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Abdullah sat up, seemingly
much more alert.

“Give me half before I talk,”
he said, his voice now quite hoarse, his gaze intense on the money.

“Talk first,
Señor
,” Ortega said just as the door to the
café burst open and a squad of policemen appeared in the entrance.

“Chief Halil,” Abdullah
murmured guiltily, springing to his feet.

The chief, eyeing the cash on
the table, motioned for Abdullah to approach him while his men kept watch on
the visitors.  They conferred in low voices in the corner,
then
approached the table.

Ortega sat motionless not
displaying concern.

“Your friends have broken the
law,” the chief declared without preamble. 

Ortega remained silent.

“They will pay dearly when we
find them.”

“Where are they?  What
did they do?” Ortega asked.

“They are somewhere in the
mountains with the Frenchwoman and her boy.”

Ortega perked up.  This
was vital information.  It was suddenly becoming clear why his colleagues
took off.

“What business do you have
with them?” the chief continued.

“We work together,” Ortega
answered figuring the truth was his best ally for the moment.

“Then you are part of this
conspiracy,” the chief stated.

“I don’t know what conspiracy
you mean,
Señor
.”

“To
kidnap El-Shara’s boy!”
 
the
chief
retorted angrily.

“
Señor
,
we work for a respectable and well-known American organization which assists in
child kidnapping cases.  We do not kidnap children!  We help bring
them back to their parents.”

“Then why don’t we meet the
boy’s father and maybe you can explain why your colleagues stole his boy.”

“Will you please explain to me
what happened here?” Ortega continued in a pacifying manner.

“I will let the father and the
judge do that,” the chief said.  “Come with me.”

Two policemen at his side,
Ortega was escorted from the café through the market to an aging
open-top police Jeep and placed in the back.

Jamal, Ortega noticed, did not
accompany him.

They met the judge and Hussni
El-Shara at the judge’s quarters in the old prison building where Clair had
been held.

The bearded judge sat behind
his large desk, dressed in his customary brown suit and pink tie, with
El-Shara, Clair’s ex-husband, by his side.  He was a neat looking person
casually dressed in designer slacks and a
Lacoste
shirt, bony and tall with straight black hair fashionably cut and oiled, dark
scrutinizing eyes under heavy eyebrows, conspicuous cheekbones, a long curved
nose, and thin lips almost totally concealed under a bushy mustache.

Ortega was made to stand in
front of the judge, Chief Halil and Abdullah confining him on both sides.

Chief Halil spoke in Arabic to
the judge.  Abdullah translated to English:

“The police are quite distraught
by what has happened and are considering charging this man with conspiracy to
kidnap the boy.  We would like to hold this man responsible until his
friends show up.”

Ortega, beginning to feel a
noose tighten around his neck, spoke evenly to the judge: “Holding me hostage
here will not solve your problem.  If it’s the boy you want, I may be able
to help find him.”

Abdullah translated into
Arabic and Chief Halil continued:  “We have reason to believe this man is
withholding information which can help us find the boy.” 

The judge looked at Ortega
expectantly.  Ortega, trying to avoid being drawn into taking a defensive
position, reasoned:  “
Señor
, I came here
to try and help solve the situation.  My organization has the means to
assist you in straightening this out.”

Hussni El-Shara spoke for the
first time.  “It is your
organization who have
been after my son ever since I divorced the woman and moved to Cairo.” 

Ortega was about to argue that
El-Shara was the one who took the boy from his mother against French court
ruling, but stopped himself short, realizing the people in the room had already
imprisoned Clair for trying to bring back her boy.

He was trapped and he knew
it.  He had walked straight into it, miscalculating Egyptian motives and
thinking he could count on fair play.

They were all there, just
waiting for him to show up so they can further exploit whatever it was they
wanted from Black Jack and company who had obviously promptly escaped.

“You will be tried,” the judge
announced, then turned his back to the Spaniard and conferred in Arabic with
Hussni El-Shara. 

One of Chief Halil’s men
approached Ortega with handcuffs.  But the Spaniard was quick. 
Startling everyone in the room he jumped over the judge’s table, dodging over
the judge and threw himself out the open window landing with a thump on the
ground two floors below.  Dazed, he got up and began to limp away feeling
a terrible pain to his right leg.  Then he heard shots and noticed a stray
of bullets tugging at his heels and all around him.  He kept limping
toward a line of palm trees in the distance when a bullet caught him in the
back of the neck and knocked him down.

A troop of policemen burst out
of the prison building to give chase to the fleeing prisoner who had already
fallen from bullets fired upon him from the second floor windows.

They found him sprawled on the
ground, blood oozing from his neck and knee, and stood around looking at the
dying man until he took his last breath.

In the line of palm trees Ortega
had been trying to reach, hidden from view by a large stump, Jamal, the Bedouin
escort, watched in horror as the incident evolved into a colossal disaster.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Two members of the
appropriations committees, Senator Stone and Congressman Giovanni, agreed to
meet with Sam and his crew following deliberate lobbying by the Center’s main
supporters, George Metzger and Annie Green.

To finance Colonel Harley’s
mission to Kashmir and Natasha’s activities with the Romanians, they needed a
million US dollars.

Sam and Mai-Li had managed to
obtain support from well-placed government officials in the State Department
and the CIA who promised to assist in coordinating the needed British approvals
for employing Harley’s unit in Kashmir and for tracking the Romanian
prostitution ring outside Romania.

Public money, however, was as
always in short supply and needed to be approved and granted by the appropriate
House and Senate committees.  Metzger and Annie Green pulled a few strings
with the staffers to allow for the meeting to take place but Sam had to supply
the rationale for the expenditure.

They met in Senator Erwin
Stone’s office on Capitol Hill.  Congressman Richard Giovanni joined them
there.  Sam gave a brief preview of the Center’s activities, past and
current, successes and failures, then rationalized that most failures were due
to lack of resources, mainly manpower and money.

Mai-Li briefed them on the
Kashmir situation and the ongoing Romanian activities and the cooperation suggested
by the Romanian government.

Having been exposed to the
Center’s activities in the past and having had a hand in the dismantling of
Black Jack’s organization, LMC, both the senator and the congressman were
sympathetic but remained reserved and non-committal during the session to the
end.  They did, however, agree to include the request when their
respective appropriations committees next met, as a supplemental budget
petition under Special Task Force operations, which was all Sam could hope for
since the two could not by themselves approve the money in any event. 
They also promised to expedite the matter through the rest of the bureaucratic
sequence if the committees voted in favor.

Luck was on their side. 
Both the House and Senate committees met the very next day.  The petition
won support by a landslide and money was appropriated after conference three
days later.

Sam was notified of the
decision, meeting with George Metzger for lunch in a trendy seafood restaurant
in Bethesda.

“You’ve made quite a name for
yourself on the Hill,” Metzger observed as he dug into his salmon, dipping it
in hollandaise sauce.  He was a big man with graying, wavy, red hair, a
fatherly freckled face, pleasant and always smiling.

“What made them approve it so
easily this time?”  Sam asked.

“Stone was impressed with your
no-nonsense tenacity.  Giovanni liked your progress on cases, which have
been lingering on his agenda a little too long.  He’d been getting some
heat to do something about these issues when you walked in offering to help
resolve part of his problem.  They were both obviously sympathetic to the
cause, as anyone would be, but as you know, turning it to cash is a whole other
matter.

“Also, this time, you came in
prepared, with a set plan that included limits on both time and money. 
This was not a general petition for support over a period of time which they
tend to avoid, but rather a specific focused request which they liked and we
must learn from this.”

Sam took a sip from his red
wine. 

“We’ve got a situation brewing
in the Middle East.”

Metzger lifted his gaze.

“Jack and Christine went after
a mother who was jailed down in the Sinai Peninsula, a place called
Dahab.  She was after her boy taken by her ex.  Jack and Chris went
there and disappeared so I sent Ortega after them. 
Now
it seems, he too has disappeared.”

“Any
ideas?”
  Metzger asked.

“Not many.  We have an
Israeli contact down there.  He assisted Ortega getting him to the Sinai,
expecting him to come back out a day later but Ortega never showed up.”

“How long has it been?”

“Three days.  We gave it
another day but this is now well into its fourth day and we need to take
action.”

“What do you need?”

“I’m short three people,” Sam
reasoned.  “Natasha is in Romania waiting for somebody to make a
move.  Mai-Li is on her way to hook up with Harley and I need to urgently
figure out what’s going on down there in Egypt.”

“Go on,” Metzger said, smiling
encouragingly, seeing Sam
hesitate
.

“I’ll need to hire someone, at
least temporarily until people get back.”

“Anybody
in mind?”
  Metzger queried, knowing Sam would be
prepared.

“There’s a Greek person, a
woman I knew many years ago, who showed up on my doorstep and is staying with
me for a while.”
Metzger raised his eyebrows. “Do you trust her?”

“Yeah, I do.”  Sam looked
sideways uneasily.

Metzger studied him closely.
He was well aware of Sam’s apparent celibate state since losing his wife and,
knowing Sam for quite a while now, was not aware he had ever gotten close to
any woman since.  Sensing his uneasiness, Metzger did not want to
pry.  He was just hopeful for Sam.

“Hire her,” he said without
hesitation.  “Just make sure she gets security clearance.”

“It’ll have to be done in
parallel, George.  I need her right away to man the office while
everyone’s away.”

“It’s your call, Sam,” Metzger
said.

“She will not be exposed to
any sensitive material or even be aware of what’s going on before she gets
cleared.  All I need her to do until things settle down is to keep us all
in contact.”

“You got the Brits to
cooperate?”  Metzger asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah.
 
Harley’s got the green light.  Mai-Li’s CIA contacts got MI6 to cooperate
on the Romanian project.”

“Then it’s not all bad.” 
Metzger observed.

“I’d prefer we knew where Jack
and Ortega are.”

“When are you going down
there?”

“As
soon as I get Elena settled.
  No later than tomorrow
evening on a flight to Tel Aviv.”

“You keep me informed,”
Metzger said signaling for the bill.  “I’ll let Annie know what’s going
on.”

The two men got up and shook
hands.  Sam caught a taxi to Reagan National airport to catch his US
Airways shuttle flight back to New York.  George Metzger remained sitting,
thoughtful, for a while before his driver showed up.  He could not help
but wonder whether Sam was losing grip on the operation and whether he should
provide additional help.

*****

The shuttle landed in La
Guardia late afternoon and Sam reached his apartment in Manhattan an hour
later, his cab driver doing a heroic job fighting the traffic.

Elena was making dinner. 
It had been a week since she arrived and already they had settled into a
routine. The apartment had – remarkably - acquired a woman’s touch: 
flowerpots appeared in windows and niches, soft scents emerged from the bedroom
and bath, tablecloths, new cushions, a full refrigerator, and even a cat Elena
had found on the street.

“What’s his name?”  Sam
asked, throwing his briefcase on the sofa.

“
Alexis,
and it’s a she,” Elena answered approaching from the kitchen for a kiss and a
hug.  

They kissed passionately
falling on the sofa, entangled in love.

“You got a job.”  Sam
said when the passion subsided.  Elena looked up expectantly. 

“With me,” he continued. “I
need someone to look after things while I’m away.”

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Job description is quite
covert but in general terms there’s a group of us trying to contain the spread
of worldwide child kidnapping.”

He caught her gaze and knew
she understood immediately.

“You’re still looking for
Sammy,” she stated rather than asked.

“And others,” he said levelly.

She hesitated with her reply,
studying him for a long moment, her large brown eyes searching his
own.  

“
This a
personal crusade?” she finally asked.

“You can look at it that way
if you like.”

“This has precedence over
anything you’ll ever do?”

His stare hardened a trace
then comprehended her concern.  “I haven’t had any alternatives…”

“Would you let go if you did?”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“Would you let go if we had a
child?” she clarified.  

“Is this something you want?”

“Not with a man who grieves so
long for his past.”

An astonished,
incomprehensible look seized his face.  His eyes blanked out for a moment
as rage took hold yet he was unable to convey what he felt into words. 
His entire being was suddenly shattered by this simple statement, yet he could
not argue its logic.

He got up and left the
apartment, seeking anonymous solitude in the crowded streets and darkened
Central Park for the better part of the night.

He hated it.  Hated what
she allowed herself to say to him after all the years and all the suffering he
had gone through.  Where was she when he needed her?  She had only
shown up when it suited her and only after being thrown out of her own
house.  What did she expect of him?  What did anyone expect of him
but to manage through another day of grieving for his long lost family? 
Wasn’t that suffering enough?

He stopped at a bench where
two squirrels played, chasing one another, but stood brooding, seeing
nothing.  Did he ever stop and consider what would happen when he did find
Sammy Junior?  The boy may be quite happy and content with his life. 
May love whoever raised him.  May not even be aware these were not his
biological kin.  What would he do then?  Rip him away from his
natural habitat and cause him only more suffering?

And
Michelle?
  She would probably have urged him to get
on with his life and not trash them away, grieving for her.  What was the
point of being a shadow, not engaging in life?  Was he punishing himself for
the sake of her memory?  She would never stand for that.  She would
be the first to push him away.

He roamed the park some more
then tramped the emptying streets and returned to the apartment at three in the
morning.  Elena was asleep on the sofa where he left her, her slender
legs, bare, stretched out under an oversized T-shirt.  He bent to kiss her
forehead and she snapped awake.  He awkwardly fell onto her, burying his
face in the nave of her neck.  She kissed the top of his head, hugged him
and together they fell asleep until morning.