“Damn,” Christien said. “But you’re unharmed?”
“Yes. What we need is to somehow track the copter that snatched Rowland.”
“Are you in a safe place?”
Bourne spotted a small café, open for breakfast. “We are now. Yes.” Christien got their location in Gamla Stan, told Bourne to sit tight, that he’d come to get them himself.
They went to the café, all their senses on high alert. Inside, they reconnoitered, discovered the rear entrance through the kitchen, then chose a table in the rear with a view of everyone who came in and out.
When they had ordered, Bourne said, “Tell me how the Israeli government was able to establish a research facility in Dahr El Ahmar.” Rebeka had stiffened at the words research facility. “So you know.”
“I thought you had brought me to a temporary Mossad forward outpost in Lebanon.”
He waited while the server set down their coffee and sweet rolls.
“When I escaped in the copter I had stolen in Syria, I realized that Dahr El Ahmar isn’t a military encampment. The Mossad is there to guard a research facility.”
Rebeka stirred sugar into her coffee.
“What did you see?”
“I saw the camouflage netting, and I swung low enough to see the bunkered building underneath. There are experiments going on in that building, and I have to ask myself why these experiments are being undertaken in Lebanon, not Israel, where they’d be far more secure.”
“But would they be more secure in Israel?” Rebeka cocked her head. “Why would our enemies look for Israeli research on Lebanese soil?”
Bourne stared at her. “They wouldn’t.”
“No,” she said slowly. “They wouldn’t.”
“What’s in the bunker lab? What are they working on?”
Three people came in, one left. She stirred more sugar into her coffee, then took a sip. She was gazing at a space between him and the door, looking at nothing but her own thoughts, as if weighing her next action.
At last, she said, “Have you ever heard of SILEX?”
He shook his head.
“For decades now, there has been a theory knocking around the nuclear fuel industry that posited the theory of extracting U-235, the isotope used for enriched uranium fuel rods, via lasers. For a long time it was overhyped, and all designs proved either ineffective or prohibitively expensive. Then, in 1994, a pair of nuclear physicists came up with SILEX—separation of isotopes by laser excitation. The Americans control that process, and a project with SILEX at its center is even now going forward. At Dahr El Ahmar, we have come up with a parallel methodology. It’s being tested in such secrecy because of fears that, if stolen, the technology could be used by terrorist cells or nations like Iran to accelerate weapons designs.”
Bourne thought a moment. “Rowland was trying to steal the technology at Dahr El Ahmar.”
“That’s what I thought. But the fact is that Harry knew nothing about the real purpose of Dahr El Ahmar, let alone the experiments. No, he was looking for you, and, ironically, in pursuing him, I led him directly to you.”
“You couldn’t know that.”
She made a face.
Outside in the street, they watched a long black car slide past, more slowly than the rest of the traffic. It could mean nothing, or everything. They kept their eyes on the plate-glass door. Two elderly ladies walked in and sat down. A suit with an iPad under his arm rose and went out. A young mother and child pushed in and looked around for a free table. The three servers passed to and fro. When several minutes went by and nothing untoward happened, Rebeka relaxed.
“I’m taking a chance telling you this,” she said.
“Colonel Ben David is already convinced I know Dahr El Ahmar’s secret. The question to be answered is why Harry Rowland was sent to kill me.”
“Why? Do you think it’s all connected?”
“We can’t rule out the possibility until we know the network’s goal.”
“For that we need Harry.”
He nodded. “Our only lead is the copter that snatched him.” Rebeka frowned. “How do you propose we—?”
Her question was cut short as two uniformed police came through the door and began to scrutinize the customers.
Martha Christiana, sitting next to Don Fernando Hererra in a private jet, was used to walking a tightrope—in fact, she welcomed it. But, for the first time since she had begun taking on commissions, she wasn’t certain of her footing. Don Fernando was proving to be more of a challenge than she could have anticipated.
For one thing, he was something of an enigma. For another, he didn’t act like any older man she had ever met. He was a dynamo of physical energy, and mentally he wasn’t stuck in the reminiscences of a former age, unable to embrace an increasingly complex technological present. More than anything, he wasn’t afraid of the even more challenging future. Experience had taught her that older men, having expended their reserves of creative energy, were now content to fade into the comfortable background, letting the present whiz by them in an uncomprehensible blur. Don Fernando’s grasp of cutting-edge technology was both comprehensive and dazzling.
On a fundamental level, she found Don Fernando charming, erudite, and psychologically astute. He drew her in as the sun does a planet. The two of them made intimate connections that both exhilarated and alarmed her. She found herself basking in these connections the way a beachgoer toasts in sunshine. When she was with him, she was happy. In this, she was deviating from the successful execution of her commission. She knew this, but she didn’t stop. Such behavior was completely foreign to her and, as such, a mystery.
Another thing: There was in Don Fernando something of a memory for her, of a time before Marrakech, before she ran away from the lighthouse. A time of raging storms and walls of water crashing furiously against the rocky promontory into which her home was driven like a massive spike. Or had her thoughts turned in this direction because Don Fernando was flying her to Gibraltar?
“I’d like to take you to dinner,” he had said earlier that day. “What restaurant?” she had said. “How shall I dress?” She wore a black sheath skirt and matching braided bolero jacket, beneath which was an oyster-white silk shirt, pinned at the top with an onyx oval.
“It’s a surprise.” His eyes twinkled. “As for how to dress, I see nothing wrong with what you’re wearing.”
The surprise had been the jet, waiting for them on the tarmac of a private field on the outskirts of Paris. It was only after they had raced down the runway and lifted into the air that he had told her their destination.
Heart racing, she had said, “What’s in Gibraltar?”
“You’ll see.”
Now they had landed. A car and driver were waiting for them. As soon as they climbed in, it swept away down a coast all too familiar to her. Twenty minutes later, the lighthouse came into view, rising from the rocky promontory of her youth.
“I don’t understand.” She turned to him. “Why have you brought me here?”
“Are you angry?”
“I don’t know how you...I don’t know...No, I—”
The car stopped. The lighthouse loomed high above them.
“It’s automated now. It has been for years,” Don Fernando said as they got out. “But it’s still functioning, it still serves its original purpose.”
Leading her around to the west side of the lighthouse, he walked with her several hundred yards to the grave site. She stopped, reading the headstone. It was her father’s grave.
“Why have you done this, Don Fernando?”
“You are angry. Perhaps I was wrong.” He took her elbow gently. “Come. We’ll leave immediately.”