When the engine started, Nedim could tell from the quiet and the air conditioning that this was a car. The seats felt like leather on his legs, not cheap vinyl or cloth. It must be one of those dark Mercedes he had seen secret police and diplomats riding around in. The smell inside was not the smell of the city he was used to, nor of sweat and fear. It smelled clean and new.<\/p>\n
They drove for what seemed like quite a while, with many turns, stops, speedy stretches and slow crawls. There was no way to tell how far they had driven, or which direction they had ended up going.<\/p>\n
Finally, the engine was turned off at a stop. Nedim was roughly pulled from the back of the car. He walked into a building, down a flight of stairs, and had his bag taken off inside of another windowless stone room. There was a big white sheet hanging on one wall, some lights shining on it, and a mounted camera facing it. Along another wall was a table with an ink pad and some forms. Beside all of this was a computer with a printer. The computer had a cable running over to the camera.<\/p>\n
This room came equipped with two new people. Both of them were white, but both looked strikingly different. He judged their age to be in the late twentie<\/span><\/span>s to early thirtie<\/span><\/span>s range. Nedim was taken over in front of the sheet and made to face forward. A series of front and side photos were taken, then he was dragged over to the table.<\/p>\n While Nedim\u2019s handcuffs were being removed, he noticed something odd about this place. Silence. There were no noises coming from other parts of the building. No conversations. No mechanical devices. No sounds of people outside. This place must be very isolated,<\/i> he thought.<\/p>\n The fingerprinting proceeded while the printer spat out his photograph on a page with all his personal information. The printout<\/span><\/span> finished about the time his last finger impression was being taken. The camera man placed it into a folder he handed to the man in the suit. \u201cWe own ya now, mate,\u201d he said when he looked at Nedim.<\/p>\n He\u2019s British!<\/i> A voice screamed in Nedim\u2019s head, or perhaps he screamed it, he couldn\u2019t be certain. The man who had been taking Nedim\u2019s fingerprints said, \u201cThat we do,\u201d in the thickest German accent Nedim had ever heard as he handed the form over to the man in the suit.<\/p>\n He\u2019s German!<\/i> Screamed the same voice Nedim had heard only moments ago. That explains the euros! This was very bad indeed. Not only had he been captured, but he had been captured by people who weren\u2019t even on the list to be killed yet.<\/p>\n A Brit working with clandestine Pakistani operatives was a very bad sign. A German working with all of them was a very bad sign indeed! It was obvious to Nedim the men in this room were not under the control of any one government. Perhaps there was no government controlling them at all.<\/p>\n Nedim had heard stories about freelance operators like this from the days when bin Laden was throwing the Russians out of Afghanistan. They did what they pleased, always seemed to have limitless stores of weapons and funding. Sometimes they would go into a village and kill everyone there, then leave a few dead Russian soldiers and some Russian weapons for the news reporters to find. These types of men didn\u2019t fight for a cause, they fought for money and the thrill of the kill.<\/p>\n When Nedim\u2019s mind came back to the room he realized all of the men were laughing at him. Even the man in the suit.<\/p>\n
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\nYou are reading a special promotional version of \u201cInfinite Exposure\u201d containing only the first 18 chapters. This is the first book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:<\/p>\n