Tel Aviv, Israel
Noam sat alone at a café table that looked comically small next to his bulky body. An umbrella shielded him from the hot noonday sun, but he also wore a floppy sun hat and a pair of cheap sunglasses. The combination made him look like a European businessman unhappily on holiday.
Rachel hiked her sunglasses up into her hair. “Is this seat taken?”
Noam made a who-cares gesture with his hands.
Rachel drew out the chair, feeling the muscles twinge in her core. She no longer had to wear a sling on her arm, and the headaches were mostly gone, but her side still bothered her.
“You’re looking well,” Noam said. “Not fit for duty, but well.”
“You look like a snowman in disguise,” Rachel shot back.
The deep rumble of Noam’s laugh shook the small table between them. “I missed you.”
“It’s only been a month, for God’s sake. I’m not your wife, after all.”
Noam lit a cigarette as Rachel ordered coffee and a scone.
“What happened to Pandora?”
“The Americans took care of it,” Noam said.
“They found the doctor?”
“You were right. She was crazy and she had a crazy plan. Crazy enough to…” As his voice trailed off, he jerked his head to the east.
Rachel gasped. She lowered her voice: “Iran?”
Noam’s nod was barely perceptible.
Rachel sat back as it all clicked into place. She could picture Talia’s rage at JP, the passion in her voice. That kind of anger always ended badly.
“We weren’t part of the takedown?”
“We tried,” Noam said. “We had all the known US assets under surveillance, but they sent in clean skins. Two of them, complete unknowns. From what we hear, they stopped the attack, but they didn’t get out.” Noam’s face had a sour expression, but whether from the fate of the American agents or the lack of Israeli success she couldn’t tell.
Rachel’s coffee arrived and she sipped it. She shivered despite the warm sun. She knew what Iran did to spies. Some brave son of a bitch had done a very stupid, very noble thing. The world would go on, unknowing, uncaring, and those two agents would end up in a shallow grave in the desert—if they were lucky.
“It was a close-run thing,” Noam continued. “They ran the op from their new Emerging Threats group. Took us completely by surprise. That won’t happen again.”
“What about the funding?” Rachel asked. “The Saudi connection?”
Noam watched the plaza, crowded with tourists. Rachel knew his mood. He would tell her when he was ready.
She bit into the scone. It was buttery and flaky, just the way she liked it.
“It was a good lead from the Americans,” Noam said finally. “We picked up Alyan al-Qahtamni and he sang like a canary. Told us everything we wanted to know. Four rich guys trying to get even richer.” His lips puckered like he wanted to spit something sour on the sidewalk.
“Two Saudis and two Jews formed the Arab-Israeli Benevolence Coalition, a massive network of shell companies all over the Nile River basin worth close to two hundred billion dollars.”
“And you shut them down? Permanently?”
“Itzak Lehrmann will be going to jail for tax fraud. We turned al-Qahtamni over to the Saudis. They let him go. The rumor is he’s friends with the crown prince. I guess it’s all about who you know.”
“The yacht owner?”
Noam tapped out another cigarette. He allowed a ghost of a smile. “That one turned out a little better. Saleh bin Ghannam was the Saudi mastermind behind the plot. We dropped a word into the right royal ear and it seems the Al-Buraq suffered an accident at sea. The ship sank without a trace. Terrible tragedy.”
Noam lit a celebratory cigarette.
“That leaves one more,” Rachel said.
“Haim Zarecki.” Noam said the name like a curse. “His nephew was the mole who stole Mossad’s cryptography. The nephew will stand trial for treason. Zarecki was the one who helped Manzul build the lab. He was the one who hatched the whole plan—him and bin Ghannam. A couple of old bastards who wanted to screw the world over before they left it.”
“And?”
Half of Noam’s cigarette disappeared in one drag. “We can’t get to him. We have a hands-off order, right from the very top.” He stabbed the cigarette into an ashtray. “Last I heard he was living out his days in Europe somewhere. Geneva, I think.”
Rachel pushed the scone away, suddenly nauseous. News like this shouldn’t sting her, but it did. Politics was part and parcel of their business. Decisions about operations were swayed by relationships all the time. Facts were twisted and bent to the needs of the moment. It was just how the world worked.
Zarecki was not a well man, she told herself. He would die soon. Problem solved.
But Zarecki was also a traitor to his country. His actions had placed the lives of millions at risk. Rachel had a hole in her side that she could trace back to Zarecki as the proximate cause.
That problem deserved a solution.
Noam stood. “I just wanted to check in,” he said, handing her a slip of paper. “I thought you might like to take a vacation during your convalescent leave.”
He lumbered away, his broad back disappearing into the crowds of people around them.
Rachel unfolded the slip of paper. It was an address in Geneva.
Geneva, Switzerland
Haim Zarecki’s new home overlooked the Rhône River where it flowed out of Lake Geneva.
From his third-floor apartment, he could look down on the marina, the park, and on a clear day, possibly even see Mont Blanc in the distance. In the weeks before Christmas, the fall colors had disappeared, leaving only bare branches and damp cold on the cobbled streets of the well-heeled neighborhood.
Rachel used Airbnb to rent a small sailboat at the marina on the Quai du Mont-Blanc. The cabin was tiny, consisting only of a fold-down table, a narrow bunk, an ice chest that served as a refrigerator, and a single burner.
But it offered an uninterrupted view into the panoramic windows of Haim Zarecki’s third-floor bedroom.
For five days, she did nothing but eat prepackaged ramen noodles, drink coffee, and watch the comings and goings of the Zarecki household through a spotting scope.
The old man was a shut-in. He never left the third-floor bedroom and never closed the curtains. All his meals were brought to him by round-the-clock skilled nursing care, and he wore oxygen all the time. The day nurse was a heavyset Germanic woman with a mole on her right cheek. She arrived promptly at seven and stayed until three. The evening nurse was a college-aged blonde who wore her hair in a ponytail and expertly fended off Zarecki’s gropings for most of her shift. At 11:00 P.M. every night, a black woman came on duty. She was fortyish and walked with a limp. She took frequent smoke breaks.
Zarecki’s security staff consisted of an armed man behind a desk inside the first-floor street entrance. He buzzed people in, flirted with the blond nurse, and watched TV. Two men lived onsite, taking alternating twelve-hour shifts behind the desk.
By the end of the week, Rachel had the outline of a plan. She followed the night nurse home for the next three days.
The woman’s name was Angelique. She lived in a third-floor walk-up in an immigrant community on the outskirts of Annemasse, France. She had two children, a boy and a girl, aged fourteen and twelve, and no husband.
It took two more days to secure the necessary items for the operation. At a medical supply store, she found a set of nursing scrubs similar to the ones Angelique wore, and she found a similar jacket at a secondhand store. A visit to a veterinarian and a wad of cash yielded the rest of the needed supplies.
It was snowing the night Rachel followed Angelique from her bus stop a quarter mile from Zarecki’s apartment. Fat flakes of snow coated the empty streets, muffling all sounds.
Angelique passed under pools of light cast by the streetlamps, her hood up, shoulders hunched against the weather.
Rachel approached the woman from behind. “Excusez-moi?”
When Angelique turned around, Rachel hammered a fist into her face. She was careful not to break any bones, but she wanted the woman to have a healthy bruise. Angelique fell to her knees, crying, and Rachel pinned her to the ground. She uncapped a loaded syringe with her teeth and stabbed a small dose of ketamine into the woman’s arm.
Angelique’s body went limp.
Rachel checked her breathing and pulse, then rifled through her purse, taking her cash, but leaving her ID. Then she called the local police.
“There’s a woman who has been assaulted.” She gave the street address. “Please hurry. She’s unconscious.”
Rachel waited at the corner until she heard the police sirens, then continued on her way. Angelique wouldn’t wake up for a few hours with the sedative Rachel had given her. Her presence in the police station at the time of Zarecki’s death would be an airtight alibi.
She climbed the steps of Zarecki’s house and waited to be buzzed into the main hallway. She stamped the snow from her boots on the mat inside the door.
The young blonde was waiting for her. “Where have you been?”
When Rachel peeled off her hat, the blonde stepped back. “Who are you? Where is Angelique?”
“She called in sick.” Rachel kept her head angled away from the camera over her right shoulder. “The agency sent me. I’m new.”
“Whatever.” The blonde threw on her coat. “Just don’t be late again. He’s in his room. Hopefully, for your sake, he’s asleep. He likes to grab your ass, so be careful.” She called in to the security man in the front room. “Henri, I’m going. She’s here.”
Henri grunted a reply, the door slammed shut behind the departing nurse, and Rachel was alone.
She climbed the steps to the third floor of the house. Zarecki’s room smelled like old man’s feet overlaid with the sharp tang of menthol. The room lights were dimmed to a dull yellow, just enough to illuminate the fat flakes of snow sifting past the panorama window.
Rachel looked out into the dark, trying to see the tiny sailboat where she had spent the last ten days, but the snow was too thick. She studied Zarecki’s reflection in the darkened window.
He lay in a hospital bed, his head elevated to a forty-five-degree angle. There was a full medical crash cart in the corner, ready to extend his miserable life, if needed. He wore an oxygen tube under his nose. His face looked like it was carved out of pale clay, and his skin had a clammy sheen of sweat.
His eyes opened. “Angelique?”
Rachel walked to his bedside. “No.”
She snatched the call button away before he could reach it.
“Angelique’s not here.”
His yellowed eyes searched her face. “Do I know you?”
Rachel nodded. “You saw me in Cairo,” she said, “if you were looking. Or maybe in Cyprus. I was with JP Manzul.”
Zarecki’s eyes widened in fear. The oxygen tube fell away as he struggled to sit up in bed.
“Who sent you?” he said.
Rachel picked up a pillow from the foot of his bed and fluffed it in her hands, taking her time.
“Who are you?” Zarecki demanded.
Rachel smiled at him, and said in Hebrew, “My name is Death.”
She pinned his face with the pillow. The old man thrashed wildly, but not for long.
His body went still.
Rachel lifted the pillow away, studied his face. His bared teeth were yellow and jagged, his rheumy eyes wide open, the pale skin blotchy and age-spotted.
She felt nothing. No satisfaction, no remorse, no more emotion than if she’d stepped on a cockroach.
Rachel stripped the pillowcase off the pillow and stuffed it into her pocket. She tidied up the corpse, replacing his oxygen tube and sitting Zarecki upright in bed. She wiped down anything she might have touched during her short stay, then donned her jacket and hat and hurried down the steps.
“I’m going out for a smoke,” she said to Henri, who waved without looking up.
Rachel rode the early bus to Annemasse. The snow stopped as she made her way to Angelique’s apartment.
She knocked on the door and waited. “Who is it?” said a boy’s voice.
“I’m a friend of your mother’s. She asked me to stop by.” Slowly, the boy unbolted the door and opened it a crack.
Rachel smiled at him. “It’s okay. I don’t want to come in. I just came by to drop something off.” She took a sealed envelope out of her inner pocket containing €10,000 in cash. She passed it through the door to the boy.
“Give this to your mother when she gets home,” Rachel said. “And tell her I’m sorry. Okay?”
The boy nodded and closed the door.
Rachel turned on her heel and walked away.