Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Noah
The boy traveled down the road, accompanied by a servant woman—probably his mother—his thin frame barely visible in the dim moonlight.
Noah watched them, unmoving from the olive grove where he’d been monitoring the sheikh’s house with binoculars since midafternoon.
He’d nearly given up, but once the minutes had stretched into hours, it hardly seemed to matter if he continued here longer.
Unfortunately, unlike the previous night when he’d visited with Fahad, Hower had followed him this time.
He’d been stealthy, of course, but … not enough. Maybe Hower was careless. Noah doubted that, though. He wouldn’t be one of Blackwell’s men if he wasn’t good at what he did.
No, Hower’s presence here was purposeful. He wanted Noah to know he was being watched, which was interesting.
A breeze rippled across the plain, carrying the sound of scattering stones and the sting of dust. Noah knelt beside the crumbling edge of an ancient stone wall, squinting against the grit in the air.
After it had passed, he straightened and lifted his binoculars back to the road. The boy was nearly out of view.
Time to move.
Noah slunk away from the olive grove, careful to stay off the main road. Hopefully Hower would at least use some measure of caution when following Noah—not give them both away. He hadn’t stopped Noah yet.
Keeping to the shadows, Noah followed the boy and his mother at a careful distance.
No matter what Hower claimed, Noah was convinced he’d find no evidence of German spies in Khirbet Qeiyafa, the dig to which he’d been assigned, twenty miles outside of Jerusalem.
Hower had assured Noah this was the place to be in order to learn about German spies in the area, but Noah had seen no evidence of the fact during his work in the day.
He’d learned more about the whispers of German spies from the brief encounter with Sheikhh Khalil than he had among the archeologists and their hired help.
And something about that bothered him.
He’d spent enough time in the intelligence world to know that it wasn’t everything that the public imagined—far less glamour and much more paperwork. But at Khirbet Qeiyafa?
There it felt as though he was wasting his time.
For all the talk of German agents moving through Palestine, the dig site felt like a theater set: dust, ruins, and a perfectly arranged absence of clues.
Maybe Hower had known something about German activity in the area that he hadn’t admitted to.
Or maybe Noah had happened upon a time of unusual silence between the Germans and their contacts in the Arab world.
But neither would help Noah get MI5 the information they wanted—and win the freedom to go home. Nor would it help Jack find his sister and Alice.
So he’d returned here, despite the risk he took with Hower following him, to pursue the one lead that seemed promising.
Noah continued along the edge of the road, his sandals crunching against the dirt and stone. Thankfully, Hower kept his distance. In fact, he seemed to have stopped following when Noah had moved more into the open.
The boy and his mother approached the local village, a ramshackle collection of stone houses that stood in stark contrast to the estate where Noah raised his own family. Not for the first time, guilt pressed hard against his chest. Guilt for the luxuries he so often took for granted.
The edge in his thoughts surprised him. Maybe it was the heat or the dust, or the gnawing ache of too many sleepless nights, but his patience was fraying fast.
He missed Ginger. Missed the quiet of her presence, the grounding weight of her hand in his, the competence of her logic. Even the chaos of the children felt like a different life entirely—soft, warm, real.
Here, everything felt like an illusion. As if he was reenacting the spy games he’d once romanticized through the lens of nostalgia—but, this time, he was simply pretending.
Layers of deception went deep here, yet he couldn’t find an entry point.
It made him feel less like a man and more like a pawn—moved one square at a time toward a goal someone else had decided.
Noah’s jaw clenched.
He entered the village, shifting the way he moved. Strangers would be noticed here. Nothing could be done to remedy that, but he’d do better as someone who looked like he was simply passing through rather than pretending to fit into a place where he didn’t.
The village was a mixture of scents and quiet sounds—hot food and woodsmoke, barnyard animals and soft conversations—and Noah kept his gaze low as the boy and his mother entered one of the houses right off the road.
It wouldn’t do to sit and watch the house from the road, so he drew nearer, then passed it, heading toward the well pump closer to the village center.
He paused at the well, drawing a few creaking pumps from the handle before letting it fall silent again.
Water gurgled, then spurted out from the spigot.
He caught it in his hands and splashed his face, then drank deeply.
Around him, the village hummed with domestic rhythm, but no one paid him much mind.
Hower didn’t show his face either.
Noah didn’t like the possibility that Hower might see who he’d been waiting to speak to—it brought back memories of a distant time, when he’d often employed the help of young orphaned boys in espionage—and one of them, whom he’d loved like a member of his own family, had paid the cruel price of Stephen Fisher’s vengeance and lost his hand.
After that, Noah had entrusted Khalib to Alastair’s care.
Alastair had done a better job than Noah ever could have in raising Khalib—but Noah had never forgiven himself.
Still, he waited. Watched. Counted windows, tracked movement, studied shadows.
This boy was the best prospect he had to make any of the time he’d spent away from his family count for anything.
Eventually, the boy slipped out again. Alone this time. No sign of the mother. He headed toward a goat pen at the edge of his house, a small pail swinging in one hand.
Noah let him get a little distance, then peeled away from the well and followed.
The pen backed up against a broken stone wall, the kind that didn’t bother to divide much anymore—just a relic of something older, crumbled by time. Noah waited until the boy set the pail down and began scooping feed, his narrow shoulders rising and falling with the effort.
Then he stepped forward.
“Marhaba,” Noah said softly.
The boy flinched and turned. His eyes went wide.
Noah raised his hands, palms open. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he said in Arabic.
Silence.
“I saw you at the sheikhh’s house. Yesterday. When I mentioned the American women.”
The boy didn’t speak. Didn’t run either. Just stared.
“You know them.” Noah stepped closer to him, then squatted in front of him, closer to his eye level. “Or of the man who came looking for them.”
Still nothing. But there was the shift in the boy’s stance—the slight tilt of his head, the tension in his arms. Recognition. Fear.
Noah reached into his pocket and tugged free a Palestinian one-pound note. More than this child could possibly hope to earn in weeks of work. “The women are my friends. Maybe in trouble. I need to find them. They were here, weren’t they?”
The boy’s gaze fixed on the money in Noah’s hand, and Noah felt the soft tug of guilt. The loyalty of a child was remarkably easy to buy, sadly—especially one that might be poor and hungry.
“I don’t know anything,” the boy said at last. His voice trembled.
“That’s not true.” Noah pulled out another note.
The boy’s eyes darted toward the house behind him.
Noah dropped his voice. “I’m not going to tell anyone what you tell me. This will be our secret. Either you know about the women themselves—or someone else who came looking for them. Which is it?”
“The sheikh told me not to talk to you,” the boy whispered. “He doesn’t trust you.”
That didn’t surprise Noah. “And he shouldn’t. Too many men offer ready promises and are quick to break them. Your sheikh is a wise man. He doesn’t know me.”
If he pushed too hard, the child would be more likely to give him bad information in exchange for the money. He stood slowly and bowed his head. “Ma’a is-salame.” He turned and started away.
He’d nearly reached the edge of the pen when the boy called softly, “Wait.”
Noah’s pulse quickened, and he looked over his shoulder. “Yes?”
The boy flinched again and took a hesitant step forward. “You won’t hurt them?”
Them.
The women?
He raised a brow. “The women are sisters to me,” he said, setting a hand over his heart. “Wallah.” I swear it.
The bleat of the goats cut the silence between them, with one of the smallest goats nudging the boy’s pail. The boy kept his head low, not meeting Noah’s eyes. “The sheikh hid them. When he came looking. But I don’t know where they went after that.”
Did that mean Prescott had been here?
But also—if the sheikh had protected them, then not only did that mean that Alice and Kit had been here but that the sheikh himself might know why they’d gone missing. But getting the sheikh to tell him anything would likely be a dead end.
Noah had to be cautious. A wrong word might shut down the boy’s reluctant help. And neither could he accept the information at face value. “And how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
The goat nudged the boy’s pail again. “The fair one helped my sister when the fever came. She gave her medicine.”
“And the man that came looking for them?” It had to have been Prescott.
The pail shook in his hand.
Noah knelt in front of the boy once again. This time he took out five bills. “I will pay you for the truth. And I promise you my silence. But I can’t help them unless you tell me what you know.”
The boy hesitated, then set the pail down and wiped his hands on his cloak. “Sharif al-Rashid.” A whisper, like a secret barely allowed out.
Noah inhaled sharply.
Not Prescott.
“When?”
“After Eid il-Burbara.”