110

Marcus was not finished, Jenny realized.

“Sir,” he said to Gilad, “you said a moment ago that there was nothing more you could have asked of us. But actually we have something more to give to you.”

“Oh?” Gilad asked. “And what would that be?”

“I know you had hoped we could bring back Amin al-Masri alive so you could interrogate him and get to the bottom of all this,” Marcus continued. “I’m afraid under the circumstances that simply wasn’t possible. He was about to fire on me. I had no other choice but to take him out first.”

Gilad nodded soberly. “Understood, Agent Ryker—I would never have expected you to—”

But Marcus raised his hand to interrupt. “I’m sorry, sir, but I wasn’t quite finished.”

Jenny raised an eyebrow. Marcus certainly had a unique way of speaking to power. She had seen it in Moscow. She had seen it while they were on the run across Russia. And she was seeing it again.

“Please, sir, I mean no disrespect,” Marcus added, seeing the eyebrow and getting the point. “I just wanted you to know that while we could not deliver al-Masri to you, we may have the next best thing.”

“What’s that?”

“His satellite phone.”

Marcus turned to Callaghan, who produced the Iridium 9555 he had stripped off al-Masri’s body back on the plane.

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to ask our tech whiz here—Noah Daniels—to get inside this thing and see what he can find.”

The Mossad chief grinned. “By all means.”

General Mubarak stepped out of his car.

Surrounded by bodyguards, he approached the crime scene just as most of the firefighters and other first responders were wrapping up their work. The fire was out. There was foam all over the site. To be cautious, the fuel was being pumped out of both the plane and the bullet-riddled tanker into a fleet of other refueling trucks. The passengers had been evacuated. Those who had been seated in the section directly above where the grenade had exploded and had received various injuries had been transported to nearby hospitals. Most were suffering shock.

Nothing else had been moved. The mangled, twisted, charred vehicles and equipment were still in place. Even through all the foam, Mubarak could see hundreds of shell casings strewn about. And then there was the pale, lifeless body of Amin al-Masri, lying faceup on the tarmac in a pool of his own blood, his eyes still open and glassy.

Mubarak stopped walking. Putting on a pair of latex gloves, he knelt down and examined the body. No papers. No wallet. No phone. Not even a weapon. Just multiple entry wounds in his chest. He examined al-Masri’s face. It was immediately apparent to the Hezbollah counterintelligence chief that the man’s nose had been broken. Not by a bullet. The wound was more than a day old. Could one of the Americans have done this?

Mubarak walked around the rest of the site, examining each of the other bodies. Then he was driven to the cargo terminal, where his colleagues were interviewing witnesses. His deputy briefed him on what they had learned so far.

“This was Hezbollah,” Mubarak was told. “Worse, it was Radwan.”

“You’re saying this was an inside job?” Mubarak asked, incredulous.

“Everyone I’ve talked to says the same thing—the attackers were all young, military age, and wearing Hezbollah uniforms with Radwan insignia. They were masked. They were fast. And they were thorough.”

Mubarak’s phone rang. It was another one of his investigators, on the other side of the airport.

“I’ve got two witnesses who say they saw at least a half-dozen Hezbollah fighters board a Gulfstream V,” Mubarak heard the man say. “And get this—they carried not one but two other adults onto the plane. The witnesses said it was all very odd. They tried to notify security, but every line was busy. The timing matches up with when the mess on the tarmac was ending.”

There was more. Much more. But Mubarak had heard enough. He thanked his man and walked out of the terminal, out the back door, and onto the tarmac. There, alone, he speed-dialed the Sheikh.

“They’re gone.”

“The Americans?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, and despite eyewitness accounts, it wasn’t us who carried out the attack.”

“Then who?”

“The Americans? The Israelis? Both? Who knows? Who cares? They took off on an unmarked Gulfstream about an hour ago. I’ll track it, but I guarantee you it’ll be a ghost. We’ll never find it.”

“And that traitor, al-Masri, any sign of him?”

“Got him.”

“Tell me he’s alive.”

“Not even close.”

Mubarak had to take the phone away from his ear. The Sheikh was screaming loudly and apparently smashing things in his office. The tantrum lasted at least a minute or two; then the Hezbollah leader came back on the line.

“So what do we do next?” he asked.

“Simple,” said Mubarak. “Go on television again and say that you have uncovered a joint Zionist-American spy ring trying to penetrate Hezbollah, but all those involved have been exposed, tracked down, shot on sight, and killed on your command.”

“This is a disaster, and you want me to take credit for it?”

“I do, and fast, before the Zionists do—or the Americans.”

“What about the prisoners?”

“What about them?”

“How will we explain their escape?”

“We’ll deal with that later, sir. For now, you need to get a jump on the story. That’s why you need to go on television now, in the next five minutes, announcing a major counterintelligence victory over the Mossad and the CIA. That will be the big news for today. Tomorrow we’ll deal with tomorrow.”