Chapter Twenty-Eight

Leah sat on a rug in the corner of a room while the men spoke around a table. She was dressed in a white linen gown, a tunic made of the same material, and a white scarf wrapped around her hair and her neck. She was the only woman in the room, and understood very little of the Arabic the men spoke even though Doug had a translator, who only spoke into Doug's ear. Every now and then, the Libyan man to whom Doug was speaking, would lean to the side and stare at her.

The one thing she did hear that Doug said in English looking directly at the man who seemed to be in charge was "Yes, she's an American. Yes, she's a woman. But who better to embarrass her country at the same time she gives you the ability to bring it to its knees."

The man regarded Doug for a moment, then got to his feet and walked over to Leah, standing in front of her and scowling down at her. "I know who you are," he said in a thick accent. "I believe you stood in front of those who actually did what you have been credited with." Flourishing his hand, he continued, "You are a mere woman, and no woman has the mental capacity to know something so complicated." Turning to Doug, he said, "I will watch your game. Her first failure will be her last...as well as yours." Nodding toward his men, he strode out of the room, leaving Doug, Mark, Doug's two men and Leah alone.

There was precious little for Leah to say. Everything was out of her hands, and if she had said something, she knew she would have been severely reprimanded with a beating. Libyan men in any kind of power had little regard for women except where their baser desires were concerned. They could have many wives who gave them many children, and who found companionship and comfort with their sister wives.

Leah was a woman alone, despised by the Libyan men, and nothing more than a dollar sign to Doug. He really didn't care what happened to her after she delivered the schematics Gaddafi wanted. Gaddafi would likely keep her as one of his wives to breed her intelligence into his sons. For her, that would be a sentence worse than death, unless he was smart enough to figure out she couldn't have children.

Doug and his men lived in a small compound attached to the outer wall of Gaddafi's larger compound. A covered hallway led to the room that would be fitted with the equipment Leah would need to break into the United States Department of Defense computers to retrieve the nuclear schematics. She had a room of her own with a sleeping pad, blankets and a desk where she wrote lists of equipment and instructions for their connection. At the end of each day the lists would be taken from her until the day came when she was taken to the equipment room where piles upon piles of machines, wire bundles, keyboards, antennas, modems, routers, and switches waited for her to put together into something sophisticated enough to communicate with a satellite and find packets of data zooming all over the world.

Raising her hand to her head, she groaned. "I thought you said these people could build it."

Stepping into the room from behind her, Doug said, "There will be people who will take direction from Mark. Mark will take direction from you. They can build the basic computer, but they have no idea how to make the connections."

"You didn't happen to see a satellite dish anywhere did you?"

Doug shook his head. "But that doesn't mean there isn't one. I think Gaddafi is testing you."

She smirked. "Am I going to get to meet the man...speak to him. Because I need to tell him most of this stuff is garbage."

A door opened on the other side of the room. Standing before her was Muammar Gaddafi. She recognized him instantly from news reports back home. He wore a slight smile as he approached her. "You risk being blinded," he said with an accent so thick it was difficult to understand him.

"Why is that, Mr. Gaddafi?"

"Libyan women know to lower their eyes when a man is present." He breathed in as if it was beneath him to tell her his people's customs. "However, I understand you are American and have...other customs. I will tolerate them in order to facilitate our project."

She'd opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it. This man could end her with a simple nod. Lowering her eyes, she bowed her head. "Thank you."

"You will come with me. I have something to show you." Gaddafi turned and, expecting her to follow, left the room.

Turning to Doug, she motioned first to herself, and then to the door, questioning, and when Doug nodded, she followed Gaddafi out. Doug followed as well, and when they were out in the courtyard, Gaddafi addressed him. "My Minister of Information will be speaking with Miss Haverty. Do you have anything to contribute?"

Doug was speechless for a moment. He simply shook his head and excused himself back to his quarters.

xxxxxxxx

Trapper and Eliseo Delgado sat in a tent with brightly colored cloth hanging from each corner, a cook fire burning out front, and several men sitting outside cross-legged, watching as people shuffled down the busy street.

"Our contacts here have several rooms in an apartment building for you to set up your practice. You'll have to tend to some of the illnesses here in the city to be believable," said Delgado. "We also have another medical volunteer who will vouch for you. He'll tell them you are from the same organization he's working for, so your cover is almost in place. You'll go there tomorrow with his aid who speaks Arabic and can translate for you."

"And how does this find Leah?" asked Trapper.

"The aid will spread the word that you are a cardiothoracic surgeon. If Leah has trouble, we're hoping you'll be sought out. If not, Gaddafi's own curiosity may win you an audience. Once you're in, we're hoping you'll see her...to judge her health. And we're hoping you'll get a feel for the compound she's being held in."

Running a hand over his head, Trapper said, "It seems you're hoping for quite a bit. Don't you have some kind of plan to go in and get her?"

"No, Trapper," Eliseo said definitively. "That would be suicide." Moving a hand to Trapper's knee, Delgado looked at Trapper until the doctor met his eyes. "Gaddafi will want to show her off...the American woman who's helping to build Libya's first nuclear weapon...a weapon that will be used against their biggest enemy."

"If he does that, the US will see her. They'll know she's here."

"They already know she's here. We have to get to her before they do."

Trapper thought for a moment. "If I see her, why can't I take her out of there?"

"Because you won't make it out with her. They'll definitely kill you, and they'll probably kill her, but after she delivers. If she won't do what they ask, they will torture her. Or maybe they'll keep you alive and torture you in order to get what they want out of her."

"That's inhuman," said Trapper, scowling.

"That's Muammar Gaddafi. If you see her, you can't let them think you already know her."

"And where will you be?"

"Well, you can't wear a wire, and we can't bug you. They'll find that before you get through the first door. Aggie is going as your nurse. You'll have some compounds in your medical bag...nothing suspicious, that Aggie can work miracles with to make explosives. If you get into trouble, she'll get you out. Mind you, I'm just talking about you. Not Leah." He held his hand up to stop the comment Trapper was about to make. "If you do your job, Trapper, the likelihood they will harm her before her work is done is minimal. He could try to kill you just because you looked at him the wrong way. We're not going to automatically jump to the conclusion that he's connected you to Leah. Though he will test you. You can be sure of that."

xxxxxxxx

Leah followed a respectful distance behind Gaddafi as they walked the halls of his compound. The halls were of the same color as the sand. Third-world drab, Leah thought to herself. Then he led her through a series of rooms lavishly decorated with brightly colored fabrics draped on the walls and from the ceilings. There were no chairs, but large pillows, and a low table at the center of the back wall behind which another man sat and wrote. On the table were statues of bronze and what looked like silver and gold along with any number of inlaid precious gems.

The last room she entered was nothing like the others. Equipment lined the walls, metal cabinets were opened with cables hanging out and a bank of screens sat forward of the equipment. It reminded her of the work room at Redstone Arsenal where she'd spent a considerable time of her government employment.

"Mr. Manning has given me your list of required equipment. But he has given us no plan for how you will use the equipment," said Gaddafi.

Leah glanced up at the man, thought better of it, then looked away. "I haven't written anything but the list. I thought Mr. Hansen and I would be working alone. I don't need instructions for myself, and I verbally tell him what to do when something needs to be done."

Gaddafi laughed.

"Did I say something funny?" she asked, looking into one of the metal cabinets.

"You are in a very different country from your own, Miss Haverty. I would suggest you refrain from telling any man what to do."

"Then how am I going to get any men to build what you need to get a nuclear device?" she asked, smirking to his face. When Gaddafi met her eyes, she didn't waver, but glared directly into his. "I am a scientist, Mr. Gaddafi. I don't care about such proprieties when I have a job to do. It wastes time. It prevents things from being done as efficiently as possible. Perhaps your men shouldn't think of me as a woman...merely a scientist."

Gaddafi's smile was condescending...evil, as if he loathed her, but she was his only avenue, at the moment, to obtain that which he desired. He whispered to an aid who had been constantly following them, while both men looked Leah up and down.

When the aid clapped his hands two men, obviously military, came in and grabbed her arms roughly, almost lifting her off her feet, and hauled her back through the door.

Oh, shit was the only coherent thought she could muster.