Captain Thomas Burke of the Special Air Services peered through his binoculars over the low brick wall. It was a clear day on the Scottish coast, with good visibility. The binoculars gave him a clear view of the target. Satisfied, he set down the binoculars and picked up his weapon.
"Ready!" he called out to the men flanking him. He matched his own actions to his word, raising the grenade launcher to his shoulder and sighting in on the target. The two men flanking him did likewise.
The American M79 grenade launcher was a short, rifled, breech-loading weapon that fired a fixed cartridge. A variety of cartridges was available; high-explosive, incendiary, tear gas, and others. Today, Burke and his men were using the HE. Even though it was not the most modern weapon available, it was still an effective and formidable one, with a maximum range of about 350 yards.
In this particular case, the target was less than half that distance away. It was a very unusual target, not the kind normally seen on this or any other firing range. It was also not moving, which made for an even easier mark. Squinting through the sight, Burke made a small correction in his aim. Taking a deep breath, he held it to steady his aim.
"Fire!" he breathed.
The three grenade launchers spoke as one. The low-velocity projectiles were just visible to the naked eye as they arced toward the target, giving Burke enough time to retrieve his binoculars and raise them to his eyes before the grenades hit.
The SAS men had been well trained; all three of them had been part of the elite SAS team that --- along with a team from Israel's Mossad --- had gone into Iraq on the eve of the Gulf War to destroy a suspected biochemical weapons facility at Samarra, near Baghdad.
The three grenades hit within a ten feet of each other in a circle centered on the target. The three explosions merged together, kicking up a large fountain of dirt. Even at this range, Burke could feel the concussions. A large cloud of smoke briefly obscured his vision.
When the smoke dissipated, Burke could see the target, still apparently intact.
The young woman brushed off the dirt and the charred remains of her camouflage fatigues from her red dress with a gold lightning bolt on the front. The short skirt flapped in the turbulent air, as did the white cape hanging from her shoulders. Her dark hair, tousled by the blast, hung down in a wild mass, covering half her face. Her skin was only slightly darkened from the fire and smoke.
Even as he watched, she used her hands to smooth out her short skirt. Then putting her hands on her hips and tossing her head to shake the hair out of her face, she looked around.
Even at this range, Burke could have sworn that he saw her eyes sparkle as she located him, turning and looking directly at him, raising an arm and waving it at him.
Knowing that she could see him just as clearly as if he hadn't been behind a wall, he rose to his feet as just she began jogging toward him, her long shapely legs covering the distance in a matter of a few seconds. The other two men also stood up, flanking Burke as the girl came to a stop on the other side of the wall.
Marlen's chest was rising and falling with her breathing, a little more rapidly than usual, though not from the exertion of the run. Now that she was directly in front of him, he could clearly see her nipples tenting up the sheer fabric of her dress.
One arm flashed out as she moved closer, taking the man on Burke's left. She all but pulled him over the waist-high wall as she kissed him.
He nearly fell to the ground when she broke off and released him, as if all the air had been sucked out of him. Knowing the power of her lungs as Burke did, that wasn't a completely inaccurate description.
Bypassing Burke, she repeated the process with the man on his right.
She then returned to Burke, reaching over and grabbing him, pulling him over the wall to her side. She shifted her burden, slinging him over a shoulder.
"Thank you, boys," she told the other two men, still appearing a little short of breath. I'll see you two tomorrow, right?"
Getting acknowledgment, she turned and trotted off, still carrying Burke over her shoulder.
He tried to hold on as best he could as her long strides ate up the distance. Turning his head, he buried his face in her thick, luxurious black hair. Even over the smell of the burnt cloth and the acrid HE residue, Burke could detect her distinctive scent of honey and wildflowers.
Burke could still remember how she'd single-handedly held off an entire Iraqi armored column, buying time for the rest of the squad to get away. He would never forget the image of the girl in black engaging the lead armored car, at the same time yelling over her shoulder at Burke to get his men out.
He wasn't quite exactly sure how she'd done it, but she'd later met them at the extraction point just as the helicopters arrived to take them home. She'd been the last one into the last helicopter.
Burke came back to the present as he felt himself being set down on his feet outside an old bunker.
Time had taken its toll on the old concrete structure. The walls had started to sag, warping the steel doorframe and jamming the door in place. A medium tank might have trouble forcing the door open. Marlen reached out, placing the palm of her right hand on the door.
The steel door began to bend inward. Then, with the creak of accumulated rust, the door popped open.
Together, they went in.
It wasn't the most luxurious of accomodations, but they had cleaned it up some and brought in new bedding. Burke saw that Marlen had brought in a picnic basket; he could see the wine bottle poking out.
It was cooler inside the underground bunker, but Burke did not feel the chill. Not even after Marlen had undressed him.
Marlen did have an effective way of keeping a man warm, a way no other woman on earth possessed.
While one Arion was having a good time in Scotland, another one was on the other side of the world. And she was most definitely not having a good time as she lay motionless on the damp ground of a rainforest.
Not even the Chinese knew that Tyreen Mackenzie had entered China. Nor did her superiors with the British Secret Service --- officially. She'd traveled a route a thousand years old --- a smugglers' trail established around the time the first Emperor unified the seven warring states into a great country.
Now, five days later, she was well inside the People's Republic, in the rainforest, maintaining her watch on the four Arabs who were far from their lair.
The coin-sized headphones built into the air vents in Tyreen's jungle combat hat enabled her to follow the Arab's conversation. She knew just enough Arabic to know that they weren't talking about much except for how good it would be to go back home again.
They reminded her of foxes, tense and nervous, with their noses sniffing and eyes darting. But they hadn't spotted the children. The cloying humidity stifled everything. The boy and girl from the village a mile back down the track were also trailing the Arabs.
Tyreen had glimpsed the children a moment ago, gliding through the foliage to her right. The boy seemed no more than ten, the girl a little younger. Local kids playing "hunt the stranger."
Long ago she'd learned the adult version --- learned all the rules for survival in jungle, mountain, snow, and desert. And the city. There was a simplicity about them, of falling back ultimately on what her own body could provide, which went to the very core of who and what she was.
Even here, among trees a hundred feet tall, her own height was striking. Her head was topped with wavy black hair, still without a trace of gray. People marveled at the way she avoided the more obvious signs of aging. Her skin was unlined and wrinkle-free, her vison and hearing perfect, her body lean and trim. She didn't look like a woman well into her fifties.
That also was due to who and what she was. The last full-blooded Arion born on Earth.
She was dressed in khaki shirt and pants. She'd hidden her face behind insect repellant cream and camouflage green so that, lying perfectly still, she'd pass for a log.
Three of the Arabs were wiry, with the forgettable faces of gunmen the world over. The fourth was squat and muscular and completely bald. He was an incongruous sight; a bull of a man clutching a shiny new briefcase. Bagman and escort.
They were soaked from the first of the afternoon cloudbursts. Once more, the light drained from the sky as another rainstorm swept in and was over in a minute. It left the air heavy like a warm sponge filled with moisture.
The headphones picked up the faint rustling of the children moving through the growth. Tyreen reoriented the parabolic microphone until there was a faint whispering in her ears. The girl wanted to go back.
"Not yet," urged the boy. "Let's go a little closer."
"All right. But not too close," agreed the girl, reluctantly.
Their dialect was Cantonese, thin and reedy. There was no way Tyreen could head them off. That would alert the Arabs. Nothing must be allowed to do that.
A Mossad agent in southern Lebanon had alerted MI6 about these Arabs. Having been in Tel Aviv liaising with Mossad, she'd immediately flown out to Beirut to pick up the trail. The money they'd offered in those cryptic calls to Bangkok had deepened her suspicions. Two million US dollars. No hagglng. She had to know what was worth that much. And put a stop to it.
She had patiently followed the Arabs all the way from Beirut, flying on the same TriStar as they to Bangkok. They had not paid her any special attention beyond what would be expected for any Western woman traveling unaccompanied in these parts of the world.
The Arabs spent a day sampling the sexual offerings at Pattani, going from one brothel to another, choosing underage boys and girls as the mood took them. The bagman had also bought the briefcase, and Tyreen had realized then that she was not wasting her time.
The Arabs had gone to a branch of the Royal Bank of Thailand in Bangkok. That evening they traveled by train north to Udon. She had taken a compartment near them and left the train before they did. From Udon, a Thai guide took them by road to Chiang Rai, the hilly capital of Asia's drug-running gangs, far older and as powerful as Columbia's Medellín cartels. She had followed, knowing now, for sure, where they were going.
At Chiang Rai the Thai handed the Arabs over to a Chinese, a short, light-skinned member of the tribe of Yao, one of China's minority peoples who had long been renowned smugglers. The man had taken the Arabs into the People's Republic. The party traveled light, pausing only to eat and rest at villages where their guide was known in this region of slash-and-burn farming. Locals no longer looked curiously at strangers who came in search of heroin and cocaine. Or worse.
Nevertheless Tyreen never showed herself but waited close by in the jungle, eating high-protein food concentrates specially prepared back in Britain. She had enough food for two weeks. After that she could live off the land. She knew now that she would not need to. When he had led the Arabs into the clearing, the guide had said that they had reached their destination.
An hour later, they were still squatting on the ground, the Arabs in their cheap Lebanese bazaar suits, the guide in the baggy trousers and high-buttoning shirt of his people. From time to time he glanced furtively at the case. The bagman rested a hand lightly on its handle. Like the others, he chain-smoked.
Tyreen saw the bagman look at the guide. The Arab's cough rasped in Tyreen's headphones.
"How much longer?" demanded the bagman in English.
"Not long now," promised the guide. "They come long way."
The bagman grunted and lit a fresh cigarette. One of the gunmen pulled out his pistol and made a show of checking it before shoving it back in his belt.
"Bad men," came the girl's whisper in the headphones. "We go now."
"No!" insisted the boy. "You can go. I'm staying."
Tyreen judged the children were slightly ahead of her. The gunmen were talking quietly among themselves in Arabic, ignoring the guide.
"We can kill him once we are back across the border," said one.
"He may have friends waiting," objected the second. "We kill him here, no one knows."
"We need him to get us out of here," insisted the third gunman.
Even at this distance, Tyreen heard the sudden fury in the bagman's voice. "There will be no killing until I say so."
The gunmen fell into a resentful silence.
Rather than stir, Tyreen let a column of ants march across her hands, a million and more of them passing in review before her face half buried in the mulch. She closed her eyes tight and sucked in her lips when they suddenly changed direction. Despite the cream, they filed up one side of her head and down the other, barred from entering her body by wadding placed in her nose. When the ants passed, she opened her eyes.
"Let's go." The girl's further plea whispered in Tyreen's headphones.
"No!" said the boy, more determinedly.
The girl's sigh was followed by the sound of them wriggling closer to the clearing. They were expertly using the shadows and sounds of the jungle to cover their approach. Suddenly the boy gasped and their movements stopped.
Tyreen, the Arabs and their guide, and the children saw the two men emerging from the jungle on the other side of the clearing at the same time.
The guide scrambled to his feet, smiling in relief. One of the Arabs moved to the bagman's side, the other two separated, ready to provide crossfire. The newcomers ignored the move.
Tyreen studied them through the sight of her light machine gun. Dark-skinned Han, dressed in coolie smocks and pantaloons, mountain people used to open terrain. As well as carrying Kalashnikovs, both wore belts on which were clipped knives, the long serrated blades matte-finished to avoid glare. From each belt hung an entrenching tool, similarly coated. No Han went anywhere without one. The men stood for a moment before retreating into the jungle, moving awkwardly and using their guns to beat a path.
They returned with a third man. This man was middle-aged and his chest heaved as if he had walked a long distance. He wore a cheap suit and carried a case identical to the bagman's.
He was tall for a Chinese, close to six feet, but well-built, not undernourished or weak. Someone who received extra rice and meat. A privileged person. The hands holding the case had never done a hard day's manual work. The face was pale, almost like ivory. An indoor person.
The man's narrowed eyes took in the Arabs. Then, his breathing calmed, he walked slowly into the clearing, holding his case with both hands as if it was heavy.
As he started to speak, there was an electric crackle in Tyreen's ears. The headphones were shorting. Water, probably. The cloudburst had left her soaked as if she had been swimming with all her clothes on.
She watched the guide turn to the bagman and point to the case. "Open, please..."
Tyreen could see the hatred in the bagman's eyes. "The money is all..." The bagman's words were lost in renewed crackling in the headphones.
"Open, please..." repeated the middle-aged Chinese. "...-za say oke-dokey..."
Tyreen stiffened. She held her breath, silently cursing the static. Yet despite the poor transmission and the man's imperfect command of English, there was no mistake. The Chinese had said -za.
Only one name that mattered to Tyreen ended like that. Raza.
During the Gulf War, Khalil Raza had vied with Abu Nidal as the grand master of global terrorism. Then, in one horrific and never-to-be-forgotten incident, Raza had established himself as the world's most evil man.
Raza had personally planted, in the Jewish maternity ward of a Jerusalem hospital, the Semtex that slaughtered sixty-two newborn infants and their mothers, along with twenty-nine of the nurses and doctors tending them.
Among the victims had been Ruth and David Chernow, the wife and son of Jacob Chernow, her closest friend in Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. She had first met him when he had been a student at Cambridge, before he'd been recruited by Mossad. Since his recruitment, they'd worked together several times, most extensively after the Lockerbie incident.
On her way to visit her friends on what should have been a joyous occasion, Tyreen's plane had touched down at the Tel Aviv airport less than half an hour before the blast at the hospital. Rushing to the site, she'd found him with the rescue workers, frantically digging through the carnage. Late that evening, they'd found Ruth and David beneath several tons of rubble in a recovery room.
She'd insisted on taking him back to his home. There, he'd cried himself to sleep on her shoulder. Carrying him to the bedroom, she'd laid him down on the bed and stayed with him through that long dark night. Not wishing to intrude on his grief, she did nothing more than holding him through his troubled sleep.
Almost a year ago, Raza had disappeared after two spectacular failures. His plans to launch a Stinger missile against the House of Commons from a warehouse across the Thames, while at the same time detonating a bomb in the newly reconstructed Reichstag in Berlin, had both ended in firefights with antiterrorist forces who had killed or captured Raza's men. Raza's own credibility among his Arab supporters had taken a nosedive. The general consensus was that Raza had followed his notorious predecessors, Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal, into broken-backed oblivion. When both Tyreen and Jacob Chernow had said to wait and see, their surperiors had told them they were just being paranoid.
It had been Jacob Chernow who had called her to Beirut.
Now Raza's specter loomed large in the gloom of the clearing. And the children were still arguing.
As Tyreen reached up to tweak the headphones, she smelled burning. A miniature electrical thunderstorm filled the headphones, then silence. The acrid smell was stronger. She removed the hat. A wisp of smoke was coming from the headphones. She reached for a dollop of mud and smothered them.
No matter how well her mother designed them, and no matter how well Q Branch built them, there were limits to any piece of equipment. These had been intended to work in the much drier environment of the Middle East, not in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
In the clearing, the bagman opened his briefcase and, watched by his bodyguards, the Chinese was pulling out bundles of US dollar bills, expertly riffling them. Satisfied he was not being short-changed, he handed over his own case, unopened. The bagman held it in his hands, testing its weight.
Tyreen thought it seemed to weigh the same as the two million dollars. She eased the stock into her shoulder. She'd found the weapon where Chernow had said it would be, wrapped in layers of waxed paper and buried near one of the stockaded villages she'd passed. She was still getting used to adjusting her aim to compensate for the weight of the bulbous silencer.
The light was going. And where were those kids? Then all else was forgotten. The groups were separating. The middle-aged man clutching the bag was retreating to the far side of the clearing, the bodyguards walking backwards, ready to deal with any attempted shot in the back. The Arabs and their guide moved quickly and diagonally across the clearing, making the range hard to judge.
Tyreen switched to automatic fire: five seconds to empty the magazine of twenty rounds of 7.62-mm cartridges, three to reload.
She saw the children then. The boy had risen out of the ground and was trotting toward the Arabs, laughing and pointing at the briefcase. The girl was running, hands outstretched, trying to pull him back.
Through the gun sight, Tyreen could see the sudden fear in the girl's eyes. See the boy reach the bagman. See the Arab smash the case against the child's head. Hear the crunch of breaking bone. See the boy go down, poleaxed. Feel and hear the rage choke in her own throat.
The girl was screaming. Tyreen could see her mouth opening, see the surprisingly white teeth. And see, as she turned to run, one of the Arabs shoot her. For a moment the child stood, poised in mid-stride. Then, as the crimson spread on the front of her smock, she collapsed against one of the gunmen. He hurled the limp, lifeless form from him.
Tyreen opened fire, feeling the hard kick of the gun against her shoulder. The silent, sweeping burst tore through the girl's body, instantly killing the three gunmen. The bagman and the guide had vanished.
Rolling to a new firing position, Tyreen cursed softly. The dead Arab who'd thrown the girl into her fire path had allowed the bagman to escape.
Bullets scythed over the ground where Tyreen had lain. The Chinese had spotted her. She killed one with a short burst, ripped out the spent clip ,and rammed in a new one.
No sign of the middle-aged man. A fresh storm of bullets showered leaves and twigs on Tyreen's head. The other bodyguard was hiding somewhere to her right. The silence was broken by a bolt being jimmied, followed by the clank of a magazine being unlocked and locked.
Crouched double, Tyreen moved with extraordinary quiet and speed to where the Chinese should be. He'd gone.
She picked up a small branch and lobbed it across the clearing. A chain of bullets flayed the area. A sign of panic. She spotted movement to her left and crawled toward it, gun in one hand. The ground foliage was still crushed where the man had lain. There was the smell of a bowel that had moved.
She lay on her back, gun beside her, knife in her hand. She picked up another piece of wood and threw it high into the trees. The falling stick rattled and bounced against the branches.
Feet away the Chinese rose, Kalashnikov pointing upward.
Tyreen jackknifed off the ground and kicked the rifle from the man's hands. The Chinese grabbed his knife. She jabbed with hers, cutting away cloth and flesh on the man's arm. The Chinese grunted and dropped his knife, then charged, head-butting her. The knife slipped from her grasp and fingers clutched at her throat. She drove her knee hard into the man's groin and crushed his nose with a blow from her elbow. There was a louder grunt and the pressure at her throat eased.
Tyreen struggled to her feet. The Chinese rose from the ground, trenching tool swinging. She kicked out, and the tool went flying. She grabbed it, and drove the tool's point into the man's throat. The Chinese clutched at the handle with both hands as they struggled for possession. She smelled the man's sour breath and saw bubbles of blood oozing from his mouth.
Taking one hand from the wooden handle to brush the stray hair out of her face, she saw that the man's eyes were hemorrhaging. Still using only one hand, she pushed harder. There was a tearing sound as the steel emerged at the back of his head.
Only then did she relax her grip, letting the tool fall to the ground.
When the pain eased in her chest, she rose to her feet. The blood was turning to darkening jelly where the man' nose had been. Ants had already found the arm wound.
What had he been protecting? There was nothing in his trousers' side pockets. She turned the body over. The ID card was in a slit pocket in the rear waistband, where on a Chinese security guard she'd expect it to be. She found the Kalashnikov, ruined its barrel against a tree trunk and threw the weapon deep into the undergrowth.
She went into the clearing and searched the other bodyguard, removing the ID card.
There was no identification on any of the Arabs, but Tyreen didn't need any. Foot soldiers were foot soldiers. She tossed the men's pistols deep into the growth. She dragged their bodies into the bushes, laying the children a little apart from their killers. It was all the respect she had time to show.
She looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes since the bagman had gone. A quarter of a mile here was a choice of trails to Burma, India, Pakistan, or Thailand, She'd long ago realized that pursuit was always a matter of balancing expectation against reality.
She sat against a tree trunk to study the ID cards. Laminated plastic protected each face and an embossed stamp that meant nothing. But the symbol in the top right-hand corner of each card she recognized immediately. The two interlocked red squares containing motifs of a test tube and pestle-and-mortar were the logo of the State Research Institute at Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
The scientists who worked there had established the People's Republic as the world's leading manufacturer of chemical and biological weapons. At Chengdu they had recently created the newest and most deadly of those weapons, Anthrax-B-C. The "B" distinguished it from all other kinds of anthrax. The "C" honored China as its birthplace.
Anthrax-B-C could be safely transported and handled in its frozen state. But a few ounces, when thawed, could kill thousands. When scientists spoke of an antidote, they usually added if --- if a victim could be diagnosed in time... if he or she received the correct kind and amount of penicillin... if he or she was otherwise physically fit. Even then, the chances of survival were not great.
So deadly was Anthrax-B-C that the People's Republic had refused to supply it to Iraq, a client state, which it had discreetly provided with other biochemical weapons in the run-up to the Gulf War. Tyreen's sources were certain that the Chinese had not broken that embargo now. But the world was getting that much darker when that kind of credit could be given.
Fearing Saddam Hussein had managed to duplicate Anthrax-B-C, Marlen had accompanied a small SAS team into Iraq on the eve of the war to destroy a key plant near Baghdad. Buried deep beneath the sands, the lab complex was safe from even the tactical nuclear weapons that the Americans had stationed in Saudi Arabia. It had needed the abilities of the only Arion Prime on the planet to ensure the mission's success.
Tyreen squinted through the trees. The sky was turning purple. The first of the stars were out. The air had grown still. Soon the predators would creep through the darkness to the bodies. By morning there would be only little piles of bones, picked clean.
Her thoughts returned to Raza. There would be lot more bones if he had the Anthrax-B-C to loose into the world.
Before he had disappeared, Raza had formed an alliance with the drug barons of the Golden Triangle and the Medellín cartels in Columbia, promising to guarantee their supply lines through the Middle East in return for safe houses in North and South America, in Europe, and in Asia.
Had Raza sent his dogs of war to meet a Chinese drug contact? Was that middle-aged man somehow using the Chengdu facility to purify drugs? Tyreen shook her head; her gut instinct told her it wasn't drugs.
This was somehow connected to the cabal of mullahs. They had emerged from the Gulf War as a powerful force with clearly stated aims for the Middle East: the destruction of the State of Israel, the removal of all Western influences from the region, coupled with its total Islamic fundamentalization. With that went complete control of the oil fields and the rich mineral deposits being found in the deserts. With such power, the cabal would not only achieve hegemony over all Arabs, but would be as rich economically as any superpower. So far they had done nothing but threaten.
It was also Jacob Chernow who had told Tyreen the cabal was poised to escalate.
The mullahs now wanted to launch a jihad, a holy war, sending their hordes storming through Arab countries and creating fear and panic around the world. The adventurism of Saddam Hussein would pale in comparison. It would be the greatest single uprising mankind would have seen.
At their last meeting, Chernow had brought the news that the cabal was transferring the two million US dollars to Bangkok. Everything else had flowed from that.
Had the mullahs provided the money for the bagman to vanish into the jungle with a quantity of Anthrax-B-C, and had they found in Raza the one person prepared to use it?
Her mission had only just begun
As Tyreen began the long walk out of China, she knew she had to have another meeting with Jacob Chernow as soon as possible.
Faruk Kadumi now accepted that those who had known him at the height of his success would now hardly recognize him as the slim, svelte surgeon who had operated on Europe's rich and famous. His face was coarsened and bloated, the once finely shaped nose lumped and twisted slightly, the result of a recent driving accident. His body had an unhealthy toadlike shape, which the cumbersome anticontamination suit emphasized.
Designed to protect against biological and chemical agents, the suit's charcoal-coated cloth chafed his skin, and the gloves and foot coverings made it difficult to walk and handle anything.
The hood and respirator, with its gelatine filters, made him feel nauseous and dizzy.
He had found he could not remain in the suit for longer than an hour. After each practice run, he'd taken a whiff of ether from the hip flask he constantly carried with him. He still found sniffing both relaxed and excited him. He also knew he was powerless to kick a habit that had ended his illustrious career.
He'd been hooked, of course, long before that day he'd killed a patient he'd operated on after sniffing. Because of whe he was, colleagues had covered up --- but had insisted he must retire. Within a year, his childless marriage was over and he had returned to Algiers, embittered against his profession and France. In Algiers, he'd found ready work treating the city's criminals. His fame had spread, and soon he was operating on Raza's Feydeheen wounded on missions.
Raza had paid his exorbitant fees, and Kadumi was now a millionaire in any currency. But he knew he was as hopelessly tied to Raza as he was to his addiction. Raza had told him he could have anything --- as long as he continued to obey.
Faruk Kadumi's Faustian bargain had brought him to the bunker to prepare a sample of the Anthrax-B-C.
As he had once done for any particularly difficult and dangerous surgical procedure, he had prepared carefully, immersing himself in the literature Raza had provided on biological weapons. Kadumi had paid special attention to the top-secret manual smuggled out of China. It had been vital in creating the conditions in which he could work safely.
A completely sterile laboratory and decontamination chamber had been built at one end of the bunker. Access was through airlocked doors. Inside, the lab's air supply was filtered. The lab was equipped like those at the State Research Institute at Chengdu that handled Anthrax-B-C.
In the event of an emergency, there was a built-in self-destruct system. Several thousand gallons of petrol were stored in a tank above the lab's false ceiling. At the press of a button, the ceiling would collapse, releasing the fuel. Gas jets built into the walls would automatically ignite and the lab would become an instant fireball. The manual had explained only a temperature in excess of one thousand degrees Celsius was capable of destroying Anthrax-B-C.
The image of being incinerated made Kadumi once more sweat as soon as he put on the hood. The pungent aroma from the respirator's filter began to fill his nose and mouth.
Forcing himself to ignore the several destruct buttons positioned within easy reach of the walls, Kadumi cast his eyes over the stainless-steel lab table in the center of the room.
He had laid out his instruments the same neat way he would for any operation.
At the far end of the table were two vials filled with perfume. Standing in neat rows were small empty bottles.
Kadumi picked one up in his heavy gloved hand. He'd broken several before he'd mastered the knack of doing so.
He brought it close to his visor. The bottle was a striking shape, octagonal and made of dark green glass. It bore an elegantly scripted label printed in gold:
|
Raza had told him he had spent weeks rejecting designs before he was satisfied. The bottles had been specially blown in Hong Kong. Raza had paid over the odds. But the glassmaker had not lived to enjoy his profiteering. The local cartel had killed him on Raza's orders.
Kadumi remembered how Raza had relished telling he story. He felt the sweat seeping from his body.
He looked at the wall clock. It was time to open the deep-freeze chest standing beside the table.
There was a hiss as the airlock disengaged and the door opened. Into the room came three women. They were all dressed in anticontamination suits. The younger two had struck him as more of the serious and totally committed women drawn to Raza. All Kadumi had been told was that they were Greek.
With them was Lila. Even now, she was striking. Her thick, red hair cascaded around her face behind the visor and, despite the cumbersome suit, she moved with easy grace.
This past week, she had spent most of her time with Raza in the well-equipped broadcast studio at the far end of the bunker. Kadumi had known better than to ask what they had been doing. Raza's fury at being questioned was legendary.
After sealing the airlock, Lila turned to the Greek girls. "Watch carefully. Anything you don't understand, ask." The microphone built into the respirator metalicized her voice. She then turned to Kadumi. "Doctor, you can begin."
He motioned for hem to stand on the opposite side of the table. His mike made his swallowing sound like a burp. "I would like to start with a reminder. We are dealing here with the ultimate weapon. Cheap to produce. Not needing complicated dispensing techniques or equipment. And guaranteed to work."
He saw he had their attention, the way he had once held medical students in thrall.
"What we have here is a refinement of thousand of years of man's learning how to harness the forces of Nature for his own end. Three thousand years ago, our ancestors introduced diseased carcasses into the water supply of their enemies. Later, they deliberately infected their prisoners with the plague and drove them in among the enemy. The Spartans did that when they laid siege to Athens. Ten thousand a day died in the city. Since then, more people have been killed by such means than any other. The Black Death killed a thousand times more people in Medieval Europe than died at Hiroshima. Man has come a long way, and today there are over two hundred diseases which can kill or incapacitate by biological attack..."
"Doctor, can you move on?" Lila interrupted brusquely.
Kadumi bit back his anger. Not for the first time had Lila reminded him of her power as one of Raza's longest-serving aides. He smiled weakly behind his visor. "Raza wishes you to be absolutely clear of the power of he weapon he has entrusted to you. So you will listen to what I have to say. And that includes you, Lila."
"Doctor, let's not waste time arguing!" said Lila.
"Very well. Anthrax-B-C has been designed to kill by skin contact, inhalation, or in water. In each case, once inside the body, the spores produce a high temperature, throat swelling, a severe cough, severe respiratory problems, and internal damage. The fever inflames the brain and leads to raving and hallucinating. At death, corpses have a blackened appearance, like the Black Death..."
"Get on with it, doctor," snapped Lila. "Just tell us the best way to distribute the stuff."
Her sudden explosive fury startled the Greeks and made Kadumi blanch. He picked up a bottle. "One way would be to introduce it into an underground transport system, such as the Tube in London or the Metro in Paris. The CIA showed it could be done when they introduced a harmless agent into the air-conditioning system of the New York subway a few years ago. If it had been the real thing, up to a million people could have been infected."
Kadumi was gratified to hear the gasps from the Greeks.
"What precautions would we have to take when releasing the bottles?" asked the shorter of the Greek girls.
Kadumi sighed. Raza had ordered him to downplay the risks with dissemination. "You would need to wear some sort of face covering and gloves."
"How about using a small electrical timer that would break the bottle after it was in place?" asked Lila.
Kadumi nodded. "That would certainly work, but it would be less effective. Breaking the bottle would release all the contents at once. The most effective way is to release it slowly."
"What about in water?" asked Lila quickly.
Kadumi looked at the bottle. "Dropped in a small reservoir, this would be lethal."
"Okay, we've got the message. Let's get on," said Lila crisply.
Kadumi flushed inside his hood. He put down the bottle, turned, and shuffled to the ice chest. Removing the cylinder, he placed it on the table. He unscrewed the cap and the metal separated. The frozen Anthrax-B-C gleamed in the shadowless overhead lights.
He deliberately waited before continuing. "At forty degrees below freezing, the anthrax spore is dormant. Unlike other agents, it can be repeatedly thawed and frozen without losing any of its potency. In theory, you could go on doing that for a hundred years. The important thing to remember is that a fraction of a degree above zero, the anthrax becomes lethal. And it gives no warning it is active. Detection and a positive identification require appreciable time and very expert clinical diagnosis. It is designed so that doctors would diagnose its effects as pneumonia. By the time they have realized their mistake, their patients would be dead."
"Doctor, will you start preparing a bottle?" asked Lila. "I have a plane to catch."
Kadumi's mouth tightened. Clammy rivulets of sweat were now running down his body. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could be out of this suffocating suit. He picked up some surgical tongs and carefully removed the frozen shape from the cylinder. He placed it between two steel blocks fixed to the table and fitted with tightening screws. Slowly he tightened the screws until the shape was held firmly with the minimum pressure to avoid its breaking.
He spoke without looking at anyone. "The technology is simple. What is important is never to rush."
He reached for a surgeon's high-speed electric saw. A low whine filled the air as he moved the saw steadily along the top of the shape to cut a thin, unbroken slice. He switched off the saw and picked up a par of spatulas, inserting the broad steel blades under the slice and removing it to a cutting board.
He glanced at the Greeks. Both were staring wide-eyed at the sliver.
He picked up a long-bladed scalpel and cut the sliver into equal segments. Using a pair of tweezers, he dropped the sliver into the perfume bottle. In moments, he had transferred all the segments.
Holding the first bottle firmly in his hand, he turned to a vat. "Here, hold this," he said, giving the bottle to Lila.
She gripped it between her padded fingers.
Kadumi picked up a syringe and began to fill it from the vat. The perfume was a pale honey color and oily-looking. "It's a clove-and-aloe base," he explained. "The requisite perfume smell remains even when the anthrax is diluted."
"Diluted?" asked the taller Greek girl, speaking for the first time.
Kadumi turned from the vat with a full syringe. "When mixed with a standard saline solution, the kind you can get from any medical supplier, Anthrax-B-C retains eighty percent of its original potency."
He nodded toward the bottle in Lila's hand. "You could dilute its contents to produce forty, maybe fifty bottles. Each of those bottles would still have a capability of killing several hundred people. In theory, you could continue to dilute and know the guaranteed effects would still be to produce widespread serious illness. You will not need to do that, of course. Long before then, people will have understood the potency of this weapon." He began to fill the bottom with perfume.
The tall Greek broke the silence. "Can this be transmitted from one person to another?"
He answered without taking his eyes off the bottle and syringe. "No. It's not like the plague. You can't drop it into the sewers and hope the rats will do the job for you. It'll kill them before they could run the length of a drain. But unlike all other biological viruses, fungi, and toxins, Anthrax-B-C does not remain active in the dead for more than twenty-four hours. In that time, it can, under certain circumstances, be passed on." He put the empty syringe on the table.
"What circumstances?" asked the shorter Greek.
Kadumi shrugged. "One you are not likely to encounter --- an autopsy. If someone came into contact with infected blood or body fluid in that twenty-four hour period, it could be fatal. But primarily, Anthrax-B-C is designed for battlefield conditions --- fast-acting over a limited time."
He took the bottle from Lila, corked and then sealed it by placing the bottle neck in a mold of melted red wax. He handed the bottle back to her. While the Greeks continued to watch, he began to cut a second slice.
Lila walked to the hatch leading to a small decontamination chamber. Spinning the wheel that opened the hatch and stepping into the airlock, she closed the door behind her, spinning another wheel to lock it securely. Using the same method, she opened the door into the chamber.
Putting the bottle on a shelf, she stripped out of her suit. Under it, she was wearing only panties. Removing those, she placed them with the suit on a chute and pulled a lever on the wall. A panel opened in the wall into which the chute slid. She caught a blast of heat before the panel closed, consigning the clothes to the electrical furnace buried in the sand behind the bunker.
She then repeatedly showered and scoured herself with a solution of fuller's earth, a clay-based decontamination powder. Afterward, she dried herself under a powerful blowdryer set in the ceiling.
Holding the bottle, she opened the airlock on the other side of the chamber and entered a changing room. She dressed in the clothes she had chosen for her long journey --- jeans, hand-tooled calf-fitting boots, and a blouse that emphasized her large pointed breasts and narrow boyish hips. She studied her reflection quickly in the wall mirror. Her skin had the luster of health and youth. No one would believe she was a year from her fortieth birthday.
She put on the distinctive denim jacket with its multiplicity of pockets for exposed film, a light meter, and all the other accoutrements of a professional photographer. She checked an inside pocket for the American passport, Time ID card, and the letter on the magazine's letterhead stating she was a freelancer on assignment. The documents had been provided by the cabal at Raza's request.
Stashing the bottle in the bag filled with cameras, Lila walked out of the room.
The Jeep that had brought the bagman was waiting outside. The driver had stowed in the back the travel holdall she had packed earlier. When he attempted to take the bag and place it beside the holdall, she shook her head. Instead, she carefully placed the bag beside her on the front seat.
From the darkness of the villa's verandah, voice softly called in Arabic. "Good luck, Lila. I am depending on you."
She smiled. Raza never forgot the importance of such reminders.
"You may depend on me," she called out, nudging the driver with her elbow.
The Jeep headed out across the desert. It seemed to be filling with its own sounds as it cooled. Then Lila realized she was listening to the beat of her own heart.
Jacob Chernow saw Walter Bitburg had not managed his usual mastery over his eyes. Gray, like everything else about Mossad's Director, they had started to carom soon after Chernow and his guest had come into this windowless room adjoining Bitburg's office.
That was like a rich man's library, walled with leather-tooled books, and dominated by a seventeenth-century desk an earlier Bitburg had fled with from Germany the year Hitler came to power. This small cheerless room with its matching gray walls and ceiling, gray metal table, around which three men and one girl now sat, was known as Bitburg's Bunker.
It was almost unprecedented for an outsider such as the girl with the long black hair to be allowed in. Especially a girl who appeared to be in her twenties.
The Director's eyes reminded Chernow of balls being repeatedly struck by a cue in Bitburg's head. What else was going on in there, going round and round? Bitburg's way was to keep everything in separate compartments, each labeled with the amount of proof they contained. When Bitburg thought there wasn't sufficient evidence, his eyes led a life of their own. They continued to carom as Chernow explained.
"Even before she," a tilt of his head indicated the tall, black-haired girl sitting on his right, "returned to Bangkok, all traces of the Arabs had been removed, Walter. Hotel reservations, airline bookings. Their names had even been wiped off the Immigration computers. Only the cabal could do that. And those mullahs would only do so if it was important."
Bitburg leaned forward, the light from the neon strip catching his thick glasses. "And the bank? Any proof it actually paid over two million dollars?"
The girl showed neither impatience nor irritation. "I saw the man count the money, sir."
"Surely not the whole amount? That would have taken an hour."
The girl wondered if Bitburg's glasses were to protect his eyes from realty as well as to see better. "I wouldn't know, sir. I've never counted a couple of million dollars."
The silence returned, creating more than distance between them. It was something wider and deeper.
"What I'm trying to establish is supportive evidence. Something tangible. Which I fear is lacking here."
She continued staring at Bitburg with her piercing blue eyes, remembering again what had happened at the clearing, each distinct, detachable, unforgettable moment.
Bitburg turned the Chinese ID cards over, inspecting them carefully. He then turned back to Chernow. "If I understand, everything you two are suggesting flows from these?"
"It's more than a suggestion, Walter."
Bitburg placed the cards on the table. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Jacob. When you first brought Chengdu to our attention, I recall you made a particular point that the plant was actually close to the route China's own smugglers use to run in and out of the Golden Triangle. And that there were two or three cocaine-processing labs operating in the vicinity of the plant itself. Is my memory correct, Jacob?"
"There are now four labs."
Bitburg pursed his lips. "Four? I see." He glanced quickly at the cards. "I also recall your saying some of the people at Chengdu could be involved in a little moonlighting. Lending their skills to those labs."
"Yes. But not this time."
Bitburg once more picked up the cards. "All these IDs prove is that the two men worked at the plant. Nothing to show they smuggled anything out. Or that the other man even worked their. And he could have been a drug smuggler. He could have been anybody. And there's nothing to do with Raza."
"I heard one of them, sir," the girl said, "just before those damned headphones blew up on me."
Bitburg glanced at the papers before him. His voice was dry and precise when he looked up at her. "Yes. I'm sure you will register your disappointment with your Q Branch when you return to London. But these things happen, I suppose, when people are too eager to prove something works." His eyes resumed caroming. "What you heard was '-za.' That's what your own report says, '-za.' That could have been a reference to Gaza. There are a hundred Arab names and places that end in '-za.' Jacob can tell you that." Bitburg lowered his eyes, as if the papers would confirm all this.
Bitburg looked up at Chernow. " '-za,' Jacob. That's all. It could refer to anybody, anyplace, anything."
"Is that what you want to believe, Walter?" Chernow asked softly, his eyes never leaving Bitburg. "You think I don't know by now when it's Raza? That those Arabs were his people? You really think that?"
"But I need something more than that before I go to the Prime Minister."
The third man at the table shrugged. Chernow always liked the way Danny Nagier conveyed contempt by the merest lift of a shoulder. "Our intercepts clearly show the two million went to the Thai bank, Director." For a man who often spent his time listening to whispers, Nagier had a loud voice.
Bitburg's eyes momentarily steadied. "But your intercepts don't show what the money was for."
"No, we don't know. But I'd bet on Jacob having it right," boomed Nagier. In the Yom Kippur War, he'd lost his left eye, leaving the socket covered with a patch. It had done nothng to lessen his skill at directing all of Mossad's electronic surveillance. At fifty-five, he still led from the front. He turned to the girl. "Any idea how much of this Anthrax-B-C could be in that bag?"
She had thought about little else since she'd left the clearing. "I'd say around a pound. A couple of ounces, properly dispersed, could kill thousands. A pound, tens of thousands, maybe more."
"My God!" roared Nagier.
Bitburg's eyes resumed caroming. "But we don't know. That bag could have contained anything! The collective wisdom in the Intelligence community is that he's in no position to do anything spectacular. The business in Berlin and London has hurt him badly. The loss of his patron, Saddam, even more so. If Raza's doing anything, it's probably protecting drug runners." He sat back in his chair, looking from Nagier to the girl to Chernow, but never allowing his eyes to settle. "The Americans, the Brits," he nodded to the girl, "everyone says the same thing. Raza's shot his bolt with those two failures. These mullahs, if they're only half as smart as you seem to think, won't want to put their money on Raza."
Chernow shook his head. "He's a terrorist, Walter. He thrives on action. He guarantees escalation if his demands are not met. And he lives off unpleasant surprises. Everything I know about him says he's about to spring another one."
"Proof, Jacob --- where's your proof? Show me that and I'll go to the Prime Minister."
Nagier gave another shrug. The girl said nothing. Chernow folded his arms, watching Bitburg resume reading.
After she and Chernow had returned to Tel Aviv from Bangkok, it had taken them a morning to write their reports and go through the usual oral debriefings.
Bitburg looked up. "There's really nothing here to make me change my view."
"There's nothing more, Walter," said Chernow.
"Not unless you want a blow-by-blow, sir," added the girl.
"Thank you, no." Bitburg disliked details of violence; they jarred with all his fine theories of geopolitics.
The gray silence returned, matching Bitburg's dark gray banker's suit. He had become Director after another of those purges that periodically ran through Mossad. A real banker, thought Chernow. Put it on paper. Plus a copy for the file.
Bitburg cleared his throat and looked at the girl. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always understood that, caught in time, anthrax could be successfully treated with penicillin?"
Her voice was measured and certain. "The Chinese have made sure that Anthrax-B-C will not respond to any of the usual medical countermeasures. Atropine and pralidoxine would be totally useless --- not that they offer much protection against any of the other biological weapons. But the only possible defense against Anthrax-B-C could be the new PEG-enzyme. It's a byproduct of the present AIDS research. The theory is that for Anthrax-B-C it would have to be given in the first few hours of exposure to have a chance. Then massive doses at six-hour intervals for the next forty-eight hours. Until it's tried, no one really knows."
"But I'm still recommending we get our labs to start producing the stuff in sufficient quantities," Chernow said. "I'd also recommend we tell our allies to stockpile as well." The girl nodded in agreement.
Bitburg's eyes caromed as if he was going for the winning break. "So what do we have? A drug that may or may not work? And expensive to produce --- right?"
The girl's glance was as steady as her voice. "Very expensive. And yes, no absolute guarantee it will do the job."
Bitburg's voice was as thin as his hair. "Yet you want everybody rushing to produce the stuff?"
"Because it's the only logical thing to do," Chernow said.
"The only logical thing to do," repeated Bitburg. "Sometimes, Jacob, I wish you wouldn't sound so English. Move away too far from your upbringing and faith, my father used to say, and you move away from what's important."
"Going to Cambridge didn't make me less of a Jew, Walter. It just showed me that faith's not a prison."
Bitburg smiled thinly. "You argue like a Jesuit."
"I hope I sound like someone who wants you to act on our recommendations."
Bitburg looked down at the papers, his refuge. Nagier turned to Chernow. "How long will it take to produce sufficient quantities?" he asked.
"Ten days, if our labs work around the clock, Danny. That should proved enough for every man, woman, and child in this country. I don't know how long it would take our allies to tool up."
Bitburg raised his eyes and held up a hand before the girl could say anything. "There's nothing here to justify that kind of extreme action. Making connections out of very little I one thing, but the pieces you've produced belong to different puzzles, Jacob. Those that do fit together suggest you interrupted a drug deal in that clearing."
Chernow let the silence stretch before answering. "Why not take it to the Prime Minister? Let Karshov decide, Walter."
"The Prime Minister expects me to decide, Jacob." The harsh overhead strip light emphasized the vein that had started to throb in Bitburg's forehead. "Accepting you've overlooked nothing, what do we have? Three dead Arabs no one's going to mourn, but still a messy business. If the Chinese find out, it could rule out any hope of détente with Beijing."
A clock struck the half-hour in Bitburg's office. He'd been given the grandfather clock to mark his sixtieth birthday. By then, Bitburg was long embalmed in his own certainties.
The Director cleared his throat. "And those children, was there no way to warn them?"
"No, sir, there was not." There was no emotion in the girl's voice.
"I see. Let's hope their deaths are not laid at our door. Or yours. That would cause..."
"I didn't kill them, sir."
Nagier broke the silence. "One of those scientists at Chengdu could have been bribed, Director..."
"Why didn't your people pick up the bagman?" snapped Bitburg.
Nagier shrugged. "My people are good. But miracles they leave to God."
"There were a hundred ways home for the bagman, sir," said the girl. "There isn't a surveillance system that could cover them all."
Chernow spoke. "Danny is right --- almost certainly a scientist was bought."
Bitburg's eyes suddenly steadied. " 'Almost,' Jacob? But no proof, right?"
Chernow stared at Bitburg, saying nothing.
The Director continued, his voice even thinner. "To get that stuff out, a lot of people would need to have been bribed. And the chances of discovery would increase with each one. Chengdu, as I recall, has a high security rating."
Chernow breathed out slowly. "Because of that, they wouldn't expect anyone to try and break it. Those two guards would be all that scientist would have needed. And he'd take them along to make sure Raza's people played fair and square."
"Pure speculation. But given you are determined to reject a drug connection, let me give you something to think about. We all know the Chinese are once more doing a thriving business as armorer to the Middle East. Those Arabs could have been a weapons paymaster and escort from Libya or Syria."
"We can't give you the proof you need, Walter, for sure. But if there's one thing I've learned in this business, it is to trust my own gut feeling. And hers," he inclined his head to the girl. "And those tell us Raza could have a quantity of Anthrax-B-C."
Bitburg pounced. " 'Could have,' Jacob? You expect me to go to the Prime Minister and say Raza 'could have' this stuff? And would he please ring up London and Washington and anywhere else where he might get a hearing and say, 'Excuse me, we could have a terrorist who could have this new kind of anthrax?' Men have been sent to the Negev for less. I need a lot more than that, Jacob, a lot more. You know --- we all know --- our relationship with our allies is not what it used to be. They didn't listen to us when we warned about Saddam Hussein before he walked into Kuwait. Then, we gave them chapter and verse. Now you expect them to listen just because of... a gut feeling?"
"Walter, the political end I leave up to you and the Prime Minister. All I know is any threat by Raza to use the anthrax would not be against just us. The whole world would be at risk."
"Would you like to expand?"
For a long moment, Chernow remained silent. Then in a quiet voice, he began. "When that old madman Khomeini was ranting and raving, he wanted Iran to fight the world. But after what happened to Saddam, Khomeini's successors learned a lesson. The way to win was not by head-on confrontation, but through surrogates." He looked at Nagier. "Two of those intercepts from Lebanon were calls to Teheran, right?"
"Right," replied Nagier. "To the mullah, Ali Akbar Muzwaz. To arrange for two million dollars to go to Bangkok."
Chernow turned back to Bitburg. "When I was last in Teheran, Muzwaz was already firmly established as leader of the cabal. Khomeini's old war chest for financing trouble was in their control. There could be a hundred million dollar there. It's on deposit in half the banks in Geneva. The interest alone could finance a lot of problems, for sure. And you know hard it is to get anything out of the Swiss, Walter, let alone agree now to freeze that money."
Bitburg's quick, reluctant nod confirmed the machinations of a world he knew well.
Chernow continued. "The virulent fundamentalists haven't magically gone away. They've just learned not to shout so crazily, that softly-softly works as well. Of course, when we say that in London or Washington, let alone Paris, we are accused of being hardliners." Nagier nodded vigorously. "The cabal know how to exploit this. How to tap a couple of hundred million minds. All of whom believe their leader, their Imam, has been waiting in the desert for several hundred years for the right moment to launch his version of Islamic purity. The mullahs preach he can only do so if there is a bloodbath. That before the Imam can return, Israel must be destroyed. That the last Jew must be violently removed from this land. But since the Gulf War, the mullahs also know the West would never allow that. So the cabal need to recruit someone to frighten the West so badly that even the United States will try ad persuade us to voluntarily give up this land. My gut feeling tells me the mullahs have turned to Raza."
"What does he get?" Nagier's voice was an unaccustomed whisper.
"Respectability, for sure. Justification for his terrorism. Killing in the name of the Prophet sanctifies it. He can present himself as a Saladin, all the heroes of the Koran rolled into one. Raza's the archetypal thug posing as the ultimate patriot."
Bitburg took longer than usual to clear his throat. "An instructive reminder. But let's get back to this China business. All I know is that the CIA, the Germans, and the British, who are all thick on the ground in China, have assured me they have not heard a single whisper that any anthrax has come out of Chengdu. And, despite their best efforts, they have also failed to trace this bagman." He picked up a sheet of paper. "The CIA sent a team at my specific request to the clearing. They found nothing. Not even a spent bullet."
"Why did you ask the CIA to get involved?" Chernow asked before the girl could. His voice was dangerously calm.
"Because they were the nearest. Because I decided to..."
"You don't do that, Walter. Ever. You don't do anything involving my work without first checking with me." Eyes fixed on Bitburg, Chernow sat perfectly still, as did the girl who had gotten involved at Chernow's personal request.
When Mossad had come headhunting in his last year at Cambridge, he had responded to the appeal to patriotism, the mystique surrounding the agency, and the knowledge that its intelligence was more detailed, wide-ranging, and up-to-date than anyone else's. But he'd also said he didn't want a desk job. The recruiter had replied, we'll talk when you've proven yourself.
Chernow had done so in all those places where Israel's interests were threatened. Finally, he'd been offered a teaching post, to spot talent, and the chance to run Operations. He had accepted both on condition he didn't answer to anyone. A tough and pragmatic Prime Minister agreed. Successive Prime Ministers went on doing so.
Bitburg finally forced a weak smile. "No offense intended, Jacob."
Chernow suddenly felt tired --- tired and wasted. He wanted an end to this nonsense. "The CIA should know that Raza's a tidy housekeeper, Walter. His local people would have done the kind of cleanup we do."
"Very well. I will send your report to the Prime Minister. But I will also recommend we do nothing until we have more evidence."
Chernow pushed back and stood up. Bitburg had made another of his banker's decisions. Without another word, he walked from the gray room, Tyreen Mackenzie following at his heels.
It was time to go and see someone else. Maybe The Syrian could provide Bitburg's proof.
