by Larry Bond
Thera held his hand at the dock, as if they were sweethearts.
“See you,” he told her as the small crowd began to press forward.
“When?” she asked.
“Probably tomorrow. But who knows?”
“You look like you need a vacation.”
“Think I can get a good deal at Versailles?”
“Ha, ha. I’m serious.” She looked up at him, as if expecting a kiss. “We’re done, right?”
“We’re never done.”
He held her hand for a moment. She had changed into Muslim dress to blend with the Turkish women going home; the comb she’d had in her hair the night before was gone.
Why would she have stolen the jewels? Ferg thought.
Besides the obvious reasons, like greed.
“We’re saying good-bye, right?” Thera told him in Arabic. That was the cover they’d worked out for the plainclothes police who watched the dock.
“Yeah,” he said, and he took her in his arms and flattened his lips against hers.
The taste of the kiss was still in his mouth an hour later when he showed some of the jewels to a pawnbroker in the old part of the city. The man closed his eyes when he saw the stones; Ferguson pulled them back across the counter.
“How about these?” he said, taking out two of the diamonds.
The man considered them. “Twenty Euros apiece.”
“Come on, they’re worth more.”
“Your accent is Egyptian,” said the man. “But your clothes tell me you are from Europe.”
“Ireland. I grew up in Cairo. Will that get me a better price?”
“Fifty Euros would be the best I could do. They are decent but not real.”
“What about this?” said Ferguson. He took out the bracelet that had fallen on the ground the night of the operation. The man’s eyes and greedy fingers told him immediately it was real.
“For this—” started the merchant.
“Don’t even tempt me. It’s not for sale,” said Ferguson, pulling it back.
~ * ~
O
f all the covers Ferguson had ever adopted, playing a doctor had to rate among the best. It wasn’t just that people seemed to easily accept it; they became positively voluble, offering all sorts of information. And so Dr. Ferguson not only gained a great deal of insight into the autopsy procedures at the university hospital but was also treated to a full tour of the area where corpses were held. In the course of this tour, the assistant to the assistant head pathologist revealed that they had handled an important case just that morning, working on a body that had unfortunately met its demise by coming too close to a hand grenade.
Dr. Ferguson recalled experiences with mines in Bosnia as a young intern volunteering his time. This pressed the cover story to the limit. Ferguson was actually too young to have been there in the time frame when it would have taken place—but the assistant assistant wasn’t keeping track of dates. Ferguson moved on to a discussion of plastic surgery, a specialty he had not indulged in but often wondered about. The conversation flowed a crooked road of techniques and wounds and reconstruction, until at last Ferguson found himself staring at the face of Jurg Vassenka, who was not Jurg Vassenka.
They’d been had. The Russian had managed to slip away.
~ * ~
4
THE PERSIAN GULF, SOUTH OF IRAQ
The U.S. Navy had special teams trained to board and inspect ships on the high seas, and Rankin was content to ride shotgun with one as it approached the Chi Lao. Guns chafed a bit at the seamen’s haughty commands when they went up the ladder from the rigid-hulled inflatable boat, but then the whole idea of sailors doing what by rights should have been a marine job didn’t sit well with the leatherneck anyway.
The freighter had started its journey not in North Korea as Ferguson had originally suspected but the Philippines, where it had docked not far from one that had recently come from North Korea. This was all documented in the papers the captain presented to the ensign in charge of the boarding party, as were the stops it had made in the Middle East. It hadn’t docked in Tripoli or Latakia, but Rankin already knew from Thomas’s work that there was enough slack in the ship’s itinerary for it to have lingered a few hours offshore, presumably to get a payment or for instructions. In any event, the papers weren’t what he and Guns had come to see.
“We want to look at the cargo,” he told the ensign.
The ship captain’s English, which just a moment ago had been perfect, suddenly became strained. He managed to communicate that he had nothing but televisions and cooking oil aboard, and was already overdue.
“Then you better help us take a look quickly,” suggested the ensign, “or you’ll be even later.”
Rankin gripped his Uzi as they went down the ladder to the forward cargo spaces. There were shadows everywhere, and while the destroyer they’d come from sat less than a hundred yards away, the boarding crew was very much on its own amid the shadows and cramped quarters below deck. They went to the stacked boxes of cooking oil; the crew directed one of the skids to be opened for inspection. The captain asked if they wanted it done there or above on deck.
“Neither,” said Rankin. “Where are the televisions?”
The ensign shot him an odd look. The captain’s English once more failed. The boarding crew, however, had already located them in the next hold; the crates were arranged so that they would be easily unloaded.
When they finally reached them, the captain began to protest that an inspection would make them even later.
“Tell you what then,” said Rankin, raising his Uzi, “I’ll just fire at random through them. What do you say?”
Guns grabbed the captain as he jerked away and threw him to the ground. The sailors who jumped on him grabbed a small pistol from his pocket.
The first set of boxes they opened contained thirty-two-inch televisions manufactured in South Korea. The second set seemed to as well, until the picture tubes were examined more closely. The flimsy cardboard that protected the rear of the TV sets covered a large plastic piece at the back of the picture tube. The first sign that it was different from that on the legitimate sets was the fact that it screwed off rather than pulled. The second sign was the kerosenelike stench that quickly spread through the hold when it was off. Rankin put the cap back on gingerly.
“Better get this place vented,” Rankin told the ensign in charge of the boarding team. “This stuff catches fire pretty damn easy.”
~ * ~
5
CYPRUS
Thera got back to the hotel just as Monsoon and Grumpy were taking their gear out to the van that would run them over to the British military airport at Akroti. A jet there would take them to the States, where they would have a few days off before rejoining their units. Surprised and disappointed that they were leaving, Thera tried not to show it. She kissed Grumpy, which surprised him, and then kissed Monsoon, which didn’t.
“I hope I see you again,” she told him.
“That’d be nice.”
“You have an e-mail address?”
“Sure.”
Upstairs, she tucked the address into her wallet, then went to take a shower. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she undressed, she saw a woman with drooping eyes and a puffy mouth: an old, tired, lonely woman.
Exhausted by the last several days, feeling the aftereffects of the pill she’d taken to keep herself going last night, she burst into tears.
~ * ~
6
TEL AVIV
THE NEXT MORNING . . .
“The problem with you Americans is that you think you don’t have to get your hands dirty. You think you can deal with a problem by talking about it rather than taking action, when only action will solve it: strong action, eradicating action. You would have kept Khazaal and Meles alive, risking their escape. We have dealt with them efficiently. We have provided you a solution to the problem which you did not have the stomach to take.”
&
nbsp; Ferguson sipped his coffee in the secure room beneath the Mossad building as the Israeli’s rant continued. One thing surprised him: the lecture was coming not from Tischler, who sat stone-faced across from Corrine, but from Aaron Ravid. The slime had not only made good time getting back to Israel but also put the effort into polishing up a speech.
Corrine listened impassively. She didn’t have a lot of experience as a courtroom litigator; most of what she did had come from pro bono work in local courts representing poor people accused of very minor crimes. But she knew how to act during a prosecutor’s summation: nonplussed, occasionally sipping from her water, once in a very great while taking the time to look incredulous.
“Is that the position of the Israeli government?” she asked Tischler when Ravid finished.
“We don’t speak for the government,” he answered.
Corrine pushed her chair away from the table and got up to leave. As she did, she turned to Ferguson. “Is there anything you want to say?”
“Only that this is the best coffee I’ve had in the Middle East. It’s not Starbucks, is it?”
~ * ~
I
can’t believe they blew us off like that,” said Corrine outside the building. “I can’t believe it.”
“Relax,” said Ferguson. “Walk with me.”
He turned to the left, leading her down the block, away from the car.
“We’re supposed to be allies,” said Corrine. “We’re supposed to work together.”
“Yeah. That happens sometimes. Not as much as you’d think.”
Corrine pressed her lips together. She wanted to admit that she wasn’t really sure what to do, but she couldn’t say that to Ferguson. Making herself that vulnerable to someone who not only didn’t like her but also resented her would be suicidal.
“You noticed that Tischler didn’t say anything?” asked Ferguson.
“And?”
“That’s what’s important for the next step. Whatever that is.”
Corrine stopped in the street, squinting because of the sun, which poked through the buildings and hit her in the eyes. Ferguson saw the squint and interpreted it as her attempt to look tough, which he thought made her look just the opposite. If it weren’t for stuff like that, she might actually be all right to deal with.
Not better than all right, but all right. On a good day.
“What’s next is we figure out where the Russian went,” said Ferguson. “He’s not in Latakia.”
“You don’t think back to Russia?”
Vassenka could have gotten down to Damascus, hopped a plane to Cairo, and then flown just about anywhere in the world. Alternatively, he could have taken a boat to Turkey or Lebanon or even Israel, driven north in a car, even taken a train.
“Let’s say Khazaal’s friends didn’t kill him. On the contrary, they helped him get out of town. Seems logical. If that’s the case, then he owes them a favor.”
“We have the rocket fuel.”
“True. But we don’t have the rockets.”
“How many could there be?”
“You tell me. There was enough fuel for a dozen at least. You have them in parts? Who knows?” Ferguson still thought that Khazaal had overpaid for the fuel and for Vassenka. But the fact that he had to get the rocket fuel from Korea showed that maybe the stuff was getting harder to come by these days because of the weapons export agreements. When the Russians had first started mixing the stuff using German recipes, it had cost about twenty cents a kilogram, which would work out to less than a thousand dollars a missile. Clearly, the stuff was harder to come by these days.
“One thing I want to take care of in Syria,” Ferguson added. “The cruise missile Birk’s offering for sale. I want to buy it.”
“For a million dollars?”
“That’s cheap. Not only do I take it off the market, but I also can find out where he got it. As far as we know, nobody’s manufactured copies of the SS-N-9 Siren, and it’s never been exported. If we have this one, we may find out differently. Not to mention the fact that we’d be taking a pretty potent weapon off the market. The Siren has a range of over 110 kilometers, carries a 500-kilogram warhead; it’ll do a lot of damage.”
“All right. I’ll fix it with Parnelles.”
Mildly surprised, Ferguson told her that he was sending Rankin and Guns to Iraq to see if they could figure out who was supposed to pick up the fuel and to poke around for Vassenka. He mentioned Thera in passing, saying he was keeping her in Cyprus in case he needed backup.
Which was the truth, just not all of it. He hadn’t decided what to do about the jewels yet.
“Ferg, let me ask you something,” Corrine said, trying not to look at her watch. “What do you think about Iraq?”
“It’s a hellhole.”
“Do you think the government there is going to last?”
“You were just there. You tell me.”
“The ambassador claims it will. He seems pretty confident.”
Ferguson laughed. It was the only answer he gave and the only one she needed.
~ * ~
S
ince Ferguson had to make a complicated dance to get from Israel to Syria anyway, he made a virtue of necessity and stopped in Cairo for a few hours that afternoon. The new CIA deputy station chief who met with him had recently discovered the pleasure of the pipe, and spent much of their meeting in the café puffing away, to Ferguson’s amusement. Unfortunately, that was about the only thing he got out of the meeting. If Vassenka had stopped in Cairo on his way out of Syria, no one had spotted him.
There had been no fallout from the Fatman incident. “Dead is dead” went an old Egyptian proverb. It might have lost a bit of color in the translation, but it retained all of its meaning.
“That was related to that whacko Christian thing, Seven Angels, right?” asked the deputy between puffs.
“Yeah,” said Ferguson.
“Did the FBI find that lady or what?”
“You lost me there.”
“They had a heads-up the other day, travel-advisory thing, about this woman they were looking for. Real vague. It got flagged because it: was related to your run-in. Routine stuff.”
“Yeah, routine. You find her?”
“She didn’t come to Cairo.”
“You sure?”
“Not on any of the lists. You can check with Dave downstairs if you want. I don’t even remember her name.”
Neither did Dave downstairs, who had to look it up: Judy Coldwell.
It didn’t click with Ferguson either, but it did with Thera.
“That’s the woman I visited in the States. Thatch’s sister,” she said immediately when he mentioned the name. “The bureau said she wasn’t connected with Seven Angels. Why is she traveling overseas?”
“And why the hell don’t we know about it?”
~ * ~
T
wo hours later, Ferguson had his answer to the question: the FBI had considered the First Team’s involvement in the case over and therefore hadn’t bothered to inform them. He also knew that someone had used Thatch’s name to register at a hotel in Latakia.
“The FBI really dropped the ball, Ferg,” said Corrigan as he finished filling Ferguson in. “They really screwed up.”
“Yeah. Where is she now?”
“Unclear. Thatch checked out. We’re trying to see if we can trace any credit cards that were used.”
“Get back to me when you know something.”
Ferguson called Thera in Cyprus to see if she knew anything else about Coldwell. When he told her that Coldwell had been in Latakia, she volunteered to go there and look for her.
“No,” he told her. “Not now.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure she’s still there.”
“Hell, Ferg. Why am I on ice here?” she asked. “You think I screwed this up somehow?”
“You’re not on ice.”
“Well, why I am here when everybody else i
s on the job?”
“Just get some rest.”
“I’m sorry I screwed up.”