The Lost Codex

61

Three hours passed too quickly. When Vail’s phone alarm went off, she did not want to open her eyes, let alone get out of bed. It took her a moment to orient herself — but a short bump of turbulence was enough to shake her mind back to the present. They had given her the master bedroom, which, with a pillow-topped mattress, provided the most comfortable experience she had ever had on an airplane.

This is the way to travel.

They convened in the main cabin in leather chairs that surrounded the table. Large mugs of coffee were at each seat, black and steaming.

“Caffeine,” DeSantos said, setting a carafe of milk next to Uzi. “Drink up, get your heads in order.”

Uzi rubbed his eyes and did a couple neck rotations. “Let’s get started.”

“Some information’s come in while we were sleeping,” DeSantos said. “First, Prati said they took down that van without a fight. They found the same radiological material that was packed into the truck in New York City. The tangos were arrested and are being questioned. All the defense contractors in LA are in lockdown. All incoming and outgoing communications for the past year are being checked. Hard drives and servers are being examined. It’s a friggin’ mess, but they’ll find him. Or her.”

“And the Cortez tunnels?” Fahad asked.

“They’re working on it.”

Vail suddenly did not need the java to wake up.

“Second,” DeSantos said, “Knox is en route. And we’ve got new orders.”

They waited for him to elaborate. Instead, he took a drink from his cup.

“The president does not want us to apprehend Sahmoud,” he said after another swallow. He’s concerned it’d send the wrong message while he’s trying to negotiate peace.”

Vail slammed her hand on the table. “Arresting a notorious terrorist, number three most wanted, who’s launched attacks on the US and killed scores of people — that’s sending the wrong message?” She turned to Uzi. “You have a relationship with the president. Why don’t you talk some sense into him?”

Uzi broke a smile. “We don’t have a relationship. I was at his inauguration.”

DeSantos took another drink. “Doesn’t matter. We’re not going to obey those orders.”

“We’re not?” Fahad said, eyebrows arched. He tilted his head. “Shouldn’t we put this to a vote?”

DeSantos stared him down. “No, Knox and Secretary McNamara are on board.”

Fahad squirmed in his seat. “You’re sure. The director told you this.”

“In so many words. He used a passphrase.”

“A passphrase.” Fahad glanced at Uzi, then back at DeSantos. “I think we need to be absolutely clear on this.”

“Let me be clear,” DeSantos said. “You can accept what I’m telling you, or you can stay on this plane when we land. Or you’re welcome to parachute out at any time during the next ninety minutes.”

“Okay, let’s all just take a breath,” Vail said slowly. “Hector. Knox gave you new orders but then told you not to follow them. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Right. Maybe someone was there with him, so he had to be appearing to tell me one thing when in fact he was telling me the opposite. Bottom line, nothing’s changed. But I wanted you to be aware of what was going on.”

That’d be great if I really knew what’s going on.

“Boychick, you got us set up with wheels?”

“A friend’s going to pick us up at Ben Gurion. Raphael Zemro. Former Shin Bet — Israel’s security agency — which is where I met him. He’s now a contractor. He may still do stuff for Shin Bet or Mossad, I’m not sure. But he understands what we’re doing. He speaks our language. We’ll be able to rely on him.”

They talked strategy for the next thirty minutes then DeSantos left them to their own thoughts during the approach to Israel.

Vail watched as the landscape took shape, darkness enveloping the region for as far as the eye could see, except for brilliant pinpricks of light in one particular area, which she was fairly certain was Israel.

They were on the ground ten minutes later. It was a quiet arrival — the airport was, for all intents and purposes, still closed. Jumbo jets, mostly 747s emblazoned with the El Al Israeli flag logo, sat on the tarmac awaiting the morning’s travelers.

They were met at the gate by an Israel Defense Forces colonel, which had been arranged by Knox with cooperation from his counterpart at the Shin Bet.

Vail, Uzi, DeSantos, and Fahad were ushered through Ben Gurion airport. They strode along the strongly sloped arrivals hall beside a divider made of tall, thick panes of glass. On the other side was another walkway sloped in the opposite direction, bounded by large bricks constructed to look like the Kotel, or Western Wall, one of the last vestiges of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and Judaism’s holiest site.

They hit the main terminal, a spherical room that featured a two-story, circular waterfall that cascaded down from the ceiling to a shallow trough in the center of the floor.

The area was ringed by shops that were dark. The quiet of the airport was a bit unnerving.

The colonel led them through customs, stopping briefly to speak Hebrew to another soldier who had an MTAR-21 “Micro Tavor” assault rifle strapped across his shoulder. Minutes later, they were at the arrivals curb outside baggage. A dark-skinned man in his forties was leaning his buttocks against his black Chevrolet SUV, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Uzi, he tossed the butt to the ground and advanced rapidly, a smile on his face and his arms spread wide.

“Raph. Great to see you.”

The two men embraced, then Zemro leaned back to appraise his friend. “You look like shit. See, you never should have left Israel.”

“I had to, you know that. And you — a little less hair, but you’re looking good. Still smoking, though.”

“Old habits, you know?”

Vail snorted. Yeah. I know.

Uzi introduced everyone and they shook hands.

“Call me Raph.” Zemro’s accent was thick but his speech clear and easy to understand.

Zemro was an Ethiopian Israeli, Uzi explained, having been one of the many who were rescued in Operation Solomon, a covert military operation in 1991 that airlifted over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to safety in a space of thirty-six hours when the Ethiopian government was on the verge of falling.

As they piled into Zemro’s vehicle he looked around and said, “No bags?”

“Packed light,” Vail said. In fact, they had left their belongings behind at the Relais Bosquet. Claude and his team had already picked them up and, by now, had disposed of them.

Zemro made a quick assessment and nodded his understanding. “Anything you need, I’ll do my best to get it for you. Shower, clothes, food—”

“We could use some information,” DeSantos said. “We’re looking for Kadir Abu Sahmoud and Doka Michel. Sahmoud’s office and a safe house Michel’s using.”

Zemro laughed, then reached forward and turned over the engine. “My friends, you realize these are — what do you say, a tall order?”

Vail chuckled as well. I’d like to change my order, if you don’t mind. Something on the safer side.

“You know what’s gone down in the US,” Uzi said. “And England.”

“I understand what’s at stake. I’m just reminding you of what things are like here. I think you should be realistic.”

“Being realistic isn’t part of this op,” DeSantos said.

Zemro shrugged. “I can take you to see a guy, one of my informants. I don’t know if he’ll be able to help you. This is more than anything we’ve ever asked of him.”

“Something’s better than nothing,” Vail said. “Maybe he can point us in the right direction. Informants sometimes know more than they think. If they’re given the right enticements.”

Zemro grinned and he winked at Vail. “I like the way you think. This is true. But Hamas, al Humat, Islamic Jihad, these are bad people, you know? The worst of the worst. Very dangerous. They profit from the terrorism. Very much.”

“Profit?” Vail asked. “What do you mean?”

Zemro accelerated and merged onto Highway 1 headed for Jerusalem. “Things are not like you know in America. The PLO — you know what PLO is, right? Palestinian Liberation Organization, they run the PA, the Palestinian Authority.”

“Yeah,” Vail said. “Got that. I read the news.”

Zemro laughed again. “Then you know nothing. The news, the journalists, they are tools of the PLO and Hamas propaganda. Most of them, the media doesn’t know they’re being manipulated. Some don’t care. But back to your question. The Palestinian Authority’s taken money, billions of dollars from international donors — including your country — to build out its government, to make jobs, a police force and other institutions for the people. But most of that money never got spent on any of that. It went to corrupt politicians, their personal bank accounts.”

“And no one knows about this?”

“Everyone knows.”

Vail turned around to Fahad, who was seated behind Zemro. “Mo, you know about this?”

“Like Raph said, it’s not a secret. Arafat was the worst. His personal estate is worth billions, holed away in foreign countries. He skimmed, he stole, he diverted. I wish I could tell you things are different now. But—”

“Why don’t we do something to stop it?” Vail asked.

Fahad grinned sardonically. “We’ve got a saying at Langley: the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. We’re in no rush to push anyone out the door.”

“Last year,” Zemro said, “a senior security officer for Fatah sued a top Palestinian Authority official, claiming he stole over a billion dollars from Palestinian coffers.”

“It’s a lot worse than that,” Fahad said. “Hamas and al Humat leadership control the smuggling tunnels they’ve built from Egypt into Gaza. The stuff that’s brought through — food, cement, oil and gas, medical supplies, you name it — it’s all highly taxed with the graft going to their personal bank accounts. In the US we call it organized crime. In any civilized country, it’s called a damn shame. The people need that money.”

“You said they profit from the terrorism.”

“Oh yes,” Zemro said. “If there is no uprising, no ‘resistance’ fight with Israel as the bad guy, the money does not flow in from Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia. Big fund-raising is done for the welfare and relief of the Palestinian people. But the people do not get the money. Or welfare or relief. The terrorist leaders and their families, they get rich.”

An hour later Zemro was navigating the surface streets outside the walls of the Old City. He found a curb spot on King David Street and they walked through the modern Alrov Mamilla Avenue, an outdoor shopping center with upscale retailers and restaurants on both sides of a central walkway. Constructed of masonry block designed to mimic the Western Wall, it incorporated open air arches above the pedestrian promenade to help the mall blend with the adjacent Old City’s architecture.

“I’m going ahead,” Fahad said. “Best that I’m not seen with you. I run into someone I know, or if your CI knows I’m with the Agency — or if he even associates me with law enforcement because of you guys, I’ll blow my cover.”

“Where you headed?” Uzi asked.

“I’ll see if I can find some people I know, ask around, get some intel. Let me know when you’re done with your meeting.”

The rest of them continued through the mall, but most of the stores were still dark.

“We’re early,” Zemro said as he led them to a contemporary-looking coffee shop. “The place I’m taking you to isn’t open yet. We’ll get something to eat, kill some time.”

Vail was both tired and hungry, so she welcomed the caffeine and muffin. They sat in the sleek café nursing their drinks, Vail examining the chocolate brown cup with Hebrew lettering. “What does this say?”

Uzi, who seemed preoccupied, glanced over. “Aroma. It’s a chain of cafés in Israel. Like Starbucks, much smaller scale.”

A few employees from nearby shops filtered in to get their coffee as stores across the pedestrian walkway began opening for business.

“Probably best if I wander about on my own too,” DeSantos said. “There are people in the biz I could run into. Not worth taking the chance being seen with a former Shin Bet operative. Don’t know who you can trust to keep their traps shut. Let me know how your meet goes.”

As DeSantos headed out the door, Zemro gestured at the wall clock. “We should go. It’ll take us a little while to get there.”

They walked through the Promenade and exited the mall, crossing Yafo Street. The sun had risen about ninety minutes earlier and the developing morning light cast an orange-yellow glow on the sand-colored rock of the ancient stone fortifications that bordered the Old City. Its ridged castle-like teeth along the top gave it the appearance of a garrison — which it had to become millennia ago because of invading armies that repeatedly attacked, and sacked, Jerusalem.

As they approached the Jaffa Gate, one of eight entrances to the walled-off city, Vail pointed at something in the stone facing. “Is that?” She stepped closer. “Are those bullet holes?”

“From the War of Independence,” Uzi said. “It’s always been a place under siege, even in modern times.”

They followed Zemro through the Christian Quarter, past the Church of the Holy Sepulcher — which Vail would have liked to see, regardless of the Jesus Scroll’s revelations — and into the Muslim Quarter.

They moved down the myriad streets and alleys of the Arab souk, a long, narrow flea market comprising stalls where vendors sold a variety of items from shawls, hats, trinkets, and Holy Land postcards to cured meats and costume jewelry.

Uzi stopped at one and bought Vail a black scarf, which he told her to wrap over her hair. “You’ll blend in better. It’s a good idea for where we’re going.”

They came to an area that contained traditional storefront businesses, including one that bore a large sign in both English and Arabic that read:

A gray-bearded man was sitting on a chair in the front. Zemro shook hands with him — and Vail was fairly certain he had deposited a monetary note of some sort in the elder’s palm as he passed.

They walked into the shop, which was large and filled with backlit display cases of antique oil lamps, coins, jars — dozens of shelves around the entire room, including a central showcase that was, likewise, full of ancient items, all bearing a written explanation of what they were, when they were found and where, and their purported age.

“I know this place,” Uzi said as he and Vail followed Zemro to the rear of the store. “Been here once.”

Zemro knocked three times on a door and a tall man answered it. He stepped aside to let Zemro pass, but froze when he saw Vail and Uzi.

“Friends,” Zemro said.

The bodyguard hesitated, gave them a once over, then waved them all in.

The room was large and packed with books, papers, and items similar to the ones on display but still in the process of being categorized. Behind a large metal desk was a heavyset man of about fifty, a rank-smelling Turkish cigarette burning in an ashtray and a cup of dark coffee steaming by his left elbow.

“Mr. Zemro, my friend. What brings you here? And so early in the day.” He turned to Vail, his gaze traveling the curves of her body as if negotiating a slalom course.

She let him look. If it helps us get the information we need, I’ll open the top three buttons of my blouse. And lean over your desk.

“Friends of mine,” Zemro said with a jerk of his head in their direction. He did not bother to provide any more details as he took the lone empty chair. Aside from the bodyguard who had answered the door, two other men were in the room. “Khaleel. I need some information.”

“I did not think you were here for a drink. But you are certainly welcome to have one.”

“I never pass up a Turkish coffee.”

Khaleel gestured to one of the men. “Cup for Zemro.” His assistant walked to the side of the room, where the brewer sat on a cabinet. He busied himself and returned a moment later with a small mug of what looked like thick black liquid.

Vail thought of asking for some — she was curious and it smelled good — but since Khaleel had thus far ignored them, other than undressing her with his eyes, she and Uzi were obviously unwelcome guests.

“You sell antiquities,” Vail said.

Khaleel jumped backward as if he had stuck his finger in a light socket. He recovered quickly and forced a smile. “Is it that obvious?” He coughed a raspy laugh then reached for his cigarette and took a long drag.

“I’m known for my ability to point out the obvious. And for being blunt.” She set her hands on the back of Zemro’s chair. “What do you know about the Aleppo Codex?”

Khaleel locked gazes with Zemro. “Who is she?”

“She is me,” Vail said. “My name’s not important. But I’m curious if you’ve heard anything about where the codex is being kept.”

Khaleel tore his eyes away and looked at Vail’s face for the first time. “No one knows where it is. Half of it is missing.”

“Yeah, the ‘important’ half. But a man like you, doing what you do, you know where it is.”

Khaleel lifted his cigarette from the metal tray and took another drag. He blew the air toward the ceiling and leaned back in his chair. “And if I do?”

“Tell us.”

Khaleel gestured to the two assistants, a quick flick of his fingers and wrist to send them on their way.

“I’d prefer if they stayed,” Uzi said.

Khaleel seemed to suddenly become aware of Uzi’s presence. He looked at him with disdain as he tipped his coffee back and drained the mug. “More,” he said and held the cup out to one of his men.

Vail figured Uzi wanted to prevent them from making a call to someone who would follow her and Uzi when they left the store. When dealing with the grime of terrorism you could not be too careful. It was easy to disappear in the busy backstreets of the souk, only to emerge a year later on a desolate strip of desert in an orange jumpsuit with a machete at your throat.

It was a fine balance, she was sure, as Khaleel might be less inclined to talk with witnesses present. It depended on how much he trusted his men.

Khaleel considered Uzi’s request, then nodded.

That settled, Uzi shoved his hands into his front pockets. “The codex,” he reminded Khaleel.

Khaleel snorted and turned to Zemro.

Zemro reached into his jacket and pulled out a roll of bills — shekels. He peeled off a few and placed them on the desk.

Khaleel looked at them. Without lifting his eyes, he said, “It’s in Gaza. A man by the name of Kadir Abu Sahmoud has—”

“We know who Sahmoud is,” Vail said. “And we already knew he has it.”

Another drag. “Then you know it’s not there yet.” Exhale, smoke directed toward the ceiling. “But it will be soon.”

“When?”

“This I do not know. I only know what I hear.”

“Where does Sahmoud live?” Uzi asked.

Khaleel laughed. “That I do not know either. But I have some photos if you want to try to figure it out.”

“How’d you get pictures?” Zemro asked.

Khaleel took the refilled mug from his assistant. “Everything is for sale, is it not?” He took a sip then set it down and faced his laptop. He banged away at the keyboard, struck a final key with a flourish, and then appraised the photo he had called up. “I can get places the Mossad and Shabak cannot,” he said, using the acronym for the Shin Bet. “I take pictures, I get money. Sometimes I buy pictures, sell for more money. I’m a businessman.”

A businessman who may not live long enough to enjoy his riches.

Uzi swung the laptop toward him and Zemro. “What do you think?”

Zemro squinted at the screen, then zoomed in on the picture. “Hard to say.” He stared at it a long moment then moved the image around, taking in the buildings in the vicinity. “I think I might know where it is. You sure this is Sahmoud’s house?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

As Zemro scrolled left, Uzi pointed at the monitor. “Hold it. Zoom out a little.”

Zemro did as asked. Uzi placed his fingers on the touchscreen and moved the photo to the right.

“That’s Sahmoud, right?”

“Yeah,” Zemro said.

“That guy,” Uzi said, poking at a grainy image beside Sahmoud. “I recognize him.”

“From where?” Vail asked.

“I don’t know. It was — it wasn’t that long ago.”

“New York? London? Paris?”

“Not sure.” He turned to Khaleel, then angled the laptop toward him. “Who is this?”

Khaleel tilted his head. “I’ve seen him but I don’t have a name. He’s important. He’s in a lot of my Sahmoud photos.” He paged through the others, but all were shot with a telephoto lens in suboptimal light.

Uzi found the best image and took a picture of the screen with his phone. Vail watched as he sent it off to Richard Prati and Hoshi and asked them to scour their servers, including the DEA narcoterrorism database, for an identity and background sheet.

“What about the Jesus Scroll?” Vail asked. “Where is that?”

“If I knew, I would not tell you.” He laughed, exposing nicotine tarred teeth. “More coffee!” He pulled out a marijuana joint and ignited the tip with a lighter from his drawer. After taking a long toke, he leaned back in his chair. His large belly stretched his nylon shirt. “I do not know where the scroll is. I have asked, sent out feelers. But there are a lot of dealers, wealthier than me, willing to bid just about anything for that. And the codex pages.”

“Do you know Doka Michel?” Uzi asked.

Khaleel took another puff. “I know him because of his father. I have heard rumors that he has the scroll. But he is someone I cannot get near.” He squinted at Uzi then leaned forward in his chair. “You need something. A coin from the Maccabean times? Excavated by your Western Wall. A necklace.” He grinned. “Bring you luck.”

Uzi frowned but humored the man. He reached down his shirt and pulled up a gold chain, the bottom of which contained a small coin. It was worn beyond recognition. “Already got one. Bought it here, in fact.” He winked.

That seemed to make Khaleel uncomfortable as the smile disappeared from his face. Uzi peeled off some shekels and set them in the top of an oil lamp that sat on the man’s desk. “Thanks for your information. You hear anything, let Raph know.”

As they left the store, Uzi and Zemro scanned the area to make sure they were not being surveilled — or targeted. They melted into the souk when Uzi suddenly stopped.

“What’s the matter?” Vail asked.

“That guy in the photo. Trying to figure out where I know him from.” Uzi glanced up, left, right … and then snapped his fingers. “It’s the guy—” He physically shivered. “It’s the guy Fahad met with in New York. His CI.”

“You sure?”

Uzi pulled up the photo and studied the screen. “No doubt whatsoever. Unless he’s got a twin.”

“Your friend’s CI is a terrorist?” Zemro asked.

“He certainly seems to be associating with one. One who happens to have a huge bull’s-eye on his forehead at the moment.” Uzi tapped out an email and then started dialing the satphone.

“Who are you calling?” Vail asked.

“Richard Prati.” A moment later, Prati answered. “Richard, listen. Can you look into something for me? … No, it can’t wait. You’re gonna be late to your meeting. I need you to look into a guy named Amer Madari. He was in Manhattan several days ago. I was told he’s a CI. He supposedly doesn’t have a criminal history, but we need to rethink that. Run the photo I just emailed you through the facial recognition database, see if you get a hit for a terrorist with any of the known organizations. Start with al Humat, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood.”

“And the narcoterrorism database,” Vail said.

“And the narco — right.” Uzi listened a second, then said, “Yeah. I think this could be a bad dude. A real bad dude.”

62

This was the day Mo went AWOL?” Vail asked.

Uzi leaned his buttocks against a wall. “Yeah.” He brought the handset back to his mouth. “I need this info ASAP, Richard. I saw him meeting with my partner. We may have a real problem. Call me as soon as you’ve got something.” He dropped the phone from his face and craned his head up to the sky.

Zemro scratched the back of his head. “So you talked with this Madari when Fahad met with him?”

“No.” Uzi licked his lips — but his face displayed a pained expression, wrinkles, and jowls. Tension. “Fahad went off the grid for the better part of a day and didn’t have a real good explanation for what he was doing. I had some surveillance done — I didn’t know him back then and, well, being Palestinian, after what happened with Dena and Maya, I–I didn’t trust him. He met with the man we just saw in the photo back at Khaleel’s. I had my people run the image and I got a name — Madari — but he was clean.”

Vail stepped closer, the three of them forming a tight huddle against the side of the building. “And now, we see this Madari hanging around with Kadir Abu Sahmoud, the number three most wanted terrorist in the world.”

Zemro seemed to be thinking it through. “No good explanation for this, Uzi. He wasn’t delivering pizza.”

“No.”

Vail’s satphone rang. It was DeSantos’s number. “Do we tell Hector?”

“He’s had it out for Mo since London. I — maybe we should get confirmation, if that’s possible, before we say anything.”

“You’re afraid he’ll overreact.”

Uzi looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “I don’t know what to think. Maybe Santa’s been right all along. But back in Paris—” Uzi lowered his voice, which was soft to begin with—“what Mo did to Yaseen. That wasn’t an act, was it? I mean, was his nephew really killed?”

“You should tell your partner,” Zemro said. “He needs to know.”

Vail answered the call.

“You still in your meeting?”

“No, we’re done. Come find us.”

Zemro suggested a location to meet — in the Jewish Quarter, at the Western Wall.

Ten minutes later, they descended a series of steps that led to Kotel Square, a plaza dominated by the ancient but well preserved ruins of the fortification wall where the Jewish Second Temple once stood.

The gold topped Dome of the Rock rose from above the top of the five-story Western Wall, an area also known as the Temple Mount — where the First and Second Temples once stood, Uzi explained. “The Kotel — which is another name for the Western Wall — is two thousand years old and extends another ten stories underground. It’s pretty cool. They give tours but you’d never be able to go down there.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” She took in the length of the wall. “Much bigger than what I imagined from the pictures I’ve seen.”

“I think it’s three football fields long.”

“This is the holiest place on earth to Jews,” Zemro said. “People from all over the world come here to pray, just like they came thousands of years ago to make pilgrimages to the Temple and sacrifices to God.”

As they approached, Vail could see different strata to the masonry — large blocks at the bottom and middle, with smaller bricks toward the top. “What are those plants growing out from between the rocks?”

“There are different kinds,” Zemro said. “Most common is Shikaron. It’s poisonous, some kind of hallucinogenic. The ancient Jews used it as an anesthetic. The Egyptians and Greeks used it for pain relief. The Germans used it in the Middle Ages to make beer. It’s still used nowadays in some medications.”

They stopped at a low wall that stood a few dozen feet in front of the Kotel. A man standing by a tall bin on a ramp that led down to the Kotel handed Uzi and Zemro a couple of white beanies.

“Kippot,” Zemro said to Vail. “Yarmulkas. We wear them on our heads as a sign of respect for God, to remind us that He’s always above us.”

Vail looked out at the Kotel, which dwarfed a number of men in black coats and hats standing with prayer books inches from its surface.

“We can talk here,” Zemro said, moving a few feet to his right, in front of a three-foot wall.

“Hey.” They turned and saw DeSantos approaching. The man at the Kippot bin handed him a yarmulke, and he placed it atop his head. “When in Rome, right?”

Uzi squinted. “Bad analogy.”

“Good point. So was the CI helpful?”

“In more ways than one,” Vail said.

DeSantos tilted his head as he studied Uzi’s face. “Something’s fucked up, isn’t it? I can tell.”

Vail told him about the Amer Madari discovery.

“I knew it!” DeSantos balled a fist and started pacing. “Goddamn it.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Uzi said. “Something’s not adding up. We’ve got some gaps. Mo was meeting with a guy who was seen with Sahmoud. I mean, yeah, it doesn’t look good. But we need to know more.”

“Bullshit. Give me one good explanation.”

“I don’t have one. I just think, for now we … monitor it. And watch our backs.”

“We still have our mission,” Vail said.

“And we might have a mole on our team,” DeSantos said, “working against us. Until I know what the hell’s going on I won’t be trusting him with anything even remotely significant.”

“I asked Hoshi to look into Madari. And Richard Prati at DEA in case they’ve got something on him in the narcoterrorism database.” He leaned on the railing that faced the Kotel. “Raph?”

“Until you hear otherwise, you have to treat him as a hostile. You know the saying. Better safe than sorry. Or my interpretation: better alive than dead.”

Uzi pulled out his satphone and started dialing.

“Who are you calling?” Vail asked.

“Gideon.” He pressed SEND. “Raph, call Shin Bet. Talk to someone there you trust. See if they’ve got anything on Madari. I already sent you the photo.” As Zemro walked off, Uzi waited for his call to connect. When Aksel answered, he glanced around to make sure no one was in earshot, then put it on speaker. “Gideon, it’s Uzi. I need whatever you’ve got on Amer Madari.”

“Am I supposed to know who Amer Madari is?”

“Short answer is yes. I’ll send you a photo. We have him talking with Kadir Abu Sahmoud. And I have Mahmoud El-Fahad meeting with Amer Madari in New York City last week.”

“Hmm.” Aksel was quiet a moment. “Let me talk with some people. Is this a good number for you?”

“I’m actually in Jerusalem.”

There was silence. Then: “Are you doing something I need to know about?”

Uzi’s eyes flicked over to DeSantos, who shook his head no.

“I think it’s best if I don’t answer that.”

“That in and of itself is an answer. Is your colleague Hector DeSantos with you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all I need to know. And I have to tell you that I’m not happy that—”

“Gideon, if you were anyone else, this conversation would never be happening. I will give you what I have. We’re on the same side here.”

“Are we?”

Vail nudged Uzi’s elbow. She whispered in his ear, “Your father.”

“I guess it’s my turn to ask you: is there something I need to know?”

“This is a game I do not want to play with you,” Aksel said.

“Fine. I know you’ve been looking for the missing codex pages. And the Jesus Scroll.”

There was silence before Aksel spoke. “Unfortunately, they’ve become chess pieces in a very dangerous game. And your government is on the wrong end of this one.”

“How so?”

“A conversation for another time. One that can only happen in person.”

“Fine. I’ll accept that. But I need an address for Kadir Abu Sahmoud.”

Aksel laughed.

Uzi pictured his firm but ample belly shuttering. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Do you have a location?”

“Take me off speaker.” Uzi did, then listened intently for a moment. “Yeah, I got it … No, I’m not happy. We intend to apprehend or kill him … No, I get it … Be right there.” He hung up, then huddled with DeSantos and Vail. “He said they’re monitoring Sahmoud, tracking his movements. Watching to see who he’s meeting with. He feels this is more valuable at the moment. And he’s worried that if we were to kill him it’d only aggravate an already shitty situation. Everyone will think Israel was behind it and there’d be no way for him to prove otherwise. Unless we take credit, which is possible but not likely because officially this mission was scrubbed. President Nunn will state he hasn’t sanctioned any such operation and deny the United States had anything to do with it. And he’d be telling the truth.”

Zemro joined their cabal. “Aksel tell you anything?”

“Just that he couldn’t tell me anything. You?”

“I’ve got a couple friends looking into it. They knew of Madari but don’t have a file on him. I asked them to look into Fahad too. Just in case.”

“They’ll have stuff.” He told Zemro what Aksel had related to him back when Fahad was added to their OPSIG team.

“Maybe it’s like an iceberg. We see the tip but there’s more beneath the surface.”

“No doubt.” Uzi rubbed his face with a hand. “Aksel’s on his way over from the Antiquities Authority. We’re meeting him at the Ramban Synagogue. A few minutes away, back the way we came.”

“A synagogue?”

“It’s safe. We can talk freely.”

Uzi led the way, telling Vail and DeSantos that the congregation was founded in the 1200s after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Crusades. “It’s now one of the oldest active synagogues in the Old City.”

They arrived on Ha-Yehudim Street in the Jewish Quarter, a pedestrian square paved with cobblestones and planted with mature shade trees. The stone building they were looking for had a central dome and a plaque on the wall describing its history.

Inside, its columns and vaulted ceilings reminded Vail of the larger barrel rooms that she had seen in the Napa Valley — specifically the one in the castle winery where Vail had pursued the Crush Killer.

Worn wood pews filled the small sanctuary. Tablets with Hebrew writing sat at the front, above one of the columns. To Vail it looked like a representation of the Ten Commandments.

The door swung open and Gideon Aksel entered. Vail had never met the man, but Uzi’s reaction gave away his identity. They exchanged nods — no hand shaking and no small talk. It was clear that Zemro and Aksel knew each other.

“Raph,” Uzi said, “would you watch the front door, make sure no one approaches who shouldn’t?”

Zemro nodded, then walked off.

Aksel unbuttoned his suit coat. “You sure you want to talk with … your friends here? I’m not sure this is a conversation for other ears.”

“I trust them all with my life.”

Aksel pursed his lips and gave a tight nod. “As it should be.”

“What did you want to tell me?”

Aksel sighed. “We have conflicting missions, Uzi. This is a problem.”

Uzi folded his arms across his chest. “We already discussed Sahmoud and—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. The security services are working to secure the codex pages and the scroll to prevent them from being used against us.”

“Against — what are you talking about?”

“I suspect you already know the documents are in the hands of al Humat. Or its agents.”

Uzi nodded.

“If you are successful in retrieving them, it’ll be no different from the terrorists having them.”

Uzi dropped his hands to his sides. “How can you say that?”

“It’s no secret President Nunn and the prime minister don’t like each other. There’s been tension since Nunn was elected. He’s made his feelings very clear.”

“Not true,” DeSantos said. “The two of them may not like each other, but the administration has done things behind the scenes that’ve supported Israel’s interests. Like helping to fund the last stages of Iron Dome’s development.”

The left corner of Aksel’s mouth lifted. “And you think that was for our benefit? Come on, Mr. DeSantos. You’re a smart guy. Why do you think the US loaned Israel the last two hundred million dollars to finish development?”

DeSantos thought a second then titled his chin back. “Because we get to share the technology.”

“Remember your Star Wars missile defense system? It never worked as promised. The Patriot system? Marginal at best. But the technology behind Iron Dome showed promise even in its earlier, flawed developmental state. It’s a smart system that tracks a missile’s trajectory and determines if it’s worth shooting down — and then calculates the exact spot in its trajectory it should intercept it so the missile doesn’t go down in a populated area. And it does it all in the blink of an eye. After Iron Dome proved its worth by shooting down over a thousand rockets Hamas shot at us from Gaza, the US had a potent antimissile system as a defensive measure — and deterrent — to thug countries like Russia and North Korea.”

“So what does this have to do with the documents?” Vail asked.

“We’ve heard that there are factions in your government working to secure them so they can be used as leverage in negotiations. Your president wants a peace deal. He wants to do what no other US president has been able to do: broker a comprehensive, final two-state solution.”

Uzi shook his head. “I don’t know, Gideon.”

“Indeed, my friend. There are a lot of things you don’t know. Your secretary of state has worked against us in several key negotiating sessions the past few weeks. This is not how an ally behaves. But it is the way you leverage an enemy to do things they don’t want to do. You twist their arm using whatever means you have at your disposal, no matter what the fallout.”

DeSantos squinted. “Do you really believe your government would agree to impossible concessions just to secure the Aleppo Codex and Jesus Scroll?”

Aksel looked away. “This is not a cold calculus, Mr. DeSantos. It’s not A plus B equals C. This is an emotional question, a religious issue, one that involves faith. And truths. The reality is that the government is a coalition of diverse agendas, needs, constituents. Add religion to the mix and it’s an unwieldy group.”

“And a significant part of that group,” Uzi said, “is ultra-Orthodox.”

“Meaning what?” Vail asked. “I don’t know a thing about Israeli politics.”

“It’s a democracy, you know that much. But instead of two parties, we have thirty-eight, thirteen who currently hold seats in the coalition. You know how hard it is to get Democrats and Republicans to work together? Try adding eleven more. Point is, the ultra-Orthodox are an important voting bloc for the prime minister. Without them his government crumbles. And the ultra-Orthodox desperately want those ancient documents — especially the codex. In fact, these documents may be the only thing that could make them give up their claims to Judea and Samaria. Don’t underestimate their importance.”

“Judea and Samaria?” Vail asked.

“The part of Israel now called the West Bank,” Uzi said. “It was known as Judea and Samaria for thousands of years. Jordan coined the phrase ‘West Bank’ sixty-five years ago.”

Aksel buttoned his coat. “Remember this, Mr. DeSantos, Agent Vail. This conflict is not about giving the Palestinians land for their own country. They want all the land, all of Israel. This two-state solution is a political invention, an attempt to compromise, to appease the Palestinians. Because that’s what politicians and negotiators and mediators do. But the Palestinians can’t be appeased. Even if they’re given the West Bank, they will not stop until they have it all. Make no mistake. This is about Israel’s survival.” He pointed at Uzi. “You know I’m right. And that’s why any negotiations — however they’re resolved — have to be done without a gun to our head. We are going to find those documents.”

There was a knock on the door to the sanctuary.

“Coming!” Aksel said, then turned to leave. “I will let you know if I find anything about Amer Madari. In the meantime, please don’t cause any trouble in my country. Better yet, go home and get out of our way. Catch the next flight out. I believe that’s this evening at 6:00 PM.”

63

Uzi waited until the door clicked shut before pulling out his satphone and moving closer to the window. “You don’t mind if I disregard Gideon’s recommended travel arrangements, do you?”

“Who are you calling?” DeSantos asked.

“An old friend who owes me. Big. Tell Raph — no one comes in.”

As DeSantos walked off, Uzi brought the handset to his face. “Reuben, it’s Uzi. I need an address.” He listened a few seconds, then said, “Aksel can’t know. … I’m serious … Yes, I’m on a satphone. It’s fairly secure. … Kadir Abu Sahmoud.” Uzi held the phone away from his ear, waited a second for Reuben to stop yelling, then said, “I need this. And now you know why Aksel can’t know. … Make it look like it wasn’t you, like it came from the outside … Fine, leave an identifier pointing back to me. I’ll take the heat … Yeah. It’s that important.”

Uzi hung up, then faced Vail and DeSantos, who had returned. “Reuben was knifed by an al Humat operative in the West Bank. His phone had been destroyed but I figured out a way of tracking him through his vehicle. Everyone else had given up but I found him, dumped in a field, left for dead.” Uzi took a deep breath. “Like I said, he owes me. He’s going to give us Sahmoud’s address. But they’ve got an ongoing op and he doesn’t want to ruin it. Same thing Gideon told me.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that you’re going to do just that?”

“I work for the United States government and Sahmoud is the architect of the terror attacks in DC and New York. Our job is to get those ancient documents and bring Sahmoud in — dead or alive.”

Vail shook her head. “This is not going to end well. You heard what the director general just told you about tensions between the two countries. You may even be persona non grata in Israel.”

Uzi tightened his jaw and turned toward the window. “Can’t think about that. We have our orders. That’s all that matters right now.”

“Orders that were sent to us in code?”

DeSantos rolled his eyes. “Don’t start with that, Karen. I know what Knox was saying. This is what we’re supposed to do. Let’s go do it.”

64

They had gotten back to Zemro’s car outside the Old City when Uzi’s phone rang. It was Richard Prati. Zemro went to the rear hatch of the SUV while the rest of them climbed into the vehicle.

Uzi took the front passenger seat and answered the call as his buttocks hit the fabric. “Talk to me, Richard.”

“It was coming up zeroes until your colleague, Agent Rodman, broadened the algorithm and included Interpol. Then we got a hit — a big one. This Amer Madari joker is Nazir al Dosari.”

It took a second for Uzi to find his voice. “What?”

“Nazir al Dosari. He’s rumored to be a rising star in al Humat, but everything we’ve got on him is several years old—”

“Are you sure? I mean, really sure?”

Vail and DeSantos leaned forward in their seats.

“Hundred percent, Uzi. He had facial reconstruction in Germany, at that ex-Stasi facial surgery clinic. We didn’t know what he looked like but one of my guys got hold of a photo from a file the CIA bought three weeks ago. There was a meeting between Carlos Cortez and Dosari in Beirut. Money and weapons exchanged hands. The Agency had someone with a long lens snapping photos. I’ll send you what we’ve got. There’s something in the file that’s classified and encrypted, but I’ll give you what I have and let you run with it.”

“Copy Hoshi Koh in my office. And thanks for digging into this, Richard. Sorry you missed your meeting.”

“No you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not. Talk soon.”

He hung up as Zemro got into the SUV, his arms filled with tactical vests. “I have a feeling we’re going to be needing these.” He handed two back to Vail and DeSantos and the other to Uzi.

Uzi dialed Hoshi and secured the Kevlar with the Velcro straps while the call connected.

“Uzi. Where the heck have you been? Shepard’s been on my c—”

“Listen to me — Richard Prati at DEA is sending you a file. The person of interest has a classified file at Interpol. I need to know what’s in it.”

“Well how am I — you want me to hack Interpol?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah. Good idea. Call me on my satphone. I’ll text you the number.”

“You have a satphone? Where are you?”

“I need this info ASAP, Hoshi.” He clicked off and let his head rest against the side window.

DeSantos leaned back in his seat and waited for Uzi to explain. Finally he said, “So this is not getting any better, is it?”

Uzi sighed. “Nope. The guy Mo met with in New York is the number two in command at al Humat. Nazir al Dosari.”

“We need to find Fahad,” DeSantos said. “And bash his head in.”

“No,” Uzi said. “There’s an encrypted file. I want to know what’s in it before we jump to conclusions.”

“Jump to conclusions?” DeSantos looked at Vail, his brow raised. “Boychick, I know you don’t want to hear this, but read the writing on the goddam wall.”

“I’m reading between the lines.” Uzi’s phone rang. It was Fahad. He held up his phone for Vail and DeSantos to see the Caller ID.

“Answer it,” DeSantos said. “Tell him to meet us. We’ll bag him as soon as he shows his face.”

The phone buzzed. Uzi hesitated, then finally brought it to his face. “Mo. What’s up?”

“You done meeting with Raph’s CI?”

“Yeah, we’re good with that.”

“Was he helpful?”

“Was he helpful … not sure. We’ll probably find out very soon.” He ground his jaw. That was true in more ways than one. “Where are you?”

“Muslim Quarter. You?”

“Meet us where we parked. We just got back to the car.”

“Be right there.”

Uzi dropped the phone into his lap. “Now what?”

DeSantos snorted. “Now? We get him in here and—”

“Karen,” Uzi said firmly. “What do you suggest?”

They all faced Vail.

She thought a moment, then said, “This is a tough one. If we accept the info and background we’ve been given on Mo as accurate and complete, I’d say this doesn’t add up. He’s got legitimate motivation to do what he did to Yaseen. I’m not condoning it, but it’s understandable. I’d want to do the same thing. And if that’s the case, there’s no way he’s working with al Humat. But if there’s more to his story that we don’t know, it’s impossible for us to know what’s really going on.”

“And that’s why we need to cuff him and take him somewhere,” DeSantos said.

“Wrong,” Vail said.

“Wrong?”

“Wrong. Despite their differences, Uzi has built a rapport with Mo.” She turned to Uzi, who was still leaning against the window, staring straight ahead. “Am I right?”

“Yeah.”

“That kind of rapport takes us weeks to achieve with a prisoner, with any hostile, suspect, or known killer. And Uzi’s got it. He needs to use it, leverage it. In fact, the only person who Mo has a problem with is you, Hector. So you’re the last person who should be interrogating him. He’ll shut down. You won’t get anything.”

“You’re sure of that.”

“Yes. He’s CIA. He’s trained in the stuff you’d be doing to him — psychological or physical — he knows what’d be coming and how to resist it.”

“I’ll get more with a carrot than a stick,” Uzi said, turning around.

“Exactly. When the time’s right you need to confront him with these allegations. But gently, as if you’re just chatting and it’s no big deal. Do it at a time and a place where you can observe his facial tics and body language. It might be subtle, but you’ll know if he’s being straight with you. You with me?”

Uzi nodded.

“Eat the friggin’ carrots,” DeSantos said, turning away. “Give me a nice thick stick.”

“Not this time, Hector.”

Zemro, who had been observing the interplay, appraised Vail. “You want a job? Shin Bet, Mossad, they both use behavioral analysts.”

Vail managed a smile. “Without me, these two goons would be in serious trouble.”

Zemro laughed. “I agree.”

Uzi’s satphone vibrated. He glanced at the screen and blew some air through his lips. “Reuben came through. He’s sending us Sahmoud’s address.”

“Because of all the terror attacks,” Zemro said, “the checkpoints are active. My plates will get us in. Just let me do the talking.”

A knock on the window made them all flinch. It was Fahad. Uzi unlocked the doors and he got in next to DeSantos, who shifted to the middle seat.

Fahad chuckled. “Man, you guys are on edge.”

“Being around terrorists gets the adrenaline flowing,” DeSantos said, his gaze out the front windshield remaining steady.

Fahad squinted and glanced at Uzi.

He held up his phone. “Just got Sahmoud’s address.”

DeSantos moved the phone to face him. “Those are GPS coordinates.”

“A lot of the Arab neighborhoods in the West Bank don’t have street names, so no addresses,” Zemro said.

“Do you know where this place is?”

“From GPS coordinates?” Zemro laughed as he pulled away from the curb. “I’ll have a better idea when we get close.”

“So we don’t really know what we’re getting ourselves into,” Vail said.

“Wrong.” Uzi pulled out his Glock and checked the chamber. “We know exactly what we’re getting ourselves into.”

65

They followed the GPS, navigating the streets of downtown Nablus, driving through the town center and past electronics stores and groceries. Open-air bazaars with rainbow colored umbrellas shielded the markets’ vendors against the sun — or today, against the threat of rain.

Zemro craned his neck to get a view of the area. “Looks like we’re pretty close.”

“I know some people here,” Fahad said.

Uzi kept his gaze ahead on the metropolitan landscape. “Maybe we should let you off, see what you can learn.”

“I think we should all stick together,” DeSantos said.

He wants to keep his eye on him, make sure he doesn’t blow our op.

“That woman we just passed,” Fahad said, twisting his torso and watching out the rear windows. “I went to school with her. She’s a real pain in the ass. Knows everyone’s business.”

“Pull over,” Uzi said.

Zemro brought the car to a stop at a break in the car-lined curb.

“I think this is a bad idea,” DeSantos said.

Uzi swung around to face Fahad. “Keep in touch. Don’t go off the grid. We may need you once we scout out Sahmoud’s office.”

“Right.” Fahad swung the door open and got out.

DeSantos studied Uzi’s face. “I know you don’t want to believe he’s part of the problem. But it’s not worth the risk. You’re overcompensating for all the pent-up anger you’ve had toward Palestinians for murdering your family. But your emotional need to like the guy could get us all killed.”

“You think that’s what’s going on here?”

“I do.”

“Drive,” Uzi said, gesturing to Zemro, who nodded and then pulled out into the traffic.

Hector may not be too far off in his assessment.

The streets were packed with yellow cabs bearing green and white license plates — a key designator for vehicles that entered Israel. The soldiers guarding the checkpoints knew to be extra careful when examining these cars and trucks, scanning the under chassis with long-poled mirrors and, during times of inflamed violence, bomb-sniffing dogs.

Vail wiped her sweaty palms on the thighs of her 5.11s. She checked her Glock and then the Tanto to make sure both were in place. She had not had to draw either one in a while, but she had a feeling that was going to change very shortly. Her heart was racing, beating against her chest wall as the tenths of a mile ticked off the odometer.

Zemro made several turns into secondary areas of the city, past apartment buildings and a number of hollow facades, structures that had been destroyed — either by bombs that went off while they were being constructed or by Israeli bulldozers in retaliation for a terror attack in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

The secondary roads were potholed and the houses were a mix of well maintained homes and rundown hovels.

The GPS took them down a side street that fronted a series of older structures. A block later, Zemro brought the SUV to a stop against the curb.

Uzi looked out the window at the surrounding neighborhood: they were in a light industrial area with tile factories, automobile repair depots, and carpet warehouses, by the look of the signs. He gave a final glance around and checked his mirror. “We go on foot from here.”

Vail’s breathing got tight as she popped open the door and they poured out of the vehicle.

Zemro led the way down the cement path between buildings constructed of large, pale yellow block masonry, a style Vail had grown accustomed to seeing on this trip.

“Are you armed?” Uzi asked Zemro by his ear.

“Don’t worry about me, my friend. What’s the saying? This isn’t my first show?”

“Rodeo. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“Good. It’s not mine, either.”

They continued through the wide alleyway, which doglegged right. Zemro slowed, glanced down at the GPS, and stopped. Vail, at his side now, was jerked back by his grip on her wrist. Before he had pulled her away, she had seen, ahead and slightly around the bend, two men standing guard on either side of a large brown metal door.

Zemro pressed his upper body against the masonry wall and reported on what he had seen. “They’re armed. Assault rifles, maybe AKs. They had the al Humat patch on their left shoulder. There’s a double metal door set back in a stone archway. The entrance to Sahmoud’s office, I’m sure of it.”

“Here’s our play,” DeSantos said. “Karen, use your charm. Walk right by them, make eye contact as you pass. Maintain their gaze and, you know, do your thing.”

“My thing?”

“Wink, smile at them seductively. Lick your lips. Something to get their blood pressure rising. But don’t oversell it.”

“And then what?”

“Then we’ll take care of the rest.”

Vail glanced at Uzi and Zemro and they both seemed to be on board with the plan. “Okay.” She removed the scarf and tousled her hair, giving it a playful and sexy look. Then she walked off, her arms swinging and her butt rocking up and down.

“I told her to get their blood pressure up,” DeSantos said, “not mine.” He took a breath and followed several steps behind her.

Vail did as instructed, slowing as she made eye contact with the two guards, showing genuine interest in their appearance, undressing them with her gaze. She looked at them over her shoulder as she passed and then swung around, walking backward and holding their attention.

DeSantos ran up on their blindside, his Boker knife drawn. He sliced viciously and quickly at the carotid of the man closest to him, then drew it forward and blocked the other guard’s attempt to raise his AK-47 and stabbed backhanded at his abdomen — once, twice, three times in rapid succession. Both men dropped to the ground as if gravity had increased exponentially in a split second, arterial blood spurting out from the first guard’s neck.

Uzi and Zemro, handguns at the ready, came up behind them and moved the bodies aside. They took the AK-47s and slung them over their own shoulders as DeSantos checked the front door. It was unlocked.

He nodded to them, then turned the knob and pushed it open. It swung inward, squeaking softly.

Vail pivoted into the building. It was dark and dungeon-like, with only a few visible windows that were obscured by solid wood shutters on metal hinges. Light leaked in along their periphery.

She nodded at Uzi and Zemro, who dragged the two bloody bodies into the entryway, followed by DeSantos.

They stood there, backs against the wall, allowing their eyes to accommodate to the darkness. There were no guards there, which was a good thing — because at the moment, Vail could not see much, and she was sure her colleagues had the same problem.

Seconds later, she started to get a sense of the layout of the room: it was an old factory of some sort that had been cleared of all the machinery that had once been there. The walls were cinderblock and unfinished cement covered with spider cracks emanating in all directions. Puke green wood walls, with glazed windows, apportioned the space into separate offices.

They moved from the front of the factory to the back, clearing the rooms as they went, using hand signals to avoid giving away their presence in case someone was in the deeper reaches of the building.

Seconds later, Uzi called out. “Found something!”

They joined him at the rear of the facility. The smell was distinct and rancid. Vail brought a forearm up to her nose as she made her way over to the wall on the left, where she found a window. She pulled open the shutters, flooding the area with light. “What the hell is that?”

Seated on a chair in front of a portable table with folding metal legs was a body. A burned body.

“Not what,” DeSantos said. “Who.”

66

Exactly,” Vail said. “Who is this?”

“I’d ask the two guys who were out front, but they’re a little under the weather,” DeSantos said.

Zemro used the tip of his Beretta to move the bones of the body’s incinerated hand. “This was a really odd fire.”

DeSantos took a step back and tilted his head, taking in the scene. “Judging by the condition of the body, it almost looks like a controlled burn. The table is intact, as if the intent was just to kill and burn the person but not anything else in the room.”

“Raph, would you keep a lookout, make sure no one drops in on us?”

“Sure thing.” He adjusted the submachine gun strap and moved off, toward the front door.

“He’s only partially burned,” Vail said. “Mostly from the waist up.” She crouched behind the body, reached into the rear pocket of the still-intact jeans, and extracted a leather wallet. She set it on the melamine surface in front of the deceased and splayed it open. “This is Sahmoud?”

Uzi moved beside her and looked it all over. “Appears that way.”

Vail shook her head. “I’m not buying it.”

“Me either,” DeSantos said. “Can we get some DNA? Or was it destroyed in the fire?”

“Because his lower extremity’s intact,” Vail said, “we can get some cells. The problem is the timing. It’ll take a while to get a profile.”

“Three days,” Uzi said. “But there may be another way. A buddy of mine told me he heard that life scientists at the Weizmann Institute have developed an experimental method that could get us an answer within twenty-four hours, but it’s not 100 percent accurate. It can check for certain markers but not produce an entire profile.” He pulled out his satphone and moved to the window. He put it on speaker, dialed, and waited while it connected.

“Gideon, it’s Uzi.”

“Tell me you’re on your way to the airport.”

“We found something and I need your help.”

“That sounds like a ‘No, we decided to ignore your warnings and do something stupid.’”

Uzi and Vail shared a look.

“We’ve got a body, badly burned.”

“Where?”

“Nablus. Sahmoud’s office.”

“Dammit, Uzi. Did you not understand me when I said—”

“Gideon. You know me. Did you really think I’d leave?”

“How’d you find his place? From one of my people?”

“Not important. You want to help or not?”

There was a long pause. Then Aksel said, “I’m listening.”

“This body appears to be Sahmoud — he had a wallet in his back pocket with ID, but we have doubts.”

“As you should.”

“Weizmann,” Uzi continued, “has that experimental DNA—”

“That was a rumor. But we’ve got something else. And yes, the test is already in progress.”

Uzi looked at DeSantos, whose mouth slipped open.

“You know about the body?”

“Uzi, you know better than to ask that question, no? One of your ex-colleagues went in the back door at 4:30 this morning, took the cells, and left. The guards never heard a thing. At this point, I’ll have the findings in about five hours, maybe sooner.”

“Will you share them with us?”

“If you’re on the next flight out of Ben Gurion, you have my word.”

67

This doesn’t make sense,” Vail said.

Uzi stood there, phone in hand, staring at the body. “The burn pattern?”

“There’s that, yeah. But also motive. Who’d do this? And why? And why just when we’re about to close in on him?”

“First impression?” DeSantos said. “It’s a decoy.”

“Second impression?” Uzi asked.

DeSantos took a position in front of the corpse. “Someone had to know we were hot on Sahmoud’s trail and left this body for us, hoping we’d take the bait.”

Vail chuckled. “You mean hoping we were stupid.”

“You think it was Khaleel?”

“That’s probably a question for Raph,” Vail said, “but just going by personality, he’s someone who’d sell anything to anyone for money. So he could be a double agent of sorts. Informs for both sides.”

DeSantos glanced around the room. “If this was a setup, there’s no way Sahmoud would’ve left anything behind. But we’re here, we should search the place just in case.”

“I don’t know how long we have,” Uzi said, “before someone comes looking for the two missing guards. Not to mention there’s a fair amount of blood out front.”

“Just a few minutes, then we can go.” DeSantos knelt in front of the body and examined it. He moved around the side of the table and then behind the corpse.

Vail turned and began along the adjacent wall, looking for hidden rooms or compartments. She had not gotten very far when DeSantos called out.

“Got something. Right here, the body.”

Uzi stepped closer and shined his phone’s flashlight where DeSantos had indicated. Three fine wires were visible protruding from the seat of the chair.

DeSantos took the phone and angled it closer to the area. “Looks like a pressure sensor. If we move the body, we’ll be in a million pieces.”

“If that was rigged,” Uzi said, “other things might be too. Don’t touch anything. We need to get out. Raph!”

“Yeah. Coming.” They heard him walking down the hall — and then felt the walls shake as a loud blast filled the room. Dust clouds swarmed the air.

“Raph! Raph — you okay?”

But Vail already knew the answer without waiting for a response. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

“You go. I need to find Raph.”

“We’re not leaving without you.” DeSantos swatted away the fine debris that hung in the air and rode along the shaft of light that streamed in through the lone open window.

“Raph!”

Vail moved alongside them. Like car headlights in thick fog, the phone's illumination was both diffused and reflected back at them by the dense, relentless wall of dust.

Uzi suddenly stopped. DeSantos and Vail likewise froze in midstep. Ahead of them was a partial body. The skin was black — save for the chalky dust that covered his arms and close-cropped Afro.

Vail grabbed Uzi and hugged him, turned him away from Zemro’s destroyed corpse. He squeezed her back and it was clear that he did not want to let go. “I’m sorry,” she said by his ear.

He sniffled loudly, then pushed away. “No time. We need to get out.”

“Which way?” Vail asked.

“We’re closer to the back,” DeSantos said. “But we don’t know if the door’s rigged. We’ve gotta go out the way we came in.”

They moved an inch at a time, single file, DeSantos leading the way, clearing the space in front of him as they advanced.

When they reached the front, DeSantos brought the barrel of the AK-47 up and nodded at Vail, who pulled open the door.

DeSantos swung out into the alley. He indicated with a nod of his chin that it was clear and they retraced their steps back to Zemro’s SUV.

When they got there, Uzi jammed the butt of his Puma knife into the corner of the small driver’s side vent window and smashed the glass. He struggled to get his forearm through the narrow opening but was able to reach in and unlock the doors.

They got in and Uzi pulled out his satphone. He swiped and tapped, then handed it to Vail, who was riding shotgun. “Send Gideon a text. Tell him what happened and that they have to retrieve Raph’s body. And to be careful because there are likely other bombs.”

“We got lucky,” DeSantos said. “That could’ve been us back there.”

Uzi reached beneath the dashboard and fished around. A moment later he found the wires he was looking for and hotwired the car. He quickly pulled away from the curb and down the street, back into downtown Nablus.

Vail sent the message then felt the satphone vibrate. “It’s Hoshi.”

“Put her on speaker. And hand me that grease rag on the floor by your foot.”

“Hoshi, you’ve got me, Uzi, and Hector.”

Vail handed over the dirty towel and Uzi stuffed it into the hole created by the broken window.

“Where’s Mr. Fahad?”

“That’s a good question,” DeSantos said.

I wonder if he knew the place was rigged and that’s why he begged off going with us to Sahmoud’s.

“So he’s not with you?”

“No.”

“I wish I had better news for you,” Hoshi said.

Uzi leaned closer to the handset. “You couldn’t break the encryption?”

“No, I did. But what I found isn’t good.”

“Just give it to us straight,” Uzi said. “We’re in no mood for riddles.”

“So Nazir al Dosari’s father, Uday, was a Shin Bet informant — Shin Bet’s kind of like our FBI. Anyway, the Palestinians call these informants collaborators and Hamas and al Humat don’t take kindly to it. In short, the collaborators are killed. When he was twenty years old, Dosari found out what his father was doing and turned him over to Hamas. That was in 1990. Uday was tortured and then killed by being dragged through the streets tied to the back of a motorcycle.”

“Ratting out your own dad,” Vail said. “Heartless. But given what these extremists are like, that’s not surprising.”

“This is depressing,” Uzi said, “but it’s not bad news regarding our case.”

“Dosari has a half brother who’s five years younger. And his name is Mahmoud El-Fahad.”

Uzi stepped on the brakes and yanked the SUV over to the curb. “What did you just say?”

“Uzi,” Vail said, “your window’s broken. That rag definitely helps, but because of where we are, let’s not shout this from the mountaintops, okay?”

He rubbed his forehead then let his head fall back against the headrest.

“You still there?” Hoshi asked.

Vail took the call off speaker and brought the satphone to her ear. “Still here. We need time to absorb this.”

“I get it.”

“Call us if you find out anything else.” Vail hung up and leaned her back against the window, facing Uzi and DeSantos. Both were silent.

“Go ahead, Santa,” Uzi said to the windshield. “Tell me you told me so.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Knox has to know this, right?” Vail said. “And Tasset?”

DeSantos rubbed his thighs. “You would think. That’s a hard thing to keep secret, and if the Agency did their due diligence, which I’m sure they did, even if they missed it during their background checks, they would’ve seen that encrypted file. For all we know, that’s why it’s encrypted.”

Uzi ran a hand through his hair. “Just like they knew about my work with Shin Bet and Mossad, I’m sure they know about Fahad. And yet they put him on our team. What does that say?”

“Text from Mo,” Vail said, holding up Uzi’s phone. “He’s got a twenty for us.” She turned around to DeSantos. “For what? Sahmoud? The codex? The scroll?” The phone buzzed again and she read the message. “He wants us to meet him where we parked outside the Old City on King David. He’s getting a lift over there.”

Uzi looked at Vail but did not say anything. He turned back to the windshield. She knew what he was thinking: could they trust him?

Uzi yanked the gearshift into drive and pulled back onto the road.

“Uzi,” DeSantos said, “we need to discuss this.”

“What’s there to discuss? Mo’s half brother is al Humat’s second in command. His nephew blew himself to bits. And you’re saying he’s guilty by association.”

DeSantos loosened his seatbelt and grabbed hold of Uzi’s headrest, pulling himself forward, close to the back of his head. “Boychick, I’m saying we need to be careful. We don’t have enough information. We don’t understand the connections, the motivation. We have no clue what’s going on in his head.” He turned to Vail. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Everything that’s happened,” DeSantos continued, “everything bad that’s happened, Mo’s been away — meeting with an informant. Or trying to get intel. Or just plain AWOL. Coincidence? Yeah, maybe. Shit happens. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s the one who’s been tipping people off.”

“Was he there when you were attacked at Arc De Triomphe?” Vail asked.

“No.”

“What about that flat in Paris, when they sent you the email to go to the arch?”

“No.”

DeSantos placed a hand on Uzi’s shoulder. “He might be the one who gave the sniper your location at Times Square.”

“He didn’t know we were going to be there.”

“He did,” Vail said. “I texted him, hoping he’d meet us there.”

Uzi sat tall in his seat. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what he’s been up to or what he’s thinking. He’s CIA, he’s taught to deceive, to have a cover story.”

“He’s taught to con you, to make you believe his cover story,” DeSantos said. “So which is the real story? What’s the truth?”

Uzi cut around a slow moving taxi. “What do you want to do?”

“I certainly don’t want to walk into an ambush.”

“Neither do I,” Vail said.

Uzi thought a moment. “We’ll go, hear him out, try to verify his intel.”

“Okay.” Vail nodded. “And if we can’t?”

“Then we have an important decision to make.”

68

Uzi pulled to the curb on King David Street. Fahad was standing there, talking to a woman wearing a burka. He excused himself and climbed into the backseat.

“I’ve got a location,” Fahad said.

Vail shifted in her seat to face the three men. “For what?”

“Kadir Abu Sahmoud. His home, in Gaza.”

No one spoke.

Finally Fahad looked at each of them. “Did I miss something? We’ve got Sahmoud’s address — an actual address — and from what I could determine, he’s there. This is awesome news. Let’s go.”

“We had a problem,” Uzi said. “Raph’s dead.”

Fahad jerked back. “Dead? What happened?”

“The office was rigged with explosives. Raph tripped one.”

Fahad’s shoulders slumped. “Man, I’m sorry. I–I wish I was there. I — he was a good guy.”

“He was,” Uzi said.

Vail saw a liquid sparkle in his eyes, tears pooling in his lower lids.

An awkward moment of silence passed.

“Look,” Fahad said. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but we’ve got a line on Sahmoud — our objective from day one. What’s the problem?”

“How do we know it’s not another setup?” Vail asked. “We could walk into an ambush.”

DeSantos turned to face Fahad, his expression hard. “Where’d you get this information?”

“From two of my informants. One in Nablus, a Palestinian Authority cop. He told me Sahmoud lives in Gaza near the resort beach community. He mentioned something that reminded me of another guy I know in East Jerusalem who works construction. I cabbed it over and made a couple of calls and found that they were paving roads near Silwan. He was a little dodgy, but bottom line is that his daughter and son-in-law live in a house down the block from someone who they’re sure is Sahmoud.”

“How can they be ‘sure’?” DeSantos asked.

“His son-in-law owns a cell phone startup in Gaza City, but my CI has always thought their money comes from somewhere else — a stipend from the money Hamas gets from taxes on the goods smuggled into the strip through its four hundred tunnels — weapons, fuel, medicine, consumer goods, cars, appliances, drugs, cigarettes. Anyway, point is, his daughter and son-in-law are one of almost two thousand millionaires living in Gaza. And they’ve got a house that my CI described as gaudy.”

“This is where Sahmoud lives?” Uzi asked.

“Down the street.”

“Again,” DeSantos said, “how do they know Sahmoud lives there?”

“His son-in-law told him one night when they’d had a lot to drink. They were sitting around the fire and he said he’s seen Sahmoud. A few months later my CI and his wife spent the weekend there and saw guards escorting a man around that looked like Sahmoud. They drove him around in a town car that was heavy and fortified — as if it were bulletproof and blastproof.”

“Anything else?” DeSantos asked.

Fahad shrugged. “That was enough for me — and it fit with what the cop in Nablus told me.”

Vail took turns reading Uzi’s and DeSantos’s faces. They were processing the intel, running it through their bullshit meter. If she were plugged into this world, she would be doing the same.

Finally Uzi said, “I think we should go and take a look, maybe sit on the place for a few hours and watch.”

DeSantos sucked on his bottom lip, then nodded. “I can live with that.”

Hopefully we all can.

69

Gaza was everything Vail had expected — and none of what she expected when they first boarded the plane to Israel. She figured she would see what had been shown on news reports following the most recent war: total devastation, destroyed buildings, a landscape flattened by mortars and artillery and bombs, a poor and destitute population.

There were areas like that — shells of structures that once stood, piles of rubble still littering the scenery, residents in simple clothing and looking the worse for wear. But by and large, that was a fraction of what she saw as they drove toward the address that Fahad’s informant had provided.

They entered Gaza from Israel through the Erez Crossing along the strip’s northeastern border. As Uzi and Fahad explained to Vail, the sixty million dollar pedestrian and cargo portal was built by Israel when it withdrew all its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in what was envisioned by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a land-for-peace deal in 2005. If all went well, it would serve as the template for negotiating a similar pact for the West Bank, with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state.

But four months after the Erez terminal was completed, Hamas won the popular election for the territory, its reign of terror began, and all hopes of a negotiated peace deal were put on hold.

Blockades were put in place to stem the flow of weapons from Iran, and Egypt closed the southern border to prevent Hamas and al Humat terrorists from entering the Sinai and collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood. Passage into Israel from Gaza was restricted to curtail suicide attacks and into Gaza from Israel to prevent the smuggling of contraband that could be used to build bombs.

Gaza became isolated and the people became a society controlled, manipulated, and intimidated by their elected government.

“I remember when my mom and I would take a bus into Gaza once a week to buy vegetables and fish,” Uzi said. “No checkpoints. No problems.” He glanced around. “That was before the intifada, before the suicide bombings.”

“A lot of things changed,” Fahad said. “If only we could turn back the clock, start again. Maybe things would be different.”

Vail glanced at Fahad. Is this an act, or is he sincere?

With a scarf again covering her face, Vail took in Gaza City’s high-rises and businesses, hotels, museums and bustling avenues. Apartment buildings and homes. Fahad told her there were theaters and several universities as well as beautiful beaches along the Mediterranean coastline with resorts and sophisticated restaurants.

The sun was starting its descent as the winter afternoon passed. Despite the gathering clouds, there was still considerable light left to the day.

DeSantos’s phone rang and he dug it out of his pocket. “Hot Rod, talk to me … Yeah … Okay.” He pressed a button and said, “You’re on speaker.”

“I got a hit on something. Not sure if it means anything, but I haven’t seen any recent sit-reps from you guys, so I’m a bit in the dark. In case it’s significant you should know that Hussein Rudenko’s back on the grid. And he’s in your area.”

Holy shit. Rudenko!

“I knew we hadn’t heard the last of him,” DeSantos said.

“Hussein Rudenko, the arms dealer?” Fahad asked.

“Weapons trafficker wasn’t bad enough,” Uzi said. “He added terrorist to his resume. Karen, Hector, Hot Rod, and I got into it with him in London a couple of years ago.”

“As soon as we heard there were rare manuscripts and antiquities in play,” Vail said, “I should’ve known Rudenko was involved.”

“Hang on,” Uzi said. “We don’t know for sure he’s got anything to do with the codex or the scroll. Hot Rod, exactly what do you have?”

“I asked NSA to point their ears to Gaza and the West Bank in case anything came up that’d be important to you guys,” Rodman said. “They trapped a cell call ten minutes ago and got a voice match to Hussein Rudenko.”

“We’re in Gaza right now,” DeSantos said. “We need to know if Rudenko just happens to be in the area or if he’s selling weapons or planning an attack with al Humat.”

“I’ll see if NSA can track the phone’s GPS. Give me a few minutes.”

DeSantos ended the call and set his phone down on his thigh. “This is no coincidence.”

“If we look at this logically,” Vail said, “the most obvious reason for Rudenko to be here, now, is that he has possession of the scroll.”

“We know that al Humat — or one of their representatives — has the codex,” Uzi said. “That phone conversation we intercepted in Paris from Borz Ramadazov after he left the Louvre — he said he had it and was bringing it to the safe house. He had no reason to lie because he had no idea we’d tapped his phone.”

DeSantos swung around in his seat, taking in the city streets, no doubt doing some surveillance due diligence. “But we just missed Doka Michel, who supposedly was transporting the codex to Sahmoud’s office. Someone tipped Sahmoud, so when we got there, there was no codex and no Sahmoud, and the place was rigged. He knew we were coming.” DeSantos glanced at Fahad. It was subtle, and Fahad was looking out the window, so he probably did not notice.

“Rudenko could be buying it,” Uzi said. “Or the scroll.”

“Does this change anything?” Fahad asked.

“Yeah,” Uzi said. “I doubt Rudenko’s going to be alone. He’s going to have a small, well trained security detail with him.”

Vail curled some hair behind her right ear. “What do you make of the fact that he’s come to Sahmoud rather than the other way around?”

“Sahmoud’s ability to move in and out of the territory is restricted,” Uzi said. “And he’s at the top, or near the top, of just about every intelligence agency’s most wanted list. Much safer for Rudenko to come to him. Into Egypt, through the Sinai, then the tunnels into Gaza.”

Fahad pointed at the road ahead. “Slow down, we’re getting close. Turn left.”

Uzi followed the instructions and decelerated. Ahead, about seventy-five yards away, was a guard booth and two metal pillars that rose from the roadway. “Gated community.” He pulled the car to the curb.

DeSantos leaned forward to study the uniformed security officer, who appeared to be alone in the small brick structure. “We should hang out here till we hear back from Hot Rod.”

Rodman’s assessment came in a moment later:

“That goes with what my CI told me,” Fahad said. “We’ve got the right place.”

A second later, it came through on DeSantos’s phone. “This doesn’t match the one your CI gave you.”

Fahad consulted the screen, then leaned back, his face twisted in confusion. “That’s easily two blocks away.”

“We go with Hot Rod’s intel,” DeSantos said. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Uzi said. “We can always double back to Mo’s house if we don’t find anything.”

“The numbers are transposed,” Fahad said. “Two digits are reversed. Maybe that’s it.”

And maybe not.

Vail looked out at the street. Large houses with adobe tile roofs and solar panels were set back from the road. None of them had perimeter walls or metal gates. “If we know Rudenko’s there now, we shouldn’t wait. We’ve got no idea how long he’s going to stick around.”

DeSantos tapped away at his phone. “Operationally, it’d be better to wait till it’s completely dark. I just asked Hot Rod to let us know if Rudenko moves.”

“How are we tracking him?” Uzi asked.

“NSA and NGA,” he said, referring to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. “Combination of cell phone intercepts, GPS data, and infrared heat signatures from a drone equipped with FLIR sensors.”

“Those sensors can be defeated.”

“So far we’ve got a fix.” DeSantos’s phone vibrated. He took a few seconds to read the text, then paraphrased it: “Apparently there’s a bunker-like room that’s hardened and shielded to some extent. They can see four men along the building’s perimeter and outside that room, but the others are less distinct. They think there are a total of eleven in and around the house. Rudenko’s one of them and, presumably, Sahmoud.”

“Wife and kids?” Vail asked.

DeSantos looked long and hard at her, then texted Rodman back. The response was near-immediate, despite the ten thousand miles separating them. “He wants to know if we’re serious. And he wanted to know who asked.”

Vail shook her head. “Yes, I’m serious. And I want an answer.”

Six minutes later they had a response. “Best they can tell, his wife and two boys are out of town in Italy at their villa.”

“Any backup?” Fahad asked. “Or just us?”

DeSantos glanced down at his phone. “Just got blueprints. And real-time images with infrared signatures. Check your satphones. Let’s make sure we all have the same feed.”

Uzi and Vail pivoted in their seats, pulled out their devices, and called it up on their small screens.

“Can’t really see inside that room,” Vail said.

“That’s the shielding,” DeSantos said. “Probably layers of concrete, maybe metal. We know men are in there but they look like blobs rather than well defined human outlines.”

Great. We’re not quite blind, but close to it. Kind of like being severely nearsighted and having your glasses smashed.

Fifteen minutes later, they had devised an operational approach to infiltrate the house, and although they had the layout and location of the tangos, they were guessing about who and what was inside the hardened room. They also did not know al Humat’s security protocols and what obstacles they were going to face.

They had one advantage: the element of surprise — at least for the moment — so the idea was to maintain it for as long as possible.

They assumed there would be motion sensors that would set off perimeter lighting and video cameras linked to a hard drive recording mechanism. That was a reasonable supposition, though by no means guaranteed.

“If it’s cloud-based,” Uzi said, “it could be a huge problem.”

“Odds?” DeSantos asked.

Uzi considered the question. “Al Humat isn’t known to be tech savvy — and a lot of the extremist groups take al Qaeda’s lead and avoid tech whenever possible because they know it can be tracked by the good guys. So I’d gamble that their video is, at best, recorded on a local hard drive. More likely it’s just live feeds with no archival storage. They’re not worried about catching or prosecuting intruders by identifying their mugs from a recording. They just want to prevent someone from doing what we’re going to do. But since camera feeds can be hacked, they may avoid them altogether and rely only on security personnel.”

“I’m more concerned with how we’re going to coordinate with each other once we leave the car,” Vail said. “We don’t have comms devices.”

DeSantos nodded. “As we work our way toward Sahmoud, if something goes south, text will be our quietest and quickest way of communicating.”

After walking through the plan a final time, they initiated their first line of attack: removing the security booth guard from the equation.

Fahad was the logical candidate to approach the man given his native appearance and language skills. Uzi would follow a moment later as backup and support in case there was someone else nearby.

A minute after Fahad left the SUV, DeSantos’s satphone rang.

“It’s Knox. Text Fahad, tell him to wait.”

Uzi yanked his phone out and started typing as DeSantos answered and placed the call on speaker. “Yes sir.”

“Are we secure?”

DeSantos looked around and made sure no one was in earshot. “You’ve got me, Uzi, and Karen. We’re in a car.”

“I’ll be landing in a matter of minutes. Status?”

DeSantos gave him a quick update. “We’re getting ready to go in.”

“Getting those docs is job one. Sahmoud is a secondary priority, but a priority nonetheless.”

DeSantos glanced at Vail and Uzi. “We’ll take care of both.”

“Just make sure you secure those documents,” Knox said. “Keep your emotions in check, temper your desire for justice. I want that fucker to pay for the American lives he’s taken too. But the codex and the scroll … while their strategic and historic value is obvious, there are other considerations. And because of that, after taking possession of them, you’re to turn them over to Mossad.”

Vail kinked her neck. “If we’re going to give them to the Israelis, why not just have them infiltrate Sahmoud’s compound. They’re much better equipped—”

“Because you’ve got your mission and you’ll carry it out. And because if I thought that pulling out now would work, I’d call the director general and tell him what we’ve got and let him deal with it. But there’s no time for that. You’re down the street from two prime targets. You bug out now, we may never find those docs again.”

Uzi ran the back of a hand across his beard stubble. “Why are we giving the codex and scroll a higher priority than capturing the number three most wanted terrorist?”

There was a prolonged pause. Just when Vail thought they had lost him, Knox began speaking.

“President Nunn wants to control the documents for his own strategic reasons. My sources tell me he plans to use them to force concessions from Israel to win the peace.”

“I thought that’s what the Palestinians are doing,” DeSantos said.

“It carries a great deal more weight with the president as the driving force behind it. And to Nunn, being the only president who successfully brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians would cement his legacy. But you know what? I don’t give a shit about a president’s legacy. If there’s peace it should be a negotiated agreement, not some leveraged form of blackmail. Despite best intentions, negotiated agreements sometimes fail. But extortion never works.”

“Take the documents out of the equation for a minute,” Uzi said. “The administration could just withhold military aid loans to Israel and leverage them that way. Wouldn’t that have the same effect?”

“Not that simple,” Knox said. “Those military loans are required to be spent in the US, so taking that money out of the US economy, and the jobs it would cost, would not be very popular at home. Congress would never go for it, anyway. No, this is Nunn’s only shot. They’re secret negotiations, which means no one’s supposed to know what he’s planning to do with these documents. So if you repeat what I’ve just told you, it’ll be clear who leaked the information. I’m the only one who knows what’s really going on outside a very small, well controlled circle.”

Apparently not as well controlled as you think. And now not as small a circle as it was before.

“Secretary McNamara and I don’t buy into this strategy. It’s the wrong approach and won’t lead to a healthy peace.”

Vail squirmed in her seat. Defying — and undermining — the president? This feels dangerously close to treason.

“That’s why you’re not going to bring the codex and scroll home,” Knox said. “Give them to the Israelis. Bring them to the Shrine of the Book building at the National Museum. We have to ensure that this leverage — this undue influence that these documents provide — is taken out of the equation.”

DeSantos signed off and Vail texted Fahad to tell him to resume the operation.

“Showtime,” Uzi said.

DeSantos gave him a fist bump. “Good luck.”

Uzi left the SUV and followed the path that Fahad took to the guard booth along the sidewalk, using the cover of bushes and hedges where possible. From fifteen feet away, he watched through the window in the front of the small brick structure as Fahad greeted the officer.

From what Uzi could tell in the descending darkness, there was some discussion between the two men. A moment later, Fahad was the only one visible.

Uzi advanced and found the militant seated in a chair, dressed in an al Humat uniform, his head resting on his forearms. He looked like he was asleep. But Uzi knew better.

Conspicuously absent was an array of video screens for surveillance monitoring — a good sign and hopefully an indicator of whether or not the residents of the neighborhood felt the added level of paranoia was necessary.

Fahad began searching the small desk drawers while Uzi examined a spiral bound log book that contained Arabic writing. Visitors were required to sign in. Their license plate numbers were recorded along with their names and addresses. “Looks like they have regularly scheduled check-ins with someone — someone on Sahmoud’s personal detail. Probably one of the guys in that house.”

“Makes sense. What’s the interval?”

“Every thirty minutes. Last one was … eighteen minutes ago.” Uzi checked his watch. “So we’ve got twelve minutes. That’s cutting it close.” He texted DeSantos and Vail and gave one last look around. “Let’s go. We don’t have a lot of time.”

70

Rudenko is our third priority,” DeSantos said, “and only because he may have the scroll. If it’s clear he doesn’t, we let him go unless taking him down won’t jeopardize our primary objectives: the two documents first and Sahmoud second. You okay with that?”

Vail frowned. “You mean because I’d like to put a bullet behind Rudenko’s ear?”

“Because of that, yeah.”

“I understand the mission priorities, Hector. But forget about Rudenko. What if it comes down to the two docs or Sahmoud?”

“You heard our orders,” DeSantos said. “Codex and scroll are number one. That said, I’m betting Sahmoud is in the bunker — the most secure room in the house. Which means he’ll have the docs there too. Assuming I’m right, we should be able to grab both the docs and Sahmoud.”

I hope you’re right.

DeSantos looked out at the guard booth. From what he could see in the failing light, he told her, Fahad and Uzi had been successful. “Let’s take a minute for a dose of reality.”

“I kind of assumed I was living a nightmare.”

“Most of the time,” he said, ignoring her, “a Special Forces operator aims to get in and out. He avoids contact with the enemy. We don’t have that luxury. We’ve got vests but no head gear. We have guns but no suppressors. No comms and limited intel. So to keep the advantage of surprise, the Glocks stay in our waistbands until we don’t have any choice. This is close quarters combat. Use your knife. And your hands.”

“We’ve already gone over this.”

He twisted his body to face her. “I need to know if you can handle yourself. This isn’t going to be yelling at some perp a block away to stop while sighting him with a .40-caliber. This is in your face, kill or be killed.”

She looked into DeSantos’s eyes and absorbed what he was saying. There could be no doubt. No hesitation.

“I’ve been involved in close quarters combat. You know that.”

“Al Humat chooses its guards from its best fighters, Karen, those who’ve proven themselves by killing innocents — which shows their commitment to the cause. These aren’t rent-a-cops.”

Sahmoud and Rudenko are two of the worst offenders I’ve come up against. I want them. Badly. But can I do it?

She had the training. She had the weapon. She had gone hand to hand with serial killers and deadly assassins. But would she have the killer instinct in a situation where she was the intruder?

She had crossed the line in the past, sometimes purposely and sometimes inadvertently. This felt different. There wasn’t a question of if she would encounter tangos. They were going in to purposely engage them.

Vail realized DeSantos was waiting for an answer. She held his gaze and said, “We’re taking down one of the world’s worst. Two of them if we’re lucky. I’m in.”

DeSantos nodded slowly. “Let’s do it, then.”

71

Ten minutes passed and the light was fading rapidly. Over the Mediterranean, the sky still had some life to it. But to DeSantos's right, the death of cloud-covered darkness had settled in.

Most importantly, he had difficulty seeing the landscape around him: just how he wanted it.

He moved slowly to keep from tripping motion sensors, a painstaking process but one he had perfected during years of similar missions.

Waves crashed in the distance but his auditory sense was focused on those noises that would mean the difference between life and death. His field of vision had narrowed, his concentration was deep.

He had one objective at the moment: the man on the other side of the door. According to his screen, the guard was two and a half feet away, only a one inch slab of wood separating them.

He had little choice but to permit Fahad’s participation: although he had strong suspicions, he had no proof. With a force of four against eleven, they had a chance of success. With three the odds dropped significantly. DeSantos had to trust him.

But not completely. He had texted Rodman and asked him to make sure Fahad’s regular cell phone and satphone were monitored. If he made a call to anyone other than the three members of his team, they were to be notified immediately.

It was enough fighting eleven men; he did not need one of his own working against them.

DeSantos knew from the infrared imagery that the guards were armed with what looked to be AK-47s. They probably also had small arms and even bladed weapons. The objective was for him, and his team, to strike unexpectedly. And fast. It took time and effort to move a heavy submachine gun toward an enemy. Too much time in close quarters combat — which is what this would be. Plus, they were likely not expecting an incursion and, despite what he told Vail, even if they were their best fighters, he did not know their specific level of training. They might shoot well at fifty yards, but did they practice weekly? Did they practice home invasion scenarios? Using his SOG SEAL seven-inch knife, he scraped the exterior surface of the door. Lightly, at first.

No response.

Again, a little more deeply.

Footstep. Hand on the knob. Creak of the hinge as it opened.

DeSantos tossed a small rock to his right. It rustled the leaves of a bush and the guard stepped out onto the cement stoop. The AK-47 was slung across the man’s shoulder, gripped sloppily in his right hand, pointed at the ground.

DeSantos swung the double-serrated blade backhanded through the moist, cool air and struck the man in the left kidney. He stiffened and opened his mouth to scream but DeSantos slapped his fingers over his lips.

He yanked the knife out and stabbed again, this time a vicious, fast jab to the right side of the man’s spine. He struck bone and went through it. The man’s legs went limp and DeSantos put him down with a final strike to the throat so he would not make a noise that would give away his position.

DeSantos yanked him into the foliage, stepped over the bloodied concrete, and into the house.

Vail made her way to the southeast side of the house. She had approached as DeSantos advised her, along the plant line and staying clear of gravel, keeping on grass wherever possible to avoid making unwanted noise. She moved slowly but deliberately and was successful in not setting off the motion sensors.

She stood at the front door for a moment and heard only the crashing rumble of ocean waves. It was unnerving. The satellite imagery showed her mark — a soldier standing rock-still, a foot away, guarding the entrance to the home. Adrenaline flooded her bloodstream and her hands felt unsteady. She wiped her palms on the back of her pants and took a long, cleansing breath.

DeSantos’s face flashed through her thoughts as he leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “I need to know if you can handle yourself.”

I’ve stormed buildings, jumped out of helicopters, and parachuted from the back of a military jet. I can do this too.

Vail shoved the phone in her pocket and brought a fist up to knock.

This man is a killer. Kill or be killed. Kill or be killed.

She rapped lightly on the wood surface. The door immediately swung open and a large male stood there, angular face with close-cropped dark hair and wearing a uniform with the unmistakable green/yellow/black logo of al Humat.

A submachine gun was balanced against his right forearm. His hand relaxed and the barrel dipped slightly when he saw a woman standing at the door. Not much of a threat.

Vail did not hesitate: she spoke the words Uzi coached her to say in Arabic—“I have an urgent message for Kadir from Doka”—and handed him a note. When he reached out to take it she stepped forward and thrust her long Tanto blade into his midsection, an uppercut designed to miss the ribcage. It sliced through as if she had cut into Jell-O. She yanked the handle left and right, severing the abdominal aorta.

The fighter’s eyes bulged wide and his torso bent forward in shock. Or pain. He dropped the AK-47 as his head jerked back. He grabbed her throat with a broad, thick hand and squeezed with surprising strength.

Don’t panic, Karen. He’s bleeding out.

Kill or be killed.

She gave the Tanto a final jerk back and forth and then grabbed it with both hands and yanked it up and down, sawing in and out.

Three long seconds later the man’s eyelids fluttered closed and he collapsed into her, releasing his hold on her neck. She stepped aside and helped him down to the shiny granite entryway.

Vail used her left Timberland boot to roll him over. She stuck her foot on his abdomen and extracted the Tanto, then gave it a quick wipe on his pants — her black 5.11s were now smeared maroon with blood.

She moved to her right into an expansive living room whose walls featured a large representation of the al Aqsa mosque in relief, alongside the Dome of the Rock, which was covered with what looked like real gold leaf — just like the actual building. She knelt behind a needlepoint upholstered chair to consult the drone’s infrared imagery. Four men were down, which meant that Uzi, DeSantos, and Fahad were also successful. That still left an unspecified number of security personnel — two outside the room and maybe three guards and two tangos inside the room.

Vail slipped the Tanto back into its sheath and removed her Glock. A round was chambered, so it was ready to go. At this point stealth was no longer an option — nor was it necessary. All the men were on the same floor: the basement.

Judging by her team’s movement — they were all closing in on the room — she was the last to dispose of her assigned target. But she resisted the urge to move too quickly. Although she had only seventy-five seconds until the guard’s scheduled check-in, the last thing they needed was for any of them to be discovered now, before they were all in position.

A minute later, with time winding down, she had descended two floors and stood on the landing, a few feet from the mouth of a long hallway. Approximately thirty feet down the cement corridor was another al Humat officer. He was likely keeping watch at the door to the large room behind him, where an important business transaction was occurring.

Vail leaned her back against the wall and waited for the text from DeSantos. It came seconds later:

She shoved the satphone in her front pocket and took a breath, hands wrapped around the Glock’s polymer handle. Seven, six, five, four …

72

Uzi and DeSantos faced the second door to the basement bunker, where Sahmoud and Rudenko were likely located. They were ninety degrees from the main entrance, where Vail’s target was stationed.

“I like your new uniform,” DeSantos said of Uzi’s al Humat black shirt with embroidered patches depicting the organization’s logo.

“He wasn’t all that bad for a terrorist. He gave me the shirt off his back.”

This was by design — Uzi would engage the guard with his hands rather than his knife — in case they needed an intact uniform.

They had thirty seconds before the scheduled check-in with the security booth officer was due — assuming they kept to their schedule. According to the logbook Uzi had seen, they were punctual.

Fahad remained upstairs, ensuring guards did not enter the house once the shooting began. That they were in the basement, two levels down, lessened the likelihood the gunfire would be heard.

DeSantos tried the knob carefully, slowly, quietly, and determined it was locked. The door appeared to be solid metal — which meant it was heavy, likely reinforced, and impervious to being kicked in.

If this had been another time and place, Uzi would’ve set a charge of C4, taken cover, and blown it off its hinges.

They had reviewed the file photos of each wanted man. They would have milliseconds to identify them and shoot the others. How many were there? Impossible to be sure.

One mistake and they would lose the ability to detain and question two of the most dangerous criminals in the civilized world. However, Knox had made the overriding objective clear.

“We can’t shoot through this,” DeSantos whispered.

“Agreed. We should knock.”

DeSantos gave Uzi a look.

“I’m serious. Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of you.”

“I’ve got nothing better. Go for it.” DeSantos texted Vail and then moved out of sight.

Uzi lifted his balled fist toward the door and rapped on the cold steel surface.

“What,” someone shouted in Arabic from the other side.

“Message from Doka,” Uzi replied. “Important.”

The countless hours Uzi had spent in Shin Bet’s academy, then Mossad’s training facilities during ops preparation, and in the FBI Academy’s shooting house, flashed through his thoughts. His heart was pounding and his pulse was racing. He took a breath. The knob turned and the door swung in a second before Vail’s first gunshot rang out.

Uzi shouldered the door open. DeSantos swiveled into the room, took aim, and drilled a number of suited men in the chest.

Yelling

Chairs toppling

Frantic bursts of return gunfire

Uzi located his target and squeezed off several rounds, the sound deafening, the smell of cordite suffocating, obscuring visibility.

“Where is he?” Uzi yelled. “Where’s Sahmoud?”

Another two gunshots, then Vail burst in, crouched low with her Glock in the ready position.

Uzi moved deeper into the room and surveyed the carnage. Neither Sahmoud nor Rudenko was there. He pulled an AK-47 off the dead body of one of the downed security guards and tossed it to DeSantos.

He rooted out his satphone and saw an amorphous, unaccounted for heat mass behind the large desk near the far wall. Uzi hand signaled Vail as he moved cautiously toward the man.

A middle-aged male with a salt-and-pepper beard was seated on the floor, his back against a vertical row of wood file drawers. His right hand was pressed against his abdomen.

Assessing the threat and determining there was none, Uzi shoved the Glock in his waistband and knelt in front of the man.

“Kadir Abu Sahmoud, you’re a prisoner of the United States government.”

73

Vail came around the edge of the desk and studied Sahmoud. He was leaking blood from an abdominal wound and was in a great deal of pain. Given their covert status, there was no way to get him the kind of medical attention he needed to save his life. How long he had she did not know. Because of their training, Uzi or DeSantos could make a more accurate assessment.

“Get me to a hospital and I will make sure you are well compensated,” Sahmoud said through clenched teeth.

“Call Mo,” Uzi said. “Tell him we’ve got Sahmoud but not Rudenko.”

“Copy that,” DeSantos said as he removed his phone.

“The dumbwaiter,” Sahmoud said. “He’s … gone.”

Vail moved across the room and examined the small elevator. She craned her neck and looked up the shaft and saw that the car was on a level maybe twenty feet above her. Is Sahmoud telling the truth or is Rudenko hiding somewhere? As Vail turned to face the room, a group text arrived from Fahad:

Rudenko! Son of a bitch.

She glanced at DeSantos and shook her head. She replied and told Fahad to make sure there were no surveillance cameras — and if there were, to erase any recordings.

While DeSantos patted down the dead guards, Vail turned her attention to the primary objective and began a systematic search of the room. She did not have far to look: a walk-in safe behind the desk, a few feet from Uzi, was ajar. She pulled the six-foot-tall metal door open enough for her to enter and turned on her phone’s flashlight.

On the left side were a number of flat cases and assorted cardboard rolls, stacks of money of various denominations — shekels, dollars, pounds, euros. A large velvet pouch of uncut diamonds. Several canvases of what looked like Renaissance era paintings.

As she sifted through the contents of the shelves, she heard Uzi and DeSantos begin to interrogate Sahmoud.

Off to the right she saw a portfolio that was strikingly similar to the leather cases she had seen in the Louvre restoration vault. She set it on a small table in the center of the vault and carefully unzipped it.

Whoa. So this is the Aleppo Codex.

It was as the rabbis in Brooklyn had described: once bound, now mostly loose pages of about 10x13, dark brown ink on tan parchment, roughly thirty lines to a column, three columns to a page. The handwriting was so perfect it could have been typeset on a computer.

Her palms were sweaty, her heart still racing — but it was not just the residual adrenaline. She was holding one of the most important documents produced by mankind. It brought back memories of her first trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a young art history major and seeing Diego Velazquez’s oil on canvas, Juan Pareja.

The scroll?

Vail closed the portfolio and pulled off the metal endcap of a spiral wound cardboard shipping tube. She peered inside: another parchment, this one looking a good deal more fragile. She did not want to risk pulling it out for fear of damaging it. Vail opened three others — and while each contained what appeared to be valuable documents, none matched the description of a Dead Sea Scroll.

“How’s he doing?” Vail asked, poking her head out of the vault.

“Not very cooperative,” Uzi said. “He confirmed that Rudenko sold him the scroll. Rudenko bought it twenty-some-odd years ago from someone who smuggled it out of the Vatican.”

“So the Vatican got its hands on it?” Vail asked.

“They offered nineteen million dollars to get it back. Sahmoud made a better offer. No one knew who had it. He felt now was the time to sell because of what he’d been told about the peace negotiations.”

“He was right,” DeSantos said. He was standing beside the kneeling Uzi, the pilfered AK-47 in his grasp, legs spread. A position of readiness.

Vail whispered in DeSantos’s ear, “With the gunshots, even down here, there’s gotta be others on their way. And someone may discover the dead guard at the gate. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want any part of that.”

“Especially with Fahad watching the shop. What about the codex and the scr—”

“Got both.”

DeSantos nudged Uzi in the shoulder. “Boychick, we gotta go.”

“Take me with you,” Sahmoud said through a tight jaw. “I’ll pay you … Two million each.”

Uzi laughed.

Sahmoud winced. “Diamonds in the vault … worth twenty-five million. Take them … they’re yours.”

“They’re ours anyway,” DeSantos said. He lifted his phone and took a snapshot of their prisoner’s face. “We should leave him here.”

Sahmoud began to laugh — a rough chuckle that had a raspy edge to it.

“What’s so funny?” Uzi asked.

“The man who made all this possible. One of your own.” Laugh. Wince.

“What are you talking about? Who made what possible?”

Sahmoud’s head fell back against the wood desk. “He … helped us locate the bank. He … made it possible … to buy the scroll.” His eyes closed.

C’mon asshole, don’t die on us now.

Uzi and Vail shared a concerned look — but he started talking again.

“His idea to use it … to leverage … the Israelis. Knew they’d give in … Not many weaknesses … but their holy books … their holy land … can’t help themselves.” He laughed again, brought his knees up to his chest. “He found out … FBI director coming … to make sure … I was sent to … America … for trial. Warned me.”

Uzi got in his face. “Who? Who warned you?”

He opened one eye. “Take me …”

Uzi hesitated, then said, “Fine. We’ll take you with us.” He turned to DeSantos and said, as convincingly as possible, “Get something to use as a stretcher.” Back to Sahmoud: “Who warned you?”

He swallowed, licked his lips. “Ward … Connerly.”

74

The president’s chief of staff?” Uzi glanced at DeSantos, the look saying, “So it wasn’t Mo.”

“That’s why you planted the burned body,” Vail said.

Sahmoud managed a crooked grin, his eyes closed, his voice weak. “You weren’t … smart enough … to get the … clue.”

“Clue?” DeSantos asked.

The note pinned to the Times Square vic. The first ward. Ward Connerly. “First” applies to the president, like the First Lady, the first dog. The president’s chief of staff.

She explained it to Uzi and DeSantos.

“Nothing … you can do …” Sahmoud said. “Never … find … evidence …” His voice tailed off, his arms went limp, and his head dropped to his chest.

DeSantos pressed two fingers against Sahmoud’s neck, then straightened up. “Looks like he’s reached his end of days.”

“What are we going to do about this?” Vail asked.

“Nothing,” DeSantos said, feeling for hidden compartments in the desk. “Our job’s done. We’ll give it to Knox, let him run with it. Right now we grab what we can, get the hell out of here.”

“Sahmoud could’ve been telling the truth,” Vail said. “Guys like Ward Connerly know how to cover their tracks, they use straw men to do the dirty work. If there’s nothing out there linking him to this—”

Uzi walked into the vault and started rummaging around. “There’s more than one way to build a case. It may take a while, but we’ll get him.” He pulled out his phone, put it on speaker, and set it on the table.

“Rodman.”

“Hot Rod, it’s Uzi. Sorry to wake you.”

“Wake me? Been at the ops center pulling double shifts. What do you need?”

“Ward Connerly. Get what you can on him.”

“The president’s chief of staff?”

Uzi explained what Sahmoud had told them. “Any connections to Middle Eastern types that look suspicious, dig deep. Speed matters.”

“We’ll get a team on it right now. Hodges,” he shouted away from the phone, “get your ass over here.” Back into the handset, he said, “If there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”

“We’ll be on the move. Anything comes up, tell Knox and Hoshi Koh at my office.”

“Got something,” DeSantos said. He handed it to Vail, who brought it to Uzi.

“Hang on a sec,” he said to Rodman. Uzi studied the two-page printout for a moment, then said, “Looks like a list of al Humat cells in the US, with contact numbers for what could be the leader of each one. Hot Rod, I’ll send it over to you. You’ll need an Arabic translator.”

“We’re on it. Check six.”

Uzi hung up, then took a photo of the spreadsheet and emailed it to Rodman.

“If that’s what you think it is,” DeSantos said, “that’s a huge win.”

Uzi opened a cabinet in the vault and rifled through its contents. “We’ll see. No idea how up-to-date it is — assuming I’m right.” His back to DeSantos, he said, “But I don’t share your optimism about bringing Connerly to justice.”

“I think we should be happy with our score and call it a damn fine job.”

Vail checked her watch, then pulled open another desk drawer. “Assholes getting away with a crime doesn’t sit well with me. Especially when those assholes are in positions of power.” She found a booklet made of clear plastic sleeves containing maps. Although she could not read the Arabic, it had GPS coordinates and was marked up meticulously with bold blue and red lines crisscrossing the pages.

Vail walked back into the vault and showed it to Uzi. “What is this?”

He flipped through the pages and paused to read the Arabic. “A diagram of their tunnels. Red for the ones that go into Israel. Blue for the ones coming from Egypt into Gaza. That’s gold. Take it with us, we’ll turn it over to the IDF.”

As Vail shoved the booklet into the back of her waistband, she noticed that Uzi was slowly unrolling a parchment.

He stooped over the document as he read the Hebrew. “This is it.”

“The Jesus Scroll?”

Uzi brought his gaze up to hers. She saw wonderment in his eyes, nothing short of amazement.

“I’m actually holding one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The same one that my zayde — my grandfather — held.” He gestured to the thick stack of pages at his right elbow. “And the Aleppo Codex. We found it. We really found the codex.” He shivered. “Sorry. I just … I feel like I’m touching my history. My cultural essence.” He shook his head. “I’m babbling.”

“I understand.” Vail inched closer for a better look. “It is extraordinary.”

A moment later, Uzi straightened up suddenly. “We’ve gotta get going. Go help Santa finish our search. I’m gonna pack this stuff up. All we have to do now is get it to the Antiquities Authority.”

Uzi emerged with four containers. “I’ve divided up the documents into these cases. Safer that way. Something happens, one or two of us is more likely to make it through. Avoids the all eggs in one basket thing.” He kept a mailing tube for himself, handed another one to Vail, and gave the portfolio to DeSantos, who also took Fahad’s satchel.

“We’ve been here too long,” DeSantos said as he consulted his satphone. “We need to go. Call Fahad, get a status.”

Vail did so and headed for the stairs. Fahad answered immediately. “Mo, we’re coming upst—”

“We got a problem.”

Vail stopped at the bottom of the steps, phone pressed against her ear. “What kind of problem?”

“Vehicles approaching. Army vehicles. Shit, Karen. It’s al Humat. And they’re armed. We’ve gotta get out of here, now!”

They ran up to the main level, where Fahad was waiting. DeSantos handed him the satchel as they all moved to the back of the house. “We’ve divided up the docs, each of us has a part.”

“Good idea,” Fahad said as he slung the bag over his shoulder.

Uzi pulled the back door open. “Split up, meet at the Shrine of the Book. Go!”

75

Vail ran through the yard in a northerly direction, scaled a masonry wall, and ended up in a lightly landscaped greenbelt. She fastened her scarf as she continued on past palm trees and meticulously pruned hedges, then made her way back to the street.

Fifteen minutes later, after finding a dark, well shielded area, she stopped to try to get a bearing on where she was. She knew that Google Earth and Bing Maps did not provide clear satellite imagery of Israel and the Palestinian territories, so she had to rely on regular street maps and general topography. Unless—

Is the drone still overhead? She pulled out her satphone and tried to call up the real-time imagery. It was no longer online — but then she remembered she had the booklet tucked in her waistband.

That it was written in a foreign language was challenging, but she was able to get a sense of the area using the coastline and beach as a reference point. There were a couple of tunnels into Israel that appeared to be nearby.

She plugged in the GPS coordinates of the closest one and followed the screen to set off in the right direction. By her estimate, she was about three miles away. What would the entrance look like? She had seen CNN videos during the war, but those were mostly the openings on the Israeli side, holes that emerged from rock outcroppings in rural areas.

For now, her main concerns were finding a way to traverse the distance and arriving safely. Not knowing who she could trust and not speaking Arabic, she could not pass for anything other than what she was: an American, or at best, a westerner. Who was working with al Humat or Hamas or Islamic Jihad? It would be impossible for her to tell.

She had to think like a Special Forces operator, not an FBI agent. When I get back, if Knox insists on keeping me in OPSIG, I want more training. I need to know what the hell I’m doing. Enough of this on-the-job bullshit.

The air had grown chilled, the sky overcast. A light drizzle had begun falling.

Vail came to a suburban neighborhood, not nearly as well kept or affluent as the area of Gaza City and resort community she had seen. Plain-faced concrete apartment buildings rose all around her. Graffiti marked the sides of most structures in all directions. The streets were illuminated, but not well lit, which both played to her advantage and placed her in greater danger.

She perused the parked cars and tried the driver’s doors as she passed. All were locked. Even if she got into one, it might take her a while to remember how to hotwire it. The last thing she wanted to do was get caught trying to steal someone’s vehicle in Gaza — especially since her clothing was soaked in blood.

She placed a hand on her Glock and walked down the street. A moment later, a dark sedan turned the corner, headed toward her. Engage or not? She stepped in front of it and held up a hand. A woman standing in the rain. In distress, with blood on her clothes. How could he ignore that?

As anticipated, the driver stopped. Vail smiled broadly and moved around to the window, which cranked open, revealing a male who looked to be in his mid-twenties. He said something in Arabic, then flashed a grin of his own. It did not last long, however, as Vail brought the Glock up and shoved it into his temple.

“Get out,” she said firmly by his ear. Vail did not know if he spoke English, but he seemed to understand the language of aggression because he put the car in park and opened the door. Vail kept her handgun trained on him as he got out.

“Sorry,” she said. “Very sorry. I’ll take good care of it.” She pulled the beat-up Honda into gear and accelerated away from him. After making a few quick turns, she pulled out the satphone and checked the display to see if she was pointed in the right direction. The receiver was having a difficult time getting a signal.

Shit, the clouds. The weather, it can’t get a lock on the satellite.

It flashed a blinking red warning across the display: NO SATELLITES. Five intolerable seconds passed — during which Vail held her breath — before a green message appeared: RETRIEVING SATELLITE DATA. The mapping image populated the screen and she sighed relief.

One left turn later and she was on track, headed for the tunnel.

Fahad made it safely away from Sahmoud’s house, but not without a brush with a trailing al Humat SUV. He felt it was best to make a non-stealth exit, moving through the adjacent yards before emerging on the side of a home and appearing to be coming from the garage. He had examined his clothing for blood earlier, while standing guard, and reversed his jacket to hide the lone blood spatter.

The satchel was in his right hand as he walked along the sidewalk, glancing over his shoulder at the military vehicles bearing the familiar al Humat window sticker.

He had hoped to avoid contact but was almost inviting it by strolling past their convoy. When the militant stopped his car and whistled at Fahad to approach, he pointed at his chest and asked in Arabic, “Me?”

The man extended his hand out the window and wiggled his fingers. “Come here.”

Fahad stepped off the curb and had started toward the SUV when shouting down the street caught the driver’s attention. He swung his head toward the disturbance, then accelerated hard, burning rubber.

Fahad figured they had discovered one or more of the dead guards. He continued on down the street, casually glancing left and right, counting the seconds until he was out of their view.

He passed the security booth where another al Humat officer was examining the guard. His neck was broken, so there were no overt signs of death like a gunshot or knife wound. It would take him a bit to determine why the man was not responsive.

Fahad picked up his pace and covered at least half a mile before turning right down a side street.

CIA Director Tasset had put him on the OPSIG team to deliver the codex and scroll to one of several safe houses the Agency maintained throughout the world — including one on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

But Knox had directed them to turn the artifacts over to the Israelis.

His course of action should be clear. He was a CIA officer and he was given orders — his sole reason for being on this operation was to secure the documents for the Agency. He answered to the director. But he only had a portion of them. Was his role, his covert mission within a black op, still significant?

He pivoted 360 degrees. The apartment building he was looking for was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a vast lot and an enormous pile of concrete rubble — likely one of the many Hamas structures destroyed during the recent Gaza war. An Agency informant claimed that a lot of the money donated to Hamas for rebuilding had been stolen and diverted — which could explain why the debris was still sitting there.

He stopped a woman coming down the street with her young son and asked if she knew where his friends had moved. She turned and pointed. “It’s an apartment building, on the corner, two blocks away. Second floor, I think.”

Fahad slung the satchel over his left shoulder and proceeded down the street. He turned onto the broken cement path that led to the front door and consulted the listing of names posted at the foot of the stairs. He ascended a couple of flights, and a moment later a middle-aged woman came to the door.

“Mahmoud!” Karima stepped forward and gave him a hearty embrace, then leaned back and appraised his face. “What are you doing here?”

“In for a visit, to see my family. Pay my brother a visit.”

Her bright expression sagged. “Your brother?”

“We’ve patched things up.”

Karima stepped back. “Good. That’s good.” She took his hand and turned, leading him toward the kitchen. “When did you get in?”

“This morning.”

Karima let go of his hand, turned around, and smiled. “It’s wonderful to see you. You look good. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“I’ve still got that job in Virginia. Things have been busy. And you?”

Her smile faded. “Things are not so good with Hamid. He—” She stopped, glanced around, found Fahad’s eyes and said, “he’s mixed up with al Humat. I told him it would only bring bad things to our family. But the money is …” She shook her head. “He said he wants to do this.”

Hamid’s involvement with al Humat introduced a variable Fahad had not anticipated. He rubbed at his temple. “Hamid’s always had a rebellious streak.”

“So have you.” She grinned again, tried to lighten the sudden tension in the air. “Sit down, stay awhile. Coffee? Hamid will be home soon. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

“Hamid and I didn’t exactly leave things in a good place.” Fahad’s forehead sprouted perspiration. The last thing he needed was to confront Hamid. Was he merely a sympathizer? Soldier? Official? Knowing his friend, it was all three: he was not someone who followed; he led.

With what Fahad was holding in the satchel, and the fresh news that Kadir Abu Sahmoud had been killed, running into Hamid could be disastrous. He took a step back out of the kitchen. “Besides, I can’t stay. I just wanted to stop by and see how you two were doing.” He had come to ask a favor, but now his sole focus was to get out of the apartment.

Before Karima could reply, a key slipped into the front door and the lock turned. Fahad’s head whipped around as his free hand slid toward his Glock. A second later, a man walked in wearing a black shirt. With an embroidered al Humat patch.

76

DeSantos was huddled in an alley behind two cars and a dumpster. He pulled out his cell and called a friend of his who lived in Sderot, a town bordering Gaza that had borne the brunt of Hamas rocket fire — until those rockets became more powerful and were able to reach deep into major Israeli cities dozens of miles away.

The psychological trauma of living in a constant state of readiness, of having mere seconds to flee to a bomb shelter, of having your young children grow up playing in indoor schoolyards and “parks” because it was unsafe for them to be outside, was far-reaching and had damaged an entire generation.

DeSantos met Inbar Ramon during an op in Moscow in the 1990s. She had been working for Mossad as a swallow, a female sexpionage operative whose mission was to seduce a finance official to get a line on corruption payments that they surmised were finding their way to an Iranian proxy in Lebanon. Both Israel and the US Department of Defense had an interest in stopping the flow of money.

After the mission, Inbar and DeSantos had a brief romance that ended when he left Russia and she went back to Sderot. Two months later he met his wife Maggie. A year later Inbar got married.

After quickly dispensing with small talk, DeSantos explained that he was in Gaza and needed to get through the security barrier.

“You’re not serious.”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”

“Hector, what you ask … as you can probably guess, the border is very tightly monitored, for obvious reasons. Where are you?”

“I saw a sign for Sheikh Za’id. Know where that is?”

“Let me see what I can do. I know someone at the Erez border crossing. You’re a few miles away. I’ll text you directions. What name are you using?”

“DeSantos. Mossad knows I’m here, no point in trying to use a cover.”

“While waiting to hear from me, make your way over to the border. Call you back in ten.”

Uzi had hitchhiked to within two miles of the Erez crossing. The youth who had given him the ride — for twenty shekels — made small talk with his passenger when the young man touched on the news that Kadir Abu Sahmoud had been found murdered.

Uzi had figured they would drive through the checkpoint after their operation. But news of Sahmoud’s demise traveled faster than he had anticipated and touched off what he expected to be a severely escalated alert level among both Palestinian and Israeli forces. He imagined that Israel was denying a role in the murder — or at the very least was refusing to comment, as Israelis often did, regardless of whether or not they were involved.

At times like these, with the border locked down tighter than usual, each individual was highly scrutinized. But he did not see an option.

He was a quarter of a mile away when five masked men approached, armed with submachine guns. “What are you doing here?” one yelled at him in Arabic.

“Headed to the crossing. I have to visit my father in Nablus. He’s ill.”

“Past curfew. They won’t let you through.”

“I know,” Uzi said, “I need to try.”

“What’s in there?” the taller militant asked, nodding at the tube.

“Some blueprints of a house I designed for my boss. I wanted to show my dad. He’s a retired architect.”

“Bullshit,” the man in front said. “Get down on the ground.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Because Kadir Abu Sahmoud was killed. Because there’s a curfew. Because you look suspicious walking around out here in the rain. And we’re searching everyone.”

As a general rule it was smart to submit to law enforcement when you were told to do so. But these men were not law enforcement — and Uzi was not in an area where the rule of law was respected.

“Okay,” he said.

They were not well trained, as they had approached him casually, overly confident, cocky, and ill prepared to take action. Their weapons were not in a position of readiness and they did not have good spacing. Two were stacked behind their colleagues.

They stood only about fifteen feet away, but with the poor illumination and their ski masks on it was impossible to tell how old they were.

“Get down now!”

Even with a balky knee, Uzi was still plenty fast. Could he outrun them before they got their submachine guns into firing position?

Uzi slowly crouched down while shielding his right hand from the men. He pulled his Glock and started firing. He hit two — but because of the way they were closely aligned, his shots were more efficient, and three of the militants hit the pavement.

He turned and ran, the roll tucked under his left arm as he put the trunks of nearby palm trees between him and the pursuing tangos. He had gotten about thirty yards when he felt the burn of a gunshot wound sting his arm. He recoiled and dropped the tube. Rounds struck the pavement at his feet and a metal pole near his head, so he ducked and spun around and began running a zigzag route, his Timberlands slapping puddles and mud as he passed the Erez Industrial Park ruins.

Ahead was the caged screening corridor, a three hundred yard cement-walled passageway featuring a blue and white sign that read, “Welcome to Erez Crossing” written in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, along with the following warning — in Arabic only: Continuing with violence results in the withholding of ease of access and luxury for the people.

The border control pavilion was a secure facility that consisted of passageways, gates, turnstiles, doors, high-tech body scanners, and identity checks. The army and Israel police monitored each phase remotely behind blast proof concrete-and-glass enclosures.

Uzi knew that for security reasons, there were no direct human contacts with Israeli personnel until the very end. And there were delays at each phase of the crossing. As a result, if his pursuers followed him into the complex, he would be leaving it in a pine box.

He ran into the corridor made of tall concrete blast walls. Behind him he heard the footfalls of at least two men. Then, shouting in Arabic for him to stop. Were they serious?

About a hundred yards ahead he saw the remote-controlled turnstile bounded by a tall chain-link fence. He started flapping his uninjured arm, gesticulating, turning and pointing behind him as he continued toward the gate. He knew the police were watching through surveillance cameras. The only question was, were they paying attention? And if so, would they get there in time?

If he drew his Glock, there was no way the police would approach him. He hoped they also saw the al Humat men pursuing him and understood that he was the good guy in this scenario.

The area was brightly illuminated, though another thirty yards later a spotlight hit him in the face and a blaring klaxon sounded. Several police officers in blue uniforms came through a thick metal door, clad in tactical vests and helmets.

“Stop! Get down,” they yelled in Arabic.

Uzi stumbled to a jog, then pulled up and dropped to his knees. “I’m American,” he said as they surrounded him. “Being pursued by two or three armed al Humat—”

“Check it,” the lead officer said. Four of the men headed down the corridor the way Uzi had come. The cop then pulled his two-way and barked orders in Hebrew. He lowered his radio and knelt in front of Uzi. “What are you doing in Gaza?”

“I have an appointment with Director General Aksel.”

The man shared a glance with one of his underlings as if to say, “Did I just hear right?”

“We need to search you,” one of the others said. “Don’t move.”

Uzi glanced up and saw the three-bar insignia on the senior officer’s shoulder: a sergeant major. Peretz, by his nametag.

“You’ll find a Glock and a Tanto,” Uzi said, “and a satphone and a Lumia.”

“Call it in,” Peretz said to one of his men. “And get a medic over here.”

The cops emptied the pockets of his 5.11s and backed away from their detainee, showing Peretz the cache — which was exactly as Uzi had described — except his satphone’s screen was shattered and his Lumia was missing.

“Get up,” Peretz said. “Name?”

Uzi got to his feet. “Aaron Uziel.”

Peretz pulled an Israeli bandage from the backpack of one of his men and began applying the compression dressing to Uzi’s arm. “Mind telling us what you were doing in Gaza? And why you have an appointment with the director general of Mossad? You’re no ordinary American.”

Uzi chuckled. “Trust me, Sergeant Major. You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

Peretz frowned. “Actually, if your friend is Hector DeSantos, I might, in fact, believe you.”

Vail arrived at the location of the tunnel entrance. But the sky was now completely black save for a sliver of moonlight that was fighting to be seen through the otherwise dense cloud cover.

There was barely enough illumination to keep her from stepping in a hole as she navigated the hard, rocky soil.

With the satphone in her left hand and the Glock in her right, she stumbled her way to the coordinates. She hoped no one engaged her, because staring at the backlit screen destroyed her night vision. If someone approached she would not be able to see him.

After five minutes of searching — and the phone losing its satellite signal, then regaining it — she stopped at a rock outcropping, where the tunnel’s mouth was supposedly located. You’ve gotta be kidding. It better be here.

She turned on her Samsung’s flashlight and found the entrance behind a large boulder. Then it hit her: she was headed underground into a tunnel. How long it was, how tight it would be, she had no idea.

Claustrophobia or not, she had no choice but to push forward. Safety resided on the other side of the border.

She wrapped her left arm around the tube and looked into the abyss: there was a metal ladder bolted to the wall that led straight down, perhaps thirty feet. Holy shit.

Vail took a deep breath and started descending, one rung at a time. As she neared the bottom, her right foot slipped on the next to last step and she hit the ground hard. A jolt of pain shot through both ankles.

Shake it off. Keep going.

She held up the flashlight. Ahead of her the tunnel stretched as far as she could see, with a bend near the end. Was it the end, or merely a turn?

Standing there and debating it was fruitless. Vail turned off the satphone to conserve the battery — there was no reception down here — and trudged forward, keeping the light in front of her. There was electrical conduit mounted along the left wall and bare bulbs every thirty feet or so. But she did not see a switch.

The spherical tunnel was constructed of formed concrete bunker-style sections and stood about six feet across at its widest point and about six feet tall at its apex. At five foot seven, as long as Vail remained in the center, she would be able to stand straight.

Another hundred yards — and she heard a noise. She stopped, painted the area with her flashlight. Nothing.

She reached for her Glock — but it was gone. Shit. Shit!

Vail spun around and peered into the darkness behind her. Might’ve fallen when I fell off the ladder. Go back? No. Could’ve also dropped it up top. I may never find it. It’d totally suck if I got captured looking for my gun.

As it was, she did not expect to find anyone else down here. And once she reached the end, she would no longer need it.

Vail rested her palm on the handle of her Tanto and continued forward. She kicked something made of glass and it bounced repeatedly ahead of her, ultimately striking the concrete wall.

Her heart, already beating hard, felt like it skipped a beat. Perspiration blanketed her body and she felt clammy. Between the anxiety of claustrophobia and the stress of not knowing what lie ahead in the darkness, she would not be surprised if she had a coronary.

Stop it, Karen. Nothing’s lurking in the darkness and you’re not gonna have a heart attack.

Vail reached the bend but was dismayed to see that it continued on. That, however, was not the problem. The road forked — and the two options led in opposite directions.

She stood there trying to reason it through based on which direction she was headed on the surface and where the satphone image had indicated Israel was located. It was a nearly impossible equation because she did not know which direction she had been walking when she entered the tunnel.

Vail turned left to see if there was any indication as to which way she needed to go. But as she took a step forward someone grabbed her from behind.

77

The man’s forearm was locked across her neck, cutting off the blood flow to her brain. She would lose consciousness in a matter of seconds.

His other arm was around her torso, pinning her limbs to her body. Vail dropped her phone and the tube and tried to raise her arms up — but she could not pry them loose.

As he dragged her backward she dug her heels into the dirt, hoping to throw him off balance. But he maintained his center of gravity.

The darkness was disorienting, the only light coming from her cell lying somewhere on the ground. And even that was fading as he squeezed harder and she started to lose consciousness.

Using her legs, she pushed herself side to side — and drove them both into the concrete wall. His grip loosened, enough for her to get some oxygen, enough to free a hand.

She reached back to grab him — and felt cold metal. A gun! She got her fingers on it and pulled, but he jerked her back and it went flying somewhere into the darkness.

Fuck. She swung her left foot out, hoping to kick the weapon away to prevent him from getting to it. She hit it once but could not tell if it traveled any distance.

He jerked her hard to the right — and she was able to reach down low enough to touch the handle of her Tanto.

But he rocked her back the other way and then yanked her toward him, arching her spine and regaining control over her free hand.

Her head struck the ceiling of the tunnel and her fingers slipped off the knife’s grip.

He shouted something in Arabic and she screamed something in English.

She began rocking on the balls of her feet, bucking left and right — and again his grip weakened enough for her to pull a hand from his grasp. She grabbed the Tanto and jerked it from its sheath, then fought to draw her forearm forward.

He pulled. She pushed.

She yelled long and loud to summon her strength — and then slammed her heel onto the top of his foot.

He recoiled and she drew the blade back hard, toward his body. And stabbed him in the thigh.

He screamed.

Now there’s a language I understand—

She jabbed at his body again and again, blindly using him as a pin cushion. But none of the thrusts were deep enough to do life-threatening damage.

He tugged back on her neck, compressing her larynx, but she kept stabbing, hoping the pain would eventually force him to try to get the knife away from her — which meant he would have to loosen his grip on her throat. And once he did that he would no longer have control.

A few seconds, that’s all she needed.

She continued thrusting and he continued yelping — until Vail got the window she was waiting for. He reached for her arm and grabbed her wrist, but she had already transferred the knife to her other hand.

Vail twisted out of his grip, spun, and started slashing, left, right, left, as if the Tanto were a sword and she were a swashbuckler. She struck something soft, but in the darkness it was hard to know if she did any damage.

She couldn’t blindly thrust because if he got hold of her arm, he could take the knife from her. And then he would surely make her pay for treating him like a cooked Thanksgiving turkey.

Get away from him!

Vail backed down the tunnel, running the palm of her left hand along the wall to give her some bearing.

She stopped suddenly and listened, doing her best to slow her respiration, to keep noise at a minimum. She could no longer see the light from her phone but she could hear the tango breathing loudly.

Let him come for you.

Vail stood there, back flat against the cement. One minute. Two.

She slowly reached into her pocket and rooted out her spare magazine. She tossed it away, about ten feet to her right, hoping to hit the wall. It did — and seconds later he advanced.

Vail waited a beat, then stuck out her leg and he ran right into it, then struck the ground with a thud. She pounced on his back and jabbed the Tanto into his neck, then grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. A final slice across the front of his throat and all movement stopped.

She slid off his body and fell onto her side, her heart thudding, her hands shaking. Hyperventilating.

Vail pushed herself up and stumbled away, slamming her back into the wall and her head into the curved ceiling.

Focus, Karen. Calm down.

She took some deep breaths, slowed her pulse, then licked her lips and pushed forward, back the way she had come, hoping to find the pistol she had dislodged — and the tube Uzi had given her. A couple of minutes later she had both in hand.

She chambered a round and sheathed the Tanto.

Continuing a few paces farther, she came upon the fork in the tunnel — which she recognized only because of the slight breeze she felt coming from the other shaft she had taken from the surface. She felt around — hoping to find something that the tango had — a drawing, a diagram of some sort — that could show her the way out of here, one that would take her into Israel.

Wait, the booklet I found at Sahmoud’s.

She reached back — and it was still there, wedged into her waistband.

If only I could see it.

Then she remembered the satphone. Its screen should throw off enough of a glow to read the map.

She powered it up and held it over the page, traced her tunnel with a finger and determined she needed to take the path where the dead militant lay. She moved forward and found her Samsung and reactivated the flashlight.

As she gave a final sweep of the area, she saw what appeared to be a cot against the wall along the other corridor. She jogged over and took a quick look: the tango had been sleeping down here. Why? To guard what? She moved a bit farther in and saw wood crates stacked along the wall with Arabic writing on them. She pulled one down and used her Tanto to pry off the top. Grenades, assault and sniper rifles were nestled among Styrofoam popcorn bits. She thought of taking one of the rifles with her, but the ammo must have been in a different box.

She headed down the tunnel, stepped past the bloody al Humat militant, and continued on. If the map was to scale, she had another ten minutes of brisk walking to reach the exit.

When she climbed the ladder to the surface, she found a metal covering and a fair amount of brush obscuring its opening. Upon emerging, she dropped to her knees and breathed in the fresh, damp air. While crouched there, at the edge of what looked like farmland, a light drizzle prickled her cheeks.

Seconds later two headlights struck her face. She shielded her eyes and got to her feet. The driver pulled up alongside her and rolled down the window.

“I need some help. Do you speak English?”

“Of course I speak English.” He squinted, leaned closer and said, “You’re bleeding!” He got out of the car and came around to walk her over to the passenger seat.

“I’m fine, it’s not my blood. I got into a fight with an al Humat soldier.”

“Al Humat? Where?”

“In a tunnel. There’s an opening a few feet from where you found me. They’ve got a cache of weapons down there.”

The man pulled out his phone, made a call and jabbered Hebrew at someone on the other end. He hung up, then thanked her for the information.

“During the war, they came out of the tunnels, attacked the kibbutzim — our communities — then disappeared back inside.”

“I heard.”

“I have to ask. What were you doing down there?”

“You don’t have to ask and you don’t really want to know.”

He looked her over, his eyes resting on her blood-soaked shirt. “What can I do for you? To repay the favor.”

“I need a ride to the Israel Museum.”

His brow rose. “In Jerusalem?”

Vail tilted her head.

“Okay, okay. It’ll take us a bit. You need something to eat? Drink?”

“No time. Just get me there as soon as possible.”

He laughed. “You know how Israelis drive?”

“Not a clue.”

“Crazy. Fast. Hang on.” He accelerated hard and Vail was slammed back into the seat.

78

The man was telling the truth. He drove like a demon, zipping around cars and getting Vail to Jerusalem in just over an hour. By the time he pulled into the Israel Museum’s parking lot at 8:00 PM, the rain had stopped.

A few vehicles were still there, likely staff and whoever else they were supposed to meet. A curator? Police? A Mossad officer? Vail realized that in the rush to get out of Sahmoud’s house they had gotten no details as to what was going to transpire when they arrived.

As she neared the entrance, she passed through security barriers and walked by a rectangular reflecting pool. She saw a sign for the museum offices as well as those of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

If they knew what I had in this tube, they’d be out here with a red carpet.

A sign directed her to the gallery entrance, where she was met by two black-suited men with close-cropped hair and earbuds. If she had been in the US, she would have guessed they were Secret Service agents.

“Karen Vail?” one of them asked.

“I’ve been accused of worse.”

He looked her up and down, lingering on the blood stains soaked into her shirt and pants.

The other agent gestured at the tube. “We’ll take that.”

“No, you won’t.”

He looked at her a long moment, his expression stern, as if he were deciding whether to challenge her. He finally said, “Come with me,” and he led her through the admissions area and into the museum, up a long corridor with dark walls and a charcoal granite floor. Dramatic exterior spotlighting illuminated the frosted glass windows to her right.

They passed ancient floor-to-ceiling mosaics, which, according to the posted sign, were from sixth-century Beit She’an ruins.

First the Louvre, then the Israel Museum … someday I’m going to visit all these places with Robby. No guns, no bad guys. No killers. No terrorists with bombs or chemical weapons.

A girl can dream, right?

The agent led her outside, where they crossed a long, narrow cement promenade that stretched into the distance to her left. Ahead was a dark gray freestanding rectangular wall, and to her right a shiny white brick dome with a nipple on the top.

“What’s that?” Vail asked.

The agent slowed, turned, and said, “The roof of the shrine. It’s designed to look like the lid of the clay pots that contained the Dead Sea Scrolls.” He swung back and continued on and Vail hustled up beside him. They entered an area designated “The Shrine of the Book,” then descended a series of stone steps with a glass-sided railing that led into a small plaza.

Several suited men and women were standing there — which Vail immediately pegged as part of Knox’s protection detail.

Her escort stopped at the door and said, “Inside. They’re waiting for you.”

Vail walked into a dark corridor with museum displays on each side. They appeared to deal with the discovery of the scrolls in the Qumran caves, but she did not stop for a look.

She proceeded straight ahead into a dramatic atrium that had a dome-shaped ceiling; she was underneath the white brick structure she had seen outside a minute ago. In the center sat a circular display case five steps up on a raised platform that contained a Dead Sea Scroll that had been unfurled.

On the main level, along the periphery, were wall-mounted exhibits featuring scroll sections and informational placards.

Vail ascended the stairs where two women and several men were standing — two of whom she knew: Gideon Aksel and Douglas Knox. Knox had been pacing. He stopped and looked up when she entered the room.

Vail swallowed deeply and suddenly became aware of the tube she had tucked under her left arm — and its significance.

“Agent Vail,” Knox said. “You have something for us?”

“Yes sir.” She stepped forward and handed it to a woman who reached out and took it from her with extreme care. If you only knew what I just put it through.

“I’m Tamar,” the woman said. “Thank you. For bringing this to us.” She and three of the other men descended to the main level where a temporary table and an assortment of magnifying lenses and tools were located.

Knox came up alongside Vail. “Glad you made it.” He squinted in the dim light. “You’ve got blood spatter all over your clothing.”

“You should see the other guy.”

Knox tilted his head and a smile teased the corners of his mouth, a sign of approval.

“Agent Vail.” Tamar’s voice echoed in the empty room. She was holding her white-gloved hands vertically, like a surgeon in an operating room. “Other than some Arabic papers, this tube is empty.”

“What?” Vail leapt down the steps. She lifted the container and peered inside, then looked at the table. What the hell? Could they have fallen out when I dropped the tube? No. I would’ve seen them.

“Where are the documents?” Askel asked.

“I–I don’t understand.” She brought her gaze up and looked at him. Then at Knox.

“Hector called me two hours ago,” Knox said. “He told me each of you were bringing portions of the codex and scroll.”

Footsteps drew their attention. They looked up in unison to see DeSantos walking in, a portfolio in his hand.

Vail could tell he was reading their faces as Tamar reached over and took the bag from him.

“My tube was empty,” Vail said. “There’s no way I lost the pages. I mean, I guess it’s possible but I can’t see how. I would’ve seen them.”

A moment later, Tamar’s stern voice echoed in the chamber. “This is empty as well.” Even in the understated light, Vail could see that her jaw was firm, her eyes fiery.

What the hell is going on?

DeSantos rooted out his phone, started dialing.

“You’re calling Uzi?”

DeSantos did not answer. He lowered the handset and cursed under his breath.

“Either of you hear from Fahad?” Knox asked.

Vail bit her lip. “Nothing.”

DeSantos indicated likewise.

Seven minutes passed. Knox paced. Vail and DeSantos sat on the bottom steps of the shrine.

Vail was concerned about Uzi. Thinking about the two ancient documents they had been entrusted with. And starting to have doubts about Fahad’s true intentions: were they as DeSantos claimed — nefarious — or beneficent, as Uzi claimed?

DeSantos rose up and began to stretch when Uzi walked in. Vail immediately noticed that he was not carrying anything.

Aksel was the first to question him. “Where’s your—”

“Gone. I was intercepted by al Humat militants and I got away with a GSW to the arm. I lost the tube, but—”

“Our docs are missing,” Vail said. “My tube and Hector’s portfolio are empty.”

“I know.”

DeSantos stepped forward. “What do you mean, ‘I know’?”

“I gave it all to Mo.”

Knox descended the steps and stood face-to-face with Uzi. “You what?”

DeSantos’s face shaded red. “Boychick, are you crazy? We’ve been worried about him since the day he joined our team. He may’ve been the one who almost got you killed.”

“I don’t think so.”

Aksel came up beside Knox and folded his short, thick arms across his chest. “Let me get this straight. You gave two of the most ancient, most holy documents of the Jewish people, to a Palestinian? A CIA operative? After what I told you? And you expected him to bring it here, to turn it over to Israel?”

“Yes.”

DeSantos shook his head and walked out of the chamber, heading for the shrine’s exit.

Knox cleared his throat. “Agent Uziel, you should’ve consulted me on this.”

“No time, sir. Al Humat was approaching Sahmoud’s house. We had to get out right then — or we wouldn’t have made it out alive.”

That’s not entirely true. You had to put everything in Mo’s satchel before we knew they were coming.

“Given the situation, I felt he stood the best chance of getting back here safely, without being challenged and detained. Or killed.”

“The situation?” Knox asked.

“He’s Palestinian, sir. He speaks Arabic, he looks like them, he knows their culture, he’s got friends in Gaza.” Uzi swallowed. “And family.”

Yeah, he’s got family there, all right. A brother named Nazir al Dosari.

“Director Tasset was running a covert counter-op with him,” Knox said, “which I only found out about a little while ago. He was working with the White House to secure the documents for the president. Had we known, Secretary McNamara and I never would’ve put him on this mission.”

Uzi sat down on the step and bowed his head. A long moment passed. “I didn’t know. I really thought we could trust him.”

“Mo only thinks he has parts of the codex and the scroll,” Vail said. “Even if he felt compelled to carry out his mission, it wouldn’t do the president much good.”

“But if he looked inside, he’d know he had everything,” Aksel said. “Brilliant move, Uzi. You’ve managed to fuck things up again.”

Vail expected Knox to say something in his operative’s defense, but the director remained silent — in effect, endorsing Aksel’s comment.

A moment later, the shrine door opened and closed. All heads swiveled in that direction, where DeSantos and Fahad were entering.

“Thank god,” Knox said.

Amen to that.

“Sorry I’m late,” Fahad said. “Stopped by a friend’s to get a ride to the checkpoint. Turns out he’s now with al Humat. Could’ve gone south real quick, but he got the call about Sahmoud and took off.” He stopped and seemed to realize that everyone was staring at him.

“You have something for us?” Knox asked.

He pulled the satchel off his shoulder and handed it to the director, who gave it to Tamar. She regloved and immediately went to work with her team.

They huddled around Tamar’s makeshift laboratory as the curator carefully unzipped the case and splayed it open. She pulled off a few layers of tissue paper and the pages of the Aleppo Codex stared back at them.

Aksel’s lips parted, while Knox pushed his glasses up his nose with a finger and leaned over the table to get a better look.

“Extraordinary,” Tamar said. The other conservationists concurred.

Tamar glanced at Fahad and gave him an appreciative nod, then moved on to the other item, a tubular shaped object similarly wrapped. She gently removed the paper and exposed a well preserved scroll. With gloved hands, she and two of the men carefully peeled back the first several inches.

Everyone leaned in for a glimpse. Tamar remained longer than the others, examining it with a jeweler’s loupe before straightening up. “More tests are needed, but it does, in fact, look like the genuine article.” She turned to the other woman, who was hunched over the codex.

She lifted her magnifying lens and spoke to Tamar. “I have to study this further in the lab, but I believe these are the missing pages of the Aleppo Codex.”

Uzi tapped Vail on her shoulder and gestured to the others to follow. He led them outside to a raised lookout over a one acre scale model of ancient Jerusalem and the Second Temple, shortly before its destruction in 70 CE — the precise time documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Uzi sought out Fahad, who was following a dozen feet behind. “Be right back,” he told Vail.

“A minute?” Uzi asked as he approached Fahad.

“Sure.”

Uzi gave him a shoulder hug. “Thank you, man.”

Fahad canted his head. “Hey, just doing my job.”

“No, not for that. For renewing my faith that your people and my people can get along. After what happened with Batula Hakim and her brother and all that other bad shit with Hamas and al Humat, I’ve had my doubts.”

“Believe me, I’ve had my moments too. I’m not without baggage.”

“So there’s hope.”

Fahad rocked back on his heels. “Well, now that we’ve solved the Israeli-Palestinian issue, maybe we should become diplomats and tackle other world crises.”

They both laughed.

“I’ve gotta go brief my boss,” Fahad said. “Not gonna be an easy conversation. Tasset’s going to be pissed.” He paused, then deadpanned, “You think there are any job openings at the Bureau?”

Uzi chuckled. “You’ll be fine.”

“See you on the plane.” He pulled out his phone and headed for a nearby bench.

Uzi rejoined Vail and DeSantos at the railing overlooking the Second Temple model.

Vail was slipping her phone back in her pocket. “Got an email from my boss. He just put a new file on my desk and wanted to know how soon I can get back to doing some important work — profiling serial killers.”

“What’d you tell him?” Uzi asked.

Vail smiled wanly. “Told him I can’t wait.”

Uzi took a deep breath of damp, cool air. “I hope we’re making headway against those cells back home. Santa — how long till you think we’ll hear something?”

“Spoke to Hot Rod on the way over here. The list of cells we got from Sahmoud’s was spot-on. We’ve got tac teams in eleven cities ready to strike simultaneously — FBI, marshals, local PD. Massive operation.”

“You think we’ll get ’em all?” Vail asked.

DeSantos considered that. “Eleven’s pretty damn good. But no. I don’t think we’ll get them all.” He stared into the darkness for a moment. “We dealt them some major blows. I think we’ll be okay for now. Things will be quiet. A few months, a year, two years. Who knows.”

“What about Connerly?” Uzi asked.

DeSantos shrugged. “NSA intercepted a call between his phone and a number the CIA had been tracking belonging to Hussein Rudenko. Don’t know what was discussed, and we can’t be sure it was Connerly, or Rudenko, on the line, but—”

“There’d be no reason for the president’s chief of staff to have a phone call with an arms dealer and terrorist who’s on the FBI most wanted list.”

“Without having a recording of the conversation,” Vail said, “you can’t prove Rudenko and Connerly were talking.”

“Not a smoking gun,” Uzi said. “But we might be on to something.”

“Or it might mean nothing,” Vail said.

Uzi shook his head. “I don’t believe in coincidences where things like this are concerned. I think Sahmoud was telling us the truth.”

“Good luck with that,” DeSantos said. “We can’t put the president’s chief of staff in a black site room and interrogate him. There’ll be lawyers.”

That’s torture enough.

“It’s now Knox’s problem,” DeSantos said. “And the attorney general’s. When, and if, they find something, justice will be served. If not, Sahmoud is a really bad guy who did really bad things. He was a whole lot worse than Connerly. We take our wins where we can get them.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

Uzi pursed his lips. “I believe it was on a naval carrier on the Atlantic Ocean somewhere off the coast of England.”

They laughed again.

“You know,” Vail said, “if I didn’t know any better, it looked like you and Mo are in a good place.”

Uzi turned to DeSantos. “Yeah, well, hate to say I told you so.”

“But you’re gonna say it anyway.”

“No, no, no,” Vail said with a shake of her head. “I’m not buying that whole ‘I trusted him’ line, Uzi. I know you better than that. You embedded some tracking chip in Mo’s jacket, didn’t you?”

“Nope. I knew we could trust him.”

“Really,” DeSantos said.

“Trust has to start somewhere, Santa, and, really, we were trusting him with far more important things — our lives. I had faith in human nature, in Mo, to do the right thing. He’s a real person. True to himself. To who he is, who his family is. And was.”

Vail looked at him. “Remember what the rabbi said about truth? That there may not be such a thing?”

“I still think there are some truths in life.”

“And I still think you were at risk of being played a fool.”

“I made sure he wasn’t,” DeSantos said.

Uzi tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

“I hedged our bets. Sorry, Boychick. Too much at stake. I took the active tag chip out of my satphone and slipped it into Fahad’s satchel right before we left the house. Need be, we could track it.” DeSantos chuckled. “Of course, I wasn’t anticipating cloud cover.”

Uzi leaned back against the railing. “So you’re saying that you didn’t trust my judgment.”

DeSantos considered that. “Faith is powerful, but at the end of the day, we’re just people. And people approach things with their own biases.”

Vail grunted. “Kind of like what the rabbi said about truth. We see things through our own lens. We think what we’re doing is right.”

“But others may not see it that way — and they may be wrong. So I needed an insurance policy that these historic treasures were not only placed in their rightful place but that they were not used as blackmail in peace negotiations. Those were our orders.”

“If Mo figured out that you’d given him everything,” Vail said, “and if he wanted to turn it all over to the Agency, and if he knew about the chip, he could’ve ditched your tech and disappeared.”

DeSantos nodded slowly. “Then I guess in the end, it all came down to trust. And some luck.”

Knox came up behind them as DeSantos’s phone rang. He excused himself, pulled out his cell, and took a few steps away.

Knox placed a hand on Uzi’s shoulder. “Thank you both for a job well done.”

“What will come of the scroll?” Vail asked.

Knox looked out over the brightly lit model of ancient Jerusalem. “They’re going to store it in the museum vault and keep it quiet. Their goal was always to bring it home. Disclosure of its contents was never part of the plan.”

“Do you believe it’s possible to keep it under wraps?” Vail asked.

“I know Prime Minister Wolff,” Knox said. “Making it public, causing harm, that’s not what he’s about. The director general told me it wasn’t their place to release any ancient text that would denigrate, in any way, Christianity’s belief structure. No one would benefit from that. Looking at it pragmatically, it’d drive a wedge between Judaism and the Catholic Church, requiring decades, if not centuries, to heal. I’m sure the prime minister doesn’t want that to happen. Neither does the Vatican. There’s a lot going on here.”

“That means we’re sworn to secrecy as well.”

“That goes for the entire mission, Agent Vail.” Knox leaned both hands on the railing. “The president has been pushing construction of a new airport in the West Bank and a shipping port in Gaza. I’m told he’s been riding the Israelis really hard. They’ve said that without a properly negotiated settlement and monitoring forces in place, and without the dismantling of Hamas, al Humat, Islamic Jihad, and Islamic State, the airport and shipping port would be significant threats to Israel’s survival. Friends of mine in the military and intelligence community agree. That’s what was at stake. That’s why we did what we did. That’s why we defied the White House.”

They absorbed that for a moment.

“Why do you think we had to defy the president in the first place?” Vail asked.

Knox stared off into the distance. His jaw tightened. “Our work is done here. Thank you both again for a job well done.”

As he walked off, Uzi gestured at the blood spatter on her clothes. “Tough time?”

Vail pulled the Tanto from its sheath. “Your gift saved my life tonight.”

“You know,” he said, “that knife is taking on legendary proportions: first it saved my life. And now yours. It’s got its own built-in mojo.”

“Should we do a Game of Thrones thing?”

Uzi tilted his head. “A what?”

“Game of Thrones. The TV show. HBO.”

Uzi shrugged. “Don’t watch much TV.”

“Robby and Jonathan got me into it. A medieval soap opera. The knights name their swords. What do you say we name this knife, ‘Tango slayer’?”

Uzi chuckled. “Hey, it’s yours now. Name it whatever you like.”

“I’ll have to think on it.”

After a moment, he said, “How about Tzedek?”

“Tzedek?”

“It’s a Hebrew word. For justice.”

Vail looked at the blade, spit on it, and wiped the dried blood from its surface with her blouse. “Tzedek. Justice. I like it.” She angled it forward, catching the glow of a nearby spotlight against its black matte finish. “You familiar with the Bible?”

He cocked his head to the left. “I think I’ve heard of it.”

“There’s a verse … ‘Never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God.’”

Uzi shrugged. “I think a little revenge is okay sometimes. As long as it’s done with well reasoned moral intentions. To right a wrong. A tooth for a tooth.”

I’ve definitely had those feelings. “One of the psalms says, ‘Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.’”

Uzi leaned back. “I never took you for a religious person. I learn something new about you every day, Karen. You’re a very complex individual, you know that?”

“Complex? Yeah. Religious? Not so much. The psalm is just something my mother used to tell me when I was a kid. I wrote it on an index card and had it above my computer screen in my office. I thought it expressed what I do as a federal agent. We maintain justice, always striving to do what’s right.”

Uzi examined her face a moment. “You said you had it over your desk. Past tense.”

Vail turned away. “After Robby disappeared … I—” She shook her head. “I did what I had to do. But I didn’t do what was right, I didn’t maintain justice. I stepped over the line.”

“Sometimes things aren’t black and white.” The voice came from a few feet behind them: DeSantos. “You did what was right for the one you loved. It didn’t meet the standards of the laws we strive to uphold. But if you — if we—hadn’t done what we did, a lot of people would’ve died. Good people. People who’ve done a lot of good things for a lot of other people since then.”

Vail played with some loose dirt by her left shoe. “You talking about back then, or this op? I did things tonight that—”

“Your moral compass is what matters, Karen. What’s in your heart. You always mean well. You always try to do the right thing. Sometimes it takes a while to know what the right thing is — or was.”

Vail smiled inwardly. DeSantos’s comment was similar to something she had once told Robby. She looked out over the model of Jerusalem and tried to picture herself back thousands of years, standing where she was at this very moment … learning from the wise rabbis who roamed the streets, doling out wisdom and creating law for a population who was only beginning to learn how to conduct themselves, how to live for the benefit of the community. How to put their trust in a higher being. How to believe.

It was the birth of a religion that would spawn other religions, changing the world in ways no one could have ever predicted. Good, bad, indifferent — organized religion had its positives and negatives. But its effect on civilization was palpable.

Vail was not sure if she believed in God or some other entity that governed the souls on earth. In many cases she thought she did not — she had looked into the minds of countless killers and seen evil. No God would dare create that. Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Bundy, Chikatilo, Gacy, Dahmer. Yet these scourges of humanity existed. She was sure religious sages had an explanation, but at the moment it was unimportant.

Vail turned back to the Israel Museum’s dome, where the Dead Sea Scrolls — and now the complete Aleppo Codex — were housed. She felt a sense of satisfaction that she had played a role in helping bring these ancient artifacts, these transformative documents — to their rightful resting place, back where they began millennia ago.

“You okay?” DeSantos asked.

“Huh?” Vail turned. “Yeah, fine. Just thinking. Waxing philosophical.”

“I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Vail had to laugh. “I learn something new about myself every day.”