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He didn’t wait for her question. “We’re meeting my contact outside the village. He’s got the paperwork and a place to change clothes before we meet up with our flight.”
“First of all, I don’t have any clean clothes. This will just have to do. And—”
“Sorry, princess,” he said, and her stomach automatically clenched. “You’re wearing a burka. Best possible cover. Good thing you’re not one of those lanky American women—you’d have a harder time passing. All you have to do is keep your eyes lowered and your mouth shut and follow my lead.”
“And are you wearing a burka as well?” she inquired sweetly.
“I’ll be a retired British Army officer and you’re my Algerian wife. Not the best possible scenario—most cultures don’t like it when you take their women.”
“Something I expect you’re more than familiar with,” she muttered.
“I’m a man of strong appetites,” he said lightly. “Anyway, Colonel Blimp and his wife won’t attract that much attention in this little village—they’re used to strangers. It’s a center of the smuggling trade.”
“And what are we supposed to be smuggling?”
“Mahmoud. The child sex trade is a very lucrative one, and beneath all that dirt he’s quite pretty. We could get at least one hundred pounds for him.”
She wasn’t going to show how sick she was. “Only one hundred?” she said. “Hardly worth the effort. Though it is a good way to dispose of him.”
“Don’t bother. You aren’t going to let me sell him, and I have no intention of unleashing him on an unsuspecting pedophile. Mahmoud would carve him into ribbons.”
“You almost convince me. But no. I hope your contact has a plan for his safe disposal, because he’s not coming to England.”
“Samuel will do his best. I think he’s got some Christian school lined up. But trust me, sooner or later Mahmoud will get his scrawny butt to England and to my door, no matter how well you hide me. One should never underestimate a zealot.”
“And what happens then?”
“Then I’ll kill him.” His voice was light, sure.
It didn’t make sense. He’d yet to give her a straight answer. A man like Serafin—like Killian—could kill a small boy quite easily, no matter how fanatical and well armed. Why didn’t he put an end to this particular threat? Someone couldn’t live the life Serafin had lived and have any qualms about killing a child.
It probably didn’t matter. She wouldn’t let him do it, but it was an anomaly. And anomalies made her nervous.
“When and where do we catch our plane?”
“You’re not arguing?”
“About what? Killing Mahmoud or the burka?”
“Killing Mahmoud isn’t on the table. I’m talking about the latter.”
“Burkas are excellent for concealing weapons. I don’t have any problem with it.”
“A reasonable woman,” he murmured in mock awe. “Mahmoud.”
His response was instant. The child was awake, and clearly had been for quite a while.
Serafin’s orders were brief and to the point, and Isobel once more cursed the fact that she couldn’t understand more than a word or two of what he was saying. Not that further studies would have helped; it wasn’t standard Arabic, but some sort of obscure dialect.
“Does he understand any English?” The ground had leveled out, and they were drawing closer to the edge of town. As the sun slowly rose the chill began to seep out of her bones. A stray shiver danced across her skin and then was gone.
“No. He has no idea that in twelve hours he’ll be disarmed, scrubbed clean and praying to Jesus.”
“If he didn’t want to kill you already, then that would do it.”
“I wouldn’t blame him,” Serafin said.
Mahmoud muttered something in a sharp voice, and he replied, then turned to her. “Actually, I lied. There is one word he understands—kill. He wants to know if he should kill you or if I should.”
