Eben removed the flash drive from the tablet and dropped it in the open duffel bag.
“Who said anything about murder? It would be a clear case of self-defense,” he said, beaming a big smile at Buddy.
“There’s no box here, Buddy,” Malak said harshly, still pretending to be Anmar the Leopard. She had been watching the exchange in silence. She had also come to the conclusion that she liked Eben Lavi a lot.
“I told you,” Buddy said. “I don’t know where it is. If he says I have it, then it’s got to be in one of these places.”
“I hope you are not wrong, Buddy. For your sake,” Malak said.
They loaded all of the flash drives and even some old floppy disks into the duffel bag. It made Malak and Eben wonder about just how long the ghost cell had been active. Malak looked at her watch.
“I don’t get it, Buddy said. “You’re the Leopard, and you’re Mossad. Why haven’t you . . . you know . . . killed each other?”
Malak and Eben looked at each other. Earlier they had discussed how to play it if Buddy tried to weasel his way out of trouble. Or perhaps play one of them against the other. Buddy was a deal maker. There was always the chance he would try to form some kind of alliance and try to bluff or buy his way out of the vise he was currently squeezed in. They had agreed to pretend they had reached a temporary truce, with an underlying level of thinly veiled contempt.
“I have hunted the Leopard for many years,” Eben said. “But this is a case of how, as you Americans say, ‘the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.’”
“That’s not what we—” Buddy said, but Eben interrupted him.
“Enough, Mr. Buddy T. Do not worry about my feelings for the Leopard. When you are safely locked away, she will receive my full attention.”
“Listen to the great Mossad agent,” Malak sneered. “I have been right under your nose a dozen times and you have never so much as gotten a glimpse of me. Once this is done, I will disappear, like a leopard in the grass. You will never see me again. Until I come for you.”
Buddy watched their exchange and blanched, realizing that getting them angry was making him nervous. He gulped and looked down at the floor. Malak and Eben discreetly smiled at each other.
“We have enough time to visit one last bank. Think hard. Where is the next place you have boxes big enough to hold what Number One described to you?”
Buddy looked over the list of banks.
“National Standard Bank,” Buddy said.
Malak snatched the paper from his hand, then glanced at her watch.
“For your sake, you had better hope you are right. I am not as patient as Boone.”
The three of them left the building and piled into the intellimobile. Vanessa deftly maneuvered it through the city traffic, and they pulled up in front of the bank. Malak, Eben, and Buddy entered and repeated the same procedure to sign in to the vault as they had at every other location.
Buddy had three safe-deposit boxes at this site. They found the container Number One was looking for inside the second one. They emptied the contents of the other two into a bag, then stared at the metal case.
“That’s got to be it,” Buddy said. “It looks exactly like how he described it to me!”
“Finally,” Eben said. “I wonder what it could be that has your Number One so anxious to get his hands on it.”
“Who cares!” Buddy said. “Let’s just get it to him! Then you can catch him.”
The metal case was heavy and latched shut. Flipping it open, they saw a wooden cylinder lying in a piece of cut-out foam. It had many wooden rings encircling it, with numbers carved into the rings. It looked very old.
Malak grabbed Buddy T. firmly by the arm. She squeezed. Hard.
“Oww. Oww!” Buddy yelped.
“What is in the wooden container, Mr. T.?” she demanded.
“Oww. Let go! I don’t know! I swear I don’t know!” Buddy cried.
She released his arm.
“How did an imbecile like you rise so far in the vaunted ghost cell?”
Buddy didn’t answer, he just rubbed his sore arm.
She closed the heavy case and took it in one hand and grabbed Buddy by the other.
Eben followed behind as they exited the building.
Takedown
Speed Paulsen had just woken up from a nap and was relaxing on the couch in his living room. As he sat, he quietly strummed a Washburn guitar he had bought at auction. Playing the guitar calmed him down. It once belonged to Bob Marley. He liked to collect guitars from other great guitar players, especially those no longer living. Marley was a good guitarist, but not as good as Speed. The Washburn was a fine instrument, though. One of his favorites. His fingers were moving back and forth, progressing through the chords, when a beep from the computer monitor interrupted him.
After his interrogation of Buddy, he’d sent his best men with him to get the item. He came home to sleep and rest. He could only use his ability over short distances. He referred to it as “speeding.” He’d been using it a lot the last few days. He needed to recharge.
The three apartments were on the top floor of the building facing west, toward the bay. He spent most of his time in the middle one and now climbed through a hidden door in the bedroom closet and entered the master suite of the adjacent apartment. It was filled with computer monitors. Buddy thought he had secrets from Number One, but nothing Buddy did was secret. Speed knew every move he made. He pulled up the logs of activity reports from his various teams on his computer screen.
Strange. The team he’d sent with Buddy had not reported in for some time. He pulled up a program that would ping the transponder in their van. There was no signal. Punching keys on the keyboard he tracked their progress. They had taken Buddy from the warehouse to a bank downtown. After that the signal disappeared. And there was no word from the countersurveillance teams at that location either.
Something had gone wrong.
Once he captured Buddy, he had countersurveillance teams following him. All of their vehicles were equipped with video cameras and sent recordings back to his monitors here in the apartment. He could easily track their movements.
He cycled back to the recording until he found what he was looking for. On one of the large monitors above him, three people were entering a bank. Speed sat up. One of the men looked vaguely familiar. What was Buddy up to? Perhaps he’d hired bodyguards or someone he thought could protect him from Number One? Then he looked at the third person and jumped up from his seat.
It was Anmar! The traitor. What was she doing here? He had carefully planned for her demise in Chicago. He had visited the safe house and left her the envelope with the instructions. He had called her and sent her to Grant Park. She would be dead if Buddy hadn’t botched things. But she should have disappeared. Why was she with Buddy T.? How had Buddy managed to involve the Leopard?
Speed tried to process it quickly.
Anmar must somehow have learned of the foiled attack in Chicago and their plans to kill her. It would not have been a great leap for her to deduce their plans for her body to be discovered among the dead and blamed for the attacks. Yet she had not gone to ground. The Leopard was a hunter. But how could she have made the connection to Buddy T.? The Leopard was good. But she was not that good.
Speed sat back and closed his eyes, thinking hard. After a moment he believed he had the answer. Buddy T. was the only other person in the ghost cell who knew Anmar was in the safe house. It had been Buddy T. who had first called her on the phone. Once the Chicago op had been botched, Buddy was most likely worried that his life was in danger. He was a coward by nature and he must have realized Speed would want answers for what had gone wrong. He might have even worried that Speed would kill him.
He wasn’t wrong.
Somehow, after he captured Buddy and demanded the return of the item, Buddy made contact with the Leopard. Or more likely, the Leopard had tracked down Buddy and taken out his team. Buddy must have convinced her Speed was
the one she wanted and that he could lead her to him. It was the only reason Speed could think of that would keep the Leopard from killing Buddy on the spot. He had made a bargain. If she spared his life, he would lead her to the one who had really ordered her death.
The Leopard’s honor would not let her refuse such an offer. Buddy didn’t know it but even if the Leopard succeeded in killing Number One, she would certainly kill him afterward. That’s who she was. A killer.
Still. Something smelled.
How had she made it to San Francisco so quickly? And who were these other people? As far as he knew, the Leopard worked alone. Were these others a crew Buddy had hired?
Boone.
Boone had been involved the whole time. Speed had already figured out that Boone was the one from whom he had taken the object all those years ago—the wounded knight on the battlefield. When he had gone to supervise the kidnapping of Bethany Culpepper and ran into Boone following on the highway in the tour bus, he’d grown suspicious. Knowing Boone as a roadie from his years in the music business, Speed had heard all the rumors. People said Boone was really a spy. That he had been involved in the intelligence game for years. Speed himself had never believed it. Boone was as incompetent as Speed was brilliant. Yet there he had been, right in the middle of the kidnapping, traveling in the same direction as his cell members. So he played his dumb Speed act, and let Boone think he had the upper hand. He knew Angela and Q had ditched him in the hospital. So he had “sped” after them. He had watched the entire thing go down at Kitty Hawk and he had nearly burst when he saw Boone do the same thing he could do! After all these years he had found the Last Templar! And to think all along it had been Tyrone Boone.
Tyrone Boone. Ever since Kitty Hawk, he had been playing Boone until he could maneuver him into place. Everything he had done after Kitty Hawk had been designed to keep Boone guessing and draw him here, to the object. Once Buddy retrieved it, he would find a way to persuade Boone to open the container.
He knew Boone had others working for him, but Boone was careful. He kept his people out of sight. Whether it was Buddy who contacted Anmar or Boone had somehow persuaded her to join him in finding Number One, it didn’t matter. They had overplayed their hand. Speed Paulsen set the agenda. Speed Paulsen was in charge here. He would get what he wanted.
He always got what he wanted.
And then he would kill them all.
Now somehow Buddy or Boone had brought in Anmar the traitor. Could she have been working for Boone all along? He looked at the monitor again. The other man she was with. Where had he seen him before?
Boone. Anmar. The kidnapping. Kitty Hawk.
Speed punched a few more keys and pulled up the footage of the raid on the house on Kitty Hawk. Where Number Four had ultimately died. He watched as two agents burst through the front door and Anmar grabbed Number Four, pulling him to his feet. He isolated the image of one of the agents. It was the same man who was with Anmar now.
He let the footage play again, watching as Anmar shot the two agents, but hitting them solidly where their bulletproof vests would protect them. Now one of those men was here. It had all been an act. Anmar had been working with Boone, or at least for U.S. Intelligence, for some time.
As he thought about it, it made sense. Boone had the resources, the access to intelligence. Buddy T. was a coward. He would never have tried to make a deal with the Leopard. He would have approached Boone. And Boone must have been working with the Leopard the whole time.
How had he missed it? He’d suspected she was a traitor. In Chicago, he had ordered her death. But Boone had somehow interfered.
And right now Buddy was being handled by Boone’s people. Boone. That old geezer thought he could still pull a fast one on Speed Paulsen. You had to give the guy credit. He didn’t give up. After all these years, he had been looking for Speed. Wanting to recover what Speed had taken from him.
“I’ve been right under your nose, old man,” Speed chuckled to himself. “What a loser.”
Speed closed his eyes and looked at all the angles. The Leopard was a twist he had not expected. Though she had betrayed the cause she was a killer and she was dangerous. What if Buddy T. had cracked and told them who he was?
He laughed out loud. It doesn’t matter what they know. Or how they know it. They are all going to die. Today.
All that mattered was that Anmar was carrying the case. It held the object. Buddy T. had done it. No matter how he’d screwed things up by bringing in Boone and Anmar, the case had been found. That was the main thing.
Everything had fallen into place. By tonight, he could be on his way. He spun around in the chair in front of the monitor. He sat in silence a moment, taking time to think. Had he considered everything? Yes. There was not a single flaw in his plan.
He closed his eyes and vanished.
Only the chair, spinning slightly in the now-empty room, remained.
Out of Nowhere
The intellimobile was parked at the curb. Vanessa and X-Ray were standing on the sidewalk in front of it. The side door was open. It was the same procedure they had used at each bank. They hustled Buddy out and into the van and drove off.
Malak couldn’t identify what it was that made her feel like something was wrong. As always, she was wearing her sunglasses. She kept her head straight ahead while her eyes darted everywhere, making threat assessments. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. But her skin tingled and the hairs on the back of her neck were standing at attention.
Down the street a telephone worker stood inside a lift, working on a telephone line high up the pole. A delivery truck was parked across the street, but the driver was nowhere to be seen. Could they be cell members spying on them? Reporting back to Number One on their activities?
Thinking there might be a sniper, she scanned the rooftops across the street. But nothing looked suspicious. Why did it feel like something was wrong? Time seemed to slow down. In her mind, the distance to the van grew, as if it were at the end of a long tunnel. With each step, it appeared to draw farther away from them instead of closer. Malak released Buddy’s arm and put her hand on the grip of her pistol beneath her jacket.
“Eben,” she whispered. “Be alert. Something isn’t right.”
Malak had the same feeling she’d felt back in the Chicago safe house. Someone was watching her. But who? The few people in the street around them did not look dangerous. Nor were any of them paying attention to the team. Something or someone was toying with her, as if they were standing just at the edge of her vision. Yet she was unable to pinpoint the source of her unease, could not see who was watching. Eben did not ask questions. He put his hand into his pocket immediately.
The attack did not come until they had almost arrived at the intellimobile. Malak could not grasp what was happening at first: Buddy made a quiet gasping sound and slumped to his knees before falling to the ground. At first she thought he’d been shot, but blood flowered on the back of his shirt and she realized he’d been stabbed.
“Eben—”
Her words were cut off as a piercing pain struck her in the thigh, collapsing her leg. She cried out and tried to draw her gun, but something sharp slashed across her arm, and she was unable to move it. Vanessa drew one of her throwing knives immediately and moved forward toward Malak, who tried to shove the case to her with her remaining good arm. Then Vanessa doubled over, dropping to her knees and clutching her stomach. Blood seeped through her fingers. X-Ray tried to pull a gun from his jacket, but a vicious cut appeared across his hand, and the pistol tumbled to the pavement.
“Eben!” Malak tried to shout, but it emerged from her throat as a croak. “The case.”
Eben darted forward, reaching for it, but he cried out as a cut appeared across his coat sleeve. “Ahh!” he howled. But he did not stop, taking still another step, reaching for the case Malak held clutched in her hand. Then he was down, clawing at the hamstring of his left leg. There was blood everywhere.
“No!” Malak scr
eamed. “No!”
She felt herself falling and tried to throw her body over the case, hoping to protect it somehow until help arrived. But her head spun with dizziness, her body weakened, and she landed on the concrete beside it, though her hand still grasped the handle. Then the case was suddenly gone. It had been right there in her hand and it just disappeared before her eyes. Despite feeling woozy and lightheaded from blood loss, she was certain no one had taken it. It just vanished.
With her good arm, she pushed herself up until she could flip over on her back. She tried to pull out her cell phone but could only claw weakly at her pocket. Her vision began to narrow. A shadow crossed over her face, and she looked up to see Ziv standing above her, his gun in his hand. Ziv, the Monkey, always watching but never seen, had appeared at her side. From somewhere far off in the distance, she heard the sounds of screaming and running feet, and farther away the noise of sirens drawing closer.
“Malak,” he said. Then he gasped in pain, throwing his head back. He slumped to the ground.
“Ziv,” she hissed, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
With his last bit of strength, he threw himself across her.
The Monkey still protecting the Leopard.
The Beginning of the End
“Boone? How do you learn to control it? The power?” I asked.
“It’s hard to explain, Q. When I think back on it, I realize that at first I could only use it when I was experiencing strong emotions. Fear, anxiety, excitement. You feel all of those in battle. That first night in the room where we found it, I blinked because I was nervous and excited. Eventually it’s like learning to control your temper or any other feeling. With practice you gain control over it. After a time, the sickness and nausea go away. But it is important to remember it does have limits. I can’t blink through solid walls or doors. I need an opening. I can’t blink with someone who doesn’t have the same ability. For instance, I couldn’t take Angela by the hand and blink her across the bay. And the greater the distance and the more often you blink, the more time it takes you to recover,” Boone said. “And like I said, in the last few years it’s taking Croc and me both a lot longer to regenerate.”
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