“Not sure I should take that as a compliment, but thanks.” Leila looked like she hadn’t slept in days, but she still managed a smile. “Good to know at least one person in the U.S. government wasn’t quite so quick to label me a traitor.”
“They were worried, and reasonably so.” Cole followed signs for Interstate 395. “From what Morgan said, that exchange they got on video at the airport in Amsterdam was pretty damning.”
“Bad timing for a chance meeting with an old friend, that’s all.”
“I’m just glad the story checked out, for your sake. No way the FBI would have let you out on your own this quickly if that friend of yours had any genuine terrorist connections.” He paused. “Really sorry about your mom, by the way.”
“Thanks.” She leaned back into the seat. “I still feel so guilty for everything that’s happening. Guilt by association, I guess, seeing as my own family is behind so much of it.”
“We can’t choose our families, Leila.”
“I know you’re right, but that doesn’t help anything right now. Not Marna, not those gorillas, not my brother, locked away and suffering in some desert dungeon. He didn’t mean for the virus to be used, you know. I hope you can believe that.”
“I want to believe it. That’s the best I can do.”
They were silent for a minute. Cole tried to imagine what it must be like for her, torn between family and country, beaten back and forth by both sides.
“Heard you had quite an adventure yourself over the last few days,” she said.
“You could say that.” He wasn’t sure how much Morgan had already told her but didn’t feel like rehashing the whole story now. “How was Boston?”
“Good as six hours of nonstop interrogation can be expected to be. Just wish I knew something that might have been more useful.”
“Me too.” The flash of a smile crossed Cole’s lips. Based on what Morgan had said, most of what Leila learned from her brother simply confirmed the predominant theory about the virus’s Iranian origins, rather than adding much that might help with the day’s more pressing threat. But she was here now, for better or worse, so he was going to make this work. “Still glad you were able to come—it’ll be good to have you on board when I finally get to reconnect with Shackleton and the colonel. Sure, those video clips from Goma making the rounds on CNN are powerful, but that hardly makes the threat feel real for most people here in the States.”
“Which is probably why—”
“—it’s been hard for the right people to get excited about it and realize what we’re actually facing.”
“Exactly,” Leila said. “Sounds like there may be other factors too, though. Morgan seems pretty convinced the investigation is being delayed by a self-interested election-year politician.”
“Much as I hate to acknowledge it, I think she’s right.”
The burner phone from 7-Eleven started ringing. Same number Cole had been getting calls from all morning.
“It’s Morgan.” He pulled off into a little parking area looking out over the Potomac. The bright midday sun beat down on a wide expanse of steely blue water. In the distance the gleaming white dome of the Jefferson Memorial welcomed a steady stream of cars coming across the bridge into D.C. It was a beautiful summer day. “Let’s hope she has something good for us this time.”
“Sorry, must be in a bad spot.” Cole said. “Could you repeat that?”
Leila caught his eye and mouthed the word
speakerphone
. If she was going to be any help in stopping this thing, Cole needed to trust her. Wasn’t that why he agreed to let her come down? Not that she would have taken no for an answer, after those two soul-searching flights on the way back from Tehran and then her conversation with Professor Attenborough the night before. Sure, it would be nice to be back in her own apartment overlooking downtown Atlanta, sleeping the whole thing off. But she couldn’t go on living as if she were the only person in the world who mattered. Not anymore, not when she was implicated so deeply in the week’s events.
Cole pressed a button, and the NSA analyst’s voice filled the cab.
“—picked up a call from a woman name Nour Haddad. Parents immigrated here from Lebanon years ago, but she was born in the States.”
“One more time, who got the call?”
“Fairfax County Police. Our system alerted when it discovered that this lady’s husband has been on a terrorist watch list for years.”
“What—for being Lebanese?”
“He’d been distantly connected to a few suspected Hezbollah operatives at one point, but no criminal record or recent flags on him. Looks like an otherwise respectable small business owner.”
A quizzical expression grew on Cole’s face.
“Okay,” he said. “But what happened this morning? Why’d she call the police?”
A pause.
“Her husband never came home last night. First time since they were married, she swears. And her teenage daughter has been missing all week. Apparently—”
“Huh?”
“Apparently, Mr. Haddad told his wife their daughter was on vacation with a friend. After worrying herself half to death all night, she finally called the friend’s parents this morning.”
“And?”
“Daughter’s not with them either. She—”
“Sounds weird, yes, but I’m still not seeing a huge connection to our two recent travelers.”
Leila felt the same way. She wanted Morgan to be right—wanted this to be the big break they’d been looking for—but it wasn’t adding up yet.
“You said he’s a small business owner?” Cole continued. “What kind of stuff?”
“Stop interrupting me, and you’ll see where I’m going with this,” Morgan said. “He owns a restaurant in downtown D.C. and also a self storage facility out near their home in Fairfax. Cops have already checked out both spots. Didn’t see anything suspicious, but they did run background on a rental vehicle at the storage place. It was picked up at Dulles on Tuesday morning.”
“Where’d you say it was?” Cole handed the phone to Leila and pulled the truck out into traffic. “Tuesday morning—that’s the same day our two guys arrived from Kinshasa. Can you send me a photo of the husband? Driver’s license, passport, anything. Just message it to this same number.”
“Hang on,” Morgan said. “Okay, it’s right on Fairfax County Parkway, near the intersection with Route 29.”
Two tones chimed a few seconds later—photo message alert. Leila held the phone up so he could see the picture that had just come through. A broad dark face stared back at them.
“That’s him—the older guy from the truck last night.”
The pickup swerved into the left lane, its engine roaring.
“Cole, FBI’s planning to send a team out there later this afternoon.”
“Later this afternoon isn’t good enough.”
“Cole—”
“We’re already on our way.”
Fadi Haddad sat on the floor beside his daughter’s mattress, one hand resting against her sweaty cheek while the other held a bottle of water to her lips.
“Drink, Myriam, you need to keep drinking.”
She had dutifully sipped from the bottle ever since waking up a few hours earlier, but her movements were getting weaker even as her breathing sped up and the coughing fits got worse.
This time, she didn’t respond at all.
“Myriam, you must keep fighting. We will be out of here soon—to a hospital. Back to real life.”
Still nothing. Her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling, no longer even trying to follow the silent movie playing on the laptop beside her.
Haddad wasn’t sure if he believed his own words. After a silent drive back from D.C., Ahmad and Faisal had locked him in the storage unit with Myriam. That was the last he’d seen of them. They were still there, across the hall in unit twenty-six, but it didn’t sound like they would be for much longer. Myriam was right—it was possible to pick out a few words from their hushed conversations through the door. There’d been a debate about if and when they should leave the area at all. One of them—he thought it was Ahmad—wanted to stay and appreciate the effects of their efforts, maybe even going back into the city itself that evening. The other argued that they should stick with the original plan of leaving immediately to begin the long drive to Mexico.
And now they were leaving.
He glanced down at Myriam’s bare arm, then looked more closely. A faint spotty rash was appearing on her perfect olive skin, almost as he watched. It hadn’t been there five minutes earlier, at least, he would swear to that. Was this one of the virus’s normal symptoms? He hated himself for not knowing more about the monster eating away at his daughter right before his eyes. And she was only the first of so many.
Haddad struggled to his feet at the sound of a key in the door. The floor flew up to meet him, and he stumbled to a knee before regaining his balance. It was just the lack of sleep, and food, that was all. He felt fine.
“It is time to go.” Ahmad stood in the doorway. “Say goodbye to your daughter.”
Haddad just stood there, shaking his head slowly. No, they couldn’t do this. Would they kill him now, or drag him all the way to Mexico, maybe back to Lebanon for some kind of ultimate punishment? He didn’t know which would be worse.
“No, I won’t leave her, not like this.”
“Fadi, brother.”
“Don’t call me that. I want no part of this anymore. “
“This?”
“This game, in which innocent lives are traded back and forth and back and forth on and on into eternity. I’ve had enough of it. I want out.”
“Brother, you are far, far too late to make that decision.” Ahmad moved into the room and put a hand on his arm. “Come on your own, or we will have to use more forceful means.”
A cloud of blackness momentarily danced before Haddad’s eyes as he felt a long-forgotten surge of rage rush through his body. He brought a fist up hard into the younger man’s jaw, sending him staggering back a few steps, and followed it with a quick jab right at the nose.
The open door was only a few feet away. He leapt through it and turned down the hall, only to be met head-on by Faisal’s broad shoulder slamming squarely into his stomach. Haddad felt himself falling over the smaller man’s back, his momentum carrying him forward even as he gasped for breath.
A wave of dizziness swelled up within him, and he was tempted to stop fighting right there—collapse on the floor and be done with it.
But it receded just as quickly, and he kicked hard as he scrambled over Faisal’s shouting face. That would leave a mark. He was rising to his feet again when the full weight of Ahmad’s body landed on his back, forcing him to the floor. Twisting and thrashing, he tried to free himself, pushing back desperately, trying to ignore the heavy fog that threatened to engulf his throbbing head. There was a sharp pain in one shoulder as his arms were pulled violently behind his back, then the ripping sound of packing tape flying off the roll as it went layer after layer around first his wrists and then his ankles.
He only realized he was shouting when they threw a final wrap of the tape over his mouth and around the back of his head. He could barely breathe through his nose. He had to stop fighting.
It was finished.
They stood panting in the bright hallway for what seemed like hours, until finally Ahmad broke the silence.
“Didn’t he say he was allergic to eggs?”
Haddad didn’t feel the first prick, only knowing it was over when Ahmad’s hand pulled away from his neck, an empty syringe between his thumb and forefinger.
“If you weren’t already infected, this should do the trick,” the younger man said, his face just inches from Haddad’s own. “Not that the virus will have much time to act, if this allergy is as bad as you claimed.”
Haddad just stared up at him. Was this really how it would end? He knew eating an egg could push his excitable immune system over the edge, but getting injected with such minuscule amounts of the stuff? He’d never even imagined the possibility.
The next one stung a little on the way in.
He failed them. Not just Myriam and Nour, but every person in the country that had so carelessly adopted him as one of its own. He’d waited too long for the right moment, rather than simply making the call and accepting the consequences. A coward—that’s all he was.
The two men continued to draw the vile liquid up, syringe after syringe injected into every bare piece of skin in his body. The last one was the worst, a forceful jab straight into his temple. At the same instant, the dull headache already there burst in an explosion of searing pain and overwhelming pressure.
He let his head fall back against the floor and closed his eyes. It wasn’t worth pretending he could fight any longer.
They must have sensed the change. He heard them walk back to unit twenty-six, and then a minute later close the door and pass by him again. The main door opened and closed.
He was alone.
Haddad felt the steady drum in his throbbing head slowly increase as the minutes passed by. That wasn’t good. His heart should be slowing down now that the excitement was over, not moving in the other direction.
The soft tissues of his nose and sinuses were starting to swell, making each breath a little more difficult than the one before it. Just like that first terrifying ride in the back of a taxi as a young boy, speeding from his village to the nearest hospital. He’d been through it enough times that the symptoms were unmistakable. Anaphylactic shock—his body’s misguided reaction to the harmless proteins of a chicken egg.
His lungs screamed for oxygen, but he couldn’t force enough air through the narrowing spaces inside his head.
Each breath was a battle, and he was losing the war.
A black curtain hung before his eyes. He couldn’t resist it any longer.
The sound of shattering glass behind him broke through the silence. Footsteps running down the hall, then a woman’s face bent over him while a hand ripped the tape from over his mouth.
Haddad tried to inhale, anticipating the sweet relief of precious air filling his lungs. Nothing. His throat was sealed shut with its own swollen flesh.
A man’s face appeared, shouting something, but it was gibberish to his muddled brain.
The curtain stirred, then fell, enveloping him in a weightless darkness.