Shadow of Betrayal Read online

  Marion could hear someone enter the dining room. She gripped the Taser tightly in her hand, ready in case the new arrival was not a friend. But when the curtain was pulled aside, Marion relaxed. It was Roslyn.

  The old Swiss lady was short and thin with a wrinkled face and white hair that stopped just above her shoulders. And while her appearance did nothing to hide the fact that she’d seen more years than most, she exuded an inner strength, a confidence that made the toughest of men pause before deciding to take her on.

  “Come with me,” Roslyn said.

  Without another word, the old woman went back into the dining room. Marion followed.

  “How long have they been here?” Marion whispered once she caught up to her.

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “They haven’t found her, then?”

  “No,” Roslyn said. “But they know she was here. Someone must have told them. They say they won’t leave until they find her.”

  They crossed the dining room toward the hallway that led to the office at the front of the building. Marion was about to ask another question, but Frau Roslyn held up her hand, stopping her.

  “You must be quiet,” the woman said. “They will hear you. And if they hear you …”

  She didn’t have to finish the thought. They both knew what would happen.

  As they entered the short hallway, Frau Roslyn paused. There was light at the far end where the small building lobby was located. Above them, Marion could hear the movement of several heavy sets of feet. There were also the muffled cries and voices of children unsure why they had been woken in the middle of the night.

  Frau Roslyn took several quiet steps forward, passing the door on the left that led to her office, and another on the right to the makeshift first aid station. Again, Marion followed.

  They stopped a couple feet shy of the end of the hallway. If anyone had walked by, the light from the lobby would have been more than enough to expose Marion’s presence.

  Frau Roslyn leaned to her right, looking into the lobby. The angle would give her a view of the front door. When she straightened and turned around, she whispered almost too low for Marion to hear, “Two soldiers, but they’re still outside. Come on. We don’t have much time.”

  She pushed past Marion and opened the door to her office. Unlike the back entrance, the hinges on this door were well oiled and made no sound. Frau Roslyn motioned Marion inside, then she closed the door, easing the latch into place.

  “The soldiers,” Marion said, “they won’t hurt the children, will they?”

  The woman shook her head. “Jan is up there.”

  Jan was Roslyn’s cousin. A large Swiss-German man who had the benefit of being a former member of the Swiss government, something Roslyn would have made sure the soldiers knew.

  “Where’s Iris?” Marion asked.

  Roslyn put a finger to her mouth, then turned and edged her way around the large metal desk that seemed to take up half the room. She reached up and made sure the curtains across the window on the back wall were fully closed. Then, instead of sitting down in the old wooden chair, she continued past the desk to the sidewall. Like the rest of the room, the wall was painted off-white. On it were hung several framed pictures of Frau Roslyn with children who had at one time or another lived in the orphanage. They all seemed to be smiling and happy and content.

  The old woman moved one of the pictures to the side and touched a spot on the wall. There was a faint click, then the wall eased open an inch. Roslyn reached around the edge of the opening and pulled the wall out like a door.

  Marion’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Come, come,” the old woman said.

  Marion hesitated a moment longer, then moved around the desk and joined Frau Roslyn.

  Since the hidden door swung out into the office, Marion had not been able to see what was inside until the door was all the way open. The space it revealed wasn’t large, maybe a meter deep at best, and only as wide as the opening. It was made even more cramped by the fact that it wasn’t empty.

  One of the older boys was inside. He was maybe thirteen or fourteen. Marion had seen him many times before but couldn’t remember his name. In his arms he held another child. A girl, much younger than he was. Her head rested against his chest and her eyes were closed in sleep.

  It was Iris. There was no mistaking her.

  The old woman held her hands out, and the boy gave her the child.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “She slept the whole time, Frau Roslyn.” The boy smiled. “She was very good. Are they gone?”

  Before Roslyn could answer, the loud pounding of feet came from the stairs near the front of the building.

  “Madame Krueger? Madame Krueger?” a voice called from the direction of the footsteps. Male, deep. One of the soldiers, using Roslyn’s surname.

  Roslyn looked back at the boy. He was still in the tiny space behind the secret door. “Out,” she said. “Quickly!”

  The boy stepped out into the office.

  “Madame Krueger?” the voice was closer.

  “Take her,” Roslyn said as she held Iris out to Marion. “Get inside. You have to hide.”

  “What?” Marion said.

  “There’s no time,” the old woman said. “Please. Take her.”

  Marion instinctively pulled the child into her arms, careful to point the end of the stunner away from the girl’s back.

  “Now get in,” Roslyn said.

  “I don’t think I’ll fit.”

  “They’ll take her if you don’t.”

  Marion nodded as she realized there was no choice. She stepped past the woman and the boy into the small space in the wall.

  “I’ll let you out when they’re gone,” Roslyn said.

  “What if she wakes?” Marion asked.

  “I gave her something to help her sleep. You’ll be fine.”

  Before Marion could say anything else, the secret door closed, entombing her and Iris in the wall. The seal was a good one. There was absolutely no light. Marion could never remember being anyplace so completely dark. For a moment she allowed the fear to shake through her like a deep chill. But then she heard the office door fly open, and she froze.

  “What are you doing?” It was the same voice that yelled from the stairs, muffled by the closed secret door, but still distinct.

  “One of the boys was missing,” Roslyn said, her voice calm and unhurried. “I came to look for him.”

  “What were you doing down here?” the soldier asked.

  “I… I got scared,” the boy who had been taking care of Iris said. “I was hiding.”

  There was the sound of movement, then the scrape of metal along the floor. The desk, perhaps, being pushed back or out of the way.

  “Please, no,” the boy yelled out.

  “You want to be scared?” the soldier said.

  “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hid. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Silence for a moment.

  “And you were alone here?”

  “What?” the boy said. “Yes. Alone.”

  “Please,” Roslyn said. “The boy is young. He saw his parents killed in the middle of the night, so naturally he gets scared sometimes.”

  “We’ve all seen people killed in the night,” the soldier said. But Roslyn’s words must have gotten to him. The harsh tone in his voice was gone. “Next time, you don’t hide, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said.

  “Go upstairs with the others.”

  Again movement. Feet, not as loud as the soldier’s, moving out of the room.

  “Come with me,” the soldier said.

  “Where?” Roslyn asked.

  “I’m the one who asks the questions.”

  “Of course.”

  There was the sound of several feet walking out of the office, and then there was silence.

  Marion waited, hoping that the sleeping child in her arms would remain that way.

/>   What could the soldiers want with her? Her difference from the other children should have made her less desirable for the soldiers rather than more. Her kind was seldom wanted. Not just here in Côte d’Ivoire, but in most countries throughout the world. Yet this wasn’t the first time the soldiers had come looking for a child like her.

  The darkness made it impossible for Marion to know what time it was. She began counting off minutes in an effort to remain calm. But after a while she lost her place and gave up. Where was Roslyn?

  Finally, she heard footsteps enter the office. It sounded like more than one person, but she couldn’t tell for sure. She tried to angle the stunner so it pointed toward the door just in case.

  The steps seemed to stop near the desk. She thought she heard someone whisper, but she wasn’t sure. Then the steps came forward again, stopping less than a foot away from her on the other side of the wall.

  She brushed the button on the stunner with her thumb, checking its position so she’d be ready.

  Something scraped along the wall. A picture being moved.

  Then there was the click again. Only it was louder inside the hidden room.

  The door popped open an inch and light seeped in.

  The sudden change caused Iris to move, her head rocking against Marion’s chest.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Marion whispered, trying to coax the child back to sleep.

  Marion could see the tips of several fingers grabbing the edge of the door. Iris twisted again, this time lifting her head up, her eyes opening at the same moment the door did.

  Marion held the child tightly with one arm while the other was occupied with the Taser, ready to ram it into the first piece of skin she saw.

  Outside, blocking the light, was a dark form. Large, like one of the soldiers. Without even realizing it, she pushed down with her thumb, activating the weapon in her hand. Only nothing happened. There was no arc of electricity, or even a vibration that would tell her the device was on.

  “I would appreciate you moving that away,” a voice said. It came from the shadow. The voice was male, speaking French like the soldiers. Only it was different. The accent was Germanic.

  As he stepped backward, the weak light of the office revealed that he wasn’t one of the soldiers from before.

  It was Jan, Frau Roslyn’s cousin.

  “I don’t think that works anymore, anyway,” he said.

  He held out his hand. After a moment, she gave him the stunner.

  As he set it on the desk, he said, “It’s safe now. You can come out.”

  “They’re gone?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  He helped her to step out of the space in the wall, then he closed the door behind her.

  “Where is Frau Roslyn?” Marion asked.

  The look on Jan’s face darkened. “They kept her out front for over an hour talking. Then they took her away.”

  “What? What do you mean ‘away’?”

  Jan hesitated. “I’m going to go look for her as soon as I can find someone to watch the children.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “No,” he said. “You have to get out of here. You have to take Iris with you.”

  They both looked at the child. She was awake now, but she hadn’t made a sound. She was looking at Marion, smiling.

  “Where do I take her?”

  “Someplace safe,” Jan said. “The UN compound. They won’t bother you there. But—”

  “I can’t just take her to the compound.”

  Jan stared at her for several seconds. “Then leave her here. I’ll give her to the soldiers when they come back.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Of course,” she said. “Of course, I’ll take her. I’m sorry.” She paused for a moment, the beginnings of a sob caught in her chest. “I’m just… scared.”

  The look on Jan’s face was tense. There was no smile, no friendly sparkle in his eyes like Marion had seen on previous visits. “You should be.” He leaned down until only a foot separated his face from her. “Listen to me. They’ll keep looking for her. You need to get her away. Far away. Once you do, you need to disappear. Don’t let anyone know where you are. These people will find you. And once they have the girl, they’ll kill you.”

  “If I can get her out of the city, they’ll have to give up. They’re just local soldiers.”

  “Forget about the soldiers,” Jan said. “It’s not the soldiers you need to worry about. It’s the people the soldiers are working for. Those are the people you need to be concerned with. They’re not local. They’re not even from Africa.”

  She didn’t understand what he meant, but it was obvious he had no intention of explaining more. Without saying another word, he guided her through the orphanage to the back door she had snuck through less than two hours before.

  “Go,” he said, all but pushing her through the door. “Iris’s life depends on you.”

  The door closed before she could respond.

  She looked down at the child. Iris’s eyelids were heavy.

  “That’s right,” Marion said. “Sleep. Just sleep. I’ll take care of you.”

  Once the girl’s eyes closed, Marion began retracing the steps that had brought her to the orphanage, not knowing how she was going to keep the promise she had just made.

  CHAPTER

  3

  QUINN USED THE SAME PATH HE HAD EARLIER IN the day when he’d returned from his last check of the church. Only this time it was dark, and if that wasn’t hindrance enough, it seemed as if all the bushes that lined the trail had grown significantly larger in the several hours that had passed. He had to take extra care not to sound like a herd of roaming sheep.

  In his right hand was his SIG, and in his left, the small wireless microphone that paired with the receiver hanging on his ear. Keeping his eyes on the path, he reached up and attached the mic to his collar.

  “Give me a constant update,” he whispered. “I’m not going to be able to say much, so just keep talking.”

  “Got it,” Nate said, his voice overamplified and crackling.

  “You’re killing me,” Quinn said. “Turn down your gain.”

  There was a pause, then Nate said, “Better?” His voice sounded almost normal.

  “Yes. Thanks,” he said.

  Two minutes later he came to a small open field. Though he was pretty sure the assassin in the tree wouldn’t be able to see him, he kept to the dark shadows at the edge of the clearing.

  “He’s still in the tree,” Nate said. “But he’s moved back, closer to the trunk. Harder to see.”

  He’s expecting company, Quinn thought. Waiting to see if his victims have backup anywhere close by.

  “I still don’t see signs of anyone else. I think he might be working alone.”

  Quinn wasn’t ready to concede that possibility yet. He’d seen too much in his years in the business, seen too many people who had been killed because they underestimated their opponent. He removed the sound suppressor from his jacket and attached it to his weapon. Any shot Quinn took at this point wouldn’t be to scare the guy, it would be to hit him.

  “I’ve got no movement from the men on the ground,” Nate said.

  There wouldn’t be. They were all dead the second Quinn and Nate had seen the muzzle flashes on the screen. The assassin got the first three shots off before any of the men in the church could react. The range was not much more than thirty yards. So close it was almost cheating for a trained marksman. Kill shots, all of them. No question. The only reason there’d been a delay before the fourth man was killed was that the assassin hadn’t had a clean shot. So he’d waited a few seconds for the man to panic, and run for someplace new to hide, then bang. Four dead.

  “Wait,” Nate said. “I think he’s climbing down.”

  Quinn had reentered the trees on the far side of the pasture and was once again fighting the underbrush. He guessed he was about a minute away from the old church grounds
. From this direction, he would reach the graveyard first.

  “He’s on the ground, but staying close to the tree. I can see his weapon, though. Hold on, let me zoom in.” There was a pause. “I think it’s a Galil.”

  That would make sense, Quinn thought. A Galil sniper rifle using subsonic rounds could be silenced effectively. Plus the weapon was light and easily portable. An excellent choice.

  Ahead Quinn could see the trees thinning. Beyond would be the graveyard. He slowed as he reached the edge of the woods, and crouched down low. Less than ten feet away from where the trees ended was a ragged row of headstones. They were old and weathered, several to the point of being unreadable. Between the stones grass had grown high, and here and there a tree or a bush had taken root. But none had grown too large. Quinn guessed that every few years someone came out and cleared away the vegetation, a last act of respect for the dead parishioners who were otherwise forgotten.

  “I’m here,” Quinn said, keeping his voice as low as possible. “Behind the graveyard.”

  “He’s around the right side of the church from your position,” Nate told him. “Probably about your two o’clock.”

  “Okay.”

  “Quinn.”

  “What?”

  “Peter wanted me to remind you not to let him get to the bodies.”

  “That’s kind of what I’m trying to do, isn’t it?”

  “And … em … if there’s any way you can subdue him, that would be best,” Nate said. “Peter said he’s got a couple guys heading our way right now. Should be here in thirty minutes.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  “Would you like me to patch you through to him directly?”

  “No,” Quinn said, trying hard to keep his voice from getting too loud. “I’m really not in a place where I can have a chat with—”

  “Movement,” Nate said, cutting him off.

  Quinn froze in place.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “He’s heading toward the church. He left the rifle behind the tree, and is carrying a pistol now. Looks like a SIG.”