Angels of Wrath

* * *

As she left the Sharia, Coldwell felt the muscles in the back of her neck relax. For the first time since she had heard of her brother’s death — for the first time in two years, really — she could relax. It was in the Mossad agent’s hands now. Her mission was complete.

The small speedboat rocked as the engine kicked to life. Coldwell gripped the railing and then her seat, but for balance only; she no longer had any fear. She gazed at the shoreline, a hazy shadow in the distance. When she returned she would have a long bath, then take a very long nap.

It was amazing how prescient the old religious writers had been. She was the woman clothed in the sun of chapter 12 in the book of Revelation, the Christian prediction of the new age. The dragon awaited her child, but the Lord God protected her.

Was it blasphemy to think of herself as holy as that? As she considered the question, something grabbed her around the neck. The man in the boat had taken a garrote from his pocket and pulled it tight around her throat.

For the first few moments, Coldwell struggled. She grabbed the wire with her fingers and tried to pry it off, instincts getting the better of her. And then she heard a voice that sounded like her brother’s whispering in her ear.

“Let it be,” it whispered. “We will rise again in three days time, the Temple rebuilt.”

Coldwell relaxed her arms. An angel appeared before her, his body a bright light that shone warmly, a fire of faith and reverence. Behind him stood the new world, the shining tabernacle where there would be no sorrow, no death, no pain. He held his hands out to her.

“My God!” she exclaimed. “Thank you for bringing me to this moment.”

She extended her hands toward the angel. As she did, his face tore in two. She saw that it was a mask covering the hideous aspect of a dragon: the Devil incarnate. She began to scream and back away, but the angel’s wings had turned to snakes and held her fast for the burning fire behind him.

* * *

The man with the garrote, sensing Coldwell was dead, replaced the wire with a thick metal chain weighed down by iron dumbbells, then pushed her off the side of the boat.

* * *

Having gotten up early to consummate the business deal, Birk found it impossible to go back to bed. He decided he would amuse himself by taking the wheel of the Sharia as he set sail northward. The yacht was a large vessel, but a fleet one, and as he laid on the power he felt a rush of adrenaline.

One of his regrets about leaving the area for an extended “vacation” was that it would deprive him of the most rewarding part of his business: meeting interesting characters such as Ferguson, the American agent who had so entertained him of late. What would life be like without such stimulation? Birk was not one to romanticize danger, but if truth be told he would miss that aspect of his business as well or at least the elation he felt when the time of anxiety had passed.

“Two boats, small ones,” said Birk’s brother-in-law, coming into the wheelhouse area behind the helmsman.

Birk turned to look. The boats were small speedboats.

“Break out the weapons.”

The helmsman reached to his shirt to draw his.

“No, not you,” said Birk. “You take the wheel while I see what this is about. Probably nothing.”

As Birk turned, the man fired point blank into the back of his head.

* * *

By the time Ravid got to the Sharia, the shooting was over. Birk, his brother-in- law, and the two bodyguards loyal to him had been killed.

So had the American woman, strangled by one of the bodyguards Ravid had infiltrated among Birk’s men. Ravid had debated before deciding this. The woman had to be killed as a matter of operational security as well as tidiness. The fact that she was a fanatic and aimed ultimately at the destruction of Jerusalem weighed heavily against her as well. The world was better off with one less fanatic.

On the other hand, she had released something in him, allowed him to function again, allowed him to really work, he thought. This went beyond simply helping him obtain the missile. Speaking to her of his need for revenge had freed him somehow, and he felt real gratitude: a liability in his profession, but still he felt it.

He hadn’t wanted a drink quite so badly since that night either. Whether that would last or not, he couldn’t say. He wouldn’t count on it.

Coldwell’s pocketbook had been brought to him. Ravid examined it now. She had a few thousand dollars in Euros, less than a hundred American, four credit cards, and a passport which might be of some use in the future.

“Set the course south,” he told the others. “Weigh the bodies down and send them overboard at nightfall. Except for Birk; we will need his to make his ship appear as if it was robbed. Find a place where his body can be stuffed conveniently. Quickly. I must leave as soon as possible.”

3

LATAKIA

Ferguson had one indisputable point of reference: the digital photo he had taken when they retrieved the case. He avoided looking at it — he avoided dealing with the problem at all — while he tried to psyche out who had killed Vassenka. Ras provided a semiuseful theory: the Syrian authorities believed Vassenka had tipped the Israelis off to the meeting at the castle and the in-coining airplane, and this was payback.

The theory was wrong, but it told Ferguson that there were probably additional Iraqis and/or fanatics associated with Meles who had escaped Mossad’s revenge bombing. He and Thera spent the early morning hours placing new taps on the local police phones; the NSA already had a healthy operation harvesting information from the central authorities in Damascus. Sooner or later the rest of the scum would turn up in the net.

There was a legitimate question to be asked, though: how much of this effort was truly worth it? With all of the major players out of the picture and the rocket fuel about to be confiscated, the immediate threat had vanished.

Asking the question was another thing Ferguson didn’t bother with until he put Thera on the ferry for Cyprus. Unlike the yacht she and the others had taken the day before, this was a public vessel, a recent enterprise aimed at tourists but mostly used by Syrian workers who found they could earn twice as much on the island as they could in Syria. Which wasn’t saying much.

Thera held his hand at the dock, as if they were sweethearts.

“See you,” he told her as the small crowd began to press forward.

“When?” she asked.

“Probably tomorrow. But who knows?”

“You look like you need a vacation.”

“Think I can get a good deal at Versailles?”

“Ha, ha. I’m serious.” She looked up at him, as if expecting a kiss. “We’re done, right?”

“We’re never done.”

He held her hand for a moment. She had changed into Muslim dress to blend with the Turkish women going home; the comb she’d had in her hair the night before was gone.

Why would she have stolen the jewels? Ferg thought.

Besides the obvious reasons, like greed.

“We’re saying good-bye, right?” Thera told him in Arabic. That was the cover they’d worked out for the plainclothes police who watched the dock.

“Yeah,” he said, and he took her in his arms and flattened his lips against hers.

The taste of the kiss was still in his mouth an hour later when he showed some of the jewels to a