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“You’re in the souk now?”
“Yes. And I think someone is following me. But it’s not anyone from the security company. I’d recognize them.”
“You need to get out of there. Now. The security company had you down as a cancel for the day. No one got sick. Whoever told you that was lying.”
Alarm shot through Diana’s system. “And they called you, not me?”
“They’re supposed to send automated texts confirming cancellations to both of us. I’m thinking someone found a way to spoof your phone number, so it looked like it went to you. But they didn’t know about the automatic text to me. I called them because I knew you wouldn’t cancel. Not when it’s the last market day of the season. They’re sending someone now, but…”
“I’m leaving,” Diana said, stepping back into the central walkway.
“Stay on the phone with me. Tell me what you see,” Morgan said. “I’m linking to the security company. They’ll be able to hear too.”
“The crowd is getting thicker now that the band has started playing,” Diana said. “I’m weaving my way toward the central aisle. I’ll exit at the main gate where the most people are clustered.”
“You said you’re being followed. Can you describe him?”
She wanted to close her eyes to aid her memory in picturing the man, but she didn’t dare. “Brown male. Maybe six-two or three in height. Thin. Wearing traditional, male, light-colored dishdasha. Head covering is a white gutrah.”
Except for the taller-than-average height, those words could describe no fewer than half the men in the market. She supposed that was the point.
As she spoke, she wove through the groups of people milling about, aiming toward the larger groups. Safety in numbers, right?
The route to the exit would go right past Bibi’s booth. She considered skirting it and going down a different aisle, but she needed speed now.
Who had intercepted her call to the security company, and how had they managed that?
She reached the stall, which was usually stocked with trinkets for tourists—cheap artifact replicas that would fit in a carry-on airline bag—but she saw instead brightly colored fabrics, headscarves of different styles and colors.
Bibi’s booth was gone.
What had happened to the woman? Did the black-market suppliers of real artifacts catch on to Diana’s interest in Bibi’s wares?
She relayed the information to Morgan as she hurried past the stall.
Morgan responded with welcome news. “The security team is just a few minutes out.”
She told Morgan where her car was parked, at least a ten-minute walk from the souk. It might be a five-minute run for someone who didn’t have metal pins in her right ankle, but Diana was not that person. As it was, the fast walk had triggered her limp, but she didn’t let the pain slow her down.
“They’re sending two cars—one to the market and one to your car. Stay in the middle of the crowd instead of leaving the market. The streets might be quiet.”
“The crowd in front of the stage is growing. Maybe I should go there?”
But if she was in real danger, was she endangering innocent bystanders?
She paused in indecision until the choice was taken from her by a sharp scream, followed by a shout. “Diana!”
She turned to see Bibi in the grip of the tall man in the dishdasha. He held a knife to the woman’s throat.
“Run, and Bibi dies,” the man said. His English had a Jordanian accent.
Diana met Bibi’s gaze. The woman’s deep brown eyes were wide with terror.
Bibi’s job on market days was to lure tourist buyers into the underground antiquities market with low-end but very real artifacts she had in the back of her stall. She even packaged the goods with the replicas to aid the tourists in getting the items through customs.
A small but not insignificant percentage of those buyers got their first taste of the illicit trade and wanted something more valuable. A true treasure they could only show to certain associates and friends with a whispered “It’s the real deal, but we pretend it’s fake because the purchase might not have been entirely legal.”
Bibi identified the big game who hungered for rarer and older artifacts and passed their names on to the dealers, who then worked the clients over and sold pieces of Middle Eastern heritage and history to vain foreigners.
