Page 123 of Sands of Sirocco
A defensive feeling rose in her.Sarah didn’t love Noah like she did.She had no reason to sacrifice her life or safety for him.
But this wasn’t about Noah.
This is about Paul.
Ginger took the excavation notebook from Sarah’s hands and held hers tightly.They hadn’t had a long time to form a friendship.But despite not knowing each other well, Ginger could see the black and blue of Sarah’s battered heart.“I know it’s not much, but they had captured Paul for a couple months, Sarah.They probably found him with this cipher.And, if I’m honest, they probably tortured him.”
A sob broke from Sarah and she shook, her fingers tightening around Ginger’s.
“He was a terrible husband.He didn’t deserve you.But he loved you enough to protect you until the end.They never got him to tell them about his name, or what this damned cipher meant, or how to get to the only thing he’d left you with.He gave them the name Freddy Mortimer, a name that led them back to Olivia Hendricks.But he loved you so much that he probably died instead of giving them anything that could lead them to you.”
Sarah pulled back, then wiped her eyes.“We both need sleep, don’t we?”She laughed at herself humorlessly.“Thank you, Ginger.That’s a kind way of thinking about it.”
Rising from her seat, Ginger went to the window of the hotel room.The moon had already risen.They were running out of time.She’d promised to return with that damned oil concession—the oil concession that the government would have stolen from her regardless.Sarah was wrong about that.No matter what, it never would have been theirs.Her government would go to any extreme to have oil.
She set her fingertips on the cool glass, leaning closer to it.
Allgovernments seemed to be willing to go to extremes to have oil, though, didn’t they?Including the Germans and the Turks.
She turned and put her hands behind her back.“Stephen can’t get his hands on that paperwork, Sarah.”
Sarah ducked her chin.“Didn’t you just say that you didn’t have a choice?That you had to do it to save your husband?”
“Yes, but Stephen was, and I’m certain he continues to be, a German spy.Whatever he’s been doing, he’s desperate to get his hands on this paperwork.What if it’s to help the Germans and the Turks?”
“But oil hasn’t been discovered at the concession site, has it?Paul and your father didn’t even begin an exploration for it.”Sarah searched Ginger’s eyes.“At least that I know of.”
A strange feeling, like a mixture of excitement and dread, grew in her.“But we don’t know.We don’t know how far my father got with it all.And it wouldn’t take Stephen long to mobilize the exploration, at any rate.He has the money for it.What he needed was the freedom, which he took back by framing Noah for his own crimes.”
“And the concession paperwork, of course.”
Ginger stepped away.“You see?”Her throat felt thicker.“Stephen can never get his hands on that paperwork.However he plans to do it, the details don’t really matter.I’m sure he can’t mean this as a help to the British.This is about so much more than you and me and the potential money to be made.”
Sarah rose to her feet.“Well, we’re two intelligent women.I say we outsmart these men, how about you?”
Intelligent women.
“A woman in Intelligence,”Dr.Radford had said when she met Ginger.
Ginger had laughed at the thought of herself as being a woman in Intelligence.
Lord Helton had told her she’d interfered and made her feel as though she didn’t belong in this world of men.
She’d blamed herself for everything that had happened in the spring, lived with the guilt, and been crippled by it.
No more.
She turned to Sarah.“What weapons do we have?”
Sarah came over to her and sat on the floor.She upended her rucksack, and a few pistols tumbled out, along with a bandolier of ammunition.Beside them a replica of an Egyptian statuette landed with a loudthunk.Smirking, Sarah picked up the statuette.“Anubis, how did you get in there?”
Ginger arched a brow at Sarah’s affectionate tone.“Friend of yours?”
Chuckling, Sarah shrugged.“I seem to have a hundred of these things floating around my house.”
It reminded Ginger of the bracelet she’d found in her father’s study.She’d stashed the bracelet in her trunk, which now sat in Alastair’s house.Focusing back at the task at hand, Ginger found the bag Noah had brought full of weapons: a pair of rifles, two bandoliers of ammunition, a pistol … and the grenades he had taken from Sarah’s house.
She lifted a grenade, rolling her fingertips over the deep grooves of the surface.They reminded her of Private Emerson and nursing and Alexandria.That time seemed so long ago.
