The Watchers (40 page)

“Nothing that campy. If you're selected for further interview, you'll be in a small room, though. Sparsely furnished. You could even be interviewed by a man-woman team. Just remember that they're going to question you along a story line. They'll get your rhythm going along a certain subject. Then they'll suddenly interrupt you with the odd, irrelevant question. Just to throw you off your game. See, it's only human to want to be heard when you speak. And it's confusing to be interrupted with an unrelated question. So if they get you going too fast on a given subject, watch out. They'll try to make you stumble and contradict yourself. It's okay to slow down, and to pause. . . .”

CHAPTER
_
56

LONDON
—THE NEXT MORNING

Both Abby and Dylan slept in until nine, then got ready and grabbed a cab back to the Internet café in Soho, where Dylan purchased a pair of tickets to Israel on an American carrier. They exited, then disappeared to the same upper floor they had visited the day before.

Forty-five minutes later they emerged, smiling, yet considerably poorer. In a carefully concealed waistband wallet, Abby now owned a freshly minted, although cunningly distressed, U.S. passport. Thanks to post–9/11 improvements in passport security, the required holographic and embedded detail work, not to mention the use of a verifiable American identity, had skyrocketed the cost of acquiring such a document by nearly twentyfold. And the exacting glue and laminate work had required an overnight waiting time for drying purposes.

But neither client was complaining.

Marcus Bryce—his original identity of Dylan Hatfield now almost lost for all time—had engaged the most skilled, discreet, and expensive forger of such things in all of Western Europe. And that kind of care took time.

The piece, along with its accompanying driver's license and Visa debit card, were foolproof.

They hopped another cab for the return leg to Heathrow. From her seat inside the speeding black Fairway, Abby looked up at the sky. It was a gray day, made overcast by the soiled underbelly of high, thick clouds—a typical London day. She looked out at the crowded street, listened to the honking and beeping of vehicles, smelled the urbane aroma of exhaust fumes and ozone. She glanced at her companion.

“You know something, Dylan?” she said, barely above a whisper. “You're going to think I'm crazy.”

“No, I won't. What is it?”

“I miss Nigeria. I'd give anything to be back in that forest right now. I miss Sister Okoye. I miss those people . . . weren't they wonderful? The smiles, the children, the incredible women with their dresses and their voices and their wild, exuberant worship. I miss all of it.”

She paused while he smiled dreamily back in the same places with her.

“Do you know that after all that time,” she continued, “I never learned whether Okoye was her first or her last name?”

“Neither did I.”

The silence descended back on them. The taxi picked up speed.

The young woman looked back out the window, trying to identify a difference in hue between the monotonous grays of concrete highway, soot-stained walls, and leaden sky.

She began to cry, softly, to herself.

JERUSALEM, CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

The monk approached her usual sitting spot and froze in place. He stared.

She was sitting up like a normal, healthy person, the kind strong enough for everything from speech to movement of limbs to engaging in ordinary human conversation. He smiled and gave a prayer of thanks. How long had it been now?

And she so young. Or
seemingly
so young.

“You can come closer, you know,” she said in a voice he noted was free of weakness, breathiness, and impediments of any sort. It actually had a ring, a timbre to it.
Praise God
.

He approached, trying to mask his relief.

“I feel better this morning,” she said. “Do you know why?”

“No, I do not, Sister,” he answered.

“I am having visitors tomorrow. Very important visitors.”

“Oh. Well, I am glad for the warning. Perhaps I can tidy up the area—”

“Tidy up nothing, my brother. They are not people to try and impress. They will be people for whom I wish the warmest hospitality. A hearing, receptive audience for what they have to say. That is all, and no more.”

“Perhaps we can show our hospitality by helping them up here in the first place. Helping them see our views.”

“Helping them reach me would be more than sufficient. I realize, they will have no way to name me or identify me. They are coming for very mysterious and godly reasons. So please allow your most gifted colleagues out on the terrace tomorrow. Would you?”

“What are they?”

“What do you mean, ‘what are they?' They are followers of Christ, that I know. They are adventurous, that I have heard. They are loving, that I can only hope. They are a man and a woman. And I have been told, on good authority, that they will be here tomorrow. That is all.”

LAGOS, NIGERIA

“What do you mean, ‘go
home
?' I'm not going home.
You
go home!”

“Mr. Sherman, I understand your frustration and . . . dilemma. And pain. But our government no longer believes she is in the country.”

“Why?”

“I'm trying very hard to have that information released to me.”

“Well, would you leave your daughter in some third-world country on the basis of
that
? Of the blubberings of some third-rate consular bureaucrat?”

“Now wait a minute, sir. There's no need to get personal—”

“You idiot, there's nothing more personal than the well-being of one's daughter. Are you married, by any chance? Got any kids?”

“I don't see why that has any bearing—”

“Yeah. Didn't think so.”

“I can tell you, sir, and this is entirely off the record, that we have engaged an unusual level of . . . let's just say data-gathering capabilities, if you get my drift, to assist the Nigerian government in this search. Given the high level of media attention on this case, we felt it was only helpful. And those extensive capabilities have now given us ample reason to believe that she is no longer within these borders.”

“Then where do you believe she's been taken to?”

“Sir, we do not believe she has been taken anywhere against her will. Given the amount of distance she has covered, as well as numerous other factors, we believe she is moving about of her own free will.”

“Look. You tell your bosses that I'm going to hire my own merry band of Nigerian mercenaries to comb the savannah for my daughter. I hear you can buy them by the pound out here. I may or may not stay myself in this godforsaken place. But if I leave, you can be extra sure I'll leave behind a team so large and well financed that you'll wish you'd called in the marines to find Abby. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, sir. Although I feel an obligation to warn you that the engagement of private militias for anything other than safe travel to and from various approved points within Nigeria proper is strongly discouraged by—”

A door slammed and Robert Sherman was gone. The consular official, clearly rattled by the encounter, allowed his sentence to trail off into the oblivion even he knew it deserved.

Beyond the door, Sherman walked away smiling. He knew his Abby was safe and sound, of course. But the leak-proof search teams would never know it until the end—not if he could help it.

Five minutes later, he was on the sidewalk, looking around impatiently for his hired security team.

They were nowhere to be seen.

Twenty seconds after that, a single black SUV raced up the street, swerved over to a stop, and produced three machine-gun barrels from its thrown-open doors.

Abigail's father did not even get the chance to protest. A bystander rushed up from behind him and brutally shoved him toward the gunmen. His falling body was swiftly swallowed into the vehicle, which just as quickly screeched back up to speed and into the careening Lagos traffic.

CHAPTER
_
57

BEN GURION AIRPORT
—LAT E THAT AFTERNOON

Abby had fallen into a near trance of composing and rehearsing her cover story during the quiet four-and-a-half-hour flight. As a result, the only distraction strong enough to break her concentration turned out to be the bump of their actual landing. Startled back into an awareness of her surroundings, she looked outside and gasped. A deep blue sky and palm trees whizzed past her window.

She reached out for Dylan and clutched his arm, smiling.

While she climbed down metal stairs to the tarmac, Abby felt herself torn between vastly opposing emotions.

First, she was thrilled to be visiting, for the first time, the “home turf ” of her faith. It struck her as a powerful validation of her quest that it had now taken her to the very core of the Christian heritage. Even if her first sight of it was a large patch of concrete, the smell of jet fuel and a skyline of very Western, low-slung buildings. All around her, immigrants and Jewish seniors were kneeling and kissing the ground with loud, touching laments.

Second, however, she found her apprehension about the upcoming entry process climbing by the second. While she and Dylan waited on the tarmac for a cluster of security personnel to approach them, they both worked to mask their tension as simple travel weariness. But these were only cosmetic attempts. By the time Abby dared to look, only four people remained ahead of her.

A sheet of ice-cold fear descended upon her. She felt her heart break into a gallop. Her thoughts suddenly became sluggish and incoherent. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself into normalness. Perhaps, she struggled to tell herself, she could simply keep channeling these symptoms into the universal signs of a sleep-deprived flyer. A few yawns, eyes that refused to stay open, a twitchy agitation of the limbs . . .

The space ahead of her yawned clear.

Your turn
.

“Madam?”

“Oh. Sorry.” She shuffled forward, almost grateful for the veil of awkward self-deprecation her slow approach afforded her. She caught up and offered her passport to a man in his forties. Short hair. Cool, gruff expression. He'd been here awhile.

“Miss Rawlins, what is the reason for your visit today to the State of Israel?”

“Uh, re-research.”

Great, Abigail
, she chided herself. Stumble on the very first word. His eyes rested on her face; she strained to appear tired and unfocused. Anything but dishonest.

“What kind of research?”

“Sociohistorical, I guess. A doctoral thesis.”

“Please board the bus, ma'am. Thank you.”

She met Dylan's gaze as they were heading to the bus, which had just lumbered to a stop beside them. “Is that it?” she mouthed.

He smiled with regret and shook his head no.

The fear returned full force. They rode the bus several minutes to the other side of the terminal, then disembarked. Dylan and Abby were both motioned into a door with the other passengers, then to the left side of a large, open room.

Abby blanched—it was full of interrogation kiosks.

Dylan reached out and gave her hand a friendly squeeze. “Just part of the Israeli welcome party,” he said to her as though they had never discussed the subject. She knew what he was doing. A little banter to cut the tension.

They were quickly separated and led to separate cubicles. Now a woman in her twenties awaited her, already scrutinizing her as she approached. Abby handed up her papers and stood, wearing a neutral expression and wondering if the skin over her heart revealed any sign of the wild pounding beneath it.

“Miss Rawlins, why are you coming to Israel today?”

“Educational research.”

“What are you researching?”

“Uh . . . the interplay of social, historical, and religious relationships between competing factions at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to put it succinctly.”

“What factions?”

“Well, all of them in general. But specifically, the Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Coptic monks.”

Great,
Abby exulted inwardly.
I'm getting to tell the truth
.

The young woman opened Abby's suitcase and began tossing its contents on the table between them. All at once, Abby began to see gaps in her preparation—an unopened toothpaste tube here, an unremoved clothing label there.

“Did you come alone to do this research?”

“No, I came with a friend. He's over there in the other—”

“What is your relationship?”

“Friends. Just good friends. He's here to look out for me.”

“Did he buy you your ticket?”

“I guess, technically.”

“What do you mean, ‘technically'? Either he did, or he didn't.”

“Well, he purchased it on his credit card, although I'm reimbursing him.”

“Miss Rawlins, I don't see any sign of information-gathering devices here. No computer, no camera, not even a pen and paper. You say you're here to conduct research?”

Inwardly, Abby groaned. What an oversight. She chuckled outwardly, trying to maintain an amiable facade. “I was told to pack light and cheap. They said a laptop wouldn't be safe on such a long trip. And that a camera would attract too much attention. I planned to buy pen and legal pads here in Jerusalem, along with one of those cheap disposable cameras. I love those things; they're so handy. Don't you?”

The woman didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the mess she was making of the suitcase. Abby just stood there, silently exulting at her deft handling of the crisis, and awaited the next one.

Just as quickly, Abby's eyes darted up and caught sight of a camera, trained on her from just behind her questioner's head.

She began to pray.

Across one of fifteen monitors lining the wall of a nearby command center, a series of thin, blinking red lines swarmed over a still image of Abby's face like warring laser beams. Red dots blinked and tiny sounds emitted where vertical and horizontal lines intersected. Within seconds a biometric mapping of her facial features announced its completion with a low beep.