"That it can be," Brandt answered. "That's why I'm going with the whole God works in mysterious ways thing."
His fiancee watched as he mixed in the fruit, then loaded the cup into the mixer. She stayed silent as the machine whirled the ice cream, chocolate syrup, malt powder, and strawberry slices together. How had he gotten along all this time without a shake machine at his fingertips?
"You don't even want me to go over the passages from the Ten Commandments tablets and how they relate to other religious works? How across history there is precedence for a female Messiah? Why we need to go to Egypt to try and prove if she is or isn't the Messiah?"
"Nope," Brandt said, taking a long draft of the shake. He licked his lips once he was done. Damn that was good. "I'm at peace with my god."
How could he not be? Here he stood, against all odds, drinking a shake with the love of his life, not forty-eight hours after being drugged and kidnapped. If that didn't prove God was pretty awesome, he didn't know what would.
After draining the cup of its contents, Brandt set it down on the counter and pulled Rebecca into a hug. "Come here."
She laid her hands on his chest. "You are freaking me out a little here."
"In a good or bad way?" he asked, pressing their hips together.
Her cheeks flushed "Well, I'd thought the bad way, but now..."
"But now, what?" He asked as his palm caressed her cheek, his thumb stroking the soft skin.
Rebecca's one hand snaked up his neck, pulling him down toward her. Her other hand made its way down his belly, tugging his shirt up until she touched flesh. His skin rippled under her touch.
"Now?" she murmured. "I'm pretty sure there is a king-sized bed upstairs."
He loved how she thought.
Their lips met. Hers warm and inviting. Despite all the trauma it had been through, his body responded the way it always did. Roused, he pulled her even tighter to him. His hands coursed over her back, tugging up her shirt. Their tongues intertwined, foreshadowing what their bodies would be doing very, very soon.
If it weren't for the fact that Vakasa could stray out at any moment, Brandt would have taken Rebecca right there and then.
"Whoa!" Lopez shouted as he entered, throwing a hand over his eyes. "Put a sock on the door or something."
They broke off the kiss, but did not break their embrace.
"Having difficulty finding us a suitable getaway car?" Brandt asked, hoping that his tone backed off Lopez.
"Difficulty?" Lopez snorted, entering the room. "Finding a beater car in Egypt is about as hard as finding a corn on the cob at a state fair."
Of course the corporal had found a car in under five minutes. It was Lopez. Brandt knew he should get back to work, but damn if Rebecca didn't feel so right in his arms.
He couldn't exactly order the corporal out of the room so he could make out with his fiancee. He'd have to find a more creative way. "Perhaps you would like to-"
Then Lopez spied the parlor. "Shakes? Are you kidding me?"
Rebecca loosened her embrace as the corporal ran over to the counter.
"If they've got peanut butter, I can make it into ribbons for a Reese's-style shake!"
Sighing, Brandt let Rebecca back away from him. Maybe having a shake machine around all the time wasn't such a great idea.
CHAPTER 13.
Undisclosed Location 1:18 p.m. (EST) "We've got a problem," Stark said, stirring Bunny out of her semi-sleep.
"What?" Prenner asked, his tone as starched as his uniform. How the guy could go all night and not wrinkle his jacket went against all that was right.
Stark pointed to the screen. "Mr. Saramais has been receiving numerous payments-from numerous countries and agencies."
Bunny scanned the bank account list. Several names popped up. The Bahamas Commonwealth Bank. Probably one of the most famous CIA front companies out there. She turned to Emily.
The woman gritted her teeth, flipping open her phone. "On it."
Another account that stood out was the New Hong Kong Import Company. Bunny had seen the name before. Like how they had traced funds from that Chinese front company to the team that had attacked them in Russia.
Another line item was from the Iranian government-directly. No cover or front there. Just the Islamic Republic of Iran Treasury.
"What are all these payments for?" Bunny asked, a question that she felt was rhetorical, except Stark answered it.
"Research," he stated. "Or at least that's what the grants say."
"On what?" Bunny thought out loud. The Viking study probably cost a grand total of a couple hundred thousand dollars. The totals on this ledge added up into the millions, tens of millions.
Stark stretched out his fingers, cracking the knuckles. "That is going to take me a while. Saramias has got his own shell companies, plus a Swiss and Cayman Island account."
"I guess if you are trying to hide from the Disciples, you would need a ton of capital," Prenner suggested.
But what if Saramias wasn't hiding from the Disciples? What if Saramias was out there as bait? A lure that she had just advised Rebecca to take?
"We've got to warn them," Bunny stated.
Prenner shook his head. "We agreed to radio silence until they leave Egypt."
Bunny bit the edge of her fingernail. It turned out it was just as hard to be on this side of the radio as it was in the field. As she rubbed the scar that came around her rib and ended at her sternum, she realized maybe not quite as hard as out in the field, but pretty damned close.
Rebecca adjusted her jibab so that it completely covered her clothes. The long, flowing black robe obscured any figure Rebecca might have liked to think she had.
Talli held out another garment. "This is your niqab."
"I thought it was a burka?" Davidson asked.
Rebecca shook her head, studying the hat-like garment that would cover her head and face. "No, a burka is a single garment. It isn't worn nearly as common in Egypt as it is in Saudi Arabia." Rebecca took the niqab. "This way, once inside, a women can easily take off the niqab yet still be modestly dressed from the neck down."
"Modest?" Lopez snorted, sucking down his third shake. "More like get thee to a nunnery."
"I think that is the point," Rebecca stated. She knew dressing in the local fashion was important. It was important to blend in. To mask her very Western features. Still, she hesitated to put on the niqab. Many woman around the world voluntarily covered their hair and face as a matter of their religion. Many others didn't do it voluntarily. In countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, they could be beaten or whipped for showing their face to non-related males.
"You could stay with Lopez," Brandt suggested.
Rebecca shot him a look. Like she'd pass up the chance to ask Saramias what the hell was going on? Yeah, right. Besides, she had just nearly gotten squeezed to death by a python. A veil shouldn't be that big a deal. As Rebecca donned her niqab, the little girl next to her did as well. Even though the child was going to stay with Lopez in the getaway car, it was best to keep her identity under wraps.
"Don't worry," Rebecca murmured to Vakasa as she lowered the eye veil. The girl gave a thumbs-up as she adjusted the veil to fit properly. It appeared she'd worn one of these before.
Rebecca wasn't quite so comfortable veiling up the only part of her body that the jibab and niqab didn't cover. But her blue eyes were a stand out in this part of the world. They had to be concealed.
Dropping the veil over her eyes, Rebecca felt a wave of claustrophobia. And she wasn't even claustrophobic. She had read somewhere that wearing the eye veil was like wearing a dark pair of sunglasses. Um...They were wrong. A pair of sunglasses made you feel sexy. To her, the veil blanked out her identity.
Brandt put his arm around her and kissed the fabric. "You're still beautiful."
She shoved him away. "You say that to all the black-robed, indistinguishable women you meet."
"If it helps any, I'm wearing a hat too," Brandt said as Talli finished with the head garment. The scarf was a bright red with a white-checkered pattern, carried down from the days of Mesopotamia.
"It's called a keffiyah," Rebecca chided. "And it has a function to keep the heat and sun from the top of your head."
Talli indicated to the flap on the side of the scarf. "Use this to guard your mouth and nose if we get into any sandy areas."
"With any luck, we should be going into a building, then right back out to the airport," Brandt said before turning to the men. "All right. In light of recent events, this is a country in unrest. We have got to lie low...Lopez?"
The corporal adjusted his agal, the rope that kept the fabric secured to the head. "Army crawl, Sarge. That's my goal."
Brandt seemed satisfied, nodding for them to move out. He took Rebecca's hand, helping her down the short staircase to the hangar floor. If she'd thought the jibab was bad on the plane? Try wearing a black all-consuming garment in ninety-five-degree-plus weather. Rebecca was already sweating.
And was it just the eye veil, or did the car they were walking toward seem a bit...beat up?
"Lopez?" Brandt asked in that tone of his.
"What?" The corporal asked, pointing to the derelict car. "It's a Chana CM8. The single most popular car on the road in Egypt."
"How is it going to fit all of us?" Davidson asked.
Besides having more dents than Rebecca could count, the thing was narrow. Like, little, tiny Smart car narrow.
"It seats seven," Lopez insisted. "Now get in."
Brandt hesitated, though, which made everyone hesitate.
Finally, Lopez sighed. "Okay. Fine. It's going to be a tight fit. But if we put Brandt up front. Davidson, Rebecca, and the girl in the next row. That leaves Talli and Levont in the backward-facing seat." When everyone still hesitated, Lopez waved them on. "Now get."
Surprisingly, Lopez was right. Once loaded in, they were rubbing elbows, but the doors shut and they were secure. Sort of. The engine rattled the entire car as it churned to life.
Brandt glared at his corporal, but Lopez just shrugged. "Army crawl, remember?"
Then the car pulled out onto the tarmac, passed through a gate to the road that led away from the Cairo airport. Lopez horned their way into the jam-packed traffic. It had been a while since Rebecca had been in Egypt. Lopez had been correct. Their beat-up, dusty, on-its-last-legs vehicle did fit right in. Cars in far worse shape flanked them.
"Told you," Lopez said, giving her a wink. Too bad he couldn't see the smile she flashed him, as it was hidden under the dark cloth of the jibab.
"How long?" Brandt asked.
The corporal indicted to the wall-to-wall cars. "We're only twelve-point-four miles from Giza. However, in this traffic..." Lopez brightened. "Unless you want me to hop off this freeway and take the side streets."
"That would be a definite no," Brandt answered. Bad things happened to foreigners on the back streets of Cairo. Even armed ones. Under the current political climate? Perhaps even worse to the armed ones.
How Brandt wished he could have left the girl back at the plane. But going into a black-box situation like this? He needed all his men on deck. Which meant Vakasa and Rebecca had to come along. Like he could have really kept Rebecca away. She'd skydived into the Congo, for God's sake. Trying to talk her out of going to a business suite was not going to happen.
As they eased their way out of the Cairo International Airport's wake, the traffic let up a bit. Enough so Lopez had to lay on the horn and force his way between cars. Normally, Brandt would admonish him for such behavior, but in Cairo? That was the norm. Cairo drivers used the car horn like teenagers used their cell phones to text. Only, a hell of a lot louder.
Finally, they made their way west, turning left onto Ring Road.
"This part never gets old," Rebecca said as they went over the long bridge. Brandt looked down to find they were crossing where the Nile forked. Yes, the water was pretty. A shimmering green with reeds lining the shores. Unfortunately, he knew that Nile crocodiles, notoriously even more aggressive than the Congo version, lurked just under the surface. Brandt was kind of done with rivers for a while. Even the Nile.
Lopez took the second exit after they crossed the Nile onto Salah Salem. The traffic became more cluttered as they entered the business district of Giza-Mohandesin.
"Look!" Vakasa said as she pointed out the window. In the far distance, you could make out the Great Pyramid. Or at least one of the pyramids. Brandt wasn't sure which one. And really didn't want Rebecca to go into a half hour lecture on them.
Instead, Brandt nodded politely as Vakasa babbled away in half a dozen languages.
"Visit?" she asked in English.
Brandt didn't need her to take off her eye veil to know she was using her super-cute expression. He had three younger sisters, so he knew the look well. To think Rebecca suspected this typical little girl was the Messiah? He'd spent several days with her last week. Even out in the Congo, she knew who Justin Bieber was and could hum his songs.
He had worried that Rebecca would drop a true bombshell of information back at the plane, but this? This he had down cold.
"Maybe later," Brandt half promised.
A few turns later, some of which Brandt wasn't sure were entirely on purpose, Lopez pulled them into the underground parking lot of the German Industry & Commerce Tower. The structure looked pretty new. It didn't have the same sand-etched surface as most of the other buildings they passed.
"Do we get to stop?" Rebecca asked from the backseat.
"Funny," he replied. Although, thinking about it, he usually was asking her to exit vehicles at high speed. This time, though, he thought they could actually make a stop. Or at least a Hollywood stop.
Lopez tapped the breaks, rolling them to the curb. "Mysterious ex-Disciple exit."
Brandt helped Rebecca out of the car as Talli and Levont unloaded the equipment. For their current urban surroundings, it looked like they'd brought out four large briefcases. Only, they weren't exactly filled with papers.
As Lopez pulled them away from the curb, Vakasa flipped her eye veil up and waved good-bye to them with such enthusiasm that she wasn't prepared when the corporal really hit the gas, sending her head over heel off the seat.
Brandt looked over to Rebecca. The question on his face pretty damned clear.