Harry smiled. “Let’s call it a polite fiction.”
“Who are you?”
“Joseph Isaac,” Harry replied, tapping the ID before tucking it back in his wallet. “You can call me Joe. I’m your salvation.”
The archaeologist settled back in his chair, an expression of disbelief on his face.
“You see, there were Americans among your crew. President Hancock authorized a CIA strike team to rescue them. Our people arrived in the dark of night, just hours after Mossad brought you back here. And we were able to extract some of your team.”
Tal leaned forward, an almost painful eagerness on his face. “Some?”
Harry nodded. “Unfortunately, not all. The Iranians were on alert. We lost some people as well.”
“How can I believe you?”
Reaching once more into his jacket, Harry laid a cellphone on the table between them. A wire stretched from it to an earbud microphone, which Harry promptly inserted.
“We’re going to place a call to one of your colleagues. I believe you know Grant Peterson?”
“Yes, yes.”
“I will give you the number to dial,” he continued, fixing the archaeologist in a cold gaze. “And you will speak directly to Grant. This is a token of good faith. Don’t abuse it.”
Tal nodded his assent and Harry gave him the number to dial.
“You said he would call, Roberto,” Grant Peterson said, looking up into the eyes of the man he had been staying with for the past week.
“He will,” the man called “Roberto” replied, in one of his longer speeches. Whether he had a last name or not, Grant had no idea. Whatever his skills, conversation was not among them.
Almost at that moment, the man’s hand went to his pocket, withdrawing a vibrating cellphone. He cast a quick glance at the screen before handing it over to Peterson.
“Answer it.”
“Hello, this is Grant.”
“Grant!” It was Dr. Tal, nervous excitement in his voice. “Thank God you’re alive. Where are you?”
“Here in the US,” Grant replied, looking over at Roberto as though to ask if he should be more specific. Something in the man’s face told him he should not. “Are you okay, doctor?”
Tal seemed not to hear him, rushing on as if the question was irrelevant. “The rest of the team, Grant. Are the others all right?”
Grant opened his mouth to speak, but in that instant, the line went dead.
“Wrong move,” Harry stated calmly, replacing the phone on the table. “I told you not to abuse it.”
Tal stared at him, his eyes wide with sudden fear. “You’re sick.”
A shrug was the only reply Harry gave to the accusation. “You and I have business to discuss. You give me what I want, I’ll tell you who lived and who died. Not until.”
“How can I trust you?”
“You can’t. But you’re running out of options. You know Grant is alive and safe. Let’s work from that basis.”
“What do you want?”
“I think you know.”
The archaeologist looked away, towards the blank wall of the interrogation room. “All right,” he said at last, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ll talk.”
Rising from his chair, Harry moved across the darkened room, punching a gloved fist through the drywall. His fingers closed around a thin wire. Just where Carter said it would be, he thought before snapping it as he would a twig.
Circling the room, he came up against the opposite wall and retrieved the other parabolic mike, disabling it in similar fashion. The bugs were dead.
“What is he doing?” Shoham wondered aloud, watching the scene live on the TV screen in the Mossad operations room.
Gideon leaned forward. “I can take my team in.”
“No,” the general replied, shaking his head. “We gain nothing by direct action. Let Nichols run his course.”
The next minute, their TV screen went black as someone draped a jacket over the camera lens.
“Move to my chair,” Harry instructed, returning to the table. “Sit with your back to the glass.”
“Why?”
“With that camera dead, they’re going to move next door. I don’t want them to be able to read your lips.”
“Who are you?”
Harry turned back to the table, his gun hand resting on his hip, near the holstered .45. Time was running short. He stared at Tal, not bothering to respond to the question. “Talk.”
“Thank you for coming in early, Director,” President Hancock said, looking up from his desk as a pair of Secret Service agents ushered David Lay into the Oval Office. “It is the imperatives of the campaign season, you understand.”
“To be sure,” Lay responded, acknowledging the presence of Lawrence Bell with a brief nod. “Missouri today?”
Hancock nodded. “Air Force One departs from Andrews at seven o’clock.”
Preliminaries out of the way, the DCIA opened the folder in front of him. “First on the agenda is the Eilat situation.”
“So I saw,” Hancock nodded, a biting edge to his voice. “I’m sure you understand, David, that this is one of my concerns with these so-called ‘deniable’ operations. They have a way of ending up on CNN.”
Lay bit his tongue. “There was a leak.”
“Isn’t there always,” came the President’s irony-laced rejoinder. “How many people did we lose?”
“None. A couple from Savannah were in the crowd and killed in the blast, but other than that collateral damage, no one. Our operations personnel extracted safely.”
The President paled. “Collateral damage? Dear God, David, do you realize how cold you sound?”
Lay briefly looked at the ceiling of the Oval Office, sighing heavily. “That’s the spy business, Mr. President. People get hurt. People get killed. We’re busy tracking down the leaked information as we speak.”
“Do the Israelis know about the biological weapon?” Hancock asked, a sudden intensity creeping into his voice.
“No,” Lay replied, looking surprised. “You gave orders to that effect, and they have not been contravened.”
“Good.” Hancock sank back into his chair. “See that they aren’t…”
After Moshe Tal finished talking, silence reigned in the interrogation room for the space of about two minutes.
Harry sat there, silently regarding the archaeologist as he processed the information he had been given. None of it was recorded, unless Ron Carter’s intel had been bad and there was a device he had missed. He had taken no notes. Everything was committed to memory.
Taken all together, Tal’s information tallied with the intelligence the CIA had gotten from the debrief of the rest of the team. The pneumonic plague had been contained in the mass grave of the Persian city, lying dormant over the centuries until its release by the archaeologist’s dig. Opening Pandora’s grave, to speak of it figuratively.
He stood, turning toward the door as if to leave. “What about the others?” Tal asked, a plaintive note in his voice.
“What?”
“You promised. Who lived?”
Harry turned back, leaning across the table until his face was only inches from that of the archaeologist. “They all did,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. “And if you want to keep it that way, you need to do exactly as I say.”
The expression on Tal’s face was a curious blend of surprise and relief, mingled with an overwhelming fear. “What?” he asked, his hands trembling uncontrollably.