it might mean the deaths of everyone.
She had to take the chance. Watching for sentries, she ran low, toward the front of the villa. In the distance, she could hear the surf pounding the sand. It seemed to echo the pounding of her heart. At the corner, she peered around at the front terrace and entry. Abu Auda and two of his men were marching Jon and Theacute;regrave;se across the terrace and down to the bare ground in the direction of the distant barracks. When they were far enough ahead, she followed.
Jon surveyed the dark trees, looking for a way to break Theacute;regrave;se and himself free. Abu Auda and his men had taken them through a tangerine grove to a square wooden building in a clearing some fifty yards behind the barracks. The scent of citrus seemed cloying, overpowering.
As one of his bedouins opened the heavy door, Abu Auda kicked Jon into a dark room. "You've caused us too much trouble, American. Usually I would've killed you by now. Be grateful to Khalid, for he thinks greater than I. You'll cause us no more trouble in here, and the female can think upon her sins."
The guards pushed Theacute;regrave;se in after Jon and slammed the door. The key turned in the lock, and there was a clang as an additional iron bar was slid home and then a click as it was padlocked.
"Mon Dieu."
Theacute;regrave;se sighed.
Jon said in English, "This wasn't how I pictured our next time alone together." He gazed around the single cell. Moonlight slanted in from a barred window high in the wall, sending a rectangular pattern across the concrete floor. Its color was pale, indicating recently poured cement. There were no other windows, and the wood door was massive.
"No," she agreed. Despite her torn white suit and dirty face, there was a beauty and dignity to her that remained untouched. "I'd hoped you would come to the theater to sec me work, and then we'd have a late dinner."
"I would've liked that."
"Seeing me work, or the late dinner?"
"Bothhellip;the dinner and drinksand later, the most." He smiled.
"Yes." She smiled back, and then her expression grew solemn. "It's odd how life can change so quickly, so unexpectedly."
"Isn't it?"
She cocked her head and gazed at him curiously. "You say that as if you're a man who's lost much."
"Do I?" He did not want to talk about Sophia. Not here, not now. The shadowy cell smelled dry, almost sandy, as if the Algerian heat had baked the moisture forever from the wood structure. "We have to get out of here. We can't leave the computer or your father in their hands."
"But how?"
There was nothing in the room to stand on. The single cot was fastened to the wrong wall, and there was no other furniture. He looked up at the window again, and calculated its height as no more than nine feet. "I'll boost you up so you can test the bars. Maybe one or two are loose. That'd be a happy piece of luck."
He made a stirrup of his hands and hoisted her up to his shoulders.
She strained at the bars, examined them, and announced in a discouraged voice, "They've been sunk through three horizontal boards bolted together, and then bolted to iron plates. They're not new."
Old bars in a prison built long ago, perhaps to punish Arab slaves or the prisoners of the pirates who once ruled here along with what was once a local bey of the Ottoman Empire.
"You don't feel even a creak?" he asked hopefully.
"No. They're solid."
Jon helped her down, and they turned their attention to the wood door. Its advanced age might help. But it, too, showed no weakness, and it was double locked from the outside. Even its hinges were outside. The slave owners and the pirates had apparently been worried more about a prisoner breaking out than anyone breaking in to free someone. And now, without outside help, he and Theacute;regrave;se would not get out either.
Then he heard a faint, odd soundlike tiny chewing. A small animal tentatively biting into wood. He listened, but could not pinpoint the source.
"Jon!"
The whisper was so low at first he thought he was hallucinating, hearing voices conjured up by his own desperate thoughts of escape.
"Jon, dammit!"
He whirled and looked up at the window. All he saw was the dark sky.
The whisper came again. "Idiot! The back wall."
Then he knew the voice. He hurried across the cell and crouched low against the back wall. "Randi?"
"Who did you expect, the