The Lost Codex (40 page)

66

E
xactly,” Vail said. “Who is this?”

“I’d ask the two guys who were out front, but they’re a little under the weather,” DeSantos said.

Zemro used the tip of his Beretta to move the bones of the body’s incinerated hand. “This was a really odd fire.”

DeSantos took a step back and tilted his head, taking in the scene. “Judging by the condition of the body, it almost looks like a controlled burn. The table is intact, as if the intent was just to kill and burn the person but not anything else in the room.”

“Raph, would you keep a lookout, make sure no one drops in on us?”

“Sure thing.” He adjusted the submachine gun strap and moved off, toward the front door.

“He’s only partially burned,” Vail said. “Mostly from the waist up.” She crouched behind the body, reached into the rear pocket of the still-intact jeans, and extracted a leather wallet. She set it on the melamine surface in front of the deceased and splayed it open. “This is Sahmoud?”

Uzi moved beside her and looked it all over. “Appears that way.”

Vail shook her head. “I’m not buying it.”

“Me either,” DeSantos said. “Can we get some DNA? Or was it destroyed in the fire?”

“Because his lower extremity’s intact,” Vail said, “we can get some cells. The problem is the timing. It’ll take a while to get a profile.”

“Three days,” Uzi said. “But there may be another way. A buddy of mine told me he heard that life scientists at the Weizmann Institute have developed an experimental method that could get us an answer within twenty-four hours, but it’s not 100 percent accurate. It can check for certain markers but not produce an entire profile.” He pulled out his satphone and moved to the window. He put it on speaker, dialed, and waited while it connected.

“Gideon, it’s Uzi.”

“Tell me you’re on your way to the airport.”

“We found something and I need your help.”

“That sounds like a ‘No, we decided to ignore your warnings and do something stupid.’”

Uzi and Vail shared a look.

“We’ve got a body, badly burned.”

“Where?”

“Nablus. Sahmoud’s office.”

“Dammit, Uzi. Did you not understand me when I said—”

“Gideon. You know me. Did you really think I’d leave?”

“How’d you find his place? From one of my people?”

“Not important. You want to help or not?”

There was a long pause. Then Aksel said, “I’m listening.”

“This body appears to be Sahmoud—he had a wallet in his back pocket with ID, but we have doubts.”

“As you should.”

“Weizmann,” Uzi continued, “has that experimental DNA—”

“That was a rumor. But we’ve got something else. And yes, the test is already in progress.”

Uzi looked at DeSantos, whose mouth slipped open.

“You know about the body?”

“Uzi, you know better than to ask that question, no? One of your ex-colleagues went in the back door at 4:30 this morning, took the cells, and left. The guards never heard a thing. At this point, I’ll have the findings in about five hours, maybe sooner.”

“Will you share them with us?”

“If you’re on the next flight out of Ben Gurion, you have my word.”

67

T
his doesn’t make sense,” Vail said.

Uzi stood there, phone in hand, staring at the body. “The burn pattern?”

“There’s that, yeah. But also motive. Who’d do this? And why? And why just when we’re about to close in on him?”

“First impression?” DeSantos said. “It’s a decoy.”

“Second impression?” Uzi asked.

DeSantos took a position in front of the corpse. “Someone had to know we were hot on Sahmoud’s trail and left this body for us, hoping we’d take the bait.”

Vail chuckled. “You mean hoping we were stupid.”

“You think it was Khaleel?”

“That’s probably a question for Raph,” Vail said, “but just going by personality, he’s someone who’d sell anything to anyone for money. So he could be a double agent of sorts. Informs for both sides.”

DeSantos glanced around the room. “If this was a setup, there’s no way Sahmoud would’ve left anything behind. But we’re here, we should search the place just in case.”

“I don’t know how long we have,” Uzi said, “before someone comes looking for the two missing guards. Not to mention there’s a fair amount of blood out front.”

“Just a few minutes, then we can go.” DeSantos knelt in front of the body and examined it. He moved around the side of the table and then behind the corpse.

Vail turned and began along the adjacent wall, looking for hidden rooms or compartments. She had not gotten very far when DeSantos called out.

“Got something. Right here, the body.”

Uzi stepped closer and shined his phone’s flashlight where DeSantos had indicated. Three fine wires were visible protruding from the seat of the chair.

DeSantos took the phone and angled it closer to the area. “Looks like a pressure sensor. If we move the body, we’ll be in a million pieces.”

“If
that
was rigged,” Uzi said, “other things might be too. Don’t touch anything. We need to get out. Raph!”

“Yeah. Coming.” They heard him walking down the hall—and then felt the walls shake as a loud blast filled the room. Dust clouds swarmed the air.

“Raph! Raph—you okay?”

But Vail already knew the answer without waiting for a response. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

“You go. I need to find Raph.”

“We’re not leaving without you.” DeSantos swatted away the fine debris that hung in the air and rode along the shaft of light that streamed in through the lone open window.

“Raph!”

Vail moved alongside them. Like car headlights in thick fog, the phone's illumination was both diffused and reflected back at them by the dense, relentless wall of dust.

Uzi suddenly stopped. DeSantos and Vail likewise froze in midstep. Ahead of them was a partial body. The skin was black—save for the chalky dust that covered his arms and close-cropped Afro.

Vail grabbed Uzi and hugged him, turned him away from Zemro’s destroyed corpse. He squeezed her back and it was clear that he did not want to let go. “I’m sorry,” she said by his ear.

He sniffled loudly, then pushed away. “No time. We need to get out.”

“Which way?” Vail asked.

“We’re closer to the back,” DeSantos said. “But we don’t know if the door’s rigged. We’ve gotta go out the way we came in.”

They moved an inch at a time, single file, DeSantos leading the way, clearing the space in front of him as they advanced.

When they reached the front, DeSantos brought the barrel of the AK-47 up and nodded at Vail, who pulled open the door.

DeSantos swung out into the alley. He indicated with a nod of his chin that it was clear and they retraced their steps back to Zemro’s SUV.

When they got there, Uzi jammed the butt of his Puma knife into the corner of the small driver’s side vent window and smashed the glass. He struggled to get his forearm through the narrow opening but was able to reach in and unlock the doors.

They got in and Uzi pulled out his satphone. He swiped and tapped, then handed it to Vail, who was riding shotgun. “Send Gideon a text. Tell him what happened and that they have to retrieve Raph’s body. And to be careful because there are likely other bombs.”

“We got lucky,” DeSantos said. “That could’ve been us back there.”

Uzi reached beneath the dashboard and fished around. A moment later he found the wires he was looking for and hotwired the car. He quickly pulled away from the curb and down the street, back into downtown Nablus.

Vail sent the message then felt the satphone vibrate. “It’s Hoshi.”

“Put her on speaker. And hand me that grease rag on the floor by your foot.”

“Hoshi, you’ve got me, Uzi, and Hector.”

Vail handed over the dirty towel and Uzi stuffed it into the hole created by the broken window.

“Where’s Mr. Fahad?”

“That’s a good question,” DeSantos said.

I wonder if he knew the place was rigged and that’s why he begged off going with us to Sahmoud’s.

“So he’s not with you?”

“No.”

“I wish I had better news for you,” Hoshi said.

Uzi leaned closer to the handset. “You couldn’t break the encryption?”

“No, I did. But what I found isn’t good.”

“Just give it to us straight,” Uzi said. “We’re in no mood for riddles.”

“So Nazir al Dosari’s father, Uday, was a Shin Bet informant—Shin Bet’s kind of like our FBI. Anyway, the Palestinians call these informants collaborators and Hamas and al Humat don’t take kindly to it. In short, the collaborators are killed. When he was twenty years old, Dosari found out what his father was doing and turned him over to Hamas. That was in 1990. Uday was tortured and then killed by being dragged through the streets tied to the back of a motorcycle.”

“Ratting out your own dad,” Vail said. “Heartless. But given what these extremists are like, that’s not surprising.”

“This is depressing,” Uzi said, “but it’s not bad news regarding our case.”

“Dosari has a half brother who’s five years younger. And his name is Mahmoud El-Fahad.”

Uzi stepped on the brakes and yanked the SUV over to the curb. “What did you just say?”

“Uzi,” Vail said, “your window’s broken. That rag definitely helps, but because of where we are, let’s not shout this from the mountaintops, okay?”

He rubbed his forehead then let his head fall back against the headrest.

“You still there?” Hoshi asked.

Vail took the call off speaker and brought the satphone to her ear. “Still here. We need time to absorb this.”

“I get it.”

“Call us if you find out anything else.” Vail hung up and leaned her back against the window, facing Uzi and DeSantos. Both were silent.

“Go ahead, Santa,” Uzi said to the windshield. “Tell me you told me so.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Knox has to know this, right?” Vail said. “And Tasset?”

DeSantos rubbed his thighs. “You would think. That’s a hard thing to keep secret, and if the Agency did their due diligence, which I’m sure they did, even if they missed it during their background checks, they would’ve seen that encrypted file. For all we know, that’s why it’s encrypted.”

Uzi ran a hand through his hair. “Just like they knew about my work with Shin Bet and Mossad, I’m sure they know about Fahad. And yet they put him on our team. What does that say?”

“Text from Mo,” Vail said, holding up Uzi’s phone. “He’s got a twenty for us.” She turned around to DeSantos. “For what? Sahmoud? The codex? The scroll?” The phone buzzed again and she read the message. “He wants us to meet him where we parked outside the Old City on King David. He’s getting a lift over there.”

Uzi looked at Vail but did not say anything. He turned back to the windshield. She knew what he was thinking: could they trust him?

Uzi yanked the gearshift into drive and pulled back onto the road.

“Uzi,” DeSantos said, “we need to discuss this.”

“What’s there to discuss? Mo’s half brother is al Humat’s second in command. His nephew blew himself to bits. And you’re saying he’s guilty by association.”

DeSantos loosened his seatbelt and grabbed hold of Uzi’s headrest, pulling himself forward, close to the back of his head. “Boychick, I’m saying we need to be careful. We don’t have enough information. We don’t understand the connections, the motivation. We have no clue what’s going on in his head.” He turned to Vail. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Everything that’s happened,” DeSantos continued, “everything
bad
that’s happened, Mo’s been away—meeting with an informant. Or trying to get intel. Or just plain AWOL. Coincidence? Yeah, maybe. Shit happens. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s the one who’s been tipping people off.”

“Was he there when you were attacked at Arc De Triomphe?” Vail asked.

“No.”

“What about that flat in Paris, when they sent you the email to go to the arch?”

“No.”

DeSantos placed a hand on Uzi’s shoulder. “He might be the one who gave the sniper your location at Times Square.”

“He didn’t know we were going to be there.”

“He did,” Vail said. “I texted him, hoping he’d meet us there.”

Uzi sat tall in his seat. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what he’s been up to or what he’s thinking. He’s CIA, he’s taught to deceive, to have a cover story.”

“He’s taught to con you, to make you
believe
his cover story,” DeSantos said. “So which is the real story? What’s the truth?”

Uzi cut around a slow moving taxi. “What do you want to do?”

“I certainly don’t want to walk into an ambush.”

“Neither do I,” Vail said.

Uzi thought a moment. “We’ll go, hear him out, try to verify his intel.”

“Okay.” Vail nodded. “And if we can’t?”

“Then we have an important decision to make.”

68

U
zi pulled to the curb on King David Street. Fahad was standing there, talking to a woman wearing a burka. He excused himself and climbed into the backseat.

“I’ve got a location,” Fahad said.

Vail shifted in her seat to face the three men. “For what?”

“Kadir Abu Sahmoud. His home, in Gaza.”

No one spoke.

Finally Fahad looked at each of them. “Did I miss something? We’ve got Sahmoud’s address—an actual address—and from what I could determine, he’s there. This is awesome news. Let’s go.”

“We had a problem,” Uzi said. “Raph’s dead.”

Fahad jerked back. “Dead? What happened?”

“The office was rigged with explosives. Raph tripped one.”

Fahad’s shoulders slumped. “Man, I’m sorry. I—I wish I was there. I—he was a good guy.”

“He was,” Uzi said.

Vail saw a liquid sparkle in his eyes, tears pooling in his lower lids.

An awkward moment of silence passed.

“Look,” Fahad said. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but we’ve got a line on Sahmoud—our objective from day one. What’s the problem?”

“How do we know it’s not another setup?” Vail asked. “We could walk into an ambush.”

DeSantos turned to face Fahad, his expression hard. “Where’d you get this information?”

“From two of my informants. One in Nablus, a Palestinian Authority cop. He told me Sahmoud lives in Gaza near the resort beach community. He mentioned something that reminded me of another guy I know in East Jerusalem who works construction. I cabbed it over and made a couple of calls and found that they were paving roads near Silwan. He was a little dodgy, but bottom line is that his daughter and son-in-law live in a house down the block from someone who they’re sure is Sahmoud.”

“How can they be ‘sure’?” DeSantos asked.

“His son-in-law owns a cell phone startup in Gaza City, but my CI has always thought their money comes from somewhere else—a stipend from the money Hamas gets from taxes on the goods smuggled into the strip through its four hundred tunnels—weapons, fuel, medicine, consumer goods, cars, appliances, drugs, cigarettes. Anyway, point is, his daughter and son-in-law are one of almost two thousand millionaires living in Gaza. And they’ve got a house that my CI described as gaudy.”

“This is where Sahmoud lives?” Uzi asked.

“Down the street.”

“Again,” DeSantos said, “how do they know Sahmoud lives there?”

“His son-in-law told him one night when they’d had a lot to drink. They were sitting around the fire and he said he’s seen Sahmoud. A few months later my CI and his wife spent the weekend there and saw guards escorting a man around that looked like Sahmoud. They drove him around in a town car that was heavy and fortified—as if it were bulletproof and blastproof.”

“Anything else?” DeSantos asked.

Fahad shrugged. “That was enough for me—and it fit with what the cop in Nablus told me.”

Vail took turns reading Uzi’s and DeSantos’s faces. They were processing the intel, running it through their bullshit meter. If she were plugged into this world, she would be doing the same.

Finally Uzi said, “I think we should go and take a look, maybe sit on the place for a few hours and watch.”

DeSantos sucked on his bottom lip, then nodded. “I can live with that.”

Hopefully we all can.