Micah watched Anna quietly take the chair at the end of the table where Lehman had been sitting. Against the gray stone wall behind her, her oval face, deeply tanned, looked exotically dark, almost Egyptian—her skin very close to the rich color of Micah’s skin. In the time that he’d been gone, she’d unbraided her hair, combed it with her fingers, and left it hanging in waves around her shoulders. The style made her hard eyes look huge.
Cozeba studied her as though examining a mythical beast. “Who are you?”
Micah frowned. Cozeba knew exactly who she was.
Anna sighed, and some of the tension seemed to drain from her muscular body. “Anna Asher. Captain, United States Air Force, serial number—”
“Enough.”
Anna stopped.
It intrigued Micah that she had not said “formerly” of the air force.
The general’s brown eyes slitted. “I don’t want your cover story. Who are you? Where were you born?”
Micah straightened. The general was suggesting she was a foreign spy?
For a long moment, Anna studied the general in the dim sunlight streaming through the portal windows. The medals on his chest flashed rhythmically, and it occurred to Micah that they moved in time to Cozeba’s shallow breathing. Fear? Excitement? Micah wished he knew which. If it was fear, he had orders from superiors, which meant that some semblance of the U.S. military hierarchy remained. If it was excitement, Cozeba was likely answering to no one. Or to the enemy.
When Anna didn’t respond, Cozeba walked away.
He stopped at the midpoint between Anna and Micah, before he turned to face her, his back, once again, to Micah. Did the man trust Micah so much? What else had Logan told him?
Cozeba watched Anna as if he expected her to suddenly change into a bird and fly away. A thin-lipped smile touched the general’s face. “We found the jar in Dr. Nadai’s backpack. It’s being opened as we speak.”
Anna’s expression betrayed no response.
Cozeba seemed to drop into a trance where all he could do was stare at her. He must have realized it. He stopped, and started pacing, three steps toward Anna, turn, three steps toward Micah. It had an odd obsessive-compulsive precision. His dread—or maybe anticipation—seemed to be building.
“Why don’t you save me the trouble, Captain, and tell me what’s in the jar?”
“Because I don’t know. We didn’t open it.”
“My staff tells me the jar was opened once before and resealed.”
“Wasn’t us.”
Cozeba spun around and bulled toward her. He flung out a hand as though to strike her, but halted an inch from her cheek. Anna hadn’t even flinched. She just looked up at him. As though he feared her and had to nerve himself, he clamped his jaw before he lowered his hand to lightly touch her cheek. Their gazes held. Finally, Cozeba pulled his fingers away and wiped them on his pants. “You look American. You sound American. I know you have Asian blood. Chinese?”
Micah called, “General, what are you—”
“Silence, Captain.”
Weaving a little on his feet, Cozeba stepped backward, away from her, but his eyes never left Anna’s face. “I know that torturing you for information will do no good. Others before me have tried and failed.”
Anna watched him with barely concealed anxiety, as though she feared he was on the verge of revealing some epic fact. Though she continued to sit perfectly still, for the first time her eyes shifted to Micah. She seemed to need to see him. Or … or maybe she wanted Micah to be looking at her when General Cozeba said:
“I’m told you are still in contact with Hakari. That he’s given you the Divine Word that unlocks the cure.”
Anna’s face remained expressionless, but Micah’s didn’t. He leaned forward, staring down the table at her. “General, I’ve been with her for weeks and I have seen no evidence that she’s in contact with anyone.”
Cozeba whirled around and aimed his hand at Micah like a pistol. “From this moment onward, Captain, you will speak only when spoken to. You will not make a sound unless I instruct you to do so. If you continue to disrupt these proceedings—”
“General Cozeba,” Anna said. The beauty of that deep voice seemed to calm the man. He slowly lowered his hand, and his attention moved back to her. “I am not a spy.”
“In D.C. you discovered something important about the plague, yet you withheld that information from the military—and my intelligence analysts suggest that you gave it to the Russians.”
“What evidence do you have—”
“They have a vaccine that we do not, Captain. Where’d they get it?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Her voice still low and soothing, she said, “But I did not give it to them.”
Micah glanced back and forth between them. The vaccine they gave me?
Cozeba’s jaw clenched. He stood glaring at her for a full five seconds before he looked away, perfunctorily straightened his uniform coat, and reached up to touch his medals. It occurred to Micah that doing so also drew attention to them, reinforcing the general’s military record to anyone watching, and thereby his authority.
In a booming voice, Cozeba said, “Captain Asher, did you deliver classified information to the Russians—”
“I don’t believe this! Is this charade for Micah’s benefit? Or the soldiers in the hall? You know they can hear you shouting.” Anna raised her voice to match the volume of Cozeba’s. “What did the Russians offer you, General? The presidency of a devastated world? Money? It had to be something monumental to get you to betray—”
“I ask you again, Captain! Did you deliver—”
“You know I didn’t.” Anna flopped back in her chair. “Is that the case you’ve manufactured against me?” She waved a hand through the air. “My God, General, you’re the one who gave me the code and tasked me with encrypting—”
“Stop!” Cozeba ordered and stabbed a finger at her. “Do not say one more word, Captain!”
“You’re already charging me with treason, aren’t you? What more can you do to me?”
“I can test the hypothesis that you can resist torture!” Cozeba’s chest rose and fell as though he couldn’t get enough air.
In a very low voice, Anna asked, “How long have you been playing both sides, General?”
The room went deathly silent.
Anna laughed so softly Micah almost didn’t hear it. Then she looked up and stared right at him. “I’m sorry I accused you, Micah.”
Anna got to her feet, walked to the door, and flung it open. The startled guards in the corridor spun around to stare wide-eyed at her.
Captain Anna Asher ordered, “Take me back to my cell, Sergeant.”
The young man leaped to obey, then suddenly realized what he’d done and looked around Anna’s shoulder to get confirmation from Cozeba. The general nodded.
“I’ll take you, Anna,” Major Lehman said.
They left.
When Cozeba glowered at them, the two remaining guards snapped to attention.
Cozeba closed the door and gripped the closest chair back in both hands, squeezing until his knuckles went white. “Don’t let her fool you, Hazor. She’s a member of an extremist group and guilty of treason, sedition, and the murder of millions.”
Micah just listened. Treason and murder were obvious charges, but he found the sedition charge curious.
“Sir, permission to speak with my immediate superior, Colonel Joseph Logan.”
“Denied. Colonel Logan, along with several other members of my senior staff, contracted the plague this morning. He’s in the Garden now, the fenced quarantine zone outside the fort.”
Micah processed that. He’d been hoping … but it didn’t matter now. “Permission to ask a question, sir?”
Cozeba took a deep breath. “What is it, Captain?”
“Why am I here?”
Cozeba blinked as though he had no idea what Micah was talking about.
Micah continued, “You expended the effort to find me in the desert. You put me in that boat on the Nile. For what purpose? Did the Russians tell you they’d inoculated me with their latest most potent vaccine and you wanted to see if it worked?”
Cozeba’s lips pressed into a tight line. He peered down at the pendants resting on Micah’s chest, and kept his gaze there when he said, “Logan guaranteed me that you were a loyal officer who would do anything necessary to protect his country. I need your help, Hazor. I must know everything Anna Asher has told you.”
Micah paused to take in the general’s expression. Then he said, “Who’s your Russian contact, General?”
Cozeba’s eyes flared. It took him a second to regain his composure. “You fool. She knows the truth! Don’t you get that?”
“Tell me what the ‘truth’ is and we’ll compare notes.”
“For God’s sake, Hazor, I need to know where Hakari is. Is he dead, as the Russians claim? Did Asher tell you?”
Playing a hunch, Micah said, “General, why did you trust her to encrypt the code?”
Cozeba blurted, “I never trusted her! But she’s brilliant with…” He stopped cold, and gave Micah a knowing look. “Skillful, Captain.”
So you did task her with encrypting a code. A quantum code that could not be broken? For what? To communicate with your Russian contact?
Micah slowly exhaled while he watched the general. “Did you invite the Russians to observe the Mount of Olives operation? Is that why they were on the ground outside Bir Bashan? Was Yacob there? Did you give them permission to vaccinate me, or other soldiers?”
In a deceptively mild voice, Cozeba said, “What makes you think the order didn’t come straight from President Stein?”
Micah mulled that over that for a few moments. “What do you get out of this, General? They must have promised you the moon.”
Cozeba lifted a finger in warning and pointed it at Micah. “I advise you to be very careful, Captain.” In the diffuse light, the muscles of his clamped jaw quivered. “As you know, for the greater good, sometimes soldiers have to die.”
A weightless sensation possessed Micah. He didn’t know how much time passed, just moments, but he felt the emptiness as eons.
“Understood, sir.”