Jay Hawk:
The Assassin’s Lover
By
Sean Eagan
COVER BY LAURA SHINN
Smashwords Edition
Published by:
Connecticut Yankee International, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-9848288-0-7
Copyright 2011 Sean Eagan
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords License Notes:
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be copied or reproduced in any manner without express written permission of the author. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy or copies. If you did not purchase this book or it was not purchased for your use, please go to Smashwords.com or your favorite online bookseller to purchase your personal copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Jay Hawk: The Assassin’s Lover is a work of fiction. Except for certain historical and public figures, all characters are works of fiction and any names or characteristics similar to any person past, present or future are purely coincidental.
Jay Hawk: The Assassin’s Lover
What Buyers and Readers Are Saying:
“This
one hooks you early. A page turner. There are plenty of twists and
turns and you never know where the story will lead you.”
“…Everything
that a suspense/mystery fan likes in a story. Action, adventure and a
little romance thrown in for good measure. This was definitely a page
turner...as I was reading I kept telling myself I needed to get some
sleep.”
“
Haven’t read a
book I couldn’t put down in a while. Not only the intrigue of
espionage and compelling romance but so well researched it feels like
something you might read in the NYT or WSJ.”
“Action
thrillers like this are not my first choice as a genre, but I
couldn’t put this book down. Despite non-stop action, it was the
characters that lifted this book out of the ordinary. The four strong
women were fabulous but flawed, nuanced and complex.”
“It
was hard for me to believe that a male author was able to portray
women with such an authentic voice. This novel is going to be my
Christmas gift to quite a few friends. Don't miss it!”
“You
will be fascinated with these women as you learn their stories and
interactions with each other. BJ was especially likeable as a woman
who didn’t realize how strong she really was until faced with
adversity.”
“A page turner
from the start, The
Assassin’s Lover
challenges the reader’s knowledge of politics, history, geography,
and culture while taking her a journey of wonder and excitement.”
“The
story line is “clean” white-collar crime, but there (is) plenty
of good old James Bond action and romance scenes in between.”
*All from published reviews on Amazon and Smashwords.
Dedicated:
To the late Tony Hillerman.
I’ll never write as well as you and never create characters as unique
as your Navajo Tribal Detective, Jim Chee, but I promise to keep trying.
Tony was my journalism teacher at the University of New Mexico and he launched
my writing career, landing me in my first real writing job with the Associated Press.
Thanks, Tony
Story Description
Jay Hawk: The Assassin’s Lover is a romantic espionage thriller in which the lives of three women intersect in a cauldron of lies, violence, intrigue and sex, when one of them is targeted for kidnapping and torture in an Iranian conspiracy that could change the world’s balance of power.
When a self-described “little Midwestern farm girl,” flees an abusive marriage and lands a backroom job on Wall Street, she is befriended by CEO Mackenzie Collingwood and introduced to “all the right people,” including the firm’s most important client, software creator, Colonel Rebekah Chayet, a former Mossad assassin.
All the right people become all the wrong people when the three women are caught in a cauldron of lies, violence, intrigue and sex, and one is kidnapped in a conspiracy that could change the world’s balance of power.
The action, conflict and romance in this romantic, espionage thriller move from New York to London, Tel Aviv, Tehran and Athens, even a private Caribbean island owned by seven of the richest women in the world in ways that are unnervingly interconnected and intense.
Framed against real world geopolitical threats—including Al Quds commandoes, the first Iranian warships to transit the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean; and the Stuxnet computer virus that destroyed thousands of Iran’s uranium centrifuges—Jay Hawk is an extensively researched story of agonizing personal choices, individual responsibility and unintended consequences.
To view more of Sean’s work, visit:
http://www.seaneaganthrillers.com
Email: sean @ seaneaganthrillers . com
CHAPTER 1
Sandusky, Ohio
16 November
The Greyhound bus rolled through the night when, eight rows behind her nearest fellow passengers, Britt Jaeger awoke with a knife in her ribs and a hand pawing her breast.
“Make a sound and you’re a dead woman,” hissed her attacker as he shoved the point another millimeter deeper into the soft tissue between her sixth and seventh ribs. Her head snapped to her right to see the mugger who, had slipped into the aisle seat next to her, cutting off any possible escape. He jabbed once again and snarled, “Close your eyes or look out the window.”
Snow, sleet and rain from an unseasonably early fall Nor’easter pelted the windows. It was pitch black outside and, except for a few pilot lights along the floor, nearly as dark inside.
In the moment before she looked away, two features registered—the mocking grin of a Cleveland Indians logo on his dark stocking cap and the unmistakable smell of Skoal Bandit. She recognized that smell immediately. Dippin’ snuff was a rite of passage for boys from the Kansas farm country where she grew up.
Go ahead, dip another pinch, she thought. Get lip cancer and die, you animal.
A dozen rows ahead, the driver, struggling to stay on the road and on schedule, was oblivious to everything but the pounding November storm. The dozen or so other passengers near the front of the bus slept or tried to.
She guessed her attacker had slithered into the seat when she fell asleep sometime after the New York-bound bus pulled out of South Bend. The weak glow of distant city lights flickered like a kaleidoscope through the sleet-splattered windows. She glanced to her right once more. He dragged the sharp point up her ribs, drawing a thin line of blood, and stabbed it slightly into her right breast, which he had pulled free by lifting her bra and pushing it up higher on her chest. “I wouldn’t think twice about shoving this straight through both of them, like a skewer through a shish-ka-bob. That would make a shish-ka-boob, wouldn’t it?” He laughed at his sick little joke, and a trickle of brown juice dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He withdrew his groping hand and spit into his cupped palm three times, maybe more. She didn’t keep count, but she would never forget the puddle of diarrhea-colored liquid in his hand as he reached back into her blouse.
“Let’s lube these babies up a little.”
I hope you die a long, painful death, pig! she almost said it out loud.
The groping, squeezing and jabbing continued for unbearably long minutes, even when the bus wheeled off the interstate, down the cloverleaf ramp, toward the city. Through the rain she saw a flashing three-legged Greyhound on the side of the Cleveland bus terminal—the lights behind one leg burned out. Only then did she begin to hope he might not kill her.
As the bus pulled into its bay, she looked straight at him, and opened her mouth to scream. He reacted so quickly, she realized he had been waiting for that moment all along. From out of nowhere, he shoved a latex glove deep into her throat. A finger of the glove lodged in her trachea, gagging her, strangling her. While she struggled to withdraw the glove, her assailant casually sauntered up the length of the bus and, bidding the driver good morning, stepped off into the irregular shadows cast by the other buses and the overhead mercury-vapor lights. The engine noise, plus the other buses idling nearby, drowned out Britt’s coughing and gasping. Her belated scream, mixed with uncontrollable sobs, was inaudible to the groggy passengers well forward of her twelfth-row seat.
By the time the police arrived, her attacker was long gone. They searched the bus and found a second latex glove near the front door. The only “weapon” found was a silver ballpoint pen with a sewing needle taped to it—the point projecting three or four millimeters beyond the tip. It could not seriously injure anyone, much less kill. The realization that she had allowed herself to be abused without ever being in real danger made her ordeal all the more humiliating.
Hours later, after two male detectives had grilled her, more like a suspect than a victim, a uniformed female cop escorted her, ahead of the other passengers, into the front right seat of the eight a.m. bus to New York. In that seat, she would be in the driver’s peripheral vision. The cop knelt beside Britt and patted her knee. “Forget New York, sweetie, it’s not for you. Turn around. Go back to Kansas or wherever.”
“You don’t know what I went through there. I can’t go back to Abilene. I just can’t.”
“If you won’t listen to me, take this,” said the cop, pressing something slightly bigger than a spice rack canister of cinnamon into Britt’s hand and closing her fist around it. “It’s law enforcement potency, not the stuff you by in a drugstore.”
Britt uncurled her fingers and looked in her hand. She held a black, knurled cylinder with a red squeeze handle that ran down one side.
“That’s riot control strength. Don’t be afraid to use it and ask questions later,” said the cop, giving Britt a farewell pat on the shoulder. Britt smiled and tossed the small pepper spray canister into the air, then grabbed it before it fell into her lap and dropped it into her purse.
“Good luck, sweetie. You’re going to need it.”
CHAPTER 2
Herzliya, Israel
16 November
There is a seven-hour time difference between New York and Tel Aviv so at almost the exact time that Britt’s bus pulled out of the Cleveland depot, Dani Abramowitz walked into his cubicle to start his three to eleven shift. A month before he’d started his job as a computer security specialist at the Institute for International Operations Service, the official name of Israel’s legendary spy agency, the Mossad. He’d long dreamt of being a Mossad agent, but he settled for an entry-level technical job, turning down several more lucrative civilian offers.
All day he analyzed computer traffic into and out of the global intelligence assessment and communications center, looking for any attempt by hackers to penetrate the system. He studied printouts, searched a desktop monitor array and scanned a real-time 50-inch plasma monitor that monopolized his cubicle wall. The job had turned out to be anything but the exciting, glamorous world of international intrigue he envisioned. The days were already becoming monotonous.
This afternoon was more of the same. Three hours into his shift, just as he was about to wander out for coffee and a brief escape from the tedium, he looked at his screen and froze in his tracks. He dove back into his chair and grabbed his joystick controller so fast that he knocked over the picture on his desk. It was his favorite picture of his father, General Yonaton “Yoni” Abramowitz, one of Israel’s most highly decorated soldiers—missing in action since the pull-out from Lebanon back in 2006.
He pushed the joy-stick to his right, reversing the graphic display of computer traffic on the large monitor. Something had caught his eye in that narrow band of “useless” hash or static surrounding the computer and satellite communications spectrum called white noise. The Mossad found white noise very useful. The secret decryption keys needed to decode the most sensitive top-secret dispatches were buried in the white noise spectrum. Later, each key would be matched up with the appropriate message and its content decoded. Twenty-four hours a day, those hidden encryption keys spiraled through the white noise, theoretically invisible to an enemy hacker attempting to penetrate the system security.
“Concealing critical message pieces in the white noise is like hiding in plain sight,” his manager had explained. He equated the Mossad global intelligence assessment center to a bank. Every day agents from around the world deposited messages in this bank’s vault. “Our enemies are very good at cracking safes,” he said, “and just in case they succeed, we don’t put everything into the same vault.” Some of the most critical pieces were diverted into the white noise, which he likened to a newsstand on the sidewalk outside the bank. “Who is going to steal the petty cash from a newsstand when there’s a bank next door?”
Dani had seen something strange lurking in that “newsstand.” Something had penetrated the white noise. He could not identify it, read it or remove it, but the same static that masked the encryption keys was masking the hacker. But with nothing to show, who could he tell?
Staying beyond his scheduled shift, Dani searched for the intrusion, whatever it was. By two in the morning, he could no longer focus on what he’d seen or not seen. He gave up and headed toward the car park and his beat-up old Fiat.
Two major north-south expressways slice, in parallel, through the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. In between highways 2 and 20 lies an archipelago of unremarkable warehouse-looking structures. If the airspace above that area was not restricted, six hexagonal-shaped buildings could be seen clustered together like an organic chemistry molecule—the headquarters of the Mossad. A concrete fortress, created by those highways and their cloverleaf on-off ramps, guards this castle of the clandestine service. Within that bulwark, and the two-mile radius surrounding it, lies the densest concentration of high-tech companies outside of Silicon Valley—almost all of them founded or run by Mossad alumni.
Dani pulled out of the car park and headed north, up the unmarked road that leads from the fabled spy agency to the Ghandi Bridge entry to Highway 20. He took the southbound entrance on to the highway leading toward his small Tel Aviv apartment. As he waited for the light to change, he leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. Just then a limousine-sized Mercedes S-600 jolted his vehicle from behind, jarring him back into the survival of the fittest mentality needed to drive in Israeli traffic.
Before any information was exchanged, the Mercedes driver announced he had diplomatic immunity and could not be held responsible for the accident, but he offered to pay for any damage, on the spot, in cash. There was very little damage—so little, in fact, that if the accident had occurred in a car park, it might have gone unnoticed. The driver offered an obscenely generous cash settlement. Dani quickly accepted the cash but not without memorizing the diplomatic plate number.
He had driven only a few blocks when he noticed a manila envelope lying on his passenger seat. It must have been put there while he was outside his car talking to the Mercedes driver. Without slowing down, he opened the envelope and glanced inside. As he saw its contents, his whole body began shaking uncontrollably. He nearly lost control of the car before hitting his brakes and guiding the car to a stop at the side of the road.
His tremors were so violent he had to brace his hands on the steering wheel to hold the eight-by-ten photo of his father. He looked much older than in the picture on his desk. The folder also contained a two-day-old front page of the Iran Daily the English-language newspaper, published in Tehran by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Scrawled across the newspaper was his father’s signature—no note, just a signature. A business card with Dubai’s 971 4 country code phone number was clipped to the paper. There was no name on the card but someone had printed above the number in English: Call with a prepaid phone card from a public pay phone. Below the number was a handwritten note: Do as you are asked and your father can be freed. Tell anyone about this and he dies, not pleasantly.
Dani sat trembling in the car for untold minutes, trying to regain control of his emotions. He alternated between staring at the picture, the signature on the newspaper, and the note. He flipped the card over a dozen or more times, hoping something might appear on the blank side. Then he returned to study the picture, the card, then the whole process once again.
Eventually he calmed down enough to drive. He slipped the battered old Fiat into gear and eased back into the light late-night traffic and headed for home. He’d gone about two blocks when he slammed on the brakes and made an abrupt, tire-squealing U-turn in the middle of the road and raced back to Mossad headquarters. He bypassed his department and went directly to the Political Action and Liaison Desk. The “Political Desk” is a major department of more than a hundred staffers—only six on the graveyard shift—keeping track of nearly every diplomatic posting around the world, especially of intelligence agents working in embassies, under diplomatic cover, usually as some type of attaché—cultural, commercial or political officer. Once identified as an intelligence officer, that agent would be tracked for life wherever he is assigned, whatever his title. Once a spy, always a spy.
The actual desk, where the officer of the day sits, is buried in a back corner of the large room, right outside the executive office suite of the Deputy Director Political Liaison. Dani zigzagged his way through the maze of empty desks to find the duty officer to ask if he could look up a Mercedes with diplomatic plate CC 22 08 016
The duty officer yawned, then asked for Dani’s ID and why he needed to know. A half-true explanation about a hit-and-run fender-bender with the car seemed to satisfy him. “Oh, where did he hit you?” he asked as he typed the license plate number into a computer terminal.
“In the boot,” Dani replied.
“No, I mean what address or intersection.”
Dani told him the intersection and the night duty officer typed that in too. Then a paper was spit out of a printer.
“Hmmmm,” the officer groaned as he studied the printout. “If he has diplomatic immunity, you’re probably screwed. You can’t force him to pay. Even if the police find him, they can’t even give him a ticket.” He tapped a few more strokes into the computer. “Yep. You’re screwed. It is a diplomatic car registered to the Egyptian Consulate and usually driven by—hel-lo. Isn’t that interesting? That car was reported stolen six hours ago.”
Combined with the information in the manila folder, that sounded very ominous.
“You’re right. I’m screwed. I am totally screwed.”
As Dani turned and left, the duty officer noted their conversation under “exceptions” in the daily log of the world’s most storied spy agency, wondering, Am I now just a traffic cop writing up fender benders?
CHAPTER 3
Tel Aviv, Israel
15 December
For the next month Dani was a near zombie. He didn’t eat. He barely slept. He walked around with a blank stare. He no longer cared about blips in the white noise. The handwritten note made it clear he could not talk to anyone about the “accident,” so he stopped talking to everyone—everyone except the IDC study buddy he had unexpectedly met several days earlier in the Mossad canteen. The Interdisciplinary Center is an internationally known university, excelling in business, computer science and especially government diplomacy and strategy. It is often referred to as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mossad and the private recruiting preserve of Israel’s foreign intelligence service.
“Dani,” she’d yelled, waving a hand high above her head. She smiled warmly as he approached her table. Her shoulder-length, layered black hair cascaded over the collar of her red leather jacket. Her black leather skirt barely covered the top of her over-the-knee Italian leather boots. “You work here, too?”
“I’m a computer systems security analyst,” said Dani. “You know, keeping out the real bad guys and those pesky hackers showing off how smart they are.” He slid into a chair on her right and eyed the photo ID badge hanging around her neck: Seiderman, Heleene and beneath her picture in red letters, All Areas No Escort Required. She was way too young to be a senior bureaucrat with an All Areas credential. With her bangs pulled loosely to one side, nearly hiding one of her sparkling green eyes, she looked like a Hollywood spy, not an intentionally nondescript agent.
Dani’s supervisor had pointed out other young people with the same kind of pass and whispered, “Baby spy—waiting for first field assignment.” He warned Dani that baby spies—even those just out of training—outranked civilian technologists. “Be careful around them.”
She has to be a rookie field officer, thought Dani, a Katsa—a spy runner—but he couldn’t imagine having anything to fear from her. He’d helped her pass a basic computer science course. And she’d helped him with Middle Eastern history. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“You know, just snooping around,” she said with a just a hint of a twinkle that could have cost her a demerit in training. Heleene’s face and eyes were so expressive, the very antithesis of a poker-faced agent, that on her own she went for botox shots on her first free weekend in training. Otherwise, she would likely have washed out. “You?”
“Like I said, I’m a computer security specialist but I hope to be a katsa, like you,” he said.
The twinkle vanished instantly. “Dani,” she glared at him and picked up her sunglasses beside her coffee cup, “don’t ever say that again. I am not a katsa,” she lied, “but never, ever say that, about anyone, especially outside this building, unless you want to get them and maybe yourself killed. Bad for your career.”
Now I know for sure you’re a katsa, he thought. He had been ready to tell her about the computer incursion and even about the accident and the photo. He had no doubt now what she would advise: immediately report everything to Mossad security. She might even turn him in, even though his father’s life was at stake.
“How’s your friend,” asked Dani, trying to change to an innocuous subject, “that woman you used to meet for dinner all the time?”
“I wouldn’t say Rebekah and I were friends.” She put on the sunglasses that she’d been holding since Dani’s faux pas. “We don’t keep up.” She stood to leave. “Rebekah started a very successful business intelligence software company. She’s a gajillionaire and spends most of her time in America or Europe. She told me to apply for a job here and insisted I could use her as a reference, but we haven’t spoken since I went into training. She said to call her when I got my first assignment.” Then she leaned over and kissed Dani on the cheek. “Remember what I told you. People could die,” she said, then flashed the same radiant smile she showed when she first saw him.
His hope for a friend and confidant faded away with the click of her heels as she disappeared into the hall. He was in this all alone.
After that, he avoided her and everyone else. He would get in his car at the end of his shift and drive North on Highway 20, away from his apartment, toward Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Centre.
The sprawling Azrieli mall is the perfect place to get lost in a crowd. Nestled among three towering skyscrapers, the multi-level shopping mall is one of the largest in the Middle East. At least three nights of each week that month, Dani would survey the menus of a dozen of the thirty restaurants and pace back and forth past the bank of pay phones on the first floor. Then he’d ride the glass elevators to the third floor and repeat the exercise in front of those pay phones—all the time fingering the card in his pocket.
He looked at his watch. 2035. In twenty-five minutes, the mall would close. He bought a prepaid phone card from a kiosk, walked to the bank of phones and picked up the one farthest away from the flow of shoppers.
CHAPTER 4
New York City
15 December
A thunderous pounding snapped Britt’s chin up from its resting place on her knees. She was scrunched into a small rust-stained bathtub, her long legs forcing her knees high up out of the water. She had landed an interview in Midtown at four-thirty, and she still needed to wash her hair, get dressed, get uptown to the library to print some more resumes and then to the interview. “Who is it?”
“Is landlord. I vill make talk to you,” shouted the burly Russian through the apartment door, less than six feet away.
“Can’t you come back later, Dimitri?” She never could remember the landlord’s last name, never mind trying to pronounce it. “I’m in the tub.”
Britt hated the old claw foot tub, with chipped porcelain and separate faucets for hot and cold. It sat smack in the middle of the tiny, one-room, fifth-floor walk-up. When she was not scrunched into the tub, a board laid across the top served as her kitchen table and TV stand. Washing her hair bordered on torture. With the separate faucets she had a choice of scalding or freezing. Eventually she settled for filling a sauce pan and dumping that over her head time and again. The pounding resumed.
“Nyet. Ve make talk now.” Comrade Charmski, as she called him behind his back, sounded like he was standing right next to the tub. “Open door. I give to you something of very much important.”
She wrapped herself in a towel and dripped her way the three short steps to the door, opening it only as far as the safety chain would allow. A plain white number ten envelope partially obscured the eyes that leered through the crack. Dimitri had a coarse, craggy face, like Leonid Brezhnev—minus the charisma. He shoved the envelope toward her.
“Read. This to inform you, you have ten days to make proof you have job—real job, not coffee shop waitress job—and can pay rent.”
“But I’m not behind. I paid my first and last months’ rent.”
“I not vait for you fall behind. Ten days or out. You vant stay vith no job, I give to you job. You make plenty money. And no move.”
“You can’t do this to me. It’s illegal!”
“You vant sue me?” he said, walking toward the stairs at the end of the roach-infested hallway. “Trial take three years, maybe more. You could be dead by then.”
Britt slammed the door shut and threw the letter as hard as she could. “I haa-aate New York!” she howled as it fluttered to the ground about eighteen inches from her wet feet.
“You make good squeal,” Dimitri yelled through the door. “Some customers vant that. You make good earner. Da!”
Avenue D and Seventh Street was a far flung outpost of Alphabet City, an area named for its avenues identified by letters instead of names or numbers. Somehow this corner of the neighborhood remained insulated from the incursions of gentrification. Steel pickets in front of the Roaring 20s-era tenements guarded rows of garbage cans and crumbling concrete steps leading down to windowless subterranean units.
It just like Cheers, she thought, except instead of Frazier, Cliff and Norm, the only patron is the Count of Monte Cristo, chained up to the dungeon wall. She never saw anyone going down those steps but occasionally she’d see a rough looking man or two emerging from what struck her as black holes never intended for human habitation.
* * * *
Manny Klein was one of those unfortunate souls who could put on a tuxedo fresh out of the dry cleaner’s bag and ten minutes later look like a rumpled penguin in an unmade bed. Manny ran the backroom operations at Collingwood & Company, an elite, if little known, international investment-banking boutique.
“You can start today. Isn’t that nice?” he said in a singsong ridicule. “Nobody strolls in here at a quarter to five and starts today. Hell, today’s over.” He alternated looking at the woman sitting across from him and his own help-wanted ad from the Times that Britt had paper-clipped to her resume. He was not subtle about letting his gaze follow the line down her long neck and stop abruptly at the V of her white blouse. She didn’t intentionally show a lot of cleavage, but it didn’t take much to get Manny Klein’s undivided attention. Manny was a shining example of a man without polish.
“Thirty-one. You’re kinda old to be starting out.” The wholesome farm girl from the flatlands and Manny from Flatbush could not have less in common. “Oh, I guess that’s not properly PC of me. I’m supposed to say you’re highly overqualified, what with your valuable experience in a silo somewhere, and I see a double major in English and Agricultural Business. I have only a humble clerk job to offer.” The ridicule was not lost on Britt. “I’ll get back to you if we’re interested,” said Manny, getting up to usher her out of his office—a see-through cube, in the center of a sea of desks with women busily typing at computer workstations.
Britt did not get up. As Manny approached her chair, she lifted her chin and swallowed hard. She could see the reflection of almost everything in the room in the transparent ceiling.
“It was more than a silo.” She spoke with quiet resolute determination. “We bought, sold and stored thousands of bushels of wheat, corn and soybeans every day. And we hedged just as many futures contracts on those same commodities. You never knew what you bought in September, and stored all winter, will sell for in April. Think of that silo as a really tall, giant derivative.”
From his vantage point, standing right in front of her chair, Manny had an even better opportunity to look down her blouse. “I hear ya,” he said, focusing on her breasts. What a great pair of silos! “But we got a rule here. We never touch anything with roots or hooves. That commodity stuff ain’t all that useful to us.”
“So, do I have a chance?” she asked, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. “Or is that glass ceiling up there my answer?”
Manny looked up and frowned. “Honey, that glass ceiling doesn’t stop just women here, it holds down anyone who’s not a rainmaker. So technically, yeah, you got a chance, I think, because you’re a woman there’s some law against me saying you got no shot.”
“One shot, that’s all I need, but I really need it, now.”
As Britt walked to the elevators, Manny Klein stood in the doorway of his glass office watching her brown ponytail swing from side to side. The click of her high heels echoed as she walked across the raised floor covering hundreds of miles of computer and fiber optic cables. As she entered the elevator, she squatted slightly to get even with the panel buttons to make sure she was pressing the right button for the lobby. She exuded an easy grace and elegance. Manny just saw a nice ass and a damn nice rack.
Manny would never admit he was a sucker for someone who needed a chance—but he never forgot that someone had once given him a chance, and that had changed his life.
He went back to his desk, picked up his phone and dialed the receptionist at the lobby security desk. “That girl you sent to see me—don’t let her leave. Put her on the phone.”
Through the receiver a minute later, Britt heard the raspy Brooklyn accent say, “You can start Monday, but you’re on probation. We open at nine. You better come in at eight-thirty. You got a lot to learn, kid. Lesson one, don’t ever tell anyone you can start today. You just blew away any bargaining power you had. At least try to make me think you’re in demand, sweet cheeks, even if you’re not.”
CHAPTER 5
Tehran, Iran
18 December
Slivers of the early morning sun seeped through the tiny cracks of the heavy blackout curtains in the Department 36 conference room of Iran’s Internal Security Intelligence division. It is the most secret, most autonomous, most feared secret police and spy agency in Iran. Officially, it reports to the clerics running the Council of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution.
“This is a black day.” The voice at the head of the conference table belonged to Muhammad Ali-Albadi, the chairman of Department 36. Three decades ago, he had been one of the “students” who overran the U.S. Embassy and held fifty-three Americans hostage for 444 days. As a hero of the revolution, Ali-Albadi was accountable to no one except his uncle—the Supreme Leader.
The most sensitive operations of Department 36, such as the assassination of dissidents living outside Iran, were entrusted only to the secretive, extremely effective Al Quds intelligence and special operations commandos. Ali-Albadi had the power to order the death of almost anyone, even a mullah. He wielded it ruthlessly. Only the Supreme Leader could overrule him.
“Our revolution is under attack from within. Overnight, six senior Revolutionary Guard commanders were assassinated, including the head of all ground forces, helping our brothers on the Pakistan border. Our president will blame the Americans, but the perpetrators were our own people. The Guardians fear counter-revolutionary forces may once again take over our country and lead us away from the path of Allah while our enemies grow stronger.” Ali-Albadi stopped and looked each man in the eye before continuing. “We eliminated the son of the would-be president, but still he does not get the message to stop questioning the outcome of the election. Nor do the people. Then some stupid paramilitary sniper shot that girl through the heart in the middle of the street. Neda Agha-Soltan is now a household name all over the world. Our own paramilitary Basiji made her a martyr for anti-Islamic, anti-government forces. Her death has become the most widely viewed death in the world.”
Ali-Albadi threw up his hands in frustration. “What progress do you have to report?” he demanded of the Al Quds agent standing at the other end of the conference table.
“We have successfully made an initial contact, Excellency, with a potential asset within the Mossad.”
“You reported that contact a month ago. I re-ask my question. What progress do you have to report?”
“Our agents maintain daily surveillance. The target shows no signs of having reported our contact to Mossad internal security, Excellency.”
Ali-Albadi’s impatience was clearly signaled whenever he began tapping the table with the huge gold ring on his left hand. The centerpiece of the ring was a large diamond scimitar with rubies that looked like blood dripping from the crescent-shaped sword. The scimitar seemed to slice through two columns. Upon closer inspection, those two columns were the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
“May I remind you, the fate of the Islamic revolution and our achieving the destruction of the Zionist parasite state are at stake. Both depend on learning the Israeli plans for a preemptory strike on our nuclear facilities. They have already inflicted a near fatal blow by destroying thousands of uranium centrifuges with a computer worm. Our top nuclear scientists are being murdered in the street by assassins on motorcycles. Failure is not an option.”
“Be it Allah’s will, we will have a response soon, Excellency,” said his senior agent. “We have presented the target with a highly motivating dilemma.” He went on to explain how the picture and note had been delivered to Dani.
With his temple and neck veins bulging, Ali-Albadi slammed his hand on the table. “Why do I know I am about to hear a report of failure when you invoke the will of Allah? You have nothing to report. You have wasted my time. Get out!”
Ali-Albadi picked up his phone, dialed a number and resumed tapping the ring on his desk as he waited.
“Uncle,” said Ali-Albadi, “I pray that you and the Prophet, all peace and blessings be upon him, will be merciful. I have failed to recruit the asset I told you about. Weeks have passed and we have heard nothing.”
“The bird that is not pushed from the nest will never fly,” rasped the Supreme Leader. “Your failing is in not forcing the issue. Make him fly to us, nephew.”
“Insh’Allah,” said Ali-Albadi. Be it God’s will, indeed.
CHAPTER 6
New York City
23 December
It was going to be the loneliest Christmas that Britt could remember. Before the end of her first week on the job, she began staying late, telling herself she was figuring out a better way to complete her tasks. Actually, she was just avoiding going back to her Lower East Side roach motel where she didn’t even have a real bathroom, only a water closet—literally, a toilet in a closet that had once been part of the adjoining apartment. Her “closet” was a three-foot bar and wire shelf all secured with giant lag bolts that went clear through her wall and came out on the hallway side. Her entire job-hunting and work wardrobe hung there: two black skirts, black pants, two white and two black blouses and two black sweaters—a summer-weight boat-neck pullover and a cable knit turtleneck. A couple pairs of jeans, some shorts, tees and sweatshirts all fit in two drawers, along with all her lingerie: three bras—one black, two white—and enough cotton underpants for a clean pair every day, if she got to the Laundromat on the weekend.
By nine, she usually surrendered to the reality that she had nowhere else to go, nothing to do and no money to do it with. Leaving Collingwood & Company’s Third Avenue office, she’d walk to Grand Central, catch the number Four subway to Union Square, change to the L train to Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, then a fifteen-minute walk, cutting diagonally through Tompkins Square park, to Avenue B and Seventh street. The last block to Avenue D was always the scariest. After dark, she had visions of someone jumping out of one of those basement doors and dragging her down the steps to one of the dungeons. That’s when she’d dig in her purse for the pepper spray the Cleveland cop had given her and carry it in her hand until she locked her roach motel door.
Last night, she’d broken her routine and walked four blocks across town to see the Saks Fifth Avenue windows and the lights of Rockefeller Center, the skating rink and the big tree. A few days earlier, she’d treated herself to an eighteen-inch tree with blinking lights and tiny decorations included. Two days after giving it a place of honor on her combination TV-stand, kitchen table and tub cover, the lights blinked off for the last time, dead.
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, she thought. This would indeed be the saddest, loneliest Christmas ever.
Tonight, if she was lucky, she would have enough hot water for a bath and maybe even enough to wash her hair. Usually she had to choose one or the other. Either way, she would then go to bed and another lonely night would pass.
Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. Anything was better than going back to her apartment tonight. Pacing the corridors to further delay her departure, she followed the lights to Mahogany Row, the richly paneled hall of executive suites. Through an open door she saw another woman working late. She did not look at the name or title on the office door.
Mackenzie Collingwood, the CEO of Collingwood & Company sensed the presence of another soul but did not look up. Instead, she reached under her desk, pulled out the wastebasket and held it out with one arm, never taking her eyes off her work. “Just empty this. You can do the rest of the office later.”
“Oh, okay. I don’t know where it goes, ma’am, but I’ll figure it out.”
Mackenzie Collingwood was startled to hear a voice without a Spanish or Haitian accent and even more surprised to see a professional-looking woman reach for her wastebasket, using only her thumbs and index fingers, as if it was full of dirty diapers.
Britt carried it toward the corridor, wondering where to empty it. Before leaving, she asked if she could do anything else to help.
“No, thank you,” said Mackenzie. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m trying to revise my presentation for a breakfast meeting tomorrow. Why I ever agreed to give this thing on Christmas Eve is beyond me. Damned interest rates and energy costs.”
“Isn’t that what hedging’s for?” asked Britt.
“What did you say?” Mackenzie blinked and tilted her head quizzically. “Get back in here and put down that silly wastebasket. Who are you? What do you know about hedging?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.” She stuck out her hand to shake, not knowing which question to answer first. “Britt. Britt Jaeger,” she said, pronouncing her name phonetically, Yay-ger. “It’s spelled with a J. I’m new here.”
Mackenzie shook her hand, perfunctorily, but did not introduce herself. She didn’t need to. Everyone in the firm knew she was the boss. “My secretary went home sick. Do you know anything about PowerPoint?”
“I get by,” replied Britt.
As the night edged toward morning, Britt grew more energized and excited than any time in recent memory. She was, for the moment, half of a team, working side by side on something important. She gloried in trading notes and above all, escaping from the roach motel.
They worked until nearly two a.m. “I cannot thank you enough,” said Mackenzie at last, closing her laptop. “You were a Godsend. My car will be downstairs in a minute. I’ll drop you at home.”
Just the thought of her boss seeing the roach motel made her stomach knot.
“Oh, that’s not necessary. I’ll take the subway.”
“Not at this hour you won’t.”
“Then I’ll grab a cab,” she replied hurriedly, knowing she could ill afford a twenty-dollar cab ride. “You said you had to be up at the crack of dawn for your presentation. If I take a taxi, you can get home and get a little more sleep. Besides, I’m in no hurry to go back to my apartment.”
“See here, miss uh, ah...”
“Jaeger. Britt Jaeger.”
“Let’s do this! My driver will take me home first, then he’ll drop you off.”
Mackenzie poured two glasses of white wine from the tiny fridge in the back of her limo and handed one to Britt. “Merry Christmas. If you’re like me, you’re too keyed up to sleep when you’ve worked this late.”
Britt put up her hand. “No, thank you. I really shouldn’t.”
“Come on!” insisted Mackenzie, looking at her watch. “It’s already Christmas Eve. You earned it and I insist.” Mackenzie took a sip. “So how long have you been with our company, and what do you do for us?”
“About a month. I just moved here from Kansas. I’m a clerk in Mr. Klein’s department.”
“Manny! My God! Manny is an institution here. I call him our human fire insurance policy. He knows absolutely everything that goes on in this place and has a record of it—probably two or three—squirreled safely away somewhere.”
What kind of institution? To Britt he was just a Danny DeVito twin who never missed a chance to look down her blouse, but he had given her a job when she really needed it. On her second day he nicknamed her “Silo.” When she asked why, he laughed. “‘Cuz I can’t spell derivative.” He was actually listening to me during that interview, she thought.
“He started in the mailroom,” continued Mackenzie, “when I was a little girl and my father was taking over from my grandfather. Grandpa kind of adopted Manny, practically forced him to go to night school at NYU. Eventually he graduated and my dad made him Vice President of Operations, not right away but eventually. A bit of advice for you, never underestimate the importance of the Manny Kleins of the world.” She took a long sip. “Well, I think we’ve talked enough business for tonight. Tell me about you. You’re from Kansas, I believe.”
“Abilene, Kansas, population six-thousand and falling.”
“Sounds like the middle of nowhere,” said Mackenzie.
“I wouldn’t say the middle of nowhere.” Britt cracked a slight smile. “But it’s walking distance from there. Folks say, when your dog runs away in Abilene, you can still see him for three days.”
“Sounds utterly charming.” Mackenzie smiled indulgently. “You must tell me more, but not tonight, dear.” Mackenzie looked out the window, hiding her grin, as the limousine slowed. “Well, this is my place. Where again is Charles taking you?”
“Alphabet City,” said Britt.
“Good part or bad part?” asked Mackenzie. “Charles,” she continued without waiting for an answer, “you will please take Ms. Jaeger home and see her all the way to her door? Please, make sure she’s safely tucked into her apartment, understood?” Mackenzie had a habit of asking questions that were not questions. They were directives. Despite the ‘please,’ her tone left no doubt she was issuing an order, not asking a favor.
“Of course, ma’am,” replied the driver
“That’s really not necessary,” protested Britt.
“See here, Bitsy, Betsy, what was it again, Brenda?”
“Britt.”
“Whatever.”
“Maybe BJ would be easier to remember.”
“When you’ve known me longer and better—” Mackenzie’s eyebrows shot up like she’d discovered a pearl in her Oysters Rockefeller. “BJ? I like that! BJ it is. Where was I? Oh, your apartment. You might as well learn from the beginning that I am very protective of the assets of this firm.” Mackenzie patted Britt’s knee making her shiver at the unexpected touch. Touching had become frightening to Britt since her husband started the rough stuff just before the end of their first year.
As Charles guided the car into the no parking zone in front of Mackenzie’s Sutton Place condo, Jimmy the doorman was already at the curb reaching for the door handle.
“I think you just might prove to be one of them,” Mackenzie continued, swinging her legs to get out of the car, unaware of the turmoil she had caused. “You should know, Charles, here,” she leaned forward, reaching through the open divider between driver and passengers to pat his shoulder, “is not some glorified cab driver. He was a Navy Seal—fully trained in anti-terrorist, anti-kidnapping evasive driving. He is licensed to carry a weapon and he does. This car is mostly bulletproof. That is an unfortunate necessity these days because having my name on the building makes me kidnap bait. So when I say Charles will accompany you, he will do exactly that and you will let him. Do I make myself clear, young lady?” It was another question for which she did not want an answer. “Oh, and Merry Christmas.”
CHAPTER 7
Mossad Headquarters
Herzliya 25 December
Nine-twenty on Christmas morning at Mossad headquarters was simply the start of another Wednesday morning. Dani sat in his cubicle staring at his father’s picture. Three times he had partially dialed the Dubai number from the phones in the mall but could not bring himself to complete the call.
Long ago he had accepted the official declaration: missing and presumed killed in action. It was far better to think he was dead than to imagine him languishing in some Syrian or Iranian prison. He picked up the picture and looked into his father’s eyes. “What do I do, Abba?” he asked aloud, using the Hebrew word for Papa.
He could almost hear his father’s voice from when he was a child. “Just do your duty, son, and everything else will take care of itself.”
If not for his father, the Mossad would never have considered hiring Dani. Military service—distinguished military service—was an unwritten prerequisite, and Dani had served only the minimum reserve requirement, but his bloodline counted. Dani was hired straight out of the School of Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Center. Western intelligence agencies called the IDC “Head Start for Spies.” Its International Policy Institute Research Center, where Heleene had studied, was headed by Shabtai Shavit, chief of the Mossad for most of the 1990s. Dani and Heleene Seiderman were both recruited at the IDC, but neither knew about the other.
He picked up his phone to call her. Yet after staring at the phone and his father’s picture, he put the receiver back in its cradle.
“I won’t let you die, Abba, I swear. I won’t.”
With a tear running down his cheek, he listlessly pushed the joystick to his right reversing the graphic display of that narrow band of “useless” hash called white noise.
Nothing.
“How do you find an ‘irregularity’ in white noise?” he asked his father’s picture. “White noise is nothing but irregularity in its purest form. How do you find a random grain of wheat in a sea of chaff?”
Then it hit him—a technical epiphany—a classic, forehead-slapping eureka moment! The answer was so simple, so obvious that he felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. “Stop looking for a needle in a haystack,” he told himself, “look for a bit of hay in a stack of needles.” Look for blips of order—short logical sequences—no matter how short—floating in the white noise. Look for unscheduled message parts among the top-secret decryption keys buried in the white noise. Reassemble enough of those sequences and they could form an unauthorized entry into the system. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “You would be proud, Abba.”
His personal cell phone rang. He looked at the Caller ID and blanched. It was the same number he’d been carrying in his pocket for weeks.
“Shalom.” He was shocked to hear the Hebrew greeting. “It has taken you a very long time to call. We must discuss the package you recently received.”
“What do you want from me?” asked Dani.
“Do nothing. Say nothing. Go to your home after your regular shift. You will be contacted.”
“How do you know where I live?”
“We know,” said the voice. “Ask no more questions. You know what is at stake.”
Dani left work early to avoid traffic. It took less than thirty minutes to drive to his small apartment. When he arrived a newspaper lay before his apartment door. He did not subscribe to a paper. Picking it up, he found the second section was folded open to the movie listings. Circled in red was a French movie he’d never heard of, in black and white with subtitles, playing at a small art house. The 2230 late show was noted by a circle within a circle.
* * * *
A handful of students, a few older couples, plus a half dozen singles were scattered throughout the cinema when Dani walked in. One younger couple in the back row seemed far more passionately interested in each other than in the scratchy black and white movie with Hebrew subtitles on top of English subtitles. Dani took a seat in the same row but on the other side of the theater. Anyone watching him instead of the movie would have to turn around and look away from the screen. Fifteen minutes passed before one of the singles, a casually dressed dark-haired man in a light wind breaker, got up and walked out toward the lobby. Five minutes later, the man returned to his seat, dropping a note in Dani’s lap as he passed by. Wait thirty minutes. Then use the toilet. If you are not being followed, go to Le Jambe de Grenouille. Sit in the last booth on the left, by the kitchen.
A half hour later, as he left the men’s room, the woman from the back row came out of the ladies’ room, shaking her wet hands to dry them in the air. No towels in there, either, thought Dani as he walked toward the outer lobby. He never looked at her face, only at her flapping hands, exactly as she had planned. She watched him leave the theater, then reached in her purse and pulled out her cell phone.
* * * *
The Frog’s Leg was a small out-of-the-way bistro run by a French-Lebanese chef who’d never heard of nouvelle cuisine. Dani knew of it but had never eaten there. At this hour, the chef was also the maitre d´, waiter and busboy. “I expect out-of-town friends to join me,” Dani said, using the exact words written on the other side of the note.
No sooner had he been seated in the back booth than two well-tailored men stepped out of the kitchen. One slid into the seat next to him, effectively pinning him against the wall. He immediately recognized the second man, who sat down facing him on the opposite side of the booth. He was the Mercedes driver.
“You’re Iranians,” Dani said before either man spoke. “What do you want?”
“We want you to help save thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent lives. Your people and ours,” said the Mercedes driver.
Dani was no fool. “By betraying my country?” he shot back.
“We don’t want you to reveal any military secrets. We know your country is targeting what it thinks are nuclear weapon sites.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Dani.
“We do not have any nuclear weapon sites. We do have some commercial, power-generating stations. We want to insure that you have not mis-targeted innocent civilian towns under the mistaken impression that nuclear facilities are hidden there,” said the man sitting next to Dani.
“What about my father?”
“Give us just a little help to protect innocent lives, and it may be discovered that he has been mistakenly held all these years. These tragic errors do happen,” said the driver.
“You will actually be helping your country and your father,” added the second man.
“You saw how world public opinion turned against your country when you invaded Gaza. If Israel used nuclear weapons on the wrong Iranian city, it would force a full-fledged nuclear response and destroy any international support for your country. Preventing that would make you an unsung patriot.”
A classic recruitment line, thought Dani, tell the target he’s not a traitor, he’s a hero.
“Those decisions are made far above me. I have absolutely no access to any targeting information.”
“Pray that it is Allah’s will,” said the driver, “that some of that information flows through you and that you know how to recognize it.”
“You want access to our intelligence systems?”
“We are merely trying to save innocent lives—your people and ours.”
“Release my father and I will try to find out what I can. I really will.”
“No, you help us first,” said the Mercedes driver, “and if the information proves useful, your father can be released. Otherwise—you don’t have martyrs in your religion, do you?”
“You’ve got to give me time.”
“There is not much time to give. Prisons are not pleasant places and they can always become more unpleasant.”
And if the hero pitch doesn’t work, thought Dani, go to step two, threaten his family.
The man sitting next to Dani slid out of the booth and shrugged his shoulders indicating Dani should get out too. “Say nothing about this to anyone.” Then he nodded toward the door.
As he walked out into the night, Dani knew exactly what he had to do.
He took no notice of the couple kissing in the Mazda 3 parked across the street. The moment he opened the door of his old Fiat, they broke their embrace. As the man behind the wheel started the car, Heleene Seiderman flipped open her cell phone to speed dial Mossad headquarters.
CHAPTER 8
New York City
12 January
After that first late night working on Mackenzie’s presentation, Britt never left without walking past Mackenzie’s office, hoping she would be needed again. At least one night a week, Mackenzie asked for her help. They never worked until two a.m. again, but often until eight or nine o’clock, even midnight. Afterward, Mackenzie insisted on taking her for a late night dinner and “a glass of wine—or three.” That always made Britt feel special. The first time in her life she ever felt that way.
In time, Mackenzie began showing up in Manny Klein’s office just to chat—even bringing visitors to Manny’s department as part of an office tour. The tour route always passed Britt’s desk. The first time Mackenzie “accidentally” touched her shoulder, Britt jumped, like the first night in the car. On subsequent tours Mackenzie never failed to touch her hair, pat her shoulder or just rest a hand on her chair, followed by an “Oh, excuse me, Britt,” while looking at the nameplate on her desk, as if they barely knew each other. The nameplate read only “Ms. Jaeger.” Gradually, BJ stopped jumping.
Though she enjoyed their time together, Britt knew almost nothing about the CEO beyond outward appearances. She was obviously rich, very intelligent and very driven. No matter how late they worked, Mackenzie was always back in the office before nine, often by seven-thirty.
She dressed elegantly, but simply, with exquisite makeup. Her shimmering deep brunette, almost black hair, with just a few strategically placed platinum highlights, was always perfectly coiffed in an asymmetrical cut, like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. A platinum swath, precisely one-half inch wide, slashed across her brow from her part to her temple. Britt had never seen a six-hundred-dollar, two-step “do” and she was impressed. Stunning was not an inappropriate adjective—certainly for Mackenzie’s age—whatever that was. Britt guessed she was about ten years older, roughly forty, but it could be more. Hard to tell. Diamonds adorned her left index finger and both ring fingers, but she never revealed her marital status, even indirectly.