2. Didi’s office was bugged, and;
3. Didi was cheerfully spoon-feeding his own specially mixed barium meal to whoever was on the other end of the bug.
The underground parking lot in the basement of Mossad headquarters was probably one of the most heavily secured pieces of real estate on the planet. So it was amusing to see Li and the four hard-jawed Mossad bodyguards fingering their weapons and peering into the shadows as if they were stepping into the OK Corral instead of a well-lit, thoroughly guarded, and obviously empty garage. Or it would have been humorous if he hadn’t known how deadly earnest they all were.
The Mossad’s motor pool wasn’t taking any chances either; Didi’s government-issue Peugeot sedan had blastproof windows and armor-plated coachwork. They got in—one of Didi’s young men in front with the driver, the other two flanking Didi on the forward-facing seat, and Li and Cohen facing them across the foot well—and the car pulled up the ramp into the late-afternoon traffic on King Saul Boulevard with the muffled clank of ceramic compound antimine flooring.
It was nothing all that new to Cohen; Hyacinthe had driven the autobahns back when private cars were still legal and seen Porsches and BMWs romping through their native habitat at upward of two hundred kilometers an hour. Li, however, was enthralled. She inspected the floor and the doors, predictably pleased to meet a new piece of semi-military hardware. “I’ve never been in an actual car,” she said. “Is this a Mercedes?”
One of Didi’s bodyguards gave a strangled-sounding cough.
“Oh,” Li said after a moment. She cleared her throat, started to mutter something about being sorry, and fell abruptly silent.
“Never mind.” Didi leaned forward to pat her knee. “History just has a longer half-life here. Now tell me about your home planet.”
“It looks a lot like Israel, actually. Rocks and sky. Desert and mountains.”
“But without people, yes?”
“Mostly. Most of it people can’t live on yet. And even where they can, I wouldn’t exactly call it healthy.”
“And its history?”
“There is none. It’s not much older than I am.”
“A planet with no history,” Didi said. He turned to the agent next to him. “The perfect place for a week on the beach, don’t you think? They could sell vacations there. Jerusalemites would snap them up like falafel.”
“Any Interfaithers there?” the other guard asked.
“Not as bad as here.”
The Israelis exchanged significant glances with each other.
Cohen gazed at Didi, wondering if this turn of the conversation was entirely coincidental. “Is it true they’re expected to win another eight seats in the Knesset this election?” he asked, nudging the conversation along and wondering what surprises would emerge from the after-dinner chitchat.
But Didi just spread his hands in the characteristic shrug that was the Israeli reply to all life’s unanswerable questions from politics to tomorrow’s weather.
“I love my country enough to believe that she will outgrow her infatuation with the men of God and violence,” he said simply.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say that about their countries,” Cohen said.
“And were any of them ever right?”
“Not that I can remember.”
Didi opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment the car turned onto a residential street and they passed a large extended family out for a walk in the last warmth of the dying afternoon. A clucking, fussing, cosseting parade of aunts and uncles and grandparents. A pair of anxious-looking parents—and they had good reason to look anxious, given the recent wave of vigilante assaults on “bad” parents. And finally that fragile bird, rare enough in the blighted land of milk and honey to turn heads and kill conversations: a child.
As they passed, the child stumbled slightly and vanished into a dense thicket of protective adult arms. Cohen remembered Hyacinthe’s free-ranging childhood, littered with broken bones and private triumphs, and wondered what it would do to this generation of children to grow up never allowed to play or fall or risk themselves.
He glanced at his fellow passengers. Li was indifferent. Didi had glanced at the child when it first appeared, but was now staring impassively through the windshield at the road ahead. But it was the look on the faces of Arik and the other young men that would stamp itself on Cohen’s memory of this moment. Intent. Utterly still. Mortally hungry.
So this is what extinction looks like.
Didi’s house was perfectly ordinary, no less modest and no more obviously well fortified than any other house in its affluent Tel Aviv suburb. The only thing that set it apart from its neighbors were the towering trunks of the five cedars of Lebanon that had been planted there, or so the young recruits whispered, when the legendary Rafi Eitan still owned the house.
The car pulled into a garage full of the usual clutter of bicycles and sports equipment. From there they filed solemnly into the entry, where they were introduced with all due ceremony to Didi’s wife and twin daughters. Li examined the daughters with interest—as well she might, Cohen thought. Their willowy height and their cool, even-featured beauty belonged to the Ring, not to Earth. They might look like their parents in the more predictable ways, but there were other things about them, equally predictable, that put them a lot closer to the posthuman end of the genetic spectrum. The girls were the legacy of a long-ago Ring-side tour of duty under diplomatic cover, and they were at once Didi’s greatest pride and his deepest sorrow. His pride because of their obvious intelligence and beauty, and because they’d chosen—unlike so many of the Ring-bred children of affluent Israelis—to take advantage of the family unification exemption and complete their education and military service in Israel. His sorrow because the genetic engineering that had made their birth possible had also stripped them of the Right of Return that would have been theirs if their very DNA hadn’t been banned technology under the Kyoto Addendum.
Zillah greeted Cohen with special warmth. “Don’t eat too much over drinks,” she murmured as they kissed each other in greeting, “I’ve made lamb shanks. And you know what it takes to make me stay home from work and cook all day.”
“Dinner at eight?” Didi asked her.
She checked her watch. “Let’s say eight-fifteen. See you all then.” She turned to the guards, who were eyeing the twins with an enthusiasm that made Cohen think lust was about to give ambition a run for its money. “Can I make you boys a sandwich in the meantime?”
A minute later Cohen was looking around Didi’s study, wondering how recently the place had been swept for bugs…and who had swept it, given that Didi didn’t seem to trust the sweepers at the Office.
Didi subsided into his chair, looking small and fragile, and focused his gaze on Li. “What do you know about Absalom?” he asked.
Li’s eyes widened. “The mole?”
The word surprised Cohen. He’d assumed the old earthbound terminology became extinct with the insectivore that inspired it. He’d also assumed that UNSec didn’t know quite that much about the Mossad’s internal housekeeping problems.
“If that’s what you want to call him,” Didi agreed, not looking much happier than Cohen felt.
“I thought you caught him in Tel Aviv,” Li said.
“So did we. Until Arkady showed up. What I didn’t tell you in the office is that Arkady showed up asking for Absalom.”
“Thereby all but guaranteeing you would hustle him through the blockade to Earth.”
“The fact that information may be false doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore it. Besides, GolaniTech seems quite confident he’s genuine.”