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The man resisted the urge to spit, instead smiling as he slipped through the throngs to the west side of the obelisk where Martha Christiana stood, hands in the pockets of her avant black-and-red L’Wren Scott swing coat, beneath which a deep plum suede pencil skirt from the same designer showed off the shapely lower half of her body. She did not turn when she felt his presence at her left shoulder, but tilted her head in his direction.
“It’s good to see you, my friend,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long, chérie.”
Her full lips curved slightly in her Mona Lisa smile. “Now you flatter me.”
He barked a laugh. “There’s no need.”
He was right: she was a strikingly beautiful woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed, Latin in both features and temperament. She could be fiery as well as feisty. In any case, she knew who she was. She was her own woman, which he admired, all the while attempting to tame her. So far, he had not succeeded, for which a part of him was grateful. Martha would not have been half as useful to him if he had managed to break her spirit. Often, in his infrequent idle moments, he found himself wondering why she kept coming back to him. He had nothing on her; besides, she was no one to be coerced—he had found that out on their second meeting. He turned his mind away from that dark time to the pressing matter that necessitated today’s meeting.
Martha was leaning back against the massive obelisk, legs crossed at her tiny ankles. Her Louboutins glittered richly.
“When I was young,” he said, “I used to believe in the concept of reward, as if life were fair and predetermined, as if life couldn’t put undreamed-of and unacceptable obstacles in my path. So what happened? I failed, again and again. I failed until my head hurt and I realized that I had been fooling myself. I knew nothing about life.”
He shook out a cigarette, offered her one, then took one himself. He lit them both, first hers, then his. When he leaned in, he smelled her perfume, which held notes of citrus and ci
“I realized that life was trying to guide me,” he continued, “to teach me the lessons I would need in order not only to survive, but to prosper. I realized that I would have to shed my pride, I would have to embrace the unacceptable obstacles, to find the way through them, rather than turning away from them. Because the path to success— anyone’s success, not only mine—lies through them.”
Martha Christiana listened to him silently, solemnly, following every word. He liked that about her. She was not so self-involved that she failed to hear what was important. This quality alone separated her from the masses. She was like him.
“Every time the unacceptable is accepted, there is a change,” she said finally. “Change or die, that is the central thesis we both absorbed, isn’t it? And as the changes add up, a certain metamorphosis occurs. And, suddenly, we are different.”
“More different than we ever thought we’d be.”
She nodded, her gaze fixed on the rows of horse chestnuts flanking the wide, perfectly straight Champs. “And now here we are, once again waiting for the shadows to fall.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “we are the shadows.”
Martha Christiana chuckled, nodding. “Indeed.”
They smoked silently, companionably, for several minutes while the crush of people and traffic ebbed and flowed around them. In the distance, down the Champs, he could see the Arc de Triomph, shimmering like Martha’s Louboutins.
At length, he dropped his cigarette butt and ground it under his heel. “You have a car?”
“Standing by, as usual.”
“Good.” He nodded, then licked his lips. “I’ve got a problem.” He always began the business end of their conversations in the same way. The ritualistic opening calming him. He always had problems, but he rarely called on Martha Christiana to solve them. He hoarded her special talents for the problems he felt certain no one else could handle.
“Male or female?” asked Martha Christiana.
He slipped a photo out of an i
“Right.” He laughed as he handed over a USB thumb drive. “All the relevant information on the target is on here, though I know you like to do your own digging.”
“On occasion. I like to hit all the notes, even the trivial ones.” She looked over at him. “And where is this Don Fernando Hererra currently residing?”
“He’s on the move.” He showed bits of his teeth, the color of ivory mah-jongg tiles. “He’s searching for me.”
Martha Christiana raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t look like a killer.”
“He isn’t.”
“Then what does he want? And why do you want him terminated?”
He sighed. “He wants everything. Don Fernando wants to extract something from me far more precious than my life.”
Now Martha Christiana turned to him fully, her face full of concern. “What would that be, guapo?”
“My legacy.” He puffed air out of his mouth. “He wants to take everything I have, everything I ever will have, away from me.”
“I will not let him.”
He smiled like beaten brass and touched the back of her hand as lightly as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. “Martha, when you are finished, I will have someone come fetch you. There is a very special commission I need you for.”
Martha Christiana returned his smile as she pushed herself off the obelisk. “Don Fernando Hererra will be taken care of.”
He smiled. “I know he will.”
This thing with Bourne, this liaison,” Ze’ev said, “is fucking foolish, it isn’t worth it. It will be the death of you, Ben David will see to that.” Rebeka clucked her tongue. “This is what you traveled all the way from Tel Aviv to tell me?”
“I’m trying to help you. Why can’t you see that?”
She narrowed her eyes against the glare of sunlight peeking through shredding clouds in the wake of the swiftly moving storm. They were tramping through the freshly fallen hillocks of white. Ahead of them, the water was a pearlescent gray, as if it were an extension of the steeply sloping shingle. They were walking, maybe in circles. It seemed like it, anyway. Small blue-roofed cottages dotted the landscape. Here and there, men could be seen uncovering walkways to their front doors. She wanted to get back to Sadelöga, but Ze’ev was making things difficult. She knew she had to find a way to turn his appearance to her advantage, and she had precious little time in which to do it.
“I’m trying to understand what you get out of it.”
He cracked his large knuckles. He wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands were as white as a corpse’s. Though stationed in Tel Aviv, Ze’ev was one of Colonel Ben David’s men. That, in and of itself, made him dangerous. But there were other reasons to be wary of him if what she had heard at Dahr El Ahmar could be trusted.
“Out of what?” he said.
“I’m willing to bet that your helping me won’t sit well with either Amit or the Director.”
He flexed his powder-white fingers. A show of strength or a warning? “Neither of them know, or will know.”
She regarded him with a hard, skeptical glance, and he sighed. “All right, here’s the deal. Ilan Halevy has had it in for me ever since he’s risen in the ranks.”
Ilan Halevy, the Babylonian. “Why would that be?”
Ze’ev blew a breath out through his nose, a horse snorting under a too-tight rein. “I tried to get him sectioned out of Mossad. It was at the begi