‘Professor Strauss. Can you hear me?’
Feeling drunk and confused, Lev Strauss tried to focus. A man was kneeling above him. The face seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place it. ‘Thomas, is that you?’ For a moment, he thought he was back at the plane crash in the Dead Sea. Things had been bewildering then, like this was. He thought maybe he was dreaming, but there was a sharp pain in the side of his head.
Then Lev’s vision cleared a bit, and he saw it wasn’t Lourds crouched over him at all.
This man’s black hair was long and wild, and his beard was bushy. He almost looked like an American Hells Angel, but Lev was pretty certain that no Hells Angel had ever been born with those dark Arabic features. Or maybe he only thought about outlaw bikers because the man wore black riding leathers and a jacket.
‘Professor Strauss. I’m going to get you out of here. I need you to help me.’ The man tried to pull Lev to his feet.
Lev gripped the man’s proffered arm and struggled to help get to his feet, but his limbs didn’t work well. He had no strength in his arms and he couldn’t feel if his legs were under him. ‘Who are you?’
‘A friend. You were in a car wreck. I’m trying to help get you to safety.’
As the man pulled Lev to his numb foot and held him upright, he saw the dead man sitting against the cargo mesh. Two more sat on the other side of the wire in the driver’s compartment. Blood was everywhere. Frantically, Lev fought against his ‘rescuer,’ remembering the fake Alice, the way the blood had jumped from Ezra’s neck, and the dart hitting him in the throat.
‘Take it easy. Go slow. I don’t want you to get hurt any more than you already are.’ The big man held Lev and talked in a soothing tone, and his words sounded true. ‘I’m not one of them. I’m here to help you.’
‘Where’s Ezra?’
‘Back at the abduction site.’
‘Is he all right?’
The big man shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Everything happened too quickly. When I saw you had been taken, I came after you.’
‘You were there?’
‘Yes. In the alley across the street.’
Lev thought hard, trying to imagine the scene again, but found that it kept sliding through his mental fingers. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘You weren’t supposed to.’
‘The other team died in that car.’
‘They did.’ The big man pulled one of Lev’s arms across his shoulder and walked him to the rear of the van. They had to move while stooped over.
‘Are you Mossad?’
‘Yes.’
Lev stared ahead of them, willing his wits to come back to him. The drug had overpowered his system, and he knew he was lucky to be conscious at all. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Somewhere safe. Somewhere that you can work on the Book.’
‘All right.’ As Lev started to step down onto the ground beside the big man, ‘Alice’ rose in the backseat of the semiblown-up car in front of them. Blood covered her blouse and leaked from the corner of her mouth.
Lev frowned in confusion. ‘That’s not Alice …’
Startled, the big man looked up, but it was already too late.
‘Alice’ had a pistol in her hand, and bright yellow flashes burst in front of her. Something slapped Lev’s skull hard, knocking him backwards. The big man’s arm was no longer around him, and he was falling.
Mufarrij couldn’t believe the woman wasn’t dead, or that she would come up shooting instead of simply lying there hoping she would survive. The wild look in her eyes told him she was moving on pure adrenaline, which must have been the only thing keeping her alive.
He felt a bullet hammer the body armor under the motorcycle jacket, then Strauss jerked in his grip and started falling backward.
Whipping the Glock up, Mufarrij fired by instinct. Three rounds pierced the woman’s chest, then a bullet hit right between her wide eyes. Her head snapped back, and she fell once more into the backseat.
Angry at the events and at the woman, Mufarrij crouched over Strauss. A single glance at the horrible wound in the man’s face told the story. The bullet that had glanced off Mufarrij’s body armor had crashed into the man’s temple. Flattened from the body armor, the bullet had made a horrible, bloody mess of Strauss’s face.
Miraculously, the man’s mouth worked, and he had just enough strength to speak three words. ‘Get … Thomas … Lourds.’ Then the air went out of him, and he seemed to wilt there on the stone street.
Mufarrij was acutely aware of the seconds passing. It wouldn’t be long before law enforcement arrived. Or maybe the Mossad. When the bodyguard teams had gone offline, that would have triggered a response on their part as well.
Knowing there was nothing else he could do here, Mufarrij ran to his motorcycle, righted it, and threw a leg over. The machine started at once, and the back tire spun for just a moment as he wheeled it around. Then rubber found traction, and he shot out of there.
Thomas Lourds. Mufarrij knew the name. The American’s activities in Saudi Arabia only last year were well-known. Very few people knew the whole story of how Vice President Webster had gone missing and later turned up drowned during those hard times. When Mufarrij had heard the stories from his superiors, he hadn’t believed it.
But now, thanks to all the television coverage, he knew exactly where to find Thomas Lourds. Mufarrij stayed low over the handlebars and sped off into the night.
With Lev Strauss dead, he, the Mossad, and the Ayatollah’s men were all scrambling for the next clue in the hunt for Mohammad’s legendary Book and Scroll.
18
Rage and pain consumed Klaus Von Volker as he watched the news footage from Jerusalem.
Controlled and outwardly calm, he sat at the big desk in his office. He loved it because it was solid and heavy, a prime piece of Austrian woodcraft made with maple and ebony parquetry, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, and exotic woods. It was the kind of desk that Prince Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich or Napoleon Bonaparte might have sat at while planning the future course of empires.
Von Volker did that every day that he sat at the desk. The den was a man’s room, redolent of fine cigars and brandy. One wall held a collection of weapons, swords and guns that spanned centuries. It wasn’t a place that Colonel Davari found comforting.
On the large-screen television set into the wall, news footage showed the wreckage of the three vehicles that had carried the mercenaries Von Volker had sent to retrieve Lev Strauss.
‘What happened?’ Davari sat in one of the bentwood chairs in front of the desk.
‘Lev Strauss was killed.’ Von Volker backed up the film footage and froze the screen on an image. Two ambulance workers ferried Strauss’s body to their waiting vehicle. ‘See for yourself.’
‘You’re sure he’s dead?’
‘With a hole like that in your face, you’d be dead, too.’
‘Perhaps.’
Von Volker sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. ‘We have caught some luck at this point.’
‘What?’
‘The Israeli government has chosen to hide Strauss’s identity for the time being. They’re claiming this was a terrorist action.’
‘Why?’
‘You know the Mossad, Colonel. They like to control information.’ Von Volker shrugged. ‘That explanation will hold for a while before it comes apart, but it will eventually give way to the truth. For now, though, the explanation covers all the weapons and violence found at the scene.’