Angels of Wrath (56 page)

aving gotten up early to consummate the business deal, Birk found it impossible to go back to bed. He decided he would amuse himself by taking the wheel of the
Sharia
as he set sail northward. The yacht was a large vessel, but a fleet one, and as he laid on the power he felt a rush of adrenaline.

One of his regrets about leaving the area for an extended “vacation” was that it would deprive him of the most rewarding part of his business: meeting interesting characters such as Ferguson, the American agent who had so entertained him of late. What would life be like without such stimulation? Birk was not one to romanticize danger, but if truth be told he would miss that aspect of his business as well or at least the elation he felt when the time of anxiety had passed.

“Two boats, small ones,” said Birk’s brother-in-law, coming into the wheelhouse area behind the helmsman.

Birk turned to look. The boats were small speedboats.

“Break out the weapons.”

The helmsman reached to his shirt to draw his.

“No, not you,” said Birk. “You take the wheel while I see what this is about. Probably nothing.”

As Birk turned, the man fired point blank into the back of his head.

~ * ~

y the time Ravid got to the
Sharia,
the shooting was over. Birk, his brother-in-law, and the two bodyguards loyal to him had been killed.

So had the American woman, strangled by one of the bodyguards Ravid had infiltrated among Birk’s men. Ravid had debated before deciding this. The woman had to be killed as a matter of operational security as well as tidiness. The fact that she was a fanatic and aimed ultimately at the destruction of Jerusalem weighed heavily against her as well. The world was better off with one less fanatic.

On the other hand, she had released something in him, allowed him to function again, allowed him to really work, he thought. This went beyond simply helping him obtain the missile. Speaking to her of his need for revenge had freed him somehow, and he felt real gratitude: a liability in his profession, but still he felt it.

He hadn’t wanted a drink quite so badly since that night either. Whether that would last or not, he couldn’t say. He wouldn’t count on it.

Coldwell’s pocketbook had been brought to him. Ravid examined it now. She had a few thousand dollars in Euros, less than a hundred American, four credit cards, and a passport which might be of some use in the future.

“Set the course south,” he told the others. “Weigh the bodies down and send them overboard at nightfall. Except for Birk; we will need his to make his ship appear as if it was robbed. Find a place where his body can be stuffed conveniently. Quickly. I must leave as soon as possible.”

~ * ~

3

LATAKIA

Ferguson had one indisputable point of reference: the digital photo he had taken when they retrieved the case. He avoided looking at it—he avoided dealing with the problem at all—while he tried to psyche out who had killed Vassenka. Ras provided a semiuseful theory: the Syrian authorities believed Vassenka had tipped the Israelis off to the meeting at the castle and the in-coining airplane, and this was payback.

The theory was wrong, but it told Ferguson that there were probably additional Iraqis and/or fanatics associated with Meles who had escaped Mossad’s revenge bombing. He and Thera spent the early morning hours placing new taps on the local police phones; the NSA already had a healthy operation harvesting information from the central authorities in Damascus. Sooner or later the rest of the scum would turn up in the net.

There was a legitimate question to be asked, though: how much of this effort was truly worth it? With all of the major players out of the picture and the rocket fuel about to be confiscated, the immediate threat had vanished.

Asking the question was another thing Ferguson didn’t bother with until he put Thera on the ferry for Cyprus. Unlike the yacht she and the others had taken the day before, this was a public vessel, a recent enterprise aimed at tourists but mostly used by Syrian workers who found they could earn twice as much on the island as they could in Syria. Which wasn’t saying much.

Thera held his hand at the dock, as if they were sweethearts.

“See you,” he told her as the small crowd began to press forward.

“When?” she asked.

“Probably tomorrow. But who knows?”

“You look like you need a vacation.”

“Think I can get a good deal at Versailles?”

“Ha, ha. I’m serious.” She looked up at him, as if expecting a kiss. “We’re done, right?”

“We’re never done.”

He held her hand for a moment. She had changed into Muslim dress to blend with the Turkish women going home; the comb she’d had in her hair the night before was gone.

Why would she have stolen the jewels? Ferg thought.

Besides the obvious reasons, like greed.

“We’re saying good-bye, right?” Thera told him in Arabic. That was the cover they’d worked out for the plainclothes police who watched the dock.

“Yeah,” he said, and he took her in his arms and flattened his lips against hers.

The taste of the kiss was still in his mouth an hour later when he showed some of the jewels to a pawnbroker in the old part of the city. The man closed his eyes when he saw the stones; Ferguson pulled them back across the counter.

“How about these?” he said, taking out two of the diamonds.

The man considered them. “Twenty Euros apiece.”

“Come on, they’re worth more.”

“Your accent is Egyptian,” said the man. “But your clothes tell me you are from Europe.”

“Ireland. I grew up in Cairo. Will that get me a better price?”

“Fifty Euros would be the best I could do. They are decent but not real.”

“What about this?” said Ferguson. He took out the bracelet that had fallen on the ground the night of the operation. The man’s eyes and greedy fingers told him immediately it was real.

“For this—” started the merchant.

“Don’t even tempt me. It’s not for sale,” said Ferguson, pulling it back.

~ * ~

f all the covers Ferguson had ever adopted, playing a doctor had to rate among the best. It wasn’t just that people seemed to easily accept it; they became positively voluble, offering all sorts of information. And so Dr. Ferguson not only gained a great deal of insight into the autopsy procedures at the university hospital but was also treated to a full tour of the area where corpses were held. In the course of this tour, the assistant to the assistant head pathologist revealed that they had handled an important case just that morning, working on a body that had unfortunately met its demise by coming too close to a hand grenade.

Dr. Ferguson recalled experiences with mines in Bosnia as a young intern volunteering his time. This pressed the cover story to the limit. Ferguson was actually too young to have been there in the time frame when it would have taken place—but the assistant assistant wasn’t keeping track of dates. Ferguson moved on to a discussion of plastic surgery, a specialty he had not indulged in but often wondered about. The conversation flowed a crooked road of techniques and wounds and reconstruction, until at last Ferguson found himself staring at the face of Jurg Vassenka, who was not Jurg Vassenka.

They’d been had. The Russian had managed to slip away.

~ * ~

4

THE PERSIAN GULF, SOUTH OF IRAQ

The U.S. Navy had special teams trained to board and inspect ships on the high seas, and Rankin was content to ride shotgun with one as it approached the
Chi Lao.
Guns chafed a bit at the seamen’s haughty commands when they went up the ladder from the rigid-hulled inflatable boat, but then the whole idea of sailors doing what by rights should have been a marine job didn’t sit well with the leatherneck anyway.

The freighter had started its journey not in North Korea as Ferguson had originally suspected but the Philippines, where it had docked not far from one that had recently come from North Korea. This was all documented in the papers the captain presented to the ensign in charge of the boarding party, as were the stops it had made in the Middle East. It hadn’t docked in Tripoli or Latakia, but Rankin already knew from Thomas’s work that there was enough slack in the ship’s itinerary for it to have lingered a few hours offshore, presumably to get a payment or for instructions. In any event, the papers weren’t what he and Guns had come to see.

“We want to look at the cargo,” he told the ensign.

The ship captain’s English, which just a moment ago had been perfect, suddenly became strained. He managed to communicate that he had nothing but televisions and cooking oil aboard, and was already overdue.

“Then you better help us take a look quickly,” suggested the ensign, “or you’ll be even later.”

Rankin gripped his Uzi as they went down the ladder to the forward cargo spaces. There were shadows everywhere, and while the destroyer they’d come from sat less than a hundred yards away, the boarding crew was very much on its own amid the shadows and cramped quarters below deck. They went to the stacked boxes of cooking oil; the crew directed one of the skids to be opened for inspection. The captain asked if they wanted it done there or above on deck.

“Neither,” said Rankin. “Where are the televisions?”

The ensign shot him an odd look. The captain’s English once more failed. The boarding crew, however, had already located them in the next hold; the crates were arranged so that they would be easily unloaded.

When they finally reached them, the captain began to protest that an inspection would make them even later.

“Tell you what then,” said Rankin, raising his Uzi, “I’ll just fire at random through them. What do you say?”

Guns grabbed the captain as he jerked away and threw him to the ground. The sailors who jumped on him grabbed a small pistol from his pocket.

The first set of boxes they opened contained thirty-two-inch televisions manufactured in South Korea. The second set seemed to as well, until the picture tubes were examined more closely. The flimsy cardboard that protected the rear of the TV sets covered a large plastic piece at the back of the picture tube. The first sign that it was different from that on the legitimate sets was the fact that it screwed off rather than pulled. The second sign was the kerosenelike stench that quickly spread through the hold when it was off. Rankin put the cap back on gingerly.

“Better get this place vented,” Rankin told the ensign in charge of the boarding team. “This stuff catches fire pretty damn easy.”

~ * ~

5

CYPRUS

Thera got back to the hotel just as Monsoon and Grumpy were taking their gear out to the van that would run them over to the British military airport at Akroti. A jet there would take them to the States, where they would have a few days off before rejoining their units. Surprised and disappointed that they were leaving, Thera tried not to show it. She kissed Grumpy, which surprised him, and then kissed Monsoon, which didn’t.

“I hope I see you again,” she told him.

“That’d be nice.”

“You have an e-mail address?”

“Sure.”

Upstairs, she tucked the address into her wallet, then went to take a shower. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she undressed, she saw a woman with drooping eyes and a puffy mouth: an old, tired, lonely woman.