“That’s good.”
There was a slight pause, then Catherine said, “I need to talk to you about something. Are you somewhere you can listen for a minute?”
Court considered his immediate surroundings. He could probably sit here for days and no one would know. “Yes, I’m secure. What did you find out?”
“I’ll tell you. But before I do, I want you to understand something. This was not your fault.”
“My fault? You’re goddamned right this isn’t my fault.”
She hesitated. Then said, “The man you killed in Trieste was not an al Qaeda assassin.”
Court’s jaw flexed in anger, but he said nothing. He’d been there; she hadn’t. He’d seen the man kill two Serbian guards, then raise his gun towards the Israeli spy.
“Then who was he?”
“I’ll tell you, but you have to understand, you aren’t going to like what you hear.”
Court closed his eyes. “Who . . . was . . . he?”
Catherine hesitated again. Just before Court asked her a third time, she said, “I got this from Alvey, who got it from the head of the Mossad. The Israelis did a multi-year investigation into the affair, piecing it together from primary evidence and interviews with survivors. They are absolutely certain of their findings.”
Despair grew in the pit of Court’s stomach. Softly, he said, “Tell me who I killed, Catherine.”
And she did.
Six Years Earlier
Hawthorn sat quietly in his room in the Italian villa just outside of Trieste, but inside he was raging against Mossad and Manny, furious with himself for believing he would be kept safe.
Manny Aurbach had promised his agent Hawthorn he would protect him, but like other things the old Jew had told him, that had been a lie.
He wondered if he was really mad, or if he was just terrified, diverting his fear into action, as he had been trained to do long ago.
Hawthorn was a spy, and he spied for the Mossad, which was an immediate death sentence to any Arab. Compounding this fact was that he had penetrated al Qaeda in Iraq and now served as a logistics operative for the organization, and he knew it would just take one small piece of evidence to convict him. If anyone in his organization thought he was working for the Jews, he would be killed, likely in a most horrible fashion.
He’d not wanted to come to Italy to meet with the al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan, but he’d seen no way out of it. The danger for him was that he had cultivated his legend among the AQ leadership, and they trusted him, but exposing himself to an entire new group of individuals, individuals with contacts and intelligence networks who could check his backstory with their own resources, or poke holes in his legend, meant this trip could put him in front of the wrong person at the wrong time.
And just as he had feared, so had it come to pass. When he and his colleague stepped off the launch this afternoon at the dock they’d been met by a small contingent of AQ men from the Tribal Areas, and a larger group of Serbs. Soon after Hawthorn greeted the men from Pakistan, he knew he was in serious trouble.
In the driveway of the villa everyone climbed out of the vans to begin carrying luggage inside. As Hawthorn started to leave the vehicle, he felt a hand clutch his arm. One of the al Qaeda men from Pakistan sat next to him. He whispered, “I know who you are. If you try to run, I will alert them. They will tear you to pieces and enjoy it.”
Hawthorn sat dumbfounded. The other man said, “One of us will not be leaving this city with his life.”
“What . . . do you want?”
The man from Pakistan just smiled. “I am not afraid to die. Are you?”
The man pushed past Hawthorn on his way out of the van, leaving the Israeli agent to sit alone in the driveway.
For the rest of the evening Hawthorn had known he would have to act: either run or kill. Doing nothing would be a death sentence. Running seemed impossible, considering the man from Pakistan specifically threatened to alert the others if he tried.
Hawthorn had no idea what the other man’s game was, but he knew he needed to act first.
Both Hawthorn and the other spy were carrying weapons. Pistols with silencers. It was standard outfitting for AQ operatives working in the West. The guns were both a means at their disposal to fight their way out of trouble, as well as tools given to them so they could end their own lives before they were taken into custody.
The Israeli asset had not planned on using his weapon for either purpose, but now he felt both comforted to know he had a gun, and terrified to know the man sitting in a room on the other end of the villa had an identical weapon.