Nothing.
Back outside in the parking lot he walked among the trailers on the north side of the building. These were individual classrooms for AADP recruits; Court had spent part of virtually every day for two years studying with his principal trainer in trailer 14b.
Many of the trailers were gone now, but 14b was still there, the last one on the second row, almost all the way to the perimeter fence around the parking lot. Court walked over to it. Where before the grounds around the lot had been manicured lawn, now it looked like the forest on the other side of the chain-link fence had pushed through. Young pine and oak dotted the ground almost up to the back of the trailer, and the asphalt lot the trailer rested on was buckled and broken, with weeds growing through the cracks.
The windows of 14b were all broken out, as well, and there was evidence of water and storm damage here, just like at The Center. The aluminum door was bent and it hung wide open.
Court looked in, shone his flashlight around. It was all but empty. He went inside and stood there in the middle of the dark space, flipped off his light, and thought about his time here, more than fifteen years earlier.
A small swivel chair was the only piece of furniture that remained — Maurice’s chair. Maurice had been his trainer, the one man he worked with 365 days a year for two years. Maurice nearly killed him multiple times, and Court wanted to kill him back more than once, but Court loved the man like a father.
Maurice was dead now, and Court found himself wishing, more than anything in the world, that the old bastard was sitting in that chair so Court could ask him what the hell he should do now.
Exhausted suddenly, and overcome with failure, Court sat down against the wall, leaned his head back, and asked himself what the hell he was going to do now.
Just then he felt the vibration of his phone in his pack, letting him know he was getting a call via RedPhone. For a moment he just let it buzz. He had no desire to talk to Catherine King at the moment. As far as he was concerned right now, she was just one more dead end.
Finally, though, he fished out his phone and opened the app that put the call through.
“Yeah?”
“This is Catherine.”
“No one else has this number.”
“I’ve been calling. I was worried something happened to you.”
I’ll just bet, Court thought to himself. He wondered what her excuse would be for not going to Israel. “I’m fine,” he said. Three shafts of dull light entered the dark space through the door and two windows, as the moon broke through the cloudy night.
“Where are you now?” she asked.
Court looked around at the old empty trailer. “I’m at a Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Really?”
Court didn’t answer. Instead he said, “How ’bout you?”
“I’m at Heathrow. My flight home boards soon. I’m so glad I caught you between flights. I tried you before I left Tel Aviv, but you didn’t answer.”
Court sat up straighter. “You actually went?”
“I did.”
“Did you find…”
“The man you shot? Yes. His name is Yanis Alvey. He has fully recovered.”
“That’s good.”
There was a slight pause, then Catherine said, “I need to talk to you about something. Are you somewhere you can listen for a minute?”
Court considered his immediate surroundings. He could probably sit here for days and no one would know. “Yes, I’m secure. What did you find out?”
“I’ll tell you. But before I do, I want you to understand something. This was not your fault.”
“My fault? You’re goddamned right this isn’t my fault.”
She hesitated. Then said, “The man you killed in Trieste was not an al Qaeda assassin.”
Court’s jaw flexed in anger, but he said nothing. He’d been there; she hadn’t. He’d seen the man kill two Serbian guards, then raise his gun towards the Israeli spy.
“Then who was he?”
“I’ll tell you, but you have to understand, you aren’t going to like what you hear.”
Court closed his eyes. “Who… was… he?”
Catherine hesitated again. Just before Court asked her a third time, she said, “I got this from Alvey, who got it from the head of the Mossad. The Israelis did a multi-year investigation into the affair, piecing it together from primary evidence and interviews with survivors. They are absolutely certain of their findings.”
Despair grew in the pit of Court’s stomach. Softly, he said, “Tell me who I killed, Catherine.”
And she did.
Hawthorn sat quietly in his room in the Italian villa just outside of Trieste, but inside he was raging against Mossad and Manny, furious with himself for believing he would be kept safe.
Manny Aurbach had promised his agent Hawthorn he would protect him, but like other things the old Jew had told him, that had been a lie.
He wondered if he was really mad, or if he was just terrified, diverting his fear into action, as he had been trained to do long ago.
Hawthorn was a spy, and he spied for the Mossad, which was an immediate death sentence to any Arab. Compounding this fact was that he had penetrated al Qaeda in Iraq and now served as a logistics operative for the organization, and he knew it would just take one small piece of evidence to convict him. If anyone in his organization thought he was working for the Jews, he would be killed, likely in a most horrible fashion.
He’d not wanted to come to Italy to meet with the al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan, but he’d seen no way out of it. The danger for him was that he had cultivated his legend among the AQ leadership, and they trusted him, but exposing himself to an entire new group of individuals, individuals with contacts and intelligence networks who could check his backstory with their own resources, or poke holes in his legend, meant this trip could put him in front of the wrong person at the wrong time.
And just as he had feared, so had it come to pass. When he and his colleague stepped off the launch this afternoon at the dock they’d been met by a small contingent of AQ men from the Tribal Areas, and a larger group of Serbs. Soon after Hawthorn greeted the men from Pakistan, he knew he was in serious trouble.
In the driveway of the villa everyone climbed out of the vans to begin carrying luggage inside. As Hawthorn started to leave the vehicle, he felt a hand clutch his arm. One of the al Qaeda men from Pakistan sat next to him. He whispered, “I know who you are. If you try to run, I will alert them. They will tear you to pieces and enjoy it.”
Hawthorn sat dumbfounded. The other man said, “One of us will not be leaving this city with his life.”
“What… do you want?”
The man from Pakistan just smiled. “I am not afraid to die. Are you?”
The man pushed past Hawthorn on his way out of the van, leaving the Israeli agent to sit alone in the driveway.
For the rest of the evening Hawthorn had known he would have to act: either run or kill. Doing nothing would be a death sentence. Running seemed impossible, considering the man from Pakistan specifically threatened to alert the others if he tried.
Hawthorn had no idea what the other man’s game was, but he knew he needed to act first.
Both Hawthorn and the other spy were carrying weapons. Pistols with silencers. It was standard outfitting for AQ operatives working in the West. The guns were both a means at their disposal to fight their way out of trouble, as well as tools given to them so they could end their own lives before they were taken into custody.
The Israeli asset had not planned on using his weapon for either purpose, but now he felt both comforted to know he had a gun, and terrified to know the man sitting in a room on the other end of the villa had an identical weapon.