toward the Bonneville. He’d lost Rydell, but Danny was alive, and right now, that was all that mattered.
Chapter 59
Alexandria, Egypt
The decision to avoid Cairo Airport proved to be an inspired one, although it hadn’t started off that way. Gracie had gotten herself into a knot by picturing herself doing what Finch normally took care of—in this case, trying to sneak Father Jerome past an Egyptian passport clerk who would be either maniacally fastidious, sexist, anti-American, or any combination thereof.
The plane was waiting for them when they got there. Darby had come through, as promised. They made their way to the civil aviation office in order to access the tarmac without going through the main terminal, and kept Father Jerome well out of view. They were well aware that the merest glimpse of him could trigger a stampede. He was too recognizable—perhaps the most recognizable face on the planet right now. The clerk manning the small office turned out to be a Copt—a one-in-ten chance in Egypt—and a devout one at that. One look at Brother Ameen’s cassock did the trick. Within minutes, their passports had been stamped, the gates had been opened, and they were climbing up the stairs of the hastily chartered jet. The plan was for the driver to wait and make sure the plane took off unhindered before letting the abbot know it was safe to announce that the priest was no longer at the monastery, in the hope of defusing the tense crowd besieging its walls.
Gracie started to relax as the Gulfstream 450’s wheels lifted off the runway and the sleek fourteen-seater aircraft streaked upward to its cruising altitude, but her relief was short-lived. It only allowed darker thoughts to resurface. Thoughts about Finch. Visions of him, lying there in the sand. Dead.
A veil of grief descended over her. “I wish we hadn’t left him there,” she told Dalton. He was in the seat opposite her, facing back. “It feels awful. Us being here, while he’s . . .” She let the words fade.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Dalton comforted her. “Besides, it’s what he would have wanted us to do.”
“And to think, just when he was covering the story of a lifetime.” She shrugged, thinking back. “After everything he’s been through, all the wars and the disasters . . . to die like that.”
Dalton nodded, and they just sat there quietly, crippled by the loss. After a moment, Dalton said, “We’ve got to tell the folks back home about Finch.”
Gracie nodded quietly.
“We need to give Ogilvy an update on our ETA,” he added. “I’ll go talk to the pilot. See if he can patch us in to the desk.”
He pushed himself to his feet, but Gracie’s hand reached out and arrested his move. “Not just yet, okay? Let’s . . . let’s just take a few minutes for ourselves, all right?”
“Sure.” He glanced back at the galley and said, “I’ll see if they have some fresh coffee. You want one?”
“Thanks.” She nodded, then added, “If they’re out, a couple of fingers of Scotch will do just as nicely.”
THE FALSE PRIEST who had chosen to be called Brother Ameen watched Dalton rise from his seat opposite Gracie and head his way. He acknowledged the cameraman with a friendly nod as he walked past him to the back of the plane, then turned away and stared out the window.
It was his first kill on this mission, though he’d killed many times before. The war in his homeland had been brutal. It had turned a lot of young Serbian men like him into heartless killers. Once the war was over, some had been able to smother that aspect of their past and morph back into average, amiable folk. Others liked what they’d discovered in themselves. And some of those, like Dario Arapovic, also discovered that the talents that they’d forged in places like Vukovar and during operations like the Otkos 10 offensive were in strong demand. That region of the world was still unstable. It was an ongoing struggle, and any lull was but a temporary pause in the Great Game. A game that people like Maddox were actively participating in, a game where talents like Dario’s were coveted—and richly rewarded. And his decision had paid off handsomely, for although Dario had taken great pride in playing a covert role in helping shape his homeland’s future, his being picked by Maddox to play this key position in a far more important match was a source of even greater