Chapter 4 - A Door Beneath Water
Samira moved first. She pushed Maria behind the kitchen counter while Adam killed the emergency lights and pulled the curtains closed. A second bullet struck the wall where Maria’s head had been.
“The shooter is across the alley,” Samira whispered. “Adam, east stairwell.”
“Maria comes with me.”
“I can hear you,” Maria said.
“Good,” Samira answered. “Then stay low.”
They escaped through the bookstore and out into an alley shining with rain. A black sedan waited at the curb with its engine running. Maria expected another ambush, but Samira opened the rear door and shoved her inside. Adam followed, and the car raced through downtown while the city blurred into wet color.
“The voice,” Maria said. “Who was she?”
“We will find out.”
“You said the wrong brother. Does your father have a brother?”
Adam looked out the window. “He had one younger brother, Kareem.”
“The man in the photograph?”
“No. That was my father, Emir Hassan Khalid.”
“Where is Kareem now?”
“In Noor. Under house arrest.”
Maria understood why Adam had looked afraid when Leon mentioned the palace. “He is the one with the second key.”
“We do not know that.”
“You do.”
He rubbed his thumb against the silver falcon ring. “My father gave Kareem a brass key the year Blue Gate began. He said it was a ceremonial relic. After the collapse, Kareem disappeared from public life. Rashad accused him of selling state secrets to foreign contractors.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believed my father’s official investigation. For years.”
“And now?”
“Now Leon has made certainty impossible.”
The sedan stopped beneath a parking structure near the lake. Samira handed Maria a folded raincoat. “We need to move somewhere the shooter will not expect.”
They descended two levels into a maintenance tunnel that led beneath an abandoned pumping station. The concrete walls were painted with faded warnings about high pressure and contaminated water. At the end of the tunnel, Samira removed a rusted cover from a recessed panel.
Adam took out Leon’s key.
“You brought it?” Maria asked.
“The police were not given the original.”
He inserted the key into a narrow brass lock hidden behind the panel. It turned halfway and stopped.
Maria felt beneath her sweater for the chain around her neck. She had not worn her father’s key in years, but after the shooting she had gone back to her apartment with Samira and retrieved it. The metal felt cold against her skin.
“Try mine,” she said.
Adam looked at her. “If this is a trap—”
“Then we already know who set it.”
She handed him the key. When he placed it beside Leon’s, the two were nearly identical, except hers carried a tiny notch in the bow that the other lacked.
Adam inserted Maria’s key beneath the first. Together they turned the lock.
Deep inside the wall, something clicked. A section of concrete slid aside, revealing a narrow room lined with copper pipes and waterproof cabinets. There was no treasure, no weapon, and no dead man waiting in the shadows. Only a metal cylinder on a stone table, sealed with wax bearing the Khalid falcon.
Maria approached it slowly.
“Why would my father hide this in Chicago?”
“Because he designed the original pumping system beneath the city,” Adam said. “The Blue Gate prototypes were tested here before they were shipped to Noor.”
Samira examined the door. “We have three minutes before the security circuit reports an unauthorized opening.”
Adam broke the wax seal. Inside the cylinder lay a strip of microfilm, a handwritten page, and a small photograph of a young woman with dark hair.
Maria knew her at once.
“That is my mother.”
On the page, Daniel had written a single sentence:
Elena knew the first betrayal, but she never knew the name of the second.
Behind them, metal groaned in the tunnel.
May you like
Samira raised her weapon.
Someone had entered the pumping station.
