Alamour turned back to their table. “There are plenty of starving orphans on the Gaza side. And there will be plenty more.”
His cousin smiled and gestured toward the grubby spot on the window where the urchin had leaned. “That,” Al Korshan said, “is our newest employee.”
Alamour almost choked on his tea. “That devil?”
His cousin corrected him. “No. That tunnel rat.”
* * *
The Bedouin cousins caught the homeless boy in an alley and paid him a single coin. In return for which, the boy climbed into the cousins’ tight, ill-lit, and almost airless tunnel. They had provided him with a snow sled from England, flat-bottomed, cherry red and plastic, with a twined rope that the boy tied around his waist so he could crawl on all fours. The first shipment for the snow sled was a stack of French cigarettes. Other cousins on the Gaza side received the boxes of cigarettes and sold them with a 100 percent markup. The entire shipment sold in a little under an hour.
The orphan pulled the plastic sled back to the Egyptian side. Caked in sweat and dirt, only his eyes shone beneath the grime. He rose from the tunnel, held out a dirt-caked hand, and said, “More!”
The boy worked ten-hour days, crawling with his sled stacked with canned food, spare parts for automobiles, cigarettes, and even American dollars, the only currency that some shops in the Gaza Strip accepted. The cousins waited two weeks to make sure the system was working, then added marijuana and heroin, which proved handsomely profitable.
“More!” the boy would shout, emerging on the Egyptian side of the border. “Canned food. And cigarettes. And lighters. And hashish, if you can get it.”
As the Bedouin sons and nephews scoured South Rafah for the goods, the homeless boy tore into a bowl of lentil soup and a wedge of stale bread. They paid him a pittance.
Alamour made more money in those first three weeks than he had in the previous six months. But he still looked askance at the manic tatterdemalion devouring his food.
“How do you even understand the little hellion?” he asked. “What language is that?”
Al Korshan laughed. “A stew. Some of it is Arabic, some is Hebrew. A little French and English, too. Some I don’t recognize. Yiddish, I think maybe.”
Alamour looked stricken. “Hebrew and Yiddish? Are you saying the child is a Jew?”
Al Korshan shrugged. “I don’t know and I doubt the boy himself knows. That is God’s business. Ours is commerce. That brat could be the cousin of the Pope in Rome for all I care. So long as he can work the tunnels.”
Costa Rica
On board the
Belle Australis
, off the Nicoya Peninsula, a Jamaican porter made strong coffee for two of the guests, weaker green tea for two more, a Coke Zero with a wedge of lime and no ice for the fifth, and the Captain’s Blend (two-thirds Nescafé, one-third Glenfiddich). He put all the drinks on a tray, along with tablet computers for each guest, preloaded with their newspapers and magazines of choice and a bowl of fruit. Finally, he added small crystal vases, large enough for one short-stemmed rose for each guest.
He hoisted the tray with the beverages, fruit, computers, and flowers, and began distributing them around the megayacht, which sat so serenely in the Pacific waters they might as well have been in the George V Hotel in Paris.
The sun had not yet risen. The palm trees were black against the indigo horizon, the white beaches empty except for colonies of seabirds standing asleep vertically.
The steward headed for the long, claret-carpeted guest corridor and gingerly knelt before each door to leave a breakfast, a tablet, and a flower. His knees popped each time he knelt. He paused at the door of the long-legged beauty; the translator with the indeterminate accent. The steward smiled.
As with the morning before, he again heard the sounds of moaning coming from her room. The sound was ghostly, throaty, rising in crescendo. The steward smiled and shook his head, leaving the morning treats, as the moaning behind the wooden door gave way to a howl, poorly silenced by a pillow.
“
Jeune fille de bon chance,
” he observed, clucking in appreciation. He was glad someone was having a good time aboard the floating palace.
* * *
Daria awoke under the bed, moaning.
As she did so many mornings.
She was bathed in sweat, her eyes alight, flowing from within a Molotov cocktail of pain and betrayal and pure distilled terror. She was a little girl. An orphan. A child war veteran.
No!
She forced her brain to scramble through the morning time travel terrors.
Not a little girl. Not the Gaza Strip. There were no bombs, no blood. No callused adult hands, torn and bloody, reaching for her. No diggers above her, screaming for more help. No fire dying in a woman’s eyes. No lips silently breathing apologies.
She was aboard the
Belle Australis
, off the shore of Costa Rica. The sweat-sodden sheets were rucked around her hips; she had dragged them down off the bed with her. Daria grabbed a fistful and shoved the sheets over her mouth and screamed in panic/hate/pain.
Her morning began much as usual.
* * *
Daria made reservations for a Wednesday sortie of flights—two puddle jumper hops and one crossing the Western Hemisphere—culminating in New York City. That left her free to accept the dinner invitation from the yacht’s first officer, a Moldovan woman with lush blond hair and the body of a distance runner.
She and the first officer sat in the Tango Mar seaside café with glasses of crisp Italian prosecco. The music turned out to be 1950s jazz. The first officer wore a polka-dot dress—quite a change from her well-pressed white uniform with blue button-down epaulettes and sensible, rubber-soled shoes. She had exceptionally fine calves. Daria registered the thought that one doesn’t necessarily expect naval officers to be runners. You expect them to have other skills, like knot tying. Sure enough, a few hours earlier, the first officer had proven most proficient at that, too. But to have exceptional calves? And in flat sandals? Remarkable.
Daria sipped her sparkling wine.
“You seem distracted,” the first officer observed in French, which was their common tongue.
“I am. By you.” Daria smiled and leaned forward to touch the woman’s hand. “Let’s order some food.”
Actually, Daria was distracted. Within one week, she had been unlinked to the FBI, and she had been contacted for an urgent meet with Colin Bennett-Smith, an old British friend from her predefection days.
Coincidence? Daria hated that word.
Five
Montreal, Canada
The security officer at Aeroport International Pierre Elliott Trudeau de Montreal looked bored. Syrian intelligence officer Khalid Belhadj had counted on boredom. He had timed his flight so he would arrive toward the end of the morning security shift.
“
Votre passeport, s’il vous plait.
”
Belhadj handed over a well-worn Egyptian passport.
“
Combien de temps allez-vous rester en Canada?
”
He shifted his weight from foot to foot and peered through old, scratched eyeglasses. “Am sorry. I have no French. I speak some American?”
Belhadj knew very well that airport security personnel the world over are trained to watch for foreigners with superior language skills.
“English,” the officer corrected. “It is called English. Business or vacation?”
Belhadj pointed to his shabby, faux-leather portfolio. “Business. Ah…” He shrugged and opened the portfolio, withdrew a twofold brochure for a medical line of penile catheters. He began to demonstrate how they work.
That was enough for the security guard. He stamped the passport and pushed it through the half-circle opening in his Plexiglas shield.
“Thank you. Welcome to Canada. Next!”
* * *
Within the Trudeau terminal, a woman with a baby stroller knelt near the baggage claims carousel, digging through a massive backpack for a clean diaper, baby powder, and wipe-ups. After Khalid Belhadj passed her with his portfolio of catheters, the woman spoke into her sleeve.
“We have Bowler.”
New York City
Midmorning on Wednesday, Daria landed at JFK with a white canvas beach tote and a glowing golden tan. She looked anomalous amid the snow shovels, bulbous parkas, and sallow complexions of New York in November.
She didn’t know what Colin Bennett-Smith’s situation was, but she owed him her life a couple of times over. If he wanted a life and death meeting—his words—she would show. If she could help him, she would. If not, she’d have some time, a few days, to enjoy New York City. Even in November, cold as it was, the city was lovely. The Christmas decorations were in full bloom and, while Daria wasn’t the holiday sort, she did love the vivid colors of the season.
She hefted her tote and joined the queue walking or half-jogging toward baggage claim and ground transportation. Her almond eyes swept the crowd methodically, although subconsciously. It was the habit of a lifetime.
She just passed a news kiosk as the airport’s P.A. system sounded:
Dee Jean D’Arc. Please return to the Alaska Airlines booth to retrieve your purse. Dee Jean D’Arc. Please return to the Alaska Airlines booth to retrieve your purse.
She froze.
Dee
was Daria.
Jean D’Arc
was Joan of Arc.
Translation:
Daria … you are burned.
It was an old code. Far older than her time with Shin-Bet. It was a code from her childhood.
Her first assumption was she was being followed. If so, then the surveillance team was good because she hadn’t spotted them yet. Shaking them would be a good idea. Just on principle. Step one: thin the herd.
She gave up on the notion of collecting her luggage from baggage claim. The bag contained nothing she couldn’t replace. In fact, if push came to shots-fired, Daria could ghost out of her own life, just like she’d been trained to do since before she’d hit five feet tall.
She stopped in the women’s restroom, waited a few minutes in a cubicle, then stepped out and returned to the news kiosk. She spotted a businessman with a carry-on bag eyeing a rack of magazines. Daria had a copy of that week’s
Time
magazine in her tote. She pulled it out, caught the man’s eye. “Excuse me?”
She gave him her brightest smile. He glanced over, turned away, then did a double take. Beautiful women didn’t smile like that at him every day.
Daria proffered her magazine. “I’m done with this one and I hate to just throw them away. Do you want it?”
The guy had been looking for
Field and Stream
or
Golf Digest
, but free is free. “Sure! Thanks.”
Daria had noted his wedding ring before she approached him. She winked at him. Predictably, the wink made him glance around, to see who else had noticed.
“Business or pleasure?”
“Excuse me? Oh, my flight. Ah, I’m … I’ve got a business thing. In Atlanta.” He shrugged. “Conference.”
“Lovely. Well,
bon voyage.
”
He gestured toward the magazine. “Thanks. Um, hey, you know, thanks. Bye.”
Daria felt just a little bad that she was so good at flustering married men.
* * *
A janitor in a jumpsuit, with a water bucket and mop, touched the comm unit in his ear. “Batsman just made contact. Unknown male. She handed him a magazine. He’s glancing around, looking for surveillance? He hasn’t made me. He’s putting it in his carry-on. Over.”
The CIA agent running the surveillance team toggled back. “Stick with the stranger. See where he goes. If there’s a chance to grab the magazine, do so. Over.”
“Confirmed.”
Two members of the CIA surveillance team peeled away.
* * *
Daria left JFK without approaching the baggage carousel. It took her three cabs, a brisk walk, and a short subway ride before she found the perfect place to stop. The convergence of a convenience store, a small restaurant, and a construction project that had closed one of two traffic lanes, and a harried-looking police officer, bundled against the cold and trying to keep the sluggish traffic moving.
She located an ATM machine and dug through her tote for her collection of debit cards, which nestled beneath the removable cardboard bottom of the bag near the spade-shaped knife. She never traveled without them and never trusted them to her checked luggage. Each card featured a different name and different alphanumeric password, and each was linked to a different bank. She pulled a total of twelve hundred dollars out of the three accounts.
She dashed to the convenience store and found a large, cheap pair of sunglasses and a folding map of Manhattan. She headed to the restaurant and ordered French onion soup with warm corn bread and coffee latte. She chose a table where she could watch the irritable traffic cop standing between orange traffic cones, mouthing, “C’mon buddy … move it … let’s go…”
She ate without noticing the quality of the food. She studied the map. Colin Bennett-Smith had asked her to meet him at 2:00
P.M.
on Forty-second Street, west of Lexington, at an entrance to Grand Central Terminal that hunkered beneath the Park Avenue overpass. She ran a trimmed, buffed fingernail over the spot, realizing she recognized it. There would be plenty of foot traffic and plenty of automobile traffic. It wasn’t a half-bad place for an impromptu meeting.
Except for the warning at the airport.
She glanced up at the traffic from time to time. The block provided virtually no parking and with construction slowing everything to a snail’s pace, it became unlikely she was being followed by a car that was circling the block. The irritated traffic cop would have noticed by now. And no customers younger than sixty had entered the restaurant since she arrived.