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It was nothing, and it was everything. A watcher. Remote, but still, at the first sign of trouble, she could alert…someone.
The legacy of a dead man being watched over by a friend and colleague, and passed on to her in the event of the worst happening.
She met Fahd’s gaze. “Why now? It’s been years since your friend disappeared.”
He took in a slow, even breath, his chest rising, inflating his frame. His beard was more gray than brown. The lines of his face were deeply etched into his skin. He’d been aged by decades in the field, but he was still young, in his fifties, a decade or more from retirement.
“The winds are shifting. I need to look outside my local circle.”
She was about as far out of his local circle as one could get.
“You will do this for me? If I’m unable?”
She nodded. “I hope I never need to take up the mantle.”
“My wife and children share your hope.” He paused. “I’m trusting that you and the Friday Morning Valkyries will know the right thing to do. This site must be protected at all costs.” He turned to his computer. “We’ll start with the coordinates of the five most important sites. You must memorize them. Do not write them down.”
She nodded. She was particularly skilled at memorizing. It was her secret weapon.
Chapter Eleven
Unknown region in the desert, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
September
On the screen, Diana watched in horror as her friend and colleague was tortured and questioned. Tears spilled down her cheeks as he refused to give up the coordinates to vulnerable sites in Syria and Jordan.
They went with tried and true waterboarding, and Diana found herself holding her breath and suffocating along with the brilliant professor.
It wasn’t lost on her that if they knew she had the information they were after, she’d be next. She could know the same agony. She couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t break immediately.
She felt sick at the idea she might find out very soon exactly what it would take for her to break.
In the end, it wasn’t Fahd who broke under torture, it was his tormentor who unintentionally brought the scene to a close. His torturer set aside waterboarding in favor of death by a thousand cuts, and in a strange, horrific way, it gave Fahd the upper hand when he was careless with the knife. Seeing an opportunity, Fahd pressed forward, into the blade, then twisted his body. It was over before the torturer knew what had happened. Fahd had opened the artery in his arm. Blood spewed from the wound and into the face of his killer. Drowning him in much the same way he’d worked to drown Fahd.
Diana sobbed as she watched Dr. Fahd Yousef die. He’d been a good man. A powerful force for archaeology in the region. A brilliant scholar.
And, briefly, a friend.
“When did this happen?” she asked Harun.
Her captor smirked. “After your botched rescue by the Americans.”
Was this her fault? Or had they planned to go after Fahd from the start?
“Why show me this?” She could guess, but might as well make him spell it out.
“So you know what awaits you if you don’t tell us where to dig.”
Where to dig.
She’d known this was coming, but hadn’t expected it in this way. They wanted all the sites. Open season on the entire history and prehistory of Jordan.
Just Jordan? Or did they believe she knew Syrian site locations too?
She kept her features still and was thankful for the awful lesson of learning to hide her pain for the last eighteen months. “Come across as a cold bitch and fly under the radar” had been her motto since leaving the hospital. It hadn’t failed her yet.
She’d known since she was twelve that she was blessed with a particularly cold resting bitch face. It had served her well.
