a team of FDS operatives was infiltrating Ubasi from the north. They would gauge the power of the exiled Souleyman faction, and start negotiations to back Souleyman in another coup to overthrow Ubasi. The FDS team on the ground would also get Emily out of Ubasi if she ran into trouble.
Emily didn’t like the idea of swapping one murderous tyrant for another, but the U.S. did. Souleyman was easy to control. Laroque wasn’t.
The oil business made strange bedfellows, she thought as she removed her water bottle from her bag, but politics was not her concern. Her sole interest was the Alpha Dog.
But while Alpha Dogs like Laroque were her intellectual thrill, they were also highly unstable—and dangerous. And she hadn’t been on a mission for a while.
A combination of anticipation and anxiety shimmered through her stomach as the queue inched closer to the customs checkpoint. She uncapped her water bottle and took a swig of the warm contents.
She could not afford to screw this one up.
She couldn’t afford to screw anything up. She’d left enough of a personal mess in Manhattan as it was. She needed this job. And she needed to do it right—for both professional and personal reasons.
Her nerves tightened as she glanced at the line of passengers on her left, the one with the rest of the Geographic International science crew—her cover. It was moving much faster.
She’d been separated from them by a soldier who called himself the “document man” and roughly shunted to the line on the right. Emily wondered if she’d have been assigned to the faster queue if she’d given the “document man” cash. But she was saving her two hundred dollars in bribe money for the big important-looking guy manning the customs booth ahead. She had another two hundred dollars U.S. stashed in her Australian-style bush boots as backup.
Perhaps she should have brought more.
She was uncharacteristically hot and edgy this morning, and it was not a sensation she enjoyed. Emily liked to stay cool and in control—always. She tried to shrug off her uneasiness, putting it down to the pathetic mess she’d left in New York. She was tired, emotionally drained, still reeling from her recent relationship fiasco.
The angry heat of humiliation once again flushed her cheeks. She’d been lured over the boundary between professional and personal, made to look like a fool. It had been a damn stupid mistake, and it would never, ever happen again.
She irritably swiped the sweat off her lip with the base of her thumb. This FDS contract could not have come at a better time. She wanted to put as much physical distance between herself and her ex—if she could even call him that—as humanly possible.
She needed to focus on someone else’s pathology, not her own.
Emily was almost at the customs booth now, and her pulse quickened. She shot a look at the other line, saw the last of the science team leaving the terminal, and cursed silently.
While FDS leader, Jacques Sauvage, had hastily cobbled together a deal with their sponsors that allowed her to tag on to the Geographic International team, the scientists themselves had no idea why Emily was actually here, and they were under no obligation to coddle her. In fact, they’d been instructed by their sponsor to ask no questions at all. She cursed herself again. She should have forked over the damn bribe.
The customs official motioned for her to approach.
“Passeport?” he commanded in heavy African bass.
She handed it over along with her currency declaration form.
He flipped open her passport, glanced at her photo, looked up and met her eyes.
Her mouth went dry.
He smiled, teeth bright against gleaming ebony skin. “And what have you got for me today, Dr. Sanford?” he asked in deeply accented English, using her alias.
She slid a hundred dollar bill across the counter, watching his face. He stared at the money, his smile fading.
She pushed another note slowly across the counter. “It’s all I have,” she said in English.
“Vous êtes Américaine?”
Her heart beat faster. It was patently obvious from her passport what her nationality was, and now he was refusing to speak English. “Oui, je suis Américaine.”
“Raison de visite?”
A ball of insecurity swelled suddenly in her throat. “I’m here with the Geographic International science team,” she said firmly, in English, wishing to hell the crew hadn’t left without her. She unfolded and handed him another piece of paper that had the Ubasi palace stamp on it. “See?” She pointed to the signature. “We have permission from the Laroque government.”
The official didn’t even pretend to look at the piece of paper. His eyes continued to hold hers. “Currency declaration form?”
“I gave it to you, with the passport.”
“Non—”
“I did! Look, it’s right there,” Emily said, pointing.
The man shook his head, raised his hand high above his head and clicked his fingers sharply. Two armed guards left their station at the exit doors and started making their way toward his booth. Emily’s heart pounded wildly against her rib cage. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“There is a problem with your currency declaration,” the customs official said in French, before turning to the next person in line. “Passeport, s’il vous plaît?”
“No, there isn’t. Wait! You haven’t even looked at my form. You—”
The guards took her arms roughly. “Venez avec nous.”
Emily jerked back. “Why? Why must I go with you? Where to?”
But the guards hauled her briskly away.
“What about my luggage?” she snapped, dangerously close to losing her temper. “I haven’t collected my bags yet.”
But they remained mute as they forced her through a crushing crowd of people, all of whom studiously averted their eyes. The reaction of the crowd wasn’t lost on Emily. She saw it as a blatant sign of fear of government authority. These people were terrified of Laroque’s goons, she thought as the guards forced her into an interrogation room. She whirled round as they shut the door and locked it.
Stay calm. Breathe.
But no matter how Emily tried, she couldn’t. The room was airless. The temperature had to be more than 100 degrees, humidity making it worse. Her jeans clung to her legs, her hair stuck to her back, and rivulets of sweat trickled between her breasts. Emily shoved the damp strands of hair back off her face. She refused to let this man or his country get the better of her!
She refused to let any autocratic male make a fool of her.
The heat of humiliation burned into her cheeks again. Damn, she was displacing her anger and she knew it. She needed to focus on this tyrant, not her ex. That’s why she was here. She was a profiler for God’s sake. She could do this.
She clenched her jaw, forcing herself to take stock. She still had her knife, her traveler’s checks, her satellite phone, camera and, most important—her computer.
Anything she typed or downloaded into her laptop would be relayed via satellite to a monitor on the FDS base on São Diogo Island. It was state-of-the-art military communications technology, and it was how she would file her daily briefs, along with her final report on Laroque.
Just as she was thinking she’d be okay, the door banged open against the wall. Emily jerked in fright, heart pounding right back up into her throat.
The customs official loomed into the room. “I will see your checks and francs.”