Free Blood Rules by John Trenhaile Page B

again. In Bahrain, noon had brought suffocating wet heat and hazy horizons. The sea was transparent; dhows floated on nothing. Diamonds flashed in the windows of the buildings on the other side of the parking lot. Leila at last looked at her watch. Twelve-fifteen. Time to pack and go.
    The car, a white Mercedes 500 SEL, was already on the forecourt as she left the hotel. She waited until they were traveling along the Corniche before reaching into her handbag and passing the driver her pistol. Her mind was not on the journey to Al Muharraq and the airport, however; she drifted, as always, in the amniotic fluid of memory, its prisoner and its child.
    She had not seen Robbie for two years. Or Colin.
    White-walled houses slid past on her left. Expatriate homes, for people like Colin Raleigh, who every Friday would get drunk in the bar of the Intercontinental, or the Ramada, or the Delmon. Houses with video machines, in a country boasting two cinemas, both of which showed only Arab-language films. Houses with empty bedrooms kept clean and aired, for when the children came out at the start of the school holidays.
    He would be fourteen now. Manly, in his own mind, but still her boy. Everything was for him. She had not a thought in her body for anyone but Robbie, unless it was Halib, and him only sometimes. She loved Halib because he was her brother and he had saved her from destruction more than once, but Robbie she had fashioned from inside herself and he was hers.
    She had been scheming to get him back ever since New York, but Halib restrained her. Halib would not authorize a kidnap in England, because he believed that Robbie was well guarded there. We must wait for a chance to lure him out of the country, he’d told her. So she had waited. Then six months ago Halib negotiated a contract with Iran for the release of some prisoners being held in Iraq. A political hijack, that was what the Iranians wanted, and Halib had agreed to provide one. Leila would carry it out. She had no scruples about that. She was good at her job and she liked working for her brother, because she could trust him not to let her down afterward, when the assignment was over. A lot of employers used terrorists and then disposed of them; not dear Halib. Not the beloved brother who had allowed her to target the plane on which her own son would be traveling, as a means of getting him back.
    What would Robbie be wearing? she wondered. How would he have changed? Would he recognize her? Yes. He would know her, when their moment came. And soon she would discover all that had happened to him, over these past two empty, wasted years. She would hold him close, and they would talk, sharing secrets. “I love you,” she would say. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, more than my own life. More than my soul—Allah forgive me!—more than my hope of paradise. My son, my son…. ”
    She did not pause to consider how he might reply. Instead, her mind restlessly darted to the new flight crew, in whose professional hands she intended to place her own life and that of her son. She should pray for them.
    The car glided to a halt beside the passenger terminal and a host of porters rushed forward. As Leila stepped onto the pavement she steeled herself to obey the will of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, who would not deprive her of her child after such a desert of time spent without him. The flight crew would be wonderful. They would be perfect:
elect.
    Silently she repeated the
basmallah
to herself as she followed her suitcase inside: Allah, al rahman, al rahim.
    Give me back my son.

20 JULY:
LUNCHTIME: AIRBORNE
    R OBBIE examined his companion’s tray with interest. “That looks good. Better than mine, anyway.”
    “I’m diabetic, that’s why. I think it’s every bit as pukey as yours.”
    Robbie, in the window seat, had found himself sitting next to a pale, freckled boy of about his own age called Tim Campbell. Tim’s father worked for a bank in