DeSantos turned the key and the massive engine roared to life. “Knox took care of it.”
“Knox made a murder charge go away?” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”
“Don’t worry about it, boychick. Just forget it. Let Knox do his thing, okay?”
“But—”
“He takes care of his people. I told you that. That’s how he builds loyalty.”
Uzi considered this as DeSantos headed out of the lot. Was this Knox’s way of getting Uzi to back off his investigation of the director’s NFA links? I take care of you, you take care of me?
“From what I know of Knox,” Uzi said, “if he does something like this, it’s gotta serve his interests. So I guess the question is, What are his interests?”
“Despite what you might believe, he only tells me what he thinks I need to know. And why he did what he just did is not something he thinks I need to know.”
Uzi looked hard at DeSantos, trying to determine if his partner was being straight with him. “I’m not comfortable with this. Another thing for him to hold over my head.”
“Were you more comfortable in that prison cell with a lethal injection in your future?”
“No.”
“Then don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“No shit. In this case I might find rotten teeth.”
DeSantos frowned. “You’re a hard man to please, you know that?”
As they approached the exit, a black Lincoln Continental pulled in front of the Corvette, blocking their path.
“What the hell is this?” Uzi asked, his right hand moving toward his empty holster.
DeSantos touched his partner’s arm with calm assurance.
The Lincoln’s blacked-out rear window rolled down, revealing the silver-haired Douglas Knox. DeSantos threw the gear shift into Park and got out of the car, Uzi close behind.
Knox, tracking Uzi’s movements, said, “Agent Uziel, do you know who Danny Carlson is?”
Indeed he did. Danny Carlson was Nuri Peled’s cover name. Was this a test? Or a trap of some sort? Unsure as to why Knox would bring up Peled’s name, Uzi simply said, “Yes.”
When Knox’s expression did not change, Uzi concluded the man already knew the answer to his own question.
“Mr. Carlson was found dead an hour ago. In his garage, apparent suicide. He was a former colleague of yours, I believe, so I thought you might want to know.” Knox waited a beat, then said, “JTTF should confirm cause of death. See to it.” When Uzi did not respond, the window rolled up. A second later, the car drove off.
The air in front of Uzi turned Everest-thin, a dizzying array of colored pinpricks dancing around him, sparkling, swirling, shifting. In the next instant Uzi was sitting on the asphalt, DeSantos kneeling in front of him.
“You okay? Uzi. Look at me, man, look at me.” He gently slapped Uzi’s cheeks and, over the next few seconds, Uzi focused on his friend’s face.
“I just saw him, Santa. Just spoke to him.”
“Nuri was a good man. A good operative.”
Uzi licked his lips. “You knew him?”
“You weren’t the only guy in Mossad I worked with.”
“After the chopper went down, I reached out,” Uzi said, his voice coarse with pain. “To see if he knew anything about a Mideast connection. Nuri said there was nothing as far as he knew. But he’d heard a whisper that a new group had a sleeper operating in the States. He was checking it out for his employer. Not Mossad… He called it a ‘friendly ally.’ He shifted things into high gear because of the chopper crash.”
Uzi lifted himself off the ground and straightened his jacket with a wiggle of his shoulders. “I spoke to him again the night I dropped by your place. He hadn’t found anything but was working it. Obviously, the rumor was true and the group he was tracking is here. They must’ve found out he was on their tail.” He looked up at his partner, his face lacking color. “Santa, did I get him killed?”
DeSantos held up a hand. “Before you slop another helping of guilt onto your plate, let’s add this up. Knox said it looked like suicide. Gassed himself in his garage. Not exactly your typical hit.”
“I know Nuri. He wouldn’t do that. And he gave no indication of being in distress. It’s bullshit.”
“I agree. Then if it was a hit, they wanted to keep it low key, to minimize suspicion. So they staged it. But that’s not a terrorist’s typical MO, either.” He regarded Uzi, then asked, “Your reaction to the news tells me Nuri was more than just one of your sources.”
Uzi nodded, then looked skyward as if God could provide an answer. “He was my mentor when I joined up. Taught me a lot about staying alive. But I hadn’t talked to him since I left Mossad. It was good seeing him. I didn’t realize how much I missed talking with him.”
“I’m sorry, man.”
“I have to call Knox, tell him what Nuri was working on. If it wasn’t suicide, and if a sleeper was involved, Homeland Security needs to know. And I need to get some people assigned to it. You call Knox, I’ll call Shepard.”
DeSantos nodded and rooted out his BlackBerry as Uzi dialed. But before Uzi could hit Send, the phone rang. It was Shepard. He started to brief his boss on Peled, but Shepard interrupted him. Uzi listened for a moment, then turned to DeSantos, who was ending his call. “How fast can this thing go?”
“My ’vette?” DeSantos chuckled devilishly. “How fast do you want it to go?”
Uzi started toward the car. “Fast.”
Uzi and DeSantos ran into the Virginia Presbyterian emergency room, where Uzi flashed his credentials and asked where Tim Meadows was being treated. The nurse gave them resistance, but Uzi was in no mood for delays, and he made sure she understood his urgency. A moment later, they were striding down the hall looking for treatment suite four.
Gauze bandages covered Tim Meadows’s head and hands. A moment passed before Meadows opened his eyes.
“My old pal,” Meadows said, “the man with the cool name. Uzi. Aaron Uzi.” He licked his dry lips. “It’s got that license-to-kill feel.”
“Tim, I really—”
“Feel guilty? Don’t. I’d hate for you to feel responsible for nearly getting me killed.”
“Tim… I really am sorry.” He looked at the monitors attached to Meadows’s body. “Are you okay?”
“What? You’ll have to speak up because my hearing is, like, how shall I put this? Severely impaired. I was thinking of having a nametag made up to wear around the office: Speak up ’cause I’m freakin’ deaf. What do you think?”
Uzi frowned. “What I said was—”
“I know what you said, I read your lips. So you want to know if I’m okay. Hmm. Let me think about it for a second. Several freaking blocks of C-4 exploded in my basement a few feet from where I was standing. I can still hear the explosion in my head. ’Course, I can’t hear anything else.”
“I’d say you escaped relatively unscathed.”
“Yeah? Easy for you to say. Would you like a concussion and two broken hands?”
“Care to tell us what happened?”
“A bomb exploded. Specific enough?” He must have noted Uzi’s pained expression, because he continued: “I saw this car on my street. Didn’t look right to me. I went into my house to get my binoculars so I could grab the plate, have it run.
“I realized someone had stolen my PC and broken into my safe. That’s when I saw it. Blocks of C-4 connected to a detonation device. I hid in the safe. But it took out a good chunk of my house. My goddamn house, Uzi.”
“If you were in the safe, how’d you get so banged up?”
“I stayed put to make sure they weren’t waiting around to finish off the job. There was so much garbage all around me I had a hard time pushing open the door. I finally got it open and climbed out, but twisted my ankle and went down hard, broke my fall with my hands — then all sorts of crap hit me in the head. I blacked out. Metro PD pulled me out of the rubble.”