field agents.” He set the pistol back in his lap.
The mere suggestion of it had her smiling. “So what?” She cranked the seat-back upright. “You think he’s one of them?”
“Too early to say. But look here,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket and flipping open his cell phone. “That’s him.”
Jules closely scrutinized the grainy picture. He liked the fact that she wasn’t panicking. Most people would fall apart if someone had just tried to off them. “As I was saying. I’ve got a friend, a contact inside Israeli intelligence. I’m going to forward this to him, see if he can figure out who this guy is—who he works for, perhaps. You never know. We might get lucky.”
“How would that be lucky? Someone obviously wants you dead.”
“If he wanted me dead, he would have shot me on the spot.”
“Too suspicious,” she said. “If you were killed in a cave collapse in Qumran, no one would suspect a thing.”
He glanced at her and grinned. “Not bad.” Maybe the gun in his lap had only been the guy’s insurance. The real plan was probably a lot simpler, just like Jules was suggesting. Clever. “Sounds like you may have done this yourself a time or two.”
“When you go through a shitty divorce, you can come up with all sorts of ways to pull off the perfect crime.”
She had a point. His second breakup, with Sarah, hadn’t gone too badly—dare he say, amicably. But the first . . . The fierce custody battle for his two girls, and the fallout from Jasmina having forfeited her professorship to stay home and raise them? Brutal. Could have driven a lesser man to fantasize about unspeakable remedies.
“Sorry about this,” he said. “I had no idea . . .”
She reached out and gave his thick, dusty arm a gentle squeeze. “It’s an adventure. And I’m a sucker for a good thrill. No need for apologies.”
Her words were sincere. But she’d once told him that her eye color changed with her moods. And the silver in her irises seemed more pronounced. “Glad I could entertain,” he said with a half smile. “Thanks, Jules.”
The Land Rover climbed Hanoch Albeck into downtown Jerusalem. The city was still waking up, so the sidewalks were empty.
Amit pulled over so Jules could run into a cafe to use the facilities and get some coffee and pastries. As she got out of the truck, he reminded her that it was imperative that she pay only with cash.
He kept the truck running, his wary gaze scouting for anyone who looked shady.
Ten minutes went by before she came scurrying out the door with a carrying tray holding two Styrofoam cups cradled in her left hand. In her right hand, she victoriously held up a white paper bag and made a dramatic face as if she were just crossing the finish line at a marathon. Chuckling, Amit reached across and threw open the passenger door for her. She handed him one of the cups, then hopped in.
Taking a sip of the slightly bitter coffee, Amit checked his watch. It was almost seven a.m. “In a little while, I’ll make some calls. Need to get some petrol, too,” he said, checking the fuel gauge. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get some answers.”
“Worry?” she mocked, eyeing the Jericho. “With you packing a pistol on top of your crotch? A girl couldn’t feel more secure.”
24
******
After topping off the tank, Amit pulled the Land Rover away from the pump and idled near the petrol station’s pay phone. He hopped out to place a call from the anonymous landline. His contact picked up in two rings.
“Good morning to you, Commander,” Enoch Blum replied through the receiver. “To what do I owe this pleasure . . . at nine a.m.? Need an extra shovel man at a dig?”
He chuckled. “Not a social call this time, I’m afraid.” On the other end of the call, he heard a car door shut, an alarm chirp.
“Must be very important,” he said.
“It is.” He could hear Enoch’s key chain jingle, then his hard soles clicking on cement. “You’re not in the tank yet, are you?” Amit had twice been called inside the Tel Aviv headquarters of Israeli intelligence to consult on hostage extractions in Gaza. And that’s the impression the cement and steel Bauhaus bunker left: like being in the belly of a Merkava tank.
“Just making my way inside,” he said over the whistle of a breeze blowing through the parking garage.
“Maybe you can hold off on that.”
The footsteps stopped.
“Your mobile isn’t monitored, is it?”
“No,” he said with some reservation. “They still allow me a couple of liberties.”
“They” were the Mossad Merkazi Le-modiin U-letaf kidim Meyuhadim, or the Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations— aka the Mossad. They’d assisted Amit’s IDF unit on many operations. It was the two separate hostage extractions—both times, Israeli border soldiers had been abducted by al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and detained in Gaza City safe houses—that left the most indelible impression. The Mossad were a well-trained bunch.
Though the Mossad’s director reported to the office of the Israeli prime minister, its estimated fifteen hundred employees were civilians, among them communications techs, weapons specialists, psychological profilers, field agents, international operatives, and hired guns. Its organizational chart was a pyramid of deniability—top to
