Daria let a few beats of silence pass. “No?”
He looked up and approximated a smile. “The bureau decided. You’re a citizen. Your work for us, for the DEA, for ATF has … um … this seems crass, sorry. It’s
bought
you citizenship. You’ll ace the test. Then you’ll be an American. One of us. Congratulations.”
Daria sipped her wine. Ray seemed really proud. But also sad. In his own Ray Calabrese way, he seemed to be saying “hello” and “good-bye” at the same time.
Daria thought an appropriate response from a normal person might be something along the lines of,
This is marvelous news!
So she went with that.
“Okay! Well…” Ray lifted his glass.
Daria did, too. They toasted.
“All right then. Welcome to America, citizen. What’s next for you?”
Daria thought about the bled-out importer in the rundown office building, the bullet-riddled bodies of the narco soldiers, and the burnt husk of the fat man in the van. And she thought about the message she had just sent the Juarez cartel. Would they heed the warning?
No way to tell.
She mulled the offers for translation work that were on the table. She considered the job awaiting her in Costa Rica. “A vacation, I think.”
“Good for you,” Ray said. “You deserve a break.”
Daria thought long and hard about taking Ray to bed that night but, in the end, decided it was a bad idea. He was genuinely one of the good guys.
And she genuinely wasn’t.
One
Desert, South of the Sea of Galilee
The prisoners lay in their cots. It was one cot per cell. The cells were slightly larger than a bad room at a youth hostel or a kibbutz. Each had its own heater, a little partition between the cell doors, and a toilet. Really, as cells go, these weren’t bad.
Asher Sahar lay on his back, ankles crossed, hands steepled on his chest. He wore a ratty sweater and ratty jeans and slippers. He spoke with a soft, sibilant whisper. “‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’”
In the next cell, a grizzly bear of a man lay in the same posture, ankles crossed, hands steepled. His feet hung off the end of his cot. His name was Eli Schullman. He replied, “Irving Kahal.”
“No.” The other man reached up to adjust his round, wireless glasses, forgetting that he had taken them off for the night. He’d worn glasses since the age of fifteen. “Irving Berlin. But, to your eternal credit, you were incredibly close. I mean, close in a wrong sort of way. Both, simultaneously, wrong and close to right but mostly just very wrong. It was—”
The lights in the cells and in the corridor and in the guard station blinked on. They were aging, low-efficiency lights, phosphorescents, and they blinked on intermittently: this one first, then off, then that one, then the first one again. Harsh, unforgiving. They buzzed. Both men shielded their eyes. Schullman, the bear of a man, said, “What the fuck?”
It was night. In the nearly four years they had been prisoners, they had rarely seen the lights come on at night.
“Asher?”
Asher Sahar lay still.
When the big man realized Asher hadn’t risen, he didn’t either. But they could hear other prisoners up and down the row of cells gathering at their bars.
The ticktock clang of the outer iron doors reverberated. Someone from the World was walking into the cells. At night.
This, too, happened only rarely. Except when someone was about to be executed.
The outer iron doors had never opened for a priest or a rabbi. Or for an envoy from the governor’s office waving a reprieve. Or for a crusading detective with exonerating evidence. Or a cook with a last meal. It wasn’t that sort of prison.
Asher Sahar whispered, “This might be interesting.”
He fumbled for his glasses, which lay on the knee-high stack of hardback books, two books deep, two wide, that served as his bed stand.
The main door rumbled sideways under the power of an ill-greased motor. They couldn’t see the door, only hear it. The next sound was the absolutely unexpected clack of women’s heels. Round, sensible, solid heels.
Asher sprang out of the bed as if ejected. He ran both hands through his thinning hair. He straightened his sweater. “Eli,” he said.
The bear rose quickly, knowing an order when he heard one. Even a whispered one.
The heels clacked closer. Asher folded his hands behind his back.
An armed guard came into view, then another and a third. None wore any rank or insignia or any identifying marks.
And in walked an elderly woman, very thin and tall, with birdlike shoulders, her bones seemingly visible even under a trench coat. Her hair was stark white. Her outfit was immaculate and tasteful.
She smiled warmly.
Asher Sahar said, “Hannah,” the same way you’d greet a neighbor who regularly drops by for coffee.
“Oh my God. Asher. Look at you.”
They spoke in Hebrew.
“You look well,” he whispered. He cleared his throat, conscious of the soft rasp in his voice. “How are things in the world?”
The three guards looked far less than happy to be conducting this reunion. Two of the three touched their holstered sidearms. The elderly woman said, “Not good. A situation has arisen. And we have need of your talents.”
Asher nodded solemnly. “You needed my talents four years ago.”
The woman said, “And today.” She offered no explanation about the situation four years ago. She offered no explanation about the years in between.
Asher said, “Something has arisen?”
“Unfortunately.”
He said, “War?”
“Democracy.”
A smile spread across Asher’s still-youthful, bearded face. The harsh lights glinted off his round glasses. “Who could have foreseen that?”
The woman shook her head. “As it turns out, you did, dear. You’d laid out this contingency years ago. Now, you’ve been proven prescient. Our friends have moved heaven and earth to free you. So that you can do what you must.”
Asher was aware that the giant, Eli Schullman, was standing at attention in his own cell, even though Asher couldn’t see him. “And my men.”
The woman said, “Of course.”
“I’ll need financing.”
“Which you shall have.”
“And independence.”
She laughed. “As if anyone could grant you that! Of course, independence. You never followed orders, anyway.”
He smiled. “Well,
never
is a little harsh. Get us out of here. Tell us the situation. Give us time to formulate a plan.”
The woman said. “Out of here, you shall be. The situation shall be made clear. You have seventy-two hours to formulate a plan.”
Asher said, “I’ve been in this prison for almost four years.”
Hannah laughed again. “Only your body, love. Only your body.”
She made a quarter turn to the nearest guard, gave him the gentlest of nods. The guards glowered at one another, expressing how unhappy they were to be doing this. But they nodded back to an unseen someone in the control room and, a second later, the doors to the cells holding Asher Sahar and Eli Schullman clanked open.
The other prisoners kept mum, watching, wondering.
The elderly woman said, “We have transport outside. Plus clothes and hot food.”
Schullman’s voice was a gravelly rumble. “Give me a smartphone. Or a laptop. Anything with a wireless connection.”
The guards flinched when he spoke. Schullman seemed to absorb more than his share of the harsh light of the corridor. Hannah looked up at him, then she made the same quarter turn to the nearest guard. She did not speak.
The guard grumbled to himself, reached into a tunic pocket, and produced a smartphone. He handed it over, reaching as far as his arm could stretch, keeping clear of Schullman the best he could. The phone almost disappeared in Schullman’s palm.
Hannah turned to Asher. “There is a preliminary plan. It’s rudimentary. Just a sketch. Many of us think it’s unworkable and foolish. Quite possibly suicidal. Definitely horrific. But possible. With you to guide it…?” She shrugged.
Schullman stabbed at phone buttons with the pad of his beefy thumb.
Asher said, “Where?”
“It begins in the United States.”
Asher smiled. It was a sad, knowing smile, and Hannah interpreted it correctly. “Yes, dear. Daria lives in the United States these days.”
Asher laughed, and shook his head. He removed his glasses and began to clean the lenses on the hem of his sweater. “Of course. God being the ultimate jester.”
Hannah nodded to the lead guard. The man jerked his head toward the exit.
The other prisoners in their cells still did not speak. Most didn’t understand Hebrew, but even those who did watched silently.
Eli Schullman glared down at the tiny phone screen, then rudely bashed Asher’s shoulder with the back of his hand. He thrust the phone over. Asher studied it a moment, then nodded.
Everyone began moving toward the exit. Outside, more guards stood with M-16s.
Schullman growled lowly. “‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ Irving Kahal.”
Asher studied the smartphone. He shook his head. “Damn it. I could have sworn Irving Berlin wrote that.”
Two
Denver, Colorado
Four Months Later
It was the first Monday of November, and the five friends—three Secret Service agents and two spouses—met as they did one Monday per month for Denver’s Greatest Federal Law Enforcement Book Club and Pizza Fest.
The pizzas this month were thin crust—one all cheese, one with sausage and pepperoni. The book was
Moby-Dick
. The drinks were beer. Except for Stacy Knight-Mendoza, wife of agent Phil Mendoza. She was seven months pregnant and drank San Pellegrino water with wedges of lime.
The friends always picked the same booth at a Denver pub within walking distance of them all. The booth was curved and sat all five easily, with a table wide enough for two pizzas and the books.
The night’s debate started well—two of them thought the novel was excellent, two thought it contained more blubber than an actual whale, and Will Halliday hadn’t read it yet. He was the only unmarried member of the book club. Halfway through the evening, Halliday agreed to get refills for everyone’s drinks.
He went to the bar and got two Bud Lights, a Heineken, a Dos Equis, and the sparkling water with lime for Stacy. He tipped the cute bartender in the Broncos jersey top and white shorts. As soon as she turned away, he slipped a two-inch-by-two-inch envelope out of his wallet, opened the flap, and let a pale pink pill spill into Stacy’s drink.
The pill dissolved, the effervescent water masking the chemical reaction.
When the last residue disintegrated, Will Halliday pulled out a cell phone—prepaid, not his own—and hit speed dial 1.
“It’s done.”
He listened a moment, then hung up and slipped the phone into the trash can near the restrooms. He carried the tray of drinks back to his buddies.
Brooklyn, New York
Asher Sahar heard Will Halliday of the Secret Service say, “It’s done.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
Asher spoke softly into the phone. He wasn’t being covert; he was by nature and by injury a soft-spoken man. Almost fifteen years earlier, a tiny fragment of a plastic clasp, the remnant of a cheap, vinyl suicide vest, had clipped his neck and damaged his vocal cord. Asher Sahar could no more shout than he could sing an aria.
Will Halliday hung up before Asher could confirm the next stage of the operation. But that was okay. Halliday was not an X factor. Asher was sure Halliday would carry out his end of things.
Just like the rest of Asher’s team. Everyone would do his job. Admirably. Asher Sahar had many skills but chief among them was the ability to pick the best people and to inspire them to greatness. One of his secrets was demanding near perfection and total dedication from his people, then praising them when they achieved it. The combination tended to inspire true loyalty.
Asher adjusted his round, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, then hit his own speed dial on the disposable, prepaid phone. The message was being routed eastward like a rock skipped across a pond: from Denver to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Tel Aviv.
The line was picked up after one ring, despite the time difference. He spoke in Hebrew. “It’s time to alert the CIA. Set it up.”
The man who answered responded in English. “You are sure about the names?”
“Yes.” Asher spoke only slightly louder than a whisper. “Belhadj is—hold on.”
His other cell phone, his regular one, danced a little jig on the cheap bedside table in the motel room. Asher noted the readout, turned his attention back to the burner phone. “Sorry. Belhadj knows more than he should. We need to distract him.”
“And the Gibron woman?”
Asher paused. “We have our orders. Her as well.”
“Very good.”
The line went dead.
Asher set down the burner and picked up his regular phone. He punched in a nine-digit security code and a text popped up on the screen.
YOUR PARENTS HEADING TO LONDON.
Asher smiled at the text and deleted it. Good for them, he thought.
He stood up from the saggy bed and walked to the cheap bathroom with its peeling tile floor and mottled gray-black shower grout. He peed, carefully washing his hands with the pump bottle of antibacterial soap he had picked up at the store. He stood a moment, his knuckles resting on the bathroom counter to either side of the sink, staring at his own reflection in the mirror.
I look tired,
he observed with a clinical neutrality. It wasn’t a complaint, it was an observation.
I look forty.
When the hell had he started looking forty? He remembered his adopted parents at forty—
they were my age!
—hosting barbecues and laughing about kosher dogs and his adopted mom joking, “Should I serve dessert or wait for the barrage?” and his adopted siblings snickering and elbowing one another.