There was no accompanying leer to suggest any kind of sexual innuendo. She said, “It’s a deal.”
The Druze sat back, his elbows propped on the wide arms of his chair, his hands folded before him. “All right. What do you want to know?”
It was Jax who answered. “We want to know exactly what Jasha told you.”
A hot breeze ruffled the vine leaves overhead and brought them the scent of garlic sizzling in olive oil. Azzam chose his words carefully. “He said he had an item for sale-an item that would be of great interest to an enemy of Israel.”
“He didn’t say what it was?”
Azzam shook his head. “He wanted me to arrange a direct meeting with a potential buyer.”
“With you earning your usual finder’s fee?”
“Of course.”
“And did you find a buyer?”
“I arranged a meeting, but the buyer wasn’t interested.”
“Who was it?”
“That, I can’t give you. But I can ask this individual if he’s willing to talk to you. If he is, he’ll contact you.”
The Druze pushed to his feet. The interview was over. “My men will drive you back to Beirut. Get a room at Hotel Offredi, near the stadium.”
“And?” said Tobie.
“And wait.”
50
Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia: Thursday 29 October
4:00 P.M. local time
Borz Zakaev kept a heavy foot on the gas as he headed east toward Yasnaya Polyana. It was only late afternoon, but already the light was beginning to fade from the white, cloud-laden sky.
This entire oblast gave him the creeps, with its dark bogs and empty, silent houses. He’d heard it said that before the war, East Prussia had been one of the most intensely cultivated and heavily populated regions in Europe, second only to the Netherlands. No one would believe that now.
He put his foot down harder and heard the blip of a siren. Casting a quick glance in the rearview mirror, he saw a militia van with flashing red and blue lights coming up behind him, and swore.
The snow began to fall late in the afternoon.
Stefan stood in the soaring doorway of the abandoned granary and watched the big, fluffy flakes float down to cover the world in a hushed wonder.
It had been sometime before dawn when the old farmer reigned in to let Stefan and the pup down some two kilometers before Yasnaya Polyana. “You’re going home, aren’t you?” said the farmer.
When Stefan only stared up at him, the old man laughed, displaying a scant collection of stained, gaping teeth. “If someone’s after you, home’s the first place they’ll look. You know that, don’t you?”
Stefan tried to swallow the sudden lump in his throat, failed, and simply nodded, his lips pressed tight together.
“You take care, you hear?” said the farmer, and spanked the reins against his mules’ rumps.
The old man had only confirmed Stefan’s worst fears. And so, even though he was so close to home that he imagined he could practically smell his mother’s freshly baked bread and hear the honking of the geese as she walked down to the pond at feeding time, Stefan and the pup had come here, to the vast ruins of what had once been the royal stables of Trakehnen.
The stud farm was the birthplace of the famous warm-blooded Trakehner horses, begun back in the eighteenth century by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I. Stefan had heard it said that at one time the village of Yasnaya Polyana had been called Trakehnen, too, back in the days when Kaliningrad had been a German land and the stud farm had housed more than twelve hundred horses and three times that many people.
Now, the horses and their handlers were all gone. The dilapidated old mansion, with its towering stucco walls and moss-covered red-tiled roof, had been turned into a school. But the rest of the vast stud lay deserted beneath the falling snow, a crumbling ruin of brick stables and grain silos and overgrown, empty pastures.
Stefan felt the dog’s cold nose thrust against his hand. Hunkering down, he threw an arm across the pup’s shoulders and drew it close. From here he could look out across the fields to the old riding ring and the school beyond. “What do we do now? Hmmm, boy? Any suggestions?”
But the pup only gazed up at him with silent, trusting brown eyes.
51
Beirut: Thursday 29 October 5:00 P.M. local time
Hotel Offredi was built into the side of a dusty, weed-strewn hillside scarred by piles of broken rocks and bulldozed raw earth. Cheap aluminum-framed windows reflected the glare of a pitiless hot sun that wilted the fig tree growing in a cinderblock container near the front door. Rows of rusting rebars thrust up from the walls at the roofline, as if in anticipation of another story that might or might not be built someday.
Inside, they found a thickset woman in a long dress and headscarf seated behind a desk with a simple sign that said in Arabic, ROOMS TO LET. English and French-speaking patrons didn’t usually make it into this part of town.
“I wanted to ask you,” October whispered to Jax as they followed the woman up a set of bare stairs to a narrow hall. “What exactly was the crop growing around Badr al’Din’s compound?”
“You didn’t recognize it?”
The hall was starkly bare, the floor paved with cheap tile inexpertly grouted by someone in too much of a hurry to wipe up stray blobs of mortar.
“No,” said October. “What was it?”
“Cannabis.”
“Cannabis? You mean-” She broke off. “Oh.”
Wordlessly, the woman leading them thrust open the door to a small room with a hard bed covered in faded red chenille. A battered, fifties-style blond-veneered chest of drawers and bedside table, and an orange plastic chair completed the room’s furnishings. Everything was worn and cheap but meticulously clean. Mohammed had taught his followers that cleanliness is next to godliness, and they still struggled valiantly against dust and sand and poverty to please God.
“Shukran,” said October.
The woman nodded and withdrew.
Jax went to stand at the window overlooking the mean street below. A withered old man, his head down, pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with propane tanks past a handful of noisy, half-grown boys playing what looked like a version of Star Wars. Otherwise, the street was quiet in the mid-afternoon sun. Yet, Jax’s palms were damp, and he could feel waves of heat rising from his stomach to his throat. He didn’t like this setup. He didn’t like it at all.
“It’s beginning to sound more and more as if there really was an atomic bomb on that sub,” said October, dropping her bag on the floor with a thump. “Or at least, the material to make a dirty bomb.”
Jax glanced back at her. She sank down on the hard plastic chair, hooked her heels on the edge of the seat, and drew her knees up so she could clasp them to her chest. He said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”
She tossed her head to shake the loose strands of honey-colored hair away from her face. “So what exactly are we hoping to get out of this mysterious contact of Azzam’s?”
“Confirmation.” Jax pushed away from the window.
“Is that really necessary at this point?”
“It’s always necessary. Remember the run up to the Iraq War? How certain individuals cherry-picked unconfirmed intelligence suggesting Iraq still had a WMD program and was in contact with al-Qa’ida? It was all bullshit.”
“Yeah, but that was deliberately planted bullshit, designed specifically to trick the American people into supporting a war. This is different.”
A dusty old white Mercedes crawled down the street, scattering the laughing children. Jax watched it through narrowed eyes. “I keep coming back to that remote viewing session you tried in Bremen.”
“You mean the one that didn’t work?”