Rules of Deception

“There are better weapons,” suggested Hirsch with a glance at the prime minister. “Something with more bang.”

“Paveway-N’s with a B61 warhead,” said Ganz. “A nuclear-tipped bunker buster carrying a throw weight of a few kilotons. Something a tenth the size of Hiroshima. The Americans conducted a sled test last year.” A “sled test” referred to the process whereby a missile is fired into concrete to measure its destructive force. “They achieved penetration to one hundred feet. The crater was five hundred yards in circumference.”

“Just enough muscle to take out the factory,” added Hirsch, the voice of caution. “We’re not barbarians, after all.”

All eyes fell on the prime minister. He was an older man, nearly seventy, at the end of a turbulent political career. His reputation had him as a deal maker, a negotiator. His enemies questioned his principles. His friends called him an opportunist.

The PM shook his head with disgust. “It’s always been our philosophy that we ca

“You’re forgetting something,” said Hirsch. “We do know their capabilities. They have a bomb and they’re going to launch it.”

The PM leaned back in his chair, his hands tented over his nose and mouth. Finally, he exhaled loudly and stood. “Once in our history we gave the enemy the benefit of the doubt. We ca

Slowly, the men in the room rose. Zvi Hirsch was the first to clap. The others joined in. One by one, they pressed to shake the prime minister’s hand. All said the same words.

“Long live Israel.”

43

At his home, Marcus von Daniken could not sleep. Lying in bed, he stared at the ceiling, listening as the habitual sounds of the night tolled the passing hours. At midnight, he heard the radiator click off. The old wooden house began to shudder, surrendering its stored heat in groans and cracks and faint, pining voices that seemed to wail forever. At two, the nightly freight passed over the Rumweg Bridge. The tracks were five kilometers away, but the air was so still that he could count the cars as they rumbled over the trestles.

A drone.

He knew that this would be the case that defined his career. He knew it because things like this did not happen often in small, cozy Switzerland, and he was proud of the fact. He imagined the unma

In his mind’s eye, the white unma

In his dream, he was standing inside the cockpit, lecturing the captain that he had no business flying in such conditions. The captain, however, was busy talking to a stewardess, more concerned about getting her phone number than paying attention to the faulty altimeter that had him flying three hundred meters too low.

And then, with the merciless acuity of all dreams, von Daniken saw his wife and daughter seated in the rear of the plane as it hurtled toward the mountainside. As was his custom, he took the seat next to them and gently laid his fingers over their eyes, closing their eyelids and shepherding them to a deep, painless sleep. He was certain that little Stéphanie’s head had been touching his wife’s shoulder.

At 19:11:18 hours November 14, 1990, Alitalia Flight 404 struck the Stadelberg, altitude four hundred meters above sea level, head-on, just fifteen kilometers from Zurich Flughafen. The speed at the moment of collision was four hundred knots. According to the accident reports, when the ground collision alarm sounded, the captain had less than ten seconds to avoid hitting the mountain.

Von Daniken shot upright in his bed before he was forced to watch it explode.

“Not again,” he said to himself, his breath coming fast and shallow.

No more planes would go down on his watch.

He would not allow it.

44

Sixty kilometers to the south, in the mountain hamlet of Kandersteg, the lights blazed in a small hotel room where a slim, muscular man stood naked in front of the mirror, shuddering violently. He was a sight from a grotesquerie. Great daubs of blood painted his cadaverous flesh. Feverish black eyes peered from sunken hollows. Strands of lank hair were pasted across his damp forehead.

The Ghost was dying.

The poison was killing him.

One of his own bullets had ricocheted off the bullet-resistant glass, entering his abdomen above the liver. The wound was barely the size of a sunflower seed, but the skin surrounding it had colored a sour yellowish brown, like a week-old bruise. With each heartbeat, rivulets of blood slid down his flat, hairless belly. He could feel the lead lodged close to the surface. The impact of the bullet against the glass had shattered the hollow-point jacket. It was only a sliver, and coated with bare micrograms of the poison. Otherwise, he would already be dead.

A spasm wracked his body. He closed his eyes, willing it to pass. Already, his breathing was growing labored and his sight dimming. His fingertips tingled as if being pricked by needles. In the recesses of his mind, he looked across the abyss. He saw shapes there, beasts writhing in torment. He saw faces, too. His victims cried out his name. They were keen for his arrival.

He drew back from the precipice and opened his eyes. Not yet, he told himself. He wasn’t ready to pass over.

In one hand he held his knife. In the other a gauze bandage, dampened with rubbing alcohol. With his fingertips, he located the sliver of lead and positioned the blade above it. He stilled his shuddering, then cut deftly and quickly, freeing the sliver. The bandage burned terribly.

Afterward, he forced himself to drink tea while he sat on his bed. He remained there for three hours, doing battle with the poison. Finally, the spasms ceased. His perspiration lessened, and his breathing returned to normal. He had won the battle. He would live, but the victory had left him weak, both mentally and physically.

Though exhausted, he could not permit himself to sleep. He showered to cleanse the blood from his body. He dried himself, and then set up his shrine on the windowsill. The shrine was composed of sticks from a banyan tree, a pinch of soil from the farmland near his home, and drops of water from the sacred headwaters of the Lempa River. He prayed to Hanhau, the god of the underworld, and Cacoch the creator. He asked that he be allowed to find and kill the man who had escaped death earlier that night. When he was finished, he dashed the water around the foot of his bed to guard him against malicious spirits.