Enemy of My Enemy (47 page)

Robert closed his eyes, trying to sleep, but the pain in his shoulder and the uncomfortable position of being on his back, unable to turn over, precluded that.

He glanced over at one of the guards sitting in a chair, fully awake, aiming his AK-47 at Robert. The man was staring at the prisoner. He saw no need to look away.

Robert thought about Ann and his mother. He didn't want to die. He wanted to see them again.

Since the abortive escape effort, he no longer had the mood swings he had felt earlier in his captivity, alternating between optimism and despair. Now it was all black. It was as if a huge curtain of depression had settled over him.

His room was on the second floor of the villa. Judging from the tiny crack of daylight in the eastern sky, he guessed that it was now around four in the morning. The villa was deathly still.

Suddenly, through an open window, he heard the sound of vehicles approaching the villa. It sounded to him like two or three cars or trucks. He couldn't tell. Headlights from outside illuminated one wall of his room.

It's all over,
he decided.
Kendall refused to accept their terms for an agreement. They're going to kill me now. I'm just one small, expendable grunt down in the trenches of a larger war.
The term
cannon fodder
popped into his mind.

The courage he had felt before was gone. He was afraid of dying. He began to cry.

He heard voices downstairs inside the front of the villa. A door slammed. More people.

There were heavy boots on the stairs. Men were coming to get him—his executioners. He didn't care how they killed him as long as he didn't suffer. He tried to recall a psalm he had once heard. "The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to—"

Four heavily armed soldiers burst into his room, followed by two men in doctors' white gowns. Lights were turned on. Robert recognized one of the men in white as the physician who had been present when they treated his shoulder. Another man, unarmed and wearing a different uniform from the others, appeared in the doorway. Robert recognized Abdullah, the cruel and sadistic officer from the beginning of his captivity. For sure they had now come to kill him, he decided.

"So we meet again," Abdullah said. "For the final time."

Robert tensed in bed. He was right. This was the end for him.

Abdullah glowered at Robert, sorry he hadn't had the opportunity to interrogate the American pilot. "You're going home soon," he said to Robert. "You're going home."

Tiny buds of hope stirred in Robert. He didn't let them grow. Believing it was only a cruel joke by Abdullah, who intended to send his dead body home in a wooden box, he squashed his hope quickly.

"First you have to sleep," Abdullah said.

Robert didn't resist when one of the medics crossed the room with a syringe in his hand. The American was prepared to accept the notion that he would never wake up. At least death by lethal injection would be pain-free.

The shot was a powerful anesthetic. Once Robert was asleep, two soldiers lifted his body out of the bed. They carried him on their shoulders downstairs and outside of the villa. One of the vehicles that had arrived was an ambulance. They loaded him onto a gurney in the back and strapped him in. A medic hooked up leads to monitor his vital signs.

"Ready to go," the medic called to Abdullah, who was waiting outside the ambulance.

"The plane's on standby at the airport," Abdullah said. "We have a place: like this to hold him once we land in Baku."

* * *

Jack and Layla walked out of the Bristol onto Rue St. Honore and into the gloom of predawn in Paris. The hour belonged to laborers struggling to make a living getting an early start, women of the night on the way home after tumbling out of their last client's bed, and writers desperately afraid of shutting down their computers for fear that a new bout of writer's block might overtake them. Side by side they moved slowly to the curb, not wanting to leave each other, knowing that one or both of them might not survive the next couple of days.

Jack put his arm around her. "I think you're insane not to take a cab to the Israeli embassy right now and let David Navon get you out of Paris."

She leaned over and kissed him gently. "We've been through that a thousand times."

"Then at least let me ride home with you to make sure Nadim's not waiting at your apartment."

"I know you want to help me, Jack, but you have a plane to catch. Besides, Moreau's men may still be on my street."

She was right, of course. He had forgotten about Moreau. He didn't argue with her.

Layla spotted a cab. She raised her hand. The old Peugot's brakes squealed. It stopped in front of them.

"You take it," Jack said. "I'll get the next one."

As he opened the door for her, Layla flashed the mysterious smile that had captivated him the first time he met her at the wine dinner. "Will I ever see you again?" she asked.

Jack knew that the answer called for was, "You're damn right," but he was too honest for that. He thought about the dangers they were each confronting. He forced a smile and said, "I sure hope so."

That was good enough for Layla. She hugged him, kissed him quickly, and climbed into the cab.

Exhausted from making love most of the night, she dozed until the cab pulled up in front of her apartment. Paying the driver, she thought about what Jack had said, that Nadim might be waiting in her apartment. She dismissed that with a wave of one hand, while at the same time clutching tightly the black leather bag that held her loaded gun.

As the elevator rose to the sixth floor, she thought about Jack. He was different from any other man she had ever met. More sensitive. More caring. But they were an odd couple, the two of them. A common enemy, Nadim, had united them. When this was all over, if they both made it out alive, would there be a future for them?

She yawned and checked her watch.
What I need right now,
she chided herself,
is a bath, two hours of sleep, and about three cups of strong black coffee before I go to work at the bank.

Exiting the elevator, she yanked the gun out of her purse and gripped it tightly. She turned the key in the lock to her apartment door, pushed it open, and looked around. She didn't see anybody. The apartment looked normal to her.

She started across the Oriental carpet in the living room and kicked the door shut behind her. Just as she did, Nadim, who had been hiding between the open door and the wall, jumped out. Before she had a chance to react, he raised his right hand and brought it down with a hard chop on the wrist of her arm holding the gun. She lost control of her hand, and the gun fell out. Helplessly she watched it skidding across the floor.

"Get out of here," she screamed, steeling her courage. "Or I'll call the police."

Coldly, he stared into her eyes. Then, without any warning, he raised his right hand, which had a large gold ring, swung it hard, and smashed the back of it against the side of her face. The force of the blow knocked her off her feet.

He looked down at her and shook his head grimly. "You're not giving me any orders."

Tasting blood, she staggered to her feet and positioned herself between Nadim and the bedroom. "What do you want with me?"

"You spied on me for the Israelis. You'll pay for that."

"I did what I had to do for my own people."

"I'm your people. Not the Jews."

Trying to be unobtrusive, she backpedaled a couple of steps toward the bedroom. "You killed more of my people than the Israelis did."

He raised his hand and pointed a finger. "I won't kill you for what you did. That would be too easy."

With loathing, she glared at him, terrified, trying to imagine what his evil mind had fashioned for her.

"I'll give you the choice," he said, savoring each word. "Once I return from Baku—where, incidentally, I intend to kill Jack Cole—you will become my mistress, available for me whenever I want you."

"Never," she said, spitting blood out of her mouth onto the carpet.

"You can take that position if you'd like, but then I will arrange to have one member of your family in Beirut killed every day, starting with your dear father, until you change your mind."

Her body trembled with fear. She knew he meant it.

"Of course," he continued, "you have one other way out. You can simply kill yourself. Then you won't know how many members of your family I'll murder. The choice is yours." He stopped to gaze at her. "Although it would be a crime to destroy such a beautiful body." When she didn't respond, he said, "You don't have to decide right now. You have until I return from Baku."

"You're a monster," she blurted out.

He laughed. "I've been accused of worse, but being my mistress won't be so bad. You'll enjoy the wonderful sex with me."

He took off the jacket of his military uniform and tossed it onto the couch. Then he began unbuttoning his shirt. "I'll show you right now how much you'll enjoy it. In case your memory of the other night is short."

It was Layla's turn to laugh. "I lied in my note. You weren't man enough to do anything. You couldn't even get it up. At least with Jack Cole I get a hard prick."

Nadim's body froze. "You're lying, you stupid cunt."

She continued in a mocking voice: "Perhaps you were tired and it was late. Maybe you had too much to drink." She shrugged. "Who knows."

She picked her skirt up, flashing her sheer white panties and showing off her thick brown bush. "Let's see if you're man enough to do anything this time."

Then she turned and ran toward the bedroom.

For an instant Nadim was too stunned to move. No one had ever dared to insult his sexual prowess. By the time he recovered, she had slammed the bedroom door. He unzipped his pants. As soon as he reached inside and stroked it a couple of times, his member sprang out, rock-hard, red, and veiny. With fire in his eyes, he vowed that he'd make her pay for her words.

The couple of seconds was all Layla needed. She just hoped Jack's friends had done what he promised. Her terrified eyes quickly scanned the wall near the door. She saw an electrical switch that had never been there before. With moist, shaking hands she tossed the switch upward. Then she moved into the bathroom and grabbed a pair of scissors, her only other possible weapon.

The scissors were in her hand, raised high above her head. She held her breath, waiting for Nadim to grab the doorknob.

First she heard a crackling sound, then a piercing scream from Nadim, finally the sound of Nadim's body collapsing to the floor.

She dropped the scissors, turned off the current, and cautiously opened the door.

At the same time that her eyes saw Nadim crumpled up and unconscious on the floor, her nose detected the dreadful odor of seared human flesh.

It was almost too much for Layla to bear. She couldn't bring herself to get near Nadim's body, even to look at it to see if he was dead or alive. The fact that he had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people—her people—gave her no joy. Her knees tottered. She was afraid they would buckle and she would end up on the floor next to Nadim.

She had to get out of the apartment fast. Rallying all of her remaining strength, she staggered across the living room and picked up her gun from the floor. All the while she was muttering to herself, "Please God, let him be dead... please, God." She closed the door behind her and grabbed the metal banister.

Her breath was coming in short spurts. If Nadim was dead, she'd be charged with murder. There was no way she'd ever be able to convince the French police that it had been self-defense. She knew what she had to do: Get out of this building, grab a cab, and leave the area—then call David Navon at the Israeli embassy. He would be able to get her out of France.

She stumbled down one flight of stairs, clutching the banister. On the next landing she got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Jack had said that the chances of Nadim's being killed by the electrical device were only fifty-fifty. But what if Nadim survived? Even if the Israelis helped her escape, the killing and mayhem he would inflict on her family was too terrible to imagine. She couldn't take that chance. No matter how horrible it was, she had to go back into that awful apartment, determine whether Nadim was dead, and if not, finish the job. She had no choice, regardless of how awful it would be.

She turned around and started up the stairs. As she did, she heard voices coming from the ground floor. Two men were talking, and one of them was Daniel Moreau, the SDECE agent who had been looking for Jack. He had to be returning to talk to her. Going back into her own apartment was hopeless. He would find her there with Nadim's body.

She listened carefully. They were coming up the stairs. She could try for the elevator and hope to avoid them, but it was too slow. God only knew when it would come.

Think
, she told herself.
Think.
There had to be a way out of this quagmire. Then it hit her: Oliver, the screenwriter who lived across the hall. She just had to hope he was at home and not asleep, because then he might not get to the door in time.

She charged up the flight of stairs, then pressed hard on Oliver's bell, ringing it again and again.

"Okay. Okay. I'm coming," he called from inside. He looked through the peephole, saw it was Layla, and opened the door. She stumbled inside and closed it quickly.

"Hey, what's going on?" the startled Oliver asked.

She pushed a finger up to her lips. "Shhh. Be quiet."

Oliver, with two days' growth of a beard, bags under his eyes, and dressed in old jeans and a faded gray sweatshirt, led her away from the door.

"You look like hell," he whispered.

"You don't look so hot yourself."

"I've been up for forty-eight straight hours rewriting my screenplay, because some asshole producer thinks he's more creative than I am, and the director's too much of a wimp to take my side. What's your excuse?"

"It's better if you don't know."

"It's that SDECE guy, Moreau. Isn't it?"

She nodded weakly.