Straits of Power

“The radio. Translate next time they broadcast.”

“Right.” Meltzer perched on the base of the ladder.

“Anything I can do to help?” Felix prodded Mohr.

“Yes. Stop interrupting me.”

The radio voice repeated, talking longer than before. Meltzer listened. “A policeman hasn’t made his regular check-in. The town station dispatcher is asking other patrolmen if they know where he is.”

“What are they saying?”

“I can’t tell. I think these portable radios are only strong enough to talk back and forth to the station’s big transceiver. We won’t hear another cop until he’s real close.”

The dispatcher spoke again. Meltzer translated. “They’ve asked some other policemen to look for the missing cop.”

“And, we know exactly where he is,” Felix said dryly.

“Yeah,” Meltzer said, fretting.

“Sit tight. Glue your ears to the radio.”

Felix turned to watch Mohr, for lack of anything better to do. Mohr’s elbows bobbed up and down as he tightened a dozen small nuts one by one with a ratchet wrench. The nuts held a boxy clamping device in position around the trunk cable. Mohr assembled lengths of interconnecting, rigid photon-wave guides, a bridge between the device and one of his modules. He shifted his stance, and began to operate controls on another module. He studied the readouts and didn’t look happy.

“Problem?” Felix asked. Please, no.

“I have other things to try first. Do not interrupt.”

Felix bit his tongue. Mohr was breathing harder and starting to sweat. The work chamber had gotten uncomfortably warm, from all the body heat plus Mohr’s equipment running. Felix wondered if Mohr’s intent all along had been to damage Israeli systems, not aid them. He remembered Captain Fuller’s orders to kill Mohr if the German behaved with deviousness. Felix tried to figure out what a devious Klaus Mohr would look like, as opposed to an absorbed Mohr or a worried Mohr. He drew a blank, having only annoyed Mohr by staring at him.

The radio spoke again. Before Felix could ask, Meltzer said the dispatcher was dealing with other routine business, not the missing cop.

Felix made a face. “There’s a point at which they’ll announce a town-wide alarm.”

“I know,” Meltzer said.

Mohr told them both to be quiet. He needed to concentrate.

“Turn off the radio,” Felix ordered.

“What?” Meltzer was surprised.

“Turn it off. It isn’t helping any of us.”

Chapter 45

As each minute went by, the heat building up in the work chamber grew more oppressive. Meltzer, with his fiber-optic expertise, would be a better aide for Mohr if he needed assistance. Felix popped his head out at street level to take a breather. The office buildings that had before been his guide to finding this manhole now seemed like vigilant sentries lined up against him. The street itself, his team’s route of escape, felt instead like a path that would lead more cops — or soldiers — directly to them. He wondered how much longer it could possibly be before someone looking out a window noticed that something was amiss. How soon before a patrol car searching for the cop drives by, and then stops? He worried that one or more of the Kampfschwimmer teams might be compromised somewhere, impairing Pandora but triggering a national alert that would rob Mohr of a chance to finish his job soon enough. These issues, Felix told himself, were beyond his ability to influence, so agonizing further would do no good.

Felix did the most reassuring, visible thing he could think of to delay any curious observers from grabbing a phone to dial 100, the Israeli national police. He left the manhole and sat down on its edge, his legs dangling inside; he stretched his arms, took a deep breath, and relaxed. He forced himself to not glance at his watch. He really didn’t want to know what time it was. So long as Mohr succeeded in injecting his quantum-teleportation computer patch, Israel would be protected, and their priority mission goal would be achieved. After that, making it back to Challenger was highly desirable, but basically was gravy. A pitched battle against armed Israelis would serve no purpose. It was better in that worst-case scenario to just surrender, and then try to keep mum long enough so the patch, designed to hide itself, couldn’t be removed before Germany’s worm took effect. The Mossad or Shin Bet would never believe the truth, as Felix understood it. They’d fixate on Mohr’s presence right away. Felix had to let Mohr be taken alive if this happened, presuming he still trusted Mohr by then, because Mohr’s knowledge was too valuable for him to die unnecessarily on Israel’s soil.

Felix asked himself, if it came to that, whether Mohr would be the first one to cave during interrogation or torture, or the last. Mohr was the oldest person on the team, had tremendous strength of character, and had already been tested emotionally in ways far beyond the best-imaginable SEAL training.

Felix sighed. A pleasant evening was coming on. He tried to enjoy what might be his last moments of freedom, or of life. To clear his mind, he gazed up at the sky.

“He’s finished.”

Felix was startled.

“He’s finished,” Meltzer repeated from the bottom of the ladder.

Felix flashed Meltzer a grin that, for the first time today, wasn’t faked. “Ready to pack up?”

Meltzer nodded. Felix waved to Salih, who’d taken charge of the part of the team that had stayed in the street. Felix helped heft the equipment cases through the manhole opening. Mohr climbed out, tired but satisfied.

Felix went in to do one last inspection. He made sure no tools were forgotten. The pistol sat on the amplifier; carrying it around, even concealed, would be too risky, too easily noticed or detected. Guile needed to serve from here on, not gunplay. The policeman, well cocooned by duct tape, very thoroughly secured, followed Felix with angry eyes.

“Someone will rescue you soon.”

The team made a beeline for the hostel where the dig van had dropped them off. The straight route was much shorter than the zigzag they’d taken in search of a useable manhole. Even so, it was mostly uphill, and the better part of two hours’ high tension in Zichron Yaakov had already been as draining as physical labor. Felix told everyone to think and behave as if a keg of cold beer awaited them at the hostel. This way they posed as a private maintenance crew just coming off duty, sweaty from a day in the field, eager for refreshment. Felix repressed the knowledge that soon, if not already, the police in and around the town would sound a full alert for their missing comrade — quickly leaving the cop’s assigned town-center patrol area was the only thing that had let the SEALs avoid an unpleasant encounter so far. But if they didn’t find the cop quickly, and release him to describe his attackers, they’d conclude he might have been kidnapped by terrorists, and a brutal manhunt would be on; neither scenario favored Felix’s team.

Felix also tried to squelch his lingering doubts about what Mohr had done, or failed to do, in the manhole with his quantum equipment.

At the hostel, Meltzer went inside to find a phone and call the van at the dig to come pick them up — American cash used at the hostel desk would buy him telephone tokens or a prepaid card.

We’re about to find out if cell phones have already died because of Kampfschwimmer quantum- hacker meddling.

Meltzer came back onto the sidewalk. “The van lady said she’s finishing a run to Haifa. She’ll be here in half an hour, maybe.”

Felix finally looked at his watch. He shook his head in disgust. “She the only van?”

Meltzer nodded. “The only one working this late on a Sunday.”

It was almost 6:43 P.M.; they’d didn’t have half an hour to sit around waiting. They had to reach the dig, reclaim their dive gear, suit up, grab a ride out to the underwater work area, swim to a prearranged murky spot to