“Well. What a surprise. It’s the assassin’s woman,” Abdullah said. His tongue seemed dark in his mouth when he spoke, like an eel hiding in its black cave. His wet lips quivered spastically.

“It appears that you’ll die after all.” The Arab’s eyes glistened black and bulging, and Tanya thought that he had lost himself. She stood slowly.

She saw Father Petrus then, kneeling in the mud by the skiff, blindfolded, hands tied behind his back.

“Father Petrus!” She instinctively moved toward him.

“Shut up!” Abdullah struck her shoulder, and she fell back to her seat.

She scrambled around. “What have you done to him?”

“It’s okay, Tanya.” The priest’s voice was hoarse.

Tanya? He knew her real name?

Abdullah smiled, amused. “You want your priest, don’t you? Yes, of course, you are about to die and you want your priest.” He turned to the river. “Priest, come here.”

Petrus did not move.

“Come here!” Abdullah screamed. “Are you deaf?”

Father Petrus got his legs under him and staggered toward them. The Arab stepped out impatiently and shoved him the last few yards. Petrus collapsed beside Tanya.

She ripped his blindfold off and threw it to one side. Petrus blinked in the light, and she helped him to his seat.

Abdullah looked at them, an amused expression on his face, momentarily lost, it seemed. He lifted his black eyes and studied the tree line above the clearing. “Where is your man now? He’s not here, is he? No. He couldn’t have come this far so quickly. But he’ll come. He’ll come for his lover.”

Please, God . . . Tanya started the prayer but didn’t know where to go with it.

Abdullah rested his eyes on her again. He motioned to her with the pistol. “Do you know what I’ve done?”

His face held such a look of pure evil that Tanya instantly knew. The bomb. He had detonated the bomb in her vision. Fear squeezed at her heart.

“Yes?” A twisted grin lifted his left cheek, the one without a scar. Sweat snaked from his temples. “Do you know?”

“You’re the devil,” she said.

His lips snapped shut. His eyes glared round. “Shut up!” Spittle flecked on his lower lip.

She looked at Father Petrus seated beside her. Their eyes met and his were bright. His face sagged and his clothes were torn but his eyes were bright. A smile tugged gently at his mouth. She blinked. A lump rose in her throat.

She looked up at Abdullah. “You’re the hand of Satan.”

The Arab’s gun hand began to tremble and she spoke again, gaining confidence now, “Yes, I do know what you’ve done. You’ve detonated a nuclear bomb.”

He stopped, surprised. “It worked?”

He didn’t know? “Yes, I think so.”

“And how would you know this?”

“I saw it,” she said simply. “In a dream.”