by Gregg Loomis
The president admired her clarity of thought. "Yes, Susan?"
"We can be certain Prime Minister Konic of Israel is watching, too, already preparing Israel's reply, probably a strike not only at Iran's military installations but oil fields as well. With Russia and China as Iran's biggest customers, we can expect them to jump into this if their supply of fuel is threatened."
"Both Russia and China know we stand firmly behind Israel. They know they act at their peril," the president said. With the millions of Jewish voters and hundreds of millions of their political contributions, no president could do otherwise. He turned back to the military. "How long until those things hit?"
A silver-haired man in air-force blue answered, "Seventeen minutes, ten seconds, Mr. President."
"Anything we can do to shoot 'em down?"
The air force man shook his head. "Not enough time. We'll have to rely on the Israelis for that. We sold them the hardware. Still, I'd anticipate about fifty percent of the intruders will get through."
The president didn't want to even think about the damage thirty nuclear devices could do to the United States, let alone a country as small as Israel.
"Let me make sure I have your consensus here," he said. "We've got an attack, likely nuclear, against Israel.
There's little doubt of retaliation, which will likely bring in China and Russia. Suggestions?"
The secretary of state raised her hand. "Only one choice, Mr. President. You have to contact Prime Minister Konic immediately."
"I'd guess he's sort of busy right now."
"Nonetheless, you have to speak to him, convince him not to strike back, at least not until we can speak to the Russians and Chinese."
It would be easier to convince the hotheaded Israeli to convert to Islam. But, as president, Hansler had to try.
Why the hell had he wanted this job in the first place?
As though someone had read his mind, a warrant officer appeared at the president's side. "Telephone, sir. It's Prime Minister Konic."
A pin dropping would have sounded like an explosion.
"Did you say Prime Minister Konic?"
"Yes, sir."
Skeptically, the president picked up the receiver. "Moshe?"
"Phil!" boomed a voice that sounded like it came from the same room rather than from halfway around the world.
Since becoming president, Hansler had become fast friends with the head of the Israeli nation. The two had enjoyed fly-fishing for trout on the president's Montana ranch as much as socializing at international gatherings. It had been difficult not to lose sight of the fact that all Israeli leaders made a business of getting as close to their American counterparts as possible. Israel's survival depended on it.
"How's Nancy? Your boy about through college this year? Send him over here for a graduation trip!"
The president glanced around the room, aware that Konic's voice was spilling out of the receiver. "Er, Moshe, I take it this isn't a social call?" "Right you are," blared over the connection. "I expected to hear from you-a little matter of those pesky Iranians."
The president would have used another adjective, but he said, "We have the missiles on satellite. Hope the defenses we sent you work."
"Oh, never mind the antimissiles." The man's voice was downright jovial, as though he were telling a favorite story. "We'll be just fine. The reason I called you was to tell you just that-that we'll be okay. No need to go to alert status."
"You mean you don't intend to retaliate, to bomb Iran into the Stone Age?"
"Far as we're concerned, Iran's been in the Stone Age for decades. You checked out their politics? No, no retaliation will be necessary. Go back to sleep."
The president removed the receiver from his ear long enough to glance at it as though he might assay the sanity of the speaker. "No retaliation?"
"For what?"
"For…"
The four-star marine general on his left tugged gently at the president's cuff. "Mr. President…"
The president gave him an annoyed look until he followed where the man was pointing.
There was no longer a dot on the screen.
"See what I mean?" the Israeli statesman asked with a triumphant cackle. "Hang in there!"
"Moshe! What… How did…?"
"Jehovah's will, Phil. Your Bible says faith can move mountains. All we did was make a few missiles go away."
The line went dead.
The air force general was speaking earnestly into a cell phone.
"What the hell happened?" the president asked.
"What did not happen, Mr. President, was a malfunction of the visual equipment. The missiles really disappeared." "You mean the defensive system functioned better than predicted."
"No, Mr. President. The satellite showed no launch of countermissiles. The Iranian hardware just evaporated."
The president slumped deeply back into his chair. "And just how the hell did they do that?"
Silence was his only answer.
"Okay, okay," the president said. "I want to know exactly what took place, why those missiles disappeared, vanished, or whatever. And in the meantime I want a total lid on this. I hear so much as a whisper about tonight, somebody's gonna finish their career counting caribou in Alaska."
THREE
Blind Donkey Alley
Bruges, Belgium
2200 European Time
Even though Bruges's canal network was now scenic rather than utilitarian, the trees along the banks in front of redbrick, narrow-windowed medieval houses reminded Benjamin Yadish of his native Amsterdam.
The town was amazingly preserved from its days as a trading center for textiles, fine lace, and intricate gold jewelry some six hundred years past. The silting up of the River Zwin had largely ended its mercantile days, but it had also discouraged replacing tall town houses with more contemporary and far less charming structures, as had happened in so many European cities.
There had been the coldly charmless semidetached in Cambridge, the fourth-story garret in the Sorbonne District of Paris, the wretched and noisy rooms over a Bierstube just outside the university area of Munich, the only quarters worse than the converted barn near Bologna that still leaked hours after a rainfall. Before accepting a post as head of the University of Amsterdam's physics department, he had spent time at half a dozen institutions.
A wandering Jew, he liked to joke.
He rounded a corner, thankful to exit an alley so narrow he could have touched opposing polished doorknobs by stretching out his arms. He breathed deeply in relief.
Relief from what?
He was unsure. He was aware only of an anxiety that had no rational basis. Hardly an emotion to which any scientist would admit.
He crossed the Burg, a pleasant cobbled square consisting of several small restaurants, all closed at this hour. Now he could see the Markt, a thirteenth-century market square lined by tall, stair-step gabled houses, many with brightly painted facades. For reasons he also could not have explained, he was thankful to reach the most brightly lit place in town. Only now did he realize how claustrophobic he had felt in the confines of twisting streets and alleys too narrow for vehicular traffic.
Nonsense, he told himself. He had never feared confined spaces any more than he had standing at the roof edge of tall buildings.
The glances over his shoulder were totally unnecessary.
There was, though, something sinister about this whole trip. The unexpected phone call demanding he bring the CDs containing the protocol of his most recent experiments, a meeting at night in a strange city. Had the call come from anyone else, he would have thought he was speaking to a lunatic.
He settled at a table in one of the few bistros on the square still serving at this hour. A waiter silently materialized, and Benjamin ordered a Brugse Tripel beer. He would have preferred coffee, but caffeine at this hour would keep him awake all night.
Night.
Well after 2200.
The waiter set the b
eer bottle next to a glass. As was customary for such places, he also left a slip of paper on a small tray, the bill, which Benjamin could pay anytime before leaving. The waiter scurried back to the lights inside. Benjamin poured slowly, intent on the building head of bubbles.
"If you tilt the glass, you will get less of a head."
A man sat down across from him, speaking accented English. He was positioned so that his face was dark while limned by street lamps.
Benjamin squinted, unable to make out more than a featureless dark blur. "I don't recognize your voice. You're not…"
The head shook. "No. I am to take you to him. You have what he requested?"
Benjamin patted his inside jacket pocket as he lifted his glass. "Of course. As soon as I finish. You?"
"No, thanks."
Benjamin emptied the glass and held the tab up to the light from the street. Guessing rather than seeing, he left two euros on the table and stood. "I've spoken with him often, but we met only once. At the beginning. Why now? Why here instead of in Amsterdam, where he can personally inspect what I'm doing?"
The other man either did not hear or, more likely, ignored the questions. He was already hurrying west down Steenstraat. Benjamin caught up, curious as to the need to rush. Perhaps all would be explained shortly. A left turn down Mariastraat past the Welcome Church of Our Lady, its spire, the tallest in Belgium, stabbing the night as it glowed in beams cast by lights at its base. Right turn along the east-west canal. The steep-gabled, tall town houses had given way to modest two-story brick buildings whose steep eaves had sloughed off snow for over five hundred winters.
The man stopped and pointed to a bench under a tree with roots running down to the canal. Across a narrow street was a house with a depiction of a swan on it. A small hotel. That made sense. It was the type of accommodation the man Benjamin had come to see might choose: both luxurious and inconspicuous.
"Wait here."
Benjamin started to protest, then thought better of it and sat facing water so still that the warm light from the hotel's windows swam on the surface. On a spring night like this, sitting outside was comfortable. Perhaps the man feared some sort of listening devices might be in the walls of the hotel. Benjamin could fully understand why the man would want whatever he had to say not to be overheard. The project was best kept quiet until completed. There would be those who would very much like to see that it never was.
Benjamin heard footsteps and started to rise.
He felt something cold and hard against the base of his skull, cold and hard like steel.
Like a gun's barrel.
But why?
He heard a puff, a mere whisper, and brilliant lights exploded from somewhere behind his eyes. He felt no pain, only the firmness of the earth beneath him.
And someone's hand groping his inside jacket pocket.
Then all went black and he felt nothing.
FOUR
Manuel's Tavern
Highland Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia
8:30 p.m. EST
The Same Night
The original part of Manuel's Tavern dated back to the early 1950s. It consisted of stools along a bar and wooden booths, now time-worn and inscribed with graffiti from generations of students. Then, as now, it was a rendezvous for local Democratic politicos, university intelligentsia, and those who would like to become any of the above. Manuel had chosen wisely, locating his establishment across the street from the border of the Southern Methodist/Baptist-controlled county in which Emory University was located. The bar had been an oasis of beer and free thought on the edge of a Sahara of proclaimed abstinence and intolerance Never mind that the greatest amount of liquor tax collected in the state at that time came from those purveyors of the devil's elixir just across that same line, stores that supplied unmarked grocery bags and boxes to conceal the potables their customers hauled back into forbidden territory.
As racial and economic diversity blurred old and perhaps outdated values, even when alcohol became legal across the street Manuel's remained quirky. While gracious lots with lovely homes were subdivided into new look-alike neighborhoods of "affordable housing," the bar remained a bit risque, a reputation subsequent owners had done little to alter. As the years passed, it had morphed into a watering hole for not only the left-of-center but also the social contrarian and the downright funky.
A black man wearing a clerical collar and a white man in lawyer camouflage of dark suit and power tie drew no special attention. They were steady customers, always taking the same booth, continually arguing and complaining, frequently in Latin, about the poor quality of food for which Manuel's was famous.
"Corruptio optimi pessima," the priest said, reaching for a half-empty pitcher of lukewarm beer.
"No doubt corruption of the best is worst, Francis," the white man agreed, signaling to the waiter as he emptied the pitcher. "But the mayor is entitled to a defense just like anyone else. Cor illi in genua decidet."
"You can bet it was fear that brought him to his knees. It certainly wasn't prayer." Francis snorted.
Francis Narumba, formerly of one of West Africa's more corrupt, poverty-stricken, and disease-infested republics, had attended Oxford on scholarship, then had been sent to seminary in the United States. Either by his wish or that of a higher power, he had been assigned to minister not to the hellhole of his origins but to Atlanta's growing number of African immigrants.
As his dinner partner, Langford Reilly, described it, they were both victims of a liberal arts education and therefore unfit to do anything requiring any real skill.
Like, maybe, become a plumber.
Trapped in their own schooling, Francis had pursued a career in the church, and Lang law school. Lang's sister had been one of Francis's few white parishioners: Although tragic, her murder had brought priest and lawyer together. Before long they had become fast friends. Lang's lack of faith and, in his view, Francis's overabundance thereof provided an endless source of amicable debate.
In private, each would admit that the other, no matter how misguided, was probably the brightest mind he had known.
Lang watched their entrees' approach with interest. Regardless of what had been ordered, surprises were frequent at Manuel's. "Fortunately, the former mayor disagrees with Ovid. Estque pad poenas quam meruisse minus."
Lang could see the curiosity on his companion's face replaced by suspicion as he looked at the plate set before him. The "medium-rare" filet had a very burned look to it. He sighed as the waiter shoved Lang's hamburger and fries onto the table and retreated hastily. "Fortunately?"
Lang tried to suppress a smile as Francis surveyed the cremated remains of his steak. "Fortunately for me. If, he believed it better to suffer punishment than deserve it, he wouldn't pay me an outrageous fee to defend him."
Francis shook his head, reaching for a bottle of steak sauce. "I'm surprised he doesn't… What is it the crime shows say?"
"Plead guilty?"
"Hoc sustinete maius ne venial malum. Cop a plea."
"He says he's innocent."
Francis snorted again. "His chief administrative assistant, the head of the city contract board, five others-"
"Six others."
"-have either pled guilty or rolled over on each other for corruption, bribery, racketeering, tax evasion, et cetera. What else could they charge him with?"
"Parking overtime?"
Francis sampled the first bite of his steak, chewing thoughtfully. "I'm surprised you'd take the case. For sure you don't need the money."
Lang shrugged, a tacit admission that Francis was right. "Managing a huge charitable foundation isn't my idea of fun. Trying white-collar criminal cases is."
Francis was adding more steak sauce in a losing battle to cover up the flavor of burned meat. It had become a point of honor for neither man to admit during the meal just how bad Manuel's food could be and often was. "I still don't see why you'd want your name tied to a crook like that."
L
ang wiped his face. The blood of his nearly raw hamburger-ordered medium-was running down his chin. "I seem to remember someone who spent his days with a prostitute and died between two thieves. Something to do with who should throw the first stone, as I recall it."
"You know far too much scripture for a heretic," Francis growled good-naturedly before changing the subject abruptly. "Hear anything from Gurt?"
Lang put his burger down to let it soak in its own juices, mostly blood and grease. "Not a word."
Francis started to say something, thought better of it, and renewed his assault on the steak.
"Don't expect to hear. It's been over a year now since she left, went back to Europe to work with the government."
A euphemism Francis understood to mean the Agency. Although the priest had not pressed for details, the gap between Lang's college education and his law degree indicated he had spent several years in some sort of employment. His long-standing acquaintance with Gurt Fuchs gave a clue as to where. Gurt had been the first woman in whom Lang had shown any romantic interest since the death of his wife from cancer several years before the priest and the lawyer had gotten to know each other.
"Capistrum maritale," Francis said with a smile, trying to make light of the matter.
"Fine for you to bewail the woes of matrimony. Not like that's a problem you'll ever have."
Francis reached across the table to lay a hand on his friend's arm. "I'm sorry she left, Lang. I really am. You know how much I liked that woman."
"You and Grumps. I feel for both of you."
Lang was referring to the dog he had inherited when his sister and nephew died. He had not been able to part with what was arguably the world's ugliest mutt. The animal was the only part of his family left.
The waiter was removing the remnants of dinner. He must have been a recent hire or he would have known better than to ask, "All done? How was it?"
Francis simply gave him a blank stare.
