She stood a moment longer, observing the team’s slow ascent. At lunch she had laced their tea with a mild amphetamine, but soon the extra zip would wear off. She checked her watch, then set off.
Three hours.
Nearly impossible.
The skinny engineer petered out first. Emma allowed him an extra ten minutes’ rest. She removed his boots and massaged his feet. She brewed more of her special tea and forced him to drink a cup. None of it made a whit of difference. He was done. His eyes had the forlorn, faraway look she knew too well. She gazed at the high mountain valley, a vast bowl of white, unadorned by rock or tree. The flanks of Tirich Mir rose defiantly from the distant side, disappearing into the cloud.
Emma looked back at the engineer and the others, waiting patiently, the porters not bothering to remove their packs. They had just reached the crest, and anything resembling a route had disappeared beneath the new-fallen snow, leaving them all to make their own paths. Wind slapped at their faces. Emma tightened her jaw. The storm was worsening.
The guide lifted an arm and pointed at an outcropping of rock shaped like a horn in the distance. “Five kilometers,” he said.
Emma handed her pack to the strongest porter, then told the ailing engineer to stand up. Kneeling, she ordered him to climb onto her back. She stood, adjusting her arms beneath his spindly legs. She guessed he weighed about sixty-four kilos. The team looked at her oddly.
“Last one there’s a rotten egg,” she said. Then, to the guide, “Go!”
It was 4:50 and night was descending when they reached the horn-shaped rock. She put down the engineer and collapsed onto her back. She allowed herself two minutes to rest, then stood. Her vision faltered, and she realized that she was perilously close to exhaustion. In response, she ordered herself to move faster and checked on each of the team members, telling them to hydrate, helping find energy bars in poorly packed rucksacks, offering words of encouragement. When she saw that everyone had a snack, she dug out some trail mix for herself and drank a liter of water.
After ordering the porters to make a fire in a cave, she gathered the engineers and the guide together. “It will be dark soon,” she said. “But I want our friends here from Dr. Khan’s workshop to have a look at the prize before the light goes.”
“One hundred meters,” said the guide. “I will show you.”
– -
It was larger than she’d imagined. She’d downloaded the specs from the Net, but she hadn’t expected it to be so imposing, so martial. Its full name was a Boeing AGM-86 Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile. It measured twenty-one feet in length and four feet in diameter and weighed 3,250 pounds.
The guide brushed away a layer of snow and removed the tarpaulin he and his brother had brought to protect it. The missile was a shark’s gray and had an angular snout that resembled that of a commercial jetliner. The long, thin wings that aided it in flight had not deployed and were tucked beneath its body. A circular air intake valve sat at the base of its tail fin. The words “U.S. Air Force” were painted on its skin, as were the serial number and other operating information. But all eyes were glued to the yellow-and-black radiation symbol stenciled at three places along its long body, and the words “Danger: Radioactive material contained inside. Failure to follow instructions may result in physical injury or death.”
There was an understatement, thought Emma.
The heavier engineer produced a Geiger counter from his pack and held it to the center of the missile, where the payload section was located. The needle danced wildly before coming to rest in the red.
“Uranium-235,” he said, studying the isotope chromatograph. “Hasn’t degraded a bit.”
“What about the tritium?” asked his colleague, referring to the concentrated gas necessary to produce the chain reaction.
“Ninety percent.”
“My God.”
“What is it?” asked Emma.
“The bomb is still live. It can be detonated at any moment.”
35
Swiss International Airways Flight 275, originating in Jerusalem, landed at Geneva’s Cointrin Airport on schedule at 1645 local time. The weather was gray and leaden, with ground temperature measuring thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit, or one degree Celsius, and humidity at 80 percent. Jonathan walked the long corridor to baggage claim alone, feeling more anxious than he would have liked or would ever admit. Danni was somewhere ahead. She’d traveled business class while he sat in the last row of economy. The separation was intentional. Training was over. The operation had begun. Nothing made it clearer than the American passport he carried in his left hand, issued in the name of John Robertson of Austin, Texas. Jonathan had been granted his first alias. It was official. He was a spy.
At immigration control, Jonathan watched with anxiety as his passport was scanned and whatever information its security strip held was displayed on the official’s monitor. Five seconds passed-an eternity by Jonathan’s newly calibrated soul.
“The purpose of your visit?”
“Business,” said Jonathan.
The official compared Jonathan to his picture, then brought down his stamp. “I wish you a pleasant stay.”
Jonathan accepted the passport in return, then stood for a moment like an idiot before realizing that the passport was good and he had been cleared to continue.
As instructed, he waited five minutes after seeing Danni pick up her luggage and clear customs before following suit. It was easier said than done. With typical Swiss efficiency, his bag was already on the carousel when he arrived, and he had to force himself to stand still and watch it go past again and again.
Suitcase in hand, he left the terminal and crossed the street to Parking Structure B. A gray minivan was parked at the farthermost recesses of the third floor. He opened the door and saw Danni in the rear seat, cloaked in shadow. “Get in,” she said.
“Now, please, Dr. Ransom,” said the driver. “We have a bit of a drive ahead of us.” English with a hard Swiss-German accent. The driver was a compact man with sloped shoulders, a stern countenance, and gray hair cut to a commando’s stubble. Jonathan’s breath caught.
“You?”
“Hello again,” said Marcus von Daniken, director of the Service of Analysis and Protection, Switzerland’s counterespionage agency. “Please shut the door. I have the heat on.”
Jonathan climbed into the middle seat and pulled the door closed. “How’s your arm?”
“I won’t be playing tennis anytime soon, but at least I can still watch it on television.”
Von Daniken had been wounded helping Jonathan and Emma thwart the attack on the Israeli jetliner ten months before.
“So you know Connor?” asked Jonathan.
“Frank and I are colleagues of long standing. The affair last February brought us into closer contact and enabled us to recognize our mutual interests. I help when I can.”
“It’s good to see you,” said Jonathan.
“Really, Dr. Ransom, politeness is not a requisite of this profession.”
“I just mean-”
“Yes, I know what you mean.” Von Daniken met his gaze in the rearview mirror. Something close to respect pulled at his steadfast eyes. He nodded gravely, then said, “I am disappointed in one thing.”
“Oh?”
“I see you’re still hanging around with the wrong kind of woman.”
“Shut up, Marcus,” said Danni, but she didn’t mean it. Von Daniken laughed and Danni joined him, and Jonathan had the feeling of being odd man out in a shadowy, ever-shifting fraternity.
Von Daniken put the van into gear and steered them out of the parking structure and onto the superhighway. For a while they drove along the outskirts of Geneva, which in the gathering dusk was as faceless and depressing as any other central European city. Then the buildings fell away, the highway climbed a rise, and the vast expanse of Lake Geneva stretched before him, an anthracite-colored sea guarded to the west by the imposing peaks of the French Haut
e-Savoie.
The heat was too much, so Jonathan cracked a window. Bitterly cold air redolent of fallow farmland rushed in, stinging his nostrils. Instantly he was awake, his senses keen. He looked at Danni, her eyes closed, dozing. A flash of anger passed through him. She knew everything-why he was here, what he was to do, how he was supposed to do it-yet she refused to tell him. Need to know. The three words drove him crazy. If anyone needed to know, it was Jonathan. And he needed to know now.
The highway followed the shore of the lake, past Lausanne and Montreux and Vevey, until finally the lake narrowed to its confluence with the Rhone River and the mountains drew closer on both sides, their shadows pressing in on the valley like sentinels of the gods.
“Dammit, where are we going?” Jonathan demanded.
Danni opened her eyes. But instead of telling him once more to mind his own business, she yawned and said, “Marcus, Dr. Ransom wishes to know where we’re going. Would you be so kind as to tell him?”
“We’re going where every couple should go when there is plenty of snow and they are rich and in love,” said Von Daniken. “Gstaad.”
The Palace Hotel sits atop its own hill at the north end of the village of Gstaad, a fairy-tale castle presiding over a sugarcoated kingdom. Strands of sparkling white bulbs danced over the road leading toward it through the village. Von Daniken turned sharply right and shifted into lower gear as the van began a steep, winding climb. For a moment the hotel disappeared from view, replaced by a hillside of snow and barren birch trees. Another curve and it was there again, much larger than before, a symphony of lights and red carpets. Frock-coated chasseurs waited beneath the porte cochere to open the door.
“Help me with this, would you?” Danni extended her wrist, and Jonathan clasped the diamond tennis bracelet. She wore an emerald on her right hand and a canary yellow diamond the size of a Brazil nut on the other.
“Are they real?” he asked.
It wasn’t until the last hour of the drive to Gstaad that she’d finally briefed him on the details of his mission. According to their cover, they were Mr. and Mrs. John Robertson of Austin, Texas. He was something big in real estate. (“If they ask, say ‘land,’” Danni had advised. “In Texas, that says it all.”) And they’d come to Gstaad for a restorative holiday. Sun, skiing, and a little nip and tuck courtesy of Dr. Michel Revy. Revy was the target, the Swiss plastic surgeon Lord Balfour had contracted to travel to Pakistan to alter his appearance.
“Of course,” she answered, eyes fluttering like a debutante’s. “Baby loves her ice.”
For a moment Jonathan didn’t answer. He wasn’t shocked by the quality of their passports or the explanation of why they’d come to Gstaad and what he was to accomplish. He’d been waiting for hours, if not days, to find out, and his responsibilities weren’t as demanding as he’d expected. What shocked him was Danni’s voice. All trace of her accent had vanished. She spoke English as if she’d been brought up in the shadow of her daddy’s oil well on the great Permian Basin.
“Baby?” Jonathan looked to von Daniken for support, but the Swiss policeman was already climbing out of the van and instructing the bellmen that he would not be staying.
Check-in proceeded without a problem, if one didn’t count Jonathan’s need to consult his passport to ensure that he spelled his name correctly, “Robertson” being exotic to the novice operative’s eye. A credit card was on file, and when asked, Jonathan replied that yes, all expenses were to be placed on it. The resident manager guided Jonathan and Danni to their room and spent no less than ten minutes describing the various features controlled by the bedside panel.
Room 420 was a junior suite, with a small salon leading into a spacious bedroom. The carpet was the color of honey and decorated with patterns of the fleur-de-lis. The furniture was lush and modern. A liter of Passuger mineral water was cooling in one sterling silver ice bucket and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the other.
“Shall I open the champagne now?” asked the hotelier.
“No, that won’t be-” began Jonathan.
“Of course, Herr Ringgenberg,” interceded Danni, who somehow had remembered the man’s name. “We’re parched, aren’t we, darling?”
Herr Ringgenberg poured the champagne with ceremony and wished them a marvelous stay. When he loitered at the door, it was Danni who slipped a fifty-franc note into his palm and thanked him ever so graciously. The door closed. She turned and raised her glass. “Cheers, darling.”
“Cheers,” said Jonathan, lifting his glass in return. “But weren’t you putting it on kind of heavy?”
“You’ve got to have some fun with it,” said Danni, without any fun at all, her Israeli accent knocking the frivolous, diamond-loving Texas gal flat on her behind. She set down the glass without drinking. “Get changed. You’ll find a suit in the closet. White shirt and necktie, please. We’re rich and conservative. This is no place for flannel shirts and boots.”
Inside the closet Jonathan found three suits, one charcoal, one navy, one black. “I’ll look like an undertaker,” he said.
“Undertakers don’t wear Zegna.”
Jonathan didn’t know what or who Zegna was, but knew better than to ask. “What about you?”
Danni entered the bathroom, a garment bag slung over her tanned arm. “Wait and see.”
The door closed and Jonathan stood for too long gazing at the strip of light beneath it. He was thinking of another luxury hotel where he’d had no business being, another foreign city, and another woman. A longing stirred inside him. Something stronger than desire. He took a step toward the door, then stopped, unsettled by his actions. As instructed, Jonathan dressed in the navy suit, white shirt, and midnight blue tie. The clothing fit as if tailored, and when he looked in the mirror, he saw the doctor his father had always wanted. Or, as Frank Connor might have said if he were present, “the doctor he was going to become.”
The door to the bathroom opened. Classical music drifted into the room, strains of Beethoven’s “Emperor.” The scent of French perfume.
“Ready to go?”
Jonathan turned from the dressing table and something inside him locked up. His first thought was that the woman standing in the doorway couldn’t be Danni. Someone had exchanged the fit, handsome woman with whom he’d spent the last four days for a raven-haired knockout who’d just stepped off the runway in Paris. The woman staring at him wore a black sheath that left no room for imagination. Her curves were more prominent than he’d suspected. Thanks to her heels, she was taller, too. Her face was expertly made up, with lipstick to put fire engines to shame and eyeliner to make Cleopatra blush. She wore her hair up, the better to show off her diamond stud earrings. More ice for Baby.
“What is it?” asked Danni. “Is something wrong?”
Jonathan rummaged through his store of sarcastic comments for something to explain away his awestruck expression. He found only the truth. “You look… nice.”
Danni’s eyes grew liquid, and she rushed back into the bedroom. She returned a minute later, holding a black leatherette box. Jonathan stood from his chair as she removed a men’s wristwatch with a brown crocodile strap. “An IWC Portuguese Chronograph,” she said, turning over his wrist and buckling the timepiece. “White gold, because you’re not flashy.”
“Unlike you.”
Danni lowered her eyes, and Jonathan tried not to enjoy the touch of her fingers, the rapt attention she paid to her task, the nearness of her. When she’d finished, he pulled back his sleeve and whistled. “Not exactly a Casio G-Shock.”
“This is Switzerland,” said Danni. “Watches matter. Oh, and one last thing.”
“What’s that?”
Danni took his hand and slipped a wedding band on his finger. “Now it’s official,” she said.
Jonathan looked at his hand, remembering that once he’d worn a ring. He was a man who admired permanence. “Good evening, Mrs. Robertson,” he said.
Danni glanced up, and all levity had fled her gaze
. “Good evening, Mr. Robertson. Ready to head out?”
Jonathan nodded, and they stood for much too long, looking at each other.
36
Firebase Persuader was located at the head of a narrow mountain valley in the northern Afghan province of Korengal, five kilometers as the crow flies from the Pakistani border. The firebase was home to fifteen United States Marines, the members of Special Operations Team Alpha, Third Battalion, First Marines. The firebase’s footprint ran twenty meters by thirty and was surrounded by a waist-high HESCO wall, the successor to sandbags, and a three-meter-tall fence topped with coils of razor wire.
For four months, Special Operations Team Alpha had combed the valleys that ran like a witch’s fingers through the mountains. They had set up ambushes and constructed hides and humped up and down more hills than Sisyphus. Their mission was simple: interdict the flow of weapons and materiel from the ungoverned tribal regions of neighboring Pakistan and stop the traffic of foreign fighters slipping across the border to join their Taliban brethren. There had been some successes and some defeats. They’d lost two of their own, but they’d killed a hundred times that number. It was a painful trade-off, but no one would argue it wasn’t fair. In the war, Special Operations Team Alpha was a single barb in the country’s defensive perimeter. But it was a sharp barb.
Captain Kyle Crockett heard the flutter of the helicopters before he could see them. It was dusk and a purple haze hung in the air, obscuring the view down the valley leading from the northern plain. In a war zone, helicopters always flew in pairs. If one was shot down, the other was there to ferry the survivors, if there were any, and to provide cover for their rescue. Grabbing his rifle and his ruck, he left the CP and crossed the muddy ground to his men. The team going out this evening numbered twelve in all. They were well trained, disciplined, and fit. Under fire they kept their cool, and when called upon, they could be as vicious as a pack of wolves.
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