A World I Never Made by James Lepore Page A

two fingers against his carotid artery. She quickly turned to the man Pat had felled, who was lying on his side breathing heavily, moaning softly. Taking her makeup case out of her shoulder bag and flipping it open, she pressed two fingers of the man’s right hand against its mirror. After a rapid search of his pockets, she tore open his sweater and found a leather neck pouch with a passport and other papers in it. These she leafed through quickly before slipping them into her trench coat pocket. She then went about the same process with the man with the chest wound. While she was occupied with him, the man Pat had felled rose slowly to one knee. Blood was streaming from a gash above his left eye. With his good eye he stared hard at Laurence kneeling over his partner and at Pat looming over him only a few feet away. Then suddenly he was on his feet and running toward the wooded area to his left. Pat, his adrenaline level in the red zone, spotted a gun on the grass a few meters away. He raced for it, but it was too late. The injured man had vanished into the pitch-black shadows of the woods. Pat took a step in that direction, but was stopped by Laurence’s voice behind him.
     
    “Let him go,” she said. “We will never catch him in the dark:”
     
    “What about him?” Pat said, nodding toward the man on the path.
     
    “He is dead:”
     
    “What are you doing here?”
     
    “I was following you:”
     
    Pat took this in, remaining silent, trying to decide which of several logical questions to ask next. He was still holding the wrench, which was stained with blood on its business end. Seeing it, Pat recalled with a slight jolt the thud of metal against skin and bone as he whacked his assailant.
     
    “Give that to me;” Laurence said, extending her hand. Taking it, she wiped it clean on the front of the dead man’s jacket and put it in her coat pocket.
     
    “Following me?”
     
    “Yes,” Laurence replied, “but there is no time to talk. Help me.”
     
    Turning, she lifted the dead man under his arms and began dragging him off the path. Pat took hold of the man’s legs and together they deposited him at the edge of some nearby bushes, but in plain sight.
     
    “Let’s go,” Laurence said, “we will use the Métro.”
     
    “First tell me who they are:”
     
    “What is that on your hand?” She took hold of his sleeve to get a better look. A trickle of blood ran down to his fingers. There was a perfectly formed bullet hole in his leather jacket at his bicep, which was also oozing dark red.
     
    “We will talk at my apartment:”
     
    “Who are they?” Pat asked again, pulling his hand away.
     
    “They are Mabahith, Saudi Arabian Secret Police:”
     

~7~
     
    MOROCCO, FEBRUARY 5, 2003
     
    “How was Zagora? Did you find your family?” Abdel al-Lahani asked.
     
    “I did,” Megan answered.
     
    “And? Is there a story?”
     
    “No.”
     
    “No? Why not? It seems perfect:”
     
    “I was hoping to find a terrorist, but I didn’t.”
     
    “A terrorist. My God. Are you serious?”
     
    “Yes, I am:”
     
    “But I thought you wanted to write a story about the natives. The blind family.”
     
    “I was told that the sighted son had terrorist ties. That was the story. His parents told me he was attending university in France. I turned up nothing to indicate otherwise:”
     
    “You did not tell me this. You did not trust me. You think because I am Muslim I am sympathetic to terrorists.” Lahani smiled as he said this, modulating his deep, rich voice to a pitch somewhere between mock sternness and mock hurt, supremely self-assured, as Megan was learning he almost always was. What he did not know was that her confession was a tactical one, meant to stroke his already bloated ego, to dull his senses to her cunning if and when she decided to really use it.
     
    “We had just met,” she said, looking down as if embarrassed.
     
    “But we are only meeting now for the second