The Gamma Option

Chapter 6

McCracken’s thougths swirled as the 747 dipped into its descent for Ben-Gurion Airport. Fett had handed him a ticket on an El Al jet that left for Israel just after dawn. When he at last closed the door behind the Arab, Blaine had never felt more helpless or alone. Ever since learning of Matthew’s kidnapping, he’d been filled with a cold dread, exactly the kind of feeling that Lauren had wished to spare him by never mentioning his son’s existence. To say nothing of sparing the boy the terrors that had now befallen him.

He wondered how it was possible to develop such strong feelings of love and devotion for Matthew after knowing him for barely two days. The feelings were foreign to Blaine, terrifying in their implications. He forced himself to focus on the task at hand. All he had was a cryptic instruction from Fett on where to meet Evira’s contact:

Once there, McCracken would be filled in on further details that Fett himself wasn’t privy to. With the leaks to consider, Evira was taking no chances. Similarly, Blaine was forbidden to contact anyone else for help. Under those circumstances, useless were his allies in intelligence and the vast cache of favors owed him by friendly forces within Israel, forces he was now ironically pitted against. He knew these men well. If they caught him working for the other side, they would kill him without hesitation.

He’d spent five hard months in Israel in 1973, but they’d been worthwhile ones. It was his first action after being pulled out of Nam, and it reassured him that his skills were still required now that the Phoenix Project was history. One well kept secret about the Yom Kippur War was that Israel knew it was coming, just as she had in ’68. But this time Nixon and the Americans absolutely forbade her to make the first move on threats of a total cut-off. Let the Arabs fire the first shots and Nixon promised to back Israel with everything he had.

“Everything” turned out to be five hundred Special Forces troops fresh from the Phoenix Project under the command of Blaine McCracken. They were spirited into the country hours before the war started and worked the magic they had refined so well in Vietnam. The terrain was different, but that was all. Infiltration behind enemy lines was still the key. Lines of communication were disrupted, so that contradictory and downright ludicrous orders reached the Arab fighters at the front. Direct intelligence gathered by McCracken and his men paved the road the Israelis could have taken straight to Cairo and Damascus if Nixon hadn’t intervened again. As for direct engagements in battle, each of Blaine’s men was worth a hundred untrained Arabs, and the kill ratio was not far from that. His troops were sharp, seasoned, and unwilling to accept defeat again. Winning was a nice feeling and a number of them, including McCracken and Johnny Wareagle, stayed on afterward to savor it while educating Israeli paratroopers in the lessons of the Phoenix Project.

After landing in Tel Aviv, Blaine negotiated customs easily, stowed his single suitcase temporarily in an airport locker, and pushed his way through the throngs of travelers for the taxi stand outside Ben Guiron. The driver left him to his thoughts in the cab’s backseat and pulled into traffic headed for Tel Aviv.

The Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, maintains regular shifts at Ben Gurion Airport. Often disguised as fidgety travelers, or fliers seated near their suitcases in apparent consternation over a delay, even garbed as sanitation personnel, they wait and watch day and night for the entry of suspicious persons. Although possible routes of enemy penetration into Israel are many and diverse, it remains surprising how many potential enemies make their entry right at Ben Gurion.

The Mossad agent who spotted the casually dressed bearded man making his way from immigration to baggage claim was on duty behind a monetary exchange counter. As soon as the bearded man had gone, he moved to a phone directly behind his desk and dialed his control.

“Are we expecting anything from the Americans?” he queried after standard codes were exchanged.

“CIA?”

“Independent more likely. Possibly by invitation.”

“I’ll run the checks. Someone grab your eye?”

“Yes. An old friend of ours just flew in….”

McCracken had the driver take him into Jaffa and deposit him at the Ottoman Clock Tower in Haganah Square. With the bustling modern skyscrapers of Tel Aviv looming above, the old city of Jaffa maintained a tight, imponderable hold on the past, thanks to the outdoor flea market filled with salesmen pitching their wares from stands on the sidewalk, moving carts, or open-front shops. The peddlers and shopkeepers strain their voices to have their boasts of bargains heard and heeded. The quality of merchandise is generally low, but the spirit of the merchants who battle for street space and customers is keen.

From the clock tower, Blaine headed down Yefet Street and swung left on to Oley Tsiyon toward the center of the market. Less than a block later his nose was assaulted by the sharp aroma of freshly caught fish being showcased on hooks or ice at the market across the street. The entrance to the flea market just beyond was signalled by arrays of Oriental rugs draped over car hoods and roofs. As more merchants appeared, the market’s borders continued to expand, filling up every available foot of sidewalk and storefront and forcing would-be buyers into the streets to compete for space with vehicular traffic.

The shop Fett had sent him to was of the permanent variety: a building, not a pushcart. Blaine took his time getting there, wanting to become familiar with his surroundings. In addition to the rugs piled everywhere, used clothing seemed a hot item along with cheap, flashy pieces of jewelry. McCracken was most intrigued, though, by the miniature warehouse-like buildings selling ancient appliances. The incredibly high duties placed on such merchandise by the Israeli government turned convenience items like modern refrigerators and televisions into luxuries here. These items were recycled over and over again to meet the demand for them, in spite of the fact that many looked antiquated to the point of decay.

The buildings housing them were no different. Jaffa was a city mired in its historical past, the ancient structures virtually untouched by redevelopment or renewal. Torn and tattered awnings flapped in the faint breeze. Windows peeked out from behind shutters more broken than whole. The buildings were constructed mostly of stone, smoked gray or black through the years. These aged structures had a dusty, heated scent that McCracken found repellent.

A man easing a battered refrigerator from the back of his truck forced Blaine to veer off the sidewalk onto the street. Traffic was snarled, and all movements had been reduced to maddening stops and starts, accompanied by a regular chorus of horns. He passed an old man whose wares were laid out on a blanket in what should have been the right-hand lane. The old man was munching on a pita sandwich and barking to passersby amidst mouthfuls.

The street and sidewalks grew more cluttered by the moment, although more people seemed to be looking than buying. McCracken eased by an Arab merchant operating from behind a pushcart and slid between a pair of cars frozen in traffic. A young man on a bicycle nearly collided with him, and Blaine was forced up against a boy pulling a pair of used jeans on over his gym shorts to check the fit while the salesman spit on in Hebrew about the potential bargain.

The knickknack shop Fett had directed him to was located on a corner at the southern edge of the market. Blaine dodged a bunch of leather handbags dangling over the entrance and stepped inside, delighted to be out of the sun. The smell of leather replaced that of age in his nose. Blaine felt immediately better.

A young woman approached him in search of a sale.

“I believe you’re holding something for me,” he told her, and produced the Egyptian bill Fett had given him back in Reading as the signal.

“Right this way,” the young woman said.

They moved to a door in the rear of the shop. She opened it for him and smiled. Blaine accepted the invitation and entered. There, seated behind a single desk in the cramped quarters, was an old crone, her gray hair tied up in a bun and her stooped frame draped in a baggy black dress.

“Close the door!” she ordered. After McCracken had done so, she said, “Sit! Now!”

There was only one chair available, that being right in front of the desk she was squeezed behind. All light in the room came through a single uncovered window, and it was more than enough for Blaine to size up the crone. He noticed that only one eye was regarding him. The other was shut and almost encased by layers of sun-wrinkled flesh. Her hands were not visible, and Blaine wondered if they might be holding a weapon on him even now.

“You know why you here?” the hag wanted to know after he was seated.

“Not really.”

“You know!” she raged. “You had the bill!”

“Oh, I know what I’m doing here all right. But I’m not clear on why I’m not talking to Evira herself.”

“Evira wants it this way.”

“Do you know where they’re holding my son?”

“I not speak of—”

“But Evira does, doesn’t she?”

“I know only what she tells me, what she wants me to know. I here to explain as best I can. I know what Fett told you.”

“Then we both know he told me nothing.”

“He told you what he knew. Evira don’t trust him. Evira trust no one but you. You only man who can stop weapon from being used.”

“What weapon?”

“What you know of Yosef Rasin?” she asked him instead of answering.

“Fanatic from the Meir Kahane school, only a hundred times more fanatical. Hates all Arabs and encourages turmoil in the occupied zones. On one occasion he publicly demanded forced birth control for all Arabs living in Israel. I think castration was the word he used. Even so, his fanaticism has found a following. With half the government willing to concede a Palestinian state on the West Bank, there are plenty in this country who are starting to take his side because they’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“What is ‘his side’?”

“That Israel — and the world — would be better off if no Arab was left alive.”

The hag looked at him with her one good eye. “Fett told you of weapon that can wipe out the whole Arab world?”

“Yes.”

“Rasin has it.”

And out of the madness of the past sixteen hours, Blaine saw sense starting to form. No wonder the Arabs were desperate. If they even suspected Rasin possessed such a weapon, they’d pull out all the stops.

“Wait a minute,” Blaine said, following his own thoughts. “Why don’t you just kill him? You wouldn’t need me for that.”

A sudden breeze flapped the curtain and blew through the half-open window. Straying strands of the crone’s gray hair blew across her face. “Can’t. Rasin gone. Disappeared underground with his weapon. Trail there but need you to follow it.”

“Why can’t Evira follow it herself?”

“I not know.”

“I think you do. And I think we’re gonna sit here until you tell me.”

“Your son be no closer to safety as long as we do.”

Blaine’s anger flared. The deep scar that ran down his forehead through his left eyebrow turned milk white against the red flush of his face. His beard bristled. He leaned menacingly across the table.

“You know something, old woman? I believe that you don’t know a thing about the boy. But I know Evira does since she set this whole thing up. So here’s how we’re going to play it: you contact her and set up a meeting between us or the deal’s off. I won’t lift a finger for you and your people, and I don’t think Evira would be pleased with that after all she went through to recruit me.”

“No,” the hag acknowledged, “Evira wouldn’t.”

Blaine watched her as her left hand probed to the dead tissue around her left eye. The skin peeled back in her hand and took a hefty measure of the wrinkles on her cheek with it. The left hand continued to peel and tear while the right stripped off the gray wig to reveal a bun of dark black hair. She stared across the desk at Blaine with both eyes now, as the age of her face lay in strips on the table before them.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. McCracken,” said Evira.

“Come in, Colonel Ben-Neser!”

From his position in a shabby apartment, overlooking the market from above a furniture store, Yuri Ben-Neser lifted the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Have you got her, Ari?”

“Yes,” Ari told him. “Far edge of the market on the corner. Leather handbags hanging outside the entrance.”

Ben-Neser moved to the window. “I can see it! I can see it!” he said thankfully, propping the walkie-talkie upon his shoulder so he could use his single arm to mop his brow. He’d lost the other in the Yom Kippur War of ’73.

Ben-Neser had spent the last two years searching for the elusive Evira. He had heard all the stories, all the legends. Some said she had killed every agent who got even remotely close. Others claimed she had not once taken up arms within the state of Israel, that she was in fact an Israeli citizen. Another legend claimed she directed each and every terrorist attack that took place within the country. Ben-Neser preferred to accept the most secure intelligence on her, which had it that she was committed to organizing Israel’s Arabs into a force that could someday take over the country from the inside. Even this conservative analysis stated that she had agents placed in every sphere of Israeli life, including the cabinet itself. For this reason, cabinet meetings of late had been held in absolute secrecy. Ben-Neser himself favored neither the views of Kahane, nor the far more radical position of Rasin. But the notion of a legion of Arabs and those loyal to them spying on the state from within was terrifying. It certainly justified for him the risk he was taking by conducting this unauthorized mission.

“She’s meeting with someone, sir,” Ari was saying.

Ben-Neser felt the phantom pain of his missing arm as he always did when he was nervous. If anything went wrong, the ramification would be catastrophic. He had to bring this off without a hitch.

“Recognize him?” he asked Ari.

“Big. Rugged with a beard. Looks American.”

American? Ben-Neser wondered to himself. The last thing he needed here was just that sort of complication.

“Do we move in?” Ari asked.

“No,” Ben-Neser said from his position by the window of the apartment, choking down the urge to rub the arm that was no longer there. “Where are you?”

“Shop featuring plumbing fixtures diagonally across the street from Evira.”

“Hold your position. I’m coming down.”

McCracken continued to gaze across the table at the woman whose age had shrunk by upwards of forty years. She returned his gawking stare with an admiring one of her own while she continued to pick at the stray patches of theatrical makeup stuck on her flesh.

“I’m sorry this was necessary,” she said.

“And just what are you referring to, the disguise or the taking of my son?”

“Both, I guess. The boy’s fine. Better than fine. He’s safe.”

“Safe from whom?”

“My enemies are now your enemies.”

“Arab?”

“As well as Israeli. What we’re facing here doesn’t discriminate. You’ll find we have extraordinarily few allies, perhaps just each other.”

“Then how about you deliver Matthew back to Reading School to prove your good faith?”

She looked at him almost sadly. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”

“Look, lady, the hag I was talking to a few minutes ago and Fett built a pretty good case. If this bit about Rasin and his weapon are true, then I’m on your side already.”

“Like you were on the side of the French, of the British, even the Americans?” she shot back at him. “I know you better than you think. The side you start out on may not be the side you end up on, depending on the dictates of your conscience. You think I don’t approve of those traits?” she added, more softly, voice laced with admiration. “They are precisely what persuaded me that you were the only one left for me to work with now that my own network has been compromised.”

“Then you also know my word is my bond. Let the boy go. I’ll work with you.”

“I can’t. I made promises, gave assurances. Can’t you see that?”

“What I see every time I close my eyes is what a pair of killers did to John Neville.”

“I don’t condone the actions of butchers.”

“But you used them, didn’t you? Cut the bullshit, lady. If you’re so fond of the way I operate, you must have figured out you’re already working in a bigger ballgame.”

She looked hurt. What little light reached her face told Blaine she was thirty at most and probably younger. Her features were more European than Arabic. She had skin that was soft and smooth, and high cheekbones that complemented an angular chin and large round eyes. Her complexion looked more tanned than naturally bronze.

“Let’s get to the point, Evira,” Blaine resumed. “Let’s get to Rasin. How’d you find out about the existence of this superweapon?”

“I’ve had agents planted within his group for sometime.”

“Arabs?”

“Seventeen percent of Israel’s citizens are Arabs, but they’re Israelis first. This is their nation, too. And as their numbers have grown they have been accepted as part of the nation.” She paused. “By most of the nation anyway. Rasin has seized upon the reality of their growing influence, along with the possible formation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, and used them to spread his message of hate. His cause has fostered a dangerous, militant faction. He has become enamored of the power it has provided him. Fanaticism is a powerful voice, Blaine McCracken, one the Arabs of Israel find impossible to silence. He seeks to propel himself into power by creating a climate of fear fanatics thrive in. He has his hardcore followers, along with those afraid to oppose him.”

She leaned farther across the table. “Some months ago, he began holding meetings in secret. Representatives of his movement in Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the settlements were all briefed on his discovery of a means to eliminate the Arab problem forever, to destroy the entire Arab world. An agent I planted within Rasin’s camp was present at those briefings. He reported to me what he had heard. That was the last we heard from him. That was just about a month ago, near the time Rasin himself disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since. That’s what made me try to contact you.”

“Destroy the Arab world,” Blaine repeated. “Your contact’s words or Rasin’s?”

“Rasin’s expoundings were bolder, yet vague. Perhaps obliterate would be a better word than destroy. Rasin didn’t state it that way, but what else could we be facing?”

“How did he state it?”

“In shadows and riddles. The Arab peoples both nearest and farthest would be put down in a way that would make it impossible for them to ever rise up again.”

“And yet here we have Israel sitting square in the center of all these Arab peoples. How can this weapon Rasin claims he has destroy one without the other?”

“His briefings were quite clear about this result. ‘An oasis in the middle of the desert of destruction’ were his exact words.”

“Then we must be talking about some kind of selective destruction. What he seems to be talking about is a weapon that can’t possibly exist.”

“Only within the parameters our reason permits us to consider.”

“Your reason, Evira, and your fight. I’ve read the files on you, and if there’s any truth to them at all, then I’ve got to figure you’re just as able to track Rasin down as I am.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. We’ll never know for sure because I have my own target to pursue: Amir Hassani.”

“An Ar—”

“Go ahead. Finish. You were about to say ‘Arab,’ weren’t you?” She didn’t let him answer. “Yes, I am an Arab, Mr. Blaine McCracken, but my birth place was annexed, which makes me an Israeli, too. My loyalty may be divided, but on both counts Hassani is as much my enemy as Rasin. He is against everything I stand for.”

“And just what is that?”

“Peace. Does that surprise you?”

“Coming from a woman who kidnaps children to further her ends, frankly it does.”

“Not just my ends, Mr. Blaine McCracken, the world’s ends. What do you know of Hassani?”

“No more than anyone else, I suppose. He’s a real enigma, installed as military strongman of a beaten and impoverished Iran in a coup after the war was finally settled with Iraq and Khomeini passed on to the nuthouse in the sky. He came back from exile, à la Khomeini, and promised to return national pride and prosperity to a country sorely lacking in both.”

“And has he?”

“In the past six months things have gotten steadily worse. He woos the wealthy and powerful like the Shah did while giving limitless power to the Revolutionary Guard like Khomeini.”

“And caught in the middle are the Iranian masses who mean nothing to him. But you left out one thing. Hassani has used his position to rally other militant Arab leaders, and he has convinced them that with the Iran-Iraq war no longer serving as a distraction, they can turn all their attention toward a common enemy.”

“Israel,” Blaine surmised.

“Of course. Hassani has brought together a collection of madmen who want nothing more than to see Israel destroyed and collectively are in possession of the means to assure it happens.”

“Then we’re facing two madmen, each of which is poised to destroy the world of the other.”

“And they’ll succeed unless we are successful in stopping them.”

“Stop or kill?”

“One and the same.”

Blaine shook his head mockingly. “This really isn’t your game, is it? Why don’t you just come out and say what you mean: you plan to kill Hassani while I kill Rasin.”

Evira’s eyes were cold. “Whatever is necessary.”

“How did you learn so much about Hassani? You work in Israel, not Iran.”

She just looked at him, and might have been about to speak when Blaine suddenly answered his own question.

“Unless … unless you found out about Hassani’s plans through the agents you planted with Rasin. Of course!”

“You see what I mean now.”

“What I see is an Israeli fanatic with a weapon he intends to use because of what a militant Iranian is planning. In Rasin’s mind, what he’s doing is self-defense, a preventive strike.”

“But it cuts both ways,” Evira explained. “Part of the reason why Hassani has been able at last to unite the various militant factions of the Arab world is the symbol Rasin and his rising popularity presents. His following is no longer limited or hidden away. It is thriving in Israel and it is powerful. Can you imagine the kind of concessions he’ll demand, and the price Israel will be forced to pay, once he and his party capture enough seats in parliament for Rasin to become kingmaker? Hassani and the other madmen cannot wait to find out. They feel Israel must be destroyed before the tide becomes too strong to turn….”

“Which, accordingly, provides Rasin with the perfect rationale to utilize his superweapon. My God, it’s almost as if Hassani and the others had played right into his hands.”

“In any case he has the weapon and the justification to unleash it.” Her eyes became pleading. “I couldn’t trust anyone else, don’t you see? Hassani’s people have penetrated my organization, and Rasin’s people are onto me. You were my only hope. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if our positions were reversed!”

“I wouldn’t. There’s a code that must not have made it to your part of the world yet. We don’t involve family. We never involve family.”

“Our way of life is facing destruction. Israel’s, too. I hate the militants as much as you do. I’m going to kill Hassani. I want him stopped as much as I want Rasin stopped. This is our only chance to beat down what both of them represent forever.”

“Only to do so you have to employ their methods, so you become no better than they are.” Blaine paused and looked at her with eyes of ice. “Tell me how civilized you are, but first tell me what will happen if I get up from this table and walk away.”

Evira hesitated only slightly. “Your son will die.”

Chapter 7

Colonel Ben-Neser stood nervously in the open warehouse across from the gift shop. Shielded by porcelain fixtures, he gazed across the street, clenching and unclenching his remaining hand into a fist. Evira was barely thirty yards away from him. A quick dash across the street and he could take her himself. Screw the complications and get it over with.

Still, the American Evira was meeting with provided an unexpected complication. Bad enough the colonel should be about to initiate a wholly unsanctioned operation. But if an American, innocent or otherwise, should perish as a result the political fallout might be sufficient to cost Ben-Neser his career.

What little remained of it, that is. He had been born to be a soldier, not a bureaucrat. He came from a tradition of warriors and had proved himself worthy of that legacy as an infantryman in the Six-Day War of ’67. Six years later the Yom Kippur engagement had seen him perform heroically in a leadership capacity until his tenure was ended prematurely. He was rounding up strays when a boy lunged out and tossed a grenade. While the attention of his men remained fixed on the escaping boy, Ben-Neser had focused on the grenade. Calculating instantly that the only hope his squad had of survival lay in his tossing it away from them, he had managed to lift and start to hurl the grenade when it detonated. The colonel’s men were saved, but his arm was reduced to sinews sprouting from the shoulder joint.

The rehabilitation period had been long, and Ben-Neser resisted the use of prostheses and learned to live with a single arm. The best therapy was determination, and he focused all he had into becoming the best marksman in Israel. He learned how to steady the rifle with a single arm and could reload as quickly as any man with two. A decade’s assignments had culminated in a single mistake — a civilian lunging in front of a bullet meant for a much wanted terrorist — and he was reassigned to Mossad as a field control officer, an overseer of other people’s work. With each report, he found himself contemplating not how the operation had been done, but how he would have done it himself. The frustration mounted.

It spilled over when the first hard reports on Evira began to cross his desk. He maneuvered to get himself appointed as head of the team gathering intelligence on her and then became obsessed with putting an end to her shadowy and elusive movements within Israel. In these past two years he had considered nothing else, and when at last a report linked her to a booth in the Jaffa Market, Ben-Neser elected to hold on to the memo and deal with it himself. The commandos with him knew no better. He was their control, after all, and they saw no reason to doubt this sudden change in plans.

“Come in, Colonel,” a voice squawked over his walkie-talkie.

“I read you, Ari.”

“All men are in position. Ready to move on your signal.”

Ben-Neser reviewed for himself the final deployments he had decided on once Evira’s position was confirmed. Besides himself and Ari, he had a detachment of six commandos at his disposal. Of these, two had been placed upon the flat roof of the long angular building that housed Ben-Neser’s location along with a dozen other sidewalk shops. One had been stationed around the corner from the target shop on the chance Evira might manage to flee in that direction. The remaining three were all planted among the locals: one seated before a blanket crammed with cheap watches, a second in apron selling food from a heated pushcart, and a third looking like an eager patron who had yet to purchase a thing.

The phantom pain scratched at Ben-Neser again. Had he already passed the point of no return, or was there still time to abort? No matter the results here today, he knew the ramifications so far as his future was concerned. But he was approaching the end of his run anyway and desperately wanted to take something with him, something beyond the anonymity of the kills he had made over the decade he had served as a marksman.

Ben-Neser turned his walkie-talkie to the channel that connected him with his commandos. “We move on my signal. Get ready. No shooting unless absolutely necessary. Clear? I want her taken alive. That’s the first priority.” He gazed across the street one last time. With the itch of a no-longer-existent arm driving him to shudders, Ben-Neser spoke again. “Thirty seconds, people. On my mark …”

“You don’t have a choice and neither do I,” Evira was saying.

McCracken glared at her from across the table. “Do you really expect to be able to reach Hassani? You’re talking about a man who is almost never seen and about whom virtually nothing is known.”

“Some is known. Enough. The underground movement in Tehran is small but well focused. They will help me.”

“Killing him will almost certainly mean your own death.”

She returned his emotionless stare. “Would you not do the same thing if in my position?”

“I’m still not quite clear on what that position is.”

“I’m an Arab and so is Hassani. Is that it?”

“Not at all.”

“It is in enough ways, Blaine McCracken, and you know it. Yes, I am an Arab, and no one wants to see a Palestinian homeland more than me. I’ve worked most of my life toward that end.” Her voice thickened. “When the soldiers came and — Well, that doesn’t matter now. Hassani speaks to my people in a language of death and violence. He preaches, lives it. Accept that dogma and even with a homeland there can never be peace. Palestinians must get what they deserve, but men like Hassani will never give it to us. To them, we’re just tools for them to use for their own ends.”

“Except there’s also Yosef Rasin,” McCracken told her. “Hassani can kill your dream from one side, Rasin from the other. A pair of fanatics from opposite directions aiming toward the same goal.”

“You will find him. You will stop him.”

Blaine almost laughed. “You overestimate me.”

“No,” Evira retorted immediately. “I have followed your career, studied it. You are driven by ideals and nothing stops you when they are at stake. I … emulate that. I have since the beginning. I obtained all your files. I’ve read everything Israeli and Egyptian intelligence has to say about you.”

“Lies and exaggerations mostly.”

“For the sake of your son, let’s hope not.”

When his count had reached five, Colonel Ben-Neser saw a pair of jeeps crowded with Israeli soldiers pull over to the side of Oley Tsiyon where the flea market splintered to the left down an alley.

“Hold your positions!” he ordered his men. Since this mission was not logged, the area had not been sealed. The army had no idea what was going on. “Ari, come in,” he barked into his walkie-talkie.

“I read you, sir.”

“Do you see them?”

“Routine patrol.”

“It wasn’t scheduled, damn it! I checked the logs.”

“They’re here, Commander. Our only choice is to abort.”

“No! We can’t. We’ll lose Evira if we do, maybe forever!”

“What then?”

Ben-Neser watched the soldiers climbing from their jeeps and stretching leisurely as they adjusted their automatic rifles to be within easy reach if needed.

“Approach them,” the colonel ordered Ari. “Approach them and identify yourself. Do it quietly. Don’t let anyone else realize what is going on. Tell them to get the fuck out.”

“They’re soldiers. They might question.”

“Not Mossad, they won’t question Mossad.” Ben-Neser swung his binoculars quickly back toward the the gift shop. “Go to them, Ari. Do as I say.”

Seconds later, Ari’s shape appeared from a centrally placed jewelry shop. He made his way down the crowded sidewalk in the direction of the soldiers who had only just begun to move away from their jeeps. He approached the officer wearing the beret of the team leader. Ari was all smiles, like a tourist might be, his shirt untucked, his walk loose-limbed. Ben-Neser could see they were a yard apart, Ari identifying himself and the officer seeming to heed him. A hand raised by the bereted leader into the air held up the progress of his team into the square.

That’s it, damn it, that’s it!

The bereted officer started to turn. Ben-Neser had actually relaxed, when the officer swung round and leveled into a combat stance with rifle angling straight for Ari. The brief reports sounded like hammers striking nails and Ari’s body was tossed backward, blood spouting from the punctures in his chest.

“My God,” was all Ben-Neser could mutter. In his hand he felt the sweat-soaked plastic of his walkie-talkie. Somewhere in his mind he recorded the sight of the men who could not have been soldiers at all fanning out through the crowded square that was suddenly bursting with panic. In that instant he forgot totally about Evira, thought only of Ari, a friend and soldier, who lay dead because of him and his damned obsession.

The walkie-talkie was at his lips now. He heard himself speaking into it, forming the words in the last instant before they emerged.

“They’re not soldiers! Take them!” he ordered.

“Shots!” Blaine shouted, lunging from his chair.

“Wait!” Evira responded, hand feeling for one of the pistols in a drawer that had been open through the course of their conversation. “Take this.”

She was by his side when they re-entered the store, pressing a gun into his hand. Panicked bystanders rushed by outside, colliding with displays that had been set up on the sidewalk. Blaine and Evira stayed pinned behind the doorway and peered out. Beyond, all was chaos. A small group of gunmen dressed as merchants were firing upon two jeeploads of uniformed soldiers. The soldiers’ bullets cut indiscriminate lines through the crowd, their fire slowed only when sniper bullets rained on them from the roof of the building across the street.

“Yours?” Blaine asked.

“No! I don’t know who they are! I swear it! Let’s get out of here!”

Pistols in hand they ducked out the doorway to be swept away by the crowd rushing from the area.

Colonel Ben-Neser wasn’t thinking anymore, simply watching and reacting. He had drawn his pistol and rushed from the cover of the warehouse onto the sidewalk. He had seen at least three of the enemy’s number fall to the fire of his riflemen on the roof. But the fake soldiers had retreated behind the cover of their jeeps and were concentrating their fire upward in an incessant hail. After Ari, he had watched his aproned commando fall to a second barrage that commenced as soon as Ben-Neser had given the order to move in. He felt himself struck each time a bullet found one of his men. This was his fault, damn it, his fault!

Above him, one of the marksmen found a clear bead on another of the soldiers, but the others honed savagely in on his position and blasted away. The man was pitched backward while the second marksman seized what he thought would be the advantage and showed himself long enough to aim. But the soldiers’ fire never let up. Bullets punched into the second man and sent his body headlong from the roof on to the street a dozen yards in front of Ben-Neser.

“Bastards,” he moaned.

The surge of the crowd reached him then and Ben-Neser was tossed about like a puppet in their midst. A hard smack to his arm tore the pistol from his grip and he lowered himself to feel for it amidst the sea of thrashing feet.

The drop was what saved his life.

The fake soldiers had turned to spray the crowd. The butchers! Of course, with the marksmen neutralized the only shots aimed their way were coming from figures disguised within the crowd. So they had taken the most obvious, and most barbaric, action. They must have come to protect Evira, he theorized with a guilty chill. And he had handed his team to them on a silver platter by having Ari approach.

Bodies toppled over him while more of the panicked crowd struggled to flee. Two of his remaining men posted in the square, meanwhile, saw the direction the fake soldiers’ firings were taking. To save whatever lives they could, they broke off from the crowd and rushed into the center of the square to draw the bullets to themselves.

Ben-Neser saw this just as he recovered his pistol and pushed himself on his elbows over a pair of fallen tourists, both near death. He fired a full clip in the time it took the imposters to cut down these two men and a third who had circled in from around the corner, leaving him as the last.

“You fuckers!” Ben-Neser screamed as he lurched to his feet with a fresh clip snapped home. He was charging now, charging through the remnants of the crowd with pistol burning in his hand.

He felt the hot gush of pain to his armless shoulder, and for that instant he was back in the West Bank the day he had lost the limb. The phantom itching was replaced by the same fiery agony he had felt when the grenade blew into him, and once again he was melting into nothingness, this time with nothing to pull him out.

Evira and Blaine’s original aim had been to swing left outside the shop and rush away amidst the chaos. But their turn had brought them almost face-to-face with a pistol-wielding man shoving his way toward them.

“Mossad!” Evira screamed, and instantly they swung around to head toward the center of the chaos that had overrun the market.

The flow of panic was moving in all directions and they let themselves be swept up in it. The street was cluttered with wares abandoned by peddlers to the fate of the crowd, some of whom still managed to stoop to retrieve attractive items on their way. Maneuverability was cut further by the dozens of cars immobilized on the street. Windows and windshields had been punctured by bullets and most of the drivers huddled beneath their dashboards for dear life.

When the soldiers turned their fire suddenly and inexplicably into the crowd, Blaine and Evira dove to the sidewalk together.

“What the hell is this?” Blaine raged, grasping the Beretta Evira had provided.

“They’re not soldiers!”

“Obviously. But who then? Who?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!”

Bullets continued to cascade above them while behind them the Mossad man they’d fled from was rushing the gunmen head on, pistol clacking futilely. He was blown backward at the same time a screech rang out from across the street.

“You fuckers!”

A one-armed man was charging straight for the remaining trio of soldiers. He had managed six shots before a bullet toppled him. The fall separated him from his gun, and somehow he had the composure to crawl for it as the uniformed figures spun from their positions of cover to finish him off.

“Come on!” Evira urged, tugging on McCracken’s arm. “We can get out of here now!”

“Not yet,” was all Blaine said as he pulled away and crawled stealthily toward the street.

Colonel Yuri Ben-Neser knew he was dead. It came to him in slow motion as the trio of uniformed shapes swarmed his way with rifles angled down. He wouldn’t close his eyes, wouldn’t let them linger over the kill or enjoy it. The pistol was just out of his grasp and he shoved himself toward it, pain exploding in his shoulder with each push over the stones.

His fingers had just struck the pistol’s sweat-soaked butt when his eyes caught the blur of a shape rising directly before him and just to one side of the uniformed figures.

He’s not one of mine, was Ben-Neser’s only thought, as the man steadied his pistol and opened fire on the trio of fake soldiers. They tried to return it, but the man was in motion by then; twisting, diving, rolling, all the time shooting.

His bullets seemed to jolt the fake soldiers all at once, almost simultaneously. He kept firing until they crumpled over, not more than a shot or two having missed the mark.

Ben-Neser thought surely he was dreaming, or perhaps a guardian angel had been sent down to save him. No man could shoot like that. Yet it was a man who leaned over him and touched his pulse.

“You’ll be all right,” came a voice attached to the shape, and Ben-Neser passed out before he had the chance to say how very much he doubted that.

Chapter 8

The room Evira led them to was located in a block of apartment units close enough to the flea market to hear the constant blare of sirens arriving on the scene. The room was sparsely furnished with a pair of stained fabric chairs and a single day bed. There was a refrigerator, a stove, a small kitchen table, and a sink. The bathroom facilities in the building were limited to two per floor, one for each gender.

Evira locked the door behind them.

“We have little time,” she began. “I am due to leave shortly. For Tehran. For Hassani.”

Evira sat down in the chair closest to the window. Blaine took the stained, rust-colored one across from her. At one time, he supposed, the fabric had probably matched, but now one chair was sun-bleached while the other retained a measure of its original color.

“If Mossad’s on to you, lady,” he told her, “you’ll be lucky to see the outside of this country again.”

She shrugged. “It’s not Mossad I’m worried about as much as Rasin. Those fake soldiers must have been sent by him. His penetration of my organization extends even deeper than I thought.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He found me through you.”

“Then you’ve got a double-edged problem: Mossad and Rasin. That makes them my problem, too.”

“Yes, but the chaos in the square will take time to sort out. That will give us the hours we need.”

“You maybe, but what about me? If that one-armed man didn’t recognize me on sight, it won’t take him long to pull my face out of an Identikit. I’m in lots of files over here. You’ve read most of them, remember?”

“I’ll tell you what you need to know. You’ll have to move fast.”

“Sorry, lady, it’s not that simple. See, this wasn’t part of the deal. The Israelis catch me and my son is fucked….”

“You’ll be out of the country before they start to look.”

“You didn’t let me finish. You just admitted that the penetration of your network goes deeper than you think. How deep? All the way down to Fett, you think? You did say they found you through me. Think about it. What if Fett was working for Rasin? What if he set this whole thing up just to flush you out for the man himself?”

She looked at him, didn’t protest.

“Then it would be Rasin holding my son’s life, not you.”

She thought quickly. “Fett still has the boy. I know where. I’ll make arrangements. He’ll be safe. I promise.”

“And that’s supposed to mean something to me? If you don’t have the kid, I’ve got no reason to do business with you.”

“Except you know that even if you’re right I’m the only one who can help you get him back. I’ve learned to trust no one, just as you have. Fett doesn’t know I’ve kept tabs on his movements. I can get the boy away from him. You must believe that.”

“I do believe you’ll try, but that’s not worth much with that pair of murderous women running around, possibly working for Rasin. So here’s how we’re going to play it. I’m gonna send a message to an old friend of mine back in the States, briefing him on what’s gone down. If anything happens to me, and the boy doesn’t end up back in Reading, he’ll come after you, all of you. That’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but I’d wish it on the kidnappers of children.”

“He’s that good?”

“Lady, he makes me look like a green recruit.”

She nodded, forming fresh thoughts even then. “Would he have risked everything to save the one-armed man just as you did?”

“Would’ve used less bullets to get it done, too.”

“It was a stupid move, you know. You could have been killed. What of your son then?”

“Frankly, it didn’t cross my mind. There was a man out there who was about to get butchered. In the context of the moment, that was all that mattered.”

“I’ve heard that about you,” she commented reflectively. “But to see it, to see you …”

“Save the praise. It’s what I am, what I do. Hell, you’re the one who had to have me working on this with you. You know my philosophy. Saving an individual life is as important to me as saving a million.”

“I know that. What I don’t know is why.”

Blaine started to smile, then stopped. “Matt asked a lot of the same questions yesterday. I didn’t tell him the whole truth about what his daddy did in the war. I gave him the standard Phoenix Project story and conveniently left out the fact that plenty of the people we killed didn’t deserve to die. Just innocent victims who happened to be in the wrong place when our bombs went off or our assassination squads hit. What did we care? Our philosophy was win at any cost, and if the whole war had been fought that way we might have won it. I got caught up in it but I wasn’t there all that long, and when I came out I swore I’d never take another innocent life again.” Blaine’s eyes became cold. “Which is why I’ll work with you but you’ll never get my respect. You broke a cardinal rule when you nabbed the boy, you broke the only rule.”

She leaned forward abruptly in her chair. “Would you like to hear about point of view, Mr. Blaine McCracken, about perspective? Before the ’73 war I lived in one of the finest houses in the West Bank. My father was a businessman and local leader. We had nothing against the Israelis. We co-existed peacefully without incident. Even when the war came, we did not take sides. My brothers rotated constant shifts to bring the Israeli soldiers nearest us additional water and fruit.

“But when victory came, more soldiers, or maybe they were the same ones my brothers had brought food to, came to our house with an order from the government to seize our property. We were thrust out into the streets, first to a tent in what had become the occupied zone. From the tent we could look out and see the grand house where we had tried to live in harmony with our neighbors.”

“So you hate the Israelis for what they did. Is that what your crusade has been all about?”

“At first, I suppose, it was. I left my family at eighteen and went into Lebanon, to one of the terrorist training camps. I was filled not so much with hate as a desperate desire to act, against what I did not know. I guess my original aim was violence, but that changed. You see my father was still a politician, a diplomat. He still had Israeli contacts and he did his best in those early years to negotiate on behalf of the vast displaced peoples. Factions resulted. The militants saw him as a collaborator. He was beaten almost to death and forced to flee. And you know what the worst of it was? It was my brothers who turned him in….”

McCracken scowled in disgust.

“You assumed I hate the Israelis, Blaine McCracken. Perhaps I do. But I hate the Palestinians for the same reason. These past years of bloodshed in the occupied zones have only reinforced my hatred of the entire system, along with the response of others to it. Guns are not the answer; that much has been shown already. Peace can be achieved only from the inside out, organizing the Arab voice within Israel into an assertive, powerful one in a way that makes Jewish citizens understand and accept us without resenting us. The radicals accuse me of choosing means that will take too long to achieve anything. But the violence has raged for two thousand years and where has that gotten us?

“I have the skills of a terrorist, yes, but I vowed never to use them except in defense of my own life, for otherwise I would be reduced to the level I hated the most.”

“But something changed your mind. You’ve decided to go after Hassani with those very skills you denounced.”

She looked at him more closely. “I had no choice in any of the actions I authorized. We made overtures toward you a month ago. When you resisted our contacts, I turned to Fett, who discovered the existence of your son through an informant in Dejourner’s network.”

“Fine. So let me get to work so the boy can be returned. Where do I start my search for Rasin?”

Evira leaned back again and the sunlight caught her dark, vibrant features. She looked suddenly young to him, even innocent, long hair framing a face that in that moment might have been a schoolgirl’s.

“There is a man named Moshe Traymir,” she told him, “a soldier who was part of the Lebanon refugee camp massacres. He was stripped of rank and court-martialed in disgrace, but he became one of Rasin’s bodyguards. My people saw them leaving the country by plane on several occasions. If anyone knows where Rasin can be found, it is Traymir.”

“Where can I find him?”

“He’s taken a most fitting job. He is an animal keeper at the Safari Park in Ramat Gan.”

Colonel Yuri Ben-Neser walked slowly down the Tayelet on his way to Atarim Square. His left shoulder was bandaged and wrapped, and to his dismay the phantom itching intensified with the coming of this fresh wound. It was only ten hours earlier that his planned taking of Evira had ended in disaster. Ben-Neser had responded as the soldier in him dictated. From the hospital, he had reported everything, confessed everything, through proper channels. Disgrace was certain now, perhaps even imprisonment. Yet that prospect did not weigh as heavily on the colonel as the fate of his team did. Six had died in the square and a seventh was not expected to live through the night.

Atarim Square contains a cluster of open-air cafes, restaurants, and snack bars, each featuring a different menu, design, and atmosphere. Lying between the Carlton and Mariah hotels just above the shores of the Mediterranean, it is normally reached by way of the HaYarkon Street. But Ben-Neser came by way of the Tayelet’s long stretch of asphalt promenade because the sounds of the sea just below calmed him. Compared to its vastness and power, he was nothing, and what had happened in Jaffa today was also nothing.

Mossad, of course, thought otherwise. The founder of Mossad had been named Isser, and since then all of his successors had taken the same name. Unlike their counterparts in other intelligence services, heads of Mossad took a direct interest and involvement in the affairs of their organization. It was not a political or bureaucratic appointment. They were all field men first and brought that perspective to the job. Ben-Neser hoped that would work for him. That was his only hope.

He found Isser waiting for him just as planned, in Atarim Square beneath the blue-canopied table in the largest of cafes. It was not isolated, but the tables immediately around it were unoccupied. Isser was sipping what could have been either a weak drink or club soda. As he approached, Ben-Neser felt his heart quicken and breath become short.

Isser was a short, barrel-chested man with menacing blue eyes. His hair was strangely thick on the sides but thinning on top. His bulging forearms rested atop the table, a manila folder pinned beneath one. He did not acknowledge Ben-Neser’s approach until the one-armed man was right before him.

“Sit down, Yuri.”

Ben-Neser did so stiffly. Every speech he had rehearsed fluttered out of his mind, and he simply gulped down some air.

“You are probably wondering why I asked to meet with you personally.”

Ben-Neser gulped more air.

“There will be no inquiry on this, Yuri, no formal hearing. It must remain between just you and me. Is that clear?”

Ben-Neser nodded. He felt a small hope rising in him.

“I have read the report on this afternoon’s affair. I will not dwell on what you have done. You understand the impropriety of your actions, as well as the ramifications. But there are other matters involved here that are more pressing now.”

Ben-Neser eyed the head of Mossad as he slid an eight-by-ten photograph from the manila folder that had been beneath his forearm.

“Is this the man who saved your life, the one your men had spotted with Evira previous to that?”

Ben-Neser focused in the dim light on the half-smiling bearded face and recognized it instantly.

“Yes, but how did you—”

“This man was identified entering the country earlier today on an El Al jet out of London. He is a former American operative who in years past worked extremely closely with us on a number of affairs.”

“Former?”

“Details unimportant at this time. His name is at the bottom of the photograph.”

Ben-Neser scanned down and read it aloud. “Blaine McCracken …”

“You sound as if you know him, Yuri.”

“I throught I recognized him. Yes, I should have remembered immediately. I worked with him in ’73. I was attached to his unit for a stretch of the Yom Kippur War.”

“Yes,” Isser droned ironically, “he is a hero to our country in every sense of the word.”

“Then what was he doing in the company of the most wanted Arab operative at large in Israel?”

“Interesting question.”

“You didn’t dwell on his past. Is it possible that he’s turned?”

“You worked with him, Yuri. What do you think?”

“I worked with him, Isser. I don’t know him. I remember him being single-minded, ruthless, accustomed to getting what he wants. If he was meeting with Evira, he had his reasons.”

“An obvious conclusion,” Isser commented, easing his drink to the side. The limes in the glass were starting to sink past the melting ice toward the bottom. “Expand on it.”

“I … can’t. There’s too much I don’t know.”

“Let me help you, then. What were your conclusions about the ‘soldiers’ your men encountered in the square.”

“Imposters there to protect Evira, perhaps dispatched when our presence was betrayed.”

“They were all Israelis, Yuri,” Isser said flatly. “All dismissed or suspended for some breech of discipline, outcasts perhaps, but Israelis nonetheless.”

“What? This is madness! Israelis killing Israelis? It makes no sense.”

“Let us take it a step further. If they did belong to Evira, why would Blaine McCracken, the man she was meeting with, risk his life to save you during the battle?”

“But if they weren’t Evira’s, then who were they?”

“That is the crux of our quandary, Colonel.”

“My God, they must have been sent by someone else to take care of Evira in a much cruder way than we had planned. But who, Isser, who?”

“Someone with access to such men, Yuri. Someone in our own government. A shadow army, a shadow movement, who for some reason made it their business to go after Evira. We cannot afford to have this possibility spread any farther than it has already.” Isser’s voice hardened as the bands of muscle through his forearms seemed to throb. “That makes you a liability to us, a liability we cannot permit anyone else to gain access to before we have sorted this out. I am forced to reassign you, Colonel, out of necessity as much as punishment….”

And as Isser continued Ben-Neser found himself wishing Blaine McCracken hadn’t bothered to save him in the first place.

Thursday night had given way to the early hours of Friday morning when Moshe Traymir came on duty at the Safari Park and Zoological Center in the Ramat Gan sector of Tel Aviv. His apartment was only a few blocks from the zoo and, as on most nights, he was slightly drunk when he arrived. Drinking was how he coped with his disgrace in the wake of the Beirut massacres. Traymir sat through the token trials and seethed. Not that he wasn’t guilty; he was. But he and the others were scapegoats, and there wasn’t anything they could do or say about it. Traymir had kept his mouth shut and been spared imprisonment as a result. This alternative seemed only the slightly better of two evils, until he was approached and recruited by a man with need of services Traymir was well versed in providing.

As usual, his steps toward the front entrance of the park were lumbering and labored. It was strange for a man who hated animals to be working at Tel Aviv’s Zoological Center, but the hours suited him well. The hard muscle of his soldier days had been replaced by fat over his large, big-boned frame. His heavy beard was grubby and untrimmed. He seldom bathed. Traymir cared about none of this. He cared only about doing whatever was necessary to rid Israel of the Arabs who were destroying her.

Traymir whistled softly to himself as he started his rounds. The Zoological Center was unique for the many hundreds of animals in dozens of species which roamed free about the grounds, forming territories and respecting those of others. Traymir hated them all because all of them appeared to hate him. Many of the animals had got used to the other guards, even formed a kinship with them. But they refused to so much as approach Traymir. Most of the animals were sleeping now, but the long-necked ostriches were still prowling about and he could see a number of zebras munching on the grass under the moon as he passed them. He could never tell whether the rhinos and hippos were sleeping or not, big stupid beasts that they were. Traymir had once tossed stones at a rhino to see how many had to hit it before the beast would bother to move.

He belched and continued drunkenly to follow the sweeping road that cut through the first half of the safari park en route to the more traditional zoo. Despite his drunkenness, he began to sense that something was amiss. It wasn’t so much what he saw, as what he didn’t see. Not a single other guard was making his rounds. They should have been easily visible under the full moon. Strange. In spite himself, he grasped for his walkie-talkie.

“Yo, anybody home?”

Silence.

“This is Traymir. Anyone read me?”

Static.

He was beginning to wonder what was up when one of the security-handler four-door jeeps caught his eye. One of its back doors was partially open. He approached warily.

“Hello?” he called. “Anybody there?”

Traymir had just reached down for the open door’s handle when the sound of footsteps rushing at him forced a turn. His eyes had time only to regard a heavy hand surging forward. There was a burst of pain to his chest and then a numbing over his head as he slumped. He was never sure if he lost total consciousness or not, only that the assailant had shoved him into the backseat. Next he felt a splash and something thick and warm oozed over him, almost making him gag. Through the daze, he heard himself moan. Next he felt the jeep moving and struggled to lift himself from semiconsciousness, but his head ached and his breaths hurt him.

Inside of a minute later, he had come alert enough to realize the huge steel gate mechanically sliding open before them belonged to the high-fenced home of the lions.

“Hey,” Traymir muttered.

But by then the driver had already passed through. The first gate started its slide back across and as soon as it locked home a second gate before them opened. The double gate system assured against the possibility of the lions wandering off when someone drove into their territory. Suddenly Traymir felt scared. The thick ooze coated his clothes and face. He wiped it away and his fingers came away smeared with something that felt and smelled like blood.

“Hey!” Louder.

The driver passed through the second gate and Traymir heard it clang closed behind them. Since the jeep was sometimes used to transport animals, a steel grating separated the front seat from the back, and the door locks were controlled from the front as well.

“Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded, trying to sound brave.

“I think I’d better do the asking, Traymir,” the driver answered, and slid the Jeep to a halt. “It’s your own time we’re wasting. I’m here about Yosef Rasin. I want to know where I can find him.”

Traymir stiffened as bravely as he could manage. As of yet he could see none of the lions, but in the darkness shapes stirred and he thought he heard a soft, rumbling growl.

“You are from the government. I should have known. Go ahead, shoot me. I won’t talk.”

McCracken didn’t show him a gun. “Sorry to disappoint you, Traymir. It really would be easier for you if you told me where I could find Rasin.”

The lions appeared out of nowhere, a half dozen at first with at least that many stalking behind them. They circled the jeep as if it were an animal they had chosen for a kill. Traymir’s eyes darted fearfully from them back at the stone-faced bearded man in the front seat.

“What did you—”

“Toss on you? Deer’s blood, Traymir. I’m told the scent of it drives lions crazy. Really whets their appetite.”

Blaine eased his hand to the power window switch and slid the rear right window down ever so slightly. Immediately the lions’ growls turned to roars. Their faces twisted angrily and a pair of females rose to stick their forepaws toward the cracked window.

“You’ve got a well stocked infirmary here, Traymir. I found your supply of deer’s blood there after I incapacitated your five fellow guards. Feel like talking yet?”

Traymir shrunk away. He bit his lip.

McCracken slid the window down further to allow one of the lionness’s paws to push all the way through.

“No!” Traymir begged, shoulders pressed against the opposite door and window now.

“Funny thing,” Blaine went on. “Nobody’s fed them yet tonight. They’re not in the best of moods. Hate to see what they would do to a man who tasted like a deer.”

“Please, anything! Just ask!” Traymir crimped down in his seat, maneuvering himself as far from the open window as possible.

“You work for Rasin. Yes or no?”

“Yes! Since my court-martial.”

“Your role?”

“Bodyguard and nothing more. When he traveled mostly.”

“Traveled where?”

Traymir hesitated.

McCracken slid down the window enough for a second lionness to stick both her paws through, steady herself with one, and swipe inside the cab with the other, snarling as she did. Meanwhile, a male leaped atop the roof and clawed at the other window with alternating paws. Traymir reeled into the center of his seat, besieged from both sides now.

“Japan!” Traymir screeched at last. “But that was a year ago….”

“Why did he go there?”

“To meet with a man known as the Bujin!” Traymir screamed over the roaring of the lions, arms tucked against himself to make as small a target as possible.

Bujin was Japanese for warrior, and Blaine had heard of the man before. A profiteer, information broker, and arms dealer. A dabbler in many things who had become one of the most pursued men in all of Japan. The Bujin was wanted by government and police authorities along with forces within the Japanese mafia, whom he had apparently dishonored at some point.

“What did Rasin seek the Bujin out for?”

“I don’t know. I swear it. They met in private. I merely drove Rasin there and waited with a team of others outside.”

“Where did they meet?”

And when Traymir hesitated again, the driver’s side rear window was lowered enough to match the one on the passenger side. The female lions were tearing at the remaining glass on the right with both claws and teeth, while the male on the roof was working on the left. Traymir heard both panes crack and watched them being stripped away piece by piece.

“Drive out! Please!”

“Talk!”

“Outside Tokyo!” Traymir screamed at him. “A building in the woods. Well guarded. We never saw the guards but they were there.”

“The address!”

Traymir provided it.

“What else?”

One of the lionnesses had managed to wedge her upper torso inside the cab. Traymir lurched away from her flailing claws and felt those of the male on the other side graze his shoulder.

“Nothing more!”

“What else?”

“Nothing! Do you think I wouldn’t tell you? Please get me out of here!”

Satisfied, Blaine put the jeep into drive and eased it forward slowly enough to allow the lions to extract themselves from the cab. The females scratched at the fender, charging along with him as he slid away, and the male jumped from the roof with a thud. They followed for a time but had given up the chase by the time the jeep reached the double-gated exit route three hundred yards beyond.

“You really have a way with animals, Traymir,” Blaine said to the shrivelled hunk cowering in the backseat.

Chapter 9

The bus heading for South Tehran had been packed all the way from the airport. Evira had boarded early enough to gain a cherished window seat two-thirds of the way back. The old man who had grabbed the seat next to her had drifted quickly off to sleep and been snoring for most of the journey.

Naziabad had once been a factory district that had now evolved into a slum for Tehran’s poor and forgotten. The outcasts in a city that had become outcast itself, first during the war with Iraq, and now even more so as Iran paid the price for a war that had drained the economy dry. Buildings crumbled and were looted. Few windows remained whole and few families remained in their own homes. Men lived alone or in small groups, sleeping in doorways. The air smelled of crumbling brick and dust, but even this was welcome after the stifling bus ride from just outside Mehrabad Airport where Evira had landed only two hours before.

For her, travel within the Arab countries was not a problem. Over the years she had built up a string of identities and passports which listed her as a citizen of each, thus permitting effortless passage between them. After parting with McCracken, she had made her way to Cairo and boarded an Iran Air jet bound for Tehran early Friday morning.

Evira was breathing hard when the bus came to its last stop in Naziabad. She did not fancy herself a killer but nonetheless was fully committed to assassinating General Amir Hassani. Joined together at last against Israel, the militants he had rallied around him represented a force that could destabilize the entire region beyond repair.

Hassani himself was an enigma. A Revolutionary Guardsman who rose to general in the last months of the war, he vanished during the cease-fire and was not heard from through much of the peace talks. He reappeared only after Khomeini’s death when the Revolutionary Guard summoned him from exile following the failed attempts by several of the Ayahtolla’s successors to re-unify the country. His stated commitment to rebuild Iran started not surprisingly with the military at the sacrifice of the lower classes. Beyond the military, he wooed the rich and powerful and attempted to solidify his own power by appealing to the mullahs as well.

But Hassani’s ambitions stretched far beyond Iran. His goal was the unification of Arab radicals all over the Mideast for the ultimate destruction of Israel. And in spite of this he was still only the second most dangerous man in the world. McCracken would stop the first while Evira put an end to Hassani’s reign. She hated herself for what she had done to force McCracken to help her, yet even now could see no other alternative.

Her thoughts rekindled memories of her own family. Since setting forth on the life she saw as her destiny, she had not once seen her brothers. The one in his twenties had become a guerrilla fighter in Lebanon. Of the two still in their teens, one had been killed by Israeli soldiers during the uprisings in the occupied zone. Of the other, she knew nothing. Often she had been tempted to venture into the West Bank and seek out the remnants of her family, but with so heavy a presence of soldiers, the risks were too great. If the Israelis had managed to pin down her background, all her family members would be under constant watch on the chance she would someday show her face in the area. So she stayed on the move and took up residence under their very noses, mixing with their people, wishing that they would see that they were more alike than different, as she did.

Help for her in Tehran would come from the growing Iranian underground, made up of the thousands who had become fed up with Khomeini even before the close of the war. But Hassani presented them with an even clearer symbol to rally against. His policies had forced thousands upon thousands into a life in the streets, made beggars by the priorities the general had set for the country. Unorganized, the disenchanted lingered in the murkiness of fear and discontent beneath the shadow of Hassani’s murderous and power-crazed Revolutionary Guardsmen.

Evira had been able to place an agent within one of the burgeoning underground cells and contact had been initiated on several occasions. They had agreed to help her get close to Hassani and offered to aid her in any way they could. Evira relayed the message that a weapon would be required. As for an escape route, well, she was not unrealistic in appraising the likelihood of this for herself.

Though it was midday, the streets of Tehran’s Naziabad district were virtually deserted. Where shops, restaurants, and stores had once been there were boarded-up windows and chained doors. Sidewalk vendors had disappeared. In the streets there were not even any Revolutionary Guardsmen to be seen, only urchins and beggars foraging among the trash cans and fighting one another for scraps of food. All the same, Evira kept her head down to avoid being noticed. She had changed into the garb of a poor Iranian woman at the airport, but close inspection of her features or even the meager belongings she toted in a small satchel could reveal the ruse.

The building she was heading for was a plastics factory that had only in the past six months been closed down by Hassani. Its size and location made it the perfect place for this particular cell to hold meetings. She ducked down a bordering side street and climbed a steep set of steps to a hidden entrance. As promised, the lock on the door was not fastened all the way and needed only to be yanked on to give way. Evira threw back the hasp and shoved her shoulder against the heavy door. It creaked open and she entered, expecting to be met almost immediately by a member of the cell.

But there was no one. She pushed on warily. In months past this floor had contained offices; the factory itself was contained in the basement. The corridor had already turned dusty and decrepit. Tattered bedrolls lay here and there as testament to the homeless who had never returned to claim them.

Up ahead, a slightly open door grabbed her eye. Still, she heard and saw no one. Something was wrong. If the cell members were present, surely they would have already announced themselves.

Just outside the door, a flood of cold fear coursed through her. The door squeaked slowly open before her and Evira entered a room dominated by a long wood conference table surrounded by high-backed leather chairs. The next thing she saw was that the chairs were all occupied … by corpses, sitting there with the last bit of life frozen on their faces, many covered with blood.

Evira knew this was the cell that had been waiting to help her. But they hadn’t only been killed, their bodies had been arranged for effect.

For her.

Evira sensed what was coming next even before she heard the rumble of boots. What saved her was desperation and the good fortune to see an old Mauser pistol still holstered around the waist of one of the seated corpses. She lunged and grasped it in the same motion. It was in her hand even as she dove down and to the side. Her eyes caught a pair of doors bursting open at opposite sides of the room to allow a quartet of Hassani’s Revolutionary Guards to charge in with automatic rifles already blasting.

Fortunately, their fire was aimed high toward a figure they had every reason to believe would be standing. The bullets sizzled through the air, ricocheting off wood and walls and striking the already dead figures around the conference table.

Evira’s dive had given her the table for cover and she immediately shoved herself beneath it. The legs and thighs of the guardsmen were visible, worthy targets even if not likely to be fatal, and she fired the ancient Mauser at one figure and then the next. The guards collapsed before they could right their fire. Keeping low, Evira darted out from beneath the table and aimed her pistol at their writhing frames. Only a pair remained conscious, and these she killed quickly on her way toward the same door through which she had entered the room.

She bolted into the corridor and pulled the heavy door closed behind her. She pressed her shoulders tight against the wall and felt a shard of wood explode just over her right shoulder. Another Revolutionary Guardsman was charging from the end of the corridor opposite the door she had used to enter the building. She swung toward that door only to see it crash open and two more guards push through into the corridor. Both routes of exit were cut off for her.

Evira fired a pair of bullets in each direction, leaving her with a single shell in the Mauser and no spare clip. The three on-rushing guardsmen pinned themselves against the walls nearest them, which allowed her to charge across the corridor for another door that had caught her eye.

She saw it was locked and fired her final bullet into the latch. It gave enough for her forward charge to shatter it. The guardsmen picked up the chase again, firing a stream of bullets in her direction.

Evira found herself on a stairway bathed in coal black darkness broken only by the scant light provided by the open door behind her. She plunged down the steps blindly, hands feeling about the wall to keep her bearings. The bottom of the stairs came up fast and she nearly tripped over herself. Her stumble took her against an extension of the same wall and her head banged up against something metallic. Stunned, she maintained the presence of mind to realize it was a control box and quickly had it open.

Above her, the three guards were following in her wake. Her only chance was to distract them, and the control box held the means. Evira pried it open and slid the switches on the right side into the on position, and then did the same with the switches on the left. Immediately the overhead fluorescent lights struggled to catch and a whining whirl signalled that the processing machines were coming back to life. The whine gave way to an almost deafening screech. Everywhere on the floor before her huge machines performed their tasks with no materials to process, screeching as if to protest that fact. The resulting chaos was hers to take the best advantage of as she could. She rushed from the junction station to the largest machine she could find, intending to keep using it and the others for cover until she could find an alternate route out.

A bullet chimed above her head as she neared the huge machine that pressed unfinished plastic into the desired width. It was a gear-driven monstrosity with a tread that led to a pair of huge, narrowly spaced rubber rollers running in tandem toward each other to allow the plastic to slide through. Beyond this was a rolling machine that accepted the plastic sheeting and twisted it up into rolls ready for shipping. The other machines were almost as loud but not nearly as impressive, nor were they large enough to use for concealment.

The three guards fanned out, cutting off possible angles of escape. The strategy, she realized, meant she now had a single man to deal with three times instead of three men. Her new advantage was further helped by the noise that buried all possible communication among her pursuers. Evira couldn’t reach any of the possible exit routes yet, but with all the guards eliminated by the skills she would now be able to utilize, she would have her choice of doors.

Having crawled to the back edge of the rolling machine, Evira reached up for a rounded wooden shaft. Closer inspection revealed that it had a hook at the top for hoisting the rolled plastic up for stacking. The edge was not only sharpened, but also could be manipulated by a mechanism connected to it at the handle, much like a pincer apparatus. Apply pressure to a simple hand grip and the pincer-like hook snapped closed around the roll of plastic. Evira drew the instrument to her and edged on.

Ten feet away a Revolutionary Guardsman moved slowly forward in the aisle on the other side of the huge machines. If she was fortunate, he would not think to lean over and glance beneath the apparatus where he would certainly see her. Evira eased into a turn to start back toward the rolling machine again. She moved parallel to the guard, matching his pace as they approached each other. Her timing would have to be perfect. She had the pincer apparatus, yes, but the guard had something much more comforting — a machine gun. She must both disable him and get his gun.

Evira brought the pincer rod up close to her just as the guard reached the other side of the churning rolling machine. The moving tread slid in and between the powerful rollers, which ground in protest as rubber squeezed against rubber. Evira stayed low until the guard had just moved beyond her in the other aisle. Then she sprang.

The guard picked out her shape at the last instant, too late to stop her from jabbing the pincers against his throat and working the apparatus at the bottom of the shaft to perfection. The powerful tongs, sharp enough to grip tough plastic, dug part way into the flesh on the sides of his throat. His scream almost rose above the awful din of the machines, and he dropped his rifle as his hands flailed upward toward his punctured neck.

Before the guard knew what was happening, Evira jerked down on the pincers, and he found himself on the moving tread, only feet from the rollers. With the man’s head almost to the rollers, Evira leaned over to grab his rifle. She grasped the welcome steel only to find it attached to his shoulder by a strap. She tried to gain the leverage required to pull it free, but the motion exposed her to one of his fellows who had been attracted by the commotion.

His bullets grazed Evira’s side. Her own scream was lost in the final one gurgling from the guardsman as the bones of his face and neck were crushed in the rolling mechanism, jamming it. Evira wasn’t sure how bad her wound was, but it wasn’t bad enough to stop her from realizing she needed a weapon desperately.

Some thick shards of plastic lay on the floor beneath her, and she wedged them in her belt before lunging for the dead guardsman’s rifle, which was resting outside of the rolling machine. One of the remaining guardsmen was spewing fire from atop the pressing machine ten feet before her. The dead man’s gun was jammed in the pressing apparatus, but Evira was able to twist the barrel around and locate the trigger. A bullet grazed her collarbone, and she wailed in agony but managed to fire blindly forward. The guard’s hands clutched for his midsection and he keeled over to the floor.

Evira ducked low and slammed her shoulders against the rolling machine. There was no time to celebrate, not with the final guard still about. She started to edge forward, the pain in her side and collarbone rocking her, making her pay for every step.

The final guard materialized off her right flank. She registered that his leg was bloody and realized her single spray had wounded him. He fired a burst at her, but she had already lunged down and to the side, thinking she could perhaps reach the stairs ahead of him. But she stumbled over a crate and fell to even more pain and shock. The guardsman charged with his rifle aimed dead at her.

Evira remembered the thin shards of plastic she had wedged in her belt. Without thinking further, she drew one out and hurled it as he skidded to a halt to steady his aim. A scream curdled her ears and she saw that he was groping desperately for the shard of plastic that had lodged in his left eye.

Seizing the advantage, Evira regained her feet and rushed into him with a force that spun both of them around against the front of the pressing machine. The man forgot his pain long enough to grasp her at the shoulders and slam her backward against the steel. Her insides shook as he bent her over the tread. She saw the shard of plastic yanked from his dead eye was still in his hand. He swiped at her and narrowly missed her throat when Evira twisted. He swiped again and she deflected the blow with her functioning arm, sending further agony through her wounded side and collarbone.

The force of his momentum bent her further over the tread. Her feet lost touch with the floor, and the man’s eyes glistened as he pursued the most obvious strategy available to him. All he had to do was keep her going, and the pressing machine would swallow her up. He shoved harder and Evira felt her back and shoulders begin their slide to a bloody end.

Evira managed to grasp the safety rails that rose slightly over the tread and stop her progress. But by then the guard was standing over her, straddling the apparatus with a foot poised on each of the rails. He yanked a pistol from his belt and snarled, his own back less than a foot from the monstrous rollers that pressed plastic into programmed widths and sent it spewing out the other side.

Evira could see the trigger starting to give when a piece of corrugated piping from the ceiling directly above him gave way and smashed him hard in the chest. The angle of the blow forced him backward. He recovered his bearings, but not before the ever-churning rollers caught him by the holster and began to reel him in. The pistol jumped from his hands as his arms flailed to grasp something to pull him out, but there was nothing to find. His screams overwhelmed the factory’s sounds and Evira thought she heard bones crunching as the rest of his frame vanished into the mechanism.

All command of her senses and motor functions was lost as Evira sank dazedly to the floor. All she would remember later was the impossible sight of a small shape climbing down from the rafters, from the same area as the corrugated pipe that had miraculously smashed into the final guardsman. And then the shape was hovering over her, passing in and out of her blurred vision.

A boy! It was a boy!

“Don’t worry,” came his voice as he struggled for a grip on her. “I’ll get you out of here before more of them come.”

Chapter 10

“Are you sure this is the place?”

McCracken bolted upright abruptly at the driver’s question. He realized he must have been dozing the last stretch of the way from the airport and gazed at the computerized meter which listed the fee due in both yen and dollars in bright LED figures.

“Planning to retire early?” Blaine asked in English.

“This the place?” the driver responded, anxious to be gone.

Blaine gazed out the open window through the postdawn light, not sure of the answer himself. The address was thirty miles outside Tokyo in the Japanese countryside. A dirt road had taken them the final stretch of the way and at its end stood a bridge rising over a small rushing brook. They were in a placid forest, full of blooming flowers and trees, the only evidence of man being the perfect landscaping and a dark-stained wood building across the bridge. It was constructed against a sloping hillside, accessible only by a set of steep stone steps and rimmed everywhere by plush, full trees that swayed faintly in the breeze. Blaine looked back toward the driver, wondering in that instant whether Traymir had misled him, whether—

His thoughts veered suddenly. Just as suddenly, his hand swept for the door latch.

“This will do fine,” he told the driver, and fumbled amidst his wad of cash for the amount rung up on the meter.

He stepped away from the car and the driver backed fast down the dirt road. Bujin did mean warrior and the man who had taken that name was obviously taking it to heart. The building before him, Blaine realized, was a martial arts training hall, or dojo. He knew it by feeling more than sight, and he felt immediately at home.

He had come to Japan after his tour in Israel was over with Vietnam still weighing heavily on his mind. The Cong had taught him much about what Johnny Wareagle still referred to as the hellfire, not the least of which was how inadequately prepared American soldiers were to go up against Oriental prowess and philosophy. It had been that lack of understanding, McCracken felt, that had cost the U.S. the war and plenty of men their lives. The true warrior learns from his enemies, and he came to Japan to sample a number of arts. Eventually he settled on a school of Dai-Ito Ryu Ju-Jitsu that included study of the wooden sword in addition to traditional self-defense forms. His sensei was named Yamagita Hiroshi, a descendant of a long line of actual samurai and top instructor for the Japanese police and military. Blaine trained day and night, working his mind as hard as his body, until he began to grasp what had made his foe in Vietnam so difficult. His goal was to make himself proficient in such skills, but what he learned, finally, was just how much he would never know. He had stayed in touch with Hiroshi for years afterward until the master fell into disfavor with the Japanese government and disappeared.

Blaine approached the wooden bridge slowly, making sure his hands were always in plain view. He stole one last glance at the cab before it passed out of sight, and turned back to find a dark figure facing him from the center of the bridge. The figure was dressed in the black robe and hakama traditional to the samurai warrior. Angled across his left hip was the handle of a razor-sharp long sword or katana, its black scabbard comfortably wedged through the belt tied within his robes. His right hand rested on the sword’s equally black handle.

There was a soft shuffling behind him and Blaine swung around to find another samurai, hands within easy reach of the sword stretching across his left hip. Before Blaine could move or speak, another two swordsmen closed in on him from either side. Facing modern day samurai presented him with a situation even he would never be able to talk himself out of under the circumstances. He was trespassing, an uninvited guest on another’s land, and that marked a violation of the sacred code of honor. His best chance of survival was to do precisely as he was instructed.

The samurai on the bridge beckoned him on and McCracken started forward with the other swordsmen maintaining a sword’s distance away. The bridge creaked as he moved across it with the lead samurai waiting on the other side ready to lead him up the stone steps. A single sliding door stood at the top, and the lead samurai opened it to reveal a small foyer with yet another set of doors just ahead, this time of the paper variety called shoji. His escort parted these doors gracefully as well, glad to see McCracken had knelt to remove his shoes. Bowing slightly, he bade Blaine to enter. Blaine returned the gesture and passed through, feeling more than hearing the shoji doors close behind him.

He found himself in a large room with a ceiling full of regularly placed skylights arranged three to a row. Through them the sight was breathtaking, the sky seeming a reach away from the trees scratching at the glass. But Blaine was concerned more with a figure kneeling before a wall highlighted by a hand-etched scroll bearing the Japanese calligraphy for Bujin. Within easy reach by the figure’s side rested a katana in its scabbard.

The kneeling figure seemed to read his thoughts and turned an open hand behind him. McCracken followed the gesture toward another katana that had been placed in the corner of the straw tatami mat diagonally across from the kneeling figure’s position. Grasping the unspoken instruction, Blaine slid across the tatami and bowed toward kamiza, the seat of honor his host was facing. Then he eased himself on his knees toward the second sword. Honor was everything here. To disgrace himself in any way was to assure his own death. He had not been searched outside, partly because the samurai would have sensed he was weaponless and partly because his honor was not to be violated either. If he dared reach now for a weapon other than the long sword by his side, he’d be dead before he touched it. He had to play along in the hope the Bujin would at least give him a chance to explain himself under interrogation.

If that was not to be the case, the noble thing for the Bujin to do under the circumstances would be to offer Blaine a sword to fight with in combat against him. The Bujin would realize merely from the way Blaine moved that he had had some training. But since that training was pitifully inadequate next to that of such a master, Blaine would need to rely on subterfuge to survive. One opening and one quick lunge would be all it would take and likely all he could hope to get.

At last the Bujin’s body began to turn. Blaine tensed, thinking of his sword and how fast he could grab and draw it if it came to that.

But the Bujin was smiling. Then he was chuckling, soon laughing.

“You are too ugly a man to kill before breakfast, Fudo-san,” the black robed figure said as he slid himself forward across the tatami until the sun blazed on his face.

It was Yamagita Hiroshi.

“You’re the Bujin!” Blaine exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, Fudo-san,” Hiroshi returned in perfect English. “Strange our paths should cross this way.”

“Even stranger since no one’s heard from you in over a decade now.”

“No one’s heard from Hiroshi because Hiroshi ceased to exist.”

“Care to tell me why?”

“In time, Fudo-san, in time. For now your appearance tells me you need sake and a warm bed. You should have felt it was I as soon as you saw me. Fatigue can do that to a man.”

Hiroshi rose and McCracken joined him on foot. The two men met in the center of the mat and shook hands warmly. The sensei regarded his former pupil with a knowing grin.

“You are still Fudo-san, as stubborn and unwilling to change as ever. And you have become stronger in the years since our parting. I can feel that strength.”

“I’m forty now, sensei. What you feel are my bones calcifying.”

Hiroshi laughed again. “Dangle a bit of yarn before an old sleeping cat and see how fast he remembers his lessons.”

“Do you know why I’ve come?” McCracken asked him.

“I have my suspicions. Let us discuss matters over that sake I promised you. Come.”

They walked side by side through another set of shoji doors. McCracken recalled that the original dojo where he had trained with Hiroshi had looked much the same, simple and plain, the way a training hall was meant to. Even then Hiroshi’s school had been closed to the public and only pull from officials within the Japanese government won Blaine an interview. Much to his surprise, Hiroshi could recount Blaine’s exploits in Vietnam more clearly than he remembered them himself.

“There is a great warrior God in Japanese folklore,” the master had told him that day. “He was named Fudo and he carried a sword in one hand and a rope in the other, the tools he used to first subdue evil and then bind it. He would only use his sword to kill when another’s had shed blood already and was about to again. He stood up for the weak and innocent and was feared by all who carried blackness in their hearts. I will call you Fudo-san because you are such a man. I will agree to teach you because you are such a man.”

McCracken’s views on his life and work jibed almost perfectly with the creed of the samurai, and Hiroshi sensed that Blaine was destined for life as a ronin, or masterless samurai. He would be a protector and lone avenger much as the god Fudo had been himself.

But the significance of “Fudo-san” extended to a more subtle level. The word fudo can also mean immovable, and this too was a quality Hiroshi sensed in McCracken from the start. He was not a man prone to change easily, nor would he ever be. The times would pass and McCracken would pass with them, though on his own terms.

They moved down a small narrow corridor into a smaller room lined with more formal tatami mats. Blaine’s nostrils caught the faintly medicinal smell of warming sake and saw the ceramic flasks sitting within a pot of steaming water suspended above an open flame. Hiroshi knelt before them and poured out a pair of cups, handing the first to McCracken.

“We will drink to old times, Fudo-san.”

“And speak of newer ones, Hiroshi. Why did you disappear? What happened? Why did you—”

“Become the Bujin?” Hiroshi completed for him. “The answer is rather long and complicated, tedious, too.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Tradition, Fudo-san, is the curse of our people. It binds us to the past in a way we do not always understand but must accept because it makes us what we are.” He paused long enough to take a healthy sip of his sake. “There was a man, a bully, who made it his business to take money from working people in exchange for not hurting them, their families, or their businesses. The man was backed by a gang, and the few times police were summoned there was no one but the complainant to back up the story, and the complainant conveniently vanished or changed his mind soon after. Such is not unusual in Japan. It wasn’t my business … until this man, this bully, staked a claim in the village where I had been raised. The elders came to me. I had no choice but to intercede.

“I tried to reason with the man. I went alone, with honor. He laughed in my face, chastised my old ways, and had his men show their guns. He told me I would die if I ever showed my face to him again. He dishonored me, Fudo-san. He left me with no choice, if I had ever really had one. I waited for him one morning in the rice paddy he walked through to reach his office. He walked without fear, for who would dare touch him?” Hiroshi paused again but did not sip any sake. “I touched him. I drew him down into the mud and held him under until he passed out. Then I left him there to drown in the muck like the sewer rat that he was.”

“No one saw you?”

“It didn’t matter. I was bound by the oath I had sworn as an officer in the service of Japan to report my crime. There was an uproar when I did, a public outcry in which some supported my actions and some condemned them. The dead man’s friends vowed vengeance. The government was helpless to support me. I had placed them in an impossible position. So I made the rest easy for all concerned. I disappeared. I became someone else.”

“A ronin, masterless in your own right. Hiring yourself out.”

“To gain money to support the kind of people the man I killed had bullied. It was my way of making up for the disgrace I had committed to maintain honor. Such a dichotomy, so difficult to resolve. I chose a means of escape by which I could live with myself. I began training warriors as they were trained in days lost. Four of them escorted you into my dojo.”

“Oh yeah. Tough hombres.”

“To be sure, Fudo-san. They and dozens of others have trained as men were trained in a time long past. They live and work here in the dojo as uchideshi. Their life is their training.”

“And is your life to be their sensei or to be the Bujin, Hiroshi?”

“It is to be both, and it is their lot to serve me in both respects. A man does what he must to survive and find meaning in his life. Our paths are not much different. I seek to be of service to those who have been turned away at more traditional stations.”

“With one crucial distinction, sensei: I don’t keep time with men like Yosef Rasin — a recent client of yours.”

Hiroshi noticed Blaine hadn’t touched his sake and didn’t press him about it. He nodded. “Just as I thought. I had my suspicions about Rasin from the beginning, but he was most convincing and offered to pay handsomely for a small service on my part.”

“Let me be the judge of how small.”

“He needed a salvage operation conducted. He wanted me to arrange and front it for him so there would be no traces leading back to him or to Israel.”

“And did you agree?”

“No. The risk of exposure would have been too great and it was not something I dabbled in ordinarily. I merely pointed him in the direction of a salvage specialist and reluctantly agreed to act as go-between.”

“What was it that he wanted to salvage?”

“I never desired to find out. It was big, though. The kind of equipment he required was proof of this.”

“And was the salvage completed successfully?”

Hiroshi went back to his sake.

“Sensei?”

“I … don’t know. There was an accident. The salvage vessel exploded at sea. There were no survivors.”

“An accident …”

“I had no reason to suspect anything else.”

“But your feelings told you otherwise. Rasin had the men killed and all evidence of his operation eliminated after he had what he came for.”

Hiroshi nodded very slowly. “He dishonored me, Fudo-san. He betrayed my trust. When he killed those men, I was a party to it. Someday I will have the chance to repay him for that. Meanwhile, I have vowed never to meet with someone again who comes without references.”

“But you let me through.”

Hiroshi smiled. “I saw it was you before giving my men their orders. I wanted to see how you would react to my little game.”

“And were you pleased? We’re talking teacher to student again, sensei.”

Hiroshi’s gaze was noncommittal. “You have the feeling of a great volcano when it is ready to erupt after years of inactivity.”

“Physically?”

“More mentally, perhaps even spiritually. You have been away from your training for too long. You think instead of feel. Each thought is a risk for the time it takes to complete it.”

“But risk is part of life, and you took one when you agreed to work with Rasin. You risked your honor, Hiroshi. You risked all the good you have tried to do in a single move.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I told you I’m here because Rasin’s got a weapon capable of wiping out the entire Arab world while leaving Israel unscathed? What if I told you all indications point to the fact that that’s what your salvage team pulled out of the sea for him?”

Hiroshi refilled his own sake cup emotionlessly. “And just who is it the ronin McCracken has chosen to work for on this pursuit?”

“Not chosen, been forced. I haven’t told you everything. There’s a boy I recently learned was my son. The Arabs have him.”

“My God …”

“I haven’t got a choice, Hiroshi, any more than you had one when that animal began terrorizing your village. The moderate Arabs want me to stop Rasin and his weapon, while they work toward stopping a mad Iranian from uniting the militant forces against Israel.”

“So complicated.”

“Less so if we can learn what the salvage team pulled out of the sea before Rasin killed them.”

Hiroshi sipped at his sake as McCracken swirled the cooling contents of his cup.

“I know the coordinates of the salvage. That is all.”

“Then give them to me, sensei, and I’ll be on my way and out of yours.”

Hiroshi shook his head. “No, there must be something more I can do. Please let me help. You spoke of your son. I have an army of warriors I can dispatch to—”

“No, sensei. This is one I’ve got to go alone. Believe me, I have to.”

Hiroshi regarded him sternly. “There is a saying in zen, Fudo-san, that a man who tries to shoulder the weight of the world will be crushed by his burden before he can lift it.”

“It’s not the entire world this time, sensei. It’s just my little part of it.”

Chapter 11

Evira’s mind flirted with consciousness, languishing between dreams and reality. She felt the sting of cold liquid at her lips, felt her head being lifted.

“You’ve got to drink this,” a voice told her. “The doctor said so.”

Her eyes had been open but now she found herself able to see. By her side, half-behind her as he eased her head up from the pillow, was a young boy. His age was shrouded in the blurriness of her vision, but eleven or twelve years old seemed a fair estimate. His auburn hair hung shaggily over his forehead and ears, dangling to his shoulders. His eyes of the same color shone wide and bright, trusting in a way that only a child’s can be. His clothes were formed of mere rags; a man’s shirt too big for him and pinned at the back; a pair of pants that might have been burlap sacks, somehow cut and sewn in the shape of trousers. Evira glimpsed splotches of dirt coating his face and turned her eyes back to the water he had placed before her lips. The hand holding the cup was black with grime that turned the water sooty when it rolled over his flesh.

“Where … am I?” Evira managed.

“Safe.”

She felt the last of the drops of water sliding down the corners of her mouth. She was too weak to wipe them. “Who are you?”

“Kourosh,” the boy responded.

Slowly memories began to unfold in her mind, forming themselves in sequence. She remembered resigning herself to death with the last of the Revolutionary Guards standing over her in the plastics factory. She remembered a pipe crashing into him and her savior dropping down from the rafters. She remembered her savior’s face — the boy Kourosh’s face. From there everything became hazy. A man who smelled like alcohol had asked her questions Evira lacked the strength to answer. There had been fresh pain to her wounds and now, as she rested on what seemed to be an ancient mattress placed atop squeezed-together crates, she could feel the well wrapped bandages binding her torn tissue. Beyond that there were only recollections of the boy coming with water, always around her.

Kourosh had backed slightly away and sat himself atop a crate of his own that sagged in the center from his meager weight. His build was surprisingly sturdy, considering the obvious effects of malnutrition. Evira noted most of the color on his face came from the permanently painted grime. He seemed comfortable in his vigil as she glanced over at him.

“My wounds, how bad are they?”

“The doctor said if you could speak within two days, you’d live. It’s been barely one.”

“I’m remembering now. The doctor, he was a young man, very young.”

Kourosh smiled fully. He had a complete set of teeth, though the front ones were yellowed.

“Oh, he’s not really a doctor. We just call him that since he was studying to be one when he was a student.”

“We?”

“The people,” Kourosh told her.

“You’re with the underground,” Evira said.

“And proud of it.”

She tried to stir, fresh thoughts racing through her. “Who else knows I’m here?”

“No one. Just the doctor and he won’t talk.” Kourosh thrust a thumb back at himself. “He owes me.”

At last Evira gazed about her. They were in a single room which featured a partially boarded-up window not far from her perch. The room had only the assorted crates and a single battered chair for furniture. A large collection of American comic books was gathered on the floor with several selections pinned to the wall as a kind of wallpaper.

“You brought me here? By yourself?”

“We’re not that far from the factory. Just a few blocks.”

“You live here.”

“I live here,” the boy said, and lowered his face. Then it brightened. “It’s my home, better than lots have got, too.”

“You were in the factory when the soldiers came.”

Kourosh nodded.

“You saw what happened before I arrived?”

Another nod, then a sigh. “They sent me on an errand. I always come and go through the basement because there’s less chance of being seen. I had just come back when I heard the shooting. I could tell they weren’t our guns. I know the sounds.”

“But you didn’t run. You stayed.”

“Because I knew you were coming. I wanted to warn you, but I had to hide when more of the soldiers came. I hid in the basement, in the rafters.”

“Lucky for me …”

Kourosh smiled at her, and in that moment Evira saw him as the boy he should have been but in this world was not allowed to be. He was a creature of a society that no longer knew or understood youth and so refused to permit it.

“You should rest,” he told her.

“I’ve rested enough.”

“You must get your strength back.”

“Can you bring the others to me?”

Kourosh shrugged his small and weary shoulders. “There are no others.”

“But the underground …”

“The ones I know — rounded up, gone, or dead back at the factory.”

“The doctor?”

“I looked for him this morning. He’s gone too.”

Damn, Evira thought, I’m alone here….

“I know why you came,” Kourosh said suddenly. “You came to kill the animal Hassani and the underground was going to help you.”

Evira forced herself part way up through the pain.

“You don’t need them,” the boy continued. “I can help you. I know the city and I know where you can find him.”

“Where?”

“He’s moved into the royal palace that the Shah built in Niavarin. I can get you in there. I’ve got a way. When you’re ready.”

She found her shoulders slumping back to the tattered mattress in spite of her efforts to keep them upright. “That might be quite awhile.”

“You’re strong. I saw what you did in the factory basement. A few more days, that’s all.”

“With you taking care of me, I don’t doubt it.”

“I know how to change your bandages. The doctor, he showed me. I already changed them once while you were asleep.”

“Well,” she said, “if we’re going to be partners I’d better know more about you than your name.”

Evira forgot her pain while she listened to his story. Kourosh was an orphan, as she suspected. He had been born nearly twelve years before. There had been little good about his life at the start and things got rapidly worse. The war with Iraq took his father by conscription and returned him in a box. With no means of support, his mother placed seven-year-old Kourosh in a school supported by the Revolutionary Council, and it was from there just over two years later that he too was conscripted into the army.

With soldiers falling to Iraq at a frightening clip, the decision was made to utilize children on the front lines. Initially they were given some training and armed. But as armaments began to grow scarce, they were simply sent with clubs and sticks into Iraqi strongholds or used to clear mine fields. Each life lost by a boy meant one kept by a man who could thus continue fighting for the true Islamic destiny. The Revolutionary Council needed no further justifications because no one was pressing for any.

Kourosh was meant to die in one of the attack waves. They trimmed his hair short and dressed him like a soldier. Then he and the others were packed into trucks and transported west on a rain-swept day. Several of the trucks ran off the muddy roads and the boys were sent off to sit amongst the trees while the still-functional trucks were used to drag the others back on to the road. There were soldiers watching them, of course, but they couldn’t watch everybody. When the children were herded over to help push one of the trucks from a ditch, Kourosh escaped into the woods with several other boys.

For a time it was a great adventure. The boys were older than he and they let him tag along until they reached Tehran, where they were determined to become criminals and rob women of their money and groceries. Kourosh couldn’t accept that. Each woman they accosted reminded him of his mother, vague as she was in his memory, and he strayed from the others and eventually went out on his own. It had been years since he had been home, but he remembered his address and returned to it.

His mother wasn’t there. No one knew where she was.

Kourosh returned to the streets, and the streets became his only parents. He stole what he had to in order to eat. He found the empty room to which he later brought Evira and moved in. From spaces between the boards over his window he could see the plastics factory and thus observe who came and went there. Many a night he heard the faint rush of footsteps heading toward it and came to recognize the regulars who frequented the building. He judged they were counterrevolutionaries drawn from frustrated students, the heroes of the poor, and wished he were old enough to join them. In his imagination they became his friends and companions, the only ones he had.

One night, he noticed that a guard was lingering around the plastics building. When the guardsman departed, Kourosh didn’t hesitate at all. He rushed from his room across the street and through the door he had seen entered so many times. Inside he found the students in a large conference room. At first they regarded his rantings as a playful nuisance, but Kourosh got enough of their attention to convince them a raid was coming. All underground movements learn to move quickly and cover their tracks, and by the time the raid occurred less than an hour later all evidence of their presence had been erased. As a result, the boy became a fixture in their midst, asking nothing in return, though a few of the students kept him as clean as they could, kept him well fed, and endeavored to teach him English, using the comic books, he explained, as tools.

“You really think you can get me into the palace when Hassani is there?” she asked him when he was finished.

“I told you I could, didn’t I?”

“Then why don’t you tell me how. Let’s start with a map.”

The four old men sat at the shaded table in the backyard of the spacious home in the city of Hertzelia, the posh suburb a half hour outside of Tel Aviv. The two directly across from one another were huddled in deep concentration over a checkerboard with nearly the same number of black pieces remaining as red. The paler of the two, a gaunt man with three days stubble upon his cheeks, jumped a black with his red.

“King me!” he demanded triumphantly.

His slightly older opponent, a short pudgy man with only the remnants of his hair, humphed in response and slammed a captured red back into the game.

“Damn you, Abraham. You play meshuge.”

“Go ahead, damn me, Isaac. Damn me all you want. This time I’m winning.”

“The two of you should be ashamed of yourselves, whining on the sabbath,” chastised a man with a glass eye that refused to look in the same direction as his real one. “I’ve got winners.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“What you’ve got is hemorrhoids, Saul,” Isaac told him.

“Yes, from sitting in the same place too long watching the two of you.”

The fourth man’s reaction to all this was to blow his monstrous nose into a handkerchief.

“Do you have to do that in front of all of us, Joshua?” Abraham wanted to know.

“What, then? I should take a walk in the woods every time I have to blow?”

“No,” Saul said, “you’d scare away all the birds.”

Now it was Joshua who humphed. In point of fact, none of the men were going by the names given them at birth. They had gone by so many different names in their lifetimes, what difference did another make, especially if it was by their own choosing? The four men had taken the names of four kings and warriors. The names fit well with the project they had undertaken.

It was Isaac’s move again and he huddled close enough to the board pieces to lick them before making it. To the four old men, life was very much like a game of checkers. Forget chess with all its complications. Life was most easily endured when reduced to its simplest elements. They had learned that credo forty years before and had continued to practice it ever since.

Joshua considered blowing his nose again, then thought better of it.

“Still no further word from Tehran?” he asked.

“You were expecting maybe a miracle?” Saul answered.

“We shouldn’t have needed a miracle. It was all planned. That woman, what was her name again?”

“Evira.”

“She should have died in Tehran. We were assured there wouldn’t be a problem. What went wrong?”

“How should I know?” asked Isaac, who was growing increasingly impatient with Abraham’s refusal to move. His hand kept sneaking out only to jump back before committing himself. “We made sure word of her coming was leaked to the Revolutionary Guard, but the soldiers dispatched were killed, all of them, and she disappeared. End of story.”

Abraham laughed humorlessly and at last made his move. “Not if she is still at large.”

“Go ahead,” Isaac blared. “You’re going to repeat the same thing you said this morning. ‘Why don’t we find her and finish the job?’ She’s gone, that’s why. Someone helped her and that someone is still helping her.”

“Not one of ours.”

“Surely not. Perhaps one of nobody’s. It has been known to happen.”

“Not in Tehran it hasn’t.”

“The point,” Saul said, “is that she is probably on the run and thus no longer poses a threat to our plans.”

“Don’t underestimate her,” Isaac urged, watching Abraham contemplate a counter to his latest move. “We know what she went to Tehran to accomplish and we also know we cannot allow her to be successful.”

“She has little time left.”

“She has enough.”

“How many days is it now?” Joshua asked of himself, tucking his hanky into his fist in order to count fingers. “Depends on whether you count today or not….”

“Putz,” Saul muttered. “You can’t remember May fourteenth, Independence Day, after how hard we fought to win it?”

“Eight days,” Joshua said finally. “Counting today.”

“Putz.”

And on the game board Abraham had pounced on Isaac’s apparently ill-conceived move by lodging a double jump and seizing one of his opponent’s kings. “Sometimes, old friend, you make a simple game more complicated than it was meant to be.”

Isaac followed up with no delay at all, triple jumping Abraham and leaving him with a single doomed piece on the board. “Sometimes you make it too simple.”

Yosef Rasin stood on the terrace that overlooked the orange orchards of the kibbutz where he had lived as a child. To him the smells carried on the stiff breeze were more than those of citrus; they were the smells of Israel, the nation he had dedicated his life to. Rasin ran a hand through his blowing curls, noticeably thinner than they once were. He was no longer a young man. Where before dreams seemed to have forever to come true, now even tomorrow seemed too much to wait for.

Not tomorrow anyway. But soon, ever so soon….

Rasin gripped the railing tight with both hands. His grip felt weak. The paunch of his belly felt larger. The Israeli sun seemed daily to sap more of his strength. In this respect his fate was that of his nation. Pleading. Desperate. Running out of time. Interesting how they had aged along parallel lines.

And yet he stood here a prisoner of his own conscience, thanks to the plan he had undertaken. He had come to the kibbutz in the fertile lands en route to the Negev when his enemies began to search for him. These were high stakes they were playing for, and Rasin could afford no chances. The people of his kibbutz thought him a hero. Hiding him was a privilege. They would reveal no information about him and the isolated nature of their kibbutz made it the perfect hiding place. It had not become commercial as so many others had. There was no hotel, outside business, nor any wish for tourist trade. The people here kept to themselves and did not advertise their existence with signs on the highway. Rasin’s flesh crawled at the thought of the commercialism that had beset others.

He took another deep breath. The scents were of many things but mostly they were of home. He gazed out at the orange trees lined in rows beneath him. In his mind they became a vast crowd of people cheering and praising him. He could see them clearly, arms thrusting up and down, chanting his name. Rasin could feel the euphoria. He touched his unshaven face and was glad the people below were not close enough to see how unkempt he was. Involuntarily, he raised his hands from the railing into the air, a gesture for the people to silence themselves. They obliged instantly to heed the command of their hero.

“My friends,” he called out to them, “a great day is upon us, a holy day, for is this not the first time in our long, oppressed history that we have been truly independent from the hate and ugliness that has surrounded us always?”

“YES!”

“And is this not the first time we, the people of Israel, stand together as one and look to our borders without fear? When we can walk the streets, any street, and not worry for our lives or the lives of our children, either now or in the future?”

“YES!”

The applause and cheering became tumultuous. Rasin could feel his ears ringing. He found himself having to scream over it into his imaginary microphone.

“The Arab peoples have been vanquished at last! The Arab peoples have been reduced to the significance of the grains of sand that populate their deserts! Their entire way of life has been reduced to a desert. Was this my choice? Was this something that came easy to me?”

Silence now, hushed and thick.

“No, I tell you, no! I have not committed the deed I have done with a light heart. But I accept the responsibility for it. I accept it as I accept the charge of leadership for this great country I love and cherish. Let us not look to the past for what we have been forced to bury. Let us look to the future for what we can now build in peace.”

The applause thundered over his final words and Rasin raised his hands in triumph, eyes watering, the fulfillment of his greatest dream—

“Yosef …”

— before him.

“Yosef, I’m sorry to bother you.”

The voice from behind him broke Rasin’s trance. Before him the oranges were oranges again. His hands dug back into the railing. He was disappointed.

“You know I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m thinking, Daniel.”

“There are matters that must be addressed, sir. They require your immediate attention.”

Rasin swung abruptly around. “It is Israel that requires my attention, Daniel. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“This is what we must speak about, Yosef. Threats. Complications.”

Rasin’s eyes narrowed into slits of repressed rage. When he spoke Daniel noted his voice was hoarse again.

“You have my attention.”

At first Rasin had tried peacefully to prove his points to the Israeli public, to work within the system to affect the changes he felt were so desperately needed. His militant stands began with the signing of the Camp David accords. Giving back the Sinai was a tragic error, not for strategic reasons so much as for the precedent it set. Once the givebacks began, they never stopped. A Palestinian state was closer than ever to existence on the West Bank that belonged to Israel and only to Israel. Did the present leadership think the Arab rabble would be appeased with that? Did they think it would bring peace? Rasin knew it wouldn’t. For him the issue was a simple one: either the Arab world would survive or Israel would. And he had been blessed with the means to ensure the latter. No, not blessed — chosen. And if not by God, then by whom? Everything had been too neat and clean to be anything but predestined. The weapon was his to employ when and how he saw fit.

The breeze blew his hair and Rasin squinted his eyes into the sun. To the casual observer, he might have looked like a schoolteacher or mundane public official. His face was nothing if not simple, forgettable, and Rasin was glad for that. There was strength in simplicity, and he used it to distill the essence of truth.

The Arab peoples of the Mideast had to be shown the error of their ways. Plain. Simple. Period. He had the means, though it would not be the ends that provided the justification. That came from the past, from the proven brutality of a culture that had been at war since the dawn of its existence. The barbarians of the modern world, full of inbred hate and a death wish. The names they went by — Al-Fatah, Black September, PLO, PLF, the Islamic Jihad — were all fronts formed in an attempt to legitimize their existence. But Rasin saw through the fronts; the issue in his mind was simple. The Arabs hated the Israelis and would destroy them if given the opportunity. The only way to stop them was to find the opportunity first.

And now to use it.

“We have completed our interrogation of the traitor Traymir.”

“And?”

“Your fears have been confirmed. He sent McCracken to Japan, to the Bujin.”

“And what have you done?”

“About Traymir?”

“No, about McCracken.”

“The Bujin spirited him away before we could act.”

“That is hardly a surprise.”

“His next destination is equally obvious. He could do us irreparable harm if he finds …”

“Finds what, Daniel? No trace was left, no evidence. That was made sure of.”

“This is McCracken we are talking about, not an ordinary man. He has skills and resources that defy our comprehension.”

Rasin came forward and calmly tapped Daniel on both shoulders. “Perhaps you forget, my friend, the circumstances of his employ this time. He has no friends, no government resources behind him, and the life of his son is at stake.”

“He has brought down operations single-handedly before. Several times.”

“Then we will deal with him at our convenience. If your information is correct, it should be relatively simple. Relax.”

But Daniel tensed and pulled away.

“Speak your mind, my friend,” Rasin bade him.

“When we learned of his involvement, we should have killed him immediately. I warned you of the consequences of failure.”

Rasin nodded. Daniel was right, of course. The problems had begun with the discovery that Evira had planted an agent high within their midst, an agent who they could only assume had passed on Rasin’s possession of the superweapon before his capture. When word of the woman’s desperate interest in McCracken surfaced, Rasin took the most logical step available to him: Help Evira play out her cards through Fett, let her retain McCracken’s services so his own people might be led to her in the process. Everything would have gone as planned if not for the presence of the one-armed man and his team who had come after Evira in Jaffa. Even allowing for McCracken’s prowess, the unexpected had hurt more than anything.

“Your point is well taken,” Rasin conceded. “Now tell me about the woman.”

“She has vanished.”

“That is the best you can do?”

“She is no longer in the country.” Then, eyeing Rasin closely, he continued, “That could be enough. If she even suspects the truth, if that suspicion takes her to—”

“Enough! She could not possibly suspect the truth, no one could. Do you hear me, Daniel? No one! Every detail of this operation has been thought out to the letter. All we are facing are minor inconveniences. Look at me, Daniel. Look at me!”

Rasin grasped the younger man at the shoulders and held him there tight. “Do you think I like living in this self-imposed exile? Do you know why I speak to the orange groves? Not out of madness, Daniel, but frustration. It pains me so much to be isolated and alone when I am so needed. But that is going to change soon and nothing, no one!, is going to stop it! We are barely a week from the culmination of my operation. I will be a hero. Israel will be mine, to cherish and lead as I was born to.”

Rasin steadied himself, released his grip, and backed slightly off.

“Independence Day, Daniel. May fourteenth. Next Sunday. One week from tomorrow.”

Daniel’s response was one word:

“McCracken.”

“We know where he is going. We will finish him there.”

“And if we fail?”

Rasin squinted his acknowledgement. “Then perhaps the time has come again to use Evira’s plan against her.” His eyes were cold now, showing no hesitation. “Contact the women. Tell them to go to where McCracken’s son is being held. Tell them to kill the boy.”