Riders of the Pale Horse (36 page)

Wade stood waiting for Allison at the restaurant's periphery, intoxicated by the night. The traffic was thinning with the hour, yet each time a car passed he had to resist the urge to smile and wave. His feelings were almost too powerful to hold inside. He had to share them, and since Allison wasn't there just then, anyone would do. He had happiness to spare.

Then came a hand from the dark, gripping his throat with the pressure of a vise. His feet were lifted almost clear of the ground. His own hands clutched at an arm as solid as a steel girder.

The voice. “Time for paying dues, Sport.”

And then blackness.

22

“Until the moment we are having all informations,” the Jordanian officer crossly informed his three western visitors, “we wait.”

“What if you wait too long, and...” Allison could not say it. To even come that close to the thought pierced her heart with an ice dagger.

She had searched the restaurant and the street, calling his name with increasingly frantic strength. The waiters in the restaurant where they had eaten had observed her theatrics with growing concern. Finally one of them had approached, fearful, knowing without being told that he took great risk involving himself even this much. Still, he had observed their talk and their affection, and now he observed her panic and her pain.

The waiter had not spoken much English, just enough to say that Wade had met a man. Big man. Yes, English man or American, but big. Very big. And strong. No, he had no idea where they had gone. Only that Wade had vanished into the night, taken by the big, big man.

Fareed and Ben had driven her to Amman that very night. Judith Armstead and Cyril had gathered, and the search had begun. In Allison's mind, there was no room for question. Wade had been taken by Robards. Kidnapped.

Because the crime had taken place on Jordanian soil, Cyril had felt obliged to inform the local authorities. The Jordanian general had been most sympathetic. After all, Allison and the missing young man had been largely responsible for the international coup that already was reaping such benefits as press visits and interviews and urgent cables from Washington and London and elsewhere. The general had assigned an officer whom he claimed to be his best man.

But the officer assigned to them did not want to look for
a missing young American. He wanted to be involved in uncovering the cache of nuclear weaponry. And he did not like Allison at all. He was Jordanian, he was Arab, he was military, and he had no time for her borderline hysterics. He treated her with the contempt he reserved for pushy western women.

And Allison had started off on the wrong foot from the very first moment. She had almost screamed at the officer when confronted with his reluctance to even move from his office. Allison had caustically pointed out that the two Russian scientists were being held in the same military compound; why couldn't they ask them if they knew of safe houses anywhere in Jordan where Wade might be held.

The Russian scientists had responded to their questions with sullen silence, and the Jordanian officer had been vastly pleased by this result.

They were now standing in the front hall of the compound's main building. Arguing. Getting nowhere fast, while seconds ticked away and Wade might be hurting.

“I cannot see any problem to wait,” the officer announced pompously, his gaze brooking no further argument.

Allison was having none of it. “No problem? He's been kidnapped and you see—”

“Yes, kidnap. Is much kidnapping here. Question is, for what did this? Is only one answer.”

“Ransom,” Cyril said quietly.

“Is correct.” The officer nodded in Cyril's direction as if to say here, look, observe a professional. “If you add this plus this, is only one answer. For money.”

“And if you're wrong?” Allison found it painfully hard not to scream the words. “What if he wants something else? Like revenge?”

“We already have this before many times,” the officer replied. “Almost never are problems. Your man here say he pay. We set up for pay only for the live man. He gets money, we get man. Is almost never problem.”

Allison turned to Cyril and pleaded, “Can't you get him to understand?”

“Yes, yes, I see very clear,” the officer snapped. “Is everything out in open now. Now you do what should be first day, you talk to Jordanian military. Is Jordanian matter. Has always been.”

“This is an international issue,” Cyril argued, “involving Russians and Americans and possibly Iraqis—”

“On Jordanian soil,” the officer finished for him. “So now we do what Jordanian military say, with experience over years. We wait.” He pointed at Allison. “Why this woman come along? She is civilian, yes?”

“She happens to have been in on this since the beginning,” Cyril replied. “She is a field agent working with both our governments and has been indispensable in ferreting out these criminals. Miss Taylor has as much right to be here as anyone.”

The officer glared first at Cyril, then at Allison. “I say who has right. I say this woman not belong.”

“Your superior officer happens to feel otherwise,” Cyril replied at his frostiest.

That did not sit well at all. “I am speaking with them this day. Then we see.”

“Indeed we shall. Now, can we please get on with the matters at hand?”

“Yes. We do.” The officer drew himself up and pronounced, “We wait.”

“Fine,” Cyril's tone was icy. “We will do our waiting at the American Embassy, in case the man attempts to contact us there. You won't object if we stop by the hotel where the third Russian is being kept and ask him a question or two? No, of course not.” Not allowing the officer time to respond, Cyril ushered the two women toward the doors. “Come along then, we mustn't keep the busy officer any longer. Good day to you, sir.

But Alexis proved equally unhelpful. He spent the entire time staring blindly from his window, responding to their questions only with silence. Allison thought his own sorrowful face mirrored how her heart felt.

“We have so very little to go on,” Judith Armstead told Allison on their way back to the embassy. “Unless this Robards slips up and lets himself be seen—”

“No chance,” Allison said morosely. “Wade always referred to him as the professional's professional.”

“—or tries to take Wade out of the country, we just have to wait.” Cyril had succumbed to the heat and the morning's pressure, and folded his coat in his lap and loosened his tie a notch. “We can only hope that this Robards fellow will seek to gain from us what he failed to receive from our opponents.”

“And if he doesn't?” Allison pressed. “What if his motive really was revenge?”

“In that case, my dear,” Cyril shook his head and turned toward the window. There was nothing more to be said.

The car slowed and halted at the embassy's guarded entry. Allison used the temporary stop as an opportunity to throw open her door and alight. She leaned back down and said, “You two can hang around here waiting for the phone to ring. I have to at least try to do something. I
have
to.”

When the door had slammed shut behind her, Judith asked, “You're going to let her go?”

“We can hardly hold her against her will,” Cyril replied. “Besides, she and her young man have already worked wonders. Perhaps she can once again uncover what remains lost to us.”

Neither the western security men nor the two Jordanian military guards questioned Allison's right to visit Alexis in his downtown hotel room a second time. Allison had already
appeared once that morning with Price and Armstead. So when she showed up by herself and asked to speak with Alexis alone, a note was made in the logbook, the door was unlocked, and she was permitted entry.

Alexis was not actually under arrest. He had broken no law except that of leaving Russia, for which he could not be extradited under international law. He was therefore not held with the other two scientists, who had been caught transporting weapons-grade nuclear fuel. He was not, however, free. A half-dozen nations clamored for the chance, according to Cyril, to grill him and his companions for what they knew about the international nuclear arms smuggling operations—how had they heard of the jobs, what form the offer had taken, who, where, when.

When Allison entered the hotel room, Alexis was sitting just as she had left him an hour earlier. The room's single comfortable chair was pulled up close to the window, angled so that he could remain hidden from view and still watch the street below. His face wore the only expression she had seen on him—that of blank despair. Life held little hope for him and less purpose. He remained motionless as Allison crossed the room, pulled up a straight-backed chair, and seated herself. He appeared totally unconcerned as to whether she came, went, stayed, sat, or danced on her hands. He was lost in the defeat that filled his gaze.

“I need your help,” she said, filling her voice with all the quiet urgency she could muster. “Not the government. Not the others. Me. Just me. I have to find him.”

“Slow, speak slow,” Alexis said. “Little English.”

“Wade has talked to me about how you met. He saved your life.”

“Yes? Save from what? For what? What I do now with this life he save? What about my wife, my child?” Alexis turned back to his window. “Too much questions.”

“Alexis, please. I...” She had to stop and swallow hard. “I love him.”

That brought his gaze back to her. He searched Allison's face long and hard before saying quietly, “He good man.”

“I know,” she said and blinked back hard at the sudden burning in her eyes.

“Not just good. In old Russia, we have
staret.
Not know English word. People with problem, they go to—what is church where people live?”

“Monastery,” she offered.

“So. People with big problem, they go there and speak to staret. Sometime he answer with words, sometime with silence. But the people, they come back with answer in heart, because staret share wisdom. Is from heart to heart.” Alexis showed her the agony of his choice. “Your man, he show me first answer with his silence, but now I have new questions. Too many.”

“I want him back, Alexis. I need him back.”
I
need
him.
I
need
him.

“Perhaps he come and speak with me again, yes?”

Allison felt the first electric thrill of hope. “Or perhaps we can arrange for you to go and speak with him.”

“I can go? I free? You do that?” A spark of hope surfaced. “You bring me to family?”

“It's not my authority. But I will do all I can to see that you are freed. On that I give you my word.”

“What about note?”

“You want me to get a message to your family? I will try, Alexis. I promise.”

Once more he searched her face. “I think maybe you good person for him. Good woman. Good friend.”

“Please,” Allison whispered. “Help me. I don't know where else to turn.”