"My dear Hawk, I like to think that all our rooms are secure," Bar-Zohar said.
"You just might have to rethink that. We need a room that is certified free of all surveillance and recording devices. Where do you go when you want to make a statement that you're positive will be off the record?"
"That'll be Room Five."
"Room Five it is," Hawk said.
"I'll go make the arrangements," Bar-Zohar said, and walked out.
Room 5 was spare, stark, sterile, and small. The white-walled box held an oblong table, chairs, and the machinery of debugging monitors, which now certified that the room was free and clear of any sort of electromagnetic surveillance.
"I just can't credit Lemniak's statement that we've been penetrated," Bar-Zohar said.
"Somebody got to Maltz," Hawk pointed out.
"Yes, but that's the Ministry of Maritime Trade, not the Shin Bet. I can't believe it. It sounds like part of a disinformation plot to sow dissension and distrust between allies and in our own Institute. Suppose he had told you that AXE was penetrated. Would you have believed that?"
"That slaughterhouse at the café did give Lemniak's story a certain credibility," Hawk said.
Bar-Zohar was unhappy. "In any case, this room is secure, and I'll take personal responsibility for my aides."
"Ml vouch for my personnel," Hawk said.
"Then we can begin."
Present at the meeting, besides the two chiefs, were Carter, Griff, Stanton, and two of Bar-Zohar's most trusted assistants, Berger and Tigdal.
Berger was slight, sallow, cadaverous. Lieutenant Avi Tigdal's military background was evident right to the knife-sharp creases in his pants. He was big, bluff, tough, efficient.
Griff and Stanton were less inhibited than their boss in showing their pleasure at Carter's return. Griff ribbed Carter, "You sure picked a fine time to quit goofing off and come back to work."
Carter only smiled.
A message was delivered to Bar-Zohar, who gave the group the gist of it. "The four men who came to kill Lemniak have been identified."
"Who were they?"
"His bodyguards."
Hawk snorted. "Looks like someone made them a better offer."
"See what happens when you underpay your key personnel?" Stanton said.
"I think we can dispense with the jokes, Stanton."
"Uh, right. Sorry, sir."
"Any sign of the blond woman who escaped with the driver?" Griff asked.
"None," Bar-Zohar replied. "The taxi was found not far from the café. They must have switched to a second car. We're hunting high and low for them, but there are no leads as yet."
He turned to Carter. "I believe you have some background for us on the Melina incident?"
"Yes."
Carter quickly sketched a broad outline of the twisted trail he'd been following for months.
Posing as Solano, he worked the Italian beat, where the once dormant Red Brigade had been reborn with a vengeance. Infiltrating that limbo where the criminal and political underworlds intersect, he'd come to the attention of the top bosses of Italian terror, who recruited him for a very special action taking place outside that country: Operation Ifrit.
In Moslem lore, an ifrit was a demonic being similar to the genies of the Arabian Nights. Operation Ifrit would unleash the demon of destruction on the United States by punishing her allies.
The action was sponsored and paid for by the radical Militant Islam group. But carrying out the multinational terrorist offensive was the handiwork of one man, a shadowy master criminal who drew on a far-flung pool of murderous talent.
"I haven't been able to pin down his identity yet…"
"I may be able to help you on that, Nick," Hawk cut in. "But go on."
"I do have someone almost as good, though," Carter continued. "The big wheel who personally recruited me in Italy — the talent scout, you might call him — happens to be 'vacationing' right now at his villa in Lulav. I have a date with a lady friend in his entourage."
"Who is he?"
"Gianni Girotti," Carter said.
"Girotti?" Tigdal said. "That playboy? I don't believe it! Why, his idea of a revolutionary act is to go to dinner without a necktie!"
"You don't have to believe it," Carter said. "I know it's true. That dilettantish pose of his has fooled a lot of people."
"What are we waiting for? Let's pick him up and sweat him!" Berger said.
"He's tougher than he looks. You'll never get anything out of him by force," Carter cautioned.
"Have you got a better way?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Carter said. "A plan that will not only net us Girotti and his pals, but which could lead us right to the top man."
"Now I'll throw in my two cents," Hawk said. "Before he died, Lemniak gave me a name, the mysterious Mr. Big behind Operation Ifrit. It didn't ring a bell with me, but maybe one of you can do better."
"Try us," Bar-Zohar said.
"Reguiba."
The name was met with a round of puzzled shrugs and head shakings.
"Reguiba," Bar-Zohar mused. "Reguiba, Reguiba, Reguiba." He looked up. "Who the devil is Reguiba?"
"I'm hurt," Petra Kelly whimpered. "Oh God, I'm hurt!"
"Shut up!" the taxi driver snapped. He no longer drove the taxi. They had ditched it a few blocks from the café, at the prearranged site where the second, getaway car waited. Now he drove that car, while Petra bled all over the back seat. They were one short jump ahead of the fast-tightening dragnet.
Petra pressed a wadded red rag to her shoulder wound to stem the flow of blood. The rag was yellow before she put it to use. Enough shock had worn off for her to feel pain, pain the likes of which she'd never known.
What went wrong? This couldn't be happening to her. It was unthinkable. A simple execution had turned into a rout, a massacre. She was outraged. The victims weren't supposed to shoot back; that wasn't how the game was played.
"God! I'm going to bleed to death!"
"Shut up!" the driver shouted again. It was difficult enough to thread the dockside streets and alleys of old Jaffa without that Irish bitch shrieking her fool head off. Too bad it hadn't been blown off.
The driver was Dieter Ten Eyck, a Boer mercenary who'd signed on for Operation Ifrit, looking for big money and fast action. The money wasn't bad — though not nearly enough for what he'd just undergone — and the action was too fast. He could have been knocked over with a feather when that black guy had come out of nowhere to gun down two of Lemniak's treacherous bodyguards. After that, everything had gone to hell.
Ten Eyck couldn't take much more of Petra's wailing. If she didn't shut up, he'd —
But he didn't have to. They had arrived at the hideout, an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront.
Except it wasn't abandoned. Ten Eyck hit the horn with the heel of his hand, knocking out a snappy pattern of short and long honks that comprised the recognition code. The honking salute had a bright jauntiness that he found singularly inappropriate, considering the circumstances.
Moaning, Petra sat up. "Hurry! I'm bleeding to death!"
"Good."
"You lousy shit!"
Before she could get rolling on her tirade of abuse, a segmented steel door rolled ponderously upward, opening on the warehouse's dim interior.
Ten Eyck drove inside the sprawling, barnlike structure. The door rolled down behind him, slamming shut, locking the interior into semidarkness fitfully broken by small square windows set high, just under the eaves.
Ten Eyck and Petra were temporarily blinded by the sudden transition from light to dark. Others within were not so incapacitated.
Swift footsteps rushed the car from all sides. Figures surrounded the car.
Ten Eyck slid out of the front seat. "Am I glad to see you fellows! We ran into a — ugh!"