I was finished.
'Don't move,' the man said to me with a foreign accent.
My brain searched for an out, but I was too far away. The first man rose to his feet. He was still breathing hard. We looked at each other, our eyes met, and I saw something strange there. Not hatred. Respect maybe. I don't know.
I looked at the man with the gun again.
'Don't move,' he said a second time. 'And don't follow us.'
Then they both ran away.
19
I stumbled to the elevator. I hoped that I could make it to my room without being seen, but the elevator stopped in the lobby. A family of six Americans looked at me, at my torn shirt and bleeding mouth and all the rest of it, and still got on and said, 'Hi!' For the next few floors I heard the big sister picking on the brother and the mother begging them to stop and the father trying to ignore them and the other two siblings pinching each other when the parents weren't looking.
When I got to the room, Terese freaked out, but only briefly. She helped me in and called Win. Win arranged for a doctor. The doctor came quickly and declared nothing broken. I would be okay. My head hurt, probably from a concussion. I craved rest. The doctor gave me something and everything became a little fuzzy. The next thing I remember was sensing Win standing across the dark room. I opened one eye, then the other.
Win said, 'You're an idiot.'
'No, I'm fine, really, don't start with all the concern.'
'You should have waited for me.'
'Nobody likes a Monday morning quarterback.' I struggled to sit up. My body was somewhat willing; my head shrieked in protest. I grabbed my skull with both hands, trying to keep it from splitting open.
'I think I learned something,' I said.
'I'm listening.'
The curtains were still open. Darkness had fallen. I looked at my watch. It was ten PM now, and I remembered something. 'The graveyard,' I said.
'What about it?'
'Are they exhuming the body?'
'You still want to go?'
I nodded and quickly got dressed. I didn't bother saying good-bye to Terese. We had discussed it earlier-she saw no reason to be there. Win had a limo pick us up at the front entrance, pull into a private lot, and then we changed cars.
'Here,' Win said.
He handed me a mini-revolver, the NAA Black Widow. I looked at it. 'A twenty-two?'
Win usually favored larger weapons. Like, say, bazookas or rocket launchers.
'The UK has some pretty strict laws against carrying a firearm.' He handed me a nylon ankle holster. 'Better to keep it concealed.'
'Is that what you're carrying?'
'Heavens no. Do you want something bigger?'
I didn't. I strapped it onto my ankle. It reminded me of a brace I used when I played basketball.
When we arrived at the cemetery, I expected to be more ghouled out, if you will, but I wasn't. The two men were standing in the hole, almost done. They both wore matching aqua blue velour sweat suits from my aunt Sophie's Miami collection. The majority of the digging had been done earlier in the day by a small yellow excavator that sat to the right as if looking down at its handiwork. The two velour-clad gents just needed to scrape the coffin enough to open it and remove a few samples, some bone or something, and then they could close it back up and pour the dirt back over the contents.
Okay, maybe now I was feeling ghoulish.
A misty rain fell upon us. I stood and looked down. Win did too. It was dark, but our eyes had adjusted enough to see the shadows. The men were bent low now, almost out of sight.
'You said you learned something.'
I nodded. 'The men following me. They spoke Hebrew and knew Krav Maga.'
Krav Maga is an Israeli martial art.
'And,' Win added, 'they were good.'
'You see where I'm going with this?'
'A good tail, good fighter, got away without killing you, spoke Hebrew.' Win nodded. 'Mossad.'
'Explains all the interest.'
Below us, we heard one of the men curse.
'Is there a problem?' Win called down.
'They put a bleeding lock on these things,' a voice said. He flicked on the flashlight. Now all we could see was the coffin. 'For cripes' sake, why? My house doesn't have a lock this strong. We're trying different keys.'
'Break it,' Win said.
'You sure?'
'Who's going to know?'
The two men forced up a laugh the way, well, men digging up a grave might. 'True, right that,' one said.
Win turned his attention back to me. 'So why would Rick Collins be involved with Mossad?'
'No clue.'
'And why would a car accident from ten years ago reach a level where the Israeli secret service would show interest?'
'Again, no clue.'
Win thought about it. 'I will call Zorra. Maybe she can help.'
Zorra, a very dangerous cross-dresser who had helped us out in the past, had worked for Mossad in the late eighties.
'That could work.' I thought about it. 'Suppose the guy I hit with the table was Mossad. That might explain a few things.'
'Like why Interpol would freak out when we tried to get an ID,' Win said.
I thought about that. 'But if he was Mossad, so was the guy I shot.'
Win thought about that. 'We don't know enough yet. Let's contact Zorra and see what she can find out.'
We heard exertion and scraping and pounding from below. Then a voice called up, 'Got it!'
We looked down. The flashlight showed two sets of hands pulling up on the lid. The men grunted from the effort. The casket looked regulation size. That surprised me. I had expected something smaller for a seven-year- old girl. But maybe that was the point, right? Maybe that was what was saving me from feeling overly ghoulish-I didn't think we would find a seven-year-old's skeleton.
I really didn't want to watch anymore so I stepped away. I was here just to observe, to make sure they actually took a sample from the grave. This was crazy enough without knowing that everything involving this test was rock solid. If it came back negative, I didn't want anyone saying, 'But how do you know it was from the right grave?' or 'Maybe they just said they dug but didn't.' I wanted to eliminate as many variables as possible.
'Got the casket opened,' one of the diggers called up.
I saw Win look down. Another voice floated up from the hole in a whisper. 'Sweet Jesus.'
Then silence.
'What?' I asked.
'A skeleton,' Win said, still peering down. 'Small. Probably a child's.'
Everyone just stood there frozen.
'Get a sample,' Win said.
