Corsair

Bumford returned to his quarters after all the others had gone to work. He was inside for only a minute before settling himself on a chair under a sunshade just outside his tent’s entrance. The book he cracked open was easily as thick as an encyclopedia volume. Linc wanted to sneak into the camp and grab Bumford now, but native workers were moving about, gathering laundry and tidying the students’ tents.

“I took an archaeology class my junior year in college,” Linda whispered. “We went on a dig for a long weekend. We never had servants like this.”

“You didn’t have the State Department paying extra to let some of their people tag along.”

“Good point. So what do you make of Bumford?”

“If I were to guess, I’d say he’s making a healthy per diem being out here and is in no hurry to find out what happened to Alana Shepard and the others.”

“Nice,” Linda said sarcastically.

The Tunisian representative approached Bumford about an hour after he’d settled into his chair. They spoke for only a moment. Bumford made elaborate gestures with his arms and ended the conversation with a nonchalant shrug.

Linc whispered in a thick, faintly Arabic accent, “ ‘Professor Bumford, have you heard from your people?’ ” He then made his voice pinched and nasally. “ ‘ I have no idea what happened to them . . . Surely you have contacted your university and reported them missing . . . That isn’t my responsibility. I am only here as a consultant . . . But aren’t you concerned? They are several days overdue . . . Not my problem.’ And local guy exits stage right.”

Linc’s pantomime and prediction was spot-on. Bumford didn’t give the conversation a second’s thought before returning to his book.

They waited twenty more minutes for the camp to quiet down. The native staff was nowhere to be seen, so Linc crept from his hiding place and threaded his way to the back of Bumford’s tent. He slipped a knife from a deep pocket of his coveralls. It was an Emerson CQC-7A. The blade was so sharp that when he slit the nylon, it made no more sound than a knife cutting butter.

Stepping silently into the tent, he crossed over to the entrance. Bumford’s back was toward him, less than a foot away, and the man had no idea anyone was looking over his shoulder. Linc glanced across to where Linda crouched behind barrels used to keep the camp’s generator fueled. She held up a slim hand for Linc to wait while one of the cooks crossed the compound headed toward the pit latrine. As soon as he vanished, Linda clenched her fist.

Linc reached out and grabbed Bumford under his arms and heaved him into the tent in a fluid motion that sent the Ottoman specialist sprawling onto the dirt floor. Lincoln was on him like a dark wraith, one hand clamped over Bumford’s mouth, the other poised with the knife so the portly professor could see it.

A moment later, Linda stepped into the tent through the hole Linc had cut. “Damn, you made that look easy. He must weigh two-fifty.”

“Closer to two-seventy. That was my variation on the clean and jerk. I call it heave the jerk.”

Linda hunkered low next to Bumford’s head. The doctor’s eyes were as big as saucers, and sweat beaded his domed forehead. “My colleague is going to remove his hand. You are not going to move or cry out. Understand?”

Bumford lay there like a gutted fish.

“Nod if you understand.”

When he still didn’t move, Linc prompted him by yanking his chin up and down. Bumford’s eyelids fluttered as the first wave of terror ebbed, and he nodded vigorously.

When Linc pulled his hand away, Bumford whimpered, “Who are you?”

“Keep your voice down,” Linda said. “We’re here about Alana Shepard, Mike Duncan, and Greg Chaffee.”

“Who are you?” Bumford repeated. “I don’t recognize you. You aren’t part of this group.”

When Linda reached across him, Bumford seemed to try to burrow into the ground. She straightened his glasses on the bridge of his nose and curled one of the spectacles’s arms around his ear where it had dislodged. “We’re friends. We need to talk to you about the other members of your team.”

“They aren’t here.”

“What is this guy, an idiot savant?” Linc asked.

“Professor Bumford,” Linda opened again, as smoothly as she could, “we’re here to ask you a few questions. We’re part of an American search-and-rescue team.”

“Like the military?”

“Strictly contract civilians, but people in Washington thought your mission important enough to hire us.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Bumford said, regaining a little of his equilibrium, and his arrogance.

“Why do you say that?”

“You do know who I am, yes?”

Linda knew he was fishing for a little recognition to prime his ego. “You’re Emile Bumford, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Ottoman Empire.”

“Then you must know I needn’t explain my opinions. You may take them as fact. This expedition for the State Department is a complete waste of time.”

“Then why in the hell did you come?” Linc asked.

Bumford didn’t answer right away, and Linda saw the furtive look in his eye. “Don’t lie,” she cautioned.