Daria watched him. “Do you believe this group exists?”
Belhadj shrugged. “Who knows? Probably not. It might not even be a
group
. More likely it’s this person meeting with that person, money exchanges hands, and the family of a nuclear scientist in Riyadh climbs into a car rigged with explosives. Mossad and Shin Bet can honestly say they didn’t do it. Parliamentarians can be scandalized and demand hearings. The media waits for the next good story.”
He sipped his coffee. “Anyway. For a time now, I have been making it my business to find out if this group exists.”
“And did you?”
“Four years ago, Asher Sahar led a conspiracy to murder an Israeli parliamentarian. He was tried in a secret court and sent to a secret prison. Why? Why not a public trial?”
Daria said, “Scandal.”
“Okay. I don’t understand politics but okay. But then four years pass and someone drives him away from the prison. I don’t mean he escaped: I mean someone
drove a vehicle
through checkpoints to free him.”
“This
group
?”
“Which you’ve never heard of.”
Daria shrugged.
“I found out Sahar’s most-trusted lieutenants had been freed, too. He had a network, and it had been reconstituted. That requires money and political might. I followed the trail of foreign mercenaries Sahar had used in the past. I put together bits and pieces, here and there, and realized he was running an operation in New York City. I sent a surveillance team; three men I trust. I informed my superiors. At first, they were only too happy to know that Sahar had been found and was up to something. Then, after my surveillance team disappeared, I was ordered to come home and forget everything.”
“Orders that you ignored. Which is why your own people tracked you to the safe house in Paris. And speaking of which, I’m still not sure why you dragged me there.”
Belhadj raked back his unruly hair. “Honestly? I’m not exactly sure, either. I was told not to go to the United States. I ignored that order. I tried to rendezvous with my surveillance team. They were dead. I am perfectly aware that I am not a match for Asher Sahar. I can play the fiddle, he conducts symphonies, yes?”
Belhadj rubbed his eyes. “Then, I saw you on the street in New York. I knew about you and Sahar. I knew you’d beaten him before. I figured there was a one-in-two chance you were working with him. When I realized you were not, I knew I had an asset he couldn’t easily outmaneuver.”
“I was never your asset,” Daria said.
“One works with the tools God provides.”
She considered several retorts but let it slide. “You smuggled me to France.”
“Sahar was headed there. And it became evident he knew I was tracking him. Else he wouldn’t have involved me in that lunacy in New York. I thought, if I could get ahead of him, if you hated him enough to help, if, if if…” He shrugged and finished his coffee.
“But I still don’t understand about Damascus,” she said. “You’d found Asher. You knew he’d put his old cohorts back together. Why wouldn’t Damascus want him stopped?”
“Stopped, or even simply exposed,” Belhadj added. “Think about it: just alerting the Americans to Sahar’s presence would be enough, yes? It would buy my government a bit of goodwill with the American State Department. We look like reasonable people, and Israel has to answer serious questions, both internally and with allies. But let him continue with whatever he’s doing, and…”
Belhadj sipped coffee.
Daria worked her way through the story; Belhadj could tell by the way her dusky eyes darted as the threads came together. “Oh, God,” she said. “Wait. The Syrians called you off … Syria called you off because Asher … told them what he was up to? They … my God … Syria sanctioned him?”
Belhadj said, “Things are insane in Damascus. Who knows who is in charge, one day to the next?” He sounded extremely tired. “But yes. That’s my theory.”
“But why?”
He smiled a little. “What do you know about the Arab Spring?”
“Democracy breaking out all over. Lots of people on Twitter and Facebook. People with bad fashion sense cramming into squares.”
Belhadj rubbed his neck, wincing a bit. “Do you know Israel’s secret for success, all these decades?”
“Atomic bombs.”
“No. It’s…” He paused. “Are you confirming that Israel has nuclear weapons?”
Daria rested her chin on her upturned knee. “Yes.”
“Can I trust you on this?”
“No.”
He winced his version of a laugh. “Fair enough. No, Israel’s survival has depended upon being surrounded by radical hard-liners. Arafat, Sadat, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran. Israel should be a political joke. A bunch of Jews, pressed up against the sea. Before 1967, the country was only nine miles wide. Surrounded on all sides by enemies. But these enemies have looked crazy, especially to the Americans and Western Europe. The West had to trust Israel because, as the Americans say, it’s the only game in town.”
Daria felt the cobwebs in her brain clear. “Until Arab democracy broke out.”
“If you’re Israel, in light of the Arab Spring, how do you secure sixty more years of unyielding Western support?”
Daria shrugged.
“You need a new holocaust.”
Daria ran her hands through her hair again. She worried her lower lip with her teeth. She tried, as hard as she possibly could, to find a flaw in his logic.
She breathed out a whisper. “A flu.”
“A pandemic. That targets Jews. I don’t know. It’s possible. Then you just have to find the right … what’s the Americanism? Falling…?”
“Fall guy.”
“Thank you, yes. Find a fall guy. Frankly, Damascus has been unhappy with Iranian influence for some years now. The mullahs make good villains.”
Daria felt her blood freeze.
“What is the population of Israel today? Seven million? Say Sahar’s influenza kills only one percent of them.”
“Genocide.” Daria’s eyes burned.
“With Western powers unilaterally backing Tel Aviv. Let me speculate: say Asher Sahar manages to blame the Iranians. Do you doubt that the West would invade? And now the wells of Iran would be under the control of Texas. Saudi Arabia would sit back and let it happen, happy to be rid of a rival. Israel would see another half century of security.”
Belhadj finished his coffee and rose. He looked into the coffee, winced in distaste, and set it back down. “And all it would cost is a few thousand fatalities. Cheap at twice the price.”
* * *
Asher Sahar and his team crossed the border from France to Italy, riding in style in the back of a truck-and-trailer rig. The truck swayed awkwardly as it took a left onto the A5 to Milan. They sat on crates and on the floor. They ate jerky and drank stale water they had stashed earlier in the escape tunnel under the factory.
No one complained.
The American, Will Halliday, slept on his back on one of the crates, snoring.
Asher sat on the floor. He had nearly finished the Saint-Exupéry book. He reminded himself to pick up another novel in Milan.
Eli Schullman sat on a barrel, legs dangling to the right of Asher. “May I ask you something?”
Asher marked the page by folding down the corner. “Of course.”
“How did that benighted bitch find us?”
Asher sighed. He removed his bifocals and breathed on them, then began attempting to clean them with his none-too-clean cardigan. “First, if I’ve asked you once, I’ve asked you ten times: please don’t call her that.”
The massive Schullman tore off a hunk of dried deer meat and attempted to chew it. It would have served better as a boot than a meal. “My apologies. How did that clever duckling find us?”
“Overconfidence.”
“Us?”
Asher smiled. “Yes, us. We knew she was alive. We knew she had not been detained by the Americans. We should have anticipated her throwing a spanner in the works.”
Schullman continued to chew on the jerky, which seemed not to diminish one iota in his mouth. “I thought we had everything covered.”
“‘Optimism,’ said Candide, ‘is the mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going badly.’”
Schullman thought about that a moment. “Didn’t Candide also say, ‘Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’?”
Asher slipped his glasses back on and opened his book again. “That was Professor Pangloss. And he was crazy.”
Eli Schullman said, “Ah.” As if that explained everything.
Langley
It was only 5:30
A.M.
on a Saturday when Stanley Cohen, CIA Assistant Director for Anti-Terrorism, took the elevator down to the level of the Shark Tanks. He wanted to check on Pegasus. It was too early for anyone on the administrative floor to have made coffee yet and he was regretting not stopping at Starbucks.
He heard the clack of computer keys being pounded from an analysis room adjacent to the Shark Tank. Raincoat over one arm, he stepped in to find John Broom, at one of the blue-cloth-walled cubicles, typing madly.
“Broom. I attended your going-away party. I had punch. I remember it like it was yesterday. Wait, it was yesterday.”
John smiled blearily over his shoulder. He hadn’t gotten much sleep. “My contract goes through Sunday.”
“You’re kidding.”
John retrieved pages from a group printer. “Thorson confirmed that the connection between the stolen flu and the two fugitives is real.”
“The virus that hasn’t made anybody sick.”
John’s eyes were red from working through half the night. “That factory shoot-out in Paris: the French found two bodies infected with something. Both had bled out before the attack. They found a cryo-container that fits the description of the canister found in the Philippines and stolen in Colorado.”
“Yeah, but the French haven’t finished autopsies yet.”
“I’ve been working with this major in the U.S. Army, an epidemiologist. He’s USAMRIID. Also World Health. The two of us are working on a theory that whoever’s behind this is resurrecting the work of a Tajik biologist who was weaponizing viruses for the Soviet Union back in the day.”
Cohen felt the facts spinning away from him. “The Soviets? You’re sure the Third Reich isn’t behind this?”
But John wouldn’t be sidetracked. “The major texted me a couple of minutes ago. WHO is asking him to go to Europe to identify the virus. He’s tracked down the original biologist. I’d like to go with him.”
Cohen felt the urge to smoke come over him like a migraine. “Okay … first, where’s the biologist?”
“Milan, Italy. We can be there in four hours.”
“And you and this major think this guy’s virus is … whatever got stolen from the Secret Service in Colorado.”
John said, “Yes.”
“And you want to track down this lead.”
“It’s the army’s lead. I’ll just be advising.”
John picked his words with precision. He wasn’t asking to be assigned into the field, like a CIA operative. He was asking to advise the U.S. Army. Which was clearly within the CIA’s mandate.
Cohen looked like an aneurism was imminent. “You understand, we tend to put our toughest guys in the field. Battle-hardened guys. Macho guys.”
John said, “Sure.”
“John? What color is your tie?”
“Dusty eggplant?”
“And Jesus wept.”
Cohen looked at his watch. He weighed the options. He considered his personnel. John waited. “Milan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go.”
John quickly gathered his things.
“I’ll tell Nanette. And Thorson. He’ll be so happy to know you’re on your way to save the day.”
John gathered his attaché case, suit coat, and winter jacket. He was halfway out the door when he stopped. A stray thought nagged at him. He turned back to the ADAT.
“Sir? In New York, when Daria called her FBI handler, she said a name: Asher Sahar.”
“Yeah. Turns out that’s the renegade Mossad jackass who shot her before she defected.”
John winced, pissed at himself. “That’s why I knew the name. Damn it.”
“He’s doing a life term in a black box lockup somewhere in Israel.”
John played it out in his head. “We’re sure?”
Cohen studied the younger man. He could tell John’s mind was leaping ahead. “It’s a black box. We know what the Mossad tells us.”
“Okay. Thank you, sir.” John shrugged into his coat. “Um, do you think you could…?”
“Go! I’ll confirm this Sahar guy is in prison. Just, please, go.”
John left.
Twenty-four
Southern France
In the farmhouse kitchen, Daria stood and refilled her coffee cup. “So we find out if this biologist from Tajikistan is still in Milan. If he is, we go find him. He may be our best lead to Asher.”
Belhadj finished his coffee. “There’s a Syrian intelligence officer working out of a safe house in Lyon.”
“Will he help us?”
Belhadj nodded.
“Can you get us there? If you can, I know people in Lyon.”
Belhadj returned to the computer and clicked on the Internet provider symbol. “I’ll get a map.”
Daria leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her bare ankles, watching him. He sat in the dining-room chair turned into a mini-office, eyes on the aging PC. An hourglass symbol began to rotate, telling them to wait.
He said, without looking up, “Do we need to talk about last night?”
She studied him in profile. “God, I hope not.”
“Fine.” He studied the unmoving screen.
“But if we did…?”
The Syrian darted a glance at her brown legs, which disappeared up into the chambray shirt. “I’m fine not talking about it.”
“Is this a Muslim thing?”
He jettisoned a puff of air, making his cheeks bulge for a split second. It took Daria a moment to realize that’s what passed for a laugh from Khalid Belhadj. “Making love to you was not a
Muslim
thing and not talking about it isn’t a
Muslim
thing. By God, you were undercover in Beirut and the West Bank for years. Did you learn nothing about us?”