“Please.” Fawzi held out his hands in a pleading motion. “What do you want of me?”
Dimitri studied the narrow face with its sunken black eyes and scraggly black beard.
“Why did you drug the guards and sneak into this room?” He gave a deliberate wave of the gun. “The truth.”
The man hesitated, clearly weighing the danger of being caught in a lie. At last he grimaced.
“I came here to kill you.”
Dimitri’s lips twisted. That was certainly blunt.
“Is there a particular reason you wished me dead or do you simply hate all infidels?”
“A man approached me on my way back from a visit to my mother and offered me a fortune if I would put you in your grave.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know.” Fawzi pressed his hands together in a gesture of entreaty. “No…wait. He called to me from a carriage as I was about to enter the citadel. He kept the curtain across the window so I never saw his face.”
Frustration settled in the pit of his stomach.
Of course Fawzi never saw the man’s face. Why would discovering the truth become a simple matter at this late date?
“Was he an Egyptian?”
“No, a foreigner. Like you.”
“Russian?”
Fawzi shrugged. “Maybe.”
“What did he say?” Dimitri took a step closer, his expression hard with warning. “I want every word.”
“I can’t remember every word.”
“Try very, very hard.”
Sweat dripped from the man’s face as his gaze lowered to the pistol a short distance from his heart.
“He asked if I was a guard at the citadel and if I had the means to enter the room of the pasha’s two foreign prisoners. When I admitted I could move freely about the citadel he promised me a purse filled with silver.”
Dimitri lifted his brows in astonishment. “And you believed him?”
“He gave me a few coins to prove his sincerity,” the man muttered, his expression sullen. “He said I could have the rest when I brought him proof that you were dead.”
“What proof?”
The man nervously cleared his throat. “I was to cut out your eye and bring it to him.”
“God almighty,” Josef breathed.
“He claimed he would recognize it, so I was not to try and fool him,” the man hurriedly explained.
Dimitri was forced to swallow a sudden lump in his throat. His life had been one of upheaval and violent survival. He had assumed that nothing could shock him.
Now, however, he was stunned by this ruthless confession. Who could hate hi
m with such passion?