Clearly, skipping the session’s not an option. “So much has been going on with the investigation, we haven’t had much time together.”
“I see.”
“I did run into Jake Osborn. That didn’t go so well.”
“The agent you wrote up, yes. So you were expecting a more favorable reaction?”
“No.”
Rudnick took a long drink of coffee, then leaned back in his chair and seemed to appraise Uzi for a moment. “The FBI wasn’t your first choice when you moved back to the US, was it?”
“You’ve been spending time in my personnel file.”
“Just a bit. But there’s really nothing in there. Just a note that you interviewed with the CIA.”
“Their Special Activities Division,” Uzi said. “Secret paramilitary operators that work undercover. They do everything the military does, and more—and with deniability. I was looking at hooking up with their Ground Branch.”
“Sounds right up your alley.”
“Because of, well, because of what had happened, I’d had my fill of covert missions. Enough following orders. I realized I couldn’t handle it mentally anymore. I’d lost my edge, my mental toughness.” Uzi forced a grin. “You realize what it took for me to admit that just now?”
Rudnick didn’t smile. “You had ‘enough of following orders,’ yet you chose to work for the FBI, where protocols and procedures are vital to the performance of your job.”
The grin evaporated from Uzi’s face. “We’re back to Osborn.”
“We’ll get to Osborn in a minute. First let’s talk about ‘what had happened,’ as you put it.”
“How about...let’s not.”
“I really think it’ll help. Go back to your days with the Mossad. Was following orders something they stressed?”
Uzi’s foot was tapping the floor furiously as he decided whether or not to answer Rudnick. Realizing the good doctor wouldn’t allow him to sidestep the issue, he pressed on. “Mission success was the bottom line. They gave you the tools needed to get the job done and the rest was up to you. There were rules, yeah, but they were there to ensure survival. If you didn’t follow those rules, you ended up getting caught and embarrassing Israel, or getting killed. Or both.”
“What was your role?”
“I did what I did because it was necessary. But I’m not proud of it.”
“It?”
Uzi looked away. He pulled a toothpick from his pocket. He could feel Rudnick’s gaze on him as he fumbled with the plastic.
“Those toothpicks are like cigarettes for you, aren’t they?”
“I used to smoke. These are a hell of a lot healthier.”
“Are you embarrassed about what you did with Mossad?”
“Embarrassed? No. Not embarrassed. It was necessary. It was my job.”
“Yes...” Rudnick said. “But there’s something that still bothers you about it.”
Uzi had to give the shrink credit. He was very intuitive. He read his patients as if their diagnoses were imprinted on their foreheads. “Killing someone would bother any law-abiding citizen, even if the people you killed were terrorists, horrible people who enjoyed killing others because they were different and had different beliefs.
“During wars, soldiers sit in tanks with a ton of steel between them and the enemy. Or they fly in jets a few thousand feet in the air dropping bombs on a faceless enemy...lie on a mountainside hundreds of yards away and pull a trigger...launch a missile from a drone. Or fire a machine gun across a ravine. But what I did was up close and personal.”
A moment later, Rudnick caught on. “A kidon. A government-sponsored assassin.”
“If our operatives found out about a terrorist plot and infiltrated the cell, they would call us in. It was our job to...neutralize that cell before they could do any damage.”
“You killed them before they could kill innocent people.”
“Only if they’d killed before and posed a known risk to the general population.” Uzi chuckled. “Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It’s not. You try to go about your business because you know what you’re doing is right. But you still wake up in cold sweats reliving the mission.”
Rudnick nodded slowly, then took a sip from his coffee, as if he were measuring his response. Finally, he said, “I would imagine it’s a very difficult thing for anyone to live with, regardless of who your...targets are.”
“Over the years I worked with other counterterrorism agents— Special Operational Forces, GSG-9s, MI5s, MI6s. We all felt the same way. Yeah, there were some who got off on it, the killing, but most did what we did for our country.” He shrugged a shoulder. “’Course, knowing that didn’t really make it any easier to live with.”
“Your last job was before Dena’s...death?”
Uzi felt his eyes tearing and looked away. He managed a nod, but couldn’t get his voice to work. He cleared his throat and, staring at the floor, said, “A terrorist cell that’d assassinated one of our interior ministers was also responsible for three other bombings. A café, a disco, and a school bus. Seventy-nine were killed. They were planning an attack on the Knesset, to take out a major portion of the Israeli government. It’d be like 9/11, if the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had made it to the Capitol building.”
“It would’ve been...very demoralizing.”
“And it would’ve triggered a war with devastating consequences. So the agents kept a watch on the group’s activities, checked and double-checked everything. We found out how they were going to do it. They’d be able to defeat the building’s defenses and hit different parts of the structure simultaneously. But we didn’t know when it was going down.” Uzi relived the events in his head as if they’d happened a month ago. “There was one point each day when the six terrorists were in separate locations. We knew where and when, and I was given the assignment of eliminating one of them. Another five kidons were dispatched to take out the others.”
“Sounds like a pretty important mission they entrusted to you.”
“The kidon they’d originally assigned got injured. I was the backup. I’d trained alongside him, so I knew the op as well as he did. Funny thing is, if I hadn’t gone, my family would still be alive today. Strange how things work out, isn’t it, Doc?”
“Uzi, you can’t—”
Uzi held up a hand. “There are some things you have control over, and some you don’t. Nothing I could’ve done differently on that. Luck of the draw.”
“So what went wrong?”
“They didn’t tell me till the morning of the hit that I was going in. They did that sometimes so you didn’t stress over it. You trained for days, sometimes weeks, and then one day they just said ‘Get your gear, you’re going in.’ That’s when they told me who my target was. I couldn’t believe it. I knew the guy. Ahmed Ishaq, one of our best informants. I told the director general there was some mistake, that Ahmed would never do this. He told me to carry out my orders, that our intel was good. He asked me if I could handle this mission, and I told him of course.
“But in the back of my mind, I had doubts. I thought that if I could just talk to Ahmed, find out what was going on....” Uzi shook his head. “I just couldn’t believe Ahmed was a terrorist.”
“So you went to meet him.”
“I should’ve followed mission protocols,” Uzi said, pounding the knife-edge of his right hand into the palm of his left. “Everything was mapped out. Mossad had reconfigured their training facility to match Ahmed’s safe house, so I knew the layout before I went in. I’d practiced the maneuvers so many times I could’ve done it in the dark.” Uzi chuckled sardonically. “My grandmother used to say, ‘Man plans and God laughs.’ Because when emotions enter the equation, everything goes to hell. The best kidons leave their emotions at the door. That’s the way I’d handled all my missions. Except this one.”
“I take it the Director General was right about Mr. Ishaq.”
Uzi was staring at the floor. Finally, he spoke without
raising his eyes. “I wanted to give him every opportunity to come clean. But he couldn’t, because...yes, the director general was right. And it all blew up in my face. One of his buddies was in the back room. I didn’t approach the mission like I was supposed to do. I should’ve scoped out the house, known everyone who was in there. Bottom line, Ahmed was guilty and trapped. They started shooting. I got caught in the cross fire, pinned down. I couldn’t even get a shot off. But Ahmed got hit, probably by a ricochet from his partner’s gun. The other guy took off.”
“What about the other five terrorists?”
“Eliminated.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Rudnick said. He took a sip of coffee. “May not have gone as planned, but it sounds like the mission objectives were met.”
Uzi was still staring at nothing.
“Right?” Rudnick asked after a long silence.
“We stopped the terrorist attack. So, yeah. But the guy at Ahmed’s place who got away. That’s where the problems started. When Dena and Maya were killed...” Uzi stopped, his voice choking down. He looked up at the ceiling. His eyes were moist. “A note was left. It read, ‘For Ahmed.’”
“But you didn’t kill Ahmed,” Rudnick said. “His colleague—”
“His buddy couldn’t admit he’d shot one of his own. I’m sure he told the others in his cell that I’d killed him. That is what I was supposed to do. I’m sure it wasn’t hard convincing them that I was the one who’d killed him. Why would they question it?”
Rudnick nodded. “I see. So one of the remaining members of this terrorist group tracked you down and...effected revenge. And you blame yourself.”
Uzi said nothing.
“Well, my friend, this explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
The toothpick bobbed up and down on Uzi’s lips. He was trying his hardest to fight back the tears. But a knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
Rudnick’s brow crumpled. He rose from his chair and cracked the door open.
Just then, Uzi’s phone rang. The caller ID told him it was Marshall Shepard’s private cell phone. “Yeah.”
“Uzi, listen carefully. Some bad stuff’s going down. I don’t know the whole story, but I’m working on it. It’s gonna take some time. Just cooperate and don’t make it any harder—”
Uzi turned in his seat and saw a gray-and-black uniformed law enforcement officer through the doorway. The man and Rudnick exchanged a brief, muffled conversation—during which Uzi heard his name.
This is about me. Shepard’s phone call suddenly made sense.
“I’m a psychologist,” Rudnick said, louder. “I’m not at liberty to disclose who’s a patient—”
“It’s okay, Doc,” Uzi said. He was on his feet, moving toward the door. “I’m Aaron Uziel.”
A suited man nudged the door open and pushed through. It wasn’t until he had entered the treatment suite did Uzi see there were a handful of officers in the anteroom. And their guns were drawn.
Definitely not a positive sign.
“Aaron Uziel, Detective Jack Paulson, Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department. I’ve got a warrant here for your arrest. Do you have any weapons on your person, sir?”
“What’s going on?” Rudnick asked. “You can’t just barge into a doctor’s office and arrest his patient—”
“We can and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Paulson said matter-of-factly. “Now step back, sir, and don’t interfere or we’ll have to take you in, too.”
Uzi slowly spread his arms like an eagle, his Nokia still in his right hand. An officer stepped forward and patted down Uzi’s body, removing the Glock from its holster. Next he found the Puma tactical knife in Uzi’s pocket and then the Tanto hanging around his neck.
“I’ve got a boot knife, too.”
The officer handed it all to Paulson, who squinted as he eyed the weapons cache, no doubt wondering why an FBI agent was so heavily—and unconventionally—armed.
“I’ll ask you not to make any sudden moves,” Paulson said. “You know the drill.” Paulson turned around. “Chuck.”
A man in a brown windbreaker stepped through the crowd of officers. He opened a small toolkit on the carpet and peeled a couple of wide swatches of adhesive tape from a plastic wrapper. He applied the strips to Uzi’s hands, then removed and carefully packaged them.
Uzi knew what they were doing, and he didn’t like the implications. “What’s the charge?”
The technician nodded at Paulson.
Paulson nudged Uzi around, then pulled his prisoner’s arms down one at a time and affixed a set of handcuffs.
“Aaron Uziel, you’re under arrest for the murder—”
“Murder?” Uzi craned his neck to look at Paulson. “Of who?”
“John Quincy Adams.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No, sir, no joke. And you have the right to remain silent.”
“Spare me,” Uzi said. But Paulson continued nonetheless. Uzi zoned out, searching his memory for the name John Quincy Adams—beyond the obvious American history reference.
Then it hit him.
8:25 AM
29 hours 35 minutes remaining
Uzi was driven by squad car to the Mason District station of the Fairfax County Police Department. A modern brick and stucco structure, it had the flavor of a small-town police station with all the technology and creature comforts of a metropolitan facility.
A single deputy manned the booking desk, where clipboards and files were stacked on end, with memos and rosters taped to walls. Everything Uzi expected to see that he had seen when he’d visited other police departments as a guest—phones ringing, keys clanging, printers spitting out documents—were absent.
He was led to a counter-mounted camera, positioned in front of a wall with measured hash marks, and given a metal identification sign to hold in front of his chest. The flash sparked and he was ushered over to a metal bench. Ahead stood several jail cells with thick, yellow bars.
“Wait here,” Paulson instructed. He handed some paperwork to another deputy, who was operating the free-standing LiveScan electronic fingerprint unit. Uzi’s ridges and whorls were recorded and stored digitally in an expansive electronic database. Uzi thought of the tour he’d taken of the Bureau’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, a state-of-the-art fingerprint facility in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The technology contained in the 100,000-square-foot computer center fascinated him. Uzi had wanted to spend more time learning about it, but never had made the trip. Now he was experiencing the front-line centerpiece of the system firsthand.
Paulson led Uzi across the hall to a small room where a rack of forms sat beside a Sony television. Mounted atop the TV was a PictureTel video conferencing unit linked with the magistrate on duty. The bespectacled judge was leaning back in her chair listening to Paulson outline the charges.
Uzi followed his better sense and kept his mouth shut. Mostly, he didn’t know what to say other than to deny everything—something he was sure the cops and the magistrate heard often.
Paulson glanced down at his notepad. “Evidence includes a ballistics match to Mr. Uziel’s Glock forty-caliber sidearm—”
“What?” Uzi looked at Paulson, his mouth agape.
“You’ll get your chance in a moment,” the magistrate said to Uzi. She gestured toward Paulson, and the detective continued.
“That should be enough for now, Your Honor.”
“Indeed,” the magistrate said. “Agent Uziel, now you may speak.”
Uzi faced the monitor. He was a bit unnerved over pleading his case to a television screen, but pressed on without hesitation. “Your Honor, what time was Agent Adams murdered?”
The magistrate consulted her paperwork. “ME estimates five to seven hours ago.”
Uzi knew the gunshot residue test the forensic technician had performed on him was only valid for up to six hours after firing a weapon—which meant he was right on the cusp of the timeline. Regardless, he was confident the
GSR would come back negative since he hadn’t fired his sidearm in nearly two weeks. But a negative finding might not do him any good because a good US Attorney would merely point out the test’s limitations and the fact that several hours had elapsed since the murder.
Uzi looked directly into the camera. “Your Honor, I only met Agent Adams once—actually, twice,” he said, realizing he had first seen the man on the ARM compound. “I had no animosity toward him. I’ve got no motive.” He figured it would be best not to mention the argument in Garza’s office, though he knew, of course, it would eventually surface.
“And how do you explain the ballistics match?”
Uzi absentmindedly shook his head. That was a good question. He couldn’t. “I don’t know, Your Honor.”
“Well, for now we’re just going to go with what we have. I’m sure you would want me to do the same thing if you were in Detective Paulson’s shoes.”
Uzi sucked the inside of his cheek. He wanted a toothpick desperately, but given the circumstances figured he would be better off asking for a phone call to an attorney.
“Okay then,” the magistrate said. She looked down at the paperwork on her desk and scrawled her signature. “Officer Paulson, we’re a go on this one.”
Paulson nodded, then took Uzi by the elbow. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Your Honor, I’m running the investigation into the vice president’s assassination attempt. I can’t just—”
“Agent Uziel, as a rule of law, my hands are tied. They’ll have to carry on without you. I hope, for your sake, you get this straightened out.”
That makes two of us.
The detective led Uzi back across the hall to Room 162. He pulled open the door, and they walked into the quiet chamber that held six empty jail cells. Paulson grabbed the handle on unit number two and slid the gate aside. Uzi knew that was his cue to enter.
“I’ll get you a phone in here as soon as I can. Meantime, make yourself comfortable.”
Uzi sat down on the cot and watched Paulson close the door. His first thought was what this meant in terms of his task force and the investigation. He had barely a day left—not a good time to be locked up in a cage.
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