CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Are you nearly finished yet?” the Syrian asked irritably. The thin, wiry man—the one that Khalil had labeled a “specialist”—had been sharpening a wickedly curved hunting knife for the past thirty minutes, rubbing the blade back and forth on the edge of the rough-surfaced worktable, much to Adrian’s irritation.
“Nearly,” Adrian told him. Both men wore decontamination suits in the basement of the tailor’s shop in Marseille, Adrian Cheval’s makeshift laboratory, as he completed the necessary containment of the smallpox samples.
“You told Imam Khalil you would need only until morning. It is nearly ten a.m. What is taking so long?” The man spoke much better French than his partner, the one who was holding Claudette hostage. Adrian wondered if she had been taken somewhere, i
