Rules of Deception

“So he gets off,” said Myer.

Von Daniken shrugged. “I’m sure you and I might find some ways to make his life more interesting down the road.”

“It will be a goddamned pleasure.”

Von Daniken poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at his desk. He couldn’t stop thinking about Marti being on the Americans’ payroll. Export licenses. Dual-use goods. It had all the smell of a setup. But to what end? Why equip your enemy with the devil’s handiwork?

He finished the coffee, then called Philip Palumbo. He was anxious to see if his contact at the CIA had dug up any information about the assassin who’d killed Lammers and, as the latest medical reports confirmed, Gottfried Blitz, a.k.a. Mahmoud Quitab. The call rolled over to voice mail. Von Daniken left his name and number, but no word of the reason for his call. Palumbo wouldn’t need any prompting.

The Americans. Everywhere you looked, there they were. The key was Ransom. He’d met with Blitz and with Ji

Just then, he spotted Hardenberg bustling across the floor. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and his belly jostled back and forth like an unrestrained bowling ball.

“Sir,” he called, not able to wait until he drew nearer. “I’ve got something.”

“Get your breath first.”

“It’s about the Excelsior Trust, the one in Curaçao,” Hardenberg continued, huffing. “I had the idea that if it held title to one house, it might hold title to another. I wasn’t in the meeting with General Chabert, but I was told that he was certain that the drone had to have some kind of operations base that would grant the pilot a direct line of sight to the aircraft.”

“That’s correct.”

“Based on that reasoning, I contacted the tax recorder and asked him to check the name of the trust against any recent property sales in all the communities surrounding the Zurich and Geneva airports.”

“And?” Von Daniken locked his hands behind his back, hoping he wouldn’t appear too anxious.

“So far, only two of seven communities have reported back, but it seems that the Excelsior Trust purchased a home in Glattbrugg.”

Von Daniken swallowed, hope sparking like kindling in his belly. Glattbrugg was the community directly contiguous to the Zurich Airport. “Where in Glattbrugg, precisely?”

“The home is located less than a kilometer from the southernmost tip of the runway.”

79

The assignment went to 69 Squadron of the Israeli Air Force, also known as the Hammers. Operating out of Tel Nof Air Force Base southeast of Tel Aviv in the Negev Desert, 69 Squadron was comprised of twenty-seven McDo

The nuclear-tipped bunker busters sat in their cradles on the gleaming concrete floor. The bombs were intimidating just to look at. Twenty-five feet in length, they bore four fins behind a sharp nose and four more on the tail. The B61-11 was slim as far as airborne munitions go. Its two-foot four-inch diameter corresponded exactly to the eight-inch artillery barrel of the deactivated M110 howitzer used in its manufacture. Equipped with a delayed-reaction fuse, it would strike the earth at a speed of two thousand feet per second and burrow through fifty feet of granite or reinforced concrete prior to detonation. Armed with a ten-kiloton warhead, the bomb and the seismic shock waves it would generate would destroy any structure up to two hundred fifty feet underground. It would also throw over sixty thousand tons of radioactive waste into the atmosphere.

“Just in time,” said General Da

“A miracle,” Hirsch agreed.

Nearby, a team of airmen wheeled one of the bunker busters across the polished concrete floor. Positioning it beneath the plane’s bay, they jacked up the gurney and fastened the projectile to the internal bomb rack. Hirsch and Ganz watched as the team attached a second bomb, and then a third. Ganz sighed inwardly at the sight. He was tired of the fighting. Tired of the constant vigilance. He wondered if Israel would ever have the luxury of peace.

“The first wave will concentrate on the newly discovered enrichment facility at Chalus,” he said. “After that, we’ll go after their missile launchers and warhead fabrication plants. Some Sayeret men are going in tonight to paint the targets in advance of our birds. We’ll helo them in from our boats in the Gulf.”

“Tonight?” asked Zvi Hirsch, more than a little confused. “Isn’t that a bit rash? Remember what the president said: We can’t go off half-cocked. We need a reason.”

Ganz crossed his arms. “I received a phone call a few minutes ago from a friend in the Pentagon. A fellow pilot, actually.”

“Who?”

“Major General John Austen.”

“The evangelist?”

“I prefer to think of him as a friend of Israel.” Ganz leaned closer to make sure that no one overheard their conversation. “He has intelligence pointing to an attack against our interests within the next twelve hours.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere in Europe,” said Ganz. He stared into Hirsch’s bulging eyes. “I don’t think we have long to wait.”

80

“How will we find him?” Jonathan asked.

“Look in the backseat and get my laptop,” said Emma.

Jonathan found the computer and turned it on. “Same password?”

“Same one. You know that you scared the hell out of everyone by cracking that code. They’re going to have to redesign the entire Intelink system because of you.”

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”

They were driving beside the Lake of Zurich. It was six o’clock. Lights sparkled along the hillside like a fairy-tale landscape. During the ride down the mountain, she’d finally opened up and began to talk. If she wouldn’t tell him about everything she’d done in the past, she was more forthcoming about how she’d found him and about John Austen’s plan to shoot down the plane. It was a first step in repairing the split between them.

Emma instructed him how to open the software program. The laptop’s screen filled with a detailed map of Switzerland. She told him to enter the letters “VD.”

A flashing red dot appeared near the outskirts of Zurich. The map zoomed in until it reached street level.

“What is it?” he asked.

“LoJack on steroids,” said Emma. “I put a tracker on von Daniken’s car three days ago. I needed to keep tabs on him. The signal from his car is sent to a satellite and bounced right back down to us.”

“You’ve been busy.”

Emma smiled cryptically. “Where is he?”

“Close.”

“Glattbrugg?”

Jonathan studied the map. “How did you know?”

“Shit.” Emma punched the accelerator.