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“I don’t think so, Agent Harvath,” answered Schoen as several heavily armed men sprung from behind the casks.
“What the hell is this?” demanded Harvath as one of Schoen’s operatives took his Browning, as well as the Beretta from Meg.
“We were also hoping to take the brother,” said Schoen. “But for the time being, one out of two will have to do.”
“The brother is dead. I saw to it myself,” replied Harvath.
“We have also been to the catacombs beneath the fabric shop and while, yes, there were several bodies, there was not one that could be identified as the brother,” said Schoen.
“Impossible. The Italian authorities sealed it off.”
“After we had been there. There were still several men alive. Some, weren’t even wounded. I can only assume they were trying to regroup. You have to learn to finish what you start, Agent Harvath.”
Schoen had been shadowing him the entire time. Harvath had no choice but to believe him. “What’s this all about, Ari? Revenge?”
“Look at me,” said Schoen. “Wouldn’t you want revenge for this?”
“But this isn’t about you. It is about your son, Daniel. Isn’t it? Tell me why you and Adara Nidal have the same rowing club picture.”
“It’s not true.”
“One of the men in that picture was your son, wasn’t it? This woman, the daughter of Abu Nidal, and your son were somehow co
Schoen swung the pistol back again, but stopped in midair. Adara, on her hands and knees, was sobbing. Blood trickled from her mouth as well as her thigh, where one of Harvath’s shots had caught her and knocked her down outside.
“I had no idea my son had become involved with an Arab. I sent him to Oxford to propel him forward in life, and he made a decision that could only drag him down. What’s worse, it could have dragged me down along with him. Can you imagine? A top-ranking member of the Mossad with an Arab for a daughter-in-law? I had no idea at the time who her father was or what he had pla
“Justified?” said Harvath. “What did you do?”
“I did the only thing I could do. I tried to reason with my son, but he wouldn’t listen. He actually wanted to marry the girl. Can you believe it?”
“What did you do?” repeated Harvath.
“I withdrew my son from Oxford and forced him to come home to Israel. His mother was sick, and I used that to get him back. When the letters from the girl came, I intercepted them. I had one of our forgers at the Mossad draft a new letter-a Dear John, as you call it. I did the same thing in reverse to the girl at Oxford and included a doctored photo of Daniel with a young Israeli girl. It worked, Daniel never heard from her again.”
“You bastard,” sobbed Adara. “All of you Jews are fucking bastards! Every one of you deserves to die.”
“It is not the Jews who deserve to die. It is your people who must be eradicated,” said Schoen as he grabbed a handful of her thick black hair and jerked her head back. “You know,” he said as he looked at Harvath, “my Daniel never got over her. I tried to encourage him to find another love. I introduced him to nice Israeli girls, but until the day he volunteered for that terrible mission and never came home, he pined over this Arab whore.”
“Whore?” said Adara. “If I am a whore, what does that make your son? He wanted me to bear his children-your grandchildren.”
“Liar!” screamed Schoen as he repeatedly brought the butt of the pistol down into her face. “Liar! Liar! Liar!”
“Schoen, stop it! You’re killing her,” yelled Harvath “This is war and Israel will triumph!” he screamed.
It was obvious, even to Schoen’s men, that Schoen was so consumed with rage he couldn’t even think straight anymore.
One of the men finally intervened and took Schoen’s pistol from him. Another pulled him down the corridor toward the exit of the cellar. Two others lifted Adara and started marching her in the same direction.
“Where are you taking her?” demanded Harvath as he took a step toward of one of the remaining men.
The man’s response was simple and straight to the point. As a matter of fact, he needed no words at all to convey his meaning. He simply raised his submachine gun and pointed it first at Harvath chest and then Meg’s, as he backed down the corridor and finally disappeared from sight.
Meg looked at Scot, who had been mumbling to himself and whose voice was now getting louder, “…eight Mississippi, nine Mississippi, ten!”
He grabbed Meg’s arm and started ru
“What are we doing?” she yelled as they ran.
“We’re going after them. Adara is going to pay for what she did, but not at the hands of Ari Schoen.”
“They’ll kill us. We don’t even have a weapon.”
“We don’t need one.”
“Are you crazy?”
“They probably have a car or a van stashed somewhere up there. We need to ID it so we can get the Italian police on their tail right away.”
The door to the cellar was barricaded from the outside. Harvath figured it was probably the large terra-cotta urn he had seen when they came in. He rammed the door several times with his shoulder, but the object wouldn’t move. It wasn’t until Meg threw her weight in as well that it began to budge.
When the door finally opened, they ran up the short flight of flagstone steps toward the villa and the sound of an engine growling to life. Clearing the parking lot, they could see Adara and Schoen being loaded into a windowless, black Fiat van. They hid behind one of the vineyard’s tractors parked off on the grass. Harvath tried his best to make out the van’s license plate number and soon detected another sound over the noise of the engine. It was faint, but growing-sirens!
“I don’t believe it. The cops! Thank God,” said Harvath.
“No, thank Cassidy,” replied Meg.
“‘Thank, Cassidy’? What are you talking about?”
Meg held up the Italian Special Forces radio she had been given. “I heard one of the pilots come back on the radio while we were in the cellar. I kept the transmit button depressed so long I thought my finger was going to fall off. We were live the entire time.”
Harvath was about to give Meg a huge kiss, when his blood froze in his veins. Appearing like a wraith out of the vineyard was Hashim Nidal. He was ru
The torture and ignoble death that he knew Adara would face at the hands of the Israelis was more than Hashim could bear. Without her, his life and their cause meant nothing. There was no other choice. The Jew who had caused his sister and their people so much pain would finally be put to death.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, Hashim Nidal took the Israelis completely by surprise. He jumped into the van just as the door began to close.
Harvath threw himself on top of Meg. The grenades detonated and the van exploded into a billowing fireball.