“Sounds like a pretty important mission they entrusted to you.”
“The kidon they’d originally assigned got injured. I was the backup. I’d trained alongside him, so I knew the op as well as he did. Funny thing is, if I hadn’t gone, my family would still be alive today. Strange how things work out, isn’t it, Doc?”
“Uzi, you can’t—”
Uzi held up a hand. “There are some things you have control over, and some you don’t. Nothing I could’ve done differently on that. Luck of the draw.”
“So what went wrong?”
“They didn’t tell me till the morning of the hit that I was going in. They did that sometimes so you didn’t stress over it. You trained for days, sometimes weeks, and then one day they just said ‘Get your gear, you’re going in.’ That’s when they told me who my target was. I couldn’t believe it. I knew the guy. Ahmed Ishaq, one of our best informants. I told the director general there was some mistake, that Ahmed would never do this. He told me to carry out my orders, that our intel was good. He asked me if I could handle this mission, and I told him of course.
“But in the back of my mind, I had doubts. I thought that if I could just talk to Ahmed, find out what was going on….” Uzi shook his head. “I just couldn’t believe Ahmed was a terrorist.”
“So you went to meet him.”
“I should’ve followed mission protocols,” Uzi said, pounding the knife-edge of his right hand into the palm of his left. “Everything was mapped out. Mossad had reconfigured their training facility to match Ahmed’s safe house, so I knew the layout before I went in. I’d practiced the maneuvers so many times I could’ve done it in the dark.” Uzi chuckled sardonically. “My grandmother used to say, ‘Man plans and God laughs.’ Because when emotions enter the equation, everything goes to hell. The best kidons leave their emotions at the door. That’s the way I’d handled all my missions. Except this one.”
“I take it the Director General was right about Mr. Ishaq.”
Uzi was staring at the floor. Finally, he spoke without raising his eyes. “I wanted to give him every opportunity to come clean. But he couldn’t, because… yes, the director general was right. And it all blew up in my face. One of his buddies was in the back room. I didn’t approach the mission like I was supposed to do. I should’ve scoped out the house, known everyone who was in there. Bottom line, Ahmed was guilty and trapped. They started shooting. I got caught in the cross fire, pinned down. I couldn’t even get a shot off. But Ahmed got hit, probably by a ricochet from his partner’s gun. The other guy took off.”
“What about the other five terrorists?”
“Eliminated.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Rudnick said. He took a sip of coffee. “May not have gone as planned, but it sounds like the mission objectives were met.”
Uzi was still staring at nothing.
“Right?” Rudnick asked after a long silence.
“We stopped the terrorist attack. So, yeah. But the guy at Ahmed’s place who got away. That’s where the problems started. When Dena and Maya were killed…” Uzi stopped, his voice choking down. He looked up at the ceiling. His eyes were moist. “A note was left. It read, ‘For Ahmed.’”
“But you didn’t kill Ahmed,” Rudnick said. “His colleague—”
“His buddy couldn’t admit he’d shot one of his own. I’m sure he told the others in his cell that I’d killed him. That is what I was supposed to do. I’m sure it wasn’t hard convincing them that I was the one who’d killed him. Why would they question it?”
Rudnick nodded. “I see. So one of the remaining members of this terrorist group tracked you down and… effected revenge. And you blame yourself.”
Uzi said nothing.
“Well, my friend, this explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
The toothpick bobbed up and down on Uzi’s lips. He was trying his hardest to fight back the tears. But a knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
Rudnick’s brow crumpled. He rose from his chair and cracked the door open.
Just then, Uzi’s phone rang. The caller ID told him it was Marshall Shepard’s private cell phone. “Yeah.”
“Uzi, listen carefully. Some bad stuff’s going down. I don’t know the whole story, but I’m working on it. It’s gonna take some time. Just cooperate and don’t make it any harder—”
Uzi turned in his seat and saw a gray-and-black uniformed law enforcement officer through the doorway. The man and Rudnick exchanged a brief, muffled conversation — during which Uzi heard his name.
This is about me. Shepard’s phone call suddenly made sense.
“I’m a psychologist,” Rudnick said, louder. “I’m not at liberty to disclose who’s a patient—”
“It’s okay, Doc,” Uzi said. He was on his feet, moving toward the door. “I’m Aaron Uziel.”
A suited man nudged the door open and pushed through. It wasn’t until he had entered the treatment suite did Uzi see there were a handful of officers in the anteroom. And their guns were drawn.
Definitely not a positive sign.
“Aaron Uziel, Detective Jack Paulson, Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department. I’ve got a warrant here for your arrest. Do you have any weapons on your person, sir?”
“What’s going on?” Rudnick asked. “You can’t just barge into a doctor’s office and arrest his patient—”
“We can and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Paulson said matter-of-factly. “Now step back, sir, and don’t interfere or we’ll have to take you in, too.”
Uzi slowly spread his arms like an eagle, his Nokia still in his right hand. An officer stepped forward and patted down Uzi’s body, removing the Glock from its holster. Next he found the Puma tactical knife in Uzi’s pocket and then the Tanto hanging around his neck.
“I’ve got a boot knife, too.”
The officer handed it all to Paulson, who squinted as he eyed the weapons cache, no doubt wondering why an FBI agent was so heavily — and unconventionally — armed.
“I’ll ask you not to make any sudden moves,” Paulson said. “You know the drill.” Paulson turned around. “Chuck.”
A man in a brown windbreaker stepped through the crowd of officers. He opened a small toolkit on the carpet and peeled a couple of wide swatches of adhesive tape from a plastic wrapper. He applied the strips to Uzi’s hands, then removed and carefully packaged them.
Uzi knew what they were doing, and he didn’t like the implications. “What’s the charge?”
The technician nodded at Paulson.
Paulson nudged Uzi around, then pulled his prisoner’s arms down one at a time and affixed a set of handcuffs.
“Aaron Uziel, you’re under arrest for the murder—”
“Murder?” Uzi craned his neck to look at Paulson. “Of who?”
“John Quincy Adams.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No, sir, no joke. And you have the right to remain silent.”
“Spare me,” Uzi said. But Paulson continued nonetheless. Uzi zoned out, searching his memory for the name John Quincy Adams — beyond the obvious American history reference.
Then it hit him.
Uzi was driven by squad car to the Mason District station of the Fairfax County Police Department. A modern brick and stucco structure, it had the flavor of a small-town police station with all the technology and creature comforts of a metropolitan facility.
A single deputy manned the booking desk, where clipboards and files were stacked on end, with memos and rosters taped to walls. Everything Uzi expected to see that he had seen when he’d visited other police departments as a guest — phones ringing, keys clanging, printers spitting out documents — were absent.