“I think I’ll vomit if I have to eat more blended banana.”
“Okay. I’ll do a strawberry, then. Need any help getting to the bathroom?”
“No, I should be fine. I’ll yell if I fall and break my hip.”
She smiled at the attempt at humor. “You’re not young, poor thing. Be careful.”
“Very funny.” His tone changed. “I want to thank you for taking care of me while I’m down. You didn’t have to stay.”
“Where would I go?”
“Anyplace I’m not. There’s no reason you can’t start fresh wherever you want. You’re still dead.”
She sighed. “No, I can’t. Because I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. And that’s no way to go through life. I thought that was all behind me after Algiers, but I suppose that was wishful thinking…”
“I already apologized.”
“I’m not blaming you, David. The odds of anyone figuring out I was alive, much less where I was living, were miniscule.”
“But I should have known better,” he said bitterly.
She eyed him.
“Truthfully, yes, you should have — isn’t it you who told me to assume nothing but the worst at all times, and that would be the optimistic view? But that’s water under the bridge. I’m okay here in Israel, so nothing irreparable happened. But I won’t run and hide from these pricks, David. If they want a war, I’ll bring it to them. The way I see it, it’s either them or me, and I don’t intend to lose. You know me well enough. I’m not going to let go of this now that I’ve been dragged back into this world.”
“I know that. But there’s no point in going off half-cocked. We need to figure out why the whole team was killed. A vendetta against you doesn’t explain that, and until we have the whole picture, it’s impossible to know if you’re taking the right steps.”
“So you’re saying I can’t just kill ’em all and let God sort them out.”
“Something like that.”
“You’re no fun anymore since you got shot.”
“I hear it’ll do that to you.”
They held each other’s gaze for a long moment.
“Do you ever think about getting out of the game, David?”
“I’m afraid it’s not so easy. Unlike you, I’m not in the field, so I can’t contrive a car explosion to reset the clock.”
“But do you think about it?”
“Sure. And then I also think about what I would do instead of this, assuming I could get out. I’ve got nobody. No career other than this. Nothing to go home to. So then I have a couple of drinks and stop wishing I was somebody else, and get back to work.”
“You’re wounded now. What would happen if you just never resurfaced? Wouldn’t that be exactly the same as if you had been killed and then dumped into the sea with an engine block tied to your ankles? Maybe this is actually an opportunity…”
He shook his head, then conceded her point.
“That could be. But not until we understand what’s actually going on. I’m like you — I don’t want a future where I’m never sure whether the next car to drive by is going to unload an Uzi at me. That’s not a life, and we both know it. Maybe if all the pieces fit together and we figure this out…well, then maybe there’s something to talk about. I’m not worried about the Mossad — I know their tracking capabilities and how to stay gone. It’s the unknown that’s the problem,” he explained.
She came over and sat down next to him.
“That’s fine. But once it’s all over…what then, David? If we’re both dead to the world, then we could go anywhere, do anything. Maybe Indonesia, disappear on an island and never be seen again.” She hesitated. “It doesn’t have to be a world where you have nobody to come home to. We used to be good together. Do you remember? My greatest regret, in fact, the only regret in leaving the team was knowing I’d never be with you again.”
He didn’t speak for several beats, then the trace of a blink betrayed his eyes.
“I remember. And yes, we were good. The best. I can’t tell you how hard it was to let you go…”
She took his hand and held it, sitting in silence.
They stayed that way, peacefully, moment following moment until Jet let out a sigh, rose to her feet and softly kissed his forehead.
“Get better, David. Everything else will work itself out.”
He tried for a grin, but his eyes were moist.
“It always does, doesn’t it?”
She carried her computer back to the living room, more motivated than ever to get answers, even as her head swam from the possibility of a new, different future. One with David by her side.
Was it even possible after three years? Had too much happened? Nobody stayed the same. Was it foolish to believe they could just pick up where they had left off and craft a life together?
Maybe it was.
But she’d long ago learned it could all be over at any moment, and nobody gave you a refund at the end of the ride, long or short. If the universe had given them a second chance, then it would be foolish to ignore it. And from what she saw in David’s eyes, he meant it when admitting that it had been hard to see her leave for good.
Perhaps that was enough. There were only two of them in this. She saw no reason why he couldn’t stay gone and put the whole ugly covert world behind him. The Mossad had him documented as having been wounded, with a fair amount of his blood at the scene. If he never made it back, he could well have died.
There would be the problem of her logging in using his password, but that could be only a one-time deal, then never again. Just as would have occurred if he had survived the attack and was trying to figure out who was after him, even mortally wounded.
Then he would go dark. End of story.
It wasn’t perfect, but it could be good enough.
In the end, it would be David’s call.
Chapter 18
The humid day was followed by an equally humid night. The trees and the tangles of undergrowth stirred with the movement of jungle creatures as they roused themselves for another nocturnal round of feeding or being feasted upon.
The town shut down after the government buildings closed and the sun sank into the hills. Guatemala was only twenty-five miles west and yet worlds away. Traffic had trickled down to an occasional vehicle working its way down the small streets as the area’s inhabitants returned home to their families and sat down to dinner.
Sir Reginald Percy had eaten a light meal at seven, as was his custom: baked fish and a side of local fruit with the ever-present dirty rice, spicy and riddled with beans. He’d read a few more reports, watched a half hour of satellite television news to catch up on what was happening in the real world, and then prepared for his nightly swim. His slippers shuffled on the heavy tile flooring of the governor general’s residence. He nodded to his housekeeper as he wended his way through the house to the rear deck area, home to one of Belmopan’s few private swimming pools — a perk for Her Majesty’s appointed representative in Belize.
His security detachment had switched shifts two hours earlier, and now, the three men who worked the night crew were at the front of the house. Their duty of patrolling the grounds ranked highly among the most boring of their careers. Nothing ever happened in Belmopan. The governor general was more of a figurehead than anything else, with no real active role in the day-to-day business of running Belize, although he was charged with selecting and naming the prime minister and his cabinet, and was the vessel through which Britain made its will known.
It had been a tense few weeks following the bizarre shooting not a mile from where he now stood — a murder that remained unsolved, although speculation abounded as to the reason for the public slaying. The inexplicable brutal killing had shaken the city of twenty thousand and had been the fodder for endless gossip since it had occurred. There were no active leads, and now no likelihood that it would ever be solved. In a nation with scant police resources that were overwhelmed with combating a rising tide of crime from drug gangs and the attendant violence that accompanied them, the assassination had received a week’s worth of solid if uninspired effort from the local constabulary, and then had gone into the files with all the other unsolved crimes.