The scene felt good to Lourds. He sat there telling stories with Big Mike, listening to the languages, accents, and dialects swirling around him, and felt perfectly at home. This was what civilization ultimately boiled down to: people gathered and telling stories, genuine experiences as well as lies, and they used language to convey it all.
The logs in the fireplace crackled and spat and added a warm yellow glow to the rustic wood finish of the interior. A worn CD system pumped loud, raucous rock and roll throughout the room. Outside, the wind whistled through the mountains.
In the corner, however, a young woman was getting hassled by a couple of men who’d had too much to drink. She was dark and lovely, and probably in her midtwenties. Her winter clothes didn’t completely hide her trim figure. Her hair, dark as a raven’s wing, hung down into her face and brushed her shoulders. Her tanned skin was striking, smooth and unblemished.
One of the men spoke to her, then reached for her breast. The woman adroitly avoided his grasp by leaning back, but he only laughed at her and grew bolder.
By then Lourds was on his feet and crossing the floor. It wasn’t until he was standing behind the other man that he realized how large he was. The guy must have been Scandinavian from the size of him.
‘Excuse me.’ Lourds stood his ground but knew he was swaying a little. The changes in altitude and the strong native beer had bollixed his motor control a bit.
The man swiveled his head and glared at Lourds. ‘Go away.’ He spoke German.
Lourds switched to that language without even thinking about it. ‘I believe the lady has had enough of your company.’ He spoke loudly, hoping that someone – in fact, several someones – in the bar would decide to become participants instead of bystanders.
No one moved except Big Mike, who seemed to be even more inebriated than Lourds.
Lourds scowled. Some Dynamic Duo. Still, he couldn’t just walk away and leave the young woman in this situation.
‘I said go away.’ The man reached out to push Lourds.
Lourds stumbled back as the big hand shoved him in the chest, then he grabbed the man’s hand, intending to grip one of the fingers and use it to control the man. Before he could do that, the big man doubled up his other fist and smashed Lourds in the face.
Stumbling back again, Lourds tried to hang on to his senses, but they scattered like a covey of quail before a hunting dog.
Watching Thomas Lourds keel over on the floor, Miriam Abata couldn’t believe her bad luck. She’d managed to be at the Scholar’s Rock Temple for two days and remain invisible. She’d also followed Lourds and his companion down out of the mountains without being seen and had managed to arrive at Namche Bazaar slightly ahead of them once she was convinced that was where they were going. She’d even booked another plane leaving for the same destination at the same time as the professor’s.
Katsas Shavit, her superior, had provided satellite support to watch Lourds’s progress, so Miriam hadn’t been too worried about losing the American professor.
Now he was lying sprawled on the beer-stained floor of a backwater bar after trying to defend her honor. If this hadn’t been her first solo mission, she might have laughed.
But the bad news kept on coming. Instead of being chased out or even worrying the local police might come along to arrest them, the big man turned his attentions back to her. His foul breath pooled in her face, and she stopped breathing in self-defense.
‘Hey, Franz, you laid that idiot out with one punch.’ The other man slapped the first on the shoulder and grinned hugely.
Franz flexed his right arm. ‘See? I am a strong man. You would enjoy your time with me.’
Fear hummed through Miriam’s nervous system, but she remembered the old martial arts instructor who had trained her. He’d always pointed out that, when used correctly, fear was fuel for an experienced fighter. Miriam wasn’t terribly experienced in life-or-death situations, but she’d spent thousands of hours on those mats.
‘I want you to go away.’
Franz laughed at her. ‘No, you want Franz. You should know this by now. I have bought you drinks.’
‘No. I bought my own drinks.’ Miriam reached out for the beer bottle in front of her and casually twirled it.
Behind Franz, Lourds’s Uighur companion Big Mike struggled to pull the professor to his feet. Unfortunately, Lourds was out cold, and Big Mike just wasn’t sober enough for the task. Miriam had hoped that, between them, the professor and the Uighur would be able to limp back to their rented quarters.
‘Now you are calling me a liar?’ Franz glared at her.
‘Maybe your memory isn’t as good as you think it is.’ Miriam watched as Big Mike had Lourds almost to his feet, then dropped the professor again.
‘Oops.’ Big Mike rocked unsteadily for a moment, then reached down once more for Lourds.
‘Maybe I show you how I kick this guy’s ass some more.’ Franz stood up from the table and headed toward Lourds.
Miriam looked around the room. Really? No one was going to get involved? She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should let Franz beat on Lourds. The problem was that Franz was drunk enough to do some real damage before he realized what he was doing. The man was probably mean when he was sober, too.
Franz swatted Big Mike backwards and the Uighur man crashed into a table with three men. All of them went down in a heap. None of them got up to fight Franz, though. They just saved their beers and looked around for another table.
Grunting a little, an anticipatory smile on his face that made him look demonic, Franz reached for Lourds.
Miriam gripped the bottle in her hand and stepped around the table. There was still enough beer in the bottle to give it a little heft. She halted just behind the big man. ‘Hey. Franz.’
Franz turned around.
Swinging with everything she had, Miriam shattered the bottle across the big man’s nose. Franz’s head snapped back, and blood gushed from his nostrils. He didn’t fall, though. He stood there with a surprised look, then clamped his jaw tight as crimson crossed his bared teeth.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, girl.’
The fear inside Miriam grew stronger. She dropped the broken neck of the bottle and almost drew the Czech pistol she’d bought from a caravan of black market dealers going up into the mountains that day.
Franz reached for her.
Uncoiling, letting her body flow into the movements her instructor had taught her, Miriam batted the man’s arm aside with her right forearm, reaching across her body and bringing her hips around automatically to load a side kick. She fired the kick into Franz’s stomach with enough force to double him over slightly. Actually, he looked more dented than doubled.
Rotating on the ball of her left foot, Miriam lifted her right leg, loaded another kick, and swept this one across her opponent’s face. The hard collision of cheekbone against the bottom of her foot jarred her, but she kept her balance.
Moving quickly, Miriam withdrew slightly, stepped to the side, then brought her left foot down in a stamp strike to the side of Franz’s left knee. Something snapped, but she didn’t know if it was bone or cartilage. Franz’s left leg gave out under his weight, and he fell forward, landing hard on his injured knee.
As the big man yelled, Miriam stepped behind him and smacked the palms of both hands against Franz’s ears. The concussive blows were enough to rupture eardrums. She didn’t know how much damage she’d actually done because Franz tumbled forward face-first and lay there, unconscious.
Breathing hard, more from her fear than any physical adversity, Miriam wheeled on Franz’s friend.
The man held up both hands in surrender and backed away.
Satisfied, Miriam looked back at Lourds and Big Mike. The Uighur man sat on his haunches and stared at her in amazement. Lourds sprawled inelegantly.
Miriam grabbed the professor’s hat, then grabbed one of Lourds’s arms. She glared at Big Mike. ‘Get over here.’
‘Sure.�
� He got to his feet with effort and grabbed Lourds’s other arm. Together, with the unconscious man’s arms spread over their shoulders, the pair carried the professor out of the bar.
Miriam cursed her luck but was secretly excited now that the danger was past. Outside, she swayed uncertainly across the uneven terrain toward Lourds’s rented room and remembered how she had been so impatient while studying in New York. More than anything, she’d wanted to be an agent out in the field.
She’d gotten a more glamorized view of the job, though. As a Mossad agent, she was supposed to be saving Israel from her oppressors. Not carrying drunken professors home at night. She still didn’t know why Lourds might be so important to the Mossad.
That night was, quite frankly, disappointing.
‘Where’d you learn to fight like that?’ Big Mike staggered and almost fell.
‘Watching Jackie Chan movies.’
‘Cool. I like Jackie Chan.’ Big Mike seemed satisfied. ‘I like Bruce Lee better. I like UFC better than WWE.’
Miriam didn’t care to get into a discussion of martial arts with the man. She didn’t want to be remembered in the morning and thought she still might have a shot at that.
As she trudged under Lourds’s weight, she noticed two men closing on them. Both of them seemed professional, and they even pointed their pistols professionally when they drew them.
24
Namche Bazaar
Solukhumbu District
Nepal, Sagarmatha Zone
August 2, 2011
One of the two hard-faced men in front of Miriam waved his weapon. ‘We’ll take Lourds from here.’ His words were clipped and efficient, with a German accent. ‘No one has to get hurt.’
‘Who are you?’ Miriam glared at the two men and dropped her right hand behind Lourds’s back to the pistol at her waistband. She did that without thought, but once she felt the cold metal in her hand, she had all kinds of doubts about what she was going to do next.
‘The men who are going to take Lourds.’
‘Wow.’ Big Mike belched. ‘This is turning out to be some night, huh?’ He grinned, let go of Lourds, then threw himself at the nearest man.
Idiot! Miriam couldn’t believe the big man wouldn’t fight the guys in the bar, but he’d throw himself at men with guns.
The move either caught the pair off guard or they hadn’t wanted to reveal themselves, because the man Big Mike grappled with got knocked backwards and barely stayed on his feet. Pushing his opponent away, he snap-fired his pistol, the bullet tugging at Big Mike’s sleeve as it passed through.
‘Whoa!’ Big Mike said, as the gunshot echoed off the buildings around them.
Hesitation gone, Miriam freed her weapon and brought it up, slapping her left hand around her right to set up the familiar push/pull hold she’d been taught. She flicked off the safety with her thumb, aimed at the shooter’s center mass, and squeezed the trigger three times.
With three rapid-fire rounds in the man who had fired first, and him already stumbling backwards as crimson covered his coat, Miriam moved her pistol toward the other man. He was just getting his weapon up to fire.
Miriam stood her ground, centered her pistol on the man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger, certain she was going to feel bullets rip into her flesh at any second. Instead, the man staggered as one of her rounds tore into his shoulder. Two of his shots went wide of her, and his face turned panicked, then slack as he stumbled and fell.
Heart hammering, afraid she was going to throw up because she was so afraid, and the adrenaline was sending her senses into overdrive, Miriam stepped forward, toe to heel, toe to heel, never crossing her feet to avoid tripping herself in case she had to move quickly.
She kicked the pistol from the dead man’s hands, shifting her gun back and forth between the two men. Kneeling, she checked the second man’s pulse with her fingers. He was dead as well.
Voices sounded behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted the bar patrons crowding the open doorway, but none of them was brave enough yet to come outside. It wouldn’t take long, though. They had liquor in them, tended to be men with too much testosterone and not enough common sense, and Miriam was willing to bet the bartender or one – or several – of them had a weapon.
She rifled the men’s pockets, taking papers and personal items. This wasn’t a random event. Her superior would want to know who they were, and who they were working for.
The crowd at the door grew bolder. ‘What’s going on out there?’
‘What happened?’
Big Mike stared at her and looked dumbfounded.
Miriam stood and stuffed her haul into her jacket pockets. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, but that was wicked.’
‘They pulled their weapons first.’
‘I know. That’s what makes it so wicked.’
In training, her instructors had commented on her natural proficiency and quickness with a pistol. When she’d been a child, her father had trained her to shoot. By the time she entered the Mossad training, she was very comfortable with weapons and targets.
Tonight was the first time she had knowingly shot – and killed – a man.
Kneeling once again, this time beside Lourds, Miriam checked the professor. The man snored peacefully though his nose had swelled, and one eye was already turning black.
She stood. ‘Get him to his room. If you can’t do it yourself, have someone help you.’
‘Sure. Aren’t you going to help?’
‘No. I’ve done enough already.’ Miriam shoved the pistol into her pocket and walked into the shadows. She couldn’t stay. She had to hope those two men were the only ones who had been sent after Lourds.
In her rented room, Miriam paused only long enough to wedge a chair under the doorknob. Then she went to the bathroom and threw up. When she was finished, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, returned to the room, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Automatically, so suddenly glad for all the things her Mossad masters had taught her to do, finally understanding what all of the grueling hours of training had been about, she field-stripped the pistol and cleaned it with the kit she’d bought with the weapon. The familiar activity calmed and focused her.
When she was satisfied that the pistol was clean and battle-ready, when she was satisfied she was calm, she put the gun on the bed beside her and took out her satphone. She punched in one of the numbers she had been given for the cutouts.
‘Hello. You have reached Best – ’
Before the message could continue, Miriam punched in the code to break free of the answering service.
Another voice, this one calmer and in control, answered. ‘May I help you?’
‘I’m an agent.’ Miriam gave the telephone operator her ID number. ‘I need to speak to my field officer.’ Katsas Shavit was another number. The connection was made quickly even though it was night in Israel.
‘Is something wrong?’ Even over the phone, Shavit wasn’t going to use names.
‘Two men tried to take the package tonight. They used force. I had to kill them.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
There was a moment of silence. ‘This was an unfortunate occurrence.’
More unfortunate for the dead men. Miriam tried not to think about that, or the fact that the men might have had families that would miss them. In her job, she’d learned that usually even the worst of men were loved by someone. Someone’s heart would soon break with the news.
‘Are you there?’
Miriam realized Shavit had been speaking. ‘Sorry. I am now.’
‘Can you do this?’
‘Of course.’
‘I know this is hard. Something like this … it’s always hard.’
‘I am fine.’ Miriam brushed at the tears that had started running down her cheeks.
‘Has your situation with the package been compromised?’
‘No.’ Miriam didn’t even want to go i
nto the situation because it was ludicrous in light of what had happened. This terrible thing she’d done couldn’t be linked to something so trivial. ‘He still doesn’t know who I am. I can make the rendezvous points without his being any the wiser.’
‘We will pick him up at this end.’
‘All right.’
Shavit’s voice softened. ‘Try to get some sleep if you can. Even though you are there, you are not alone. What happened tonight wasn’t your choice. We put you in the position you found yourself, and those men decided their own fates.’
‘I know.’
‘You did well. I will see you soon.’
Even after Shavit hung up, Miriam clung to the phone a little longer, not wanting to let go of that human contact.
Standing in the shadows just outside the yellow glow spilling from the bar, Mufarrij let his frustration flow from him and disappear into the cold wind blowing around him. He had been close to getting his hands on Lourds, to finding out what the man knew about Lev Strauss’s secret, but the German mercenaries had been hanging around too closely for him to snatch the man.
He’d almost interceded in the bar when Lourds had so stupidly risked himself over the young woman. She was a surprise, though. The way she’d handled herself in the bar had impressed him. Of course, taking out a drunken man was no great feat, but she had done it with no wasted movement.
She was young, though. A more practiced agent wouldn’t have stepped into the limelight so quickly or so strongly.
In the street with her pistol, she had been death incarnate. In all his years fighting against hard, desperate men, Mufarrij had seen few people who possessed that kind of speed and accuracy.
The two dead men lay in the street beside the jeep used by the local police. Sullen-faced policemen carried assault rifles and asked questions of the bar’s patrons. Most of the bar guests were only too willing to step forward and tell their stories. They were from out of country and this was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.
The Temple Mount Code Page 14
