Fuse of Armageddon (17 page)

Two other things about his office bothered her. The first was the framed drawing on one of the walls, out of place because it was a crude colored sketch, without doubt done by a child. It showed three figures walking past trees—a medium-sized figure on the left with long hair, a tiny figure in the middle, and the largest figure on the right. Kate could guess but wouldn’t ask Quinn to confirm that it was a drawing of the family by his daughter. It annoyed her because it gave her a measure of sympathy for what Quinn had lost to a suicide bomber. She didn’t want to have sympathy for him.

The other thing in his office that she found irritating was a small Bible on his desk. Who did this hypocrite think he was fooling with this pretense at piety?

On top of everything, Quinn’s overall quietness was really getting under her skin. She knew passive-aggressive—her ex had been good at it—but Quinn wasn’t ignoring her with the body language that suggested sullenness or a demand for attention. He simply seemed neutral to her presence—so much so that she felt almost invisible.

“Yeah,” she said, wanting a reaction of any kind, “looks like the kidnapping business is a good one for you.”

Quinn sat at his desk in an ergonomic leather executive chair, bandaged hand on his lap, peering at his computer screen, tapping at his keyboard with his good hand. The computer screen was plasma, the size of a small television, and had to cost at least two grand. He ignored her.

Kate didn’t like being ignored. “You take a percentage, like trial lawyers who represent accident victims? You know, the worse it is for them, the better for you?”

“Think about thirty terrified people held by terrorists,” Quinn said. “They are probably somewhere within fifty miles of where you stand. Maybe right now with machine guns to their heads, wondering if they’ll be forced to watch brains splatter against a wall, wondering if their brains will be on display for the others the next time a terrorist’s trigger finger twitches.” He swung around and gave her his full attention, no expression on his face.

Kate stared back at him, liking what she saw in that determined face, thinking that if she didn’t know about the tortured body in a cube van, she’d want to get closer to his strength. Was her irritation maybe a defense to keep her from wanting to get closer?

“I’m going to do whatever I can to get those people back,” Quinn said. “The odds are stacked against them as it is, and until they’re safe, I don’t want or need unnecessary distractions like whatever personal baggage you’re carrying. It’d be better if you found the maturity and discipline and professionalism to take the focus off yourself and put it back on those thirty terrified people. Think you can do that?”

Kate blinked. Part of her wanted to apologize, but she couldn’t quite force herself to do it. She wondered again about all the other bodies Cohen had told her about.

19:25 GMT


“Hamer?” Zvi Cohen said into his cell phone. He glanced up and down the hallway. “This line isn’t secure.”

“Don’t be paranoid. At IDF, I don’t worry about my subordinates listening in. The Mossad doesn’t have that kind of control?”

Cohen realized he was pressing his cell phone hard against his head, as if trying to prevent any sound from leaking. He reassured himself he was safe in the hallway. Far enough from Quinn’s office to speak without being overheard by Quinn or the Amercian cop.

“If a single trace of this leaks,” Cohen said, “all of us are dead in the water. It will bring down a government.”

“Does it make you feel better that I’ve got a scrambler on my end?”

Hamer could have said that immediately, of course. But Hamer, it seemed, enjoyed irritating Cohen. Professional jealousy, Cohen had long ago concluded.

“I’m outside Quinn’s office,” Cohen said. “Make this short.”

“I haven’t heard from the Iranian. He was going to report after driving the bus.”

“He’s not going to blow cover if he thinks there is the slightest risk in trying to make contact. Relax.”

“Relax?” Hamer said. “You want to tell me what happened to Rossett? A confidential report came in. We found his car—destroyed in an explosion. Human remains found, impossible to identify. Mossad have anything to do with that?”

“Would you want him alive after this is over?”

“Murder is not my style.”

“My style is doing whatever it takes to protect Israel,” Cohen said. “I hope that’s your style too.”

“Suppose Rossett left something behind? Then how’s your protection of Israel?”

“Covered. We have a mole in CCTI—their best computer geek. I can guarantee Rossett didn’t leave something that exposes IDF or the Mossad.”

“Guess what, Cohen. I did.”

“What?”

“That’s why I called. In case your plans to cover the tracks on this include getting me in a car that explodes too. So I’m telling you right now I’ve got a little safety package. You don’t want me dead, or your involvement makes it to the media.”

Cohen hissed into the phone. “You’re safe. IDF I trust.”

“Sure. Enough to give me a courtesy call that you were bringing in a different negotiator?”

“Safady demanded Quinn,” Cohen said. “On short notice, I had to make the decision without you.”

“You made contact with Safady?”

“Via secure chat room. As always. There won’t be any blowback.”

“That’s not the point,” Hamer said. “We had agreed. Any changes in plans are by mutual decision.”

“The wheels are in motion. Pull Quinn now and the operation fails.” Cohen hung up before Hamer could respond.

He smiled as he straightened his tie. He knew what Major General Jack Hamer would choose. Because in the end, there was no choice.

13

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 21:47 GMT


Jonathan Silver sat on a bunk bed, knees to his chest, facing the wall. He’d never felt more lonely. He was surrounded by strangers—what did he know about the Americans on the tour except that they had been great donors to his television network—and there was no one he could share his fears with.

Did God hate him?

All he wanted was a hot bath at the King David, a phone call to room service, and then the smooth sheets on a thick mattress and a nice, fluffy pillow. Was that too much to ask of life? Here he’d probably wake up infested with lice or bedbugs. Rats might crawl across his face while he slept. He fought tears as his misery overwhelmed him.

“How long are you going to sit there like a little baby?”

Silver wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. He swung his head around.

Although the lighting had been dimmed in the dorm-style room, he easily identified the woman standing at his bunk as the one who had stood up to Safady when all of them had first arrived.

She was perhaps fifteen years younger than Silver—midforties—and wore her hair pulled back from her face with a few wisps on her forehead. Definitely not an Arab. More like the kind of woman playing the part of a schoolteacher in a movie about the American Wild West. She dressed plainly, nothing striking about her appearance or figure.

“I asked how long you were going to sit there like a little baby.” She had an American Midwestern accent.

“How dare—?”

“You’re supposed to be the leader. Gather all the others who are just as miserable as you are and try to cheer them up.”

“What could be cheerful about a place like this?”

The woman’s face tightened. “This is home to the children. Why don’t you listen tomorrow for laughter and then come to me and ask the same question.”

“I meant cheerful for us, not the children.”

“Oh,” she responded. “Americans have higher standards? deserve better than Palestinian orphans?”

Silver turned back to the wall, guessing he was sending a strong signal to the woman. He did not have to put up with this sort of rudeness.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You have a responsibility here. Go to the other Americans. Gather them and pray.”

“Pray,” he snorted without looking back at her. “Like Israeli helicopters will zoom in and rescue us.”

“Is that how you view prayer? As a way to ask God for things? Gather the rest of them and pray to discover God’s comfort during tribulation. Thank Him that you have hope in one of the many rooms that Jesus has gone to prepare for you.”

He didn’t answer.

“Be a man,” she said. “People around here need you.”

The sound of footsteps told him that she was walking away.

Rafah, Gaza Strip • 21:51 GMT


In the dust and heat and chaos and noise of the lineup at the border—made that much more surreal by the dark of night and the searing brightness of the spotlights—Farag al-Naggar continually checked the underside of his wrist to compare the numbers in black ink to the license plates of incoming trucks carrying livestock and Palestinian farmworkers returning to Gaza from Egypt.

Farag, short and stocky with a much fuller beard than head of hair, was a customs official at the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip and, from his point of view, extremely underpaid by the Palestinian National Authority for a middle-aged man who had fought valiant political battles to secure his position.

His true employers, however—a local arm of Hamas—paid him very well. Day by day, as the various warlords of Rafah gained wealth from the recent opening of the border, the power of the Palestinian National Authority weakened in direct correspondence to the flagrant lawlessness of various militant and terrorist groups; to defy them meant death, but to serve them meant a small share of the wealth.

So Farag served . . . with one very dangerous secret. He was also a spy for the Mossad. The knowledge he sold them was invaluable. Not only information about the border crossings but information about what Hamas tried to accomplish and when shipments of arms for Hamas were let through and who took them through.

Today he’d been ordered by the Mossad to let two specific trucks through with only a cursory examination. Farag found this very curious. The Israeli government controlled the border. It could authorize anything at all to cross. Why was the Mossad, and by extension the Israeli government, trying to smuggle something?

Hamas would find this interesting. But then Farag would have to let Hamas know his connection to the Mossad. That would only guarantee a slow, horrible death. So Farag would do what he did best—turn a blind eye and keep his mouth shut.

Farag glanced down the line again, seeing dozens of taxis, piled high with suitcases and packed with passengers, all with an hour or two wait to get through. He had little sympathy for the drivers. With the border now open to allow Gaza residents out of the country for the first time in years, the drivers had adjusted to the demand by raising their rates to near criminal levels. Prices of nearly everything in Egypt within a hundred miles of the border had doubled and were still cheaper than inside Gaza.

Yes. There they were. Two trucks, goats, workers. And what looked like a single heifer among the goats.

Strange
, Farag thought.
One heifer.

He glanced again at the numbers on his wrist. The license plate numbers matched.

He waved the first truck forward.

There was something strange about the driver’s silence, too, and Farag looked closer into the man’s bearded face. The man stared back. His nose and cheekbones seemed to betray a European heritage.

Farag asked the man’s destination. The driver answered in Arabic that had a strangeness too. Farag had heard many accents before. This was a border that Syrians, Iraqis, and Saudis had been using of late to join some of the other militant groups. Farag recognized all of those accents, but not this man’s.

Farag stepped back and checked the license plate again. Then his wrist again.

There was no doubt.

This truck and the other were the ones he’d been ordered to wave through into Gaza. As an employee of the Palestinian National Authority, all of Farag’s instincts told him something was wrong. Yet he dared not disobey direct orders from the Mossad.

Farag grunted and pointed the truck through the border crossing. The same with the next. He wiped dust from his face. Both trucks and the men standing in them with the goats and the heifer would disappear inside the Gaza Strip. Just like so many other trucks and men had done in recent months—young, passionate men who would become suicide bombers or fresh soldiers in whatever plans Hamas had to harass Israel from the safety of Gaza.

This, however, was the Mossad.

In the end, who was Farag to question all of this? Especially if doing so would cost him his life.

CCTI Headquarters, Tel Aviv • 21:59 GMT


It was 11:59 and counting. Quinn faced the computer screen. A webcam was mounted beside it, trained on his face. Behind him stood Zvi Cohen and Kate Penner. While Cohen and Kate were at an angle that let them see the screen and close enough to hear the audio, they were not within range of the webcam.

“Big unanswered question so far,” Cohen said, “is who’s responsible. We need to know. If it’s Red September . . .”

“Red September?” Kate said. “I know the name, but so much of this stuff is in the news that I don’t keep track.”

“In 1972, the Black September kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics,” Quinn answered, intent on the screen. “The Mossad found and executed every Palestinian terrorist in that group, including the most famous, who called himself the Red Prince. Now we’ve got Khaled Safady as the Black Prince. Nobody has made a visual identification of him, so even if the person at the other webcam claims to be—”

Before Quinn could finish, an instant message appeared on the screen:

Host:
This conference ends in 60 seconds. Start it now.


Quinn glanced at his watch and clicked the video camera icon of his software program.

Instantly a face, its lower half masked, appeared on the screen in front of him. “You have been hunting me,” the man said. “Now we meet face-to-face.”