Wheels up! he thought. Had he left them down seconds longer they would have been impacted by the armored vehicle.
“We’re airborne, Abdul.”
He no sooner said that then he saw the plane descending toward him on an intercept course.
—
Sara raised her hands over her head. As the ISIS terrorist gestured with the muzzle of the rifle he’d held under her chin, she slammed the edge of her hand into his throat with such force she sent him tumbling back down the ladder headfirst.
The second shrouded figure was savvy enough not to swing his rifle around in such close quarters. Instead, he whipped out a WWII American Army Ka-Bar—a formidable weapon in hand-to-hand combat no matter what decade they were in.
He lunged at her—a quick and vicious strike meant to rip apart her belly. Instead of moving back, as he had anticipated, she moved into his attack, allowing the blade to pass by her left side as she brought the power of her combined fists to bear on the side of his head. He staggered against her, and she kicked his back leg out from under him. He was so far extended he could not recover his balance and, as he tipped over, flailing, she ripped the Ka-Bar out of his grasp, buried it to the hilt in the soft triangle of tissue where the neck met the shoulder. He went down and stayed down. What breath was left him was soon extinguished.
Peering down through the hatch in the ceiling, Sara could see the first man hadn’t moved. No wonder. His head was at an unnatural angle.
She climbed down, made it back across to where Southern was dutifully waiting. By this time fire from the gunship was no doubt causing the advancing ISIS front line to fall back. She wondered how long before they regrouped and came again. Apparently, the weapons operator was thinking the same thing. The gunship let fly an air-to-ground missile. Moments later, there was a flash like a thousand lightning bolts striking in concert, the ground shook, and the percussion rang in their ears.
Sara put her lips to Southern’s ear, said as loudly as she dared, “That’s our ticket to ride. Move out, Lieutenant.”
Together, they broke cover. Zigzagging, she led him due north directly into the flight path of the gunship. The pilot must have spotted them, because the gunship tilted left, homing in on them.
Sara began to wave, realized she and Southern still carried the semiautomatic rifles she had picked up, was about to drop hers, when she heard Southern yell, “Bugger all!” from just behind her.
Turning, she saw he was down on one knee, holding the back of one thigh. Blood oozed from between his fingers.
“I’ve been shot,” he said superfluously, but then people tended to say foolish things when they had received a direct shock.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sara saw the gunship bearing down on them, weapons bristling. Ignoring the ball of ice forming in the pit of her stomach, she threw down her weapon, hauled Southern up, and bending down, hoisted him across her shoulders. Her knees threatened to buckle under the weight, but drawing strength from her hara, her lower belly, she staggered on toward the gunship.
And, ironically, it was Southern getting shot that saved them from being torn to pieces by small-arms fire from the gunship. Instead of being mistaken for active hostiles, they were mistaken for noncombatants, fleeing the conflagration. That lasted only until the gunship was close enough, and the crew saw that they were Caucasians.
A nylon rope ladder was unfurled, one of the crew clambered down, took the lieutenant off her shoulders. And then everything fell in on her. The last, lingering effects of the Rohypnol, which her body had been fighting for hours, the utter shock of being held captive, tortured by a man who looked like Jason’s twin, the savagery of her response, the fact that she had not—could not—honor Amira’s promise to keep her brother safe, and, deadliest of all, the nightmare of Jason’s death. She collapsed against the bottom rung of the ladder, sobbing, all strength, all hope gone.
From somewhere far away from the helo’s incessant racket, she heard someone calling her name. At first, it seemed like a dream, and she ignored it because she could not endure another instant of false hope. But gradually, as the voice grew nearer, she tilted her head up, squinting and shading her eyes from the whirlwind downdraft. The crew member had taken Southern back up into the gunship. She assumed he had returned for her, but as he reached the end of the ladder, she saw it was someone else altogether, someone she knew well.
He reached down a strong arm and with an unthinking, automatic gesture she took it, swinging off the ground as he hauled her up against him.
“Rebeka,” Dov Liron, head of her Caesarea unit, said, “sometimes even you require a bit of help.”
And, leaning heavily on him, she climbed rung by rung up the ladder.
—
Bourne banked the jet hard over left. The other plane banked right, but Bourne could tell that with him ascending and the other descending they were too close: their wingtips would come at each other like crossed swords, sending both aircraft pinwheeling, plunging into the ground.
“What’s happening up there?” Aziz said in his ear. “We’re clear of the runway at least.”
Bourne had no time to answer. He stood Abdul’s jet on its left wing, so the aircraft was perpendicular to the ground. A moment later, the other plane flashed by, a near miss—too near, by far.
“Allah preserve us!” Aziz said, and then in a stricken voice, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Calm yourself, Abdul. The worst is over. Just sit tight for a few more minutes.” Bourne kept the plane in a steep climb, leaving all that was of danger to them behind. Gradually, he brought the aircraft back to level.
For some time, he heard nothing but the plane around him, which was, in itself, reassuring. It’s when you didn’t hear sound, when you didn’t hit air pockets, that you knew it was time to be concerned.
“Abdul, have you worked out our flight plan?” he called. “I have an initial heading, but it won’t be long before I’ll need a definite waypoint.”
Not long after, Abdul appeared. His face was chalk-white and his legs appeared rubbery. “This is not the sort of flight to which I’ve grown accustomed.”
“Couldn’t be helped.” Bourne indicated the fold-down jump seat. “Take a pew.”
“Where’s my prayer rug when I need it?” Aziz said mournfully as he settled his buttocks on the narrow seat. Then he shook his head. “What d’you think happened, Jason?”
“One of the three bank directors I saw today must have called the wrong people—for us, anyway.”
“Any idea which one?”
Bourne took the flight chart his friend had painstakingly written out, adjusted the heading accordingly. “My money’s on Mr. Gebre Tesfey, but it doesn’t matter who made the call. What interests me is who he called.”
“Any thoughts on that score?” Aziz inquired.
“That’s the problem,” Bourne replied. “I’ve got too many.”
53
Angelmaker they called her, and Angelmaker she was. It was Timur Savasin, the first minister himself, sitting beside her in the commercial airliner, who had dubbed her, much as a king dubs a knight for extraordinary services rendered, and in so doing gave rise to a legend.
When Timur Savasin advised the Angelmaker of a commission, he asked her to “take care” of the offending creature, much as a supervisor would dispatch a nanny to an upper-class family home. Her bones were made—in literal fashion—when she took care of an avaricious up-and-coming silovik who had become something of a thorn in Timur Savasin’s side. She lured this know-it-all into a honey trap, in the parlance of the shadow world, to a dacha away from the center of Moscow Savasin used for such purposes, fed him poison in glasses of champagne he guzzled after liberally availing himself of her considerable charms. The poison, part of an apothecary of more than five hundred it was believed the Angelmaker concocted herself, literally melted the skin and flesh off the offending creature’s bones.
“Pig,” was all she said when Timur Savasin arriv
ed to drink in the successful outcome of her commission. And then she took the first minister right there on the dacha carpet, riding him bare-chested, very much like the Sovereign riding his horse.
Now, in the midst of a different kind of commission, she was an entirely different person. She was, in fact, the very paradigm of a major modern executive, clad in an oyster-gray Armani silk suit, sensible, low-heeled shoes, and a chiffon scarf tied loosely around her neck. Her hair, which in other circumstances could turn into a wild mane, was pinned sleekly back into a prim and proper bun. She wore diamond studs in her pierced ears and a simple gold wedding band on the third finger of her left hand. She was subtly made up to look a decade older than her real age, and almost plain. She had, in short, dialed down her natural charms to a bare minimum.
For his part, the first minister was attired casually but ever so elegantly, freshly shaved, the skin of his cheeks pink, his hair recently cut and coiffed in the European manner. He wore a matching wedding band. Were they president and vice president of a prestigious conglomerate? Husband and wife? Who could say? No one, as it happened, because no one gave them so much as a second look.
Her current commission was one she carried out each time the first minister traveled abroad on business that was not strictly official. On these infrequent trips there was no alarmingly large posse dictated by the Federation trailing after him. She was his sole companion, bodyguard, assassin. He would trust no one else, not even his string of seconds-in-command, to both guard his life and his secrets. Sadly, in this increasingly complex world, one had to trust someone, sometime. Given that, Timur Savasin had chosen someone who was not only supremely adept in all matters relating to coaxing death out of even the most hairy situations, but whose allegiance was never in question. Years ago, before she had become the Angelmaker, but after he had assured himself that her potential would eventually be fulfilled to his satisfaction, the first minister had done the Angelmaker a service of such desperate consequence to her that he was assured beyond any shadow of a doubt that she was, body and soul, bound to him for life.
The little chime rang out in the interior of the aircraft and the pilot came on advising them to stow away their tray tables and return their seats to the upright position and telling them that they would be landing in Nicosia, Cyprus, in twenty minutes. Then he announced the local time, and both the Angelmaker and the first minister adjusted their wristwatches accordingly.
—
It seemed altogether appropriate that their first meal in Nicosia should be at a restaurant along the Murder Mile, otherwise known as Ledra Street, for centuries the city’s main shopping and eating thoroughfare that ran north-south through the walled Old City. The street got its nickname in the latter half of the 1950s, when colonialists were often shot to death here by nationalist fighters seeking to end the British rule.
Today, in the blue-gold coolness of the Mediterranean early evening, the former Murder Mile was as calm and serene as a bustling concourse could be. Even though indigenous businesses were in the process of being overrun by Starbucks, McDonald’s, surf shops, and all other manner of Americana exported to the world, which Muslim extremists of every stripe bitterly resented and fought against, Ledra Street still retained its distinctly Cypriot flavor. As in most all of Cyprus, particularly in the often disputed north, the mark of the Turk was in evidence almost everywhere.
Every country had its battles, Timur Savasin thought as he savored a retsina, its piney resin taste bitter-tart on his tongue. In Cyprus it was the Turks who engendered animus among the fiercely independent locals.
They had gone directly to their hotel from the airport, checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Blaine, of the Sussex Blaines, unpacked, showered, dressed in more casual clothes, as befitted the Cypriot lifestyle, and then sought out a restaurant that had been recommended to the Angelmaker. By whom, Timur Savasin did not know, but since all her recommendations turned out to be stellar, their origins were of no interest to him.
Opposite him, the Angelmaker had eyes only for the pedestrians on the street, the shadowed doorways, the windows that had the best sight lines to their outdoor table, which the first minister had insisted on taking, rather than one indoors, which she had wisely advised.
“There is a time for prudence,” he had told her, “and a time for living life.”
“I suggest the former,” the Angelmaker said in her peculiarly clipped speech, “so you can enjoy the latter.”
The first minister smiled, raised his glass of retsina, touching the rim to her glass of tonic water. “Well, just this once, let us enjoy life together as if we were part of the real world.”
“I have a job to do,” the Angelmaker said. “Please allow me to do it.”
“Hmmm.” Timur Savasin sipped his resiny wine without enjoying it in the least. How could people drink this swill? he asked himself. Calling a waiter over, he placed his glass on the tray, and ordered a pair of triple vodkas on the rocks. In the meantime, he lit a cigarette, drew the smoke deep into his lungs.
“One hour,” he said to his companion. “Is that so much to ask?”
The Angelmaker hesitated for just a moment, then she smiled. Something magical happened to her face when she smiled—what had been deeply, inarguably erotic became irresistible. Though it could never be said of the Angelmaker that she was unaware of her sexual allure, she was never bound to it. Her radiance was entirely effortless, and therefore all the more potent.
“Like a vacation?” she asked.
He nodded. “Like a vacation.”
The vodka came, as icy as he liked it, and they toasted again, this time to their sixty-minute vacation, whatever that might entail besides food and a proper Russian drink. Not that the Angelmaker was Russian. She was, in fact, Estonian, a member of a people whose strange and vaguely unsettling language was entirely opaque to him. Much like the Angelmaker herself. Which he believed was part of her allure. He was aware of only one small sliver of her past, the one he was able to mend for her. Perhaps he could have discovered more had he put his people to work. But he found the thought of others pawing through her intensely private past intolerable. Besides, she was part of his own intensely private life. Anything discovered about her would inevitably lead to him. And so these two remained as sun and moon, a binary system whose components were destined to be neither reconciled nor happy, circling one another in the secretive fastness of the Federation firmament.
Timur Savasin allowed her to order for them; this restaurant was, after all, her recommendation. The quality of the food was her responsibility. With their meal ordered, he said, “How’s Liis?”
“You know perfectly well how Liis is.”
“Of course. I have someone watching her day and night.” He smiled. “But there is some news I prefer to hear from someone who loves her above all others.”
She regarded him for a moment—one of her patented enigmatic expressions that so thrilled him. Until the Angelmaker, he had never met a woman he found unfathomable.
“She’s just been made soloist in the Company.” She meant the New York City Ballet.
“I imagine congratulations are in order.”
The Angelmaker laughed, and it was like sleigh bells in the snow of a Christmas morning. “If you mean the three dozen pairs of toe shoes and the bouquet of red roses you sent, I believe you’ve already taken care of that.”
“I’m proud of her.”
“You sent the gifts in my name.”
“What of it?”
“You don’t know?”
“It was an altruistic gesture.”
“No,” the Angelmaker said. “It was egotistical. ‘From your loving sister.’ She read me the card.”
“Why did she do that?”
“Because it didn’t sound like me.”
“She could tell that just from that one short sentence.”
“You were an only child, weren’t you?” She sat back, eyed him again as their food, a deluge of little plates, cold and hot, all fr
agrant, was set down in front of them.
He smirked, nothing more than a defense. She had his number—why couldn’t he get a handle on hers? “I know from experience that gifts don’t always make you angry.”
She took up a fork, speared a bit of octopus ceviche. “I’m not angry. Disappointed, perhaps.”
He was genuinely at sea. “By what?”
“That you didn’t tell Liis who the gifts were from. She would have appreciated—”
“I don’t want her thanks,” he said a bit too coldly.
“I already conveyed her thanks.”
“You never should have told her about me.”
“Not tell her about the man who rescued her from the Albanian mob? Who got her psychiatric help for the anguish those fucks put her through—”
“Those fucks, as you so colorfully put it, are no longer among the living.”
“It was important for Liis to know that. It would have meant the world to her to meet you.”
“We’ve been down this road too many times,” the first minister said. “What I did… It was personal, part of my other life only you are privy to.”
“Fine,” she said. “She knows who sent her the toe shoes and the flowers. She’s very grateful.”
He said nothing for a time. There was a point, at the very beginning, when rescuing the Angelmaker’s younger sister was nothing more than a means to an end, but latterly he had come to realize that Liis’s continued well-being contained meaning for him—meaning he never suspected would exist. He wondered about this, just as he wondered what the Angelmaker was to him. Her official duties were simple enough, but then there was the hidden side, as if she were a human black op.
Thoughts like these caused him to pick at his food. He didn’t like any of it, especially the octopus ceviche she seemed so fond of. His mouth watered for a steak, thick and bloody, or, failing that, a rack of veal.
“You don’t like that kind of attention, do you?” the Angelmaker said.