“Robespierre?”
“He says he’s a reporter.” Avital Avraham brushed the back of her impeccable nails against her peach pashmina scarf. “But I don’t believe him. He’s not smart enough.”
“He is American.” The man sitting across the table from her offered this as though it were an explanation for everything.
She shrugged. “True,” she said. “But my instincts say he is CIA, or perhaps DHS.”
“How much did he know about the ya Homaar?”
Ephraim Ben-David had been a Mossad intelligence-gathering officer for over ten years now. Management had made his midsection softer, but his mind was still as sharp as when he was a field agent. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow, then adjusted his yarmulke which threatened to slide off the back of his head. He hated meeting in darkened back rooms to coordinate information. It felt like something out of a bad spy movie—an American spy movie—but the budget was small, and so his cover was to live in a tiny apartment above the delicatessen that he ran as a cover. The salty smell of salami wafted up from the store below. His yarmulke was tufted with hair in an effort to hide his orthodoxy from customers.
“He pretended not to know anything,” she said, crossing her legs in a relaxed fashion that left Ephraim feeling anything but relaxed. “But he knew about the negotiations, so he’s definitely a player at some level.”
“What about the Asian you said was with him?” Ephraim asked. He popped an antacid to quell the rising fire in his esophagus. “Could he be an American operative for the MSS?”
Avital’s eyes twinkled with amusement, which somehow made her appear all the more dangerous. “I don’t think so, but if the Institute has taught me anything it’s that anything is possible.” She smiled, and her perfect teeth reflected the light with a sparkle. “At any rate, I have a date with him for…dinner. So by the next day I’ll know everything about him.”
Ephraim held up both hands. “I don’t need to know the details,” he said, stopping Avital from tachless, from getting to the point. He longed for a more civilized time when information extraction relied on civilized means, like rubber hoses, alligator clips, and car batteries. He found the katsa’s softer methods to be unseemly; he despised the use of a “honey trap.” But he couldn’t deny she got more than her expected share of human intelligence, HUMINT, from her assignments. There used to be hushed talk that Avital Avraham could have a recruit begging to spill information and spill their seed in the same breath. There used to be hushed talk—until Avital herself walked in on one of the conversations, and openly began telling tales of conquest with a level of detail that none of the whisperers would have dared to imagine. After that, the conversations didn’t have to be so hushed.
Avital was acutely aware of her handler’s discomfort, which only made her want to go into more detail. She imagined the somewhat-handsome American drooling on the bed, his overstimulated limbic system draining all the mental dampers around the secrets he kept. She flushed hotly at the thought, and crossed her legs in the other direction, clenching her thighs a bit more tightly.
“When we assigned you to this yarid,” Ephraim chided, “it was to find out how these worthless indigents of ya Homaar suddenly came into such devastating weapons. For years, they were only a threat to the goats that wander their mountains. Now, four bombings within Israel—one in Jerusalem! One that nearly devastated our Knesset.”
She sighed. “I am aware, sir,” she said. “I’ll try to rein in my…zeal. If we have anything in our favor, it is that they still remain somewhat inept despite their inexplicable weapons gains.”
It was true. Each bombing had been within moments and blocks of being major catastrophes. The first bombing had taken killed a roadside work crew that had temporarily blocked the road to a middle school. The second one had derailed a cargo train at a crossing only a few dozen yards from an outdoor marketplace. The last bombing had been the worst, killing over a dozen drivers who were stuck in traffic—including the bomber—due to security details around the session of the Knesset. Either these radical jihadists didn’t know they were closer to a higher value target, or they had accidentally bumped their detonators. Even today their bad luck was running true to form, with the intervention of the American, Remo.
“Just find out what you can as quickly as possible,” Ephraim sighed. “We don’t have time to turn a recruit. Just get the information. And remember, always: when you are with your friend, make sure he is not with his.”
“Of course, sir,” Avital replied. Every first year Institute recruit had the Mossad adage for handling assets. You had to be sure you were not dealing with a dangle, with someone set to trap you. And you damn sure had to be certain you didn’t develop any real relationships.
Avital was about to ask if they were through, when the room shuddered. She grasped the edge of the table as though it would steady the world, as Ephraim pushed his chair back and dove under the table for cover, giving him an unwanted but unavoidable view directly up Avital’s skirt. “Bomb!” he yelled, as books and pens quivered on their shelves before falling to the floor.
Avital, still gripping the edge of the table, remained otherwise cool and observant. “I don’t think so,” she said, as the trembling subsided. “I think that was actually an earthquake.”
“In the Channel Islands?” Ephraim looked up at her from under the table. Look at her eyes, look at her eyes, look at her eyes, he repeated in his mind, from his vantage point that was parallel to her knees. “There hasn’t been a noticeable earthquake here for almost a century!”
The tremor subsided, and aside from a decorative piece of pottery, the contents of Ephraim’s quarters were unharmed. Outside, a car alarm blared annoyingly.
Ephraim started to crawl forward from under the desk, paused, then scooted backward on his hands and knees until he had reversed out from beneath the table.
Avital stood and walked, heel-toe, heel-toe to the window and pulled back the curtain. Other than a cracked plate glass window in a clothing store across the street and a hanging streetlight that had fallen on a parked car (the same car with the annoying alarm), there was little evidence that a natural disaster had just occurred.
“Well, I think we can reset the clock timing that particular event,” she said coolly.
· · ·
Across town, Remo was directing traffic.
“Third room from the end,” he said. “On the left. The others are already filled to the gills.”
The parade of movers and hand-trucks grunted and squeaked, carrying a seemingly never-ending stream of steamer trunks to the top floor of the La Haule Manor.
At the far end of the hallway stood Chiun, his arms crossed imperiously, hands tucked into the sleeves of a silk kimono so black it vigorously sucked in all the light around it. His eyes appeared almost closed, but each mover was keenly aware that he was monitoring them.
“Easy on that corner, Joe,” said the older man who was supervising the transition. “That’s fine teak on that one.” He gave the chest a loving stroke, earning a barely perceptible raised eyebrow from Chiun, a silent approval given to someone who appreciated fine art. “Take a wide swing so you don’t…”
He was cut off as the floor began to undulate. Joe lost his grip on the hand-truck, the steamer trunk slipping off its ledge and sliding toward the doorjamb. Joe reached for it, seeing it slip away as if in slow motion. Suddenly, an arm reached over his shoulder, a forearm that seemed to go directly into a very fast hand without bothering to taper into a wrist. The hand caught the far edge of the trunk, pulling it back from the wall with inches to spare.
“Earthquake!” Remo yelled. “Everyone, find a doorway and stand in it!”
Slightly more than a dozen workers stumbled from their chores into the doorways lining the upper floor of La Haule Manor. Remo surveyed the hallway, making sure everyone was safe, that nobody was hurt, as the chandeliers began to swing faster and harder. He was surrounded by chaos, but that was just another Thursday. And then Remo saw something that made his blood run cold.
He saw Chiun.
And Chiun was on the ground.
· · ·
“I think he’s going to be okay, son. Just took a little spill.” The near-retirement supervisor—Leonard, according to the nametag on his coveralls—placed a hand on Remo’s shoulder, meant to comfort him. Chiun was seated now, and Remo was kneeling on the floor beside him.
Cold eyes, set deep beneath a furrowed brow, cut to the hand on his shoulder. Then they closed once, and reopened, much softened. “Thanks,” Remo said, rising to his feet. “Tell you what, Leonard. All the trunks, they’re off the trucks right?”
“Just got about eighteen more down in the lobby, but yeah,” Leonard said.
“I’ll get them,” Remo said. He pulled out his wallet and peeled out twenty 100 Euro notes. “Why don’t you guys knock off for a bit? Go get some beers, calm some nerves. It’s been a heck of a day for all of us.”
“Mister, the bill’s only a thousand.”
“Call it hazard pay,” Remo said warmly, handing the money over. He didn’t add that they were going to get it anyway, as moving trunks for the Master of Sinanju was about as hazardous a job as any man might undertake.
Leonard laughed nervously. “Well, sir, if you say so.” He handed over Remo’s copy of the invoice. “You need anything moved again, you know who to call.”
“You bet, Leonard.”
He waited until the men had packed all the hand-trucks into the service elevators. As soon as the doors closed, he wheeled back to Chiun.
“Little Father.” He knelt again beside the frail old figure. Remo realized for the first time Chiun actually did appear old and frail to him, and that gave him a feeling he had not felt in a long time: fear. “What happened?”
Chiun looked up at Remo, his lips pursed in indignation. “An earthquake happened,” he said. “Things move in earthquakes. Entire buildings fall down in them. Certainly a person can expect to stumble.”
“Chiun, I’ve seen you run a sprint in an earthquake before,” Remo said. “You didn’t even so much as kick a pebble, let alone fall down. So don’t give me that. What’s really going on?”
Chiun jutted out his chin defiantly, but Remo didn’t relent.
“What’s wrong, Little Father?” he asked again. “Are you…Are you dying?”
Chiun looked down and away. His shoulders began to shake up and down, and it was moments before Remo realized the old master was laughing, albeit sadly.
“Yes,” Chiun said, finally. “Yes, I am dying. I am dying, you are dying, we are all dying.”
“I know that,” Remo said.
“Yes,” Chiun said. “But now we are all dying much faster.” He sat, and Remo’s senses went on full alert. Nothing required Chiun to sit.
“The earth cries out in pain,” Chiun finally said. “I know you can feel it.”
Remo had been feeling something the past few days akin to car sickness. He had been ignoring it, writing it off to some virus whose ass his system was no doubt kicking. “What am I feeling, Little Father?” he asked.
Chiun folded his arms. “Sinanju is breathing,” he began, going back to the primal lessons he had given Remo on their very first day of training. “You breathe to fullness. You center yourself. This is the core of the sun source.”
Remo stood silent, stock still as Chiun paused.
“But what is centered, when there is nothing to center against?” Chiun finally stated. “The earth is crying out, like a new mother in labor.” He looked up at Remo, and his eyes, which were normally vellum slits of condescending wisdom, were now open fully, and brimming with sadness.
“A great death is being born.”