West stepped out from behind Wizard.
'Why hello, Jack,' Archer said familiarly. 'Haven't seen you since Desert Storm. Heard about what you did at that SCUD base outside
Basra. Very nice. And Israel appreciated your efforts; although we still don't know how you got out. My bosses said you were involved in this, which was why they sent me. They thought you would accept me more than you would a total stranger.'
'They were right, Ben,' West said. 'It's the only thing keeping you alive right now.'
'Don't shoot the messenger.'
'Why not?' West said and for the briefest of moments, Archer's confident air fell.
West said, 'I don't like having my hand forced, Ben, and you've got us over a barrel here.'
Archer said seriously, 'This is big, Jack. Affairs of state. Fate of the world and all that. This confrontation between Europe and the US has been coming for a long time. Let's just say, Israel always likes to be involved. If it makes you feel better, I have orders to place myself under your direct command.'
West pondered this a moment.
Then he said, 'No contact with home. No reporting back to Mossad until the mission is achieved.'
'I
'No reporting back to Mossad until the mission is achieved or I blow your brains out right now, Ben.'
Archer held up his hands, smiled. 'Can't argue with that. You've got a deal.'
The team was stunned—but they knew they didn't have any choice in the matter.
Either they allowed Archer to join their team or the Israelis would just advise the Americans of their mission.
How the Israelis had discovered them, they didn't know—but then the Mossad
What was also apparent, however, was that Israel did
Europe—which meant Israel had an interest in the mission succeeding. That was good.
The big question, however, was what Israel planned to do at the end of the mission. Could Archer and Israel be trusted then?
At first, hardly anyone even spoke to Archer—which the ever-cool Israeli didn't seem to mind at all.
But no man is an island, and one day he joined West as he carried out some repairs on the station . . . and so began the process of becoming part of the team.
And slowly, over the course of many months, by working and sweating and training with the others, he became accepted as one of them.
One member of their little community, however, always regarded Archer with great suspicion.
Saladin.
As an Arab and a Muslim, he distrusted the Israeli intensely, but he also knew that Archer's presence in Kenya was now a given.
He would often say that while he had to accept Archer's presence, he didn't have to like it.
As all this was happening, Lily's development was proceeding apace.
She was always inquisitive, always watching.
Watching Saladin go off into the big barn and disappear inside his explosives workshop. He was so sweet and cuddly, she renamed him Pooh Bear.
Watching the new man, Archer, go out to the western paddock and practise firing his ultralong Barrett sniper rifle at far-off targets—and hitting the target
Watching Witch Doctor do chin-ups. From an early age, she had loved his wild dreadlocked hair. He became Fuzzy.
Watching the two youngest troopers, Matador and Gunman, jog together, train together and drink together. This earned them their new callsigns: Noddy and Big Ears.
And, of course, watching Zoe.
Idolising Zoe.
Being the only twenty-something female Lily knew, it wasn't unexpected that Zoe would become her feminine role model.
And Zoe Kissane was a good role model. She could outlast the men in fitness tests, outwit most of them at dinner-table discussions, and she could often be found studying history books deep into the night.
It was not uncommon to find Lily sitting in an armchair late at
night beside Zoe, fast asleep with a book open, trying to imitate the pretty Irish woman.
Naturally, Lily called her Princess Zoe.
But above all, the one person Lily enjoyed watching most was Jack West Jr.
She would never forget the day in 2000 when Wizard had presented West with a shiny new silver arm.
With Zoe assisting, Wizard spent the whole day attaching the high-tech arm to West's left elbow, pausing every now and then to frown and say something like, 'The arm's CPU is experiencing interference from somewhere. Aziz, would you turn off the television set, please.' Eventually, he changed some frequencies on the arm's central processing unit and it worked to his satisfaction.
The four-year-old Lily had watched them keenly as they worked.
She was aware that West had lost his arm on the day she was born, in the process of saving her life, so she really wanted his new arm to work.
At the end of the day, the arm was on, and West flexed his new metal fingers. His new hand could actually grip things far more tightly and firmly than his natural right hand could.
True to his word, Wizard had built West an arm that was better than the one he'd been born with.
Other things about West intrigued Lily.
For one thing, of all the team at the farm, he hung out with her the least.
He didn't play with her.
He didn't teach her any special subject.
He would spend most days in his study, poring over old books—
Lily loved his study.
It had lots of cool stuff arrayed around its walls: sandstone tablets, a crocodile skull, the skeleton of some ape-like creature Lily couldn't recognise, and hidden in one corner, a glass jar filled with a very strange kind of rusty-red sand. On a secret mission of her own late one night, she discovered that the jar's lid was sealed tight, too tightly for her to open. It remained a mystery.
There was also a medium-sized whiteboard attached to the far wall, on which West had scribbled all sorts of notes and pictures. Things like:
After this West had noted:
One note on the board, however, caught Lily's eye.
It was at the very bottom corner of the whiteboard, under all the others, almost
Once, late at night, she had seen West staring at those words, tapping his pencil against his teeth, lost in thought.
