“I’ll deal with it. Give me a minute. I’ll meet you by the car,” David said.
When he walked into the main section of the abandoned warehouse they’d commandeered for the interrogation, he looked grim. She studied his face before turning to the vehicle.
“Eli?”
“No longer with us.”
“That will save the Mossad the work of making him disappear, I suppose. There was no way he could have faced any sort of formal charges, was there?”
“Not a chance. He knew where far too many bodies were buried. This way is best. He won’t be talking to anyone about us, or helping the Russian any longer, and whenever someone finds him, the Mossad will keep it under wraps.”
“So now what?” she asked.
“We’ll need to get out of the country as soon as possible, but I don’t like our odds going through the border to Jordan on foot. Unlike Rani, I’m in databases, and for all I know, I’m already on a watch list because of the shooting at the safe house. And airports are obviously out. That means I’m going to need to make a few calls.”
“Tonight?”
“No better time I can think of.”
David walked over to the roll-up door and pulled the chain, raising it five feet. Jet started the car and inched out with the headlights off, and David ducked under the door as it dropped shut.
“What did he tell you?” she asked as they moved towards the highway.
“He confirmed some things I suspected, and some others I didn’t. For him, it was all about money. He claims Grigenko’s people got in touch with him two years ago and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Millions of dollars for helping, or a bullet to the brain if he didn’t — not just for himself, but also for his daughter, who lives in New York. They seemed to know about the existence of the team, but not our identities. The payment was blood money to sell us out.”
They rode in silence for a minute, then Jet pointed to the road signs. “Where to?”
David thought about it. “Haifa. There are a lot of hotels where we can get a room and we won’t be bothered…and they’ll take cash.”
She took the road north.
“Eli swore that the only information he provided them was the identities of the team members who participated in the Algiers attack. So Rain wasn’t the Russians. It was just coincidental timing. Looks like the cell figured out it had a problem and decided to do something about it.”
The road rumbled beneath their tires as she changed lanes.
“Eli also said that we were too late. That the Mossad had gotten wind of something in Belize. It wasn’t specific, but I think we can guess it has to do with the oil find.”
“Did he say why the Mossad was involved in that?”
“He didn’t know. It’s possible that there are others on Grigenko’s payroll in the agency. I believe he told us everything he knew. But he did say one thing that’s disturbing. He told me just before you came in. Right before he lost consciousness for the last time.”
“What was it, David?”
He adjusted his position in an effort to get more comfortable in the cheap seat.
“Eli said that whatever was going on in Belize was already in play. That there was no stopping it now.”
Chapter 22
The staff at the Leonardo hotel in Haifa were professional and courteous, and within minutes, Jet had paid for a mini-suite on the seventh floor overlooking the sea. The bellboy waited patiently to escort her to the room while she walked to the bank of pay phones near the lobby restrooms and slipped David a room key and a small brochure with the room number scrawled on it. On the outskirts of town, they had stopped at a store to buy a calling card for him to use, and now David was deep in conversation, the telephone handset locked to his ear.
The room was lavish compared to the dumps she had been staying in, and she spent a few moments on the balcony, watching the distant lights of boats in the Mediterranean, before returning inside and closing the curtains. She quickly undressed and then moved into the bathroom, where she stood under the pulsing shower spray, savoring the warm stream of water on her skin. She was in the process of rinsing the floral shampoo out of her hair when she heard the room door close and David’s voice call out.
“I’m taking a shower,” she called, and then the bathroom door opened.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to intrude. I’m done downstairs, so let me know when you’re finished. I want to rinse off, too.”
She caught his glance darting at her nude reflection in the mirror even as he appeared to be averting his eyes.
“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
She reluctantly turned off the water and then stepped out of the shower. After rummaging through the hotel hospitality kit, she brushed her teeth, then realized that she’d left her clothes in the other room. Fortunately, the towels were oversized, and after blotting her hair, she wrapped one around her torso and opened the door.
“It’s all yours,” she said.
David stripped off his shirt and went into the bathroom. The incision looked a lot better. He was definitely healing quickly.
Jet sat down at the desk near the window and appraised her reflection in the mirror: wet hair hanging in her face, bullet graze on her shoulder almost healed. She inspected the gash on her hand. It was time for those stitches to come out. More than time.
She stepped over to the bed and switched on the television, tuning in to the local news before turning off the beside lamp. The shootout in Tel Aviv was all over the airwaves, and it was being described, as was the gun battle at the safe house, as a terrorist attack. An earnest government spokesman droned on and on about recent agitation and an increase in violent rhetoric from Islamic fundamentalists, and finished with an outraged promise to track down the groups responsible for the reprehensible attacks and deal with them swiftly and unequivocally.
Jet had long ago given up wondering how much of whatever the media disseminated was actually true. Her cynicism was bred by her job, where nothing was ever as it seemed and duplicity was second nature. It only figured that governments were cut from the same bolt of cloth as the agencies they spawned.
She heard the water shut off, and then the door opened, and a still-dripping David emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“That felt great,” he said as he plopped down on the bed next to her and turned the volume up using the remote.
She traced her fingers over the stitches on his abdomen.
“You still in one piece?”
“The shower made me a new man. Or at least a slightly less battered one,” he said with a small grin.
“How did your calls go?”
“Not bad. I reached a contact I have with the Americans who owes me a bucket load of favors, and asked him for anything he could get on Belize. He’s the one who acted as our liaison in Algiers — he passed the information on to the Mossad about the meeting, and he’s been helpful on several other matters since then. A good guy. He said to give him twenty-four hours. He’s high up in the CIA, so he might be able to help us.”
“Well, that’s positive. And what about saving our asses and getting us out of Israel?”
“That could be a little more difficult. I’m going to have to go back downstairs and call again in about an hour, after he’s had a chance to see what he can come up with.”
She fingered one of his stitches.
“Ow. Watch it. That hurts.” He put his hand over hers.
“I need to pull my stitches tomorrow,” she said.
“You never told me what happened — how you got that slice on your hand.”
“A gardening accident.”
