“Band-Aid?” Shoshana asked.
Levy cracked a smile. “A Yankeeism for APC ambulances.”
The radios at the rear of the cave came alive as reports of low-flying reconnaissance drones filtered in. “There’s too many of them,” Levy said. “Cruise missiles. Warn everybody to button up and get into their NBC gear,” he ordered.
Shoshana ran from the command post and scrambled out of the ravine. She had left her gas mask and protective clothing in the APC. Why did Levy think they might be using nerve gas now? she thought. She prayed he was wrong.
“You are wicked,” Tara breathed, her voice husky, exciting Fraser. They were lying on the bed in his Watergate apartment, their clothes heaped on the floor. She kissed his neck and ran her hand between his legs. A shudder coursed through the man’s body.
“You made it so simple.” She licked at his ear. Tara had coaxed him into revealing how he had orchestrated Pontowski’s election by pumping money into the campaign at critical times. All that remained was to identify the middle man who would tie it all right back to Fraser and, therefore, Pontowski. “You’re a genius,” she said and rolled over on top of him.
Fraser was pleased with Tara’s reaction and, for a moment, the thought of marriage crossed his mind but he quickly discarded it.
Tara decided to turn the heat up and learn the name she needed to complete the puzzle. She wanted to be finished with Fraser. She wiggled down his body and off the end of the bed. He watched her walk across the floor to the small refrigerator, mesmerized by the way she moved, the perfection of her body, her beauty. She bent over, pulled out a bottle of champagne, and disappeared into the bathroom. He could hear the sound of running water and the pop of a cork. She reappeared and stood in the doorway, steam curling from around her bare back. She beckoned to him with one finger and vanished back into the steam. He obediently followed, his breath coming in short, sharp pants.
She guided Fraser into the sunken tub, settled him on his back in the shallow but extremely hot water, and scrubbed him down with a rough washcloth until his skin glowed. Then she disappeared for a moment, only to come back holding a small black narrow case. She sat on the edge of the tub and arched her legs over him, opening the case. She gently removed an old-fashioned straightedge razor and a small sharpening stone. With short, practiced strokes she sharpened the razor, raising her eyes occasionally from her work to glance at Fraser. She tested the razor by drawing it along one of her legs, up to her crotch, satisfied that it was sharp.
Fraser gasped for air when Tara moved over him, straddling his big belly like she was riding a horse backward. Shetossed her hair and looked back over her shoulder at him, wetting her lips.
“No way,” he protested, giving a sharp little buck. But she ignored him and scooted her buttocks farther up onto his chest and tightened her legs, riding him. She bent forward, arching over his legs and drew the razor along the inside of his thigh, inching it toward his crotch. Then she grabbed the waiting bottle and splashed champagne over the freshly shaved leg. Fraser gave a little twitch as she licked at his thigh. “Don’t,” he moaned. She tightened her legs, wiggled her buttocks higher on his chest, and drew the razor over his scrotum.
Fraser was gasping for air and his heart pounding as she flicked the razor back and forth over his scrotum and wiggled higher. Then he felt the cold champagne and her warm tongue, quickly followed by the razor, only this time it was moving up his erection. “Please stop,” he begged. A momentary pain shot across his chest as she poured champagne over him and her tongue went to work. Now he could feel the razor again, or was it her fingernails? her teeth? He gasped as the pain returned, coming down hard on his chest, clamping him in an unrelenting vise, crushing him. Just before he died, he knew what Tara wanted.
Tara felt her mount go limp and looked over her shoulder. Fraser’s bulging eyes, gaping mouth, and frozen face shocked her. She had never seen a dead person before and bolted out of the bathroom, running for her clothes. Then she stopped, panting for breath, and forced herself to be calm. She sank to the floor, not moving for almost ten minutes. Back in control, she moved through the room, straightening, arranging, deliberately leaving traces to show that Fraser had shared his bed, but that his companion had dressed and left long before he had his heart attack.
She steeled herself and went into the bathroom. She drained the bath while she scrubbed the body and hosed it down. When she was satisfied that all traces of champagne and shaved hair were down the drain, she refilled the tub with hot water, hoping that the water would confuse a medical examiner about the time of death. Then Tara straightened up the bathroom, taking care to leave no traces that two people had shared the bath.
Carefully, she went over the entire apartment again, making sure it was right. She scribbled a note—“Call me in the morning”—and left it on his dresser in plain sight. Then she dressed, checked the apartment one last time, and left.
Shoshana and Hanni were in the APC when the first cruise missile hit. The low-order explosion drove both women to the periscopes as they tried to see what was going on. “Levy was right,” Shoshana said, scanning the slope in front of them. “That wasn’t a conventional warhead. It’s got to be nerve gas.” Panic was eating at her and she strained at the periscope in the driver’s position. But the eyepiece on her gas mask kept getting in the way. Hanni was having better luck with hers.
“I count three, make that four, missiles hitting,” Hanni reported. “I don’t understand, they’re hitting the area at random. There’s five and six.”
“Nerve gas is a wide-area ordnance,” Shoshana explained, trying to beat down the panic that was threatening her sanity. Should she tell Hanni what she knew? She decided against it since there was nothing they could do if it was the new nerve gas the Iraqis had developed at Kirkuk. “They don’t know our exact location so they saturate the area.”
“What do we do now?” Hanni asked.
“Exactly what we had planned to do before, only we do it wearing our masks and NBC suits.”
The radio crackled with reports of more inbound missiles. But these turned out to be the reconnaissance drones Levy had been expecting. Another report came in identifying the nerve gas vapor drifting over the area as VR55, an old Soviet-developed nerve agent. “We’re going to be in these things for a while,” Shoshana said.
“You sound relieved,” Hanni said.
The harsh metallic rasp of the radio interrupted her with orders to pull back. “Moshe wants us to pull back until after the artillery barrage is over,” Shoshana said and started the engine.
“What’s he like?” Hanni asked.
“Not what you’d expect. He seems quiet and withdrawn, but when he talks to you … well … I can’t explain it. You just want to follow.”
“Is he married?”
“Oh Hanni, be serious.”.
“Not for you, child.”
Yair Ben David’s face was a rocklike mask when the first reports came in that the Iraqis were using nerve gas. Every face in the command room of the bunker was turned toward him, waiting for his reaction. “How much? Where? Type? Casualties?” he barked. “I want the answers.” He slammed his fists onto the table in front of him. The prime minister forced his anger back into the cage where he contained it. This is not the time to overreact, he cautioned himself.
Then the answers filtered in. It was a limited attack in a tactical situation. Only six short-range cruise missiles had been used, the chemical weapons had been used in Lebanon, not inside Israel, and the IDF had been ready. More reports confirmed that it was the old type of nerve gas that the Israelis had an antidote for. “So,” Ben David said to the general sitting beside him, “the Iraqis are testing the water, gauging our reaction. But why did they use cruise missiles? I’d always expected them to use artillery or aircraft when they employed nerve gas.”