Solomon's Gold

CHAPTER 28

Elizabeth had Nick on speaker. She listened with growing concern as Nick described the attack. Stephanie sat nearby, listening to the conversation.

"This complicates things," Elizabeth said.

"No kidding," Nick said. "The place is crawling with people from Shin Bet and Mossad. The Israelis aren't happy and neither am I. Rivka was a friend of mine. Their so-called safe house looks like someone held the shoot out at the OK Corral in it. I'm getting distinctly unfriendly vibes."

"Not your fault, Nick."

"Yeah, I know."

"Any clue on who they were?"

"My bet's on the happy followers of the Ayatollah," Nick said. "No IDs, but they were carrying copies of the Chinese Norinco carbine. As far as I know, Iran is the only country in the area who uses those."

"All right, that's helpful."

"Director, we must be getting close to that gold if they're pulling out the stops like this. We still have to find the next location. With a little luck, that will be the end of it. But I have the feeling the Israelis aren't going to cooperate anymore. Friedman's dead, their agents are dead, and they know as much as we do."

"Then I can just bring you home," Elizabeth said.

"Damn it, Director, I don't want you to bring us home. Rivka wouldn't want that. We've come a long way and I want to see this through to the end. We deserve that."

"It may be out of my control, Nick, but I'll see what I can do."

"Yeah, you do that."

Nick broke the connection. Elizabeth looked at the phone in her hand in surprise.

"He hung up," she said to Stephanie.

"He's angry," Steph said. "You can't blame him. I think he was a little bit in love with the woman who got killed. He met her before he really got committed to Selena."

"The easy thing would be to pull them out," Elizabeth said.

"If you do that, they'll resent it. This has turned into a full-blown mission. No one likes to be pulled out of the middle of something like that. It goes against their code, their ethos. You don't quit a mission until it's over. You don't walk away because people get killed and it's rough. If they leave now, it's as if the deaths of Friedman and Rivka and the others are meaningless. The only thing that redeems that is completing the mission."

"That's quite a speech, Steph."

"It's what it is. Lucas is the same way."

Lucas Monroe was Stephanie's husband. He was also the Director of National Clandestine Services at Langley. Before that, he'd spent years as an active field officer on the hairy end of things in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Elizabeth said, "This has become an international incident. I'm going to have to brief the President about it, but I want to talk with Clarence first. He has connections in Israel that are better than mine. I can get him to sound out what's going on."

"Good idea."

"I was hoping nothing like this would happen."

"It's an old story," Stephanie said.

"What is?"

"There's always a lot of blood spilled when there's a lot of gold."

"Humans never seem to learn, do they?"

"Not when it comes to gold."

Stephanie stood. "I'm going downstairs and see what Freddie can dig up about the photograph and phone number I found in Miriam's apartment.

"Let me know if you find something interesting," Elizabeth said.