Free Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) by M.K. Gilroy

have a long talk. We’ll start from scratch.
    If she was shooting two pages per shot, how many pages had Pauline sent him? Eleven? Maybe twelve?
    He watched the screen breathlessly. Nothing. Maybe a slow satellite Internet connection? He started counting the seconds. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Nothing.
    Why had she stopped?
    C’mon Pauline. Just aim and push the button. Doesn’t have to be perfect.
    He watched in stillness for another thirty seconds. Still nothing. Another minute passed. An excruciatingly long minute. His heart began to sink. He stood and stretched his back. He picked up a pillow and punched it. He slowed his breath and sat back down.
    He scanned the images quickly. Two pages for every picture except for the first. He had just eleven pages in total. Surely the man wrote more than that in his leather journal. His client seemed certain that Alexander’s journal was the Holy Grail of corporate espionage. Eleven pages? Had to be more.
    What’s happening Pauline? Why have you stopped? I know you aren’t finished.
    He stared at the short column of six static, unblinking icons on the computer screen. Even as he racked his brain for explanations he knew better. The program was failsafe. His stomach knotted up in a tight ball. He tasted bile in the back of his throat.
    Pauline, I know you said yes of your own volition, but I’m sorry I put you in harms way. Just talk to me. What is happening Pauline?

13
    Hodeidah, Yemen
    NICKY MET HIS MAN AT a small café on the south side of Hodeidah, the closest town to the port of Mokha. He would like to be closer to the spot where he would climb aboard a speedboat to depart the dust and sand of Yemen, but the port only had one main pier with no commerce.
    Platters of humus, grilled halloumi, tabbouleh, shish tawook, and dolma rested on the table between them. Nicky was ravished. He had lost fifteen pounds during his sixty-day tour of the Arabian Peninsula. He forced himself to slow down his chewing and count to five between bites. With a high speed boat ride ahead of him, he didn’t want to sabotage his stomach’s attempts to hold down the product of gestation.
    The man across from him barely touched the food. His eyes smoldered in rage. He was the youngest son of Sheikh Sulaymon and the brother of the handsome Arabian prince who died at the hands of Malmak. Nicky was surprised the old man had sent Labeeb to acquire the precise location of Malmak and his warriors. Labeeb meant sensible and intelligent—two qualities that Nicky suspected the young man missed out on at birth. The kid was of an age to head to Europe or America for college, but he was a fanatic who didn’t understand thelong game. Why waste four or five years in study when you could be killing enemies of Allah and the tribe right now? The old man should know that there was a decent chance Labeeb would go Rambo and seek to avenge his brother in a solo kamikaze attack.
    Nicky and his uncle fought over the same issues when Nicky was eighteen. In his case, he couldn’t wear his uncle down. The fact that this kid was marching toward the front line of war rather than being secured on a safe university campus told him something about Sulaymon as well. He did not possess his uncle’s strength and will. He doubted Sulaymon would be a player in the bloodbath that was to come. He was just one or two steps up the food chain from Malmak.
    Of course, twenty years later, Nicky still forced his way to the front lines to his uncle’s consternation. He looked at Labeeb closer.
    He won’t be alive in a week. Time for you to grow up and do your work from a distance.
    What the kid did or didn’t do was irrelevant to Nicky. One more casualty from a minor player in his uncle’s grand drama was nothing.
    What amazed Nicky most was that in exchange for telling Sulaymon where Malmak was encamped, he was bringing home a