Corsair

Tariq Assad was no Adonis, with his graying hair and single dense eyebrow, but he had a good personality and Eddie thought he could have done better than this rather bovine woman. If not love or lust, he guessed information. She was the wife of a judge, after all.

As the Libyan muttered reassurances into her cauliflower ear, Eddie surveyed the apartment. The judge’s home was well furnished, with a new leather sofa and chairs and a marble-topped coffee table with a neatly arranged fan of glossy magazines. There was an impressive oriental rug on the hardwood floor, and shelves for matching leather-bound books. The walls were adorned with intricate needlework of geometric design framed under glass. Her handiwork, he assumed. A breeze worked the gauzy curtains near the balcony, and the apartment was high enough that the traffic below was a low-register thrum.

Assad patted his mistress on her ample rump to send her back to the bedroom.

“She’s a good girl,” he remarked before she was out of earshot. “Not too bright, and a little rough on the eyes, yes, but a veritable tiger where it counts.”

Eddie and Hali shuddered.

“May I get you gentlemen a drink?” Assad offered when the bedroom door closed. “The judge favors gin, but I brought Scotch whiskey. Oh, and I am sorry for firing at you. It was reflex. I thought it was him.”

“I think you can drop the act, Mr. Assad.”

No one spoke for a few seconds. Eddie could read Assad’s face. He’d been out in the cold, in spy parlance, for a while, and was debating if the two strangers represented a way out.

His shoulders sagged slightly. “Okay. No more act.” Though he still spoke English with an accent, it was subtly different. “I’m pretty screwed no matter what happens now, so it doesn’t really matter anymore. Who are you people? I figured CIA, when I met with you on your ship.”

“Near enough,” Eddie replied. “That’s Hali Kasim. My name’s Eddie Seng.”

“You’re in Libya to find out what happened to your Secretary of State?”

“Yeah. But the mission’s also morphed into a hunt for Suleiman Al-Jama.”

“As I figured it would. His organization is like an octopus with its tentacles wrapped all through the Libyan government. They work in the shadows, infiltrating one high-ranking office after another.”

“Who are you and what’s your deal here?”

“My name’s Lev Goldman.”

Understanding hit Eddie like a punch to the gut. “My God, Mossad. We have information that says you’ve been here five years.”

“No. My cover goes back that far. I arrived in Tripoli eighteen months ago. Tel Aviv suspected Al-Jama was going to take over a North African country through slow subterfuge. They sent deep-cover agents into Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and here to keep an eye on the government. When it became clear that Libya was the target, the other agents were pulled and I remained.”

“So these women?”

Goldman lowered his voice even further. “Lonely housewives of powerful men. Oldest trick in the book.”

“And your work at the harbor?”

“Nothing goes in or out that I don’t know about. Arms, supplies, everything Al-Jama’s brought here. Including a modified Hind gunship they bought from the Pakistanis. It was used in the high mountains of Kashmir, and can reach elevations unheard of for a regular helicopter. I had no idea why they wanted it until Fiona Katamora’s plane crashed.”

“Members of our team took it out,” Eddie told him. “They also rescued about a hundred people who used to work in Libya’s Foreign Ministry.”

“There were rumors of a purge when Ali Ghami was named Minister despite the press reports that everyone who left had retired or been transferred to other branches of the government. This is still a police state, so everyone knew not to question the official word.”

“Listen, we can get into all of this later. We need to get you out of here. The secret police have staked out your home and office.”

“Why do you think I was hiding here?”

“What’s your exit strategy?”

“I have a couple, but I thought I’d have a little warning from some of my contacts. I’m flying by the seat of my pants now. I had pla

“We can get you out quicker and safer, but we have to leave now.”

No sooner had Eddie spoken the words than his phone rang. He answered without speaking, listened for a few seconds, and cut the co

“I have a secret exit from this building but it won’t get us far enough away. I had it in case the judge ever came home early.”

Eddie made a snap decision. “We’re going to split up. Hali, stay with Lev. Get yourselves to an embassy, but not ours. Try Switzerland, or some other unallied country. You’ll be safe there until this all blows over.”

“What about you?”

“I’m the distraction. Lev, where’s the master bathroom?”

“Through there.” He pointed to the closed bedroom door.

All three men strode into the room. Lev and the judge’s wife spoke for a few moments, he trying to reassure her, she accusing him of God knows what. Eddie ignored them and flipped on the bathroom light. He searched through several drawers until he found the items he wanted.

First, he moussed his hair to give it Goldman’s curls and then sprinkled it with talcum powder so it matched his salt-and-pepper. He filled in the space between his eyebrows with a cosmetic pencil, and used a wad of toilet paper and the contents of a mascara bottle to give his face Goldman’s heavy five o’clock shadow.

Goldman saw what Eddie was doing and had his harbor pilot shirt off and ready to swap. Eddie tossed Goldman his shirt and slipped on Goldman’s.

The Israeli agent led them out of the bathroom and into the woman’s closet. He pushed aside a section of the hanging clothes, ignoring the increasing whine of her pleading questions. He moved a rather odorous shoe rack to reveal a piece of wood pressed up against the stucco wall. When he pulled it away, there was an open void about two feet across that ran the depth of the building. Opposite, they could see the backside of the laths for the next apartment. Budging plaster filled the gaps between the boards. Above, light filtered into the void from a pair of dusty skylights.

“This was left over from when the building was converted from offices,” Lev explained. “I found it on the old blueprints. At the bottom, I cut another hole that leads to the garage.”

“Okay, you two go down. Hali, get our car and pick up Lev in the garage. The cordon shouldn’t be too tight yet, and with any luck the police will be focusing on me.”

“If it is the police,” Goldman said. “Remember, Al-Jama is ru

“Does it really matter?” Hali pointed out, thrusting a leg into the opening.

He braced a foot on each wall and slowly started making his way down. His motion kicked up a thick cloud of fine white dust, and his weight caused the old laths to bow. Chunks of plaster broke away and fell into the darkness below.

Goldman had to disentangle himself from his distraught mistress. Her eye makeup ran in dark smudges down her apple cheeks, and her heavy bosom heaved with each sob.

“Women,” he remarked when he was finally free and crawling after Hali.

Eddie followed him, but rather than descend he moved laterally for a few feet, so any plaster he dislodged wouldn’t hit the men below, and started climbing. It was only a single story, so it took just a few minutes before he was pressed up under one of the skylights. The heat in the shaft was stifling, a weight that pulled at him as surely as gravity.