Fuse of Armageddon (11 page)

“Now I really feel better,” Kate said, allowing a smile back on her face. “Sure you turned me down, but at least you put some effort into impressing me with that. Not everyone knows Joseph Heller.”

“Who wouldn’t want to impress you?” Quinn said. He was grateful she was working to lighten the mood too.

“Some other time?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, “some other time.”

“Thanks.” She smiled sadly, kissed her fingertips, and touched them lightly against his cheek.

Kate walked away, the breeze again swirling the light summer dress around her hips, and Quinn felt like a traitor to his sorrow for watching her until she disappeared around a corner.

7

CCTI Headquarters, Tel Aviv • 12:21 GMT


Steve Gibbon watched two men walk into the lobby of the CCTI building.
Mossad,
he thought instantly.
Maybe IDF.
The men had that air. It was difficult to put into words, but a person knew it when it was there. The men had dark, short hair and managed to make their jeans and polo shirts look like uniforms.

“Gentlemen,” Steve said. “Appointments?”

The first walked through the metal detector, setting off chimes. “Don’t bother searching,” he said to Gibbon. “It’s a Beretta.”

The second one had already set off the metal detector too. “Mine’s a Russian make. I always mispronounce the name.”

“Appointments?” Steve repeated. He placed his hand on his holster.

He’d been marine trained, but nothing could have helped him anticipate the first man’s lightning kick to his chest.

The second drew his pistol and knelt beside Steve, grinding the barrel in his ear. “No moves. Don’t even blink.”

Steve stared upward, hearing a ripping sound. He didn’t recognize it as duct tape until the first wraps went around his ankles. His wrists were next, then a patch over his mouth.

The first man prodded Steve with his foot and looked down into his eyes. “If you want to live, we’d better find you right here the way we left you.” The commando’s eyes were dark, the stare unflinching.

Gibbon’s nostrils flared as he tried to suck in air.

“Relax,” the second one said. “We have no interest in killing you. It’s someone else we want.”

They headed to the elevator.

Tulkarm, West Bank • 12:22 GMT


Safady was alone with all the passengers in the bus. It was parked in a fruit-and-vegetable warehouse. The driver had gone for a cigarette.

This was satisfying for him: to look down the aisle and see all of them helpless. To wait until they slowly struggled back to the light. To enjoy watching them begin to understand what had happened.

The gas had knocked them unconscious, and as the bus traveled down the highway, Safady had moved from seat to seat, certain that the height of the bus and the darkness of the tinted windows made his actions invisible to other drivers.

He’d used plastic tie strips to bind the wrists of the Holy Land Tours passengers, the same tie strips that American soldiers used on insurgent captives. The strips were simple, effective, fast, inexpensive, and easy to carry; he’d stored them in his day bag.

Before binding their wrists, Safady had intertwined the arms of each person with the person in the adjacent seat so that the evangelicals were bound to each other in pairs.

The difficult part had been restraining his rage.

Bending over the women—many of them soft and fat in the way that he’d come to expect from decadent Americans—he’d been forced to inhale their perfumes and been disgusted and fascinated at the clothing some wore, like harlots, showing skin that only a husband should be allowed to see.

The slack faces of the men still somehow contained the arrogant confidence of those whose money was a power untouchable and unthinkable in the world where Safady had spent his childhood.

While binding the passengers, it had taken all his discipline not to smash at their faces with his elbow, not to fracture cheekbones and scatter teeth.

How he hated all Americans. Especially these—the Christians who tainted the Palestinian land as their forefathers had so many centuries before during the Crusades.

He relished his hatred.

And soon they would wake to discover the extent of it.

CCTI Headquarters, Tel Aviv • 12:23 GMT


Watching the events down in the lobby on the video screen in his office, Rossett didn’t have to read lips to understand what was happening.

He’d always known that when they came for him, defeating the CCTI security measures would be as simple for them as thrusting a pistol barrel through a wet paper bag. The fact that the events in the lobby were securely on video and audio meant nothing now that two gunmen were on their way up the elevator.

It would take them a minimum of 215 seconds to make it from the lobby to his office. Rossett had timed this. He’d practiced an escape route and timed that too. He could be out of the building by a secret exit and in his car at least twenty-five seconds before they reached his locked office door on the fifth floor. It would take another thirty to forty-five seconds to force the door open before they looked into his office to see that he’d bolted.

He had less than two minutes before the arrival of the intruders. Rossett threw on a Kevlar vest, then put his Armani jacket overtop to hide it. He wrinkled his nose at the poor fit. Good tailoring wasted. That would show up on the video taped from cameras in the hallway.

Rossett glanced around his office as if checking for loose ends, but he knew without looking that there was nothing to cover or hide. This was reflex; he never left anything of value in the office.

All there was left to do was grab his silenced Luger and his cell phone. This would be on video too. Later, his cell phone records would be checked against the time on the videotapes. Investigators would know he’d called Quinn. But that wouldn’t expose any secrets. And Quinn deserved protection.

Rossett dialed Quinn’s cell as he walked down the hall to the elevator. There would be no one on the fifth floor to interfere. Rossett had set it up this way, so that the fifth floor was all his.

He positioned himself along the wall beside the elevator door.

“Rossett?” Quinn answered, obviously reading his caller ID.

“They’ll want to get you next,” Rossett said. “I don’t have much time to explain. Get to your car. Run.”

Behind him he heard the hum as the elevator rose.

Tulkarm, West Bank • 12:23 GMT


The Iranian bus driver was on his knees in an old warehouse, hands bound behind his back, eyes bulging as he looked upward at Safady. The American tourists remained on the bus, still bound. The driver was in his midtwenties with a full beard and nearly shaved head. He always spoke quickly, always had food in his teeth. Safady had disliked the man from the beginning but was happy to use him until the man no longer served any purpose.

“I know you were sent by the Mossad,” Safady said to the Iranian. “I know you’ve betrayed me. Do you deny this?”

The man’s trousers suddenly splotched with wetness.

“You are fortunate I don’t have time to kill you slowly,” Safady said. “Fool. All that time convincing me where to hide the hostages. Acting as if you and I were equals, partners. Hear this before you die: From the beginning, I knew why you appeared with money. The operation will fail. Do you understand?”

The Iranian closed his eyes.

“Say it,” Safady said. “Tell me you understand the operation will fail.”

The Iranian looked up again at Safady. And spit.

In a moment of fury, Safady pulled the trigger. It caused him faint regret. He would have enjoyed taunting the man for a few more minutes.

8

Acco Harbor, Israel • 12:24 GMT


When his cell phone rang, Quinn glanced at the caller identification display.

“Rossett?” Quinn answered.

“They’ll want to get you next,” Rossett said. Rossett’s voice sounded strangled. “I don’t have much time to explain. Get to your car. Run.”

“Me next? Who are they getting first?”

An explosive noise in Quinn’s cell phone sounded like a gunshot.

“Roz? Did someone shoot at you?”

No answer.

Quinn scanned the promenade, seeing no unusual movement. “Rossett, what’s happening?”

More explosions. Clicking. Then silence. Echoing silence, not the silence of disconnection.

Then Quinn heard a voice, not Rossett’s, as if from someone standing nearby. “Nice try. Think we didn’t expect that? On your belly, Rossett.”

Quinn was desperately trying to make a mental picture. Rossett shooting at attackers? Attackers shooting at Rossett? The clicking when his automatic ran empty?

“What did Rossett tell you?” The new voice spoke into the cell phone.

“Who is this? Where’s Rossett?”

“What did Rossett tell you?” the voice repeated.

Quinn thought quickly. CCTI was founded on the need for corporate security. Could anyone really expect that under any circumstances, let alone based on the confusion of the previous minute, Quinn would give that answer to a stranger who had just picked up Rossett’s phone? Then it struck Quinn. The person on the other end of the line wasn’t really trying to get information from him. There was another purpose in trying to keep Quinn engaged and the line open—GPS.

“He told me his appointment had shown up,” Quinn lied. “Are you his appointment? What is going on? Let me speak to Rossett again.”

Quinn was moving now at a jog, headed toward the end of the promenade and back toward street traffic. With his painkiller wearing off, his hand throbbed at the movement. The Kevlar vest rubbed hard against his chest. He calculated maybe twenty seconds to reach his destination.

“Rossett wants me to do the talking,” the voice said.

“Then talk,” Quinn said. “I have no idea what’s going on. What can you tell me?”

In front of him, pigeons scattered in flight. An old woman who had been feeding the pigeons scowled. Quinn shrugged apologetically but kept jogging.

“Given the situation here,” the voice said, “you need to answer me first. What did Rossett tell you about Fawzi?”

Fawzi! The Iranian connection to Safady!

Quinn passed a falafel stand with a dozen Israelis pushing to be at the front. No one lined up in this culture; they always formed a crowd and pushed.

“Look,” Quinn said, “you’ve got to understand what business we’re in. I’m not in a position to tell you confidential information passed on to me by my partner.”

He was at the street now, facing the usual chaos—motorcycles, cars, trucks. An open produce truck had slowed to turn. Quinn stepped onto the street and, without ending the connection, threw his cell phone into the back among the cabbages just picked from the nearby kibbutzim.

There
, Quinn thought,
go ahead and track that.

Quinn turned again and stopped at the falafel stand. He pulled out his wallet, waved it above his head, and yelled at the crowd. “Anybody here want to sell me a phone for two hundred American dollars?”

Tulkarm, West Bank • 12:26 GMT


Jonathan Silver returned to consciousness on the right-hand side of the aisle, two rows from the front of the bus, with his right arm through the left arm of one of the women in the tour group, his wrists bound together by the plastic tie strap. The woman’s left arm was crooked around his elbow, both her wrists bound in front of her too. To stand or move, they’d have to stand or move together.

Silver tried to understand what had happened but could remember only a slight wooziness, then nothing. Obviously he’d been moved while he was unconscious. Why was the bus stopped? Where was the driver? Where, for that matter, had the bus been stopped?

He was thirsty. The woman beside him was still unconscious. She was a young woman—at least to him—probably forty or forty-five. Peggy Bailey, he remembered—one of the devout ones, soaking in his apocalyptic explanations at each Holy Land stop. He knew she was a Fort Worth blonde society type, recently divorced, lots of money in the settlement—the reason she’d received the special and personal invitation to the tour. She was prim and proper, but her hairdo and frilly clothing were ten years behind. He was glad her perfume wasn’t overpowering. It didn’t seem they would be separated soon.

Silver turned his head and gave his own armpit a sniff, then rolled his eyes at himself. Sixty years old and still vain enough to be concerned about the public impression he’d give. If the two of them were linked for much more than a couple of hours, body odor would be the least of their problems.

Silver looked across the aisle. Two men—both on this tour with their wives—had been bound together arm in arm. Their wives were seated directly behind them, bound as well.

He strained to turn his head and look behind him. As far as he could see, the other passengers were in the same situation, most of them with their respective husbands and wives.

It must have been enough movement to catch the eye of Dr. Marc, who moved from the rear of the bus and stood above Silver.

“What is going on?” Silver whispered. He jerked his wrists. “Cut me loose.”

“After all the effort I went through to make sure you woke like this?”

“You? I don’t understand!”

“You will soon enough. We’re waiting for a military truck. Then you’re going to disappear from the face of the earth.”

“Who are you? Why?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Marc was smug. The smugness of power. Silver regretted how he’d treated the man at Megiddo. “Let me just say my name is not Marc.”

“This is criminal!” Silver sputtered.

The man squatted so he could look Silver directly in the eyes. “In my world, you are much more of a criminal, and now is the time to pay.”

“In
your
world?”

“The world of Khaled Safady—the Black Prince.”