‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Klaus. I … He …’ Her voice broke, and she couldn’t go on.
Lev had never met Klaus Von Volker, but what he’d seen of the man on the news had convinced him that he wouldn’t like the man. ‘It’s all right. Where are you?’
‘In Jerusalem. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My parents wouldn’t understand. I told you how they were when we were in school together in Vienna.’
Lev remembered. Whenever Herr and Frau Reinstadler showed up at the university to visit, Alice had always become incredibly tense and unhappy.
She went on. ‘Maybe this was the wrong thing to do. So much time has passed. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
‘Alice …’ Lev let out a breath. He’d been scared for months, knowing he had enemies out there, but Ezra’s story about the two dead guards made him feel even more vulnerable.
‘It’s all right. I understand.’
Afraid she would hang up, Lev responded immediately. ‘I’m coming to get you. Tell me where you are.’
She was quiet for a moment, and Lev feared she’d thought better of contacting him and hung up. Then she spoke again. ‘On Saint Mark’s Road. Near the Lutheran Hostel.’
‘I’ll be there. Give me just a few minutes.’ Lev stood and took up his coat, already heading for the door.
16
Ezra hadn’t agreed to the rescue trip, but in the end Lev hadn’t given him a choice. After Alice’s call, Lev had escaped from the apartment. Unfortunately, Ezra had discovered his getaway and come looking, finding him through a tracking device in his prosthesis Lev hadn’t known about. The young Mossad agent hadn’t caught up to Lev until he’d reached his destination, though, and his argument had proven persuasive enough to stay.
Lev sat in the passenger seat and tried calling the cellphone number Alice had used to contact him. She wasn’t answering.
‘Still no reply?’
‘No.’ Lev closed the phone unhappily.
‘Perhaps she’s in a place where she cannot talk.’ Ezra handled the car smoothly, negotiating the light evening traffic with ease. His gaze shifted relentlessly, always tracking and evaluating their surroundings. A machine pistol lay between the seats.
Lev wore a bulletproof vest despite his protests. The heavy garment itched in the heat. ‘You didn’t hear her. She was beside herself.’ Every time he replayed the conversation in his mind, Alice sounded more desperate.
Ezra shrugged. ‘Maybe she and her husband made up. A lot of people have arguments. Too much to drink, a few harsh words, then they make up later.’
‘Her husband is Austrian People’s Party leader Von Volker. He wouldn’t show his face in this city.’
‘Ah.’ Ezra shook his head. ‘That man I do not like. Anti-Semitic with ties to Iran. A partnership forged in hell for certain. What is this woman doing with him if she is such a good friend to you?’
‘Her parents arranged the marriage.’
‘What were they thinking?’
‘They wanted Alice to marry into nobility. They think the same way as Von Volker when it comes to a unified Germany and Austria.’
‘Are you sure she’s a friend?’ Ezra braked, then turned right onto St. Mark’s Road.
‘I am.’
‘With parents like that …’
‘Alice thinks her own thoughts.’
‘She just doesn’t pick her own husbands.’ Ezra shook his head. ‘My apologies. That was uncalled for.’
‘It’s all right. You don’t know Alice. If you did, you wouldn’t wonder about this. She was coerced by her parents, and she’d recently had her heart broken.’ Lourds hadn’t meant to do that, and Lev never faulted his friend. Anyone who knew Lourds should have known he’d never give himself to anything but his work. ‘Alice was hurt, confused, and wanted someone to love her. I’m sure Von Volker looked like quite a prize at the time.’
‘What does she look like?’ Slowing the car, Ezra scanned the nearly deserted sidewalks.
Another car, this one also carrying Mossad agents, trailed after them. Ezra had called in the second line of defense, and Lev couldn’t even imagine the flak the young man had endured to put that together.
‘Blond. Petite. Very pretty.’ Lev searched for her along the sidewalks as well.
‘How long has it been since you’ve seen her?’
‘Years. Her husband doesn’t let her stray far.’ Lev felt sad for Alice when he mentioned that, but there’d been nothing he could do.
‘Maybe she’s changed.’
A moment later, a feminine form stepped out of the shadows near a coffee shop whose neon signs still shone. The moonlight and neon highlighted the pale blond hair, but the darkness masked her face.
‘There she is.’ Lev pointed.
‘I see her.’ Ezra applied the brakes and reached for the machine pistol. He spoke into the headset comm he wore. ‘I have eyes-on. The subject is in the alley by the coffee shop.’
‘Understood. Do you want us in close?’
‘No. Just play everything loose.’ Ezra pulled the car into the alley only a few feet from the woman.
Lev popped the door open and got out, avoiding Ezra’s desperate grab. ‘Alice?’
She turned to him then, and the neon lights from the coffee shop took away just enough of the night to reveal her features in profile. Even then, Lev knew the woman wasn’t Alice.
Before he could say anything, she turned and ran, and he knew something was very wrong. He turned to shout a warning to Ezra, but the young Mossad agent’s neck blossomed bright blood that spattered Lev’s face. Ezra staggered, managed to get the machine pistol in his hand, and went down.
The second car shrieked to a stop behind them. Before the two agents in it could get out, the vehicle exploded, leaping into the air and flipping over. Flames enveloped it, and the heat drove Lev backwards.
Three men dressed in black erupted from the alley. They bristled with weapons, but one man carried a curious pistol. The weapon hissed rather than detonated, and something sharp struck Lev in the throat.
Lev wrapped his hands around his neck and felt the small dart lodged in the hollow of his jaw. A warm lassitude filled his head, invaded his brain, and he was falling.
The men were good.
Watching from the shadows, Rayan Mufarrij appreciated the simple, brutal attack. If he’d had the manpower, the ability to manipulate the target as these men had, he would have done the same thing. The woman — not the one that had been there, but the one she was supposed to represent — meant something to Lev Strauss. She wasn’t who she’d claimed to be, though. Strauss had started moving away before his attackers had struck. He’d recognized her as a stranger, or someone other than who he thought she was.
Mufarrij stayed where he was and kept watching. He was a patient man. A man in his calling either learned patience quickly or died. Muffarrij was forty years old, and twenty-five years into his chosen vocation.
If anyone intercepted him and recognized him, his life would be forfeit. The Israelis wanted him dead for assassinations of their people. The Shiites would kill him on general principles, and Colonel Davari had lost key personnel on operations that had brushed too closely to ones Mufarrij had been conducting. Al-Qaeda had placed a bounty on him for all the death and destruction he’d wreaked on their numbers in his native Saudi Arabia.
All in all, Jerusalem wasn’t a good place for him to be, and an even worse place for him to get caught playing in the backyards of others.
He stood in the alley with the motorcycle he’d had waiting for him when he’d followed Von Volker’s mercenary team to Jerusalem. Local contacts, men he trusted and had worked with before, had supplied him with it and his weapons.