96

DOHA, QATAR

Hamdi Yaşar hung up the phone.

Not wanting to wake his wife and children, he stepped out onto his balcony. As he looked out over the sleeping Qatari capital and the moonlight dancing on the waves of the Gulf amid all the sailboats moored in the marina, he tried to make sense of that call. Just hours earlier, Abu Nakba had been skeptical and then euphoric. What could possibly have changed in so short a time?

Bleary-eyed, yet ever faithful to the founder and spiritual leader of Kairos, Yaşar dialed the number for his man in Lebanon. The man, however, did not pick up. Eight rings. Then a ninth. After a tenth, he hung up.

Something was wrong.

BEIRUT, LEBANON

Amin al-Masri stared at the phone in his hands.

It had stopped ringing, but that only made things worse.

He had to tell them. If he did not own up to what he had done, he would not get paid. And then what? The noose was tightening. Al-Masri could not see them—not yet. But he could feel the Sheikh’s forces converging upon him. He knew who was heading up the operation. There was only one man it could be. The chief of Amn al-Muddad—Kareem bin Mubarak. The two had a long history together. The Radwan Unit was often engaged by the counterintelligence unit to hunt down and capture or kill Zionist spies and infiltrators. Unlike so many in the high command, Mubarak was hardly a yes-man, nor was he a sycophant of the Sheikh. To the contrary, he was one of the smartest and most clever in the senior ranks of Hezbollah, and the man was coming for him. Of this, al-Masri had no doubt.

That made his mission clear. Al-Masri had to be on that 9 a.m. flight. He had to have his prisoners with him. Even if there were only two. He had to collect his money from Kairos. Or else he would be out of options and out of time. The Egyptian got up, went into the bathroom, and vomited into the toilet. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth, flushed, washed his hands and face, and took a swig from the small bottle of mouthwash on the counter. Then he took a deep breath, went back into the bedroom, and hit Call Back.

“Sorry I missed you,” he said when his call was answered on the first ring. “It’s been a very busy night.”

“And all is well?”

“No. I’ve lost a lot of men. The rest of us are injured and exhausted.”

“I couldn’t care less how you and your men are doing,” came the quick reply. “How are the gifts you promised me? Are they wrapped and ready for delivery?”

“Of course.”

“All of them?”

Al-Masri was stunned by the question. “Why do you ask?”

“Never mind my reasons—answer the question.”

Al-Masri hesitated, and his contact pounced.

“Answer my question, or I cancel your ticket and dispatch a team to hunt you down and gut you like an animal—that is, if your own people don’t find you first.”

“Okay, look,” al-Masri said. “We split up the prisoners in multiple vehicles, like you requested.”

“Three?”

“No, just two—that’s all we had,” al-Masri lied.

“And?”

“And one of the vehicles made it to the safe house just fine, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But there was an incident at one of the checkpoints.”

“What kind of incident?”

“The details aren’t important,” al-Masri insisted, making this up on the fly. “But there was a shoot-out. Things got out of hand. My bodyguard and I were able to kill all of the soldiers at the checkpoint. But Mr. Millner . . .”

“What?”

“Well, he was killed in the cross fire.”

“Then bring me the body.”

“We couldn’t take the body. We had to run. We had to leave it there.”

“You’re telling me Millner is dead?”

There was a long pause. “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you—Thomas Millner is gone.”

“And Hezbollah has him.”

“I don’t know. I told you, we had to run. How else was I supposed to get you the other two? And remember, you only asked for one—and an Israeli, at that. I’m delivering you two Americans. That’s better than you asked for. The thing with Millner couldn’t be helped. But in a matter of hours, you will have two American federal agents in your hands. Again, that’s more than you asked for and well worth the money.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“Hello? Hello?” al-Masri pressed.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” asked the man whose name al-Masri had never known nor asked to know. “Do you have any idea whom you have lost?”

“Thomas Millner. DSS agent. So what? You have two more just like him.”

“No, there’s no one like him. His name is not Thomas Millner. That was an alias. A lie. To fool an idiot like yourself. And it worked. But it did not fool us. The man you lost is Marcus Johannes Ryker. He is wanted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. He is wanted by the Kremlin. By the Dear Leader in Pyongyang. A man worth a hundred times what we were paying you. And now you tell me you have lost him?”