The guard laughed. “You are good at Hebrew, but I do not think that means what you think!”
I laughed as well, and noticed a woman moving toward him, waving. I thanked him for the conversation, then inspected the church some more. Monica and her flunkies eventually found me, one of them tucking away some photos of Razon. “Nobody here has seen him, Leeds,” she said. “This is a dead end. ”
“Is that so?” I asked, strolling toward the exit.
Tobias joined us, hands clasped behind his back. “Such a marvel, Stephen,” he said to me. He nodded toward an armed guard at the doorway. “Jerusalem, a city whose name literally means ‘peace. ’ It is filled with islands of serenity like this one, which have seen the solemn worship of men for longer than most countries have existed. Yet here, violence is never more than a few steps away. ”
Violence . . .
“Monica,” I said, frowning. “You said you’d searched for Razon on your own, before you came to me. Did that include checking to see if he was on any flights out of the States?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We have some contacts in Homeland Security. Nobody by Razon’s name flew out of the country, but false IDs aren’t that hard to find. ”
“Could a fake passport get you into Israel? One of the most secure countries on the planet?”
She frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. ”
“It seems risky,” I said.
“Well, this is a fine time to bring it up, Leeds. Are you saying he’s not here after all? We’ve wasted—”
“Oh, he’s here,” I said absently. “I found a guard who spoke to him. Razon took pictures all over the place. ”
“Nobody we talked to saw him. ”
“The guards and clergy in this place see thousands of visitors a day, Monica. You can’t show them a picture and expect them to remember. You have to focus on something memorable. ”
“But—”
“Hush for a moment,” I said, holding up my han
d. He got into the country. A mousy little engineer with extremely valuable equipment, using a fake passport. He had a gun back at his apartment, but hadn’t ever fired it. How did he get it?
Idiot. “Can you find out when Razon bought that gun?” I asked her. “Gun laws in the state should make it traceable, right?”
“Sure. I’ll look into it when we get to a hotel. ”
“Do it now. ”
“Now? Do you realize what time it is in the—”
“Do it anyway. Wake people. Get the answers. ”
She glared at me, but moved off and made a few phone calls. Some angry conversations followed.
“We should have seen this earlier,” Tobias said, shaking his head.
“I know. ”
Eventually, Monica moved back, slapping closed her phone. “There is no record of Razon buying a gun, ever. The one in his apartment isn’t registered anywhere. ”
He had help. Of course he had help. He’d been planning this for years, and he had access to all those photos to use in proving that he was legitimate.
He’d found someone to supply him. Protect him. Someone who had given him that gun, some fake identification. They’d helped him sneak into Israel.
So whom had he approached? Who was helping him?
“Ivy,” I said. “We need . . . ” I trailed off. “Where’s Ivy?”
“No idea,” Tobias said. Kalyani shrugged.
“You’ve lost one of your hallucinations?” Monica asked.
“Yes. ”
“Well, summon her back. ”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said, and poked through the church, looking around. I got some funny looks from clergy until I finally peeked into a nook and stopped flat.
J. C. and Ivy hastily broke apart from their kissing. Her makeup was mussed, and—incredibly—J. C. had set his gun to the side, ignoring it. That was a first.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, raising a hand to my face. “You two? What are you doing?”
“I wasn’t aware we had to report the nature of our relationship to you,” Ivy said coldly.
J. C. gave me a big thumbs-up and a grin.
“Whatever,” I said. “Time to go. Ivy, I don’t think Razon was working alone. He came into the country on a fake passport, and other factors don’t add up. Could he have had some sort of aid here? Maybe a local organization to help him escape suspicion and move in the city?”
“Possible,” she said, hurrying to keep up. “I would point out it’s not impossible that he’s working alone, but it does seem unlikely, upon consideration. You thought that through on your own? Nice work!”
“Thanks. And your hair is a mess. ”
We eventually reached the cars and climbed in, me with Monica, Ivy, and J. C. The two suits and my other aspects took the forward car.
“You could be right on this point,” Monica said as the cars started off.