Wade (5 page)

“Now wait a minute,” he began.

“It's the best I can do.”

“Why do I have a feeling I'll be standing around again, waiting for someone who never shows?”

“If it happens, then you must accept that it was impossible for me to leave.”

“Or that you prefer the devil you know?”

Her brow pleated in a frown. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“You've been here so long that a lot of what goes on seems almost natural, part of a familiar rut that doesn't require you to think because somebody takes care of that for you. You're like a prisoner who has
been behind bars so long that the outside world looks too big to handle. It's easier to stay put.”

“I told you why it's important to me.”

“Yeah, but is that the real reason or just an excuse? You're too bright to bury yourself here.”

She drew herself up, standing tall before him though the top of her head only came to his chin. “Think what you like. I have given you my answer. You must accept it or I will tell you now that I can't go.”

He muttered something that might have been profane as he lifted a hand to waist level, abruptly closing it into a fist.

Chloe flinched; she couldn't help it.

Wade lowered his hand, staring at her before he said in precise tones, “I've never hit a woman in my life.”

“No. I…It was just a reflex.” His gesture had been one of exasperation. She saw that now.

“I know that, damn it all. What I don't get is you being so afraid and still…” He closed his lips on the words and swung around, turning his back to her.

He was angry and perhaps wounded in his pride that she could imagine he would use force. It was astonishing, and also disturbing. “I'm sorry.”

“God, don't apologize. That just makes it worse.” He stared up at the mulberry leaves above him a second. “Never mind. Be at the market two mornings from now, you hear?”

“And if I'm not?”

“I came here to take you out of this hellish country. You're going, one way or another.”

That sounded like a threat. “What are you saying?”

He didn't answer, but only took a running step and leaped to catch a lower branch of the mulberry tree. A lithe swing and twist of his body, and he was balanced on top of the wall, a shadow among the rustling branches. Seconds later, he vanished.

Chloe was alone in the garden once more, with only her fears and regrets.

W
ade Benedict stood on the far side of the stone wall until he heard a door open and close and knew Chloe Madison was safe inside once more. Or at least safe from any consequences of his visit, as far as he could tell. Only then did he move off into the night, heading for the dingy room he'd taken in a midtown hotel.

He kept to the backstreets, every sense on high alert. Curfew was in effect in Ajzukabad as in all Hazaristan cities, and he wasn't exempt because he was American. In fact, it might get him a cracked skull or trip to pokey even faster than normal. Anti-American sentiment was strong here since the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, and he could be targeted for that reason alone. A knife in the ribs while his wallet was lifted was also a definite possibility. All the public hangings and chopped-off hands in the world couldn't stop that ancient response to terrible economic conditions.

The last few minutes with Chloe Madison played in his head like a bad movie. He couldn't believe she'd actually thought he meant to hit her. That re
action told him more than he wanted to know about what her life was like these days. Leaving John's daughter in the house with that stepbrother of hers for thirty-six more hours really went against the grain.

The file on Ahmad indicated that he'd been brought up by his grandfather on a steady diet of Islamic fundamentalism that had been compounded by his introduction to the Taliban. From the mullahs at the school in Kabul where he was sent for his education, he'd been indoctrinated with the idea that women were immoral beings who must always be controlled, and that the U.S. was to blame for every bad thing that had ever happened in a Muslim nation. The result was a full-blown hatred of both women and all things American. His father's marriage to an American woman had been an insult in his view, a slur on the family honor. It was rumored that he'd rid himself of his stepmother by having her murdered in the street while his father was away. Evidence also suggested a connection to the al Qaeda terrorist network, one developed while he was in Afghanistan. It wasn't simply that Chloe's stepbrother had developed a fanatic streak with a vicious edge but that he'd found the perfect position for expressing it.

How much Chloe Madison knew or suspected about these things, Wade couldn't tell. She was uptight beyond belief, giving nothing away, letting no one get close. She understood the risks in what she was doing well enough, he thought, but had grown so used to them that they no longer had the power to
scare her. She'd always been a gutsy little thing, according to John. Apparently she hadn't changed. The Benedict in him saluted that courage as well as her loyalty to her friends and attempt to better the situation around her. Still, her refusal to listen to reason made him nuts.

He didn't like this delay, not one little bit. It was too much of a reminder of another wait, another hostage situation, another woman. The sooner this was over, the better. Besides, other people were involved in the operation, and some of them had more important things to do than stand around while Chloe made up her mind.

Wade was almost abreast of the shop doorway when he saw the woman. She eased toward him like a sheeted ghost with one hand held out in traditional begging posture. She didn't stop as she came nearer, but brushed against him, reaching with her other hand under the cover of her burqa to brush across his groin. It wasn't the first time he'd been approached by a prostitute in a foreign city, but it was maybe the weirdest. Even if paying for sex was his style, he couldn't imagine taking up an offer from a woman whose face he couldn't see and whose body was covered from head to toe.

“No,” he said with precision.

The woman gasped and instantly effaced herself. The movement was so swift that Wade felt a wrench of guilt. He hadn't meant to seem threatening. Prostitution was forbidden, he knew, but if the fear of
being too forward could bring that kind of terror, then he didn't like to think what the penalty for being caught must be or how great the desperation that would force a woman out into the night.

The incident was a potent reminder of Chloe's reaction to his visit. She was probably right about the danger of contact from him. It couldn't be helped. There were precious few ways for a man to talk to a woman here, which meant that he was forced to take chances. He'd been rough on her, too, suggesting that she liked her virtual captivity. He'd hoped to jar her into commitment, or at least an admission that she wanted to go home. The trick hadn't come close to working, and for that she also had his grudging admiration.

It had been worth the chance of getting caught sneaking over the garden wall just to see her without that ridiculous getup. The proud way she walked within her flowing folds of cloth, as if refusing to acknowledge the handicap, intrigued him, but it wasn't easy to talk to a woman when you couldn't see her face. Of course, he still didn't really know what she looked like. She'd seen to that, as if covering her face had become some sort of protective instinct instead of one of the thousand and one rules she had to follow.

He'd give a lot to know exactly how the bright-eyed preteen with the million-dollar smile that he remembered from John's photographs had turned out. He wasn't like one of those hopeless guys in romantic
movies who fell in love with a picture, but she'd always looked to him like a great kid who would grow up to be quite a package. The need to find out if he was right was beginning to nag at him. Just curiosity, brought on by the whole veil thing, the lure of the forbidden, the mystery and all that.

Not that he had much use for the exotic East, particularly this corner of it. Oh, he was impressed as all get-out by the wide deserts and mountain peaks so tall they punched holes in the sky. The endurance and fighting spirit of the people amazed him, too. But it was impossible to take a real liking to a place where maimed ex-soldiers and old women begged and died in streets that smelled like sewers, and the government was doing its level best to destroy all trace of civilized living.

Ahead of him in the darkness, he caught the glow of a flashlight and the sound of booted footsteps. Two uniformed policemen with cudgels swinging from their fists came into view. Wade slid immediately into the nearest alley. Pressing his back to the mud brick wall, he tried to make himself a part of it. It wasn't so much that he feared arrest as it was the need to avoid drawing attention to his after-dark activity. You never knew when the wrong person might hear about it. It was always possible, too, that his name could show up in some semiobsolete database of diplomatic security service personnel. That was one of the risks that he had weighed before agreeing to this operation. But of course that part of his past was the main reason
John Madison had tapped him for it in the first place. Well, that and the need for a man he could trust not to take advantage of the situation and, just possibly, of his daughter.

The patrol came closer. Wade reached to unsnap the shoulder holster nestled under his armpit and palm the weapon it held. The move was silent, practiced, natural. He could sense the familiar closing down of thought and emotion, of everything except animal-like nocturnal perception and steel-hard will. Even as the old readiness spread through him, he felt his gut tighten. Nobody had mentioned killing in order to get Chloe Madison out of Hazaristan, but the possibility had been understood. Wade could do the job if he had to, but he didn't like it, hadn't needed to worry about it for a long time.

One of the policemen laughed in a low rumble of sound that marked him as all too human. He and his partner were talking, their voices gaining in volume as they neared the alley. They strolled past with their turbaned heads nodding in unison and the sticks they carried tapping the sidewalk now and then in random patterns. They didn't even glance toward the alley.

Wade sighed and replaced his weapon as the pair's footfalls receded. He stretched his neck to relieve tense muscles while he waited to be certain the street was clear again. Emerging from the other end of the alley as a precaution, he made his way toward the hotel with all possible speed.

It was good to shut the door of his room behind
him and secure it for the night with his own hardware. The place was a dump, yes, but it was his dump for now, his little spot of America in this too-strange land.

He glanced at his watch with a frown. The timing was wrong for a call to the far side of the globe. It would jerk his old buddy and former boss, head of Vantage International Security on the Virginia edge of the Beltway, from a sound sleep. Wade shrugged, then hauled out the satellite cell phone from his black leather duffel that sat at the foot of the bed. Activating the built-in scrambler, he punched in the numbers.

It was picked up on the second ring. Nat Hedley's voice was a little husky but disgustingly alert otherwise. Wade wasted little time on preliminaries, but gave a succinct rundown of the problem and the delay it was causing. Then he waited.

“Christ, Wade, what happened to the famous Benedict charm? I thought that moonlight-and-honeysuckle drawl of yours was guaranteed to melt the pants off any female in ten seconds flat.”

“This one doesn't wear any pants to melt.”

“Found that out already, did you?”

“Drag that wad of fat cells that passes as your brain out of the toilet, my man. I only meant that underwear has never quite caught on over here as in the West. Besides, I don't think the lady has much use for men.”

“You mean she's…”

“Hell, nothing like that,” Wade said hastily. “She's been taught by experts to avoid contact.”

Nat grunted his understanding, though he didn't sound particularly convinced. “So what's the plan?”

“I wait. That's if you can confirm that our transport out of here will do the same?”

“Done. But what if she won't budge after this deadline? If the hawks in Washington get their way, they'll be calling in air strikes on Kashi and Ajzukabad any day now.”

“She's coming home. It was a promise when I made it, and it's still a promise.”

“I heard that. But if she's not too fond of guys now, how's she going to feel after you bundle her off to the States when she doesn't want to go.”

“Grateful?”

“Wouldn't bet on it. In my experience, females show gratitude least when you expect it most. Ouch! Maggie, hey! Stop it, woman!”

Wade grinned briefly as he listened to what sounded like Nat taking his lumps from a pillow being wielded by his wife and bedmate of some twelve or thirteen years. When he thought he might be heard again, he said, “Doesn't much matter what Chloe Madison thinks. She'll be safe, and that's the important thing.”

Nat apparently lost the battle among the sheets, because it was Maggie Hedley who spoke in Wade's ear. “You be patient with that girl, you hear me,
Wade Benedict. Enough people have pushed her around without you doing the same thing.”

“I can't just walk away from her.”

“Now why? That precious Old South honor of yours? You gave your word, and that's it?”

“I promised John.”

“So what? She didn't ask you to make promises any more than she asked you to rescue her. And if she makes up her mind to stay, what's that to you?”

“You don't know what it's like over here. Women have no value, zilch, nada, none. A man can do anything to them and get away with it. Leaving her behind could be a death sentence. Or worse.”

“Nothing is worse than death, my darling man. But let me get this straight. You're worrying yourself to smithereens over what might happen to this woman you've barely met?”

Wade had known Nat and his wife a long time. He was fond of them both, particularly Maggie who made a mean lemon icebox pie and had an unerring instinct for finding the soft underbelly of the tough guys who worked for her husband. Still, he'd learned the hard way to tread warily when she was on the warpath. “I guess you could say that.”

“Attractive, is she?”

“Wouldn't know, though she was a cute kid from her photos.” He gave Nat's wife the scoop on that part.

“Lord, you're worse off than I thought!”

“Now, Maggie,” he began with exaggerated patience.

“Forget it. Bring her home by force, if that's what you have to do. But remember that you're supposed to be a gentleman. You can at least act like one, even if being one is too much for you!”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said in his most deferential tone. It was a relief to hear Maggie laugh before she handed the phone back to her husband.

Wade clarified a few more details with Nat, then signed off and tossed the phone back into the top of his duffel. It bounced off a plastic carton of canned chicken with crackers, and he dug out that snack package. He hadn't eaten before positioning himself to invade Chloe's living space, and now his stomach thought his throat had been cut. It wasn't the first meal he'd made out of a can by far. Food wasn't too high on his list of priorities, and it was less trouble to eat in his room than hunt a restaurant meal. Besides, though he wasn't overly squeamish, he did have his standards, and the starvation rate in this part of the world made him wonder just what kind of meat might be on the menu.

Popping the top on the chicken, he fished out a chunk and balanced it on a cracker before wolfing it down. While he chewed, he unlaced his boots and kicked them off. By the time he had finished the sketchy meal and chugged a bottle of tepid water, he had undressed and was on his way to the shower.

He wasn't sleepy and there was no TV. He pulled
out the dossier on Ahmad along with a sheaf of other reports, and spent an hour or so going over them. They weren't exactly bedtime stories. The Taliban were a piece of work, like some hyperreligious motorcycle gang drunk on power and testosterone, getting off on their reign of terror. That they targeted women was typical of that kind of gang-bang mentality, Wade thought, but still enough to turn the stomach of a Southern good old boy brought up to revere the opposite sex. By the time he turned out the light, he had an even clearer understanding of the anger that drove Chloe Madison, since a savage need to punch out something or somebody thrummed in his own veins. If there had ever been a prayer in hell that he'd leave her behind to live out her life with these misogynistic psychopaths, there was one no longer.