“Ms. Hepworth, Izam Bekami is running a skilled terror operation. Either CNF employs an advanced intelligence network or they have someone on the inside.”
An informant on the inside.
So, this is why I am inside the cube? They think it’s me? Claustrophobia creeps in. Now I feel boxed in, trapped. An interrogation cube must not only monitor my heart rate, but have other, more sinister capabilities …
David is still talking. “… You are suspected of disclosing intelligence to Ilyas Farhad and Izam Bekami and assisting the CNF terror organization—”
“You think I have Stockholm syndrome?”
“—in the acquisition of weapons—”
“Because Farhad entered your safe house with a key?” I ask incredulously.
“You lived in Chechnya, Ms. Hepworth, correct?”
“We visited.”
“You’re documented to have attended a local school and associated with local children. You learned the language, correct?”
“I was only there seven weeks,” I say.
“Nevertheless, you learned Chechen. You developed sympathies for radical Chechen nationalists.”
“I don’t sympathize with terrorists,” I say tartly.
David steps backward, reaches across the table, and switches out the picture of Bekami for the Chechen with hazel eyes who followed me in Waterford. “Why didn’t you tell your parents this man, Ramzan Dimayev, was following you?”
“He was just a man in a street. I’d been told not to worry, so I didn’t.”
“Or is it because you were meeting him clandestinely to discuss intelligence you’d stolen from your parents?”
“Excuse me?” I say softly.
“He was your new CNF contact after Farhad was killed, wasn’t he?”
“Never!”
“During your kidnapping, you developed feelings for Farhad. Afterward, you agreed to help CNF. Bekami sent Farhad to be your contact in Tunis, but your father killed Farhad and you moved to Montana. From prison, Bekami ordered a CNF member—a Chechen American—to be your new contact.”
David walks toward the cube until his nose is a millimeter from the glass. “You planned to deliver Bekami something, information, didn’t you?”
My fingernails dig into my palm. “You don’t have clearance to read it, do you?”
He stares me down. “What did you agree to give Bekami?”
“You haven’t read it,” I continue, “have you?”
I uncoil my fists and slam my open palm against the glass. “Because if you had read my previous debriefing, David? If you knew anything about what happened in Istanbul? You would know that if I saw Izam Bekami, I would not help him. Ever.” My words come out crystallized. “I would kill him.”
For several seconds the Bubble is silent.
Then, David presses the orange button beside the glass door, releasing me.
CHAPTER 44
It was never over.
We—traveling as Henrik, Karolina, and Helle Marcussen from Denmark—enter an art nouveau structure with a marble exterior and a slate pitched roof—the Hotel am Steinplatz.
After riding an elevator to the presidential suite, we enter a wood-paneled closet. My father pushes his index finger against the corner panel—it swings forward, revealing a steel door with an embedded screen. My mother scans her retina. The door opens to a staircase, leading to another suite, an annex.
Here my mother checks the closets: weapons, changes of clothes, stacks of canned food, and piles of electronic equipment. My father double-checks the air vents.
“Is Aksel safe?” I finally ask, desperate to hear anything.
“I’m going to a pharmacy.” My mother slips into a black trench from one of the closets. “No toothpaste,” she says placidly, like this is normal.
“Why aren’t you answering me?” I demand. “I need to know he’s okay!”
My mother drops lipstick and a knife into her purse and leaves.
I walk to the triple-paned bulletproof windows overlooking Berlin. Eleven stories below, people are shopping at the Christmas market and eating roast duck and apple dumplings in cozy, candlelit restaurants. In the fresh rain, the streets are glossy; headlights shimmer in the water sloshing against the curb.
But all the way up here in this black-site suite, I try to keep from screaming.
My old life is back.
“These old Soviet safe houses will survive the apocalypse.” My father smiles warily.
At dawn, we left the hotel for Berlin Central Station, switched trains in Munich, and rode until we disembarked at a village on the outskirts of Budapest. After walking a mile in the cold sunlight, we reached an isolated hunting cabin in the woods beyond the city.
Now, my mother passes me a stack of folded clothes, adding, “There’s plenty of hot water.” I can’t believe I never realized she is part of this too—or that my presence enabled their cover. My mother is a veneer. Do I know her at all?
Showered, I dress in black jeans, boots, and a cashmere wool sweater. I braid my hair the