Something in her expression changed. “Please don’t say it was to see me.”
“Would that bother you?”
Flo thought for a moment. “Actually, it wouldn’t, not at all. I just don’t want you to go home disappointed because…”
Her voice tailed off and Brixton didn’t bail her out by trying to complete her thought. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on Flo, urging her to continue.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she completed finally.
“Didn’t you do that already?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, groping for words. “I need to know that whatever this is, it’s not final. When I saw you in the shop, the first thing I thought was, ‘Oh no, he’s going to ask me marry him.’ Because I don’t know what I would have said and I can’t bear the thought of what we had being over for good.”
“So we’re taking a break, is that it?”
“I don’t know what it is, Robert. Maybe we’re best not to label it.”
“Maybe I should have taken a horse-drawn carriage to your shop.”
She cupped the top of his hand in hers, her affection genuine. “What do you want from me, Robert?”
“Truth be told, I don’t know.”
“Take a guess.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Reassurance.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that everything’s going to be okay. That I won’t have to sell my coin collection to make ends meet.”
“You don’t have a coin collection.”
“My stamp collection, then.”
“You don’t have one of those, either.”
He nodded, frowning. “Then I guess I’m in even more trouble than I thought.”
Flo smiled. “I’m glad we did this, Robert.”
“So am I.”
“And Annabel said Mac was going to find you something.”
“She should have said try to find me something.”
“He won’t let you down.”
Brixton leaned back in his chair. “Did I let you down, Flo?”
“I couldn’t deal with Washington anymore. The lifestyle, the cocktail parties, the expensive dinners, drinking every day.”
“You just described plenty of people’s dream.”
Now it was Flo who pulled back, not as much physically as emotionally. “Does that include you, Robert? Because you seemed to embrace it.”
“I thought I was working, that it came with the job.”
“And how much work did you get that you wouldn’t have gotten anyway?”
“Not much, I suppose,” Brixton conceded.
“Exactly. The last six months we were together, you slept past seven a.m. on a workday more times than in the previous six years, and it wasn’t even close. You know how many mornings you were still in bed when I left the apartment?”
“Too many?”
“You were soaking up too much of a lifestyle, in contrast to the years I couldn’t keep you out past nine o’clock in the evening. I liked the old Robert Brixton better, but I think some good news may have come from all this.”
“What’s that?”
Flo gave him a long, deep look before responding. “I think he’s sitting across from me right now.”
CHAPTER
14
JUDEAN HILLS, ISRAEL
Lia Ganz was waiting in a workshop that smelled of rust, grease, and oil when Dar Ibrahim al-Bis stepped through the door carrying a large coupling that dripped oil across the floor.
“Samir sends her regards, Dar,” she greeted from the shadows.
Al-Bis almost dropped the coupling from his grasp and looked at Lia blankly. “I believe you have me confused with someone else.”
“What kind of man would fashion his cousin’s own suicide vest?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Satisfied the bomb maker was weaponless, Lia stepped farther into the light. “And what about killing innocent civilians on a crowded beach? Only a coward mows down women, children, and noncombatants. What would you call that, Dar?”
“If I was this man you think I am, I might say I’d call that my duty.”
“Then it’s a good thing you aren’t that man, isn’t it?”
Lia gazed about the workshop deliberately, baiting al-Bis to take up some weapon against her and thus end the charade. With his cousin Samir’s help, she had traced him to the Kif Tzuba amusement park, located on the grounds of a sprawling kibbutz in the Judean Hills. The park had a number of Israeli Arab workers who dominated the population in this area west of Jerusalem, just off the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway, neighboring the village of Abu Ghosh, from which virtually all the Israeli Arabs employed by the park hailed.
Kif Tzuba was cluttered with rides both old and new, the latest being a roller coaster that dipped and darted through the sprawl of the park. The park may have been constructed for kids under ten, but a number of the rides and attractions featured the kind of stomach-churning, dizziness-inducing thrills that left young riders literally screeching with joy. It catered to tourists and locals, including the local Arab population, who were welcomed by the kibbutzniks and park workers with open arms. The park enjoyed a stellar safety record, as Lia recalled, an irony she found striking, since the man in charge of upkeep was an explosives expert and master builder of suicide vests that had claimed hundreds of lives, if not thousands.
“We all look alike to you,” the man Lia was more convinced than ever was Dar Ibrahim al-Bis said to her bitterly.
“Actually, you look like your cousin Samir. I can see the resemblance.”
“I don’t have a cousin named Samir. All my cousins are dead.”
“Would you like to know what else I think?”
“I have no interest in anything you think.”
“I think that you built your cousin’s suicide vest to fail. I think you changed your mind at the last minute and saved her life, although I don’t think being in an Israeli prison passes for much of a life. Samir was kind enough to help me find you,” Lia said, leaving it there.
Suddenly appearing disinterested in their conversation and in Lia’s claims, al-Bis began readying some tools for his next repair job on some piece of Kif Tzuba’s equipment out in the park. Lia let his leash extend that much, ready to pounce on him if he flashed a gun.
Al-Bis forced a humorless laugh and shook his head. “You are Mossad?”
“Not anymore. I was on the beach with my granddaughter when the drones attacked.”
“Then you should be home giving prayers of thanks to your God.”
“I’d rather send the men behind the attack to meet him.”
“Then you have come to the wrong place. There was another man who worked here before me, until a few months ago. He must be the one you’re seeking, the cousin of this Samir person.”
Lia hardened her stare, just enough. “We’re going to talk, you and I. We’re going to make a deal.”
Al-Bis was picking through a metal container of bolts in search of the right size. “Mossad doesn’t make deals.”
“But I’m not Mossad anymore, remember? I’m free to do as I wish.”
“And you came alone.”
Lia looked around the workshop. “Is this where you built your cousin’s suicide vest? Am I looking at the parts you used to assemble those drones right now? Impressive feat, given the need to retrofit the guns to cut down on weight. I understand a lighter variety of high-velocity round was used.”
“I don’t know weapons,” al-Bis insisted. “Roller coasters and merry-go-rounds, but not guns, Mossad. What did you give this prisoner in exchange for information? Whatever it was, I suggest you go back and see if she knows what became of her cousin after he left here.”
Al-Bis seemed to find the size bolt he needed and drew it from the steel box, others of varying sizes tumbling out with it, along with something else: A bullet, the same 5.56 shell, modified with a lighter casing to reduce weight, that was used in Caesarea.
She jerked her Jericho 941 nine-millimeter pistol, her favorite sidearm since her days in the army, upward, steady and straight, when al-Bis flung the contents of the box at her, showering the air with steel.
CHAPTER
15
JUDEAN HILLS, ISRAEL
Lia threw her hands up reflexively to guard her face from the shower of bolts and fittings. Impact made her jerk the trigger and a shot exploded into the ceiling. She tried to steady the pistol again, only to realize the impact had also stripped it from her grasp. Her ears, deafened by the bullet’s roar, missed the sound of the Jericho clattering to the workshop’s concrete floor.
She swung back toward al-Bis to find him lunging toward her with some kind of pneumatic air hammer cutting the air ahead of him. It trembled in his grasp, his face hateful, spittle flying from his mouth as he drove it forward toward her torso.
Lia sidestepped, feeling the heat of the air hammer before it forged a neat, gaping hole in the wall. It wedged there briefly, still long enough for her to hammer the bigger man with a series of blows that produced little effect.
I’m getting old. I’m getting slow. I’m getting weak.
She formed those thoughts at the edge of the same consciousness that recorded that al-Bis was much bigger and stronger than she’d judged, uncoiling his size and strength with the abandonment of his persona. He clamped his hand over her face and drove her head backward, ramming her skull against the shelving at her back.
Tools, machine parts, and containers of lubricant spilled downward, smacking into both of them. Lia’s head felt as if it had been split in two, as the same rancid, grimy hand that had closed on her face lowered to clutch her by the throat. She felt him start to squeeze, the air bottlenecking instantly in her throat and making her head feel like it was about to explode.
Lia flailed blindly behind her and to the sides, feeling about the shelves, finally grasping a long-necked plastic container of motor oil used on the churning parts of the amusement rides beyond in the park. The container exploded on impact with al-Bis’s face, coating him in thick, dark ooze that he proceeded to cough from his mouth into Lia’s face. He was retching now, and his grip slackened enough for Lia to tear free and recover her breath, gasping. She swung back toward al-Bis just as he was coming for her again. Enraged, his eyes, red from being drenched in oil, were now narrowed into anguished slits.
Lia yanked on another of the shelves and drew it downward, collapsing it upon al-Bis as he groped for her. She fully expected it to take him over with it to the floor, but al-Bis managed to somehow right the shelf and jam it hard into Lia, pinning her against the wall. Then he was out the door. Lia jerked the shelf from her, retrieved the Jericho 941, and charged off in pursuit.
Outside the workshop, she twisted left, right, back left again. No sign of al-Bis in any direction, leaving Lia fearing he’d escaped via a long-planned route geared for just this eventuality. She could feel the muscles clench in her stomach from the tension, her ears still feeling as if cotton were stuffed between them.
The workshop was located in a rear corner of the park, leaving its sprawl cluttered with tourists and locals flowing amid the rides and attractions that turned the pathways of Kif Tzuba amusement park into a labyrinth. She glimpsed some kind of disruption directly ahead, bodies shifting awkwardly, with complaints shouted in Hebrew.
“Hey!”
“Watch where you’re going!”
“Asshole!”
Lia rushed in that direction, finding an odd rhythm in skirting the crowd in search of gaps, fissures that would put her on Dar Ibrahim al-Bis’s trail. And, sure enough, she glimpsed a large male figure plowing through the crowd, pushing, shoving, and practically throwing people from his path.
Lia picked up her pace, Jericho pistol held low by her hip, feeling superheated, thanks to more than just the hot sun and warm temperatures. How many of the tools to wage terror against the State of Israel had been forged on these very grounds by a bomb maker hiding out in the guise of a repairman? Fixing what was broken while breaking untold bodies and lives with the terrible tools of his trade.
She found the irony striking, and it served only to fuel her resolve. She was closing in on al-Bis while remaining careful not to create the kind of ripples in the crowd that might alert him to her presence. She was almost to him as they neared the entrance to the roller-coaster ride that featured an assortment of dips, darts, and stomach-churning steep drops. The interconnected chain of cars had just ground to a halt, one group of passengers exiting beneath raised lap bars so another set could take their place in the same seats.
The attendant was just about to pull back the chain and let the next set of children and their parents board, when al-Bis shoved him out of the way and snatched a small boy from the ground. Lia saw the glint of a knife blade flash in the sun, jammed up against the child’s throat. Al-Bis backpedaled along the track paralleling the interconnected cars. Israelis, no stranger to firearms, yanked them out en masse, a staggering number trained on al-Bis by shooters with too much sense and training to risk a shot while he had the boy clutched before him.
“Stay back! Stay back!” al-Bis wailed.
Their eyes finally met when Lia pushed to the front of the line. He pushed the knife closer to the boy’s throat.
“Start it! Start the ride!” he ordered the ride attendant he’d just accosted.
The young man balked, remaining frozen.
“Now!” al-Bis roared, drawing a thin line of blood with a prick of his knife against the boy’s throat.
Not much of an option, but the only one the bomb maker had. The young attendant finally threw the switch, sending the cars spiraling over much of the park, along its center. Lia figured al-Bis hadn’t made his way here randomly or out of desperation. This was part of some escape plan he’d hatched long before, to be invoked when the circumstances required, which was now the case.
She watched the cars edge into motion along the initial straightaway that twisted into the first rise of the coaster. In that moment, her thoughts and action became one, the distinction between them nonexistent. She pushed through the rest of the crowd, past the young attendant, and then found herself running along the track after the cars that were just now picking up speed, with al-Bis riding the front, knife still at the child’s throat.
She leaped into the rearmost car when it was almost beyond her and fell into an awkward tumble, her shoulder crashing against the lap bar. She broke her fall with her hands and pushed herself up from the awkward position, starting to rise, when the centrifugal force of the coaster pushed her back down as it banked into the first rise.
Lia held on for dear life as the coaster crested the top and angled into a drop that felt much steeper than it really was. She was back on her feet as soon as it sped into the next curling straightaway and rotated partially onto its side, one of those moments meant to induce shrieks and cackles from its young riders.
She leaped from car to car, fighting gravity, the growing figure of al-Bis watching in shock as she neared him, just a few cars back now.
“Let him go, al-Bis!”
“I’ll kill him!” he cried out in a rage, knife tip held just short of the captive boy’s jugular vein.
Lia raised her pistol. “Let him go!”
The cars banked into another rise and al-Bis surveyed the grounds around them to get his bearings, perhaps measuring off the point on the ride where he intended to drop off. Lia pictured him tossing the boy off first to create a distraction and draw attention from himself. He’d do that and chance a bullet from her as he vanished into the crowd below yet again. She held fast to the lap bar through the rise, ready with her plan, as the cars zoomed into the next drop.
That’s when Lia pushed herself into motion, the move as absurd as it was impossible. It felt like jump school training in a wind tunnel. Air that felt as heavy as mud seemed to hold her up as she launched herself airbor
ne, going against the grain of gravity and daring it to stop her.
She landed in the car immediately behind al-Bis’s, as the coaster flattened into the next straightaway. Lia looked up to see the sun blocked by his big shape looming over her, a single ray reflecting off the knife sweeping down toward her.
She twisted and felt the blade scratch at her upper arm, drawing blood while doing no real damage. She found her footing in the next instant, the ride hitting its peak speed as she rose in time to ward off one blow from al-Bis, and then another.
My pistol!
Only in that moment did she realize she’d somehow lost hold of the Jericho in the midst of her leap, and she didn’t dare to try to grope for it with the next rise of the roller coaster coming.
“Help!”
She heard the boy’s plaintive wail, as she held fast to al-Bis’s knife hand. She risked a glance forward and saw the boy clinging to the lap bar to avoid falling out, his tiny legs dangling outside the car. The coaster swept into the rise, the next dip certain to tear the boy’s grasp away. Lia hammered al-Bis hard with her free hand, warding off his blows. They were almost to the top of the rise, though, with just moments remaining to act before the child was projected through the air.
She remembered Caesarea, the terror of the attack, with her granddaughter clutched in her arms. Meirav was just a few years younger than this boy.
Lia flung herself forward, airborne in the instant the dip followed the lead car cresting the rise. She banged into the front car, maintaining the presence of mind to flail a hand blindly about, just managing to latch on to the boy before his grip on the lap bar separated. She was holding on to him for dear life to keep his upper body in the car, and then she jerked him all the way inside when the coaster dropped into its next steep descent, twisting from side to side.
It was enough to strip al-Bis’s balance away before he could complete the lunging assault to which he’d committed, leading with his knife. He was still coming forward, straining for balance, when Lia joined his motion instead of fighting it. She kept him going forward while lowering her frame, creating a judo-style move that projected him up and over her as the coaster sped into the center of the drop.
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