Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (25 page)

Ben looked at him with contempt. “You know, Jeremy, I wonder if you’re really doing this for Israel. Or if you’re just getting kicks out of running around in the shadows talking like a B-movie gangster.”

Jeremy chuckled again. “You must be really scared. This is what Ben Hafner does when his nerves flare. He finds someone to beat up on. That’s okay, Bennie boy, don’t be afraid. You’re about to meet one of the rats who’ll soon bring the U.S. of A. into the right way of thinking.”

“How much time have you spent in Russia, Jeremy? What makes you so sure its people are ready to do battle with America?”

His face now open and thoughtful, Jeremy answered calmly. “Fair questions. First answer is four years. Second answer is this. I used to think the Russian people—those outside the power grid—had no voice at all. I knew them to be peace loving and concerned with little more than
heating
their apartments and icing their vodka. A stereotype for sure, but one I believed. But now I know how restless they are, fed up with the incompetence of their president, with the corruption, with the way their government doesn’t seem to care about its people. And now, the loudest voice in Russia is its youth.” He looked at Ben as one about to dispense a secret. “Many of them want their Russia to be a superpower again,” he said, his focus back on the road. “They want Russia to expand into a constellation again, and they embrace whatever anti-American posture might accomplish that.”

“Go on,” Ben said with genuine interest.

“There’s a political front of Russian youth growing. Very aggressive. Very intolerant, too. They’ve been compared to Hitler’s Youth, though smart people don’t say that openly. I hear the Architect has infiltrated the group, stoking its young ardor for his own purposes.”

Ben was quiet.

They were approaching the last bridge to City Island. “But that ardor can’t compare to what’s boiling inside our fraternity of sleepers. You can’t imagine what I hear about that bunch. Kooks, a lot of them. But a few of them are big-brained professors like that Schell Devoe guy was. Others are your everyday, shop-at-Walmart spies who go to parent-teacher conferences, for crying out loud.” He looked at Ben and frowned. “Are you with me here, buddy? You look like you’re about to rip a seam somewhere.”

“Just drive. The sooner we get this over, the better.”

Jeremy drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “You know, you’d better start demonstrating that you’re Russian goods now because I’m not too sure you’ve got both feet into this.” He popped the steering wheel hard, making Ben jump. “This isn’t kids’ play, Ben,” he said angrily. “You’ll see. You’d better see because the Architect’s got his eye on you.”

With that, Ben turned a square-on look at Jeremy. “What do you mean?”

But Jeremy ignored the question and asked his own. “When do Anna and the kids leave for Israel?”

Ben’s pulse began to hammer, and he studied Jeremy without really seeing him. “In a few days.” Ben’s whole life was his wife and children …
and
his family in Israel. His mother had moved back to her native land when Ben’s father, a New York attorney, died. She was now surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom clamored for Ben to join them.

“Let’s hope that’s time enough,” Jeremy said.

“Are you threatening me and your own sister?” Ben erupted.

“
I’m
not. But I can’t speak for the boss.”

“You don’t even know who he is!”

“True. I’m fed my orders by an old sow named Sonya. She’s the big guy’s chief of staff, so to speak. You’ll meet her one day, when you’re least expecting it. So watch yourself.” He only half grinned.

Jeremy was nervous. Ben could hear the tinny quiver in his voice, see his hands tighten on the steering wheel. He’d known his brother-in-law for nearly twenty years, but not really. The first time Anna introduced them, Jeremy turned and left the room, too shy to make conversation with her new boyfriend, twice Jeremy’s size and about to enter Harvard Law School. Just a Harvard sophomore, Jeremy was already flunking out. He’d been eager to end his college career and bunk in with the rebel-rousing culture lodged on the fringes of campus.

The two rode in a stewing silence as they headed down the main avenue of City Island, an old yachting village. Only a mile and a half long and a half-mile wide, the main road ran like a backbone through the middle with rib-cage streets running off the sides, with a dead end at Eastchester Bay to the west and Long Island Sound to the east.

“Ever been here?” Jeremy asked, pleasantly enough.

“Yeah. One of my dad’s law partners used to keep a sailboat here.” Ben knew there was no sense in further tangling with this misfit who called himself an Israeli one day, a Russian the next, and who-knew-what in years to come. If South Carolina decided to secede from the Union again, Ben suspected his brother-in-law would ride a white steed up the steps of the State House in Columbia and bellow “Dixie.”

“It used to be a hub for shipbuilding, sailboats mostly,” Jeremy informed, a clear retreat from the singeing of their earlier exchange. “The Ivy League teams used to practice sailing out here.” He slowed near the next intersection and turned right onto a residential street. It was only a
couple
of blocks long, ending where a chain-link fence separated pavement from the pewter slab of bay waters that mimicked the dreary, swollen sky.

Ben saw small homes lining both sides of the street. It was clear that pride of ownership vacillated house to house. Some in shabby repair stood shoulder to shoulder with a next-door neighbor’s freshly painted picket fence and manicured patch of lawn. And there was little more than a patch to work with. The homes hugged the road, offering little ground to landscape a lift to their aging, sagging lines.

Midway down the second block, Jeremy pulled in front of a trim, wood-sided bungalow with new paint, chocolate with bright white trim. Ben immediately thought of brownies and ice cream and wondered how such whimsy found its way into his smoldering mood—which threatened to reignite with Jeremy’s next words.

“You’re gonna love this part, Gentle Ben,” Jeremy said, pulling a black hood with eye holes out of the glove box.

Ben winced as if about to be struck. “No way!”

“You’d rather go in there as Ben Hafner, close advisor to the president of the United States? Is that the recognition you want? Are you out of your mind? This guy’s about to commit an unspeakable act of terrorism against the United States. He might be a wee bit nervous about one of the president’s staff dropping in on him.”

“But he’d feel a lot better about an unidentified guy in a black hood, right?”

“He knows I’m bringing someone. He thinks it’s someone like him, another member of his benevolent order of Russian hoodlums. He’ll understand the precaution.” Jeremy heaved a sigh. “Use your head, Ben. You’re Russia’s new White House mole. It’s time you understood what’s happening. You’re here to listen to this guy, and that’s all. You don’t say one word while we’re in there. Got it?”

“I thought no one would ever recognize me,” Ben noted smugly.

Jeremy sniffed. “Can’t take a chance. Here’s what we’re going to do. You can’t walk up to the door wearing this thing and sending some old-lady neighbor tripping over her fourteen cats to get to a phone. No police interference today, please.” He looked toward the house. “I’m going in
first
to keep this guy from seeing you until you get inside and replace your cap with this.” He dropped the hood into Ben’s lap. “See, it won’t even adhere to the contours of that ugly mug of yours. No face, no voice. No way that guy will know who you are, especially in those baggy mom jeans you got on. Where’d you get those things anyway?”

Ben shot up a warning hand. “Enough! Go do what you have to do.”

Jeremy muttered something Ben didn’t catch, then got out of the car. “Watch for my signal,” he told Ben, then closed the door and walked at a hesitant, uneven clip toward the front door of the bungalow. Ben read it for what it meant.
He’s scared to death
.

The van crept down City Island Avenue, slowing further at each intersection. “Don’t you know the address?” Liesl asked, surveying the unfamiliar town.

“I do. But so do others. We must be careful at each turn.” He slid an admonishing look her way. “I suggest you never leave music for spying.”

When she turned to him in surprise, he immediately looked away, but not before she caught the upturned corners of his mouth. Could the big bad wolf be in a good mood? She almost hoped. But not for long.

As soon as Evgeny took the next right turn, he pulled to the curb and idled a moment. “You must observe everything, see everyone, search every car, every house and yard. But keep your face covered. I will do the same.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just do it.” Then he locked the passenger door from controls on his own.

“What are you doing?”

“It would be extremely unfortunate if you were to leave the van for any reason.” He resumed his cruise down the street.

“Why would I do that?”

“Sometimes we do not know what we do. We just react.”

She shook her head in dismay. “Cut the garble, Evgeny, and talk to me straight.”

“Okay. I will have to shoot you if you get out of the van.”

Her mouth fell open, but she quickly recovered. “You are unbelievable,” she crossed her arms and locked them down firmly against her in an undeniable pout, which she instantly regretted.

He looked at her oddly. “You are quite unbelievable, too, Liesl,” he said with candid sincerity. And something caught in his face, something she hadn’t seen there before. Approval? No, it was more than that. Before he could turn away, she saw it clearly. Affection, though guarded.

In the second block, Evgeny called her attention to a house just ahead. It stood out from the fading little homes strung along the street. It was painted brown with white gingerbread trim. But the most remarkable thing about it was the man just approaching the steps to its front porch. The large man with the deliberate stride, the big hands that hung like hams from the fleece cuffs of his cowhide jacket—the same jacket he’d worn when Liesl last strolled with him down the Washington Mall.

“Ben!” she called and reached for the handle of her door a split second before Evgeny’s iron grip caught her other arm.

“Stop!” he commanded. No sign of affection now. “I warned you.”

She pleaded with him. “But … but I have to—”

“You have to do nothing!” He finally released her and placed both hands back on the wheel of the still-moving van. “This is why I brought you. To prove to you that Ben Hafner is the mole.”

Locked hard on Ben, her eyes filled with scalding tears. “It’s not true. Not true!”

“Quiet!”

As they passed in front of the house, Ben, now climbing the steps to the porch, turned to give the van a cursory inspection, then went inside. At the end of the street, Evgeny made a U-turn and headed slowly back toward the brown house, pulling to the curb and stopping a few doors away.

Liesl composed herself enough to ask, “Who’s in that house?”

“Jeremy Rubin and one of the sleepers. All I know about him is that he was once a merchant marine and now he spends a lot of time in pubs.”

In her mind, Liesl grabbed blindly for a reason why Ben would be there. But no reason materialized. She couldn’t fathom a single explanation for
why
he would be in the company of Jeremy Rubin, a man of troubling liaisons whom Ben had forbidden to enter his home.

Liesl turned to Evgeny, then spoke as one grieving a terrible loss. “Why? Why would Ben do this?”

“My source has not provided that information. But I believe, as I have told you, that it is Israel. Your president sends mixed signals about how far he would stick out his neck, as you say, to protect Israel. And there is the money, a great deal to be gained from such work.”

“Ben doesn’t need the money.”

“Then it is Israel.”

Liesl knew Ben’s devotion to his Israeli family and how much he loved to spend time immersed in their culture. Had he not worked alongside Liesl and Ava to uncover the code fingering the Russian mole in Israel and exposing the plot that might have destroyed that country? Had such devotion become fanatical enough to disable his conscience?

How did I miss that?