands. A long line of women and girls waited their turn. Isadore grimaced.
She glanced at Brett again, started to speak, caught herself, and then said, “Believe it or not, I was raised in a place not much better than this. Oh, we like to pretend we don’t have the Third World in America, but if you get off the highways and take a look in the out-of-the-way places, you can find them. The Ozarks. Appalachia. Mississippi Delta. Most Indian reservations. I’m from Appalachia myself. Does that surprise you? No, I guess not. Nothing surprises you anymore. Well, I was. A buck-toothed, uncultured girl who could barely read and whose only future was to get pregnant at fifteen, sign up for welfare, and end up with a litter of a dozen squalling brats who would be doomed to live the same life of misery she did.
“But I got out. I saw what happened to my parents and my older siblings and swore it wouldn’t happen to me. Ran away when I was thirteen. It was hard at first, I tell you. Hard years. But I’d seen thirteen hard years already. I promised myself that one day, I’d be rich. Now I’m a millionaire. Someday, I’ll be a billionaire. I’ll never go back to being one of these.” She gestured at the people in the slum with contempt. “Weakness, Brett. Weakness. I look at a slum, and all I see is weakness. Oh, I’m not blaming them. They were born into it. But they’re still weak, getting pushed around by the cops and the rich and the government. I don’t get pushed around, Brett. I stopped being one of these weaklings at thirteen and learned how to be strong. Nobody has pushed me around for a long, long time.”
They flew into Timbuktu late that night, so Isadore didn’t get to see any of the famous city as she and Brett took a battered old taxi from the airport to their hotel. Accommodation was scarce in this part of the world, but General Corbin had arranged for a halfway-decent place, a creaking wooden mansion built a hundred years before during the French colonial occupation. The man at the front counter took their luggage and led them up some rickety steps and down a gloomy hall covered with a faded and threadbare carpet. He stopped at one of the doors and opened it with a brass key.
Isadore sighed. The room wasn’t any better than the rest of the hotel. Two lumpy beds took up much of the space, and the only other furniture was a wardrobe that might have looked nice in 1936 and a cracked mirror. She didn’t dare look in the bathroom.
Isadore thanked the hotel worker in French, tipped him handsomely (always a smart move to get the locals on your side right from the beginning), and closed and locked the door behind her.
She looked sourly at Brett. Their travel documents said they were mother and son, and she had decided that they should share a room even though he gave her the creeps. It would be better to keep an eye on him and have him close if he was needed.
“Use the bathroom if you need to, and go to bed,” she ordered.
He nodded and headed into the bathroom.
Isadore sighed and looked around the room. What a dump. Well, it would all pay off in the end. She started changing into her pajamas, exhausted from the long day and knowing there would be an even longer one ahead of her. General Corbin didn’t have any contacts here in Timbuktu, so she would have to scout the city herself.
It bothered her she hadn’t been able to bring a gun. Traveling like a civilian in this part of the world meant you couldn’t even have a gun in your check-in luggage, because bags got routinely searched. Well, at least she had a tonfa, a metal stick two feet long with a handle coming off near the base at right angles. It was a hand-to-hand weapon similar to what many police officers carried, although theirs were made of wood. Hers was made of the finest steel to add that extra bit of force. You could kill someone with it if you knew how, and Isadore knew how.
Plus, she had two makeup kits with her, a real one and another that contained various powders and liquids brewed up by her husband. Wouldn’t want to confuse the two kits, oh no. Stephen’s stuff would definitely not improve your complexion and highlight your eyes.
Isadore was half undressed when Brett came out of the bathroom. She gave a little yelp and covered herself too late.
Brett didn’t bat an eye. He walked right past her without looking, undressed, and got into bed.
Isadore felt vaguely insulted.
“Wow, you really are a zombie, aren’t you? Most men think I’m beautiful.”
Brett didn’t answer. Isadore shrugged and got into bed and switched off the light.
Three hours later, someone kicked their door in.