They raced through the cluttered shop, carefully checking aisles. They found the bearded shopkeeper cowering behind the counter. When they were sure there was no second shooter, they moved out the back door and looked down the deserted alley.
"Let's get outta here. We don't need this guy, we need what's in the suitcase," Kaz said, and they headed toward the Jaffa Gate. Ryan was limping badly and his back felt big and unprotected.
At the gate, they found Cole in a loud argument with an Israeli cabdriver. They were yelling at one another in two different languages. Lucinda was standing nearby, watching the commotion in disbelief.
Kaz moved up and pointed the Uzi at the cabbie. "Get the fuck outta here, shithead."
The man moved back glaring at them, as Cole got behind the wheel. Ryan and Lucinda sat in the back. Kaz piled in the passenger seat and laid the still-hot barrel of the Uzi on the dash.
"Go, man! Boil some eggs!'" Kaz yelled.
Cole put the taxi in gear and squealed out of the ancient gate, scattering chickens, Arab shopkeepers, and IDF soldiers as Cole leaned on the horn. Finally, they hit a two-lane road and sped back toward Tel Aviv.
Chapter 60.
SUITCASE
THE SUBURB OF HERZELIA PITUAH WAS ON THE COAST. IT was the Malibu of Tel Aviv. Corporation presidents and high-ranking diplomats owned or rented villas there. Gaviel Bach's house, a sixties A-line, was well situated at the end of a land spit, a quarter of a mile beyond the main cluster of houses, screened off by a row of ficus trees. A pool in the back overlooked the Mediterranean.
The long driveway was shielded by a six-foot-high concrete wall. The ex-TV producer, ex-Mafia sister, ex-IR, and ex-fed parked their stolen cab in front of the two-car garage and got out.
"Rummage around in the glove compartment and pop the trunk," Kaz said to Cole.
"why?"
"Everybody over twelve is strapped down over here. That cabbie had to have some kinda weapon with him. I want the gun. We need all the firepower we can get."
They found a Russian-made Tokarev TT-33 and a box of seven-millimeter cartridges for a German Mauser. Kaz pulled out the nine-shot clip and turned it over in his hand; then he chambered the slide and dry-fired it.
"Piece of Russian junk. Used to be a nine-millimeter, but you can't get Russian cartridges anymore, so somebody rechambered it. Good luck." He handed it to Cole, who held it like a steaming turd between his thumb and index finger.
"I don't want this."
"I'll take it," Lucinda said, taking the gun, slipping it quickly into her purse.
Cole found the garage key under the flowerpot, right where Misha said it would be. He put it in the keyhole, and the electric door hummed, then opened. The room above the empty carport was long and narrow, about ten feet by four. At one end a series of shelves were stuffed with sporting equipment and old luggage.
On the second shelf, wedged in against the wall, was the Haliburton suitcase. Cole grabbed it and pulled it down.
"Feels light," he said as he popped the latches. They all gathered around and looked inside. It was empty.
"Maybe it's not the same case," Lucinda said.
"No, that's it," Cole said. "These things were very big with agency spooks in the Justice Department during the seventies. It's an odd size, bigger than a briefcase, smaller than a suitcase."
They stood in the small room, looking into the empty case as if the answer were somehow still miraculously inside. Finally, Ryan reached down and closed it. They had come so far. It didn't seem possible that this was the end.
"'Whattayou wanna do?" Cole asked.
"Let's take a look around inside," Ryan suggested.
"You think those tapes are lying around in some desk drawer? Come on, this shit is twenty-six years old," Cole said.
"Can't hurt to look," Kaz said.
They walked around the side of the house. Kaz checked the window frames for alarm tape but didn't find any. "Lemme have a credit card," Cole said.
Ryan handed over his MileagePlus card and Cole moved toward a door that appeared to lead to a pantry. Cole slid the card in beside the door handle and finally popped the lock, then handed the card back to Ryan, smiling. "Thanks for the press pass." They opened the door and went into the house. The last to enter was Ryan, carrying the empty Haliburton suitcase.
Silvio Candrate tracked Mickey Alo down at a business meeting in a Trenton hotel. Mickey had been trying to set up distribution and supply mutes for Hawaiian ice, which was a designer drug and the brain wreck of choice with the trendy club crowd in Manhattan. Silvio's call got to him at ten A . M. The sound of a screaming pneumatic wrench and clattering lug bolts provided background for the conversation.
"Mickey," he said "our friend in Israel called me. He thinks you should know that something strange is going on. I got a number you should call if you got a secure line. He's standing by this number for ten minutes."
"Ginune it."
Mickey went to a pay phone in the lobby of the hotel. He jammed in a coin and dialed the number. The operator came on and told him it was eight dollars for three minutes. He always carried ten dollars in quarters in his briefcase. He stuffed the coins into the slot and waited. After the second ring, the Ghost was on the line.
"Hello." His voice seemed surprisingly close.
"Whatta ya got?"
"We secure?"
"More or less; it's a pay phone."
"I found out who everybody is. The two late entries include a guy named Cole Harris, an ex-newsman . . ." "Never heard of him."
"The other guy's an ex-fed named Solomon Kazorowski."
"Fuck! When's that labonza gonna leave me alone?" "You know this guy?"
"Yeah, I know him. He's been walking around in my asshole with a government searchlight for twenty years.
He got fired for busting everybody's balls. What's he doing over there?"
"I don't know. That's why I called. They're looking into something to do with a guy named Gavriel Bich. Ever heard of him?"
"No"
They met with an old woman, Bach's widow. I followed 'em to a house in a pricey suburb. They're inside now. I got an Israeli with me says Gavriel Bach was a big shot, ended up as a Supreme Court judge. I just figured before I closed this off, I'd check in with you, see if you got any last-minute instructions. I'm on a package rate. I'll do 'em all. Cost you nothing but the fallout."
"Just a minute, let me think." Mickey held the phone against his chest; something was buzzing around in his head. Bach's name was familiar but he couldn't place it. He put the phone to his ear again. "Tell me more about this judge . . ."
"I'm gonna put the Israeli on." The Ghost handed the phone to Yossi Rot. "He wants to know about Bach."
"He was very big here," Yossi said in his soft voice. "He was a Supreme Court justice. Made the news when he died, maybe six years ago."
"Before that ... ?"
"I don't know . . . prosecutor, I think."
Mickey slapped the buzzing thought down. "Put the other guy on." After a second, the Ghost was back on the line.
"If I remember, this Gavriel Bach tried the case against Meyer Lansky back in '71. He kept Meyer out of Israel, but what could that have to do with anything?"
"You want me to ignore it? I can just hit these people and get outta here."
Mickey wondered what they were after, but decided too much time had already passed. The presidential election was just three weeks away. It didn't matter what they were looking for. And if they died halfway around the world, it would remain a mystery.
"End it," he finally said, not giving a second's thought to the fact that he was ordering his sister's death.
The Ghost hung up the cell phone and moved back to the blue Mitsubishi. He looked at Frydek, Yossi, and Akmad Jarrar, who was leaning against the rear bumper. Inside the trunk was enough C-4 to blow the entire dock at Jaffa.
"Okay, Yossi, I want you to get up the driveway and put a physics package under that taxi. . . . Use a radi
o detonator in the C-four. When I hit the switch, I wanna shoot that fucking cab into space."
Yossi nodded, opened the trunk, and grabbed a satchel. Then he jumped over the wall at the foot of the property and, after picking a sheltered route, moved toward the house.
Chapter 61.
THE BIG HOWARD JOHNSON'S
THE PHOTO ALBUMS WERE ON THE COFFEE TABLE IN MIsha's sitting room and Lucinda flipped through them while Kaz, Cole, and Ryan moved through the house looking for the missing contents of the Haliburton suitcase. There were lots of shots of the grandchildren. Somebody, probably Misha, had written an identifying line under each one and dated it.
The photos were well organized. On a whim, Lucinda started searching for the album that contained pictures taken in 1971. She found it in its logical place, between 1970 and 1972. It started with January but she skipped to March, the month the trial had taken place, where she saw a handwritten caption that said, "Gav builds 'crooked' pillars after Lansky trial." These shots showed Gavriel Bach stripped to the waist and grinning at the camera. In several pictures, he was troweling concrete onto a large pedestal at the head of the drive, next to the house. Lucinda moved with the album out into the living room. She could hear the men somewhere in the house, opening and closing drawers.
"Could you guys come here a minute . . . ?" she called. Ryan came first, moving out of a guest room. "What is it?"
"I may have found something," she said.
Within seconds, they had all gathered in the living room. Lucinda held the open photo album out to them.
"These were taken right after the trial."
They huddled around the album and looked at the photographs of Gay working on the pedestal.
Kaz was already moving to retrieve the empty Haliburton suitcase from the pantry where Ryan had left it. He returned with it and set it on the coffee table, opened it, and started to look carefully at the inside.
"What're you doing?" Ryan asked.
"If he took the tapes out of here and put them into that pedestal, I was wondering if he got any plaster dust in here." Kaz licked his finger and pressed it on several specks of white powder in the bottom of the case. He pulled his finger out and showed it to the others. "Like this . . ."
They all smiled at Lucinda.
"Pretty damn sharp, honey," Kaz said and Lucinda blushed. Cole had seen some tools in the garage and he and Kaz went off to get them. Ryan was waiting at the open front door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He swung just in time to catch a glimpse of a man in a white shirt and khaki shorts running down the drive. Kaz and Cole reappeared with a. hammer and tire iron.
"Somebody was just here. I saw him running down the driveway," Ryan said.
"What'd he look like? Was it the guy in the ball cap?" Kaz asked.
"I hardly saw him. He looked slender. . . . In a T-shirt and shorts."
"Let's go check it out," Cole said.
"No," Kaz said softly. "Always assume the worst. That way we don't get surprised. Let's assume we were followed from Jerusalem. If we go down there, they're gonna know we saw him and we're gonna lose what little advantage we have. Hang on a minute." He moved to the taxi and started to look at it carefully. When he got to the front , he saw a handprint on the dusty chrome bumper. Kaz lay down on his back and slid under the car to examine the frame. Wedged in next to the gas tank, he saw about two pounds of plastic explosives connected to a detonator. He carefully reached up and pulled the detonator out of the plastic. It was a sophisticated radio unit with a "hot" wire that ran into the explosives. Kaz took his beeper off his belt. It was a state-of-the-art satellite communication system used by the federal government. He had stolen it when he'd been fired and faithfully replaced the battery every two weeks. It had never rung, but he was ready if they ever needed him. He knew it was stupid but it felt good riding on his hip. He removed the back of the instrument, yanked the hot wire off the detonator and twisted it onto the battery pole of his beeper. He pushed his beeper and the wire back into the plastic, shoved the detonator into his pants pocket, and shinnied out from under the car.
"Find anything?" Cole asked.
"Nope. Let's get that pedestal down."
While each took a turn holding the Uzi and scanning the driveway, the others went to work with the hammer and crowbar.
Little by little, they exposed the core of the pedestal. Finally, there was an opening big enough to reach through. Ryan had the longest arm and he stuck his hand down and grabbed hold of a bag, but he couldn't get it through the hole they had made.
"There's something in here," he said. "Get some more bricks out."
They worked until finally the hole was large enough and Ryan could pull out a large canvas sack. They rewarded the find with tight smiles.
"Let'sget inside," Kaz said, his eyes searching the perimeter as they moved back into the house and closed the door.
Even with binoculars, the Ghost could see only the front door through a growth of ficus trees on the west side of the property. He had decided the best way to eliminate all four was to get them into the taxi and take them all out at once. He looked at Yossi Rot and Akmad Jarrar.
"I'm gonna move up and see if we can snipe at them through the windows," the Ghost said. "That oughta get 'em moving. Yossi, once the cab starts to move, blow it. When it goes, we gotta be out of here in seconds."
The Ghost moved to the Mitsubishi, opened the trunk, and took out a blue steel Charter Arms Explorer-II .22-caliber pistol. He thought it was almost as ugly as the old broom-handle Mausers, but the Explorer-II was surprisingly easy to handle. The Ghost liked it because it could be silenced without distorting the shot. He secured the eight-inch silencer onto the threaded barrel, grabbed the twenty-five-shot ramline clip full of dumdums, and slammed it in. Then he attached the scope. He turned his ball cap backward, then jumped the wall, and moved toward the house.
In the living room, they examined the contents of the bag while Kaz kept an eye on the yard through the plate-glass window. The audiotapes, big and unwieldy, were on six-inch plastic reels. Cole remembered the old reel-to-reel odd-size tape recorders from the seventies. There was also some 16-millimeter film on four 800-foot reels. None of it was labeled. Cole held one of the reels up so he could try to see who made them, hoping it was government issue. "I'm really gonna feel like an asshole if these are movies of some kid's birthday party." The light wasn't very good on the far side of the living room, so he moved to the plate-glass window.
Just then, Kaz caught a flash of movement out beyond the pool. Then he saw the Ghost step out from behind a low wall on the far side of the pool with a deadly-looking scoped pistol. Flame shot from the muzzle.
"No!" Kaz yelled, throwing himself in front of Cole, pushing him as the window shattered and they both went down in a shower of glass.
Ryan leaped over the sofa and landed on his bad leg. It crumbled and he rolled on his shoulder. Regaining his feet, he grabbed the draperies and yanked them across the gaping opening, cutting off the Ghost's field of vision.
Cole was sitting up, a puzzled look on his face. He had blood all over him. He looked down at it, dazed, then slowly realized it wasn't his.
Kaz was lying on the floor, his legs splayed out in front of him. Blood was coursing out of a huge hole in his chest. He had taken the .22-caliber dumdum in the back. It had broken up on impact. The fragments traveled through his upper lung at the manufacturer's guaranteed velocity and exited in a five-inch pattern right below his collar bone. The wound was pulsating with thick arterial blood, draining Kaz's life down his shirt and onto the floor. Ryan pulled the Desert Eagle, scrambled to the window, and cracked open drapes. He saw nobody out there.
"Get a towel," Cole screamed, and Lucinda ran to the bathroom and grabbed some bath towels. On her way back., from the hall window she saw the man who had called himself Jerry Paradise running down the driveway, a baseball cap on backward. She ran into the darkened living room and thrust the towels at Cole.
"I saw him running down the driveway! It was him, Ryan. . . . It was Jerry Paradise!"
"Leaking like a Mexican fishing boat, ain't I?" Kaz's speech was coming slowly.
"Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that!" Cole kept saying over and over.
"I ain't gonna make it. Goin' to the big Howard Johnson's . . ."
"Bullshit," Cole said, desperately.
"Get the car into the garage. Get me in . . . I'll smash into 'em. Give you a chance." He was talking through clenched teeth.
"No, no, you're going with us," Lucinda said. "Dyin'," Kaz said, slowly. "Got one thing left to do . . . "
Cole had been in the Marines and there was a moral commandment that you didn't leave a soldier in the field to be scavenged by the enemy.
Kaz knew what Cole was thinking, so he pulled his backup piece and pointed the nine-millimeter Beretta weakly at them. "You get the car." Kaz knew they had one chance to win the game, but he was running out of time. He could feel the strength draining from him. "Do it," he said, thumbing back the hammer.
Ryan looked at the dying ex-fed. Something caught in his throat. He couldn't let Kaz die, but he knew he was powerless to save him. All he could do was grant his last wish.
"I'll get the cab," Ryan said.
"You got a bad leg," Cole said.
"Even with a bum wheel, I'm faster." Ryan knew the keys were still in the taxi, so he threw open the front door and ran the short distance across the drive, keeping the car between him and the bottom of the driveway. His leg was throbbing, but as long as he ran straight, it felt pretty solid. He dove into the cab, got the engine going, then backed it into the open garage, and hit the automatic door closer. The garage door came down, cutting the open drive from view.
The Ghost saw the garage door coming down through his binoculars. He summoned Yossi and Akmad. 'They're gonna be coming out. Get ready."
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