“Oh, thanks,” Jake groused. Rinnah popped up and kissed his chin. Eight years together, and her kisses still lit him up. The wind had scattered her dark-brown pixie-cut hair, and her olive skin glowed. Was it from the wine or the early-autumn tang in the air? Maybe it was just from being someplace green and spacious and quiet. He wished he could give her quiet. It was never quiet in the city, and green came in pots on windowsills.
“Actually,” Gene said as he pushed a new beer in Jake’s direction, “I was telling my favorite nephew here we’re hiring analysts in the Intel Division again. I can talk to the deputy there, put in a word.”
Jake snorted. “So it’s true, you’ve started talking to yourself.”
“Hey, sometimes it’s the only person I can have an intelligent conversation with.” Gene stood so he could look squarely at both of them. “Seriously, your background, you’d be perfect. Starts at seventy, you know our benefits are bulletproof.”
Almost half again what he earned at the bookstore, plus benefits only the executives got. But it would mean plunging back into the swamp he’d climbed out of over ten years before and sworn never to go near again.
He glanced down to see Rinnah’s huge, dark eyes watching him. He knew what she was thinking. Larger apartment. Save something for Eve’s college. Go out for something nicer than cheap Thai every once in a while. Another round of the same discussion.
“NYPD’s family,” Gene said. “We take care of each other. Protect each other. Know what I’m saying, kid?”
“Yeah. I’ll think about it.”
Family. That’s what they’d said in the army, too. They’d lied.
SEVEN: Dearborn, Michigan, 15 October
Al-Shami was already connected to the computer in his home’s spare bedroom when the Skype call came in. “Majid?”
“Yes. Altair.”
Codewords exchanged, al-Shami’s handler asked, “Are you well? Any problems?”
“No problems. The weather here is miserable and this city is worse than you can imagine.”
“So everything’s normal. Jayed.” Even on the muddy voice-over-IP connection, al-Shami could hear the man in Lebanon sigh. “The Council has decided it’s time to activate Muhunnad for 17 Muharram.”
It took a few moments for al-Shami to convert the Islamic date to something useful. The 23rd of December. First day of Hanukkah. “Target?”
“Yasir.”
Al-Shami let out a whistle. Finally, they were serious this time.
“Are your shuhada ready?”
“Yes, of course.” For months, waiting for the Council to make up its mind. He leaned back into his black armless office chair, swiveled, stared at a mental checklist. He had nearly everything he needed—a vehicle, electronics, detonators, a payload. He had work ahead of him to assemble everything for this particular target, but that’s why the Party paid him.
Yasir. The Party had finally decided to stop sparing the nation that made the Zionist terror possible. The Americans would experience the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks attack all over again. But this time, it would happen in a place they couldn’t ignore.
“Right. I’ll get started.”
EIGHT: Beverly, New Jersey, 16 October
Miriam brushed a few tattered leaves from the lawn, sat, wrapped her arms around her knees. She turned her face to the sun for a few moments, took what warmth she could from the pale blob fighting the chill and losing. Only a murmur of voices a few rows of markers away broke the ringing silence.
Fifteen times she’d come here, once a month. She’d seen the place from summer humidity through autumn’s flaming trees to the still of blanketed snow, spring rain and green, back to summer and fall. Now another winter snapped at autumn’s heels. The first winter was cold and dark and empty, a perfect mirror for her moods. What would this one be like?
She brushed the grass over the grave with her fingertips. Cool, a little damp, but still springy for a few more weeks, until the first snow. Then she traced the engraved cross on the headstone with her eyes and read the inscription. It was a ritual; she knew the words by heart.
WILLIAM
JAMES
SCHAFFER
GYSGT
US MARINE CORPS
JUL 18 1974
JUL 20 2010
SILVER STAR
PURPLE HEART
OPERATION
IRAQI FREEDOM
OPERATION
ENDURING FREEDOM
“Hi, darling,” she said. “It’s getting cold early, most of the leaves are down by now. Last month they were just turning color. Remember how pretty they were?”
She waited to hear his voice. When she’d first started these visits—back when the grass over his grave was just rectangles of fresh sod—she could hear him so clearly, talking back. But his voice had slowly faded and now it was gone, just like that. Just like one day he was gone.
“You’ll love this. The Mossad used my name in some assassination plot over in the Gulf. I guess they had a female agent, and she was me for a while. Can you believe it? So now I’m wanted by INTERPOL, or at least my name is. I think the woman’s prettier than I am. The FBI came to talk to me, that was exciting.” She’d like to hear Bill chuckle at the situation, but imagining was all she could do.
“Dickinson’s still being an ass, as usual. He wanted me to take down my nameplate so that damn sheikh wouldn’t be upset by my name, since I used it to kill some terrorist. Well, I didn’t. Honestly, I forgot. Well, that pompous Arab jerk comes strolling in with his entourage, and he takes one look at my nameplate and says, ‘I hope you’re not going to kill me, too, Mrs. Schaffer.’ Ha ha ha, everybody had a big laugh. So I said, ‘Not as long as you have an appointment, sir.’ And they laughed.” She pulled up a few blades of grass and hurled them away from her. “He complained to Dickinson, who read me out, so now I’m on some kind of probation. I’m really getting to hate that place.”
No answer. She didn’t expect one, but an answer would’ve been nice.
“Listen to me, complaining. That’s what you get for marrying a Jewish girl.” In the first few months, this was when Miriam would start to cry. She ran out of tears sometime last winter. In a lot of ways, she’d run out of feelings, too. She could go two or three weeks without noticing she hadn’t laughed at anything. True, she wasn’t sad so often anymore, but neither was she happy. Angry, she could still do.
“Look, there’s this guy at the gym. Really nice, a couple years older than you. His wife died of leukemia last year. We’ve talked a few times.” She swallowed. “Well, he’s asked me out. On a date.” She stroked the grass covering her husband and started to feel like a traitor. “I want to go, Bill. I’m lonely. All my friends are married and have kids and I’m tired of them being nice to poor Miriam the widow lady. I want someone to talk to. Someone who’ll talk back. Someone who can hold me.”
Miriam stared at the skeletal trees a few yards away, slate gray against a sky the blue of skim milk. She had to admit to herself the Mossad thing had made her feel more alive than she had for a year. A little scared, yes, but also a little excited. Someone had noticed her. She’d been something other than the grieving widow to someone.
An unexpected flash of anger hit. You left me, damn you. “I’m not asking for permission. I just want to tell you what I’m doing and why.” She swallowed the little burst of flame before it grew too hot. He wasn’t the one to blame. “I hit my ‘pause’ button when you died, and I think it’s time to press ‘play’ again, don’t you? I’m tired of feeling like I belong down there with you instead of up here, living.”
She stood, brushed the grass and leaf bits from the seat of her jeans. She took a round, white pebble from her pocket and placed it on the marker. “I’ll always love you, darling. Always. And I’ll still visit. But I want to live now.” She kissed her fingertips, pressed them to the marble, then slowly paced away.
NINE: Tel Aviv, 17 October
Orgad looked up from the paper Gur had handed him.
“Three of them?”
“In the past month.”
“Hm. A robbery in Rotterdam, a fall down stairs in Hamburg, and a mugging in Paris.” Orgad carefully laid the paper on his desk. “Not exactly uncommon events.”
Gur had expected this reaction. If he’d been on the other side of the desk, he might say the same thing. “We used twelve names. Ten were on the Qatari list. Massarani and Nussberger aren’t ours. Now three of them are dead in a little less than a month. What are the odds?”
“To live as an Israeli is to beat the odds every day.” Orgad folded his hands on his belly. “The Watch Center belongs to the Director. Why are you telling me this?”
“I trust you.”
“Ah. So, what do you propose?”
“Have Kaisarut tell the Police Nationale and the Carabinieri. If the pattern holds, they’ll go to Marseille next, then Italy. They can say we’ve noticed a pattern, or we’re hearing chatter, or whatever they think they can sell. Someone needs to look out for the other nine.”
Orgad pooched out his lips, pushed the summary around the blotter with his finger. “We call the French and the Italians and tell them their citizens whose identities we borrowed are now being killed by—who? Hezbollah?” He held out a hand, palm up. “Do we have proof? No. We have a hunch. But we have very good hunches, trust us.” He dropped his hand to the desk. “The French just cancelled a cultural exchange program the P.M.’s wife was sponsoring. The Italians recalled their ambassador. All this, and we haven’t admitted we’re behind Doha. So imagine if we do.” Orgad shook his head. “Raffi, what are you doing to me here?”
Gur rubbed the throbbing in his right temple. “We should tip them off somehow. We could work the Mishteret connection, do a cop-to-cop warning. But there’s something else we need to think about.”
“That is?”
“If someone’s working the list, they’re going to run out of Europeans pretty soon. You know what happens then.”
“Then they move on to America.”
“And you’re worried about the Italians?”
Orgad sighed, shook his head as if it was swollen and painful. “Thank you for ruining my day. But there’s no proof. It’s three people in three different countries, victims of street crime or accidents. Tragic, but not a pattern yet. I need more, you know that.”
Gur set his elbows on his knees, rubbed his eyes. “Yes, I know that.”
Orgad nodded slowly for a few moments, taking all this in. Then he cleared his throat and said, “No warnings. One loudmouthed cop in Milan can turn this into a total disaster for us. Keep an eye on the situation, let me know what happens.”
Gur didn’t know why he’d expected anything different. Above all else, the Institute looked after itself. “All right. For everybody’s sake, I hope I’m wrong.”
“That would be good.”
TEN: Brooklyn, 17 October
Eve giggled and belted out, “Jia yow! Jia yow!”
“Shh!” Jake shifted under Eve’s weight on his thigh. “You don’t have to yell.”
“Kai-lan did.”
“Yeah, well, her neighbors don’t mind. Okay, click on the next one.”
Eve strained against his arm holding her against his chest. Her four-month-old, pink Dora the Explorer pajamas were already too small. She wrapped her little hand around the laptop’s mouse and clicked on the picture of anime-eyed Kai-lan tugging a cart. “La!”
“That’s too easy,” Eve said. When she crinkled her nose, she looked just like her mother.
Rinnah appeared at Jake’s right shoulder, in sweat pants and an olive sleep shirt. “No more Chinese tonight. Time for bed, ahrnavon. Say goodnight to Daddy.”
“Ai ya, Mommy!”
“It’s time. No whining.” Rinnah made a face at Jake, switched to Hebrew. “You could teach her Hebrew, you know.”
He answered in Hebrew, “At least she can use this.” He poked the fidgeting little girl on both sides of her waist, returned to English. “Sleepy time, Bunny.”
Eve threw her arms around Jake’s neck and peeped, “Bao-bao!”
He did as he was told and hugged her back. Every time he held his daughter, he understood the old phrase “bundle of joy.”
“Night-night, Daddy.”
“Night-night. Love you.” He kissed her forehead, helped her slide off his leg. She snatched Princess Jasmine off her perch on the desk and shuffled to Rinnah’s side. The only two people in the world he’d gladly die for padded from the little living room hand-in-hand.
With Eve gone, Jake could hear the rain flit against the curtained window in front of him. He closed the Nick Jr. tab on his Web browser and brought up www.interpol.int. At the top of the index page splashed the headline “INTERPOL issues Red Notices to assist in identification of 12 Qatar murder suspects.”
Jake clicked on “See all photos and Red Notices.” Twelve faces appeared in three columns, some partly obscured by the holographic overprinting some nations stamped on their passport photos. He scrolled to the third row and clicked on the triangular-faced man whose picture the FBI had shown him over a month before. A new window opened.
WANTED
Alias ELDAR, Alias Jacob
Present family name: ALIAS ELDAR
Forename: ALIAS JACOB
Sex: MALE
Date of birth: (unknown)
Nationality: USA
Jake let out a long, pained breath. Even with the wrong picture, seeing his name on an international wanted poster made him vaguely ill. Who decided to steal his name? Who set up the credit card in his name? That had taken hours on the phone with Visa to get shut down. How long did this asshole pretend to be Jake? How many places was his address floating around?
He closed “his” Red Notice, opened the document he’d started a couple weeks before, and scrolled down to the fourth row, second picture. The second of the two women. This one was sort of but not quite pretty, with good cheekbones and a graceful neck. She was blond in the picture, but it didn’t look like her real color; her skin was a shade darker than Rinnah’s, and her eyebrows were brown. He clicked on the photo.
WANTED
Alias SCHAFFER, Alias Miriam
He started another tab, Google this time, typed “Miriam Schaffer” in the box, hit the search button. Forty-six hundred hits. Shit. He quickly scanned the excerpts, dismissing the wanted-list repostings or interviews with the Qataris or recountings of the hit on the terrorist. On the third page, he found what he was looking for: “Cherry Hill Woman to Qatar: ‘It’s Not Me’” on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website.
Miriam Schaffer, suspected of being an Israeli spy, is blond and wanted for murder.
Miriam Schaffer from Cherry Hill is neither. “It’s not me,” she wants everyone to know.
Schaffer, 35, a secretary for downtown Philadelphia law firm Canby Matheson & Phelps, says she was just as surprised as anyone when she discovered she was connected with the murder of Hezbollah terrorist Masoud Talhami in Qatar on Aug. 30…
Jake brought up his document and started taking notes.
“Is that your new Internet girlfriend?” Rinnah wrapped an arm around his neck and rested her chin on top of his head. “I think you don’t like blonds.”
Busted. He sighed, let his shoulders sag. He hadn’t wanted to let Rinnah know he was doing this; it might upset her. “I don’t. She’s one of the others.”
“You mean, like you? With your name stolen?”
“Uh-huh. I’m trying to find them, see who they are, see if we have anything in common. I’ve nailed down eight of the eleven I’ve looked at so far.”
Rinnah didn’t say anything for longer than he liked. He wondered if she was reading his notes—name, city, profession, any biographical info he could find. Between Facebook, LinkedIn, newspaper articles, blogs and all the other electronic footprints people had left behind, he’d put together a scary amount of data on each of them. He had actual photos of five so far.
“Why?”
“Like I said, I want to see who they are. Near as I can figure, we all have some connection with Israel. Maybe that’s how the Mossad picked us, they already have our data.” He started closing the windows on his screen. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop. It’s a little weird, I know.”
“No, it’s okay.” She stroked his chest through his undershirt. “Is all this going to make you crazy?”
“No.” Jake took her hand, kissed it. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.”
Rinnah pressed her cheek against his hair. “Yakiri? Are you still thinking about Gene’s offer?”
The interest in her voice made him squirm. “I guess. I just never thought I’d get back into that world. I was so glad to get out.”
“It won’t be the same world.” She swung around and straddled him, trailed her fingers through his hair. “It’ll be gangsters, not Palestinian teenagers. Real bad guys for you to find. It isn’t Yahmam. No one shoots at you.”
She’d lost her sweats since she’d collected Eve for bed. The warmth of her legs burned through his thin warm-up pants. He stroked her bare thigh, grew hard at the thought of everything she wasn’t wearing under her sleep shirt. “I know. You really think I should do it?”
Rinnah kissed the corner of his mouth. “I think a change is good for you. The bookstore was someplace to work when we came here, not a career, not your life. I see you do this—” she gestured over her shoulder at the laptop “—and I think this is what you should do. You’re good at it, and you can help people. You always want to do that.”
He ran his fingers under the hem of her shirt, caressed her bare hip and rear. “I don’t know. I know the bookstore was supposed to be temporary, but I really like the place. I can help people there, I can make them happy—”
“But think about the future. Our future. Eve’s. I just want us to all be happy.”
“I want that, too.”
“I know.” She kissed his lips, tenderly, for a wonderfully long time. When she pulled back, she glanced down for a moment, unsure, then looked deep into his eyes. “If you’re going to decide, a good time would be now.” Rinnah showed him her left hand, the one not caressing his chest. It held a white plastic wand.
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