“The Israelis,” Knox says to Dulwich. No one is within earshot, but he wouldn’t care if they were. His anger shows as a tightening of muscle and sinew, as though his body is preparing to take a blow. Both men know where this is headed.
Dulwich does not look thrilled about it.
“You are so far out of your element.” Dulwich is more mindful of volume than Knox. “You did what you came to do. Now, go home.” He reluctantly takes the last few steps and plants himself within striking distance. Lowers his voice further. Grace can barely hear him.
“You two…” Dulwich looks past Knox at Grace. “You should have left well enough alone.”
“You can’t leave something alone unless you know about it in the first place.”
“The op is a thirty,” he says, indicating that it’s over; they’re done. “It’s a fat paycheck. Don’t jeopardize it.”
“I’m going in there,” Knox says, glancing at the room’s door. “I won’t be part of his death.”
Dulwich shakes his head. “I told you up front: no killing. It’s NTK, Knox. Leave it!”
“You made like he was a monster!” Knox spits unintentionally.
“You like things neat. Like your booze.”
Knox shakes his head. “The GPS tracks him to a bunker the Israelis have been unable to find.”
“N… T… K.”
“They add it to the sortie when the time comes to start taking out Iran’s nukes. Those bunker busters the U.S. has been so hesitant to provide. No stone unturned. No bunker left operating.”
“You have to learn when to turn it off.”
“I’m missing that switch. This model didn’t come with one.”
Dulwich collects himself. “Come on, John.”
Grace adjusts her position, believing she’s going to have separate them.
Knox produces his phone. “What say we give Primer a call and sort this out?”
“He’ll deny it all.”
“Impressive. You didn’t so much as flinch.”
“We’re making a scene. Let’s take this down to the cafeteria or outside.”
“A scene? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Knox moves to push past the man, but Dulwich is faster on two good legs. They stand chest to chest.
“Boys.” Grace indeed closes the distance. She stands behind Knox, a gesture he takes as both symbolic and significant. She can be his legs.
“Tell him we don’t need a scene,” Dulwich says.
“You lied to us,” Grace says. “Omission. Commission. No matter. You lied.”
“You are both disobeying the directive. You are also misunderstanding what’s going on. It’s Need To Know.”
“I need to know”—Knox emphasizes the words mockingly—“why you lied. I suspect Primer will be interested as well, denial or not.”
He focuses on his phone’s screen. Dulwich reaches for it, but Knox has several inches more arm span. He holds it at bay. He and Dulwich are practically kissing.
“You have no fucking idea how wrong you have this.”
“Enlighten me.”
Grace steps forward to pry them apart. Her intervention catches the attention of an orderly down the hall. She spots the man a mile away, thanks to his oversized shoes. He had to change out of his leather-soled shoes to look the part, she guesses, and he couldn’t find any his own size in the staff lockers he broke into. In her mind’s eye, Grace can see the man panicking and settling for a pair several sizes too large. But he looks like a carnival clown; it might have been smarter to risk wearing his own shoes. He’s moving to help her.
“David, your six o’clock,” she hisses. The men stop wrestling.
51
Dulwich grabs Knox by the back of the head and presses his lips to his ears. “Thorium,” he manages to say before Knox bats his arm away, bruising him. Knox intentionally flares his eyes.
“Can I hel—”
Working from Knox’s signal, Dulwich rotates and hits the orderly in the jaw. Grace moves like they’ve rehearsed for it, catching the man as he sags, unconscious, while driving her fist into his chest and stunning his diaphragm. Dulwich drags the man from behind, Grace catching the door and toeing it open.
Knox watches it all as his thumb directs the phone away from his search for Brian Primer’s direct line to its search engine.
thorium
Google.
Dulwich makes excuses to someone who’s complaining from within the room. He says the man fainted. He and Grace drag the man into the bathroom, where a soft thud confirms the man won’t be interfering further.
a cheap, plentiful source of energy
Knox has it worked out before Dulwich returns. He recalls Rutherford Risk telling him his ID had come up as “on leave.” Dulwich is rogue, as Knox suspected, but maybe not the villain he thought.
“We caused the heart problems. Our phones. Forced him here, where your client and his guys put his mother—”
“I know only the client. No part of any government agen—”
“Save it for the congressional hearing. They replace the failed pacemaker with one containing a GPS chip. The Israelis track him back to his bunker lab in the Iranian desert—”
“And we ensure that no one mistakenly bombs it,” Dulwich says, staring Knox down defiantly. “You two got it backward, pal. Had it backward from the start. It was never in the plan to harm this guy. His thorium research would be spared. We save him from the firestorm. And, mark my words, the firestorm is coming. Neither he nor anyone else was going to tell us which bunker not to bomb.”
“No way Primer sanctioned this,” Knox says. A combination of anger and resentment floods him, makes him want to throw a punch. Dulwich put him in the path of an unforeseen dead drop that has put Knox and Tommy at permanent risk. “Unintended consequences,” it’s called in the business. Knox never wanted to be on the wrong end of it, but he is now, and there’s no sense complaining. Not even Dulwich can change an unintended consequence.
“We must move,” Grace, ever the practical one, announces. “Now.”
Knox bumps Dulwich back a step. He and Grace walk side by side as he shoves him a second and third time, closing the distance to the exam room housing Mashe Okle.
To his credit, Dulwich doesn’t fight back. The man’s nervous eyes reveal his search for a solution. If Knox exposes the pacemaker’s true purpose, the Israelis lose their op. But more important to Knox right now is distancing himself from any dead drop. If he’s believed to be the courier, he’ll be followed, hunted and squeezed dry. The Mossad won’t rest until they get what they want.
Grace tugs on his sleeve, points out two men at the end of the corridor. They’re not hospital employees.
If Dulwich abandons him now, Knox is in the kind of trouble you don’t get out of. The magician’s trick is sleight of hand.
Knox fishes the business card he stole from the nurse’s station out of his pocket. Angles slightly to the right, turning Dulwich with him as he does. He wants both the security camera and these two men to get a good look at what he’s doing as he carefully hands Dulwich the card, doing an intentionally poor surreptitious pass.
Knowing no better, Dulwich accepts the card.
Seeing the exchange, Grace covers her teeth — her automatic response to an unwanted smile. Another op, another time, she might have warned Dulwich.
Knox backs up a step. Under no circumstances does he want the business card passed back to him. He amuses himself by thinking: It’s radioactive.