the Star of David from her neck, lest others see it. She unclasps the pendant, surrenders it, and hurries toward the blue Mediterranean before the blazing sand can burn her feet.
“Careful,” said a voice, the first to address her since leaving the camp. “There are steps ahead.”
They were wide and smooth. When Natalie reached the top step, the hand pulled her forward, gently. She had the sensation of moving through a great house, through cool chambers, across sun-drowned courts. At last, she came to another flight of steps, longer than the first, twelve steps instead of six. At the summit she became aware of the presence of several men and heard the muted clatter of automatic weapons expertly held.
A few murmured words were exchanged, a door was opened. Natalie moved forward ten paces exactly. Then the hand squeezed her wrist and applied subtle downward pressure. Obediently, she lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged upon a carpet with her hands folded neatly in her lap. The blindfold was removed. Through the mosquito netting of her facial veil, she saw a man seated before her, identically posed. His face was instantly familiar; he was the senior Iraqi who had interrogated her before her transfer to Palmyra. He was lacking in his previous composure. His black clothing was covered in dust, his brown eyes were bloodshot and fatigued. The night, thought Natalie, had been unkind to him.
With a movement of his hand, he instructed her to lift her veil. She hesitated but complied. The brown eyes bored into her for a long moment while she studied the pattern of the carpet. Finally, he took her chin in the lobster claw of his ruined hand and raised her face toward his. “Dr. Hadawi,” he said quietly. “Thank you so much for coming.”
She passed through one more doorway, entered one more room. Its floor was bare and white, as were its walls. Above was a small round aperture through which poured a shaft of scalding sunlight. Otherwise, the shadows prevailed. In one corner, the farthest, four heavily armed ISIS fighters stood in a ragged circle, eyes lowered, like mourners at a graveside. Dust coated their black costumes. It was not the khaki-colored dust of the desert; it was pale and gray, concrete that had been smashed into powder by a sledgehammer from the sky. At the feet of the four men was a fifth. He lay supine upon a stretcher, one arm across his chest, the other, the left, at his side. There was blood on the left hand, and blood stained the bare floor around him. His face was pale as death. Or was it the gray dust? From across the room, Natalie could not tell.
The senior Iraqi nudged her forward. She passed through the cylinder of sun; its heat was molten. Before her there was movement, and a place was made for her among the mourners. She stopped and looked down at the man on the stretcher. There was no dust on his face. His ashen pallor was his own, the result of substantial loss of blood. He had suffered two visible wounds, one to the upper chest, the other to the thigh of the right leg—wounds, thought Natalie, that might have proven fatal to an ordinary man, but not him. He was quite large and powerfully built.
He is everything you would expect . . .
“Who is he?” she asked after a moment.
“It’s not important,” answered the Iraqi. “It is only important that he lives. You must not let him die.”
Natalie gathered up her abaya, crouched beside the stretcher, and reached toward the chest wound. Instantly, one of the fighters seized her wrist. This time, the grip was not gentle; it felt as though her bones were about to crack. She glared at the fighter, silently chastising him for daring to touch her, a woman who was not a blood relative, and then fixed the Iraqi with the same stare. The Iraqi nodded once, the iron grip relaxed. Natalie savored her small victory. For the first time since her arrival in Syria, she felt a sense of power. For the moment, she thought, she owned them.
She reached toward the wound again, unmolested, and moved aside the shredded black garment. It was a large wound, about two inches at its widest, with ragged edges. Something hot and jagged had entered his body at extremely high speed and had left a trail of appalling damage—broken bone, shredded tissue, severed blood vessels. His respiration