I Am Pilgrim (89 page)

The Saracen gave it to me, but I didn’t raise it to my face – instead I reached my hand out to the two of them.

‘Weapons,’ I said.

They both handed over a pistol – the cop’s was a standard Beretta 9-mil, but the Saracen’s, probably provided by Nikolaides, was a SIG 1911 Stainless, made in Switzerland, as good a weapon as you could ever buy over the counter.

I shoved the Beretta in my pocket and kept the SIG held loosely in my swollen fingers. Given the

state of my hands, I wasn’t sure I could even fire it. I shifted the weight on my damaged foot, fought back a wave of nausea and raised the phone to my mouth.

‘Ben?’ I said, my voice rasping and broken, probably barely recognizable to him.

‘Is that you?’ he asked.

The sound of the cop’s voice, something I thought I would never hear again, almost overwhelmed

me. I slumped for a moment and realized how they had nearly destroyed me.

‘Sort of,’ I said, after a moment. ‘I’m gonna open the mic, Ben,’ I continued, trying to remember

the details I had so meticulously planned. ‘You’ll hear whatever is going on. If something happens to me, shoot the nanny – okay?’

I saw the information register with the Saracen and Cumali, and I lowered the phone. Despite the

freshly dug craters in my mind, I knew I had to move fast. I turned to the woman.

‘Go down the tunnel, stay hidden and watch the beach. When you see the others, head back fast and

warn me. Remember – get smart and sign them up to attack me and the man in Bodrum will hear. You

know what he’ll do.’

She nodded and ran, desperate to make it work, desperate to save the boy. In her anxiety and fear, I doubted she even realized she had become my closest ally.

I turned and looked at the Saracen. I knew that, no matter how much agony I had gone through, the

really difficult part lay ahead: I had to get him to tell me the truth and not defeat me with lies and disinformation.

‘My name is Scott Murdoch,’ I said, through the pain of my injuries. ‘I am an American intelligence agent. I am going to ask you some questions.’

Chapter Forty

I HAD LAIN awake in my hotel for hours the previous night thinking about how I would interrogate Zakaria al-Nassouri if I ever got the chance.

I decided my only hope was to ask a relentless wave of questions, never giving him the opportunity

to guess which ones I knew the answer to and which ones I didn’t. I had to mix knowledge and ignorance so effectively that he would be loath to risk any lie at all, and I had to do it so fast that he wouldn’t have time to think and weave.

I knew it would have been difficult a few hours ago but, wounded in body and mind, I had no idea if

I could manage it now. One mistake, one successful deception, and it would have all been for nothing.

‘If you lie, give me one incorrect answer,’ I told him, ‘I will shoot you and turn the phone off. As you know, the man in Bodrum has his instructions concerning your son. Clear?’

I didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Who recruited Patros Nikolaides?’ I said, worried that my damaged throat would fail me.

Straight off, the question wrongfooted him. Nobody had mentioned the old bull’s name, and I could

see the Saracen was wondering how the hell I knew it. Already he was on the defensive.

‘My sister,’ he replied, trying to show he wasn’t shaken.

‘When she was twelve she won an essay competition – what for?’

‘English … English comprehension.’ Who the hell did they speak to, he must have been thinking,

who would know details like that? His mother—?

‘What hospital treated the shrapnel in your spine?’

‘Gaza Infirmary.’

I was flying all over the world, leaping across decades—

‘Did your sister ever go scuba diving?’

‘My father taught her – when she was young.’ It was probably correct – their father had worked at

the Red Sea Marine Biology Department.

‘How many Hind helicopter gunships did you bring down?’

I checked the phone’s microphone, desperately hoping Bradley was taking notes – in my state, I wasn’t sure I could remember the answers.

The Saracen was shocked – now we were in Afghanistan. ‘Three, some say four,’ he replied. I could see it in his face:
who is this man?

‘After the war with the Soviets, where did you buy your death certificate?’

‘In Quetta – Pakistan.’

‘Who from?’

‘How do I know?! It was in the bazaar.’

‘Who provided you with a new identity?’ I looked straight at him.

‘Abdul Mohammad Khan.’ His reply was one micron softer than the others, and I figured it was a

betrayal. Good.

‘Keep your voice up,’ I said. ‘The address of your childhood home in Jeddah?’

‘You know – you’ve seen a photo of it.’

‘I’ve been there, I took that photo,’ I replied. ‘Where were you stationed when you fought in Afghanistan?’

‘The Hindu Kush, a village called—’

I talked over him, letting him think I already knew the answer, keeping the pace relentless. ‘What nationality was your new identity?’

‘Lebanese.’

I had got my first one: I had a nationality and, with that, I knew we could start to trace him if we had to. The walls were closing in.

In the house in Bodrum, Bradley was holding the phone tight to his ear – trying to hear everything,

paper scattered on the bench in front of him, scrawling notes furiously because of the speed I was going.

He said later that he was almost certain – to judge by my voice – that I was dying on my feet.

Chapter Forty-one

I FELT LIKE it too. I scooped a handful of water out of the trough and threw it on my face – anything to keep going, anything to lessen the pain and cool what I feared was a blossoming fever. ‘Who is Sa’id bin Abdullah bin Mabrouk al-Bishi?’ I demanded.

‘State executioner,’ the Saracen replied.

‘Country?’

‘Saudi Arabia.’

‘How do you know him?’ He paused, and I realized that the wound was still raw even after so many

years.

‘He killed my father.’

‘Faster,’ I warned him. ‘What was your date of birth?’

He had barely begun before I hit him with the next one. ‘What blood group are you?’

He only got half the answer out when I swerved again. I had to keep him reeling—

‘What is the common name for
Amphiprion ocellaris?
’

‘Clownfish.’

‘Where did you receive your medical degree?’

‘Beirut University.’

‘Who paid?’

‘Scholarship – the US State Department.’ I didn’t react, but yeah – it figured.

‘What mosque did you attend as a youth in Bahrain?’

I couldn’t recall the name, but the Saracen’s answer sounded right. ‘With which radical group was it affiliated?’

‘The Muslim Brotherhood.’

‘Name the last hospital you worked at.’

‘El-Mina District.’

That was the second one: hospitals had employment records and they would show the name he had

been using since he had first acquired the Lebanese passport.

‘Who was the medical director? … What year did you start? … Which month?’

The Saracen had no choice but to answer – the speed was unsparing, but it was costing me dearly.

My small reserves of energy were rapidly depleting, and I was certain now that an ache at the back of my head was a symptom of fever – I figured an infection from the open wounds was starting to pour

through my body. Go faster, I told myself.
Faster
—

‘The name of the boy’s mother?’

‘Amina.’

‘Ebadi?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, staggered at my knowledge.

‘How many other names did she use?’

‘Four.’

‘Tell me the relationship between Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade and your son’s orphanage.’

‘They funded it.’

‘How was your wife killed?’

‘A Zionist rocket.’ God, the bitterness in his voice.

‘What was the name of Nikolaides’ son who died in Santorini?’

‘What?’ he countered, confused and desperate. ‘We’re back at the Greeks?!’

He had no idea where we were going next, and it gave me strength. I realized every detail of my

epic journey counted – I was using every thread; for once I was picking up every stitch. Nothing had been wasted.
Nothing
.

‘The name of the son?’ I demanded.

He tried to recall, maybe not even sure he had ever been told it. ‘I don’t … I can’t …’ He was panicking. ‘Christopher,’ he said, but he wasn’t sure. ‘No, no—’

‘Christos,’ I said, and gave him a pass.

‘Where were you the day before you came to Bodrum?’

‘Germany.’

I figured it was true – it had to be somewhere close.

‘How long were you there?’

‘Two months.’

‘The name of the street of the mosque you attended?’

‘Wilhelmstrasse.’

‘Which town?’

‘Karlsruhe.’

‘Name the three foreigners you killed in the Hindu Kush.’

‘I don’t … I don’t remember—’

‘First names! What did they call each other?’

‘Jannika—’

I didn’t wait. I couldn’t recall them either. ‘Did you use a Web message board to communicate with

your sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was Clownfish?’

‘My nickname.’

‘What illness did your son have when you were in the Hindu Kush?’

He stared at me – how the hell did I know his son had been ill?

‘Influ—’

In desperation, he was trying a lie, testing me, but I looked straight at him and he thought better of it.

‘Meningococcal meningitis.’

‘Too slow. And don’t try that again. What is the name of the largest hotel in Karlsruhe?’

I hadn’t heard of the town, and I needed another fact to make sure we didn’t focus on the wrong place. I felt the fever getting worse.

‘Deutsche König,’ he said.

‘Did you work there?’

‘At the hotel?’

‘In Karlsruhe!’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Chyron.’

It meant nothing to me, and I wasn’t even sure I had heard it correctly. ‘Full name.’

‘It’s American, that is its—’

‘Full name!’

The Saracen was sweating, probably trying to imagine the sign at the front of the building, but he

blanked. I raised the phone to speak to Ben – as if I were threatening the boy. He got it—

‘Chyron Pharma-Fabrik GmbH.’

‘Name of the mosque you attended as a child.’

I didn’t care – I saw the Saracen relax, just a tiny easing of the muscles around his jaw, and I knew that Karlsruhe and its chemical factory was the hottest of the hot zones.

‘Your address when you were working in El-Mina?’

The Saracen could barely keep up, but he gave a street name and a number. He hadn’t finished before I hit him again – ‘Name three people I can verify it with.’

He gave them, but I didn’t care about El-Mina either, even though I guessed that was where he had

synthesized the virus.

‘What job did you have at Chyron?’ I was back where I wanted to be – in the hot zone. I could tell

from his face he didn’t share my enthusiasm.

‘Shipping clerk.’

‘Name of supervisor?’

‘Serdar—’

‘What shift?’

‘Graveyard.’

‘What is Chyron’s primary business?’

‘Pharma – drugs.’

‘What sort of drugs?’

‘Vaccines.’

I gambled. Probably the biggest gamble of my life, but a doctor didn’t get a job on the night shift in a drug company’s shipping department for nothing.

‘When did the virus leave Karlsruhe?’

He paused fractionally, and I put the phone to my mouth, ready to pull the pin. He stared at me for a moment longer.

‘Yesterday,’ he said quietly.

I felt granite towers of mystery collapse and a blitz of relief so intense that for a moment I forgot the pain. I knew it now: in the last twenty-four hours a vaccine contaminated with the smallpox virus had left a company in Germany called Chyron Chemicals.

It was already in America, or close enough, and my urgent thought was: how big? What was the scale of the attack?

‘How many doses?’ I said.

‘One hundred.’

It was the tiny inflection, the dropping away of the sound at the end, as if he were trying to shrug it off, that warned me. I still had the phone at my mouth. The SIG was in my other hand and I pointed the barrel straight at his face—

‘I’ll only do this once. I’m going to ask you again. How many?’

He seemed to slump. ‘Ten thousand,’ he said.

It took acres of self-control not to react. Ten thousand?! The number had to be true, it was too extraordinary to be a lie, and in that moment I put the last piece of the puzzle together. Given the scale of the attack and the time of year, the virus could only have been hidden in one place. I was certain I

knew where it was and what he had planned. For the first time in what seemed like half a lifetime, I had no more questions.

I leaned against the trough – I was in pain, beyond exhaustion and, with the fever steadily colonizing my body, sweat was starting to run down my cheeks.

I looked up and saw al-Nassouri staring at me. He knew why the interrogation had stopped – I had

found everything I needed, and all of his years of work, the very thing which had given his life weight and meaning, was in ruins. He was about to say something, probably to curse me in the name of his

god, but he didn’t get the chance. We saw Cumali running hard towards us.

‘They’re coming,’ she called, stumbling to a stop.

‘Together?’ I asked, rapidly shaking off the exhaustion. ‘Anyone straggling?’

‘No, together.’

It gave me a chance – if they were strung out, the man at the back would be warned by the gunfire,

and I didn’t like my odds against some jerk with a machine pistol. Surprise – and hitting them in a group – was the best weapon.