The Atlantis revelation

39

Vadim was sitting inside the Peugeot parked opposite the Palace of the Grandmaster. He looked past the vehicle ID badge dangling from his rearview mirror to see the silver Mercedes SUV drive through.

He reached back and pulled down the rear seat to access the trunk. Squirming next to the blocks of C4 plastic explosives was a bound, gagged, and badly beaten Abdil Zawas. Vadim had brought the Egyptian to Rhodes directly from Bern hours before the security checkpoints had been set up. Since this car had been registered to a resident for several years, the security forces sweeping the Old Town yellow zone hadn't opened its trunk.

Abdil was waking up a little sooner than Vadim wanted. The streets were so narrow and cars so few that he couldn't afford to have somebody walk by while Abdil banged his head and feet to draw attention.

"Siesta isn't over," Vadim said, and removed an injection pen from his pocket. "We have to keep you alive long enough for the coroner to pronounce your proper cause of death as a martyr for Allah." He delighted at the look of horror in Abdil's eyes. The pen was filled only with a concentrated dose of trazodone to put him to sleep. Nothing painful, unfortunately, and it was a shame to think that the Egyptian wouldn't be awake for his final moments.

"Don't you wonder how many of your little sluts will miss you when you're gone?" Vadim asked, injecting the trazodone into Abdil's thick neck. "I think you'll miss them more where you're going."

Abdil's eyes rolled around in panic even as his eyelids grew heavy. In a few minutes it would all be over for the late, great Abdil Zawas.

"I'm going to make you famous, Abdil," Vadim told the Egyptian. "You're about to open a new front on the war against Jews and Crusaders. Look at this clip that's about to be posted on YouTube. Recognize yourself?"

Vadim was about to play the video on his BlackBerry when the device began to ring. It was Midas.

"Security says Yeats is alive and on Rhodes," Midas barked. "She has betrayed the Alignment."

"You seem surprised," Vadim said. "Your plan was always to kill her as soon as she delivered the globes. She knows too much. More than I do. Nothing has changed. Yeats won't make it in time to interfere."

"Is everything set?"

"Yes," Vadim said. "The only street into or out of the Palace of the Grandmaster is the Street of Knights. I'll take care of her as soon as she leaves the palace."

"She must not have even a moment to contact anybody with information about what she may have learned from Uriel or figured out for herself," Midas said, and then there was a pause. "Remember, Vadim. She will be the second car. I repeat: the second car. Not the first. Everything is lost if you mistake the two."

Vadim said, "I won't."

"See that you don't," Midas said. "It must look like the first car was the target but that Zawas hit Serghetti's car instead and blew himself up in the process."

"Yes," said Vadim, looking at Abdil's limp body in the mirror. "I understand."