Firebreak (7 page)

“Who is he anyway?” she asked.

Habish let his irritation with her show. “Start doing your homework and learn all you can about the people you associate with. His grandfather is the President of the United

States.”

Shoshana felt a warm confusion tug at her again.

The black Mercedes Habish had dispatched to take Shoshana to Porta Banus blended perfectly with the other cars in the small, exclusive resort town that hugged a harbor overflowing with yachts. The driver deposited her at a dock where she joined a small group of people. Much more observant after Habish’s sharp rebuke about doing her “homework,” she noticed that most of the crowd was made up of the younger set from last night’s party. She also counted the armed uniformed guards that strolled casually through the waterfront and along the docks. She carefully noted the type and condition of their weapons.

Two luxury speedboats were ferrying the waiting guests for the water-skiing party out to a massive yacht that was too long to enter the harbor. A man in a white linen suit took her name and spoke into a small radio, checking her invitation before he let her board one of the speedboats.

Once on board the yacht, she was pleased that the baggy white shorts and cotton safari shirt she had chosen to wear over her swimsuit matched the casual dress of the other guests. Hopefully, she thought, Habish won’t be too upset when I tell him that I didn’t wear
the
bathing suit. Instead, she had donned a modest athletic tank suit with two bright fluorescent panels. Her instincts warned her that it would be more acceptable to Mana and less provocative to the likes of Matt Pontowski.

“Miss Temple,” Hellmut called out when he saw her, “so glad you could make it.” The heir apparent to the Wisser fortunes guided her by the elbow to his small group gathered around the taffrail at the stern of the ship. A waiter scurried up with a tray of Bloody Marys while Hellmut introduced her around. Is’al Nassir Mana extended his hand when he was introduced and she shook it, finding it warm and soft like his brown eyes. He spoke a few words and Shoshana thought of the teddy bear she loved to cuddle as a child. He did not match the stereotype she had created in her mind when she had studied his file.

Laughter and playful screams drifted up from the boarding platform as the first group of water-skiers took off, cutting across the wake of the Ferrari-powered ski boats. Shoshana was leaning against the rail, talking and smiling at Mana, actually enjoying the conversation when the high-pitched wail of four approaching jet skis demanded their attention. Lisl Wisser and Matt Pontowski were standing on the lead ski, cutting graceful arcs back and forth in a scissors pattern with another jet ski. Lisl was topless. “Ah, I see your friend from last night casts a wide net. But then, that is expected of a fighter pilot.”

“Oh, please,” she laughed, finding his Oxford accent pleasant, “save me from fighter pilots!” She noticed that Mana did not take his eyes off Lisl. Shoshana was wearing the wrong swimsuit.

Lisl set the style on board for most of the women who promptly went topless within minutes after her arrival. Two younger girls were sunbathing nude on the forward deck. Much to Shoshana’s confusion, Mana was following Lisl around like a puppy, captivated by the half-naked woman. According to Mana’s file, he preferred her type to Lisl’s. Could the file be wrong?

“Arabs like blonds,” Matt said, joining her. “But don’t worry, Lisl will throw him back.”

Shoshana didn’t like the American knowing she was trying to attract the Iraqi and reprimanded herself for being so obvious. Tall, fair, and muscular, Matt was certainly a contrast to Mana. Clothes hid Matt’s well-conditioned body and the muscles that rippled under his smooth skin when he walked or moved. She suspected he was very vain and spent hours working out in a weight room. You are probably something else in bed, she thought, disturbed by the man’s magnetism. She peeled down to her swimsuit, deciding to do some water skiing. “How long does she play with her prey?” Shoshana asked.

Matt liked the sound of her voice. “In this case, I’d guess about thirty minutes.” He gave her a thorough look. “Like your swimsuit,” he said, meaning it. “Perfect for water-skiing. Want to give it a try?”

Shoshana caught a playful change in his voice, almost as if he were shifting gears. She shrugged her shoulders and climbed down the boarding stairs to the floating dock to wait for her turn. Matt stood beside her carrying on a light banter. Within minutes, they were sitting on the edge of the float as the ski boat played out their towlines. Then they were up, gliding and skipping across the bright blue water. Matt would roar with laughter as he cut back and forth across the wake of the expensive towboat. Shoshana found she was enjoying herself immensely.

On a tight pass around the yacht, she noticed that Mana was standing alone at the rail. Suspecting that Lisl had found someone else to play with, Shoshana gave a cutting motion with her hand across her neck, signaling she wanted to drop off. The towboat slowed and she threw her rope clear and coated to a halt by the dock. “Enjoyed it!” Matt yelled as the boat accelerated away. Strange, Shoshana thought, he wasn’t coming on at all. He only wanted to play.

She climbed back up the ladder, sure she now had a clear shot at Mana. She knew how to soothe wounded male pride. He was watching her as she worked her way through some dancing couples. “Americans,” she fumed, joining him at the rail. “I can’t get rid of him.” The smile that lit Mana’s face told her she had hit a responsive chord.

“They can be persistent,” he said, still smiling.

Shoshana caught his last word and decided to play it. “I prefer them to be nonpersistent and nontoxic.”

Mana looked at her in surprise. The words had a special meaning for him.

Don’t stop now, she warned herself. “There I go talking shop,” she explained, laughing, enchanting him. “I work for a commercial insecticide company and I guess it comes out when I’m fighting off bugs.”

“So do I,” he said. “Well, in a manner of speaking.”

“Then that’s why you know the Wissers.” He only nodded. She pressed her opening. “Would you mind riding with me back to the port? Otherwise the American”—she cast a glance toward Matt who had finished skiing and was climbing the stairs—“will swarm all over me.”

“It would be my pleasure.” His formal way of speaking amused her.

Shoshana made sure they were engrossed in a conversation when they brushed past Matt so she could ignore him. Matt watched them leave. “Aced out by a fucking raghead,” he muttered. Then he laughed. “Well, it has to happen once every five hundred years.” He shook his head and went looking for Lisl. He found her sunbathing nude on the forward deck.

On the boat ride into the harbor, Shoshana sat close to Mana, their thighs touching, and kept him talking about himself. The young man waited with her as the black Mercedes, now driven by Habish, pulled up. “Would you be kind enough to join me for dinner tonight?” he asked, his English still formal.

“I’d love to.” She smiled at him. “I’m staying at the Atalaya Park.”

“Yes, I know. Shall I pick you up at eight o’clock?” Shoshana nodded in agreement. “Please wear the black dress.” He almost was blushing when he said it.

“If you wish.” She gave him a promising look as Habish pulled away.

“You wore the wrong swimsuit,” Habish growled. “You were going after the Arab, not the American.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” she protested. “I
am
going to dinner with him.”

“That was luck. You attract Americans by being provocative at first and then becoming very reserved. They have a basic prudish streak in them. With Arabs, it’s show all the way. Get them panting and keep them that way.”

“But Mana was a perfect gentleman … reserved … polite …”

“That’s a protective disguise Arabs adopt when they travel. The perfect Western gentlemen. They revert to type when they are home and become egotistical, domineering bastards. Listen to me next time. You won’t have so much trouble.”

Shoshana sank back in the seat. She had much to learn.

Brigadier General Leo Cox ambled down a corridor of Arlington Hall Station, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s annex located three miles from the Pentagon. A sharklike grin split the cadaverous face of the Air Force one-star general when he stopped at the office door of his best Middle Eastern analyst, Lieutenant Colonel William G. Carroll. “Bill, you busy?”

The analyst glanced up from his work and immediately shot to his feet. Unlike many of the personnel assigned to Arlington Hall, Carroll liked Cox. When the general had been assigned to run Arlington Hall by the DIA he had swept through it like a vengeful banshee, clearing out the dead-wood, bringing in fresh talent, and changing it from a dead-end assignment into a top-notch analytical organization. Fools and paperpushers did not last long around Cox and he picked his key men with care. Carroll was one of the “spooks” whom Cox relied on and was far from being a deskbound paperpusher.

“Whose toes did I tread on this time, General?” Carroll knew that Cox liked to drop in on his subordinates unannounced, bypassing the chain of command. It was a habit that kept the higher-ranking milicrats, the military version of bureaucrats, in the DIA stirred up and their lower-ranking protégés afraid for their careers. The working troops loved it.

The general shook his head and closed the door behind him. “Sit down and relax, Bill. I’ve got a problem.” Cox stretched out his skinny six-foot-four-inch frame in the only decent armchair in the office. “I sent you last analysis about Iraq and Syria showing signs of kissing and making up over to the CIA to be included in the PDB. Hogan bounced it right back with some scathing remarks about us being out to lunch. I won’t repeat what he said about your linking the Iraqis with the economic negotiations going on between Egypt and Syria.”

Carroll’s mouth twisted into a rueful grimace. Hogan was the staffer in the CIA who compiled the President’s Daily Brief, of PDG, and it was widely rumored that he wrote it up with a crayon. Supposedly, the PDB summarized the best intelligence the United States had for the President, and since the CIA had sole direct-reporting access to the President, all intelligence had to go through the CIA. “The troops over at the CIA think we’re too pro-Israeli.”

“Don’t tell me, Bill.” Cox smiled, raising a hand. “I know that not a single one of those shit-for-brains over there speaks Arabic.” Carroll was fluent in Arabic and Farsi; and could, in a pinch, get along in Berber.

“Someone had better tell the President what’s going down or we’re going to get our asses in the proverbial crack-again,” Carroll said. Cox valued the slender and youthful-looking lieutenant colonel because his linguistic and analytical abilities were backed up by an outstanding record in the field. Carroll was one of the most highly decorated Air Force officers on active duty and wore the Air Force Cross for his role in rescuing 280 prisoners of war.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Cox said. “But no one else, most of all the CIA, is reading the signals the way you do. I floated your analysis by General Howard and he almost threw me out of his office.” Lieutenant General Howard was the Army three-star general in command of the DIA and Cox’s boss. “No one is buying your analysis that Saddam has become a martyr to the Arab people and could be a rallying point against the West. The Agency boys believe that we stomped Saddam hard enough to keep everybody in line and that the Arab claim that they have the men and money to change their third world status and only lack the will to do it is just so much hot air.” Cox held up his hand to keep Carroll silent. “Bill, I agree that Iraq is secretly rebuilding its military much like Hitler did in Germany in the 1930s. A nation learns more from losing a war than from winning it. We know they’ve gotten back all their planes from the Iranians. But the goes against the party line that the Iraqis are now rational actors and that the Mideast is stabilizing.”

“So what else is new?”

‘I need to get the attention of the President or the National Security Council,” Cox said, “but I’m out of ideas and airspeed. If I can’t do it through normal channels, it’ll have to be leaked to the media.”

Carroll studied the pencil he was holding. He gave a little snort and shook his head. “That’s a bad choice …” He understood the general’s problem. Everyone in the administration was hailing the current negotiations between Egypt and Syria for an economic and mutual assistance treaty as a harbinger of peace and stability in that shattered area of the world, as everything the allied forces had fought for. But Carroll had discovered something else. At first, everything he had seen supported the accepted view of the treaty. Then a Mossad contact had passed him a top-secret protocol an Israeli spy had discovered buried deep in the negotiations. The protocol fused the Syrian and Egyptian military command and control systems and established communications links with Iraq.

After blending it with other intelligence, Carroll had come to one simple and overriding conclusion: The Egyptians, the Syrians, and possibly the Iraqis, were using the treaty to prepare for a major war and there could only be one targetIsrael. Cox also had a contact in Mossad, one much higher than Carroll’s, who had passed along the same intelligence to him.

“The Israelis know what’s going down, so why doesn’t the Israeli ambassador warn our State Department?” Carroll asked.

Cox shook his head. “Lots of reasons. Too many congressmen and senators would claim the Israelis are crying wolf. Their new prime minister is one cocky son of a bitch. Yair Ben David thinks Israel can take on all the Arabs as long as they keep their powder dry. He isn’t worried, so his ambassador isn’t worried. Everyone over here is happy because that supports our administration’s position that the Israelis are on top of the situation, Iraq has quit lusting after its neighbors’ oil, and that peace and prosperity are just around the corner. People only see what they want to see.”

The general gave vent to his deeply ingrained cynicism. “What we’ve got here is a classic case of double whifferdill inverted rectalitis where everyone is looking up everyone else’s asshole and seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Right.” Carroll grinned. “And feelin’ cool because the wind is in their face.”

“Bill,” Cox said, looking at his feet, “I can’t leak it.”

“And you want me to?”

There was no answer as the general disappeared out the door.