When Drake stripped out of his dry suit, he was already wearing a set of khaki pants, but his chest was bare. He dug in his duffel for a few seconds and emerged with the blue and white Hawaiian shirt from the Coptic church.
“You can’t be serious,” said Nick.
Drake slipped the shirt over his head. “No time to argue. We’ve got a nuke to find.”
The big operative started for the bunker door, but Nick stopped him with a hand to his chest. “I don’t want you to come.”
“Look, boss, the shirt stays. Deal with it.”
Nick shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. You got me this far. Now I go it alone. As far as Kattan is concerned, you’re just another chess piece.” He pointed to the east. “Somewhere out there is a bullet with your name on it, for no other reason than to torture me. If I let you come, I’m giving Kattan exactly what he wants.”
Drake frowned at his teammate. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is what he wants. He wants you isolated. Alone.” He pushed by Nick and headed for the truck, calling to him over his shoulder. “And as long as I’m still breathing, boss, that’s not going to happen.”
CHAPTER 69
The Israeli Defense Forces pickup had a light bar and a siren, and Nick used them both liberally to cut through the traffic as he sped southeast through Jerusalem, doing his best to beat the rising sun. The most likely targets for the nuke were those within the walls of the Old City — more than a dozen churches, synagogues, and Biblical sites that would make definitive spiritual and political statements as epicenters for the final blast — but when Nick came to a sign that said OLD CITY: DAMASCUS GATE with an arrow pointing due south, he took the road southwest instead.
“Wrong way, boss,” said Drake, turning to watch the sign pass behind them.
Nick flipped on the lights again and swerved around the car ahead of them. “Got to make a stop first. We have to get my family.”
“No. Not a good tactical plan.”
“Says the guy in the gaudy Hawaiian shirt.”
Drake’s voice grew deadly serious. “Listen. I know your family comes before everyone else, but we don’t have time. It won’t do your dad or your wife and kid any good if you find them the moment the nuke goes off.”
“Who’s driving the truck?”
Drake frowned. “You are.”
“Are you planning on Tasing me or shooting me or something?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then shut up.”
A few minutes later, Nick parked the truck on the street outside the King David Hotel. He looked ahead at the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the road east toward the Old City. “Have Molly order me a cab for three to Ben Gurion International,” he said, jumping out of the driver’s seat. “Then get the equipment ready. We walk from here.”
Inside the hotel, Nick raced across gold and purple marble tiles to the back of the lobby. He bypassed the elevators and took the stairs two and three at a time up to the fourth floor. Finally, breathing hard, he banged on the door to his wife’s room. “Katy!”
There was no response.
He tried one more time, but as he pounded, Katy stuck her head out of the room next door. “Nick?”
Nick checked the room numbers. “I thought you were—”
Katy waved her hand and shook her head. “Your dad and I switched rooms. The hotel put the crib in the wrong one. What are you doing here?”
He pushed past her, heading straight for the phone by the bed. “Don’t you and Dad check your messages?”
The little orange light on the phone wasn’t blinking. He picked up the receiver and pressed the retrieve button.
“You have no messages,” declared a cheerful recorded voice, and then it repeated the statement in Hebrew and French. It appeared Kattan had tampered with the lines to head off Nick’s warnings, which meant he had these rooms under surveillance.
Nick slammed the handset into its cradle. “We have to get you out of here.” He went to the drawers beneath the TV and started pulling out clothes, throwing them at her suitcase a few feet away. “You and Dad are leaving Jerusalem. Now. Get Luke ready.”
When Katy started to argue, Nick lost what calm he had left. He whipped around with a shirt and a pair of her jeans clenched in his fists. “Just do as I say for once!”
That was enough to subdue her, although the look in Katy’s eyes told Nick he would pay for the outburst later. He hoped so. He hoped they would have a later. When he finished, he zipped up her rolling suitcase and yanked it off the rack. “You have cash?”
“Plenty.”
Nick snapped his fingers and motioned with an open palm. “Give me a fifty. Where’s Dad?”
“He had an early meeting with Avi.”
“Did he say where?”
“Only that it was one of their old haunts, something about a garden.”
By the time they reached the shaded drive out front, the cab was waiting. Nick hurried Katy into the back, tossed the child seat in beside her, and set Luke in her lap. “You have to go.”
“Luke isn’t buckled in.”
“Buckle him in on the way. Get the next flight out, even if you have to pay for a whole new ticket.” He kissed her hard and then kissed his son’s hand. Luke giggled and smiled at his daddy.
Katy stared up at him, fighting back tears. “Nick, what is going on? What is this about?”
Nick didn’t answer. He closed her door and tossed the fifty through the front window. “That’s the first half of your tip,” he told the cabby. “She’ll give you the rest when you get there.” He pounded the top of the car. “Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion Airport. Go!”
Kurt Baron sat alone in the lush courtyard at the American Colony Hotel, sipping a cup of English tea and listening to the water trickling down from a jade fountain. He pulled his fleece jacket close around him. The garden was still chilly and dark, the varied greens of its vines all muted gray by the shadows.
This hotel had offered visitors and expats a refuge from the turmoil of Jerusalem for more than a century, since the days of the British protectorate. Kurt remembered sitting here during his postgraduate studies, waiting for the first golden rays of morning to break over the eastern wall and spread across the bleached flagstone, bit by bit revealing the glory of this small Eden. In those days, he usually shared the experience with his fellow student, Avi. He had expected to share it with his old friend once more, but Avi had not yet arrived.
Kurt jumped as his phone buzzed with a text message. The thing hadn’t made a peep since the day before. He checked the screen. Avi made his apologies. The Israeli professor had been called to an early faculty meeting. He suggested rescheduling tea for an hour and a half later on the Temple Mount Plaza, another one of their favorite spots from the old days. I’ll bring the tea, said the text. You bring the pastries.
Kurt smiled at the notion of the pastries. These days, Avi’s wife placed very stringent restrictions on his diet. She did not allow him such pleasures. Kurt started typing his response.
On a dead end street, a block away from the American Colony, Avi Bendayan sat behind the wheel of his car. Masih Kattan sat next to him.
When Kurt Baron’s response came through, Kattan picked up the phone and patted Avi on the arm, causing the dead professor’s head to slump to one side, stretching out the deep, bloody gash in his throat.
Kattan checked the message. Avi, I’ll be there with the pastries. What Panina doesn’t know won’t hurt her.