Terminal Rage (31 page)

The interrogation was brief and cordial. He knew exactly how to play it to deflect any interest in him.

By the early afternoon, Blackwell seemed well enough for the hospital to discharge him. But not before asking him to fill out a litany of paperwork and submitting him to another full-body probe by the buxom Latina. In turn, she handed him over to a long line of other doctors, physiotherapists, and counselors, each with their own claims and disclaimers. Every single one of them prognosticating how his mind and body would react to the attack in the next few days and weeks, and how he should respond accordingly. Bureaucracy gone mad, Blackwell concluded. If this was Anguilla, they would have advised him to rub his scalp with lime juice and sent him home with a bottle of rum. And it would have been better.

In a faint voice Blackwell gave the address of his sister Alice’s house in Calabasas to the taxi driver. Alice was a writer and was travelling in Thailand and Malaysia with her husband and kids. He always crashed at her place when he was in town.

The afternoon sun flooded the inside of the taxi and all he could do without his shades was dip his head and stare at his feet.

The entire reel of what had happened to him played out in his mind. With nothing to go on. Who were these guys, and
how’d
they know to come for him, only to be killed by a mysterious, silent figure who tranquilized him, then saved him?

Thanks to a phone charger he
’
d borrowed from the nurses
’
station, he was able to pump some juice into his dead phone. When he switched it on, the incessant buzzing of backlogged emails and text messages made him wish he hadn
’
t.

First, he skimmed for anything from Melanie and the kids, but he
’
d only been out of it for a day and they hadn
’
t started to worry yet.

Then a text message from a number he didn
’
t recognize. Blackwell couldn
’
t tell if the chills he felt were the effects of the tranquilizer gun, the painkillers they had pumped in him, or the content of the message staring him in the face.

Four words from the man he now knew had saved his life. Four words from Sam Morgan.

Stop looking for me.

TWENTY-SIX

Monday, September 24, 2012—7:58 a.m.
Sydney, Australia

D
espite the morning crispness in the air caressing his face, Sam sensed this would be another hot day in Sydney. Summer was just around the corner and it had already started to show. He sat at the back of the empty ferry as it departed from wharf number four at the main terminal of Circular Quay, heading to the affluent lower north shore suburbs facing the water.

The only other passenger on the boat was a sphinx-like man who must have been about seventy-five. He sat on the outside deck near Sam. His shriveled hands leaned on a battered cane and revealed a ring on his finger. It identified him as a former officer of the ANZAC Battalion, which had fought under the combined forces of Australia and New Zealand during the Vietnam War. Their eyes met briefly and Sam nodded to him in respect.

“Thank you.”

The old man gazed at him with a bewildered, but kind face.

“Sorry, mate?” His voice was low and gruff.

Sam pointed at the ring, which was all the explanation required for his random expression of gratitude. The old man smiled, nodded, and gazed out to the bay with nostalgic eyes. He sighed wistfully. It must have been a long time since anyone had remembered, yet alone acknowledged his selfless valor in defending his country.

Taking his cue from the former warrior, Sam looked back at the majestic white sails of the Sydney Opera House. This iconic building was the city
’
s cultural bastion, and had been standing vigil overlooking the harbor since its completion forty years ago.

It reminded Sam of his own war. He had first laid eyes on it thirteen years ago, with his wife Angela by his side.

On that same trip to Australia, she surprised him on the idyllic Lord Howe Island with a positive pregnancy test left on his nightstand in their lodge. They would have a girl and would call her Maya.

He touched the long scar that went from his shoulder down to his elbow, expecting to remember the pain he
’
d experienced when his skin was cut open. He felt nothing. A new calm had been sprouting within his soul. The war he
’
d been waging was now coming to an end. The scar was a battle-mark he
’
d picked up on the day his wife and children perished in Sharm El Sheikh, seven years ago.

At the police roadblock, Sam had realized the second explosion that rocked the city was in the hotel where he’d left Angela and the kids. He begged the Egyptian cops to let him return to the Spring Roy resort, in the desperate hope his family had survived.

They refused, so he jumped in the car and made a run for it, leaving his driver behind. The cops didn
’
t chase after him, probably because they deemed him harmless and had other more urgent matters on their minds.

When he reached the resort, fire had engulfed the whole compound. The emergency services were overstretched by the first wave of bombs to hit the old town.

The extent of the first response at the resort was pathetic—a clunky old police truck that spewed from its belly a handful of inept-looking central security conscripts. They stood gaping at the fire like a Chuck Norris flick at their local cinema, hardly noticing Sam as he circled the resort to access the pool area from the boardwalk.

Terrified tourists from surrounding resorts had congregated on the beach for safety. The more foolhardy stood in front of the Spring Roy to get a better view of the devastation. But even they gawked with disbelief at the image of Sam fighting his way into the inferno.

The path from the beach to the main building had been transformed to a desolate war zone. Plush wooden beds were blown away to splinters floating in the still-lit pool. Droplets of fire catapulted from inside, and the shattered glass tables from the nearby Reef Grill created a treacherous obstacle course.

A secondary explosion from the gas cookers in the kitchen of the bistro erupted, forcing Sam to jump into the pool, where a razor-sharp wood splinter sliced through his left arm from his elbow to his shoulder. The pain was dull and silent at first, until he saw the water around him turning red.

Struggling to get out of the pool with his gaping wound, Sam sensed that death wasn
’
t far away. And it was an oddly comforting realization. Paddling sideways like a half-slaughtered chicken, he questioned the sanity of wanting to stay alive, when the only people worth living for had just been murdered. The fire from the resort was fast approaching, but he didn
’
t even have to wait for that. All he had to do was give up. Surrender to the awesome force of death that had shattered his life and could just as well take him, too.

Perhaps it was instinct that kept him alive. Or maybe, even back then in the infant moments of his tragedy, a part of him had already resigned itself to staying alive to seek justice for his family, and everyone else who was murdered on that day.

Sam hoisted himself up with his good arm and managed to get out. The only chance of survival was to head back to the beach. At the rate he was losing blood, there was every possibility he wouldn
’
t even make it there. His head spun as the force of life drained from his body faster than he could resist. But he made it. He touched the sand and collapsed, surrendering to a massive fade to black.

As the ferry approached Mosman Bay, the slight chill in the air had all but evaporated. The powerful rays of the sun penetrated through a speckle of dispersing clouds, like giant glass beams filled with white light. Rows of boats of all sizes shimmered in the bay like expensive pearls. And as far as the eye could see, breathtaking houses sculpted into the rocks overlooking an enchanting cove.

On the dot at eight fifteen, the ferry docked as scheduled. A young woman with pumpkin-colored freckles and eyes as blue as the sky above smiled at Sam and the war vetern. She latched the ferry with a thick rope. Sam gave the old man a hand and when they had cleared the entrance, the morning commuters started shuffling onto the boat in an orderly manner.

Outside the ferry terminal, a public bus pulled up. His wristwatch gave him another forty minutes before his meeting, so he considered hopping on it. But he changed his mind. The bus would get him there in ten minutes. What he really wanted to do was to take a trip back in time by walking through the mesmerizing neighborhood of Mosman. One of Sydney
’
s finest suburbs.

The stroll up Avenue Road was a little inclined, but he enjoyed
the increased heart rate and the minor physical challenge. When he
emerged into the busier part of the street, the ground leveled out. He passed by one stunning house after the other, smiling as he remembered how serendipity had first brought him and Angela here.

It was their pursuit of Sydney
’
s best beaches that took them to this part of town. They
’
d started the day early at Cobbler
’
s Beach, then wandered on foot, aiming to reach yet another secluded bay, only to be seduced by the delights of this hidden suburb.

Exciting aromas of fish and chips from the corner fishmonger. Endless rows of curbside cafés with their sophisticated coffee culture, introduced and perfected by successive waves of southern European immigrants. And happy, accomplished people floating around, beaming with sunshine.

It wasn
’
t hard for them to fall in love with Mosman. Years later, he and Angela would still speak half-jokingly about moving there one day. Not just because it was a thriving, affluent community. Or for the picture-perfect, tree-lined streets and secret beaches tucked away in the heart of the neighborhood. What had really captivated their imagination was the safety and evolved sense of community in this magical, understated part of Sydney.

Short of making true on their wish to move there for good, he and Angela had at least hoped to spend a year living in Mosman when the children were a little older. Sam would take a sabbatical from work and they would enroll the kids at a local public school to test-drive the lifestyle.

And although they could never afford a property here, they had come a step closer when Sam inherited a farmhouse in the Blue Mountains on the borders of metropolitan Sydney. Like Sam
’
s mother, his uncle Massimiliano had escaped Sicily and immigrated
to Australia in the fifties. When he passed away, Sam was his only surviving family member.

He and Angela saw the inheritance as a sign. They would sell the farmhouse and use the money as a down payment for a property in Mosman. One of many dreams and plans cut short when Angela and the children were torn from him.

Sam found himself ambling on Myahgah Road, heading towards the heart and soul of Mosman, the Village.

He passed the local public school, where the rowdy sounds of happy children stabbed him deep in the heart and twisted. Ever since he had lost them, not a day passed when Sam didn
’
t think of his kids.

Maya would have been twelve and Ryan nine. What would they look like and how would they have turned out? Sam could only guess. Ryan would have been athletic and adventurous, but gentle and loving with his sister. Maya would have been outgoing and sociable. The leader in her group of friends. Smart, confident, and immune to peer pressure.

These thoughts were not the sort he could dwell on for too long, though. As he always did when he felt this way, Sam snapped his attention away from the school, interrupting an imminent flood of tears.

Accepting his fate and forgiving himself after his family was killed took him six painful months after the attack. The only reason they had ended up in Sharm El Sheikh in the first place was because of him and his work. Angela had expressed her reservations about traveling to the turbulent Middle East, but Sam had won her over with logical, convincing counter arguments.

It all started a year and a half before that fateful trip. Sam had been working on a secret project for a mysterious foreign client who was paying him an obscene amount of money to build a real estate software program. It was the first time since he had launched the company that Sam had taken on a project that wasn
’
t film-industry related.

The client had targeted and recruited him aggressively, and the money they offered him was too attractive to refuse on the grounds the project was out of his scope of interest.

It would be a one-off, never to be repeated. The cash influx would allow Sam to pay off his mortgage and maybe even buy a house in Sydney in cash. And free him from the shackles of his business debts and allow him to take the company to the next level. Hire more full-time product developers and rely less on overseas outsourcing. Maybe even expand to the East Coast, with an office in New York to target the music, theater and publishing industries.

As a token of gratitude for Sam
’
s successful completion of the project, the client offered him and his family an all-expenses-paid, open-ended holiday at the presidential suite of the Spring Roy resort in Sharm El Sheikh.

Sam meandered on the pedestrian part of Myahgah Road past the school, by the Allan Border Oval. The freshly mowed circular lawn was lush and almost begging for a quick run with an incorrigible dog.

The delicious smell of the coffee floating out from the Fourth Village Providore in the heart of the Mosman Village told him he had reached his final destination.

A few attractive mothers with fashionable sunglasses and tight jeans sat at one of the two tables outside, sipping on frothy coffees as their designer toddlers played near the fountain in the courtyard.

The woman Sam had come to meet sat with her back to him at the other table, but he recognized her from her hair. Shorter now, but still the same natural chestnut color.

Creeping up on her from behind, he placed a hand gently on her shoulder and whispered in her ears, “Do you have a light?”

She tossed her head around and her face lit up with a smile when their eyes met.

Julia Price got up and hugged him tight.

The last time they had met, he had pushed her inside a van that took her to a hiding place on the outskirts of Rome. And they had each played their parts masterfully—he the terrorist kidnapper and she the innocent victim.

She looked stunning now in a tiny pastel skirt and a white polo shirt. Her feet showed off manicured toes and were adorned with expensive-looking but simple sandals, topped with a sensual ankle bracelet. And she smelled like an exotic early blooming flower. A stark difference from the version of Julia that had featured in the fake proof-of-life video they had made.

When the FBI had exchanged the Jordanian terrorists for her life, the bruises they would have found were all self-inflicted and art-directed, with the help of the two doctors on their team. The plan was always for her to blindside the feds to focus on her apparent emotional and sexual abuse, rather than probe her thoroughly for physical damage.

This was the last stop of a journey they
’
d started together many years before their staged encounter in Rome.

He sat across from her, took out an iPad and a thick leather envelope from his backpack, and placed both in front of him.