‘Good.’ The lieutenant shook his hand, then showed him the door.
Alice sat in one of the chairs out in the hallway. She looked at Lourds for just a moment, then came to him and held him. Lourds wrapped his arms around her and felt her shaking against him.
‘I hear I have you to thank for my life.’
She tilted her head and looked up at him. ‘I was also the one that very nearly got you killed by bringing you here in the first place.’
Lourds smiled at her and kissed her. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
‘But you’re still going back to Jerusalem.’
‘I’ve got to locate whatever Lev left for me to find.’
‘You’d be safer going back to Harvard. If you had any sense, that’s where you’d go.’
‘I can’t. Lev counted on me to help him.’
‘I don’t think he would hold it against you under the circumstances.’
Lourds just held her, relishing the way she felt and smelled and made him glad to be alive.
‘You can’t go till you figure this thing out, can you?’ Alice looked disappointed.
‘No.’ The unknown was a siren call for him though he wished that call were safer sometimes. ‘But we should be safer in Jerusalem.’
Alice shook her head. ‘Not we. Not yet.’
That surprised Lourds. ‘Alice, you can’t possibly be thinking of staying here. Not with that madman still on the loose.’
‘Lieutenant Krieger is going to help me get my things from the house. And by things, I mean Lev’s collection. I can’t just pop back across the border with those. I don’t know how Klaus managed it, but I don’t have the political clout he does. So, for the time being, I’m going to stay with that collection and research it.’
‘Do you have somewhere safe to go?’
‘Yes. And the means. In order to take advantage of various tax shelters, Klaus put a number of bank accounts in my name. I intend to avail myself of those while I deal with the collection.’
‘You’re a brave woman, Alice.’
‘Perhaps it isn’t bravery at all. Perhaps it’s just curiosity.’
‘There’s a lot of that going around.’ Lourds frowned. ‘I think Von Volker is working with the Iranians on this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the book pertains to Islam, and because Von Volker doesn’t believe it exists. I think he’s just making a token effort to get the book for the Ayatollah. I can’t think of anyone else he’d be working with in this matter, and that would explain the extremes he seems willing to go to in order to find it.’
Alice shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I do know that a man from the Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guard has come to our house on occasion, and I’ve seen phone numbers for him on Klaus’s cell phone.’
‘What man?’
‘Colonel Davari.’
Lourds considered the name but couldn’t place it. ‘Maybe I’ll take a look into him too. Once I get back to Jerusalem. It would be good to know who all our enemies are.’ He checked the time on a clock in the hallway. ‘I’m sorry, Alice—’
‘I know. The plane will leave without you. Go. I’ll take care of things as best I can at this end. You just make sure you stay alive long enough for me to see you again.’
‘I promise.’ Lourds kissed her, then went to get his backpack and suitcase. The lieutenant had promised him a police escort to the airport.
33
‘We’re fortunate, Katsas Shavit.’
Glancing up from her desk, Sarah waved Isser Melman into her office. ‘Come in, please, and explain our good fortune.’
Melman entered the room and took a seat in front of her desk. He used his walking stick to lever one leg over the other.
‘We have picked up Professor Lourds’s trail once more.’
‘In Vienna?’ Shavit had spent most of yesterday and this morning trying to find agents with assets to track the American down.
‘Actually, he just left there. He’s on a plane bound for Tel Aviv. I’m betting he’ll return to Jerusalem.’
Sarah leaned back in her chair and felt her stomach rolling again. Lourds was a traveling storm, full of all kinds of portents, first here, then there. It was most disconcerting. ‘He found out something in Vienna that has sent him back to Jerusalem.’
‘I believe so.’ Melman rested his hands on top of his walking stick and grimaced. ‘While he was in Vienna, he incurred the wrath of Klaus Von Volker.’
Sarah was tempted to spit when she heard the name, but she didn’t. In her book, evil didn’t come much worse than Von Volker. ‘He’s involved in this?’
‘So it would appear. Von Volker is definitely in the Ayatollah’s camp.’
That was inarguable.
‘As it turns out, Professor Lourds has an interesting history with Von Volker.’
‘I wasn’t aware that Lourds knew Von Volker. That’s something I would have remembered from his file.’
‘Actually, the history wasn’t with Von Volker.’ Melman smiled slightly and shook his head.
In addition to being good at memorizing files, Sarah was good at connecting the dots. ‘Von Volker doesn’t have a daughter, nor a sister. So it’s the wife then?’
Melman nodded. ‘Lourds and Frau Von Volker were classmates at Vienna, as it turns out, and lovers for a couple of years.’
‘How did we miss that?’
‘We weren’t looking for it. We weren’t looking for a connection to Von Volker either.’
‘No, but that would explain the German and Austrian mercenaries that turned up dead where Lev Strauss was killed.’
‘And the two men Agent Abata killed in Namchee Bazaar.’
Sarah made a note in Lourds’s folder to tie him, Von Volker, and Frau Von Volker in together. ‘Perhaps we should make a history of every woman the professor has been romantically involved with.’
Melman tugged at his white beard and smiled. ‘I’m beginning to think that even the vast resources of the Mossad might be taxed to investigate such a thing. Professor Lourds seems to find willing women wherever he goes.’
‘We don’t know why Lourds is coming back to Israel?’
‘No.’ Melman shook his head. ‘Not yet. But he found something in that book in the bus locker that sent him to Vienna. That much is clear. I’m willing to bet that he found something in Vienna that brought him back here.’
Pulling up the crime scene photos of Lev Strauss’s flat, Sarah turned the monitor around so Melman could see. ‘There were a number of articles taken from Strauss’s flat according to Strauss’s neighbor.’
‘Mrs. Hirsch, yes, I know. And I was thinking that if Von Volker were behind Strauss’s kidnapping, those things might have ended up in Vienna.’
‘We have discovered the woman’s origins.’
‘The one found at Strauss’s murder site?’
‘Yes. She was from Austria. From her police record, she had a history of selling sexual favors and attaching herself to wealthy men.’
‘A mistress?’
‘If you want to call it that.’
‘Von Volker’s mistress?’
‘We’re investigating that possibility.’
‘Can you bring up a picture of Frau Von Volker and this mistress side by side on your computer?’
Sarah pulled the images from the files and placed them together on the monitor.
A cold smile thinned Melman’s lips. ‘Those two women favor each other, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’ Sarah felt frustrated. That was something she should have caught earlier.