Angels of Wrath

1

“Coming at you, Ferg.”

Ferguson made a show of looking at his watch as their subject, a well-dressed man in his early forties walked out of the small café on Ben Yedhuda Street, heading southward in the direction of Nakhalat Shiva. Ferguson began walking before the man quite caught up with him, letting him catch up and then pass him. Their subject continued past a row of restored nineteenth century residential buildings before crossing the street and going inside a jewelry store.

“All right, I give up,” said Ferguson into the microphone at the sleeve of his shirt. “What the hell is he doing?”

“Got me,” said Menacham Stein, the Mossad agent who’d trailed the man out of the café. “He’s your guy; you tell me.”

Ferguson heard Stephen Rankin snicker in the background. He pulled out his tourist guide, leafing through it as if lost. Inside the store, their subject went to one of the side counters and bent over a display: completely innocuous, but then everything he’d done since arriving seemed completely innocuous.

“Hey, Skippy, you in the market for a watch?” said Ferguson, speaking to Rankin.

“Screw yourself, Ferg,” said Rankin. He’d been called Skip since he was a kid, but absolutely hated being called Skippy. The fact that Ferguson found this amusing irked him even more.

“Make it an expensive one,” added Ferg.

Rankin pushed out of the side street where he’d been waiting. Ferguson took a step back on the sidewalk as Rankin approached, watching their subject inside. As far as Ferg could see, he hadn’t spoken to the proprietor yet.

Though two inches shorter than Ferguson at five-eleven, Rankin weighed close to forty pounds more. Bulky at the shoulders and with a face that looked as if it belonged to a middle linebacker, he appeared naturally menacing; the owner drew back apprehensively as he entered the shop.

“So, Menacham, this jewelry store a cover for something?” Ferguson asked as he played up his lost tourist act, fumbling with a map and moving to the side of the street.

“Few jewelers are known for their radical beliefs,” replied the Mossad agent. “Maybe he’s looking for a good deal on a ring.”

Ferguson examined his map. He and two other members of the First Team had trailed Benjamin Thatch to Jerusalem the day before as part of an operation to break up an American group that called itself Seven Angels. The title was a reference to a passage in The Revelation of Saint John the Divine in the Bible concerning the Apocalypse. Based loosely around a church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the group was dedicated to facilitating the Apocalypse’s early arrival and had apparently amassed more than a million dollars to do so. The FBI, which had initiated the case, believed the money would he handed over to radical terrorist groups willing to cause mayhem in the Holy Land.

Some of the briefing papers on the group erroneously identified them as “fanatical Christians.” In fact, the members viewed Christianity, as well as Judaism and Islam, as having run its course. Only a few of the group’s active members had even been born Christian; the rest came from Jewish, Buddhist, and agnostic backgrounds. They interpreted various scriptures, especially John the Divine’s Revelation, to predict a new two-thousand-year millennium of peace… built on incredible bloodshed, of course.

Among the many various groups of crazies the FBI kept tabs on, the church had caught their attention not because they looked toward the destruction of holy sites in the Middle East but because an eccentric millionaire had apparently bequeathed them money to encourage it. Failing to penetrate the church’s membership, the Bureau had put several of its leaders under surveillance over the past few months. The church’s leader had recently declared that the time for the new age to dawn was rapidly approaching. With the exception of some minor currency and tax violations, the Bureau lacked evidence that the group had committed any actual crimes. Then one of the members had made plane reservations to Israel using an assumed name. The man was Benjamin Thatch.

The CIA and the Office of Special Demands had been brought in to help only a week before. In Ferguson’s opinion, it was one of the only things the Bureau had done right. They didn’t know who Thatch was meeting or exactly where he was going; they didn’t even know that much about him, except that he was an accountant.

As the agent in charge of the First Team, Ferguson had high standards. Officially known as the Joint Services Special Demands Project Office, the First Team was a CIA-Special Forces unit that could call on a wide range of resources, including a combined Ranger/Special Forces task group that had its own specially modified MC–I30s. The Team had been created to address unconventional threats in an unconventional way, without interference from the bureaucracy of either the intelligence or military establishments. The arrangement made Ferguson and the men and women who worked with him essentially free agents, and Ferg was a free agent par excellence.

The Mossad had been called in on the Seven Angels project not only because they had a handle on all the radicals in the region but also because it was nearly impossible to run an operation in the Middle East without their knowledge and at least tacit approval. As usual, Ferguson found the Mossad operatives assigned to assist incredibly efficient and utterly dedicated. They were also, he knew, potentially ruthless and ultimately loyal to Israel, not the United States.

“Coming out,” said Rankin.

Ferg pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket.

“What was he doing?” asked Stein.

“Don’t know. Didn’t talk to anyone that I saw.”

Ferguson bent down, pretending to admire the display in the store he’d stopped in front of. He watched Thatch’s reflection as he passed, counted to three, then started to follow.

“Where we heading?” Ferguson asked Stein.

“Not a clue,” said the Israeli. His accent had a decidedly Brooklyn flavor to it, a legacy of several years as a case officer in New York City. “You’re moving parallel to the Old City, which would be his most likely destination if he were a tourist.”

“Maybe he’s lost,” said Ferg. “It’s his first time overseas, let alone here. I was just about born here, and I’m confused.”

Ferguson slowed his pace to let Thatch get farther ahead as he crossed the street. He followed at about ten yards as the subject continued to the next intersection and then turned right. A block later, the distance had widened to fifteen yards. Ferguson decided to close it up as Thatch turned right down a side street; he trotted forward, then stopped abruptly at the intersection, momentarily unsure where Thatch was. Cursing silently he started to trot again, then stopped as Thatch appeared in the crowd a few paces ahead. Ferguson followed as the traffic cleared. Thatch waited a moment at the curb for the traffic and crossed, all alone on the block. Ferguson crossed behind him.

A short, frumpy-looking woman wearing a raincoat turned the corner and walked in Thatch’s direction.

Someone at the other end of the block shouted. As Ferguson turned to see why, the woman exploded.

2

Ferguson woke up in the ambulance, the siren piercing the sides of his skull.

“I’m OK,” he groaned, trying to get up. The attendants had belted him in, and he didn’t get very far.

“Just take it easy,” said Stein.

Ferguson didn’t recognize the voice at first. He tried again to get up. “There some sort of force field holding me down or what?”

“You’re strapped in,” said Stein.

“Don’t want me leaving without paying the bill, huh?”

Stein leaned over Ferguson. “You’re going to be all right. You have a concussion and some cuts.”

“Yeah, and my leg’s missing right?”

“Your sense of humor’s intact.”

“Already on the road to recovery.” Ferguson worked his arms out from under the restraints and undid the belt.

“You think you should do that?” asked Stein as he sat up.

“Probably not.” His head pounded like a jackhammer. “Where’s Thatch?”

“Gone,” said Stein.

“Convenient.”

Stein didn’t say anything.

“Who was the woman?” Ferguson asked.

“We’re working on it. She tried to get on a bus at the corner around the block, but someone saw that she had a raincoat and the sun was out.”

So probably, thought Ferguson through the pounding, it was just incredibly bad luck for Thatch. And for them. Maybe the FBI wasn’t incompetent; maybe the case was just cursed.

Ferguson brought his legs down to the floor. “All right, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Check out his hotel room.”

“I’ll call your people. You’re going to the hospital.”

Rankin watched from the end of the block as the Israelis continued to work. Barely an hour had passed since the suicide bomber had blown herself up, and already the cleanup had begun. A truck with two large panes of glass pulled up nearby; after a brief conversation with the driver, the police waved it through the barricade. The area would soon be reopened to traffic, and within a few hours it would be difficult to tell that anything had happened here. This was all part of the Israeli coping mechanism: you dealt with the horror brusquely and moved on quickly.

Besides Thatch and herself, the woman had killed two elderly men walking behind her. About a dozen people had been injured, including Ferguson. As the police continued to interview potential eyewitnesses, Rankin took another walk around the block, trying to decide whether someone could have been acting with the suicide bomber as a lookout. The answer was yes, but even Rankin thought it was unlikely that Thatch had been assassinated in some sort of elaborate plot.

Manson, the FBI agent who’d been in the control van, walked up to Rankin when he returned. He was the ranking FBI agent on the detail to Jerusalem, though the surveillance operation was under Ferguson’s direct command. “What do you think?” asked Manson.

Rankin shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Crappy luck.”

“Yeah.”

“Ferguson called from the hospital. He wants us to check out the hotel room. Our forensics people are on the way.”

“Yeah. OK, let’s do it,” said Rankin. “I’ll call Guns.”

Guns was Marine Gunnery Sergeant Jack “Guns” Young, another First Team member, who had been tasked to stay at Thatch’s hotel and see if anyone went into his room.

“You want to stop at the hospital, check on Ferguson?” asked Manson.

“Why?”

Surprised by the sharp, almost bitter tone of Rankin’s answer, Manson said nothing.

Rankin’s sat phone rang as they drove over. He took it out of his pocket and slowly swung up the antenna. “Rankin.”

“What’s going on?” asked Jack Corrigan. Corrigan worked back in the States, supporting the First Team from a specially equipped communications bunker known as the Cube. It was located outside of Washington in a Virginia industrial park. The Cube sat below an innocuous-looking building owned by the CIA, officially known as CIA Building 24-442.

“Same as ten minutes ago.”

“Thirty,” said Corrigan.

“Whatever.”

“How’s Ferguson?”

“Doc said he’d live. He’s already giving orders.”

“The Israelis know not to release his name, right?”

“It’s their show,” Rankin told Corrigan.

“What’s that mean, Sergeant?”

Before coming to work for First Team and the CIA, Corrigan had been an officer in special operations, in PsyOp. As far as Rankin was concerned, PsyOp wasn’t real fighting; it was trick fighting, lighting, bullshitting. Sissy crap, even if you did get away with it. And of course, Corrigan had been an officer, which meant he didn’t do any real work anyway.

“Corrine Alston wants to talk to you,” said Corrigan when Rankin didn’t answer. “She’s worried about Ferg.”

“She doesn’t have to worry,” said Rankin. But he waited for her to come on the line.

“Stephen, what’s going on?”

“Looks like some Palestinian whack job blew herself and our subject up. I don’t think he was a specific target.”

“How’s Ferg?”

“OK.”

“Corrigan said he was in the hospital.”

“He’s all right. They’re checking him out.”

“The embassy will send someone to the morgue to handle Thatch,” said Corrine. “Can you get over there with them to see if someone else turns up?”

“Not a problem,” Rankin said. She was right; he should have thought of that himself. “I’ll get back to you.”

Ferguson held his hand up as the nurse approached with the needle. “I don’t need it, thanks.”

“It’s just a painkiller.”

“Doesn’t look like Scotch.” He smiled at her, and, keeping his hand out to ward her off, pushed off the gurney. “You’re frowning at me,” he said, reaching for the curtains. “Don’t do that.”

“Of course I’m frowning. You need treatment.”

“I’ve had worse hangovers,” said Ferguson. He glanced toward the wall and saw that it was past two o’clock. “Can I have a glass of water? I have to take a pill.”

Ferguson reached into his pocket for a small metal case he used to carry his medicine — he took two different types of thyroid hormone replacement drugs every day — and pulled out a small pill.

“Should I ask you what that is?” said the nurse when she returned with a cup.

“I misplaced my thyroid one day,” he told her. “Left it with my car keys and couldn’t find either. The car was easier to replace.”

Stein had just finished talking to some of the other victims who’d been taken here when Ferguson found him.

“Get anything?” Ferguson asked.

“No. Looks pretty random. Fanatics.” He shook his head. “They kill their women and children. Life means nothing.”

Ferguson had locked eyes with the woman perhaps a half-second before the bomb ignited, maybe at the moment that she had pushed the trigger. He saw them now, blank, questioning — doubt, he thought, not faith.

Am I going to paradise?

Will the bomb go off?

Or maybe he saw none of that. Maybe that was his concussion reinterpreting what had happened. Because, damn, his head hurt.

“Let’s go over to the hotel,” he told Stein.

Guns watched as the FBI people worked the room Thatch had left early this morning, and it had been cleaned; still, the three men moved through, meticulously lifting prints from the surfaces and using chemical sniffers to check for traces of explosives and other items. Thatch’s suitcase sat on a folding stand near the bed. It contained two pairs of pants, two shirts, three pairs of underwear, one change of socks.

Not enough socks, in Guns’s opinion. As a Marine, he’d learned in boot camp to think of his feet before anything else.

“Find it yet?” asked Ferguson, walking into the room. Stein trailed behind him.

“What the hell are you doing here, Ferg?” said Guns. “You’re supposed to be checked out.”

“The nurses weren’t pretty enough to stay.”

“Are you all right?” said Manson. The FBI supervisor sounded like a concerned parent.

“I’ve been better.” Ferguson sat in the chair opposite the bed, slowly scanning the room. “No money in the mattress? No microdots?”

“What’s a microdot?” said Manson.

“You don’t know what a microdot is?”

The FBI agent shook his head.

“Rent some old James Bond movies sometime,” Ferguson said. “See how it’s supposed to be done.”

“This might be something,” said one of the forensics people. He brought over a piece of paper containing an image lifted from a pad of hotel paper. By placing the pad in a device similar to a flatbed scanner, they had found an impression left from writing on an upper sheet. The expert gave it to Manson, who passed it to Ferg. It had an address on it.

“So, he was supposed to go to Cairo?” Ferg handed the paper to Stein.

“Cairo wasn’t mentioned in the wiretap.”

“Maybe he didn’t have to.”

“You sure that’s a Cairo address?”

“Yeah.” Ferguson had spent several years off and on in Egypt when his father was based there with the CIA.

“That’s not necessarily his handwriting,” said the FBI expert.

Stein stared at the address. “It’s near the Old City, the Islamic quarter.”

“Isn’t every quarter in Cairo Islamic?” asked Ferguson.

The Mossad agent smiled wryly, handing back the paper.

3

As Thera Majed got out of the car in front of the suburban Chicago home, she noticed the basketball hoop and backboard over the garage. It reminded her of the hoop on her parents’ home in Houston, and she thought of what her parents would feel if someone were coming to tell them she’d been blown up by a fanatic in Jerusalem.

The situation here wasn’t precisely parallel. The driveway Thera was walking up belonged to Benjamin Thatch’s sister, Judy Coldwell. And Thatch might justifiably be called a fanatic himself.

Thera straightened her skirt, letting the State Department official and the Cook County sheriff’s deputy take the lead. The men thought she was with the FBI, a mistake she had encouraged. In actual fact, Thera was a CIA First Team operative working with the FBI on the Seven Angels case. She’d come up from New Mexico primarily because she was the one member of the task force easily spared. The others, all FBI agents, were trailing church members and preparing search warrants to shut down the group. While the Chicago-area FBI agent with her knew she wasn’t with the Bureau, he’d been briefed on the sensitivity of the operation and let the misconception stand as well.

Judy Coldwell opened the door as they reached the stoop. “I know why you’re here,” she announced. “Come in.”

Coldwell led them inside to a dining room off the living room. Even if Thera hadn’t known from the backgrounder that Coldwell and her husband didn’t have any children, she could have read it in the house’s pristine order and the ceramic vases that sat on low tables near the side of the room. Coldwell, thirty-six, looked maybe ten years younger. Unlike her older brother, who’d been overweight, she was extremely thin; her five-eight frame might have been suited for modeling had her face been prettier. It had a harshness to it, a bleached asceticism maybe. Thera thought it might come from dieting fanatically, though it could just as easily have been a symptom of suppressed grief.

“My brother and I really weren’t that close,” said the woman, looking at Thera. “I didn’t even know he was overseas. Not until you called.”

“That would have been Mary Burns,” said the State Department rep. He took charge, telling Coldwell what she already knew: her brother had been killed by a suicide bomber; the Israelis would release the body in a few days, and he would be flown home at their expense.

Coldwell nodded once or twice. Her face remained almost entirely blank, cheeks pinched ever so slightly, as if she smelled a faint odor of vinegar. Only when the sheriff’s deputy told her that police protection would be provided if she wanted did she speak.

“I don’t believe that would be necessary. Do you?”

“Probably not,” agreed the deputy.

Thera watched Coldwell. She was an accountant with a small local practice. Thera thought it a cliché that accountants were more comfortable with numbers than people, but Coldwell seemed to be living proof of it.

Distant rather than uncomfortable, Thera thought. People reacted in different ways to grief; it was difficult to judge them from the exterior.

“I wonder, Mrs. Coldwell,” said Thera when the last of the mundane but necessary details of the death and its aftermath had been squared away, “if you’d be willing to help us with an aspect of the situation that may seem a little unusual.”

Coldwell blinked at her. “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Thera Majed. I’m with a task force. The FBI, as you could imagine, is interested in examining the circumstances as they occurred in Jerusalem.” Thera made her answer seem improvised and almost haphazard, though it was anything but.

“The FBI is investigating?” asked Coldwell.

“Our interest is routine. It wouldn’t be an official investigation, unless the Israelis made a request.”

“Did they?”

“They’ve asked for some help on our part.” Even if they were necessary, Thera disliked having to use weasel words. She wasn’t lying exactly, but she was leaving a lot out. “Primarily, in a case like this, the agencies have to make sure that what seems to have happened, did happen.”

“Can there be any doubt?”

“It’s not really my job to say that.” She smiled, as if agreeing with Coldwell that, of course, there could be no doubt at all. “In cooperating with the Israeli government, we would like a few more days before this became public.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“The government of Israel is withholding public confirmation of your brother’s identity for forty-eight hours,” said Thera. “Just so that everything can be checked out. Our government is prepared to acquiesce.”

“Why?”

“As I said, a few days to look into this quietly would be most useful.”

“Are you saying my brother wasn’t a random victim?”

“I’m not saying that, no. It looks as if he was, but there are questions. The Israelis would like to be sure, and so would we.” The Israelis were withholding Thatch’s name, though at the FBI and CIA’s request.

“Was my brother doing something illegal?”

“Do you think he was?” asked Thera.

“I don’t. But it sounds to me as if you do.”

Thera had reached the point in her script where she had to make a judgment call: what exactly to tell the sister. She could just shrug and pass this off as routine. Or she could gamble that Coldwell might know something that might be useful to the FBI.

Which way to go?

“Have you ever heard of the Church of Seven Angels?” asked Thera.

“What is it? A church? A born-again church?”

“It is a church, but it’s not Christian,” said Thera, studying the emotionless face across from her. “They’re not Christian at all. They consider themselves… apart.”

Thera struggled for the right word. The church members believed that they were part of a “post-Christian vanguard” in the same position to Christians as Christians were to Jews.

“Your brother flew several times a year to New Mexico to attend services,” said Thera. “It seems that he may have gone to Jerusalem on their behalf.”

“On some sort of tour?”

“No. Business.”

“For a church? Were they his clients?”

Thera sidestepped the question. “You wouldn’t happen to know why he decided to go to Jerusalem, would you?”

“No.”

“Did he talk about going?”

“We really haven’t been that close.”

“Did Benjamin know anyone in Jerusalem? Or Cairo?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Maybe from the Rotary Club. He’s an accountant.”

“Like yourself?” said Thera.

Coldwell smiled ever so slightly. “Maybe it’s in the genes.”

Outside, Thera walked past the local FBI agent’s Crown Victoria and pulled out her satellite phone to talk to Corrigan.

“I think we’re good,” she told him. “She’s not going to talk to the media.”

“You sure?”

“I didn’t ask her to sign a contract, Jack. It’s a gut call. The FBI tapped her phone; they’ll let us know if something is up.”

“Tapped the phone? Is that necessary?”

“Not my call, Jack. This is the FBI’s case. They want to make the arrests as soon as they can.”

“What are you doing now?” Corrigan asked.

“I’ll go back to New Mexico. I might as well be there for the arrests.”

“I thought they didn’t have much of a case.”

“They don’t. But that’s never stopped the FBI before.”

When the intruders were gone, Judy Coldwell went back to the dining room and cleaned off the table. She took the cups and saucers inside to the kitchen, placing them carefully in the dishwasher. She did the same with the silverware. She measured the detergent carefully as she always did, using a spoon. As the prewash cycle began, she went to the dining room and removed the cloth from the table, taking them down the hall to the laundry room. Life required a certain meticulous order; tasks great and small were best performed immediately.

Only when that was done did she open the drawer to retrieve the tiny medal lion, the lone token of her brother she possessed in the world. It looked like a twelve-sided dime nestled amid the silver corn cob holders. Coldwell took it out and pressed it into the palm of her hand, hard enough to make an impression, hard enough to sear her soul.

Benjamin’s death hadn’t seemed real until the intruders arrived. But now it was very real.

The intruders had tripped over themselves trying to describe the church. They were so wedded to the old age, the ways that had dominated for the past two thousand years that the coming age was beyond their vocabulary. Calling the Seven Angels Christian was like calling Christians Jews. Yes, there were intersections, but the Seven Angels were no closer to Christians — or Jews or Muslims — than they were to Buddhists. They recognized the old age had ended and were dedicated to the new.

The words of the Christian Bible did predict the changes to come, for in the old there are always the seeds of the new. But the Christians in their blindness did not know how to interpret the words they themselves held dear.

The Book of the Apocalypse mentioned seven vials: seven wars. These would begin in the Holy Land, where the other ages had begun. Before the wars had run their course, all of the old holy places — Jerusalem, Nazareth, Mecca, Medina — would be destroyed just as Jerusalem had been torn asunder to signal the birth of Christianity. All that was required was a spark.

Benjamin was to have provided that spark. But the old resisted the new, dinging selfishly to its ways.

Coldwell knew that the intruders were lying about her brother’s death being an accident. They might blame a suicide bomber, but surely that was part of a plot to obscure what had happened. The Jews controlled Jerusalem, and it was only natural for them to blame the Muslims. One did not like to jump to conclusions without evidence, but surely some sort of deliberate act had taken her brother’s life.

Coldwell despised mendacity, but it strengthened her in a way and even provided some comfort. These people were her enemy. They were powerful, but they were not so strong as they pretended. Nor as knowledgeable. They seemed to have no idea that she, too, was a member of the church. But then that was by design. Judy Coldwell had done much for the church soon after the angels visited the Reverend Tallis and instructed him to start the movement. Her job as an overseas accountant with an energy firm and then an exporter had been based in the Middle East, and her contacts helped lay the groundwork for Seven Angels’ early missions. These were primitive and paltry, greatly limited by the group’s lack of funds.

That changed when Kevin Durkest became interested in the group. A real estate developer in the Washington, D.C., area, he had been convinced to sell off some of his minimalls and leave the money in various accounts for the group’s use. Coldwell did not know all of the details. There were rumors that some of these transactions had occurred after the reclusive Durkest had died, and scandalous talk that Durkest’s demise had not been the accident the coroner claimed. But death was of little significance to those who believed, as they would be reborn as high priests in the new age, and so these details were not important to Judy Coldwell. And, in any event, by the time he died, she was no longer close to Tallis and the others, nor did she play a visible role in the church.

Which was not to say that she was no longer a member. Soon after Durkest became involved, the Reverend Tallis had asked her to break her active association with the group and become, in his words, “a sleeper.” Such an agent, he predicted, might become necessary in the future as the new age dawned. The old religions might fight back, just as the Jews and Romans had persecuted the followers of Christ.

At first, Coldwell was skeptical. Tallis had never been comfortable with strong women, and she wondered if this was just a ploy to strip her of influence. But her brother convinced her that what Tallis said was true, and after contemplation she agreed that the old religions would surely try to stop the new. And so she stopped associating with the group. She quit her job and took what amounted to an entirely new identity, working for herself in middle America until she was needed. All record of her involvement in the church had been wiped out. She even went as far as to stop communicating directly with her brother, a great sacrifice, as they had been extremely close as children and adults, certainly much closer in her case than her spouse, a boob who fortunately spent much of his time away from home on business. But the sacrifice was of temporal time only; the Reverend Tallis promised that they would be reunited in the new age, and Coldwell knew this to be true.

It would arrive soon, perhaps within the year. The stage was already set for the first war; it would take only a small spark.

Coldwell took the medal with her to the bedroom, where she retrieved a thin silver chain from the bottom of her jewelry box. Slipping the chain through the small hole at the top of the medallion, she placed the medal around her neck, under her shirt. Tears began to slip down her cheek, grief for her brother.

She had a sudden impulse to fly to the Middle East to fulfill Benjamin’s mission. But she couldn’t, or rather she shouldn’t, not without hearing from Tallis. And in any event she didn’t know what Benjamin would have been asked to do. She could guess: money or weapons were to be provided to groups eager to make a catastrophic attack on a holy site, be it Jewish, Christian, or Islamic. There were many such groups, ready fools fired by wrath they did not understand.

Wrath was the hallmark of the old age; hatred was its sign: hatred toward other religions, subjugation of other races. In the new age, all would be different.

4

Ferguson walked along the long street that paralleled the Cairo meat market, slipping through the knots of tourists and locals. A variety of sharp odors filled the air: cooking spices mixing with diesel fuel and dung. He took a left, then a quick right, turning suddenly to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

Ferg’s father was a career CIA man, an officer with a long and varied history. By the time Ferguson had come along, most of his real adventures were over and his service in the Middle East was fairly routine. Still, there had been some harrowing times: the alley where he’d been shot in the head was a few blocks away.

He’d been shot, hit, wounded, but lived to tell about it. That was the point of his dad’s story, one of the few he told. Anyone could get themselves shot in the head. Living to talk about it was the trick.

Ferguson crossed the street and kept walking, catching a glimpse of Al-Azhar, the grand mosque and university, before following a zigzag to the address on Radwan.

The address belonged to a kahwa, or coffee shop, a gathering place that didn’t figure prominently in any of the Mossad dossiers about Cairo activity. Though the CIA regularly cooperated with Egyptian intelligence, Ferguson — with approval from CIA Deputy Director, Daniel Slott — had decided not to contact them in this case. The Egyptians were not necessarily the most tight-lipped group in the world and tended to get especially antsy if they thought the Mossad was involved.

For its part, the Mossad had agreed to provide only “distant support”: fake IDs and some equipment. Which was fine with Ferguson; it was safer to keep them at arm’s length here. He’d drawn on two CIA officers in Cairo for additional support, one of whom could liaise with the Egyptians if necessary.

Ferguson walked past the building, glancing down the alleyway next to it. The area was popular with tourists; an American such as Ferguson — or Thatch, whose ID Ferg had doctored and was carrying — fit right in. He stopped at a small stand where a man was selling scarves. His Arabic was a little rusty, but the Egyptian inflections he’d heard as a kid came back as he pulled out a long “laa,” or “no,” to an offer, falling into a rhythm as he negotiated. The seller finally broke the back and forth to launch into a long harangue about the quality of the material, unsurpassed in Egypt and certainly worthy of an American who had shown himself educated enough to speak the language like a native. Ferguson bowed his head gratefully, listening to the lecture without interruption so he could surreptitiously glance around and see if he was being watched.

If so, it wasn’t obvious. Ferguson held up three fingers for a price, got another frown, and started to walk away. This resulted in a quick agreement; the merchant solemnized the deal with a tirade of praise for the tourist’s negotiating skills, to which Ferguson responded by praising the great artistry of the man’s wares. The vendor wished him a thousand lifetimes of pleasure and handed over his purchase.

Ferguson continued ambling around the bazaar. He spotted Rankin and one of the CIA station people buying some food from a man with a small charcoal burner and decided to walk over. He heard their accents, or so it seemed, and introduced himself as a fellow tourist, new in the city, just a tourist, happy to say hello, his name was Benjamin Thatch, and if they were ever in New Mexico and needed an accountant, they should look him up.

Now that he had announced his name for the benefit of any nearby lookouts, Ferguson went into the café. Tourists mixed with locals in the main room. Though it was early in the afternoon, the place was crowded, and Ferguson had to wait for a table, which suited his purpose perfectly. He pulled out a hundred-dollar traveler’s check and his passport, asking if it was possible to get the check changed. The cashier obliged, and he managed to say “Thatch” loudly enough that the waiter at the end of the counter waiting for a coffee looked up. Ferguson looked at the money he lost on the exchange rate as an investment.

Shown to a postage stamp of a table at the side of the room, Ferguson ordered kahwamazboot, a Turkish coffee with medium sugar. The idea of “medium” was relative; the brew tasted as if it had been made from jelly beans. Ferg leaned back in the chair, watching as a quartet of British tourists shared a hookah pipe, clearly not sure what to make of the experience. An Egyptian soap opera played on the television above the barlike counter; more than half of the patrons were watching it, though they were all male.

The lone exception — an Egyptian woman in western dress — approached Ferguson and asked if he was a tourist.

“Yup. Seeing the sights,” he told her.

“Many sights here.”

“Beautiful ones. Name’s Ben, Benjamin Thatch.” He shook her hand, the sort of faux pas an American tourist would be likely to make. She smiled at him but then turned and walked to another table.

Ferg concentrated on his coffee, sipping slowly. He had a second but declined a third, not sure his teeth would survive another infusion of sugar. He got up slowly and made his way out, walking lazily back to the street. He got to the end of the block before he was sure he was being followed.

Guns pulled the earphones down, figuring that the wireless bugging system they’d planted inside the café was no longer of much use. He pulled his shirt collar up, repositioning the small microphone that was clipped to the inside of his front collar.

“Two guys following him,” he told Rankin and the others.

“Yeah,” said Rankin, watching a video feed on a small handheld device about the size of a PDA. “With our luck they’ll turn out to be pickpockets.”

Ferguson was supposed to walk back in the general direction of the hotel after making contact, and they had set up their plans accordingly. Guns feigned interest in a stand selling cloth wallets as he waited for Ferg and the others to pass. The two CIA people they’d borrowed for the operation — Phil Thalid, a resident officer who worked with the Egyptian security forces, and Aim Yeklid, an agent who was technically a free-lancer — were waiting just up the street. Thalid and Yeklid would pick up the trail at close range.

Ferguson walked twenty yards past Guns then promptly turned around, ambling diagonally through the different bazaar stalls.

“What the hell is he doing?” grumbled Rankin. “He’s supposed to go back to the hotel. He’s heading back toward the café.”

“Maybe he forgot something.”

“I wish he’d stick to the game plan just once.”

Ferguson continued down the block, trying to judge whether anyone besides the two men he’d spotted were following him. They had the stiff necks and stooped shoulders he associated with Jihaz Amn al Daoula, the State Security Service, which was part of Mukhabath el-Dawla, the interior ministry’s General Directorate of State Security Investigations.

Though to be honest, the fact that he remembered one of the men from an assignment a year before was a surer giveaway. The men had either decided to trail him because he was acting suspicious or because they were bored. More likely the latter.

Ferguson passed near the empty alley next to the café and then found a watch repairman’s window, where he stopped to admire the man’s small display. Discovering that his own watch was several minutes behind those in the window, he reset it slowly, debating whether he should talk to the Egyptian agents. He had just decided to do that next when the woman who’d approached him in the café came out of the door and walked hurriedly past. Ferg smiled at her; she stared ahead as she passed.

“Excuse me,” said a man walking a few paces behind, nearly bumping into him.

“Sorry,” said Ferguson.

“Qasim’s Tailor Shop in an hour,” said the man. “Give your name.”

They’re Egyptian intelligence,” Thalid told Rankin as Ferguson entered a carpet shop near the edge of the Islamic quarter. “Ferguson must have figured it out.”

“Maybe we should tell them who we are,” Guns suggested.

“I wouldn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut,” answered Thalid. “Besides, then they’ll have to ask all sorts of questions.”

“Ferg’ll shake them,” predicted Guns. “That’s why he’s going into the carpet shop.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” Rankin leaned out from the corner where they’d stopped. The two Egyptian agents were standing about half a block away, just lighting up a pair of cigarettes. “Guns, go around the back. You other guys, get the cars.”

If the Egyptian agents had been trying even a little, they would have seen Ferguson going out the back of the carpet place. That told him they didn’t know who he was, and so with his trail shorn he made his way over to the tailor’s.

The front door opened into a room packed with jackets and trousers in every conceivable stage of construction. Bolts of fabric lined the walls, and the place smelled of exotic tobacco and hashish. Two Egyptians, one fat, one skinny, stood on separate pieces of carpet nearby, submitting to the ministrations of young tailor assistants who poked and prodded their pinned suits into shape. A short, harried-looking man emerged from the back, a roll of measuring tape partially wrapped around the thumb of one hand and a swatch of fabric in the other. Speaking in rapid-fire Arabic, he berated one of the helpers, then turned to the skinny customer and displayed the sample, which the man reached for but was not allowed to take. At this point he turned to Ferguson and asked in Arabic who he was and what he wanted. Ferguson pretended not to understand, and the man repeated the question in English.

“Ben Thatch,” Ferguson said. “I was told this was the best tailor in Cairo, which must mean it is the best in the world.”

The man called him a jackass and easy mark in Arabic, then said in English that he must have an appointment in order to get a suit.

“Well, then I’ll make one,” Ferguson said.

“Yes, yes,” said the man, who turned to the customer at his left and began a harangue about the importance of choosing the proper shade of gray.

“Can I use your phone?” Ferg asked. “I want to check my itinerary.”

The man waved at him dismissively.

Ferguson stepped over to the desk, which was partly obscured by fabric and a pile of large, yellowing papers that proved to be customer invoices. He picked up the phone and punched the numbers rapidly, connecting with a local line that had been set up for the First Team. The line was being monitored by Corrigan.

“Jack, how are ya?” he said brightly. “I’m standing here in Qasim’s Tailor Shop and looking to know—”

Something prodded him in the ribs. Ferg turned and saw one of the assistants holding a Beretta.

“It’s just a local call,” he said, but when the boy poked him again he thought it best to replace the receiver on the cradle.

Rankin felt the phone vibrating in his pocket. He reached down and hit the “OK” switch. The unit was similar to stock iridium phones though smaller and with several customized features: besides the silent alert it had 128k encryption and plugs that would let him use his radio’s mike and ear set.

“Ferg just called from a tailor,” said Corrigan. “Something’s up.”

“Yeah, he needs a new pair of pants.”

“You’re starting to sound just like him.”

“I’m standing across the street from it. We got it covered.”

Why are you here?” the fat customer asked in the back room of the shop.

“Best suits in Cairo,” said Ferguson. The man didn’t quite understand his English. “I got a message that said to come here. I follow directions.”

The customer turned to the younger man who had pulled the gun. They spoke in Arabic so quickly that Ferguson couldn’t catch it all, but what he did catch wasn’t particularly encouraging: the fat man called him an “unnecessary nuisance” and berated someone named Ali for originally making contact with the “American idiots.”

“In the car,” the fat man told Ferg.

“Which car?”

“In the back. Go.”

“This is just business. We don’t need a gun. We’re friends.”

“In the car.”

“It would make me less nervous if he put that away,” Ferguson said, gesturing with his head toward the pistol. The fat man frowned but then told the younger man that Ferguson, being an American idiot, was harmless.

Out in the alley, Ferguson stopped to tie his shoe. As he did, he activated the homing device in his heel and turned his radio on. The fat man grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him upward, pushing him in the direction of a white Mercedes S a few yards up the alley.

“Nice,” said Ferg cheerfully. “This is the executive version, right? Got the bulletproof glass, armor on the side; must’ve cost you a fortune.”

“Just get in.” The fat man opened the door with a key fob device.

“Want me to drive?”

“The back, idiot,” said the man, adding a string of curses in Arabic.

Ferguson slid into the backseat and pushed over. He gave Fatman a goofy smile as he got in and slammed the door. The kid got into the driver’s seat.

“What is your interest in Palestine?” asked Fatman as the car reached the street.

“Does it matter?” said Ferg.

The man made a snorting sound that reminded Ferguson of a choking walrus. He supposed it was meant to be dismissive.

“You think the Prophet Jesus will come on a cloud,” said Fatman.

“Well, I don’t know if it would be a cloud.” Ferguson looked out the window, trying not only to get a rough idea of where they were going but also to watch Fatman in the reflection at the same time. The nearby buildings were covered with large, colorful billboards featuring popular entertainers, each proclaimed as the spirit of his or her generation.

I don’t like this,” Guns told Rankin over the radio as they followed northward in the direction of Shubra, a working-class suburb. “Maybe we should call in the Egyptians.”

“Ferguson knows what he’s doing.”

“What do you think?” Guns asked Yeklid, who was driving the car.

“I have no idea. This is your gig, man.”

“How long will it take to get help out here?”

The officer shrugged. “Ten minutes or never. Nothing in between.”

How did you know to contact us?” said Fatman as they turned off the main street toward a row of closely packed buildings dressed in white tiles and yellow bricks.

“It was all done for me,” said Ferguson. “I just follow directions.”

The car drove up a hill, then turned abruptly down a narrow street that wound down toward an area of small factory and warehouse buildings. They took another turn and then another, finally driving up a tight alleyway.

Four men were waiting near the back door of a brown brick building. The men were fairly nondescript; their AK-47s were not.

“So this is where we get out?” Ferguson said.

“You’re an amateur, Mr. Thatch. And a meddler. We don’t like you, and we don’t need your money,” said Fatman. He turned to the driver.

Under ideal circumstances, Ferguson might have noted how ironic it was that someone who hadn’t bothered to frisk him was calling him an amateur. But these weren’t ideal circumstances, and besides, he was too busy sliding his hand down to the back of his pants to grab the small Glock 23 pistol hidden there. He put one bullet into the head of the driver, then turned to Fatman, who made the incredibly bad decision of reaching for his own weapon. Ferguson put two slugs into his head, then dove forward over the car seat as the men with the AK-47s began to fire at the bulletproofed car. Ferguson pulled the driver’s body to the side — like most Egyptians he didn’t wear a seat belt — and flung himself behind the wheel as the first bullets cracked but did not pierce the windshield. He jammed the car into reverse, turning to see where he was going. As he did, one of the guards fired point-blank at the rear window’s shatterproof glass.

Which, to Ferguson’s great surprise, shattered.

The range finder on the tracking device showed they were a half block away when Rankin heard the stutter of automatic rifle fire.

“Damn it,” he yelled, reaching down to the floor where he’d stashed his Uzi. “There! Stop!”

Yeklid jerked the wheel of the car and hit the brakes just in time to miss the Mercedes as it shot out of the alley and rammed into a car parked across the street. Rankin threw his door open in time to empty his submachine gun at the men running from the alley with AK-47s. Guns ran up behind him with a grenade launcher and pumped a tear gas canister into the alleyway, not realizing it was too late now to do any good.

The crash had deployed the Mercedes air bags. Ferguson pitched himself down as the guns erupted, reaching to his sock for his other hideaway. He rolled out of the car onto the ground, a gun in each fist.

“Ferguson, get the hell out of there!” screamed Rankin.

“Yo, Skippy! Don’t hit me,” yelled Ferguson.

“Come on, get the hell out of there,” said Rankin.

Guns pumped another tear gas grenade into the alley. The acrid smoke drifted back toward the car.

“Get out of here, come on!” yelled Yeklid.

Ferguson got up and trotted to the car. Two men with assault rifles came from down the block; Ferguson spun around and cut them down.

“Trail car! Trail car!” he yelled, seeing their way blocked.

They clung to the second as Yeklid backed out into the main street, barely missing a truck.

“I called the Egyptians, but I think it’s better if we lay low for an hour,” Yeklid told Ferguson when they collected themselves several blocks away. “I’m going to call one of the senior people I know. This may end up being a real pain.”

“You’re good with understatement,” said Ferguson. “I like that.”