Doha 12

by Lance Charnes

  TWENTY-TWO: Arlington, 23 November

  At well past midnight the outside world was dark and silent. Inside Nussberger’s townhouse, only the sports program on the television broke the stillness.

  Seven hours hiding in a closet with Sohrab had left Alayan’s joints feeling brittle as old wood. His hands, sweating in the latex gloves he’d worn for hours, felt pasty and bloated. But it was almost over.

  The light blazing in the kitchen doorway burned Alayan’s eyes, but also picked out the rumpled white dress shirt on the boneless sack of Nussberger slumped snoring in one corner of the sofa. One leg sprawled along the cushions, the other spilled off onto the floor. An empty liquor bottle idled on the low table in front of him. Perfect.

  Rafiq had discovered the signs when he and Alayan had broken into Nussberger’s home: a wife recently left, a son grown and moved away, a lonely old man. The scenario wrote itself.

  While Sohrab charged the syringe in the kitchen, Alayan watched from the doorway as Nussberger slept. The injection would surely wake the man—but not for long. Alayan smiled at the irony of using scoline, one of Mossad’s favorite drugs, against one of their own people.

  They shushed across the beige carpet to the sofa. Alayan hovered his hands over Nussberger’s shoulders, ready to catch him when he awoke. Sohrab knelt by the man’s foot on the floor, aimed, and slipped the needle through the dark sock into the vein running up the man’s vulnerable inside ankle.

  Nussberger muttered, jerked. His eyes cracked open, failed to focus, slewed toward Alayan’s face above him. “Wha— ?”

  Alayan didn’t want to do anything to leave an unexplained bruise. “Is all okay, yes?” he said in English, softly as if to a child who’d just burst out of a bad dream. He patted the man’s shoulder. Sixty seconds before the muscle relaxer took effect; keep him calm. “We help, yes?”

  The man’s head rolled on invisible gimbals, his face turned first toward Alayan, then to Sohrab’s shadowy figure holding Nussberger’s ankles, then to the television. He tried to sit up, but couldn’t make his arms coordinate. Alayan felt a tinge of uneasiness; how did scoline and alcohol mix? The drug shouldn’t be working this fast. His mind rushed to the “overdose” scenario, Nussberger dead of a “heart attack” within a few minutes, too fast for him to metabolize the drug. There’d be some left over in his blood, a sure sign he’d been killed if anyone looked. Slow down, Alayan thought. Don’t die yet. That’s not the plan.

  The man struggled again to sit up, slurred out some soft sounds of dismay. Alayan gently helped him up, rested a hand on the man’s shoulder, hoping it would calm him. Nussberger peered into Alayan’s face. “Doris?” Alayan could smell liquor on the man’s words. “Who’re—?”

  “A saheb,” Alayan said. He patted the man’s shoulder. “A friend.”

  Sohrab sat back on his heels. The man’s legs weren’t moving anymore. A few moments later, neither were his arms. Then his head lolled back against the flowered cushion.

  “Quickly,” Alayan whispered to Sohrab in Arabic. “Let’s get him to the stairs. We have to get him on the rope before the scoline wears off and he can fight back.”

  No one would suspect a thing.

  TWENTY-THREE: Arlington, 24 November

  Something was wrong. David rubbed the crud from his eyes with his thumb knuckles and checked his watch. Four in the fucking morning. The lights inside Nussberger’s townhouse hadn’t changed in the past ten hours. Everyone turned lights on and off as they went through their own home; it was reflex.

  He tapped his earphone. “Something smells,” he told Natan in the other car. “I’m going in.”

  “Shit. Wait a minute.”

  They rang the doorbell twice, just to check. If the old man answered they’d play drunk, but everything remained still inside. The front-door lock was easy enough to pick. Four steps into the townhouse, they found Nussberger.

  “Goddamnit,” Natan muttered. “Not even one of our covers.”

  The man hung in the stairwell from white cotton clothesline, face purple-black, hands limp at his sides. He smelled of alcohol and piss. On a step near his feet, David found two framed photos of a plain middle-aged woman and a teenaged boy, resting atop a single sheet of white paper. “My beloved Doris and Michael,” the note began.

  David sighed and trudged down the steps. Poor bastard. Either this was an incredible coincidence—which he didn’t believe for a moment—or this Hezbollah team was scary good. He and Natan had followed Nussberger for the past three days and had seen nothing, no tails. Those Hezbollah assholes pulled this off while he and Natan watched from their cars outside. “How’d they get out?”

  “This way.” At the back of the townhouse, Natan pushed open the sliding balcony door with one gloved finger and peeked outside. “Three meters down to the pavement, maybe. Can’t see the door from the street.”

  David sagged back against the wall facing the doorway into the kitchen. Natan had it right: God damn it. Right under our noses. “I want to meet these guys.”

  Natan closed the sliding door, stuffed his hands in his pockets. As usual, his face was blank. “I want to kill these guys.”

  TWENTY-FOUR: Newark, New Jersey, 25 November

  Alayan moved with the crowd through the glass doors leading from the train platform. When their eyes met, Kassim pushed off the corridor’s marble wall and raised his hand. Alayan’s mood brightened; he smiled in return. They embraced just out of the stream of travelers, thumped each other’s backs. Another safe journey. “I’m glad you made it, Fadi.”

  “It wasn’t a bad trip,” Alayan said. They walked side-by-side down the corridor, following the exit signs. “I’ve read so many bad things about Amtrak, but it was rather nice.”

  “Good.” Kassim held out a bag of popcorn. “Want some?”

  “Thanks.” Alayan scooped a handful, nibbled on it one-handed. Too salty, but fresh. He glanced at Kassim, noted the troubled twist of his friend’s mouth, the heavy eyes. After over dozen years together, he knew the signs. What was wrong?

  The corridor led them to the low, wide shopping arcade tunneled beneath the railroad tracks, tan marble and bright lights and a thick bustle of early-evening travelers. Alayan had expected more suits and fewer families; perhaps the Friday after their Thanksgiving festival was also a holiday. The casual winter clothes he and Kassim wore blended in well.

  “It’s good to be back in the same city with you,” Alayan said. “You keep me grounded, you always have. I need that.”

  “Someone has to look out for you.” Kassim paused, pursed his lips. “You sent Gabir and Ziyad up here before you finished Nussberger. Are you sure that was a good idea?”

  Alayan bit back a flash of annoyance. He didn’t expect or need second-guessing from Kassim; enough other people were happy to do that. “I didn’t need them anymore. Why?”

  “What if something had gone wrong? What if the police came? You’d only have Rafiq for backup. That was a big risk, Fadi. We have to be more careful.”

  They approached an African Amtrak policeman pacing down the concourse toward them, eyeing the crowd. Out of reflex, Alayan fell silent and avoided looking at the man. He and Kassim weren’t the only brown-skinned men in the station, but they might be the only ones speaking Arabic. The policeman’s eyes skidded over them as he passed, then he was gone.

  Alayan let out his held breath and peered at Kassim. “Well, everything worked out. We have to stay on schedule. Are they complaining?”

  “They’re nervous, all of them are. They see the corners we’re cutting.” Kassim took a deep breath. “You need to tell them. They deserve to know.”

  “No. I don’t want them distracted, and I don’t want them worrying about this.”

  “You’ve never kept secrets from us before, not like this.”

  “How do you know?” He’d kept secrets when he’d had to, such as shielding them from the Council’s pressure. It was his job to deal with those fools, not the team’s.

&
nbsp; “Because I know you.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.” Since university. Kassim was the last person alive to have known him before. Alayan wiped his popcorn hand on his jeans leg, touched Kassim’s sleeve. “Perhaps you should be leading this operation. You’re more careful than I am.”

  “No, Fadi. You have…a strategy. I just make it work. You know how to make these actions look right. I haven’t watched as many American crime shows on television as you. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Stop it, I know better. But thank you.”

  A flash of color attracted Alayan’s eye: a fuchsia snowsuit on a cute little brown-haired girl. Alayan watched her waddle past holding her young mother’s hand. He could never pass up looking at children, no matter how much it hurt. Always the sore that never quite heals.

  They pushed through into the station’s main waiting area, an Art Deco temple to transportation with elaborate metalwork surrounding the doors, a thirty-foot-high vaulted blue ceiling, towering windows and massive wooden benches. Alayan stopped, took in the hall, and smiled. He’d once dreamed of building spaces like this, back when he had dreams of creating and not destroying, before he’d traded away his soul.

  They stepped into the outside chill. Alayan asked, “What’s your plan for us here?”

  Kassim waited until they were in the car park off a windy Market Street before he answered Alayan’s question. “We start with the two closest targets, Eldar in Brooklyn and Brown on Long Island. Surveil each on alternating days so we don’t stand out in the neighborhoods, follow the family members too so we know their schedules as well as the targets’. Then switch to the other two, Kaminsky in Paramus and Schaffer in Cherry Hill. There’s the van.” He pointed, shifted their direction. “Once we have their patterns down, we plan all four actions and execute on four consecutive days. We leave Schaffer for last, then fly out of Philadelphia immediately after.”

  A good plan. Too bad. “That’ll take a lot of time. Remember Hanukkah?”

  “Yes, I remember. If we get caught, we’ll miss the deadline, too.”

  Alayan stared straight ahead. He hated turning down good advice, but he hated even more the thought of the disaster breaking the deadline would bring. “We’ll split into two teams of three and track Eldar and Brown at the same time. Quick surveillance, just enough to get their schedules, then hit them fast, move to the next two. Three, maybe four days for each set of two.”

  Kassim flung his hands in the air. “Do you want this to fail? We’re rushing everything. How long before our luck runs out?”

  Alayan worked very hard to keep his eyes away from Kassim’s view. “We finished Demetrio in three days,” he shot back. “We can do this.”

  “That donkey practically shot himself!” Kassim’s voice steadily rose in pitch and volume—a bad sign. “Do you really think the rest are self-involved morons like him? That they’ll make this easy for us?”

  “It doesn’t matter if they do. We can do this. No one suspects. Only four left, Kassim, four more and we’ve won.” Alayan stopped, tugged at Kassim’s arm to turn him around. Of all the team’s members, he needed Kassim’s support and understanding the most. If Kassim didn’t believe, none of them would. “Just imagine the reaction when Sayyid Nasrallah announces what we’ve done. The West won’t be able to pretend we’re just a pack of stupid animals anymore. We’ll show we can match the Zionists with weapons and brains.”

  Kassim let out a heavy sigh. “I hope you’re right, Fadi. But we need to survive long enough to see that happen.”

  “We will.” He had to believe. They all did. Alayan squeezed Kassim’s shoulder gently. “We start tomorrow with Eldar and Brown. Only four more to go.”

  TWENTY-FIVE: Brooklyn, 28 November

  Jake trailed Trina as she wrestled the book cart to a stop. “Okay, where are we now?”

  Trina—wildflower-blue eyes, blond cornrows, Laura Ashley over blue tights—peered at the sign. “Fiction and Literature.”

  “What goes here?”

  “Everything that doesn’t belong someplace else.”

  “Right. Now check what’s in the cart.”

  She walked her forefinger along the book spines, matching each to the notes in her other hand. The new replacing the old. Jake saw himself in her place six years ago, his first stumbling steps learning this business. If she stayed with it, she’d eventually know everything about this place, be able to shelve in her sleep the way he could. He envied her the journey.

  “Charles Dickens? Candace Bushnell? Stephen King?”

  “That’s right.”

  Trina wrinkled her cheerleader’s nose in confusion. “Seriously? All in the same place?”

  Someone dropped a book on the café floor a few yards away. Hardbound on linoleum sounded like a large-caliber pistol shot. Jake found himself backed against a shelf unit that had been a couple feet away a moment before. Calm down. You won’t hear the one that gets you.

  Trina held her knuckles to her mouth, stared at him. “Um, Mr. Eldar, are you okay?”

  He nodded too quickly, held up his hand. “Yeah, fine. Just keep going. It seems weird, I know. It’s your first week, you’ll learn.” Mr. Eldar? Am I that old?

  He turned to find Gene in his usual suit and black overcoat, leaning against the Romance shelf unit, checking out Trina’s calves. “Jesus, Gene, you startled me. What are you doing here?”

  His uncle shrugged. “I was around, thought I’d stop by, get you to comp me some coffee. You take shield here, right?”

  “No. Put your badge away and buy your own damn coffee, you make enough money. We need the business.” Jake grabbed Gene’s elbow and steered him to the café. He dropped his volume a few clicks. “And bullshit you were around. You never come over here. What’s up?”

  “Actually, I had to go to the courthouse, so never say never.” He’d pulled back his volume, too. “Anyway, I had my guys look at…” They stopped at the café register behind two men in suits. Gene trailed off, then half-turned to look around the store. “Gonna miss all this?”

  Jake ran a quick check of the men: white, yuppie, clean-cut, good shoes. No threat. One had his cup, the other waited. Not the time or place to talk about dead people.

  He turned to look out over the shelves and signs—his shelves and signs. Two days left. “Yeah. This is a great job, Gene. The pay’s crap and I work a lot of hours, but…when a writer shows me something new, and I get someone to buy his book, and she comes back all lit up because she loved it, too, well…” He glanced at Gene, who wore a borderline-blank expression, as if Jake was speaking Mandarin. “You can’t buy that feeling.”

  “Can’t raise two kids on it, either.”

  “Yeah, so Rinnah keeps telling me. Get your coffee, I’ll be downstairs in greeting cards.”

  When his uncle tapped his shoulder a couple minutes later, Jake spun and grabbed his hand. “Fuck! Don’t do that!”

  Gene frowned. “Lay off the caffeine, kid.”

  Jake let his uncle go, pressed his back against the nearest shelves, dug the heels of his hands into the sides of his head. “It’s not caffeine. It’s ten days knowing I’m on a list that’s getting shorter. It’s like every guy on the street with a dark tan and five o’clock shadow is going to shoot me. You know how many guys there are like that out there?”

  Gene sighed, laid his free paw on Jake’s shoulder. “Hey. Calm down. If I thought anything was coming for you, there’d be a uniform on your door, bet on it.”

  Just then, an NYPD babysitter didn’t sound so bad. “Have you found out anything?”

  Gene watched him for a moment, then shook his head. “Like I was saying upstairs, I had my guys look at those names. You heard about the one down in D.C., right?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jake had set up Google News alerts for each of the surviving Doha 12, as he’d come to think of them. “They’re saying suicide. That look straight?”

  Gene nodded. “So far. Guy was going through a not-so-friendly divorce.
Got drunk, left a note, hung himself. No sign of forced entry, no sign anyone else was there, no witnesses. And that picture on the Red Notice? That was him. He had meetings with the Qatari Central Bank about the same time that Talhami shit cashed out.”

  “So he wasn’t part of it.” Jake checked the window for snipers, then paced a tight circle around his uncle. “This is nuts. I’m taking different routes to work every day. On the subway, I stand where the cameras can see, or next to transit cops. I stole Rinnah’s mailbox key so she can’t get to the mail first. I go to a place, I know where the back door is. Everything we used to do in Tel Aviv. I never wanted Eve to live like this. Ten days. How much longer?”

  “Stop pacing, willya?” Gene grabbed Jake’s arm. He stepped close, looked up into Jake’s eyes. “You’re scared. Weird shit going down, another kid on the way, I get it.”

  Jake shook his arm free. “I’m not scared for me. Whatever they throw at me, I can take. But what if they go for Rinnah? Or Eve? What then? It’s not like I’m in the army anymore, I’ve got them to worry about now. I don’t need protection, they do. You get that?”

  Gene seized Jake’s shoulder, squeezed hard. “Yeah. Listen. My guys are on this. They hooked up with the locals in the other cities, read the M.E. reports. Know what they got?”

  The question held its own answer. Jake’s insides sagged. “Nothing. They got nothing.”

  “They got nothing.” He released Jake, shook his head. “There’s only three no-shit crimes out of the eight. Nothing common between them.”

  “Except we’re all on the same fucking list.”

  Gene held up a placating hand. “Yeah, except that.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you, kid. We spent time on this. International calls, INTERPOL, the whole shot. I almost wish we’d found something, then we’d know what’s going on, we could do something.”

  This wasn’t what Jake had wanted to hear. Task forces, FBI, warrants, that’s what he’d wanted. He leaned his elbows on one of the greeting-card shelves, wiped his fingers over his hair as he watched people come and go, gauging the threat from each. “Do I need a gun here?”