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“I suppose our friend Ernest has been trying to reach me.”
“Yes, sir,” Declan says.
He takes in the peaceful lines of tourists from here and away, waiting to explore and look at the treasures of a past empire.
“Declan, do you know your history of Lindsay Hall? About the men and women who trained here?”
“Some, sir,” Declan says.
“There were times when the trainers here spent long weeks and months training Poles, Free French, Czechs—all in preparation for parachuting them behind Nazi lines.”
“Yes, sir,” Declan says.
“But there were some unfortunate moments when the higher-ups realized that some of these very brave men and women—they were parachuting to their doom. The resistance cells on the ground, waiting to greet them, had been turned by the Nazis. Yet the parachute drops went on. You know why, of course.”
“Ultra,” Declan says.
“Quite,” Horace says softly. “We had broken the Enigma. We read most of their secret messages, including their successes in breaking up resistance cells. But if scheduled parachute drops had been called off, well, the Germans would be suspicious something was amiss. And that couldn’t be risked. So at nighttime, these brave men and women would line up to board their aircraft to be dropped over occupied Europe, and some of the same officers who had trained them smiled at them and wished them luck, knowing that they would be captured within hours, tortured, and killed.”
Declan stays silent.
Horace says, “Can you understand being so cold-blooded in your job?”
“Based on our work these past several months, I understand it all too well.”
Horace says, “True. Like our predecessors, we have to look at those tour buses and imagine knowing one is packed with C-4 and ball bearings—andchoosingto do nothing. Because doing so would alert the terrorists that we had penetrated their network…and in saving those civilians, we would allow many, many more to die down the road, because we would lose our intelligence source. That’s the cold heart and hard mind we need to possess in our business.”
Then he turns and heads back toward his office. “When Ernest of the CIA reaches out again, wanting to know what’s going on…”
“Sir?” Declan asks.
“Keep him away from me.”
Chapter27
THERE’S Atouch on my leg and I instantly come awake and snap out with my left hand, grabbing someone’s ear, then follow it up with my right hand, holding my SIG Sauer pistol, which I shove underneath someone’s chin.
I blink my eyes.
It all comes racing back to me. Getting into a BMW sedan, the outside dirty and rusty, the interior clean, with fresh flowers in a glass vase attached to the dashboard. A long drive with Rami, another nephew of Nassim’s. Rami practicing his English on Jeremy and me as he goes southbound on Highway 51, which hugs Lebanon’s coastline.
Jeremy…
Sitting right next to me in the rear seat, motionless, with my left hand twisting his ear, and my SIG Sauer jammed up into his beard.
“Sorry,” I say, dropping my hands. “Habit.”
“A good one,” he says dryly.
I look around, taking in the lights and buildings of an airport as Rami drives us along the side of a paved runway, with chain-link fencing topped by razor wire nearby. “Beirut airport?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, leaning forward and turning his head to look at the utility lights, the hangars, the parked aircraft. “Although its official name is the Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport.”
“A mouthful,” I say. “Who was Rafic Hariri?”
“Business tycoon. Former prime minister of Lebanon. Helped rebuild Beirut after their civil war made it look like downtown Mogadishu.”
“So they named an airport after him—nice,” I say, rearranging my pistol in my lap. “I bet he appreciated it.”
