by Cap Daniels
Before we boarded the plane at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, keeping my promise, I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Hey there. I told you I’d call before we left.”
Penny’s cheerful voice filled my ear. “Hey, Chase. I knew you’d call. Are you leaving now?”
The C-17 cargo plane had her ramp deployed, and the crew was conducting the preflight walk-around.
“Yeah, we’ll be getting on the plane any minute now. Ginger and Skipper will run the TOC, and we have some good solid contacts on the ground over there. They’ve laid the groundwork for a nice clean op. I won’t be able to call for the next few days, but I told Skipper to keep you in the loop. I hope that’s okay.”
I could almost hear her smiling. “Thank you. I’d hoped you’d do that. I know I’m not your wife or anything, but I do worry about you when you’re off saving the world.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we’ll see what we can do about changing that when I get back from Siberia.”
She giggled. “Oh, really? And a black lab, too?”
“I love you, Penny. I’ll see you soon.”
The engines of the C-17 whistled to life as we wheeled our gear up the ramp.
The ten-hour flight stretched the limits of the C-17’s range, but we landed at Larnaca International on the coast of Cyprus just before noon the following day. Fortunately, we’d both slept most of the flight, so the jetlag wouldn’t take full effect for several hours. The loadmaster told us our gear would be waiting for us in Helsinki, and I thanked him for the ride.
What time I didn’t spend sleeping on the plane was spent pondering the questions to which there may never be answers.
Why is Clark so willing to wade through hell with me when he has absolutely nothing to gain from risking everything? Why is a beautiful, brilliant, devoted woman like Penny willing to swallow the pain I dragged her through, and still look into my eyes with such tenderness and unyielding love? How has my life become such a web of danger and confusion, held together by the loyalty and endurance of such incredible people?
A satellite phone call to Skipper and Ginger yielded great news. We’d initially been planning to fly aboard a local commuter into Tel-Aviv, but using commercial transportation tends to leave a paper trail that I didn’t particularly want lying around. Skipper, with just a little help from Ginger, was able to score a boat from Psarolimano.
A retired Defense Intelligence Agent living aboard a seventy-foot schooner would be more than happy to have us join him for the two-hundred-mile jaunt across the Mediterranean to Tel-Aviv…for a small fee, of course.
Dennis Crowe met us on the dock in cut-off blue jeans and a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt. He didn’t have the look of an intelligence operative, but what he did have was three bottles of KEO, one of the best Cypriot beers on the island.
“Welcome to Cyprus, boys,” he said as he handed us the beers and shook our hands. “I’m Dennis. I hear you boys are looking for a ride to the beautiful Hebrew Riviera.”
I laughed. “Well, I’ve never heard the coast of Tel-Aviv called the Hebrew Riviera, but if you’re headed that way, we’d love to hitch a ride.”
The man raised both hands. “Ah, Tel-Aviv. The city of cathedrals, or whatever. It’s beautiful this time of year. Well, that is to say, it’s just as beautiful, or not, this time of year as any other.”
His boat was enormous. The extra twenty feet of length his boat had over Aegis made it feel like an aircraft carrier. Three masts the size of telephone poles jutted skyward, and the array of electronics at the helm station was enough to make an astronaut envious.
“This is quite a boat,” I said.
“Oh, this old thing? It’s just the spoils of war. If you live long enough and you put away a little cash here and there, this is what retirement looks like. Don’t worry, boys. You’ll get there someday—if you’ll quit this gig and get you a job driving a truck somewhere.”
I wasn’t sure if our eccentric host was joking, but the beer was good.
“Stow your gear, and make yourselves at home. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll stick her in the wind. It’ll take about twenty-six hours to get you to Marina Herzliya.”
“In that case,” I said, “let’s get some sleep tonight and try to get our bodies aligned with whatever time zone we’re in. If we leave at daybreak tomorrow morning, that should give us a nice mid-morning arrival for the meeting with our friends in Tel-Aviv.”
Dennis checked his Rolex and nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ll just let Bimini know, and we’ll see what we can find to throw in your bellies. I hope you like fish, ’cause there ain’t much else around here.”
“Fish sounds great,” I said, and watched him dance through the companionway like a man forty years his junior.
“Interesting guy,” Clark said.
I laughed. “Yeah, you could say that.”
We found two unoccupied cabins and stowed our gear. When we made our way back on deck, Dennis was pulling more beer from an ice chest, and a stunning beauty of maybe twenty-five, wearing part of a bikini, was sitting on the coaming with a glass of white wine in her well-manicured left hand.
Dennis passed out the beer. “This is Bimini, my first mate. Well, maybe not my first mate, but my current mate.”
We shook Bimini’s hand and made our introductions. She pretended to be shy, but no one wearing an eyepatch as a bikini could actually be shy. I doubted her real name was Bimini, but I suspected Dennis didn’t care.
I saw the twinkle in Clark’s eye, and I knew he was about to push the envelope. He didn’t disappoint me.
He raised his bottle toward Bimini. “Also spoils of war?”
Dennis laughed a hearty roar one might expect of Santa Claus, and he raised his bottle. “Here’s to spoils of war!”
We touched the rim of our bottles to his and settled into the comfortable cockpit.
Dennis studied Clark and me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Let’s see if an old man has still got it. What do you say?”
Clark looked at me as if I was supposed to know what the old Defense Department spy was talking about. I had no idea what to expect, but I said, “Sure. Why not?”
Dennis cleared his throat and pointed toward Clark. “I first thought Navy SEAL, but you don’t walk like a SEAL, so I’m thinking Delta Force. Am I close?”
Clark tried not to smile, but the corner of his mouth started climbing up. “Not bad. You’re close, but no cigar.”
“Rats!” said Dennis. “I used to be good at this.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Clark said. “I was Special Forces, but I got a better offer before I could get accepted into Delta.”
“I knew it! I’ve still got it.”
Clark laughed and pointed his bottle toward me. “Let’s hear you do him, now.”
Dennis closed one eye and sucked the ends of his white mustache into his mouth. “He’s a little tougher to figure out, but I think I’ve got him nailed down.”
I finished my beer. “This should be interesting. Let’s hear it.”
Dennis drained his beer. “Probably lacrosse, or maybe rugby. Definitely rowing. You were an athlete, and probably a good one. A college boy, no doubt. I’m thinking maybe even Ivy League, although your accent hints at the Carolinas or maybe the coast of Georgia. Possibly a Citadel grad, but you don’t move like somebody who’s ever learned to march, so probably not. Definitely not military. Okay, so here’s my FBI profiler’s best guess. You’re a lawyer by education, but you never took the bar exam. You played lacrosse at either Duke or Penn State. Eagle Scout and National Merit Scholar. The Agency recruited you out of law school at Columbia, and now you’re in clandestine services out of Langley.”
I winked at Clark. “This guy’s good.”
The beautiful Bimini leapt to her feet, threw her arms around Dennis, and kissed him as if no one was watching. “I love it when you do that, Papi. It’s so sexy.”
She tweaked the tip of his nose with her index finger and danced back to her seat.
>
Clark, Dennis, and I raised our bottles in unison and declared, “Spoils of war!”
Bimini—I was starting to believe that could be her name—grilled sea bass, carrots, and olives and served it over brown rice. We ate, laughed, and listened to Dennis’s stories as the sun melted into the Mediterranean Sea. I wanted to believe some of his stories actually had a vein of truth to them, but they probably didn’t.
* * *
It wasn’t the sound of the diesel that awakened me the next morning, but the heeling of the big boat as Dennis and Bimini set the sails. I dressed and climbed the companionway ladder to find Bimini at the helm, this time wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt with the phrase “How many licks?” below a picture of a Tootsie-Pop.
“Oh, hey! Good morning, Clark,” she said a little too cheerfully.
“I’m Chase, but good morning to you, too.”
Dennis came from the aft companionway with two cups of coffee in hand and held one out toward me. “Ah, good morning. How’d you sleep?”
I took the mug. “Thanks. I slept great.”
I could still see the coast of Cyprus behind us, but it was getting smaller by the minute.
“Is Clark up yet?” he asked.
“I’d be surprised if he wasn’t,” I said, looking back down the companionway.
Clark came hopping up the ladder and surveyed the horizon. “You guys don’t mess around when you say we’re leaving at daybreak.”
Dennis handed the remaining coffee cup to Bimini and headed back to the galley for more. Back on deck, minutes later, with two more cups and a bottle of Jim Beam, he handed a cup to Clark. “Does anybody want cream?” He poured two shots of the bourbon into his coffee and then held up the bottle. “Well, would you look at that? I got the cream and the bourbon mixed up again.”
Clark and I declined, but Bimini held up her mug. She clearly wasn’t going to miss out on an opportunity to increase her blood alcohol level, regardless of the hour.
The yacht sailed like an ocean liner—solid, quiet, and fast—and the sea was relatively calm in spite of the twenty-knot wind from the southwest. Clark and I spent the day discussing the details of the mission and standing watch. We agreed that I would stand the ten-to-four watch, he would be on duty from four until ten, and Bimini and Dennis would stand the two overnight watches. While we marked the chart and kept the sails trimmed on our watches, Papi and his arm candy lounged on deck, soaked up the sun, and generally stayed to themselves.
Just after noon, we hooked a fish on a line we’d been trailing behind the boat. Clark had a blast fighting the big fish for nearly half an hour, and when he finally got the monster to the boat, it turned out to be a shortbill spearfish. Dennis gaffed it, and we hauled it aboard. Bimini withdrew a huge filet knife from a sheath near the helm and began butchering the fish. In no time, she had over a dozen steaks cut from its flesh and a bucket of strips she’d cut for bait. We tossed the carcass overboard and saw a shark devour it almost before it broke the surface.
Dennis pointed at the water. “Did you see that, boys? That’s a pretty good life lesson for you. Even though you may not see them, the predators are always lurking just beneath the surface and waiting to strike. Don’t forget that.”
* * *
The coast of Israel came into view a few minutes after nine the next morning. I’d never been to the Middle East, but I thought Penny might enjoy visiting someday.
The sails came down, and we motored into Marina Herzliya. The Cyprus Naval Jack was on the pennant halyard above the Israeli flag boasting the Star of David. I wondered if Dennis had chosen the Naval Jack instead of the official flag of Cyprus—the yellow silhouette of the island above twin olive branches—out of some political belief he held, or perhaps Bimini just thought it was pretty.
I slid an envelope of hundred-dollar bills beneath the Jim Beam bottle—or maybe it was the creamer—and thanked our captain and first mate for the ride.
As we shook hands and stepped from the yacht to the dock, Bimini said, “We’ll see you later, Bulldog.”
I was unsure what to make of the comment.
She smiled broadly. “University of Georgia baseball star and psych major. MVP College World Series, 1996. I’m better at research than Papi, but I still think he’s sexy.”
Dennis grinned. “Things are rarely as they appear, boys. Good luck. Let us know if we can do anything else for you.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bimini said as she tossed our passports down from the deck. “You’ll be needing these.”
I caught mine and opened it up to find an Israeli stamp already in place.
Chapter 13
Shackles and Chains
“Shalom, gentlemen. I am Nataniel Yochanan. I am here to take you to see Mr. Rabin. Please follow me.”
The man was in his thirties with dark, curly hair, and a black yarmulke. The confident stance, scanning eyes, and bulge under his jacket left no question that he was Mossad. In my opinion, Mossad was the world’s finest intelligence service, and their agents were, in addition to being some of the deadliest humans alive, a force of supremely well-trained professionals capable of accomplishing things every other intelligence service in the world envied.
We fell in step with him and climbed inside his black SUV. Inside the vehicle was a collection of weaponry, electronics, and communications gear that was like nothing I’d ever seen. Nataniel wasn’t just some errand boy.
He pulled to a stop in front of a café off Mordechai Namir Road.
“I thought we were going to—”
Nataniel cut me off. “You will be meeting Mr. Rabin here.”
We stepped from the SUV, and Nataniel pulled away almost before we’d closed the doors.
Bureaucrats look the same all over the planet. A slightly overweight, balding man in his late fifties motioned for us to join him at his small table.
Although the temperature was in the sixties, the man wiped sweat from his brow with a yellowed, well-worn handkerchief. He didn’t stand or offer his hand. “You are here for the Russian.”
I couldn’t discern whether that was a statement or a question, so I didn’t respond. The man pointed toward a chair, and I took a seat. Clark did not. Instead, he made his way to a corner of the café where he could see both directions up and down the street and keep an eye on Rabin and me.
“What is he doing?” asked Rabin. “We are across the street from the headquarters of Mossad with armed men in every direction.”
“He’s doing his job,” I said, refusing to be intimidated.
Rabin shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
A waiter arrived and placed pastries and a carafe of coffee on the table. Rabin poured two cups and raised his in some sort of salute. The coffee was the strongest I’d ever tasted and more bitter than it would be possible to describe. Rabin drank a long swallow and wiped at his mouth with the same handkerchief he’d used for his forehead.
He surveyed the patrons of the café. “Your Russian is at Ben Gurion Airport. She is not cooperative, but she is your problem now. We have arranged for a C-130 Hercules to take you to Helsinki. What you do with her from there is of no concern to the Israeli government, but I am sure you are going to trade her for an equally uncooperative American, no?”
I tried to choke down another minuscule drink of the rancid black muck that was supposed to be coffee. “Mr. Rabin, you are right. What I do with her is of no concern to your government.”
I didn’t expect him to smile, but he did. “Good luck with that vild khaye. Nataniel will take you to the airport.”
I stood and pointed toward my cup. “Thank you for whatever that’s supposed to be.”
Rabin didn’t stand, but Clark began moving toward the street. Nataniel pulled up as if he’d known how long the meeting with Rabin would last. We mounted the vehicle and raced through the busy streets like we were running from the devil. Maybe we were, but I had a feeling the devil didn’t spend much time in Tel-Aviv.
Ben Gurion Airport was a
security stronghold. Armed guards manned every gate, and trucks with mounted machine guns patrolled the perimeter.
Clark surveyed the scene, taking in every detail. “We ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
Nataniel never slowed down for a gate or checkpoint. Every guard seemed to know to let us pass. We raced onto the tarmac and screeched to a stop beside a nondescript hangar with a grey C-130 cargo plane parked just outside the doors.
Before we got out, I asked Nataniel, “What does vild khaye mean?”
“Ha! Did Mr. Rabin call your prisoner that?”
“He did,” I said.
“He is correct, and you will soon find out what vild khaye is.”
Clark and I walked into the hangar, and my heart stopped beating. Sitting in a straight metal chair with an armed guard on each side of her was the second-most beautiful Russian I’d ever seen. Her hands were cuffed to a chain laced around her waist, and her bare feet were shackled. She wore blue cotton pants and a simple shirt of the same color. Her blonde hair fell across her shoulders and glistened in the light of the hangar. Her high cheekbones, smoky, blue-gray eyes, and sharp features made her Anya Burinkova’s doppelganger. Looking at her sent my mind racing through a thousand scenes and emotions.
I pictured Anya standing over me with her knife pressed hard against my tongue. I remembered the feel of her skin against mine and the sound of her Russian-accented English whispers in my ear. I shuddered when I recalled seeing her fall from the staircase in Miami with a bullet in her back.
Instinctually, I shot a glance at the chained woman’s feet to make sure she wasn’t missing a little toe from a gunshot delivered by my pistol in Charlotte Amalie. To my horror, she had only four toes on her right foot. Had she endured the amputation of a toe solely to pass for Anya? The woman wasn’t Anya, but unless they were standing side by side, it would be almost impossible to tell them apart.
