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Decker went upstairs. The bathroom was at the head of the landing. He washed his hands and face, studying himself in the mirror as he dried himself off. Nothing seemed to have changed. He looked exactly like he had that morning. As he replaced the light blue hand towel and stepped out into the hall, he noticed that his old bedroom door was open, slightly ajar. He walked over and looked in.

His room hadn’t changed either: the same pictures of airplanes from World War II; the same poster of Flags from Around the World; the same long distance running and martial arts trophies; the same photographs even. He stepped cautiously within. On his old desk, next to his books on Secret Codes and Differential Calculus and Hieroglyphics and The Mystery of The Labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral, there was a photograph of his parents in a walnut frame. He picked it up.

His mother, Louise Carrick, and father, John Decker Sr., were standing on the porch of their old house in Bettendorf. His father was in his uniform, one arm wrapped casually around his mother’s waist. He was a small man but solidly built, with dark brown eyes and thick black hair; not unlike his own father who had once worked in the factories of north England before coming to America and settling in the farm country of eastern Iowa. His mother was almost as tall, thin and pale-skinned. She had light brown hair, tinged with red, revealing her own Irish roots. Decker could just make out the freckles on her nose. There were seventeen of them. He had scored them countless times as a child as he’d reclined against her, his head tucked safely in her lap. Before the accident. Before that drunken driver had come crashing through the night, into the other lane, and hit their old Chevy Biscayne head on as they were driving back from picking up John Jr. at a track meet in Moline. Both of his parents had died on the side of the road that night, next to that other driver. Somehow, miraculously, Decker had survived. And, after almost two months in a coma, and a year and a half in physical therapy, despite all the doctors’ predictions, he had not only walked again, but run, become a Black Belt in Kung Fu at seventeen. He had thrived. At least physically.

“John?” he heard Tom call up from the first floor. “John Junior, the chicken’s getting dry. Aren’t you hungry?”

Decker returned the photograph to his desk. He took a final look around the room. “I’m starving,” he shouted back, ducking through the door. And, strangely enough, he was.

Chapter 2

Friday, January 28 — 2:33 AM
Tel Aviv, Israel

The man stood on the balcony overlooking the tranquil sea. He held something in his arms, wrapped loosely in a carpet. Then, with a quick twist, he dropped the object from the balcony. The carpet unrolled and a woman’s naked body unfurled and tumbled downward. The body landed on top of a parked car, a light blue Fiat, crushing the roof with a mighty crash, exploding the windshield. The car alarm began to wail.

Only a few feet distant, an old man walking his dog jumped back, looked up and spotted the figure on the balcony above. He immediately reached into his coat pocket, whipped out his cell phone, and punched 100 for the police.

* * *

Benjamin Seiden slept like a child. Even in repose, it was obvious he was incredibly fit, a testament to his daily workouts and ascetic diet. A handsome man, just turned forty-four, he had a wide uncompromising chin, full lips, a regal if unbalanced nose, and hair of the deepest chocolate, only recently beginning to gray along the temples.

The alarm clock rang and Seiden found himself sitting up in bed. It was 5:30 AM. Beside him, his wife Dara stirred and, with a sigh, rolled over.

Seiden slipped from the bed and padded like a cat into the bathroom. He took a cold shower, as he did each morning, letting the frigid pinpricks rinse the slumber from his skin. Within twenty minutes, he was fully dressed, wearing a pair of cotton khakis, hand-ironed the night before; a pressed white shirt; a tan Egyptian cotton tie; a pair of sturdy English walking shoes, light brown; and a brushed suede cinnamon-colored yarmulke.

Seiden made his way along the hallway. As he passed the first door on his left, he paused and poked his head in, and stared at his two daughters, Rachael and Ruth, in their beds. Ruth, the eldest at six, lay lengthways across the width of the mattress, one hand dangling down, pointing at the floor. And Rachael, his four-year-old, slept in her standard kneeling position, bottom in the air, and her little arms curled underneath her chest. Seiden wondered how she could possible find the position comfortable. She looked like a contortionist.

He stepped into the room and shook his children gently. “Time to get up, sleepyheads,” he said. They moaned and came to life. “And I want you dressed and ready in ten minutes. No dilly-dallying in the bathroom.” He looked pointedly at Rachael.

Seiden marched them both into the bathroom, grumbling and dragging stuffed animals. “Ten minutes,” he repeated. “Ruth, help your sister with her pajamas.” He hesitated for a moment longer, and then made his way back through the hallway to the kitchen.

It looked like it was going to be another beautiful day. From the kitchen, across the breakfast bar and tidy living room, he could see the open, turquoise waters of the Mediterranean shimmering beyond the sea walls. Seiden slipped an apron on and started making breakfast. The girls liked their scrambled eggs made with real milk, slightly overdone. Seiden favored yogurt and fresh honey. And Dara — she couldn’t move without her Turkish coffee. A family of individualists. The New Israel. He fussed about the tiny kitchen, working efficiently, when his wife appeared at the head of the hallway wearing a light pink cotton T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. “Good morning,” he said. “How’d you sleep?”

Dara didn’t actually respond. She uttered a kind of anthropoid grunt, scratched her head, and shuffled slowly into the room. Then she yawned, and he could see her teeth flash for a moment before her thick hair fell about her face, dark as a widow’s veil. “M’n’in’,” she finally ushered up, squeezing a yawn.

Just then the phone rang. Dara straightened reflexively and looked up at her husband. “Don’t forget you’re taking the girls to school today,” she said. “I have a conference at the Women’s Center. You promised.”

Seiden didn’t respond. He simply stared at the bright red wall phone as it continued to ring, again and again.

“Aren’t you going to get it?” Dara asked.

A phone call at this hour was never pleasant news. With a sigh, he picked up the receiver. “Seiden,” he said.

It was Captain Hymie Rubenstein of the Tel Aviv Police. “Sorry to disturb you at this hour,” he said. “Sir, I’ve tripped a flare.”

Seiden scratched at his chin. Hymie was seldom nervous. “It’s alright, Captain. Where are you?”

Captain Rubenstein gave him the address. Seiden wrote it down on a pad of paper on the kitchen counter. Dara continued to stare at him. She stood with her hip out, arms akimbo, frowning. She waited. “I’ll be right there,” he said, and hung up the receiver. Then he took the apron off. He walked back toward his study past his wife, unlocked his desk with the little key he kept in his pocket at all times, and pulled out his Jericho 941PS and holster. The handgun smelled of oil and polished leather. He slung it casually across his back and shoulder. He slipped on the light brown jacket which hung from his chair, and made his way back out into the hall.