“What is that?” She caught his hand minutes later to look at the ring.
“For your belly button.” He displayed it, then put a finger to her navel and pressed. Could he impress her that she belonged to him? He meant to keep her until she admitted it. He held it up and in the sunset drifting through the sheers against the windows, he saw the diamonds sparkle. “Tomorrow, we’ll go to the souk and have a jeweler pierce it and put this in.”
She took it from his finger and put it on hers to hold this way and that. “Are these your silver eyes on me?”
In more ways than one, babe. “From now on, you’ll never leave my sight.”
Her eyes glistened with tears as she pulled him down for a smoldering kiss.
He curled his hand around her nape and stared at her. “Now that we’re together again, I want no nights without you.”
“No days, either.” She kissed him again, quick and hard.
“A promise.” He wrapped her close.
When their breathing had returned to normal, he strode into the bathroom and took down from their hooks the white terry house robes. He encouraged her to put hers on and he donned the other. Sitting on the bed, he pulled her next to him.
She traced a finger down his cheek. “What bothers you? Nick? Something at the murder scene?”
“The cable cord, yes. I’m surprised they didn’t find that and check it out.” He caught her puzzled expression. “What about Nick?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t like him. And I’ve always liked your friends. Mark. Cord. Tate.” She was frowning. Then she shook her head. “Sorry. I need to blow that off. He just rubbed me the wrong way. Too stiff. I don’t know.”
“We’ve got bigger problems.”
She frowned. “Lots of them. If Ahmed’s murderer took his computer, then the culprit probably also has my email. My website. My ID. My—”
“What?”
She sat straighter and looked at him in horror. “I never thought, but of course, they have my office address, too.”
“And with your real name, they can easily reference your father.” Grant hated to say it, “And also—”
“Oh, my god, Grant! My mother!” She rose up on her knees on the bed.
“I’ll get Todd to put a detail on her now.” He turned, in search of his phone.
“The house! And her office!”
“Right, both.” Where the hell had he put his phone?
Ah. The living room in his trench coat. He had one foot on the floor to retrieve it when it rang.
His distinctive ring led him right to it.
Fishing it out of his coat pocket, he read the caller ID. Nick. “Hey, what’s happening?”
“Found out from the Paris homicide squad that there was no computer in the room when they went in.”
Oh, Christ. Grant rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Okay. Do you have them analyzing any fingerprints on the cable cord?”
“I suggested that would be a good idea. They wanted to know where I got the idea there might have been a computer in the apartment when the man died.”
“And you said?”
“A little birdie told me.”
“The usefulness of being on the embassy staff, eh?” Grant scoffed. “Let me know what they say.”
“Where are you staying in Qunitar? The new Oasis hotel is supposed to be decadent.”
“Heard of it, but we have a change of plans.”
“Oh?”
“We’re taking a detour to Jerusalem.”
“The King David then?”
Something about the query didn’t sit right with Grant. “Maybe.”
“Working?” Nick joked. “Or praying?”
“A little of both.”
Chapter Nine
She pulled the draperies open to view the solemnity of the gray Old City walls, capped by the golden Dome of the Rock and a Russian church tower within the confines of Jerusalem. She had lived in the newer part of this ancient city for two years when she was a teenager and her father was an American envoy. This hotel, small but elegant, didn’t exist then. In her travels here since her dad’s posting, Coco had always stayed near the American Colony compound outside the Old City’s walls. But she knew the city well, its weaving roads, its busses and bustling markets. The people. But when Grant had changed their reservations from the famous King David Hotel one block away to this one, his action left her wary.
“We’re still so close to the Old City that we can walk in New Gate,” he had explained.
He was right. The four-lane ring road around the fourteenth century ramparts assured a visitor of hailing a taxi quickly. And close as they were to the Arab quarter and the souk, they’d easily found the jeweler her mother had often patronized. The wizened old man recognized Coco immediately and with tears in his eyes, ordered his assistant to get tea and hummus. The man quickly and painlessly pierced her navel, then inserted the solid gold ring with five small diamonds. Afterward, he demanded she and Grant stay and eat a snack of hummus with ripe red tomatoes, freshly baked pita and strong black coffee.
Grant and she left soon after to await her friend to take them to the east side of town. They needed someone who crossed traveled here regularly to escort them around. Roads often changed, especially on the east side of town because of constant building. And her friend worked for an aid agency that had headquarters in the western part of the city, projects in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank in Palestine.
“Traffic is sparse today,” she told Grant. “Few taxis are in service.”
“Shabat,” he replied, pre-occupied with reading a text message on his cell.
“Friday after two o’clock begins the Jewish Sabbath and the majority keep to the laws and avoid using cars and modern conveniences. For Christians and Muslims, Friday is a day to get around town easily.”
“That’ll make our job easier today.”
“Paul ever gets here,” she said, worried always about safety in this city where the slightest problem could erupt into a catastrophe.
“Well, he’s with an international aid organization, so he probably works around-the-clock. Right?”
“Still, Paul has always been late for everything!”
“Hmm. He takes after you?” Grant teased.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’d say you can be replaced, but that is not true.”
His gaze turned hard as steel. “Don’t ever try it.”
“Never,” she whispered.
The house phone rang.
“That’s probably him now.” Grant picked it up, listened to the receptionist and after a minute said, “Yes, great. Send him up.”
Paul Gregory had the tall, slim, pale look of a man who needed a vacation, a tan and a life, and not necessarily in that order.
Coco was shocked at how slim her old friend from high school had become. At thirty-three, he appeared a decade older. Grey strands threaded through his sable brown hair. Her first instinct was to call attention to it, but her manners took hold as they hugged each other.
“You look terrific, kid,” Paul told her as his blue eyes sparkled. “Though I’d say the worry lines don’t add a lot.”
“I’m going to try to improve that with your help,” she told him as she hooked her arm in his. “Meet Grant Warwick.” The two men shook hands. “He owns Warwick Security and he’s helping me.”
Coco watched Paul assess the man who was at least two inches taller and weighed twice as much. She had to smile at her old friend’s unabashed assessment of her lover. “Does he pass inspection?”
Grant grinned. “Please say yes. I assure you, Paul, I’ve worked hard to get here.”
That did the trick for Paul who ended his exam and gave Grant a hearty grin. “Seal of approval, done. You guys ready? It’s going to rain, so we’d better grab umbrellas from the concierge.”
Downstairs at the front door, Paul pointed a remote at his car to unlock it and they got in, Coco in front, Grant in the back seat.
Paul waved his thanks to the doorman for the courtesy of the parking space, then turned the ignition.
“I have the address.” She told Paul the specifics. “I think I recall this neighborhood, but I wanted you along to tell us.” She also wanted the assurance of a friend driving them around and the impartial appearance of the organization’s marked car.
“Glad to help. I recognize the street.” Paul pulled into the ring road traffic and zipped around the periphery of the Old City walls, headed for the east side of town, the Palestinian sector, administered by the Israeli government since 1967.
Within ten minutes, Paul parked on a residential street and looked at a two-story structure with ornate green shutters and a patio. The rain that had begun as a shower was now a downpour.
“This is the right apartment,” Coco assured the two men. The color of the shutters was no longer red, but this was definitely where she had come before to examine the brother of the man she’d identified in Madrid. She checked her watch and wondered how long they would have to sit to glimpse anyone coming in or going out.
“Tough to see anything with the shutters closed,” Grant commented.
“I’ll go check the mailbox listing,” Coco put her hand on the door handle.
“No, you won’t,” both men objected at once.
“I’ll go,” Paul volunteered.
He hopped out, pulling up his collar against the rain.
“And he wanted us to bring umbrellas,” Coco jested, as she watched Paul peer at the mailboxes on the front porch alcove, then turn toward the small market next door.
“He’s going to ask around,” Grant said. “How’s his Arabic?”
“Better than mine,” she responded.
Within a few minutes, Paul was sprinting out of the shop and into the driver’s seat.
“Our man and his family have moved,” he announced, swiping rain from his hair.
Coco clutched. What now?
“Don’t worry. The owner of the store told me where they’ve gone.” Paul was grinning as he turned the engine and eased them into the road.
Coco was so pleased she could have kissed him. “How did you do that?”
Paul kept his attention on his driving as he shifted up to a higher speed. “Told them I needed to find him, that’s all. Which is true. But the shop owner says that the family moved but keep the apartment for when they come into the city occasionally. That’s all.”
“But he taught college courses here,” she said, surprised that he’d moved.
“Now he teaches in Ramallah.” Paul glanced at her and named a small university.
“So we’re going through a checkpoint into the West Bank?” she asked him.
“We are. Ever been through?”
“A few times,” she told him, full of trepidation that her control had not known about this move. Or had she just decided to keep me in the dark?
“You two do have your passports, I hope?”
“Paul,” she assured him, patting her purse and feeling more dismay at this turn of events than she hoped she showed, “we don’t leave home without them.”
Grant grumbled about the change in plans. “Did the shop owner give you any information about the man and his family?”
“Just that the man, his wife and two sons left three years ago.”
Coco stilled. The timing means my control should have known about this.
Grant was silent in the back.
Paul glanced at Coco. “Why? Is the timing of the move significant?”
“Maybe. Did the shop owner have any ideas why they left Jerusalem?”
“Got a job in Ramallah. Moved quickly, though. Does that help?”
Coco swiveled to look at Grant. “A lot, I think.”
Grant said, “Paul, tell me. How difficult is it for someone to move from Jerusalem across the Separation Wall?”
“From what I hear, not tough at all.”
Traffic began to slow as they approached a long line of cars and trucks snaking toward a concrete forty-foot-tall guard tower. Brown-uniformed Israeli guards with machine guns worked the lines of cars, examining passports, and checking out vehicles entering the West Bank. From either side of the tower stretched the twenty-five-foot- tall slabs of concrete strung together like grey dominos over hills and into valleys.
Waved past the gates by the guards, they picked up speed along the two-lane highway. Within an hour, they entered Ramallah, a city that resembled Jerusalem’s new city with its pale ivory and ochre buildings and its bustling populace. Some women were in modern dress, others in their long gowns and head scarves, abaya and haijiab. The language on the streets here was Arabic, instead of Hebrew. The aromas of cumin and cinnamon reminiscent of the souk in Jerusalem floated through the air.
Once more they came to a stop in a residential neighborhood. At four in the afternoon, people walked the street, women chatting over fences, men coming home from work. A few houses down, a group of four boys played soccer in the road. The house that she and the two men examined was a pale ivory with paler white filigree around the front porch and the windows.
“This house looks deserted, too,” Grant observed.
The children in the street caught Coco’s eye. “See those boys…?”
“Want me to drive down?” Paul asked.
“No, too obvious. Stay here.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a tiny digital camera. She focused on one of the boys, hit the zoom and turned the dial to movie mode.
“Nothing like genetics,” she murmured with a lump in her throat. She stopped the movie mode and switched to high resolution picture capability, then continued taking one shot after another. “This boy—see the one in the red jersey? What would you say he is? Ten? Twelve? Look at the he shape of the jaw. The eyes. The brows. Oh, yes!”
“You think he is related to your man?” Grant sat forward, his voice reverberating in her ear.
“Has to be,” she said, shooting a few stills of the house and put her camera down.
A woman came out, called to the boy and entered the house again.
“Uh-oh.” Coco dug in her purse for her sunglasses and a scarf.
“What’s the matter?” Grant asked her.
“The man getting out of that car?” She lowered her face as she tied the scarf and jammed on the glasses.
“Which?” Paul asked.
“The one that just parked. The man in the grey suit waving to the boy.”
Grant put a hand to her shoulder. “What about him?”
She could barely get the words out. “He looks familiar. He and the boy are going into the house together?”
She picked up her camera once more, refocusing her lens to a higher speed. The sun was setting, but she could see that the man and the boy were affectionate and knew each other well.
“I don’t understand,” she said more to herself than the others as the two figures entered the front door of the house. Suddenly, it opened again and the man came bounding out, looking like he was headed straight for their car. “Oh, Paul. He’s coming. Get us out of here. Take that road to the left.”
But the man picked up the soccer ball from the edge of the street in the front yard and took it inside.
Paul had them headed off to the left.
Coco breathed a sigh of relief “That was a scare.”
Grant squeezed her shoulder. “Why?”
“He’s one of the men at the meeting in the desert.”
“Which one?” Grant pressed. “G or C.?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Neither.”
“But you said…”
“I know, I know.” She shut her eyes, remembering, reliving the minutes in the brilliant desert sun. “He’s lost weight. That is not the sibling of the man I identified in Madrid. That’s the man who would not talk.”
Grant squeezed her shoulder. “You’re sure?”
“I know what I see. This man is one of the five I’ve been searching for. But he’s not the one I expected to se
e here. He’s not Palestinian. Not Arabic.”
”I know,” Grant said slowly. “He looks European.”
Paul agreed. “I’d say Greek. Or Italian.”
* * *
How could that be, she asked herself a thousand times on the ride back to Jerusalem. Paul and Grant remained silent, letting her think.
The still pictures Langley had shown her had been such poor shots. True. But had Langley confused the suspects?
Were some of the pictures incorrectly gathered or labeled? Mistakes happened. Intelligence was not always perfect. Face recognition software was good, but not fool proof. Neither was she, clearly.
The fact that made her stomach churn was that her control had not done her job. Had not told her that the man had moved, taken his family and gone to Ramallah. But then, was that man whom she’d just seen in Ramallah the brother of the man she’d sent to a black site?
He didn’t look like it.
He didn’t act like it.
He had totally different features, body build and posture. The boy was not his son, though. No. That she knew, too. The boy was the son of the Madrid radical or his nephew. That’s how closely the boy resembled his elder male relatives.
But she had the pictures. Clear ones, this time. And in high resolution. She’d make copies of her camera disk when they got back to their hotel. She’d go to an internet café, and buy a flash drive. Transfer the jpegs. And send the disk to… Not her control.
Who then?
Her control’s supervisor. Hey, it was jumping rank, but this had merit. If she got chewed out, terrific. If she lived, she wasn‘t interested in a promotion. What the hell good would that do her if she were miserable, without Grant…or dead?
But why the son or nephew of the Madrid radical lived in the same house with the other man bewildered her. Did they all just live together for companionship and protection?
Tall, Hard and Trouble Page 19