by Adam LeBor
The second Yael’s back was turned, Eli reached inside the left shoulder of his jacket to draw his own Jericho 941. But she saw him in the driver’s mirror, spun around, and grabbed the barrel of the gun with both hands, forcing it upward. Eli fired twice, the sound thunderous inside the vehicle as the two bullets pierced the roof. The last time she had seen Eli, five days ago on Thursday night in Tompkins Square Park, his hand had been bandaged. The bandage was gone now, but she could feel that he still lacked full strength. Now she had the advantage. She twisted her hands sideways. Either he would release the gun, or his fingers would break.
He let go.
She slipped her finger into the Jericho’s trigger guard and pointed it at Eli, while she closed the car door with her left hand.
He laughed. “You kept the antidote. Clever.”
Yael shrugged. “Not really. You are just predictable.”
“So are you.” He blinked several times, rubbed his eyes. “Now I can see you properly. Another gun? You won’t use it,” Eli said mockingly. “You couldn’t shoot me in Istanbul. You can’t shoot me here. You can’t shoot me anywhere, Motek. Come home, and we’ll make babies.”
Sensing movement outside the car, she did not answer, instead glancing at the road while still holding Eli’s pistol in her right hand, keeping it trained on him. Michal had stood up. She was unsteady on her feet but was now rummaging inside her jacket for her gun.
“Ze po, it’s here,” murmured Yael, her left hand sliding inside her jacket and taking out Michal’s pistol.
Eli laughed. “You look like a cowboy, Motek.”
“Shut up, Eli,” said Yael.
She fired once, swiveled round at Michal, fired again.
*
Najwa checked her watch. It was just coming up to five o’clock. She glanced at Harald Ingmarsson, the Icelandic president’s press secretary. What now?
He smiled back. “I’m sorry. They are running late. I’m sure it will only be a few more minutes.”
They were waiting in Bessasstadir’s formal reception room that looked out over the surrounding flatlands. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, its thick wooden beams painted off-white. The cream-colored walls were covered with bright, impressionistic works by Icelandic artists. The furniture was old-fashioned, but elegant: two pale blue sofas with thin, gilded arms and legs; a green marble-topped coffee table; a dark wooden kitchen dresser, its shelves filled with glasses and porcelain; an oval side table with a black granite top. Rafnhildur sat on one sofa and her camerawoman, Ingilin, sat on the other, checking the settings on her camera. Two minutes ago sunlight had been streaming through the long windows, falling on the patterned carpet and the polished wooden floor. Now the sun had disappeared behind a wall of clouds and the rain had started again, the wind lashing the drops against the windows.
Najwa smiled for a moment, remembering the local joke, “Don’t worry if you don’t like the weather, it will change in twenty minutes.” But that was not enough to damp down her growing feeling of unease. She, Rafnhildur, and Ingilin, a petite blond in her late twenties, were the only reporters at Bessastadir. They had been promised brief, but exclusive, interviews with all three presidents and the SG about the Sustainability Summit. The topic was not very exciting, but her New York editors had been very enthusiastic about Freshwater and Kermanzade appearing together. Najwa knew she was guaranteed airtime. But where were they? Presidents were almost always late but there was something not quite right here. She watched Harald Ingmarsson stare at his watch again, his face creased with worry.
Najwa walked over to the array of framed pictures on the wooden sideboard and picked up a photograph showing President Gunnarsdottir on top of a mountain, with her arm around a blond woman of a similar age. Both wore matching all-in-one ski suits and hiking boots.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
Rafnhildur looked up from her smartphone. “Eva. Olga’s partner.”
“A gay president. Very progressive.”
“Is it?” said Rafnhildur. “It’s quite normal here. Nobody cares who you sleep with.”
“And everyone calls her Olga?”
“That’s her name. What else would we call her?”
“Madam President? President Gunnarsdottir?”
Harald laughed. “We are not very big on formality.”
“Wait,” said Najwa. “Can you hear that?”
Rafnhildur tilted her head to one side. “It sounds like people moving around outside. Must be the security teams.”
Najwa shook her head. “Not that. There’s something else. Popping sounds.”
*
Yael looked through the car window to where Michal lay on the ground, her cuffed hands clutching her leg.
It took a second for Eli to realize that the first bullet had passed through the shattered windshield and he had not been shot.
He lunged at Yael.
She instantly raised the gun in her right hand and used the stock as a club, swinging it against the side of his head as he moved toward her. Delivered hard and fast enough, it was a blow that could kill, but at the last second she pulled the blow. Eli dodged away and the gun stock only glanced against his head. Still, he slumped down against the car seat, his eyes rolling, panting erratically.
Yael lowered the gun in her left hand, about to check him, when Eli’s hand shot out for the pistol, yanking it from her hand.
They sat facing each other, each of them pointing a gun.
Eli smiled, breathing regularly now, his manner calm and focused. “Fooled you. You always were too soft, Motek.”
Yael stared at him for a moment, her mind racing. Eli was right about her being too soft. But not today. She softened her face, and her voice. “Were you serious?”
“About what?”
She put her pistol down on the car seat. “Having children,” she said, sliding closer.
Eli glanced at the weapon, and his hard face relaxed for a moment. “Yes. Especially after last Friday.” His gun moved, barely perceptibly, but downward. “Come home with me.”
Yael instantly grabbed the grip in one hand, the muzzle with other, and twisted the weapon sideways. With the gun now free of Eli’s hand she rammed the weapon upward into his jaw. He slumped backward.
She opened the car door and pushed Eli out. He crumpled on the ground near Michal. She retrieved the second plastic cuff from her boot and jumped out after him. She bound his hands together, laid him on his side, and bent over Michal. The Israeli woman was shivering, her face contorted in pain.
The bullet had clipped her thigh and passed through the flesh, as Yael had intended. The wound was seeping blood but no artery had been severed. Michal’s bag lay nearby, a small black nylon rucksack, which Yael knew would include a medical kit. She looked inside and found a field dressing and a bandage. She stood over Michal, holding the dressing. “I remember you.”
“And me you.” Michal’s eyes radiated hatred. “The golden girl. The magician.”
“That’s me. And you, the late entrant, a few years older than the rest of us. Determined to show that you could keep up. Do you want this?”
Michal nodded, her face rigid with pain.
“Phone,” said Yael.
“It’s gone. It must have fallen out in the car. Look for it there.”
Yael said nothing and turned on her heel. A black handset lay on the road, and she picked it up. It was narrow and heavy, a special model she knew was made by an Israeli manufacturer. Protected by a biometric lock, it could only be opened with a combination of a fingertip and an alphanumeric password.
She glanced at Eli, who was still semiconscious. She rifled through his clothes until she found her iPhone and his telephone, an identical model to Michal’s. Then she stood up and walked back to Michal, whose face was pale and covered with sweat. Yael handed Michal her phone.
“Unlock it,” Yael ordered.
“Do it yourself.”
Yael showed Michal the field dressing in the palm of her h
and, turned, and started to walk away.
“OK, OK,” shouted Michal.
Michal placed her right index finger over a pad on the front of the phone and tapped out a six-digit code. The handset lit up. She gave it to Yael.
Yael dialed 112. “I wish to report a shooting. One person wounded, another unconscious. Where are we? Hold on, I can give you the exact GPS coordinates.” She read a series of numbers from the screen. “Thank you. We need an ambulance, urgently. Please hurry.”
She put the phone under the car’s right front wheel and kneeled down by Michal. Yael pressed the dressing against the wound, bound it tight in place with a bandage.
“Played for a fool for a decade,” said Michal, her face contorted with pain. “How does that feel?”
Yael smiled. Beyond Michal’s agony and fury there was something else in her eyes. “Not as bad as unrequited love. Sharing extreme danger, hotels, bathrooms, meals, almost everything a couple does, except one thing. The thing you wanted most of all.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yes,” said Yael. “He did. And very well.”
Yael stood up. She placed Eli’s phone under the left front wheel and got into the driver’s seat. She looked in the side mirror. Eli was stirring, but there was no need to run him over. Just a quick back and forth across his feet, and Michal’s, would ensure that they would not be able to come after her for a long time.
Assuming that the car still worked. The vehicle had slowed right down by the time it hit the tree. The front bumper was bent inward but seemed to have absorbed most of the impact.
Yael turned the ignition key. Nothing happened. She tried several times more and eventually the engine started. She slipped the car into gear. It jumped forward and there was a crunching noise. She felt the wheels jolt as they crushed the phones. She saw Eli again in the mirror. He was definitely waking up now, puzzled as to why he could not move properly. The crunching noise continued. Yael swallowed, took a deep breath, and put the car into reverse. As she touched her foot to the accelerator, the car flew backward. She stared at Eli in the mirror and the look of disbelief on his face as the car raced towards him. A couple of yards from Eli’s legs she touched the brakes, yanked the steering wheel and skidded around him. She rammed the gearshift into first, spun the steering round again, and drove away as fast as she could.
The crunching noise was getting louder. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see smoke trailing from the exhaust pipe. She switched the radio on. A male voice was reading what sounded like the news. She could not understand the sentences but could hear the words “Freshwater,” “Kermanzade,” “Fareed Hussein,” and “Bessastadir.” Then she heard her own name, several times. A siren wailed in the distance.
33
The popping stopped. Najwa looked through the window and instantly stepped away and to the side. Four bodies lay prone, crimson streaks mixing with the rainwater trickling off their ponchos. A heavyset man wearing a dark blue suit walked slowly up to each one. He carried a pistol with a silencer attached, and quickly fired it once into each of their backs. One by one, the bodies twitched and lay still.
Najwa felt sick with fear. Fear and guilt. Forewarned of a potential murder on Friday, she had said nothing. The sniper had almost claimed another victim, she had another exclusive. She was playing with people’s lives for the sake of her career. And now, it seemed, it was payback time.
Harald turned toward her, about to speak, when the door opened. Kent Maxwell stepped inside, his gun in his hand, his suit jacket and trousers dark with rain.
“What’s happening?” Harald jumped up and strode toward him, his eyes wide.
Maxwell raised his gun. “This.”
That sound again, louder now. The back of Harald’s head exploded. He flew backward, hitting the wall by the door, sliding to the floor as bone fragments, blood, and gray jelly oozed down the wall behind him.
Najwa froze for a second, beat back the urge to vomit. She had been under fire, in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza; seen bodies freshly killed or stinking and bloated in the heat, ravaged by torture, hands tied behind their backs, buried in shallow graves. But they were dead before she got there. She had never witnessed executions a few yards from where she was standing, then another in front of her. And witnesses were not usually allowed to live. She thought of her sister, Fatima, for a moment. It was night now in Jeddah, she would be fast asleep in her luxurious home. She was a prisoner in all but name. But she would be alive in the morning.
Najwa’s hands were clenched so tightly her nails almost drew blood. She forced herself to breathe. Ingilin sat rigid with terror. Rafnhildur bent double, coughing and spitting, her half-digested breakfast hanging from her mouth as the sour smell of vomit wafted across the room.
Maxwell lowered his gun. He glanced at the three journalists one by one, as if checking they were still there. He needed something from them. Something that, for now at least, would keep them alive. He gestured with the pistol at Najwa. “You are on screen. OK?”
Najwa nodded.
He turned to Ingilin. Her eyes were blank. “You good to film?”
Ingilin did not reply.
Maxwell jabbed her leg with the pistol. “I asked you something. Or do I need to find someone else?”
Her head bobbed up and down like a children’s toy woodpecker. “Good. I’m good.”
Finally, he pointed the gun at Rafnhildur. The Icelandic journalist wiped her mouth as she stared at Ingmarsson’s body. She swallowed hard, her shoulders shaking, tears trickling down her face. Najwa instantly understood: Harald had been her lover.
“You produce,” said Maxwell. Rafnhildur did not answer. He fired twice into the ceiling. The noise was much louder as the bullets hit the ceiling, spraying the room with chips of plaster. The Icelandic journalist flinched.
Maxwell pointed his gun again at Rafnhildur. “Are you with us? Because if you aren’t you can join your friend over there,” he said, gesturing at Harald’s body.
“Sure. I’m here,” said Rafnhildur, nodding and shaking.
Maxwell walked toward the door. He pushed Harald’s corpse aside with his foot. “Now get moving. You are live in five minutes.”
*
Yael drove Eli’s car as fast as she could on the long straight road toward Bessastadir. The tundra was empty on either side, the stubby grass rippling in the wind. Rain gusted inside the car, spattering the dashboard, her clothes and face. The crunching noise faded in and out, but was definitely getting louder. She kept one hand on the steering wheel as she tried calling Joe-Don again. Nothing. Not even a message in Icelandic saying that the call had failed. No reception bars showed on the screen. And then she remembered: her iPhone was protected by a ten-digit alphanumeric PIN. After three wrong attempts the handset locked. Eli must have tried to get in.
Thunder boomed, rolling across the flatlands like distant artillery. The sky turned nearly black as the clouds opened. Scattered raindrops became an instant deluge, the road sodden before the water could run off the sides and into the squishy mud. The car almost skidded, and Yael’s face was drenched as the wind hurled the water through the broken windshield. She could barely see fifty yards in front.
She slowed down to twenty miles an hour, steering with the sides of her knees, and entered the iPhone’s PIN plus a six-digit correction code. It lit up, and she was about to try Joe-Don when she saw a new welcome screen with a text message:
Hello, Motek.
The iPhone was useless, hacked by Eli. She dropped it on the passenger seat. But at least she still had the Nokia. Putting one hand back on the steering wheel, Yael reached around to her calf and pulled away the adhesive tape. The dark blue candy bar phone felt tiny in her hand after her iPhone, but at least it was switched on and had five bars of reception. There was only one number programmed in: Joe-Don’s. She pressed CALL. Nothing happened. She pressed the call button again.
“Come on,” she hissed aloud with frustration. She held the phone away from her ear a
nd stared at the screen. The car swerved slightly and she quickly righted it. A ringing noise began. Yael exhaled with relief and she clamped the phone back to her left ear. The ringing stopped. Eli’s voice said:
“Hello, Motek.”
Yael slammed the Nokia onto the dashboard so hard it cracked, threw it onto the backseat, and checked the car’s GPS. She was approaching Álftanesvegur, the main road along the peninsula, which eventually turned sharp right onto Bessastadavegur. That was the only access route to the presidential residence. There would certainly be a police checkpoint there. They would hold and detain her, at first for her own safety, for much longer when they found Eli and Michal. She would have no chance of getting into Bessastadir.
She checked in the rearview and side mirrors. There was a single car on the road behind her, a light blue Lada Niva four-wheel drive. It had been behind her for some time, always keeping a steady distance. There was nowhere to turn off. A threat, or a contact? She slowed down, put on the hazard flashers, and parked on the side of the road. Then, checking that one pistol was safe in her jacket pocket and the other tucked into her rear waistband, resting against the small of her back, she got out of the car, stepped into the road and flagged down the Lada.
It slowed, pulled over to the side of the road, then stopped. Even at a distance the driver looked familiar.
“Please get in, ma’am,” said Michael Ortega. “I’m here to help.”
Yael stared at him in disbelief. What was her doorman doing here? And who was he working for? She looked inside the Lada and hesitated for a moment as she considered her options. Her car was very obviously damaged in a crash and about to die. Her name was being mentioned in news broadcasts. The police would soon be after her, probably already were. Eli doubtless had a backup team somewhere nearby. The Lada Niva was bland and unremarkable, the sort of car that locals took off-road on the weekends. Ortega was an army veteran. If he wanted to shoot her, he would have done already. He was alone in the vehicle, had neither brandished a weapon nor asked for hers. She climbed in, sat in the front seat. Ortega glanced at her for a moment, said nothing as the car pulled away.