After a beat, his voice came back, along with a rumbling in the background. “It sure does.”
“Which is why, if I were to inform you that Gibron is meeting with your Tajik doctor at four
P.M.
, Italy time, at a café in the Piazza del Duomo, and that Swing Band is on site, it would in no way constitute my permission to get your ass there, fast. Understood?”
Another longish beat. “Nanette?”
“Yes, John?”
“Christmas is four weeks away. What do you want Santa to bring you?”
“A new pair of eyes. Daria Gibron did a couple of big things in New York this week. One of them was to derail Owen Thorson’s career. John? I cannot have
this
thing be about
that
thing.”
John said, “Got it,” and hung up.
* * *
The reader board on the Malpensa train read:
NEXT STOP: MILAN TRAIN STATION.
John turned to Major James. “There’s a complication.”
“I’m in the army. There are no complications, just opportunities.”
John looked the heavy Irishman dead in the eye. “Daria Gibron is meeting Dr. Tuychiev in a really crowded plaza, in about an hour, and one or both of them likely has access to Pegasus-B. Plus, a CIA hit squad with a chip on its shoulder is setting up to eliminate the threat.”
Theo stopped smiling. “Okay, that’s a complication.”
“I’m going in.”
“Well, that sounds sort of dumb.”
“A little, yeah.”
The train began to slow down. Theo offered a lopsided smile. “Well, let’s get to it then.”
Twenty-nine
The Middle East
Almost Twenty Years Ago
In two years, the Tunnel Rat of Rafah, who had dubbed himself Asher, turned twelve and the girl he’d rescued turned eight. By that time, the boy was organizing not only black-market goods in Rafah, but other towns as well. It was 1985 and he had become masterful at breaking into the many Jewish settlements that were sprouting like mushrooms throughout the Gaza Strip. He also had learned how to sneak into the Israeli Defense Forces compounds.
The girl had become a most capable pickpocket and thief. She looked so damned innocent! Not to mention quick; quick as a cat. Asher had started calling her that, in fact: Chatoulah. Western aid workers and foreign journalists fawned over her huge black eyes as she all but curtsied and picked their pockets clean.
One day, in an alley near an open-air bazaar on the north side of Rafah, the boy dug into his pocket and held out a bit of leather. The girl has seen Western playing cards and thought the thing looked like one of the suits.
“What is it?” she asked around a mouthful of rice and raisins.
Asher grinned and showed her that it wasn’t a single bit of leather but a leather sandwich, with something metal and form-fitting within.
He flicked the metal bit with a ragged thumbnail. The metal slid out on a single hinge.
Asher picked up a discarded bit of corrugated cardboard and cleaved it in two with hardly any effort.
He closed the blade back in its spade-shaped sheath. “It’s sharp. Be careful.”
He tossed it to the girl.
“What do I need a knife for?”
“Because I won’t always be here to protect you, Chatoulah.”
She shoved his shoulder, thinking the Hebrew word for
cat
was an insult regarding her lack of size. “Your mother’s only dowry was a sailor’s cock!”
“Hey!” He nudged her shoulder and grinned. “That’s a pretty good one.”
He’d been teaching the girl to swear in Arabic. She blushed. She’d been saving it for a special occasion.
He took some of the rice and raisins, and handed her the bowl. “I won’t always be here to protect you,” he repeated.
“Yes, you will.”
“No.” There was something definitive in Asher’s voice. “The cousins want me to work up north, in Khan Yunis and Deir al-Baleh. If all goes well, I’ll be working Gaza City by this time next year.”
The girl ate, handed back the bowl. “So take me with you.”
He switched to French, to test her. “Maybe. We’ll see. But keep the knife. You never know.”
“You never know,” she acceded in French.
“What is your name this month?”
Since discovering that “Asher” had been a spur-of-the-moment choice, the girl had shifted her name seven or eight times a year.
“Daria.”
“God, that’s awful.” He rolled his eyes. “You sound like a mark. I want to rob you myself.”
“It’s pretty,” she countered, rubbing her tiny thumb over the leather, spade-shaped sheath.
“I have been studying American cinema.
Back to the Future
is number one at the box office. It stars a girl called Lea. That would be a good name.”
The girl wrinkled her nose.
“
The Color Purple?
It has an Oprah.”
She thought about it. “Is that a common American name?”
Asher gave her his most worldly scowl. “In America, every fifth girl is an Oprah. Trust me. It’s perfect.”
They finished the rice bowl.
“Why do I need an American name?”
Asher sucked rice off his fingers, then wiped them with the hem of his T-shirt. “There’s a war on, Chatoulah.”
“Where?”
He hesitated. “Here. I think.”
“A war between who?”
He shot her a look. “I haven’t figured out all of the angles. Even the Bedouin cousins, God grant them huge profits, don’t know all the details. I just think a war is coming. And…”
The girl was half paying attention, fingers playing with the leather-and-blade sandwich in her small hands. “What?”
“I think,” Asher switched to English, to see if she could keep up, “we need to align ourselves.”
“With who …
whom?
” Her English was stilted.
“With the side that wins.”
The girl said, “It’s hot.”
The boy didn’t seem to hear her.
Daria Gibron said, “It’s hot!”
Belhadj said, “Wake up. You have a fever.”
* * *
Daria snapped awake. “Ash—?”
The blue-and-white Volkswagen bus rounded a tight bend, eight kilometers out from Milan. “You were complaining about the heat.” Belhadj looked worried. “You’re sweating. You have a fever.”
Daria’s fingers rose to her upper lip. She wasn’t bleeding. But her elbows and knees ached.
“You’re not well. You—”
“Get us there,” she interrupted, her eyes on the traffic.
He drove, jaw set.
“There’s something about Asher Sahar you’re not telling me.”
Daria leaned back in the cracked plastic seat, skin glistening.
“Were you lovers?”
“No.”
“You always call him Asher.” He drove, his mood deepening. “Are you siblings?”
Daria turned to him. She mopped her forehead with the sleeve of the jean jacket. “Not by blood.”
“Don’t be so damn cryptic!”
A half-assed smile twitched to life on her lips, then guttered out.
“We were orphans.”
Belhadj drove in silence.
“Another battle, another neighborhood destroyed. A … group of Israeli loyalists read the tea leaves and realized Israel would never know peace. So…” Her voice drifted away.
“Daria?”
“They collected orphans. Street urchins. Pickpockets, beggars, child prostitutes. The unwanted fruit of the tree of war. Asher was one. So was I. He was almost four years older. He protected me.”
“How old were you?”
She shrugged. “Six? Eight? Something like that. I don’t know my real age. Nor my birthday.”
“Why?”
“To train us.”
“To train children? I don’t understand. Are you saying…” Belhadj kept his eyes on the road. “Are you talking about the Group?”
Daria was quiet.
“My God. I thought they … you … were myth.”
“Like the golem.”
He didn’t know the reference and just shrugged.
“Golems. Protectors turned monsters.” She wet her lips with her tongue. “You called them the Group. As good a name as any. Believe it or not, we never had a name for them. They were just … the club, I suppose. But only Asher and I called them that. They taught us to fight. To sabotage. To infiltrate. To murder. Then they found us foster homes in Israel and hid us among the farmers and merchants, where no one would look for us. They knew that someday, somewhere down the violent path of statehood, Israel would need its monsters.”
They rode a few blocks in silence.
Belhadj thought long and hard before speaking. He knew she would be either crushed or acknowledge the truth of his observation. “Israeli jihadists.”
Daria didn’t move. After about a block, she reached out to Belhadj and tucked a disheveled lock of graying hair behind his ear. His voice carried such a wide array of emotions, although his face remained passive.
“Killers,” she corrected or acknowledged. “Killers who could do the unthinkable, who could do terrible deeds. Deeds that politicians and conscripted soldiers could never be asked to do.”
“Like kill a member of the Israeli Parliament and blame the Palestinians, to set up another holy war.”
“Yes. Asher was just following his programming. I tried to stop him. You have to believe, I never wanted him dead, never wanted him imprisoned. Just stopped. It wasn’t even a bad plan. It could have worked.”
“But you did stop him.”
She didn’t reply.
“Why didn’t you become like him?”
She shrugged off the question. “It’s not important. What’s important is stopping him. Again.”
Belhadj gripped the wheel tight. “That might not be possible without killing him.”
“Don’t.”
The rode for a while. The city center of Milan was fast approaching.
“Look. I realize you were raised together. You say he protected you as children. Fine. But when the time comes—”
“Don’t kill him.”
She wet her lips.
“That’s my job.”
Thirty
Belhadj parked two blocks from the Piazza del Duomo. Daria checked her Glock, made sure it was fully loaded, and threw three extra clips, seventeen Parabellum rounds each, into the Hello Kitty backpack she had stolen from the French farmhouse.
The Syrian had raided both the American and French command vehicles and had amassed a brilliant array of weapons of destruction. He reached into his sack and pulled out a massive silver handgun, a Desert Eagle, which, like a rifle, uses pressurized gas and not a hammer to propel the heavy .50 caliber bullets. The gun was a chunk of metal that, had it fallen from the heavens, would have killed all the dinosaurs.
“Holy hell.” Daria eyed the cannon. “You picked an Israeli handgun?”
He nodded. “Your people are Zionist occupiers and the killers of families, but you make one hell of a good firearm.”
“That thing should be bolted to the deck of a navy cutter. Are you sure you can aim it?”
“Fifty caliber rounds? Your aim doesn’t have to be perfect to turn your enemy into a graffito.”
She ratcheted open her car door. “When you fire, try not to topple the cathedral, will you?” She stepped out. “I’ll meet Tuychiev. You find a place to lurk.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re in no—”
Daria said, “Our
army
is exactly two guns deep. I’m sick and you’re not. Which of us should play the hare and which of us should lie in wait?”
He ground his back teeth, annoyed that a woman so devoid of military strategy always seemed to grasp the obvious tactical approach.
He crossed to her side of the van. Daria was swiveling at the hip, raising one heel, then the other, of her Spanish boots.
“Are you in pain?”
She was looking at the VW’s side mirror. “I’m trying to decide if these jeans make my ass look fat.”
When she glanced up, she thought Belhadj was wincing in pain. But no, it was his strange translation of a silent laugh.
“What?”
“You…” He composed himself. “You’re serious.”
She made a look-around gesture. “This is Milan.”
“Spare me, God. Is there a plan?”
“I always think everything is a trap. Let’s assume I’m right. We’re east of the Duomo. You cut south, into the plaza. I’ll cut north. The café is at the opposite end of the plaza. Tuychiev said he’d be seated outside. I’ll meet him, find out what he knows about this flu. See if there’s an antidote.”
Belhadj’s slate gray eyes flickered. “Fine.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I said
fine
. I’ll circle around, come up to the café from the south side. Don’t bother looking for me. I’ll be there.”
Daria removed the denim jacket, tossed it in the van, then slung the backpack over one shoulder, the heavy gun and clips against her lower back. She was sweating. It was maybe thirty-five degrees out.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You flinched when I said ‘antidote.’”
Belhadj bristled. “The last time I flinched, I also was teething.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Belhadj threw the strap of his bag over his shoulder, cross-chest. “Yes, there is. I forgot to tell you this plan is stupid and you are pigheaded and you should be in hospital, and your ego is out of control and you are not half as clever as you suppose you are.”
Daria ticked off his points on her fingers. “No. No, I believe you said all that in the van.”
“Oh. Then, no. Nothing more to tell you. Sorry.”
“There is no antidote for influenza, is there?”
Belhadj studied the pearl sky. When he looked back, Daria had the illusion that his eyes had been dyed to match the day.
“No. There are antivirals.”
“Oh. Good to know. Then after stopping Asher, we get this flu to World Health or the Centers for Disease Control or whomever, and have them concoct the antivirals.”
Belhadj didn’t respond.
Daria said, “How long does it take to make them?”
“About a year.”
Daria paused a beat. The pain in her elbows had increased. “Oh.”