her that he hadn’t seen Jack in quite some time, she was hopeful that he would be able to help her shape her list of people and places that deserved her attention.
As if reading her thoughts, Romero said, “Remind me. You said you spoke with this man and that he has not seen Jack, correct?”
Esperanza did not answer her brother immediately. Instead, she started off across the courtyard, toward the entrance.
“We needed a place to start,” Espy said when Romero caught up with her. “If it turns out to be a dead end, then we cross it off the list.”
Romero let that go without a response, and Esperanza appreciated the gesture. Because more than most cities in the world, Milan was a playground for someone like Jack. Just going through the museums alone would take them a lot more time than she wanted to contemplate.
With a resigned sigh, she entered the building, Romero in tow.
There were ways in which Imolene knew he had closed much of the distance between himself and the men he pursued, but most of those ways were ones known only to himself—a feeling the hunter has but cannot explain. Templeton and Hawthorne had crossed into Tunisia, of that he was certain. He was equally certain they would have to head north, because at the point at which they had navigated the border crossing, little existed either west or south but desert. Even moderately equipped, the barren landscape was a formidable adversary. In Imolene’s estimation, they would have pointed the jeep in the direction of Raballah. And so he had done the same.
He sent the Chevy truck over the sand and rock as fast as the vehicle would carry him. The Yugo, while having lasted much longer than the Egyptian had anticipated, had threatened to gasp its last a few kilometers east of the border. Anticipating the Yugo’s death throes, Imolene had traded it for the truck, although the deal had cost him a hundred dinars.
What also caused Imolene to push the speed of the new vehicle was that he’d spoken again with his employers, and they had expressed extreme displeasure with him when he’d told them of the loss of the artifact. When he’d accepted the job, he was well aware it was not without risk. In some ways, working for the Israelis was more dangerous than performing the same tasks for other neighboring governments—not because those other governments hesitated to punish failure but because they lacked the efficiency of the Israelis to do so. Imolene harbored no doubts about his life being forfeited if he failed to recover what his employers had hired him to retrieve.
For the hundredth time he wondered where Templeton was going. While he carried the American with him, it was difficult—if not impossible—for him to put any real distance between himself and Imolene, whom he would understand to be in pursuit. Whatever reason the Englishman had for keeping Hawthorne alive had to be a compelling one; it was certainly one for which Imolene was thankful.
He reached for the water bottle on the seat next to him and drained it, the lack of air-conditioning in the Chevy a hindrance he could overcome with proper hydration. The desert stretched long before him, yet he had several more bottles of water, which like the urgency simmering below the surface and fueling his pursuit, was more than enough to see him through.
There were some skills Duckey supposed he would never lose, regardless of how much time had passed since his retirement from the CIA. Such as the skill of recognizing when he was being watched. On an airplane—even a small domestic flight like the Buraq Air bird that ferried him from Tripoli to La Abraq—it could be difficult to determine when others’ eyes were studying him and so Duckey had to rely on his gut. And his gut told him that the man three rows behind him, wearing an expensive suit and pretending to be napping, was a tail.
The big question was why someone would want to have him followed. The obvious second question was who? For the why, Duckey had a guess, and if he was right it meant he wasn’t as on top of his game as he thought he was. He should have realized that, regardless of how long it had been since he’d retired, his name would raise a red flag in customs. And with the political unrest that had consumed most of the country just the year before, he suspected