Doha 12

by Lance Charnes

  “Miriam Schaffer?”

  “Yes. And you are…?”

  He held out his right hand. “Jake Eldar.”

  Her rust-brown eyes turned to rock. “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

  Jake dropped his hand. He sensed he had maybe ten seconds to keep this from being a wasted trip. “Look, I’m sorry about the call. I wasn’t really thinking straight, I was still pretty messed up from…what happened to my wife. I probably sounded pretty scattered. I came here because I want you to see I’m not crazy. And I still think you’re in danger.”

  He watched her eyes turn from granite to marble to hardwood. She drew in a long, deep breath. “Mr. Eldar, do you have any idea what my weekend was like after talking to you?”

  “Probably like my past three weeks. Look, is there someplace we can talk for a few minutes? I just want you to know what’s going on. That’s all.”

  She worked her jaw for a moment, as if chewing over her decision. “Follow me.”

  He wasn’t anything like she’d expected—a madman with wild hair and shabby clothes, clutching plastic bags stuffed with newspapers. Tall—Bill’s height, an honest six feet—good shoulders, sharp suit, conservative haircut. Not handsome, but nice-looking. Pretty eyes, big and warm. The eyes finally clinched it: calm, tired, sad, but steady.

  Miriam led him a short way down the corridor to one of the firm’s meeting rooms, all the while wondering whether her irritation and paranoia really needed booster shots. She ushered him through a glass door set into the glass wall and pointed to the nearest of the eight black chairs around the lozenge-shaped table. He stole a look out the room-wide windows. First-time visitors always stopped for the view. “Wow,” he said, “bet that’s great when it’s clear out.”

  “Yes. I can almost see home from here.”

  He pulled a stack of papers from his leather portfolio. “First, I’m sorry about your husband. I know now what that’s like.”

  “Thank you.” She settled into a chair across from his, sweeping her skirt straight as she sat. “I’m sorry about your wife. It must be a terrible time for you. I know how you must feel.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The news stories say you have a daughter?”

  He nodded. “Eve. She’s six. She’s…taking it pretty hard. She was there when it happened.”

  “Oh, my God.” She hadn’t meant to flinch, but did anyway. “Was she hurt?”

  “Not physically.” He ducked his head, sat still for a moment, holding his papers. Then he looked up, flashed the saddest smile she’d seen since looking in the mirror sixteen months before. “You’ve probably already looked up the names I told you on the phone, but in case you didn’t, I printed some things about them.” He extended the sheaf toward her.

  She waved away the papers. “Yes, I did my homework. I don’t doubt they’re dead, but I have a hard time believing Hezbollah has something to do with it. What does your uncle the policeman say?”

  He sighed. “He’s passed it to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. That’s FBI and NYPD together, looking for terrorists. He thinks…well, let’s just say he’s not convinced.”

  She could see why. Nine people, one missing, eight unpleasant but very different deaths, plus Eldar’s wife. Nothing to link them but entries on a list. The more it nagged at her, the more she realized it would take too much coincidence to explain. But if it wasn’t coincidence…that was a step her brain wasn’t willing to take, not yet.

  He pulled another chunk of paper from his portfolio, leaned forward, passed it to her. “You said you’ve had experience with Hezbollah. In Israel?” She nodded. “You’re right, lately they’ve been in love with car bombs and missiles, but they didn’t always operate that way. They have a long history of targeted assassination. That top one, Gholam Oveissi, is a great example. He was one of the Shah’s generals, he became active in the Iranian exile movement after ‘79. They tracked him to Paris and shot him and his brother out in broad daylight on the street.”

  She skimmed the material. She appreciated the care this Eldar person had put into his work—fresh, crisp sheets, edges aligned, neatly stapled. Not what she’d expect from a crazy person. “This says Islamic Jihad, not Hezbollah.”

  “That’s the name they went by then. There’s some others in there. The Mykonos one is interesting. In ‘92, Hezbollah killed four Iranian Kurdish dissidents in a Greek restaurant in Berlin. Look at that report there, it was a pretty slick operation for them. The point is, they’ve done stuff like this before, just not recently. God knows they’ve got the resources to do it now.”

  Miriam flipped through the dense, thickly footnoted report from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and started to feel queasy. The Hezbollah she grew up hating was a pack of rabid dogs. These were sophisticated operations, almost like…well, some of Mossad’s.

  Her hands worked on automatic, making neat piles of the papers while she sorted out her thoughts. It was getting uncomfortably hard to ignore Eldar’s story. “What am I supposed to do about this, Mr. Eldar?”

  “Please, it’s Jake. Be careful. Stay alert. When you’re out, stick around other people. Keep your doors locked. Do you drive or take the train?”

  “I drove today, but the lot’s just a block away.”

  “Good. Check your car before you get in. You know, the kind of things we used to do in Israel.” He slid a manila folder from his portfolio, held it in both hands, hesitated, then bobbed his head once. “It was incredibly easy for me to find you. These guys are part of the Lebanese government, which means they’re in bed with the Lebanese police. Anything INTERPOL has, they have.” He pushed the folder across the table. “But even without that, we’re our own worst enemies.”

  “What’s this?”

  “A dossier, on you. I built it yesterday.”

  A dossier? Was Eldar really some kind of crazy stalker? Miriam swallowed, gingerly opened the file’s front flap, expecting spy pictures taken through her blinds. Instead, she found her life in black and white. Work history, address history, club memberships, her car, which major stores she shopped in.

  “That’s forty-nine bucks on the web,” he explained. “It comes from one of those data aggregators. By the way, if you want your own data, you have to pay for it. The credit agencies are regulated, but these guys aren’t.”

  Her stomach started to churn. All this, in one place? “They just let you buy it?”

  “All I needed was a major credit card. Didn’t even have to talk to anyone.” He gestured to the file. “You want to see what I found for free, keep going.”

  The Inquirer article. The Courier-Post story about Bill’s death, and the funeral photo. A picture of her from a friend’s Facebook page. Her notary license. A small-claims court judgment from that car wreck five years ago. Bit by bit, he’d scooped up far too many details of her life in America. She absently neatened the stack of papers, closed the file, but couldn’t stop staring at it. “Who are you?”

  “Just a bookstore manager. Sorry, I was until Thursday. Now I work for NYPD.”

  She looked up. “Bookstore managers don’t do things like this.”

  “This one does.” They watched each other watch each other. “I used to be an intelligence analyst in the army. You never forget how to ride a bicycle, or build a file.”

  “The American army?”

  “No, Israeli.”

  “Tzahal?”

  He nodded. “I was in Target Field Intel for four years. So I know about these guys, too.”

  This was so wrong. She’d been so sure he was just another kook, but he was serious and he seemed to know what he was talking about. A tremor of fear slithered up her spine. She didn’t realize she’d pressed her fingertips to her lips until she tried to speak. “You really think they’re trying to kill us?”

  “I hope not. But if they are, you need to protect yourself.”

  He folded his arms on the table; his sad eyes grew sadder. Not just sad, but weary. Had he slept since Thursda
y? After Bill died, how long was it before she had a full night’s sleep?

  “I knew all this before Rinnah…” He looked away, then back to her. “I never told her. I thought it’d scare her. I wish I had. She might have been more careful, she might still be…” He turned his face away again, swallowed. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She turned her hands loose on restacking the papers while she tried to digest everything he’d said. The man on Friday? The white van at the supermarket? Were they real? Were they…them?

  He took the loose papers from her but pushed the folder away. “Keep that. You should know what the web’s saying about you.” He stowed his research material in his portfolio, stood, buttoned his suit coat. “I’ll leave you alone now. Be safe. Please.”

  She rose, carefully arranged the chair in its place. Dark thoughts raced through her mind, obscuring the certainty she’d had just minutes before. “How long do you think this will last?”

  “Until someone catches them, or we’re all dead.”

  “That’s awfully grim.”

  “Yeah. So’s being a target.” He held out his right hand. “Miriam, thanks for listening.”

  This time, she took his hand. “Thank you for being so persistent, Jake.”

  FORTY-ONE: Philadelphia, 5 December

  A cold, gray day had become a drizzling twilight by the time Miriam pushed through her building’s heavy glass doors to face the going-home tangle of Market Street. In a few minutes, she’d be part of the logjam. She hated driving to work, but she’d started late this morning and missed her train. She belted her raincoat, turned up the collar against the saw-toothed wind and joined the scurrying crowd on the sidewalk.

  She checked over her shoulder as she trotted across 21st Street on the yellow light. No one waved an RPG at her, but she knew she’d never spot a lurker in the mob.

  As she marched head-down across Market, she shifted her pepper spray from her purse to her coat pocket. She’d thought all afternoon about what Eldar had told her. This was America, and she was an American now. Hezbollah didn’t kill random people in America. Or did they?

  David keyed the radio. “Got her?”

  Amzi’s voice squawked back, “Yeah. Tan raincoat, southwest corner.”

  “Breaking off.” David stepped up on the southeast corner of Market and 21st. He glimpsed Amzi’s broad back in a green field jacket ten meters down 21st Street. David turned left at a steel-and-glass shoebox of a vacant office building and hurried east.

  “Say again?”

  Sohrab’s voice gargled through Kassim’s phone. “She’s coming.”

  Time for work. Kassim started the van’s engine, turned up the heater. He checked the rear-view mirror. “Ready?”

  Ziyad rolled up his prayer rug. He’d finished his fourth prayer of the day just moments before. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  The foot traffic on 21st thinned dramatically only half a block off Market. The clack-clack of Miriam’s heels on cement sounded like someone hammering a large nail. At least she’d get more exercise walking this fast.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Across the street a big man hurried through the drizzle, hands jammed in the pockets of a green field jacket, the brim of his Phillies baseball cap shrouding his downturned face. He didn’t seem to notice her, just heading the same way.

  The handful of people behind her also appeared to be wrapped in their own affairs. A little of her tension drained away. She was just short of the corner of Ludlow; the parking lot’s entrance was maybe fifty feet away.

  “Almost there. Fifteen, twenty meters.”

  Kassim checked the right side-view mirror again. The woman’s dark-green Honda Prelude slept two parking stalls behind the van, facing the side of a splotched-brick building. A sticker on the bumper read, “My Husband is a U.S. Marine.”

  Schaffer appeared in the Suburban’s side-view mirror as she entered the car park. Gur pressed the transmit button on his radio. “Schaffer’s at the driveway. Where’s the attendant?”

  “Shuffling cars,” Kelila answered.

  “Van,” Natan said. “Seven or eight meters east of her car.”

  Gur twisted hard in his seat to look. “That’s the target. Stand by. How many in the van?”

  “One.”

  One? That wasn’t right. “The others are here somewhere. Wait for them.”

  “One by the west end,” Natan said.

  “We can terminate them?” Amzi asked.

  “It would be nice to get one alive, but don’t risk yourselves.”

  Miriam dug her keys from her purse. She noted the white van idling near her car.

  A white van. Near her car. She paused a moment, her scalp tingling. She twisted to look behind her. The man in the green field jacket stood near the parking lot entrance, staring at the sign. Following her? If not, why was he just standing there?

  She turned back to the van. The white van. She’d have to walk by it to reach her car. Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. Half a dozen white vans had passed her on Market Street just a few minutes before. Get in the car. You’re safe in the car.

  Kassim said over his shoulder, “Wait for my word. She’s almost here.”

  Ziyad squatted next to the back doors, his hand already on the latch. His lips were moving. A prayer for going into action?

  The plan was simple for one of Fadi’s productions. Ziyad drags the woman into the van. Kassim drives away from the car park while Ziyad strangles her, then tears her clothes to make the police think someone tried and failed to rape her. They take her purse and jewelry, go to the river, dump her body. If she somehow escaped, Fadi, Gabir and Sohrab waited at her apartment block to try the same ploy. One way or another, they’d finish her tonight.

  That was the plan.

  “Today is Ashura,” Ziyad said. “We should be mourning Hussein. We should be fasting.”

  “We have work to do,” Kassim told him. “Remember him in your heart. Be careful.”

  Ziyad glanced back at him, gave him a small smile. “How hard is it to kill a woman?”

  The target circled around the back of the van.

  “Go!”

  The Honda beeped when Miriam tweaked the alarm. The van’s driver hadn’t even looked at her when she passed. However, the man in the green coat still trailed behind her, maybe fifty feet back. Miriam’s heart bashed at her ribs. Get in the car!

  She felt rather than heard the van’s back door open. Before she could turn, a man’s gloved hand clamped across her mouth, and an arm vise-gripped her neck. The man yanked her back, almost off her feet.

  No!

  She mule-kicked, buried the back of her heel in the man’s shin, heard him swear in Arabic. She tried to raise her leg high enough to jackhammer his knee, but her skirt was too tight. Damn it! She jerked to her left, then right, elbows flailing, trying to break his grip, but he ratcheted down his arm on her throat, making her choke as she screamed into his palm. Leather and old sweat from his glove filled her nostrils. She drove an elbow into his ribs, but his layers of clothing and the awkward angle robbed the blow of its strength. Her right hand dove into her coat pocket, groped for the little metal canister, found it, lost it, grabbed it again.

  The man dragged her back a step. She tried to snap her head back into his face, but his grip was too strong. She knocked the side of her right foot against the inside of his, then stomped down as hard as she could with her heel, spiked the arch of his foot. Then again. And again.

  He choked out a scream.

  Natan saw the struggle, drew his pistol. “It’s started,” he told the radio.

  He stepped out from behind the brick wall, wound up to dash across the alley, climb the meter-tall retaining wall and vault the iron railing, then take down the man in the black hooded sweatshirt who had grabbed the woman.

  An instant later he was on his back, clutching his collarbone, gasping against the pain.

  A young man loomed over him. Persian features, short black coat, blue jeans, a co
llapsible black metal baton in his hand. “Good night,” he said in English, then brought down the baton again.

  Kassim could hear the struggle—the woman’s strangled cries, then Ziyad’s wail—saw Sohrab knock down a man who’d appeared from nowhere, noticed the man and woman edging through the parked cars about twenty meters away. Police?

  He took his pistol from the console and focused his mind on action.

  Miriam fumbled with the pepper-spray’s flip-top safety cap.

  The man jerked her backwards another step. The van appeared in the corner of her eye. One more good yank and she’d be inside.

  The cap popped open. Miriam closed her eyes, held her breath, snapped the canister to her shoulder, then sprayed wildly behind her. The man screamed full-out. His hand slipped from her mouth.

  She shrieked as loudly as she could with the man’s arm still blocking her windpipe, then blinked open her eyes.

  Jake Eldar skidded to a halt in front of her.

  What?

  His fist grazed past her hair and connected with something just behind her, a wet crunch loud in her ear. The arm fell away from her throat.

  Jake shoved her behind him. She spun in time to see him wrench a pistol away from a dark, bloody-faced man in a black hoodie, punch his jaw, then kick him in the groin. Her attacker doubled over, coughing, grabbing his injuries with both hands. He stumbled aside but stayed on his feet.

  “Put him down!” she barked at Jake. “Get that bastard!”

  Eldar? Here? How?

  Kassim, stunned, watched through the van’s back door as Eldar tore the pistol out of Ziyad’s hand and kicked him viciously between his legs.