about what happens in the next hour or so.” He looked toward the rising sun. “There are five bodies in there. Six if you count the dog. I know because I killed them. And no, you aren’t going to arrest me for it, before you starting getting any ideas. You said it yourself, I’m a bloody hero. Now, what is it, almost five? Anytime soon their reief are going to turn up, expecting to take over babysitting duties. I suggest you get someone in there to clean up, fix the damned gate you just broke, and think about bringing in the rest of this mob. So we can either stand here measuring our dicks, or we can shut these people down. Me, I know how well I’m hung. How about you?”
That shut the little man up.
Frost turned his back on him and hit the dial-home on his earpiece.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” the policeman shouted at his back as he walked away.
Frost ignored him.
“I said don’t you dare walk away from me!”
Frost continued to walk away. He’d told the man all he was going to tell him.
When Lethe picked up all Frost said was, “The idea is to call in the cavalry if I am in trouble. I’ll be here all bloody night trying to explain this away.”
“And here I am, thinking you were going to say thank you,” Lethe said. “So? What happened? Tell me, tell me. Come on. The only excitement I get is living vicariously through you lot. I want all the gory details.”
“We got a name: Mabus. There’s not much else to say. A normal day at the office.”
“Ah, man, you take all the fun out of life, Frosty, you do know that, don’t you?”
17
Orla Nyren followed Uzzi through the warren of offices that made up the IDF Intelligence Building. Inside the world of spy versus spy, the Intelligence Directorate was better known as Aman. More than seven thousand people plied their trade in this world of Israeli secrets. Uzzi was Modash, IDF Field Intelligence. Field was something of a euphemism for special measures, which in turn meant collection and elimination. Uzzi Sokol dealt with national security issues inside the Israeli borders. Security, planning, dissemination of intelligence and overseeing foreign emissaries. He was much more than a babysitter.
Despite his warning, the drive over had been uneventful.
She had holstered her gun as they entered the building. Her heels clicked sharply on the linoleum-tiled floor.
He gestured with a finger over his shoulder for her to keep up. The man really grated on her nerves, but he knew things she didn’t, and she was prepared to put up with his macho bullshit until he told her what she needed to know. He knocked sharply on the glass pane in the center of a door, once, and opened it without waiting for whoever was inside to answer.
“She’s here, sir,” Sokol said. He stepped back to allow Orla to enter the office first. It wao put upirst trace of chivalry the man had shown since she had gotten off the plane.
The man squeezed in behind the desk barely even looked like a man anymore. The top button of his shirt wouldn’t button up because there just wasn’t enough material in the shirt for it to reach all the way around his enormous neck. He did his best to hide it with a navy blue necktie that looked like a noose. The huge black circles beneath his eyes only added to the illusion. His complexion was sallow, his hair salt-and-peppered at the temples.
The toad looked deathless. He could have been anything from fifty to one hundred and fifty years old. The only real clue to his age was the memorial plaque to his son, killed in the Yom Kippur War. Shimon would have been fifty five now, which meant he had to be in his early seventies at least. He licked his lips. The way his tongue slipped out put Orla in mind of a toad. He reached out a hand for her to shake.
His grip was clammy but surprisingly firm for a man of his age. He was the parody of the fat incompetent general right up until the moment he opened his mouth. His voice was like honey. She could imagine thousands of women spending a lot of money to listen to any sex line the man voiced.
“So pleased you could join us, my dear,” he said, his accent perfect Old School Tie English. “Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He turned to Sokol. “Uzzi, close the door on your way out. There’s a good man.”
Sokol didn’t look pleased, being dismissed so matter-of-factly, but he didn’t argue, which meant the toad outranked him comfortably. The IDF was like any sort of military organism; it lived and died by its respect of rank and structure. Sokol was never going to argue with the toad. He closed the door and left them alone.
“So, tell me, Miss Nyren, how do you like being back in our fair country? It must be very difficult coming back here after what happened in that camp, no?”
They had done their research. She expected nothing less from Aman. They were methodical. Circumspect. And every bit as dangerous as they were careful. There was nothing hot-headed about Aman’s modus operandi. Stealth, cunning, reason and malice of forethought-those words best described her experience with the organization.
Orla looked around the room as though admiring the beauty of the landscape beyond these four walls. The toad had decorated in the familiar military austerity chic. He had a row of black-and-white pictures and a single color one of himself. There was a line of books with battered cloth spines and faded gold lettering, and a faded globe with the old territorial boundaries of the fifties. The only concession to decorative softness was a scale mod of a soft top 2CV. It was a curious thing to be the only decoration, and then Orla remembered who the toad was, and why the car was significant to him.
Gavrel Schnur. It was the car she remembered. The tiny 2CV and the woman. His wife, Dassah, had been killed in a car-bomb attack outside their home in the Ramat district to the north of the city. Gavrel had been a rising star in the Likud party back then. She looked at the figures in one of the black and white photographs and realized it was Menachem Begin, the former Likud prime minister. There was another of him with Shamir and Netanyahu. She remembered Gavrel Schnur as being particularly vocal in his opposition to Palestinian statehood and in support of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.
The PLO had placed the bomb in his car, not expecting his wife to be the one to drive it that day. Not that it really mattered to them one way or the other. Her death had achieved one thing-it had turned Gavrel Schnur into a poster boy for his party. He had stood on the platform in the days immediately after her murder and decried the Palestinians as cowards. He had sworn a vendetta against his wife’s murderers. His rallying cry had been that the Palestinians were a nation of godless terrorists, that death was in their blood, and that he would not rest until they were driven out of Judaea, Samaria and Gaza. And now here he was, guardian of the state’s security. There was something almost ironic about it.
“It feels like home, Gavrel,” she said, enjoying the slight smile he gave her. They were like players on opposite sides of a card table, each keeping their cards close to their chests.
“Very good, my dear. You do not disappoint. Tell me, what was it that gave me away?” He licked his lips again.
“I remembered the car,” she said.
“Of course you did, of course you did. Everyone remembers my great tragedy. Few remember the great triumphs of my life, but I do not blame them. Sometimes I can barely remember them myself, but Dassah, Dassah I never forget. Even after all these years I still expect her to come home from shopping. That is my great tragedy. But you didn’t come here to talk about my dead wife, did you?”
She shook her head.
He shifted his weight in his seat. The leather and wood groaned.
The story, if she remembered it right, was that Gavrel had gone after his wife’s killers personally. She found it hard to believe, looking at him spread their in the chair, but he had apparently hunted down the bomber and the chemist that had built it, as we as taking out the man who had given the order. Gavrel Schnur did it the Aman way. He watched, gathering intelligence, making plans, until over the course of one long night in Tel Aviv everyone in any way remotely connected with his wife’s death fell victim to what on the surface appeared to be unconnected accidents and random acts of violence. The coincidences racked up and, come dawn, everyone knew Gavrel Schnur
