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“Thank you.” Isphording pumped her hand. “And my wife? What about Kara?”
“Another team is fetching her now,” the woman called Ludmilla replied.
“Thank you,” the lawyer repeated. “I thank all of you for saving me.”
“You were not harmed?” Ludmilla asked as Isphording followed her out of the trailer. Linc had placed a stepladder at the rear door to make it easier for him.
“No. I am fine. A little frightened perhaps. Until you came on Friday I had no idea the Palestinians were after me. I’m grateful to you all.”
Julia gave him a smile. “You have Mr. Savich to thank. We are just doing as he ordered.”
“I knew he’s a powerful man, but I had no idea he could arrange something like this.”
“Here we are,” Ludmilla announced.
The office was spartan, just a couple of desks and filing cabinets and a worn vinyl couch under a frosted glass window. The floors were scuffed linoleum, and the room smelled of cigarettes. Curtains were drawn over the large piece of plate glass that overlooked the warehouse floor. Isphording collapsed onto the couch and accepted the bottle of water Ludmilla handed him.
A few minutes later Yuri Zayysev strode into the office. He’d left his machine pistol out in the warehouse, but he’d belted a holster around his lean waist.
“What happens now, Herr Zayysev?” Isphording asked.
“We’re waiting for some more of my people, and then we are leaving. The man who drove the truck thinks he might have been followed, so we’re hurrying our schedule. We don’t know if the Palestinians are on to us or not.”
“They haven’t operated outside the Middle East in years,” Isphording said. “They must truly be desperate.”
“A lot of money is unaccounted for since Yasir Arafat’s death,” Zayysev countered, “enough to make anyone desperate.”
The lawyer was about to reply when everyone jumped at a crash outside in the warehouse. A second later came the unmistakable sound of silenced weapons fire. One of Zayysev’s men gave a choking scream that was cut off by another burst of gunfire. Zayysev tore his pistol from its holster and racked the slide. “Stay here,” he ordered Ludmilla. He crossed to the open door, keeping low. More gunfire echoed outside. He eased around the jamb, his pistol outstretched, probing. He cursed and fired four rounds to clear a way out of the office. Taking a cautious step out, he fired again at a dark shape running behind the semi. He turned to give Ludmilla another order when he was caught by a sustained and brutal burst of autofire that stitched him from knee to chest. The impact of a half-dozen rounds blew him back into the office, where he fell crumpled against a desk. His chest was a mass of blood.
The plate glass window overlooking the warehouse exploded in a rain of silenced gunfire. Bullets impacted all around the room, sparking off the metal furniture and tearing gouges from the cheap paneling. With the reactions of a cat, Ludmilla threw her body over Isphording, shielding him until she could unholster her own weapon. She twisted off him as a figure loomed in the shattered window frame. Around his face the gunman had wound a checked kaffiyeh like those favored by Palestinians. He spotted Ludmilla and raised his assault rifle to his shoulder. She fired first, and Isphording saw the Arab’s head literally come apart. Blood and pink clots of brain matter sprayed the wall next to him in an obscene Rorschach ink blot. Another Muslim gunman took his place and raked the office with his assault rife. A chunk of Ludmilla’s arm was blown off, and then she caught two more rounds to the stomach. She managed a low keen of pain as she fell to the dirty linoleum surrounded by a spreading lake of her own blood.
The attack had been so lightning fast and savage that Isphording was too stunned to move. The smell of blood and gunpowder overwhelmed the small office. The attacker, who must have been the one that killed Zayssev, entered the room. He stepped over to Ludmilla’s crumpled body, using a foot to turn her corpse so he could better see her wounds. “Nice shooting, Mohammad,” he said in Arabic to the gunman at the window. The terrorist leader unwound the kaffiyeh from his face and glanced at Isphording. His features were sharp and dangerous, and his dark eyes blazed with hatred. “I know you speak my language,” he said to Isphording, continuing in Arabic. “You did work for the late Chairman Arafat, hiding money that should have been spent fighting the Americans and the Jews.”
“The others are all dead, Rafik,” Mohammad reported from outside the office. “The building is ours.”
“Did I not tell you someone would try to free this pig from prison?” Rafik gave Isphording such a superior leer that the lawyer couldn’t stop his bladder from releasing. “All we had to do was wait.”
Rafik snicked open a switchblade knife, its keen edge glinting in the fluorescent light. “Now, let’s talk about the money.”
17
RUDOLPH Isphording never gave much thought to the people whose money he laundered. He’d insulated himself from his clients so they were nothing more than pass codes on bank account ledgers or vague signatures on legal documents. He had always considered himself a numbers man, a person most comfortable behind a desk protected by a paper fortress. Now the evidence of what he’d done was sprayed across the walls of the office and pooled under Ludmilla’s body. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the carnage that had been Yuri Zayysev’s chest.
Rafik had been called out to the warehouse before asking the lawyer any questions. Mohammad watched him from the office doorway, his eyes looking like chips of obsidian. Isphording could see that the Palestinians were maneuvering a ramp to the back of the trailer to unload the armored van. The Russians who’d snatched him had taken great pains to make sure no one had been injured or killed. He felt certain that Rafik and his thugs wouldn’t be so scrupulous. Isphording’s entire body trembled like he was in the grip of an epileptic seizure.
The terrorist leader called out for Mohammad to join him for a moment. He pinned Isphording with a menacing glare and stepped out onto the warehouse floor.
Minutes crawled by, allowing the lawyer’s fears to kaleidoscope in ever more horrifying thoughts, so when the sound penetrated his mind, he wasn’t sure what he heard. It sounded like someone was calling his name, but the voice was distorted and wheezy, like they were a great distance away or it was coming from a dream. He turned his eyes toward the doorway. No one was there. He looked around the room. Ludmilla lay faceup, her clothes sodden with blood.
“Isphording.”
He heard it again, and had he not been turning his head to check on Zayysev he never would have believed the Russian’s lips had moved. By some miracle Zayysev was still alive. He was ghostly white, and blood continued to drool down his chest like crimson molasses. Isphording felt hope surge inside him like a dose of adrenaline.
“Keep them talking,” Zayysev mumbled, his eyes flickering from shock.
“What?” the lawyer whispered urgently. Mohammad or Rafik could be back any second.
“Tell them anything they ask. Just keep them talking.” Zayysev’s voice was so faint Isphording had to cup a hand to his ear and tilt his head to hear him.
