She rushed to her room and yanked her phone off the end table. Her first thought was to call Yanis in Tel Aviv, but instead she dialed Babbitt in D.C., where it was just after eight in the evening.
She started the conversation in the softest tone she could muster. “Mr. Babbitt, I am begging you to give us a few hours to continue surveillance.”
“Why would we do that? Lucas says you know where he is. He says you’ve got an operative watching his place right now.”
“Outside, yes. It would be idiotic to do surveillance inside the location now.”
“No need for that. All we have to do is go in and get him.”
“Kill him, you mean.”
“That’s up to him; however, I will say this. He murdered several of our people the other day, so I’ve ordered my direct action team to take no unnecessary chances.”
Ruth was certain their plan was to kill Gentry, and there was no plan whatsoever to bring him in, but she did not make the accusation. Instead she pressed on with her campaign to get Townsend to wait. “At open of business today I’ll send one of my guys into the building to rent a room, and with a little luck we’ll have a live covert feed from in there by noon.”
“I trust you’ve met Jumper Actual?”
“Beaumont? Yes.”
“Well, he’s my guy, and I’m sending him in there this morning. They aren’t going to get video, they aren’t going to rent a room. They will simply move through the property, locate the target, and neutralize him by whatever means are most expedient.”
She said, “You know there are kids in there. Immigrant families, probably packed in like cordwood. There will be illegals; they’ll scramble when they see white guys with guns. It could become a bloodbath if Gentry starts moving through all that!”
“We can’t lose the target again. It’s as simple as that.” He added, “Beaumont and his team are quite good. This is how your Metsada operators do it.”
“Metsada goes in only after I provide them all the information they need to do their job without collateral.”
“Like in Rome, Ms. Ettinger?”
Ruth forced herself to take a deep breath. “Rome was a mistake. Honorable people can make a mistake. Metsada has honor. American SF soldiers have honor, too. I’ve worked with them before. But these guys of yours? Who the hell are they? They act like a posse heading out on the prairie to collect Indian scalps. You can’t just run through a capital city with your guns blazing! This isn’t the Wild West!”
“I beg to differ. These times are difficult. America’s enemies are certainly more far-flung than they were back in the Old West and, I would argue, the threats are more pervasive and their impact more profound on my nation than anything that went down back then. But our mind-set here at Townsend is very similar to the deputized lawmen of that day and age.”
It sounded to Ruth like Babbitt was reading from a bronze plaque on the wall at Townsend House. She said, “I have a feeling you don’t even know what Court Gentry did to earn the shoot-on-sight. Whether you know or not, I am certain that you do not care.”
“I have to go now, Ms. Ettinger. You and your team can feel free to stand down from this operation if you don’t feel comfortable with it. We thank the Mossad for your help in this matter.”
“I’m calling Carmichael. I’ll put a stop to your operation right now.”
“Ms. Ettinger, I seriously doubt you have the clout to get Denny on the phone, but assuming you do, I will save you some trouble and frustration. Carmichael has almost single-handedly carried the banner on the Gentry operation for the past five years. Whatever the fuck Gentry did — I am speaking about what he did previous to killing his field team — it was clearly something very personal to Denny Carmichael. If you call him right now and tell him you need Team Jumper to stand down ninety minutes before they neutralize Court Gentry, either he will laugh in your face or, and this is what worries me, he will call me and ask me to have Mr. Beaumont hog-tie you and your team so that you don’t get in the way of their operation.”
Ruth Ettinger fumed.
Babbitt let out a long, audible sigh that sounded to Ruth about as phony as his company’s pseudo-cowboy image. He then said, “It’s an ugly thing that’s about to happen there, Ruth.” He paused. “Let’s not make it any uglier.”
THIRTY-THREE
In the past thirty minutes it had become clear to Ruth Ettinger that even with all the layers she wore — every bit of her own cold-weather gear and even the extra jacket she made Laureen take off her own body and give her before Laureen climbed into the warm Skoda and returned to the safe house — the bottoms of her boots were composed of only a rubber sole and thin insoles. Even with her thick socks, the frozen ground transferred its cold into her feet and legs. After just a half hour out here in the dark, it felt like the bones in her lower legs, all the way up to her knees, were beginning to freeze solid.
She stamped her feet, sat down on the cold bench at the bus stop occasionally and lifted them off the ground, but there was really no way for her to get warm outside when it was only three degrees.
Of course things were going to heat up soon, in a figurative sense anyway. In less than an hour a goon squad of American gunmen would roll up the street, enter the door of the apartment building eighty yards from where she now stood, move up the flight of stairs, and then train their guns on dozens of people on the second and third floor. The Americans would find their man, who was himself a very violent individual, and then it would go downhill from there.
Ruth had called Yanis Alvey to complain, of course. As she drove through the dark city in the embassy Skoda, she woke him up from a deep sleep in Tel Aviv and angrily told him she did not get into this business to help private American bounty hunters set up a half-assed and ill-conceived raid on a house full of children to kill a man who had committed many heroic acts in his career, and who she suspected was being unjustly pursued by American intelligence.
She did not mention Rome. She did not have to. Yanis knew what she was thinking.
Yanis did what he always did when Ruth got angry. He listened politely, made gentle and reasoned counterpoints, and then he asked Ruth if she wanted to drop the operation and come home.
She said no; she always said no. She also always found a way to complete her objective, and for this reason Yanis Alvey indulged his extremely hotheaded but also extremely brilliant targeting officer.
This time was different, however, in that this time he told her in no uncertain terms that Mossad leadership had ordered him to provide the Americans any assistance they required on this operation.
Ruth was incensed by this, but she did not take it out on her boss. If Yanis’s hands were tied, she wouldn’t waste her breath complaining to him. But she was puzzled by what he told her. Mossad leadership had always stayed out of her investigations in the past. Yes, in Rome they had pushed to have the operators move in, but that was only after Ruth and her team had been satisfied of the threat.
Why the hell were they now second-guessing her on Gentry?
Sitting in the covered bus stop, she took her eyes off the building up the street for a moment, but only a moment. She looked back up to the building and, just as she did so, the door opened and a single man walked out. A streetlight shone on the sidewalk near the door, and as he passed under it she saw the black coat with the hood, the blue jeans, and the black backpack in his hand.
It was him. He looked up and down the street, slung his pack on his shoulder, and headed off down Sveavagen toward the south in the direction of the river.
Ruth was hidden in the dark at the bus stop, but she stood now, backing deeper out of his line of sight.