20:29 / 8:29 P.M. GST
Mahmoud struggled to break free, but his attackers were too strong. His face was being pushed down into a pillow, and he wondered if they were going to suffocate him. But then he felt something being pressed to his neck, and it emitted a low hum and vibrated. What are they doing? Are they testing me for something? Have they tagged me with an identifier?
His breathing was approaching hyperventilation, and he tried to slow it down. I must stay calm, think! So far I’m still alive. Maybe they won’t kill me. Maybe they’re kidnapping me. Maybe they’ll swap me for prisoners.
But he knew the truth. He had heard the Hebrew counting. These were the Israelis. This was the Mossad. He was a dead man; they were just killing him on their own time schedule.
Hands grabbed his arms, and he was flipped faceup. Then the men stepped back. One of them was saying something in Hebrew, but Mahmoud couldn’t seem to process the words. One thing he did know—they’d just made a big mistake. No one was holding him down, and here was his chance.
He tried to make a run for the door, but his legs wouldn’t move. In fact, no part of his body could move. He was completely paralyzed. He couldn’t even blink.
The room began to spin, and it felt like he’d started to float. He tried to take a deep breath but found he couldn’t even do that. His breathing grew more and more shallow. Darkness crept in from the corners of his vision.
What were the words of that ghost who had haunted his dreams for the past 20 years? Foolish, foolish man. Don’t you know that Israel never forgets?
20:35 / 8:35 P.M. GST
David felt for a pulse, then put his ear to the man’s chest. “He’s dead. Let’s get to work.”
While Nir and James undressed him, Chester continued to watch by the door. David went through the room putting back to right anything that looked out of place from the struggle, and Nir and James redressed the body in pajamas, then pulled the bedding up to cover it. David set the dropped bag on a chair before pouring a half glass of water and placing it on the nightstand.
“Okay, everybody, look. Is anything out of place?” David asked.
Nir walked the room checking every detail. It all looked right to him.
“Okay, Chester and I are out first. James, Michael, you follow in five. Lock up, then head straight for the van.”
Nir tried not to think about the fact that the body of a man he’d just helped kill lay four meters away from where he stood. He wanted nothing more than to get out of there. Finally, James said, “Time. Let’s go.”
Nir stepped into the hallway as James attached a device to the door’s bolt. His hours of practice paid off, and James had the bolt slid into its slot in under ten seconds. He closed the door, and Nir hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle.
It felt surreal as Nir rode the elevator down. It was as if nothing had changed from the moment he’d taken the elevator up. Same elevator, same lobby, same van. Yet it was all so very different.
He’d taken lives before, down in South Africa. But that had been in a gunfight as he was saving those around him. This time he’d lain in wait, then ambushed and killed an unarmed man. Sure, he could justify it by saying Plasma Screen had killed before and his activities were killing others. But that was quite a few theoretical layers up from where he was now. Here, nothing was theoretical. It was all very real from the ache in his hands from the struggle to the place where his index finger had slipped into the man’s mouth and pressed against his front teeth.
The right and wrong of what he’d done weren’t what troubled him. The change that had taken place in him was what he’d have to work through. He had no doubt that the man walking away from the hotel was very different from the man who had walked into it.