The Watchers (41 page)

A panel glowed violently, angrily red. An alarm sounded.

A watching member of Ben Gurion Airport Security Service walked over and shook his head as the captured still-shot faded, whisked away to Interpol's alert system. The shot was replaced by real-time footage of Abby's face. Blinking readouts of her skin temperature, pulse, and pupil dilation.

“Biometrics are a little elevated,” the man said to a companion in the corner, “but it's the actual features it really doesn't like. They've triggered some Interpol watch list, but which one, it didn't say.”

“Did it upload?”

“Yes. Just did.”

“Fine. Then just wait. This girl doesn't trigger any serious profiles. I think she's just tired. Unless Nadeena spots something, let's just wait on Interpol.”

CHAPTER
_
58

ISRAEL, DAVID BEN GURION AIRPORT

“Please, Lord,” Abby whispered, “let my fear and my guilt stay invisible to these people and their cameras. . . .”

Inwardly she repeated the plea over and over as she stood, her knees grown as rubbery as her brain cells. She could see Dylan standing at the far edge of the room. He was through. She could see that he was also sweating it out.

More than anything, she hoped he was praying.

“And what use will you make of this research?” the young woman continued.

Abby sighed.
The truth, if possible . . .

“First and foremost, I've developed a practical goal. I want to help the Ethiopians win their fight. There's an important war going on, one that's far more important than a few square feet of church rooftop.”

There. It was vague and imprecise, but it was the truth.

“What made you choose this subject?”

That tack surprised Abby. She strained a moment for words. “Well, it's quite a story, with roots stretching back over centuries. All sorts of implications and subtopics reaching into nearly every level of religious and social history through the ages. Dramatic episodes too. Even in our own decade, there've been violent—”

“What is your true relationship to the man you came here with?”

Ah, there it was. The tossed-in disruptor question.

She paused. An honest responder would have paused before answering that one.

What is the truth?
Abby asked herself.
What is an honest reply I can give to satisfy this woman?

She wanted to answer that it wasn't any of her business. It was no concern of the State of Israel how she felt about Dylan. And she would have been right. But she would have also been inviting her own doom.

She sighed, the breath laden with reluctance.

She would speak the truth.

“I suppose it's because . . .” she said finally, then pausing again, “because I have romantic feelings toward my friend. Feelings I have never disclosed to him. And I was hoping that on this trip, those feelings might emerge and turn into an actual . . . relationship.”

“Why would you hide such a thing from a public questioner?”

Abby almost guffawed out loud. “You're joking, right?” she heard herself saying, despite her own better judgment and inner protestations. “Would
you
offer up such a thing to a public official, in this kind of setting?”

The young woman looked at her closely. She seemed to be searching, Abby imagined, for signs of a motive behind the outburst.
Petulance? Impatience? Arrogance? A plea for sympathy?

Out of sight, the young woman's right index finger trembled, poised over what they all called the “giveaway button”—the alarm that told every security person in Ben Gurion that a falsehood had been identified. A bad guy of some sort had been found.

The finger lowered. Its skin actually grazed the button's top surface.

Something passed between them. The tiniest spark of understanding. Of course, Abby was right. It was ridiculous to fault somebody for not informing an interrogator of a private crush.

And yet, she had to say something.

“I suppose it's because of my high regard for Israel and the religious heritage she represents. I'm very aware that I'm traveling alone with this young man. And of the . . . appearance of impropriety that might present.”

Perfect. Her voice had dripped with an altogether sincere reluctance and embarrassment.

Her confession had been truer than she'd ever intended.

Abby met the young woman's gaze and tried to picture whether she too, somewhere in her past, may have harbored unspoken, possibly unrequited, feelings for a man she'd spent time with.

Please, Lord, deliver me from this nightmare. . . .

Abby leaned back and caught sight of Dylan, straining anxiously for a sight of her.

The young woman noticed the contact. Ever so slowly, her head turned until she got a glimpse of the man Abby had spoken of.

He was in mid-wave, smiling hopefully, when the young woman had seen him. He lowered his hand sheepishly.

Abby thought he had never looked more boyishly handsome.

The index finger withdrew. The young woman's face softened and became human again.

“You're free to go.”

Unable to process the words, Abby stared at the passport and ID being handed back to her. The documents shook imperiously, a gesture of impatience on the young woman's part.
Take them and go!

“Enjoy your stay in Israel, Miss Rawlins. And good luck.”

Because Abigail Sherman's facial measurement did not reside in the fields reserved for criminal suspicion but rather for
persons of interest
, a rather hazy and more innocuous designation in Interpol's menus, the alert was not automatically forwarded to the customs booth as it otherwise would have. As a result, it was delayed for twenty seconds while the command center staff decided whether to forward it to the booth for action or ignore it altogether.

Several moments later, a red alarm began to blink silently in the bottom left corner of the young Airport Security operator's computer screen.

By then Abby was on the other side of the terminal, staring motionless at a suspended television as Dylan walked up briskly.

“Come on,” he urged her in a low voice.

“Dylan! Look!”

Compelled by the panic in her voice, he glanced upward.

The red-backed text crawling along the screen's bottom read,
Breaking news: Robert Sherman, New Media chairman and father of Abby Sherman, abducted in Nigeria
.

Dylan shook his head in a brief concession to shock. “I'm so sorry, Abby. We can talk about this later, try to figure out what to do, but right now we have to move. Now. The cops are coming. . . .”

Security personnel spotted the pair just as Abby and Dylan disappeared onto the outside sidewalk, their bags in hand. Pursuers sprinting out to the sidewalk saw only a retreating taxicab, its license plate numbers and ID tags, only they were too distant for reading.

But Abby Sherman had not escaped. Not by a long shot.

Interpol knew, which meant that within an hour the entire world of secret organizations had learned she'd been spotted in Israel.

A half hour after that, an enhanced Annihilation was issued to every Brother of the Scythe around the globe. With blood stirring and adrenaline surging through their veins, every one of them stopped from fifty different ordinary activities. Twelve were in the act of harvesting victims, and even those ecstatic rituals went unfinished.

Fifty killers turned their homicidal gazes on Jerusalem and hurried there, as though their own lives depended on it.

CHAPTER
_
59

JERUSALEM, THE ROOFTOP
—MORNING

They found her that morning standing, as motionless as a statue, facing out across the rooftops of the Old City. The monk came up behind her and she spoke without turning, without giving any sign of how she'd detected his approach.

“Brother Brehan,” she said, still staring ahead, “I hope you've brought me some reinforcement.”

“Indeed I have, my Sister.”

“It is I, Sarha,” called the female voice beside him.

“There is a great battle afoot,” she said.

“I know. I sense it too. It is why I came. I sent out my best summons to all the sisters I know. They are all on their way.”

“Good. I have never seen so many comings and goings over the skies of this city before. And never felt such foreboding. The battle ahead will be unlike anything we have known. But do you know why it is happening?”

“I have no idea, Sister.”

“She is here. The sister we have prayed for all these weeks. I have felt her approaching.”

THE OLD CITY
—THE NEXT MORNING

Walking through the ancient stone walls of the Jaffa Gate beside Dylan, Abby gazed up at the deep blue, almost purple Judean sky, felt the Mediterranean sun warm her cheeks, smiled for a moment, then just as quickly willed the expression from her face. Frowning, she looked down while they walked.

“I just can't believe I asked him to lie to protect me,” Abby lamented, “yet never thought of asking him to protect himself.”

“That may be true,” said Dylan, “but you didn't ask your father to go traipsing around the globe, making enemies.”

“He didn't know what he was in for, you know that. He doesn't even believe in spiritual things.”

“I predict he will soon,” Dylan said.

“What are you saying?” she asked, fuming.

“Only that I think he's got quite a learning curve ahead of him.”

“Well, regardless, we need to pray for my dad's safety, that God will protect him wherever he is right now. His life's in serious danger. . . .”

“I'm sorry, Abby. I didn't mean to sound so cold. And I agree completely that we need to pray for him. By the way, are you going to tell me what you said to that security woman back at the airport?”

She gave Dylan a long, appraising glance, and the faintest return of a smile. “Not on your life,” she said.

“I didn't think you would. But you realize this only gives my imagination more fodder to imagine anything it wants.”

“Imagine away, Dylan. It will never beat the truth.”

Smiling at each other, they passed under the gate's arch and gaped in wonder. The sheer crush of humanity that greeted their senses nearly caused them to stop where they stood—except that in a crowd this thick and bustling, stopping was the one sure impossibility.

Beyond the strip of shadow sprawled David's Square, a marketplace crammed with street vendors, food stalls, souvenir stands, and more people than Abby had ever seen in such a small space. Abby glanced at a trinket stand beside her, piled high with copper pots of every size and shape. Just beyond it, a Palestinian boy barely in his teens hoisted wooden nativity scenes in both hands, screaming an incomprehensible sales pitch to all passersby. She craned her neck. Her gaze brought her exotic shades of blue and orange from a silk stall; her nostrils filled with hot steam and the aroma of fresh-baked pita bread, deep-fried falafel, and some kind of grilled kebab. As she walked by, she ducked to avoid the wild gestures of two men, one of them a Hasid wearing black clothes and a waist-length beard, haggling loudly over a large urn. Overwhelmed, Abby hopped aside to avoid being struck by a strange little cart, pushed along by a stone-faced teenaged boy.

“That's what passes for mules around here,” Dylan explained. “You see that strip of rubber dragging along behind? That's the brakes. When they go downhill, the guy just steps on it hard and hangs on.”

She laughed out loud at the thought. “Wow, you know so much! Do you know what it does for me, being back here?”

“Back here? I thought this was your first trip to Israel.”

“Well, Dylan, that's the thing. All of this takes me back to the very first dream, or experience, that launched me on this whole journey. Remember, it was my experience of inhabiting the body of the prophetess Anna, on the morning her lifelong dream was fulfilled and she got to hold the baby Jesus, and tell the world that the Messiah had come. It all happened right here, and I can feel it, and taste it, and smell it.”

“That's great, Abby.”

“Dylan, are you all right? You don't seem all that excited to be here.”

He turned to her, his features clouded over. “I've been here before, Abby.”

“Oh. Well, is that such a bad thing?”

“No. I mean”—and now he adopted a low, menacing tone—“I've
been here
before.”

She shook her head, a blank expression on her face. “I'm sorry. I'm not catching your drift.”

“Do you even remember what I told you, back in Africa, about my career?”

“I know at first you were hired to kill me. But I guess I never put it all in a broader picture. Maybe I just didn't want to see the whole meaning.”

He stopped walking, turned to block her way, then leaned in close as the crowd flowed around them, bumping their shoulders and assaulting their senses with an unending variety of foreign clothes, snatches of exotic languages, and questioning looks from faces of every description. David Street had now turned into a narrow bazaar—a claustrophobic, deafening kaleidoscope of people, shops, and foods.

“I've been an assassin, Abby,” he whispered. “A professional hired by our government and . . . sympathetic parties. No fake movie stuff. No James Bond. The real thing.”

“People like that really exist?”

“A few of us, yes. I was here in '01, right after 9/11. A small team and I helped Israeli Mossad find and sanction a whole PLO team that was here preparing to do some very bad things.”

“Sanction?”

His face darkened. “You know what I mean.”

“Oh . . .”

Abby nodded thoughtfully, and they continued walking, the moment's tension dissipated. She looked down at her feet and, for the first time, tried to absorb this deeper knowledge.