Ferguson sipped his coffee in the secure room beneath the Mossad building as the Israeli’s rant continued. One thing surprised him: the lecture was coming not from Tischler, who sat stone-faced across from Corrine, but from Aaron Ravid. The slime had not only made good time getting back to Israel but also put the effort into polishing up a speech.
Corrine listened impassively. She didn’t have a lot of experience as a courtroom litigator; most of what she did had come from pro bono work in local courts representing poor people accused of very minor crimes. But she knew how to act during a prosecutor’s summation: nonplussed, occasionally sipping from her water, once in a very great while taking the time to look incredulous.
“Is that the position of the Israeli government?” she asked Tischler when Ravid finished.
“We don’t speak for the government,” he answered.
Corrine pushed her chair away from the table and got up to leave. As she did, she turned to Ferguson. “Is there anything you want to say?”
“Only that this is the best coffee I’ve had in the Middle East. It’s not Starbucks, is it?”
I can’t believe they blew us off like that,” said Corrine outside the building. “I can’t believe it.”
“Relax,” said Ferguson. “Walk with me.”
He turned to the left, leading her down the block, away from the car.
“We’re supposed to be allies,” said Corrine. “We’re supposed to work together.”
“Yeah. That happens sometimes. Not as much as you’d think.”
Corrine pressed her lips together. She wanted to admit that she wasn’t really sure what to do, but she couldn’t say that to Ferguson. Making herself that vulnerable to someone who not only didn’t like her but also resented her would be suicidal.
“You noticed that Tischler didn’t say anything?” asked Ferguson.
“And?”
“That’s what’s important for the next step. Whatever that is.”
Corrine stopped in the street, squinting because of the sun, which poked through the buildings and hit her in the eyes. Ferguson saw the squint and interpreted it as her attempt to look tough, which he thought made her look just the opposite. If it weren’t for stuff like that, she might actually be all right to deal with.
Not better than all right, but all right. On a good day.
“What’s next is we figure out where the Russian went,” said Ferguson. “He’s not in Latakia.”
“You don’t think back to Russia?”
Vassenka could have gotten down to Damascus, hopped a plane to Cairo, and then flown just about anywhere in the world. Alternatively, he could have taken a boat to Turkey or Lebanon or even Israel, driven north in a car, even taken a train.
“Let’s say Khazaal’s friends didn’t kill him. On the contrary, they helped him get out of town. Seems logical. If that’s the case, then he owes them a favor.”
“We have the rocket fuel.”
“True. But we don’t have the rockets.”
“How many could there be?”
“You tell me. There was enough fuel for a dozen at least. You have them in parts? Who knows?” Ferguson still thought that Khazaal had overpaid for the fuel and for Vassenka. But the fact that he had to get the rocket fuel from Korea showed that maybe the stuff was getting harder to come by these days because of the weapons export agreements. When the Russians had first started mixing the stuff using German recipes, it had cost about twenty cents a kilogram, which would work out to less than a thousand dollars a missile. Clearly, the stuff was harder to come by these days.
“One thing I want to take care of in Syria,” Ferguson added. “The cruise missile Birk’s offering for sale. I want to buy it.”
“For a million dollars?”
“That’s cheap. Not only do I take it off the market, but I also can find out where he got it. As far as we know, nobody’s manufactured copies of the SS-N-9 Siren, and it’s never been exported. If we have this one, we may find out differently. Not to mention the fact that we’d be taking a pretty potent weapon off the market. The Siren has a range of over 110 kilometers, carries a 500-kilogram warhead; it’ll do a lot of damage.”
“All right. I’ll fix it with Parnelles.”
Mildly surprised, Ferguson told her that he was sending Rankin and Guns to Iraq to see if they could figure out who was supposed to pick up the fuel and to poke around for Vassenka. He mentioned Thera in passing, saying he was keeping her in Cyprus in case he needed backup.
Which was the truth, just not all of it. He hadn’t decided what to do about the jewels yet.
“Ferg, let me ask you something,” Corrine said, trying not to look at her watch. “What do you think about Iraq?”
“It’s a hellhole.”
“Do you think the government there is going to last?”
“You were just there. You tell me.”
“The ambassador claims it will. He seems pretty confident.”
Ferguson laughed. It was the only answer he gave and the only one she needed.
Since Ferguson had to make a complicated dance to get from Israel to Syria anyway, he made a virtue of necessity and stopped in Cairo for a few hours that afternoon. The new CIA deputy station chief who met with him had recently discovered the pleasure of the pipe, and spent much of their meeting in the cafe puffing away, to Ferguson’s amusement. Unfortunately, that was about the only thing he got out of the meeting. If Vassenka had stopped in Cairo on his way out of Syria, no one had spotted him.
There had been no fallout from the Fatman incident. “Dead is dead” went an old Egyptian proverb. It might have lost a bit of color in the translation, but it retained all of its meaning.
“That was related to that whacko Christian thing, Seven Angels, right?” asked the deputy between puffs.
“Yeah,” said Ferguson.
“Did the FBI find that lady or what?”
“You lost me there.”
“They had a heads-up the other day, travel-advisory thing, about this woman they were looking for. Real vague. It got flagged because it: was related to your run-in. Routine stuff.”
“Yeah, routine. You find her?”
“She didn’t come to Cairo.”
“You sure?”
“Not on any of the lists. You can check with Dave downstairs if you want. I don’t even remember her name.”
Neither did Dave downstairs, who had to look it up: Judy Coldwell.
It didn’t click with Ferguson either, but it did with Thera.
“That’s the woman I visited in the States. Thatch’s sister,” she said immediately when he mentioned the name. “The bureau said she wasn’t connected with Seven Angels. Why is she traveling overseas?”
“And why the hell don’t we know about it?”
Two hours later, Ferguson had his answer to the question: the FBI had considered the First Team’s involvement in the case over and therefore hadn’t bothered to inform them. He also knew that someone had used Thatch’s name to register at a hotel in Latakia.
“The FBI really dropped the ball, Ferg,” said Corrigan as he finished filling Ferguson in. “They really screwed up.”
“Yeah. Where is she now?”
“Unclear. Thatch checked out. We’re trying to see if we can trace any credit cards that were used.”
“Get back to me when you know something.”
Ferguson called Thera in Cyprus to see if she knew anything else about Coldwell. When he told her that
