a specially equipped communications bunker known as the Cube. It was located outside of Washington in a Virginia industrial park. The Cube sat below an innocuous-looking building owned by the CIA, officially known as CIA Building 24-442.
“Same as ten minutes ago.”
“Thirty,” said Corrigan.
“Whatever.”
“How’s Ferguson?”
“Doc said he’d live. He’s already giving orders.”
“The Israelis know not to release his name, right?”
“It’s their show,” Rankin told Corrigan.
“What’s that mean, Sergeant?”
Before coming to work for First Team and the CIA, Corrigan had been an officer in special operations, in PsyOp. As far as Rankin was concerned, PsyOp wasn’t real fighting; it was trick fighting, lighting, bullshitting. Sissy crap, even if you did get away with it. And of course, Corrigan had been an officer, which meant he didn’t do any real work anyway.
“Corrine Alston wants to talk to you,” said Corrigan when Rankin didn’t answer. “She’s worried about Ferg.”
“She doesn’t have to worry,” said Rankin. But he waited for her to come on the line.
“Stephen, what’s going on?”
“Looks like some Palestinian whack job blew herself and our subject up. I don’t think he was a specific target.”
“How’s Ferg?”
“OK.”
“Corrigan said he was in the hospital.”
“He’s all right. They’re checking him out.”
“The embassy will send someone to the morgue to handle Thatch,” said Corrine. “Can you get over there with them to see if someone else turns up?”
“Not a problem,” Rankin said. She was right; he should have thought of that himself. “I’ll get back to you.”
Ferguson held his hand up as the nurse approached with the needle. “I don’t need it, thanks.”
“It’s just a painkiller.”
“Doesn’t look like Scotch.” He smiled at her, and, keeping his hand out to ward her off, pushed off the gurney. “You’re frowning at me,” he said, reaching for the curtains. “Don’t do that.”
“Of course I’m frowning. You need treatment.”
“I’ve had worse hangovers,” said Ferguson. He glanced toward the wall and saw that it was past two o’clock. “Can I have a glass of water? I have to take a pill.”
Ferguson reached into his pocket for a small metal case he used to carry his medicine — he took two different types of thyroid hormone replacement drugs every day — and pulled out a small pill.
“Should I ask you what that is?” said the nurse when she returned with a cup.
“I misplaced my thyroid one day,” he told her. “Left it with my car keys and couldn’t find either. The car was easier to replace.”
Stein had just finished talking to some of the other victims who’d been taken here when Ferguson found him.
“Get anything?” Ferguson asked.
“No. Looks pretty random. Fanatics.” He shook his head. “They kill their women and children. Life means nothing.”
Ferguson had locked eyes with the woman perhaps a half-second before the bomb ignited, maybe at the moment that she had pushed the trigger. He saw them now, blank, questioning — doubt, he thought, not faith.
Am I going to paradise?
Will the bomb go off?
Or maybe he saw none of that. Maybe that was his concussion reinterpreting what had happened. Because, damn, his head hurt.
“Let’s go over to the hotel,” he told Stein.
Guns watched as the FBI people worked the room Thatch had left early this morning, and it had been cleaned; still, the three men moved through, meticulously lifting prints from the surfaces and using chemical sniffers to check for traces of explosives and other items. Thatch’s suitcase sat on a folding stand near the bed. It contained two pairs of pants, two shirts, three pairs of underwear, one change of socks.
Not enough socks, in Guns’s opinion. As a Marine, he’d learned in boot camp to think of his feet before anything else.
“Find it yet?” asked Ferguson, walking into the room. Stein trailed behind him.
“What the hell are you doing here, Ferg?” said Guns. “You’re supposed to be checked out.”
“The nurses weren’t pretty enough to stay.”
“Are you all right?” said Manson. The FBI supervisor sounded like a concerned parent.
“I’ve been better.” Ferguson sat in the chair opposite the bed, slowly scanning the room. “No money in the mattress? No microdots?”
“What’s a microdot?” said Manson.
“You don’t know what a microdot is?”
The FBI agent shook his head.
“Rent some old James Bond movies sometime,” Ferguson said. “See how it’s supposed to be done.”
“This might be something,” said one of the forensics people. He brought over a piece of paper containing an image lifted from a pad of hotel paper. By placing the pad in a device similar to a flatbed scanner, they had found an impression left from writing on an upper sheet. The expert gave it to Manson, who passed it to Ferg. It had an address on it.
“So, he was supposed to go to Cairo?” Ferg handed the paper to Stein.
“Cairo wasn’t mentioned in the wiretap.”
“Maybe he didn’t have to.”
“You sure that’s a Cairo address?”
“Yeah.” Ferguson had spent several years off and on in Egypt when his father was based there with the CIA.
“That’s not necessarily his handwriting,” said the FBI expert.
Stein stared at the address. “It’s near the Old City, the Islamic quarter.”
“Isn’t every quarter in Cairo Islamic?” asked Ferguson.
The Mossad agent smiled wryly, handing back the paper.
3
As Thera Majed got out of the car in front of the suburban Chicago home, she noticed the basketball hoop and backboard over the garage. It reminded her of the hoop on her parents’ home in Houston, and she thought of what her parents would feel if someone were coming to tell them she’d been blown up by a fanatic in Jerusalem.
The situation here wasn’t precisely parallel. The driveway Thera was walking up belonged to Benjamin Thatch’s sister, Judy Coldwell. And Thatch might justifiably be called a fanatic himself.
Thera straightened her skirt, letting the State Department official and the Cook County sheriff’s deputy take the lead. The men thought she was with the FBI, a mistake she had encouraged. In actual fact, Thera was a CIA
