“You didn’t answer my question, Gideon. Just how positive is your ID? Confirmed by fingerprints, facial recognition, functional gait—”
“Intel,” Gideon said.
Uzi tilted his head. “Intel? A CI?”
“Reliable intel,” Aksel said firmly.
DeSantos brought a hand up to his eyes.
Uzi bit down on his toothpick and snapped it in half. He spit the fragments out and said, “So you’re not even sure it’s her. Who’s doing sloppy intelligence now?” He turned around and began to pace. “How dare you come here and tell me this story — turn my life upside down again — without absolute proof? What if we move against her and you’re wrong?”
DeSantos let his hand fall to his side. “You told me you were sure, Director General.”
Aksel’s jaw muscles clenched. “Leila Harel is Batula Hakim.” His eyes were hard and cold. “You do what you want with this information. If you don’t believe it, do your own analysis. Just make it fast.”
Uzi noted the hard stare shared by both men, and then it clicked. “You wanted Hector to take her out. Because kidons don’t operate on US soil.” Uzi turned to his partner. “And you were going to do his bidding. No matter what I wanted—”
“No, Uzi. I mean, yes. At first. Knox said—”
“Knox?”
DeSantos held up a hand. “It’s not what you think.” He took Uzi’s left arm and ushered him away. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Director General, the longer we’re out here in the open, the more vulnerable we are. Please, get in the car. We’ll join you in a moment.”
DeSantos led Uzi toward a landscaped planter in front of Ris, an upscale restaurant at the corner of 23rd and L. They stopped by a line of covered patio tables, dark with inactivity.
“You asked me to help you arrest her, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“But if Knox—”
“I’ll deal with Knox.”
“If we’re going to arrest her,” Uzi said, “we’ll need evidence… at least a positive ID.”
“Good news is there’s a simple solution to this problem,” DeSantos said with a shrug. “We get a positive ID.”
Uzi extended his fist, and DeSantos touched it with his own.
After the limo departed, Uzi sat on the curb, mentally spent. Angry, confused, frustrated — but despite his efforts to shove his emotions aside, they kept forcing their way to the forefront of his thoughts.
Finally, at nearly two in the morning, he began making his way from 23rd and L toward the Hamilton House. The brisk air gave him a chance to clear his mind and regain some lucidity. As he headed down New Hampshire Avenue, the apartment building rose from the asphalt like a block-long monolith, partially obscured by a dozen trees. A series of Metro Police barricades and warning lights were arrayed across both lanes, blocking the street. The crime-scene techs had finished their analysis of the blast site and the crowd had dispersed.
He felt naked without his tricked-out smartphone. But it was now history, so much cinder and ashes. He found one of the few remaining pay phones a couple of blocks away and accessed his voicemail. He paged through the thirteen messages, hoping to get an eleventh-hour handle on his investigation. There was one from Hoshi, left only ninety minutes ago. She was heading home, hoping to grab a few hours’ rest. Because of the approaching deadline — since it was now past midnight, “D-day” was technically today — she urged him to call her as soon as he retrieved the message.
He dug more quarters from his pocket and dialed the number. Hoshi was in a dreamy half-sleep, but had enough wits to be oriented as to time and place. “I take it this line isn’t secure.”
Uzi nearly laughed. “Not even close.”
“Okay.” She grunted as if pushing herself into a seated position. “Phish and Mason said Danny Carlson called you twice, once on the tenth, lasting two minutes — remember, they round up—”
“Just one, Hoshi, he only called me once. The tenth sounds about right.”
“There’s also an outgoing call on the fifteenth, lasting only a minute.”
“When yesterday? I never spoke to him.”
“Best they could tell, he called you shortly before he was killed.”
Uzi did the math. Son of a bitch. He called while I was in jail. “He might’ve left a voicemail.” Uzi knew that cell service was notoriously unreliable, and sometimes the message notification didn’t buzz back to his phone for days. “Have Phish and Mason look into it. Give them my password and find out if he left a message, and if he did, what it was. Tell them to coordinate with DeSantos. I’m a bit occupied at the moment.”
“Occupied?”
“Occupied. We’ve only got about twelve hours, Hoshi. Go back to the office. I’ll check in with you later.”
He hung up and headed back to Hamilton House. Across the street were large brick-and-stone Victorian-style homes, where he would set up camp. As he passed in front of the apartment building, his eyes scanned the crime-scene-taped area.
Remaining across the street from Hamilton House, Uzi sat on the concrete steps beside a brick column. He wrapped his scarred leather jacket around his body and leaned his elbows on his knees. Through the barren trees — the ones that survived the fiery blast — he could see the dark window of Leila’s apartment. On the walk over, he’d decided to continue thinking of Batula Hakim as Leila Harel — at least for now — because if he encountered her, he didn’t want it slipping that he knew her real name.
If Gideon Aksel was correct.
The thing that gnawed at Uzi was that he had never known Aksel to be wrong. That’s why he had been so successful as director general. He weighed facts and made informed judgments. But he always seemed to have such damn good facts. And if Gideon was right about Leila being Hakim, he was wasting his time with this exercise. Still, aside from law enforcement protocols, for his own peace of mind, he needed to know — quickly — if she was Hakim. He could then move forward… with the investigation, and with his life.
While he wanted to believe that meeting her was pure chance, at a crash site on a random event, he now knew that if she was Hakim, everything had happened by design. She played him like a skilled flautist coaxing music from a rusty flute. He bowed his head out of disgust. Gideon was right. Shame on him that he could be suckered so easily. That he’d let his guard down. That he hadn’t done his job properly six years ago.
The time passed slowly. He almost dozed twice — and was tempted to grab a little shuteye because it was three o’clock in the morning and a prime rule of covert ops was that you took short naps at odd moments, whenever it was safe. He doubted he was in danger sitting where he was. Even before Dena’s death, he was a light sleeper. He’d learned the skill when in training for Mossad. Under normal circumstances, if anyone came within twenty feet of him, it would awaken him.
But with a concussion and the recent physical and emotional stress, he couldn’t risk falling into a deep sleep, putting himself in danger and missing his window of opportunity.
Across the street, as he watched the lighted traffic cones flash rhythmically on and off, his eyes settled on the area where the shattered Tahoe sat only hours ago. In many ways, his damaged psyche was not much different from the SUV: shattered from within, nothing more than a burned-out hulk.
Hoping that Leila was either asleep or not returning tonight, he entered through the parking garage, staying clear of the building’s front entrance in case someone had been watching. He took the elevator to the lobby and saw Jiri sitting behind his large marble desk, shoulders slumped and head drooped forward. Uzi thought he was asleep, but as he approached, Jiri looked up. His face brightened a bit but it was clear the man was in a funk.