The more they talked, the more mysterious it all became. Eventually, as she was leaving, Saul returned to her brothers.
“So have you heard from your brothers?”
“Not since they went overseas!” she replied, opening the door.
“When did they go overseas?” both parents asked in unison.
“Months ago,” she replied.
“No, you’re mistaken,” said Saul taking a note from the side table in the entrance hallway and passing it to his daughter.
She read it and looked at them in bewilderment. The note was from her brother and showed him pictured on a tank on the Israeli border. She looked at the date, it was just two weeks earlier. Saul handed her another two, likewise, showing her brothers and all dated at a time she knew they had been posted overseas.
Chapter 56
“Rebecca, Rebecca! Calm down! You have to remain calm!” Sam held her back but it was futile, the moment he let her go, she’d go straight for Deif.
Deif it seemed had resigned himself to his fate and sat quietly in the small kitchen chair they had perched him on. A small grimace appeared as each wave of pain from his broken arm hit home.
“Just five minutes, just leave me alone with him for five minutes!” she pleaded. Ultimately she knew that the information he had was far more important than her vengeance but she could try.
Sam was watching Deif as he fought to contain Rebecca. Something was wrong. The man looked serene. In fact, almost happy. He held information that would undoubtedly ruin his plot to destroy Israel and yet he wasn’t in the least annoyed or frustrated.
“Stop!” shouted Sam, shocking Rebecca into doing just that. She stopped pushing and stood still.
Sam walked towards Deif and felt the bullet whistle past him before it tore Deif’s right knee cap clean off. The second he had turned his back on her, she had whipped out her gun and taken the shot. Sam turned towards her as Deif crumpled to the floor, a contented smile revealing her thoughts. She placed the gun in the rear of her shorts and folded her arms. OK, she’d behave.
Sam lifted Deif whose arm and leg were obviously causing some discomfort. He struggled to sit up straight but did as well as he could manage. He was going to die the big man, thought Sam, for which he had to give the guy some credit. He had come across a lot of hard bastards who, when the chips were down, shat themselves and cried like babies. Deif was a man who believed in his cause.
“This can be easy or even more painful than it already has been and trust me, she’s just started. Where are the weapons?” asked Sam reasonably.
Deif just smiled in response. It was not the smile of a man panicking but a man smiling because he knew they’d never get it out of him. That was not an option. Everybody talked, no matter how hard or how much people thought they could tolerate pain, everybody talked and more importantly everybody in the game knew it.
Sam began to worry. Perhaps they did have the wrong guy. Maybe Deif wasn’t behind it all.
He tied Deif to the chair and walked Rebecca out of the room to speak to her privately.
“Are you sure this is the guy?”
“One hundred percent. I watched him plot this thing from the start. It’s definitely him.”
“He’s certain he’s beaten us. That is not a man accepting defeat through there. That’s a guy who knows we won’t beat him.”
Rebecca was no fool and she had picked up the same vibes. She had caught many of Deif’s men and made them all talk. This was very different from any one of those.
“Let me speak to him?” offered Rebecca.
Sam shook his head. “No, it’s too personal for you.”
“I’ll behave,” she said, ignoring Sam. Ultimately, this was her operation and Sam was a bystander. She walked back towards Deif, removing a few unsavory looking implements from a kitchen drawer on the way. The corkscrew seemed to catch Deif’s eye she thought and selected that first.
As she neared Deif, he smiled through the pain. “Rebecca, Rebecca Cohen I presume?”
Rebecca was taken aback at Deif knowing her name.
“I see you are surprised I know your name. Trust me, you are a very famous woman in our organization. To be honest, your beauty has been undersold. Had we known of your true beauty, we may have caught you ourselves. It makes you memorable. However, your talents and abilities I fear from my capture have certainly lived up to their reputation. To die at your hands will be an honorable death.”
“Who said anything about dying?” said Rebecca, lighting a lighter and heating the end of the corkscrew.
“The man responsible for killing your son, the man responsible for you having to watch your precious Joshua be blasted.”
Sam caught Rebecca as she flew at the mention of her son’s name. Despite Sam’s best efforts, her foot swung and caught Deif squarely on the jaw, sending him still tied to the chair across the room, emitting an ear piercing scream as his knee-capless leg crashed into the floor.
“He wants you to kill him, you fool!” screamed Sam as he put Rebecca down and straightened Deif once again.
Rebecca tried to maintain her breathing and heart rate as both were racing. She lit the lighter again and began to heat the corkscrew once more. She looked at Deif and figured which of the two was his biggest weakness, balls or eyes. It always came down to the balls and eyes with the really tough ones. She figured on the eyes. Deif liked to see the outcome of his actions, blindness for him would be his biggest weakness.
As Rebecca placed the tip of the white hot corkscrew next to his eyeball, Deif smiled. “You do not disappoint.” She had found his weakness almost straight away. “You were a worthy adversary,” he said moving his jaw.
Sam dived across the room, knocking Rebecca aside as he went to grab Deif’s mouth but it was too late. Deif had succeeded. He had beaten them.
Rebecca tried to understand what had happened but as Sam got up, the small white bubbles foaming from Deif’s breathless mouth said it all.
“Cyanide! The sneaky bastard had a cyanide pill! Shit!!!” exclaimed Sam.
“But we checked his mouth, it was empty,” said an exasperated Rebecca. Their only lead and probably the only person on the planet who knew where all the weapons were lay dead at their hands.
“False tooth, how fucking cold war is that?!”
Rebecca looked down at the dead Deif who had congratulated her. Cheeky bastard, she thought, kicking him in frustration. She called in the rest of the team. Hopefully they’d find something in the house that would help them. She needed some good news for Ben. This was their last hope.
Chapter 57
President Russell welcomed the small group into his office. Henry Preston, Jim Gates and Allan Johnson had maintained a somber mood while waiting in the Oval Office’s anteroom. Finally, they were called and entered the office. As the door closed behind them, Henry and Jim rushed forward to congratulate their man on becoming President. Both looked at Allan, surprised at his lack of enthusiasm for their President. Allan stepped forward and shook the President’s hand. Neither Jim or Henry were aware that he had already met and congratulated their President. Jim and Henry shared a look, there was something they were missing. It had always been a cat fight with Johnson. He always wanted to be the one that pleased Russell, always wanting to be favorite and now they had their man as President, he seemed very relaxed and most comfortable. The eager to please attitude had disappeared.
“Gentlemen, at last I can relax,” announced Russell, kicking his shoes off and sitting on a large sofa in front
