Angels of Wrath (52 page)

“Stuff’ll kill you,” said Monsoon.

“If I’m lucky,” said Ferg.

“You want me to go find Rankin?”

“Nah, they’ll find their way. How’s our guest?”

“He wants to leave,” Monsoon said, thumbing toward Ravid. “I told him not to while you were gone. I promised to break his legs if he did.”

“A promise is a promise,” said Ferguson. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and you’ll get to keep it.”

He climbed up the shoreline to where Ravid was sitting. The Israeli narrowed his eyes as he approached, watching him the way a hawk might focus on a mouse in a field before pouncing.

“What’s your story?” asked Ferguson. “You don’t want to be rescued?”

“I haven’t been rescued. I told you, I didn’t want to go with you.”

“There’s a Syrian inside having a cup of coffee. You want me to turn you over to them?”

Ravid didn’t even bother answering. He stared ahead, intent on his course.

“How’d you know where we were?” asked Ferguson.

“I didn’t.”

“We’ll save you anyway. You don’t even say thank you.”

Rankin, Guns, and Thera appeared a short time later, directed by Lauren to their location. Ferguson told them to keep an eye on Ravid after the pickup.

“You sure he’s really Mossad?” asked Rankin. “Maybe he works both sides.”

“A possibility,” said Ferguson, though lie doubted it. “I put a locator lag on him when we cleaned him up. If he really wants to run, let him go.”

“Figures. They screw us, and we save their butts,” said Rankin.

“Way of the world, Skippy. Way of the world.”

~ * ~

7

CIA HEADQUARTERS, VIRGINIA

Corrigan had just started to explain what had happened for the second time when the phone behind Slott’s desk rang. The deputy director for operations of the CIA guessed it was his opposite number at Mossad returning his call.

“This will be Adam,” Slott told Corrigan. He reached over and picked up the phone. The CIA telephone operator confirmed that indeed Adam Rosenfeld was on the line. “Put him through,” Slott said.

Corrigan, unsure of the protocol, started to get up.

“No, no, stay,” Slott told him. “This won’t take long.” Slott wanted Corrigan to hear his end of it to emphasize that he fought for his people, even if he had been effectively angled out of First Team operations.

“Adam, what the hell were you doing in Syria? Excuse my French,” said Slott as soon as the other man came on the line.

“I might ask the same question.”

“We alerted you to our interests. You should have done the same.”

“We made it possible for you to pursue your interests,” said the Mossad official.

“Oh, don’t give me that. And don’t trot out your luncheon speech about living in a complicated world either.”

Corrigan stared at his hands as Slott scolded his opposite number in Israel, claiming that the Mossad operation had not only sabotaged a delicate mission by the U.S., but had put the lives of his people in danger. Corrigan had joined the CIA only a year before, coming over specifically to work in the newly created job of “desk coordinator” for First Team operations. It was a jack-of-all trades job, running interference for the First Team in the field, helping coordinate missions, and arranging support. As originally conceived, the real power rested with the field officer in charge of the mission, who had almost unlimited authority once given an assignment. The missions were supposed to flow directly from a finding signed by the president. In the last administration, the findings had consisted of language so brief and open-ended that Corrigan had been shocked by the first one he saw:
Recover illegal arms.

No location, no time frame, nothing but those three words.

President McCarthy had gradually asserted more control, first by more narrowly defining the missions and, within the last few months, inserting Corrine Alston as the conscience and de facto boss of Special Demands. Slott hadn’t quite recovered; part of his frustration now was being expressed indirectly in his conversation with Rosenfeld.

“We have one of your people with us,” Slott told Rosenfeld, changing his tone to make the information seem almost incidental, though it was anything but. Bailing Ravid out—which was the only possible interpretation of what had happened, Slott believed—was a four-aces hand in the unspoken competition between the agencies. “Aaron Ravid. Or Fazel al-Qiam, as he’s known. We’ll take him to Cyprus. I don’t expect you to acknowledge him,” added Slott. “But you may want to make arrangements.”

Rosenfeld didn’t reply.

“I’m still not happy,” Slott said, realizing he was rubbing it in. He hung up, feeling vaguely unsatisfied.

A statue of a gargoyle sat in the corner of his desk, a Father’s Day gift from one of his sons after a visit to Notre Dame in Paris, where they’d admired the gargoyles in the heights. The boy had been fifteen at the time; now he was thirty, married, with a boy of his own.

Monsters in the shadows of the wall.

Gargoyles were common in medieval cathedrals, but according to the guide who’d led them on the tour that day, no one was actually sure why. There were many theories on what they were: devils denied access to the holy church, old gods, tokens to frighten demons away. It wasn’t even clear that the men who had carved and put them there knew exactly why they were doing so.

“There’s got to be a lot more here than they’re telling us,” offered Corrigan.

“That goes without saying.” Slott picked up the phone. “I have to relay this to Parnelles. If you’d stretch your legs for a minute, I’d appreciate it.”

~ * ~

8

LATAKIA

After the boat picked up the others, Ferguson went to the hotel to use the shuttle bus into town. Along the way he changed the jacket he was wearing for a longer coat he found hanging in a men’s room. In the lobby, he appropriated a cap. He didn’t look Syrian at all, but he could have been a Turk or Greek worker, and the policeman standing near the shuttle didn’t stop him. The ride down to town took less than a half hour. The checkpoints had been removed already.

The most logical place for the Russian to hide, Ferguson thought, would be the mosque, and so he made his way back there on foot from the center of town. But when he got to the block, he found it cordoned off, with a large contingent of soldiers on the street outside the wall. A few attempts to ask passers-by what was going on drew nothing but shrugs.

Ferguson walked back over to the hotel they had escaped from the night before. He didn’t go in; instead, he tried to figure out where Ravid had been before he passed by. It didn’t make sense that he had walked from the airport—the field was twenty-five kilometers or so from town—but clearly he hadn’t just materialized on the street either. The immediate area was mostly devoted to business; the residential section that began a few blocks away was solidly middle class. A bus line ran nearby, but there had been no buses at that hour of the night. No cars in the vicinity of the hotel bore any obvious signs of having been close to an explosion.

If Ravid hadn’t come there specifically to find them—by far the most logical explanation—then either he had been nearby to see someone or he had been dropped off by another agent as they escaped from the Syrians. Ferguson couldn’t rule either possibility out; he spent a frustrating hour wandering around before putting the quandary on hold and having a late breakfast. His clothing—and unshowered stench—drew some stares, and so his next stop was a nearby secondhand shop, where the proprietor was quite surprised to see the raggedy patron pull out a thick wad of cash to expedite the sale. Using his Irish passport, Ferguson then rented a car—the double take was milder here—and went up to the Versailles. It was still before check-in, but the man at the desk clearly preferred having him upstairs rather than in the lobby. He showered and after changing into his new clothes did a little additional shopping at the hotel mall.

Among his purchases were a pair of swim trunks and a snorkeling set, which he tested off the Versailles beach, far off the beach. So far, in fact, that he finally had to pull himself up on the side of the nearest boat he could find. Which not so coincidentally happened to be the
Sharia,
Birk’s yacht.

“Greetings,” he said to the two guards, who responded by leveling their submachine guns at him. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d say hello.”

The men were not particularly amused. Fortunately, Birk was sunning himself on the rear deck, smoking a fat Cuban cohiba.

“One of these days, Ferguson, you’re going to push things much too far. Much, much too far,” said the arms dealer, looking over from his chair. “Let him go.”

“Can I get a towel?” Ferguson pulled off his gear and sat in the empty seat across from Birk. He declined the offer of a cigar.

“They don’t make them as well as they used to,” complained Birk. “Standards have slipped since Castro got worried about lung cancer. Something to drink?”

“Water would be nice.”

“A bottle of Pellegrino for our guest,” Birk said. His brother-in-law scowled but went below to fetch it.

“I notice you hired a few new guards,” said Ferguson.

“Rough neighborhood. Why did you blow up Khazaal?”

“I didn’t. The Israelis did. They wanted Meles, and he happened to be nearby.”

“I might believe that,” said Birk. “But no one else will.”

“Did you pay the men for the trouble I caused?” said Ferguson as Brother-in-Law came over with the Pellegrino. He made sure his voice was loud enough for the others to hear.

“I wouldn’t cheat my men. Not very good business,” said Birk. He signaled that Brother-in-Law should leave them.

“So everyone thinks I killed Khazaal?” asked Ferguson when they were alone.

Birk shrugged. “What other people think, I couldn’t say. The Syrians are looking for Jewish spies. But they are always looking for Jewish spies.”

“The Syrians weren’t in on it, were they?”

“The Syrians and Israelis working together? That would be interesting. Very interesting.” Birk didn’t laugh.

“Was Khazaal here to sell or buy a Scud?” Ferguson asked.

“Bah. Neither, I would think. Obsolete equipment.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“Ferguson, truly, if you want junk, talk to Ras.”

“You couldn’t get me a Scud if I wanted one?”

“I can get you a real missile.”

“How would I get a Scud?” Ferguson asked.

Birk sighed. “You wouldn’t.”

“If I wanted one.”

Birk studied his cigar. “I suppose that if you honestly and truly wanted one, it could be had.”

“From?”

“The Koreans. You could perhaps purchase a Scud-D SS-le, seven-hundred-kilometer range. The design is not actually the same as the Russian . . . I’m afraid I don’t retain details I’m not interested in.”

“Why aren’t you interested?”

“No one wants to buy such a missile. The liquid fuel is very difficult to obtain and to handle. The weapon I can get you, much better.”

“The Siren?”

“I have another buyer. You’ll have to act fast. The price is going up.”

Ferguson took this as a ploy and was annoyed. “I want a Scud.”