'The airport?' shouted Azra. 'We'll be picked up!'
'On the road before the airport. Someone will steal a garrison car and they'll pick us up.'
'I'll arrange for one of our contacts here in the city to drive you,' said Zaya Yateem. 'He'll be the one to whom you will give the location in Bahrain, the meeting ground. You have at least five hours before you leave.'
'We'll need clothes, a shower, and some rest,' said Azra. 'I can't remember when I last slept.'
I'd like to look around your operation,' remarked Kendrick, getting out of the chair. 'I might learn something.'
'Whatever you wish, Amal Bahrudi,' said Zaya Yateem, approaching Evan. 'You saved my dear brother's life and for that there are no adequate words to express my thanks.'
'Just get me to that airport by noon,' replied Kendrick, no warmth in his voice. 'Frankly, I want to get back to Germany as soon as possible.'
'By noon,' agreed the female terrorist.
'Weingrass will be here by noon!' exclaimed the Mossad officer to Ben-Ami and the five-man unit from the Masada Brigade. They were in the cellar of a house in the Jabal Sa'ali, minutes from the rows of English graves where scores of privateers were buried centuries before. The primitive stone basement had been converted into a control centre for Israeli intelligence.
'How will he get here?' asked Ben-Ami, who had taken the ghotra off his head, the blue jeans and loose dark shirt far more natural to him. 'His passport was issued in Jerusalem, not the most welcome of documents.'
'One does not question Emmanuel Weingrass. He undoubtedly has more passports than there are bagels in Tel Aviv's Jabotinsky Square. He says we are to do nothing until he arrives. “Absolutely nothing”, were his exact words.'
'You don't sound so disapproving of him as you did before,' said Yaakov, code name Blue, son of a hostage and leader of the Masada unit.
'Because I will not have to sign his expense vouchers! There'll be none. All I had to do was mention Kendrick's name and he said he was on his way.'
'That hardly means he won't submit his expenses,' countered Ben-Ami, chuckling.
'Oh, no, I was very specific. I asked him how much would it cost us for his assistance and he replied unequivocally, “Up yours, this is on me!” It's an American expression that absolves us from payment.'
'We're wasting time!' cried Yaakov. 'We should be scouting the embassy. We've studied the plans; there are a half-dozen ways we might enter and get out with my father!'
Heads snapped and eyes widened at the young leader called Blue. 'We understand,' said the Mossad officer.
'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that.'
'You of all people have every right to say it,' said Ben-Ami.
'I shouldn't have. I apologize again. But why should we wait for this Weingrass?'
'Because he delivers, my friend, and without him we may not.'
'I see! You people in the Mossad turn flip-flops. Now it's the American you want to help, not our original objective! Damn it, yes, my father!'
'The result could be one and the same, Yaakov—’
‘I'm not Yaakov!' roared the young leader. 'To you I am only Blue—the son of a father who watched his own father and mother pulled apart in Auschwitz as they clung to each other before each was driven into the showers of gas. I want my father out and safe and I can do it! How much more can that man suffer? A childhood of horror, watching while children his own age were hanged for stealing garbage to eat, sodomized by Wehrmacht pigs, hiding, starving in forests all over Poland until the Allies came. Then later blessed with three sons, only to have two of them killed, my brothers killed, butchered in Sidon by filthy pig-terrorist Arabs! Now I should care about one American cowboy, a politician who wants to be a hero so he can act in films and have his picture on cereal boxes?'
