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He went through the motions of opening the passport Rapp handed him, but didn’t even bother to turn to the photo page. Instead, he handed it back and called out toward the gate. Rapp started walking in that direction and a few moments later was safely in the demilitarized zone.
The UN representative proved to be even less interested in him than the Syrians were. He pointed to the passenger side of the SUV and Rapp climbed in for the short drive to the Israeli border.
As expected, security there was quite a bit tighter. The towers weremanned, no fewer than eight soldiers were visible, and the massive gate was open just enough for a man his size to squeeze through. Rapp stepped from the SUV and crossed over without incident, handing Matthieu Fournier’s passport to an Israeli colonel on the other side. She flipped through it much more carefully, glancing up to make sure Rapp’s face matched the photo as the gate was closed behind him. For some reason, the metal clang of it didn’t feel as satisfying as it should. The woman seemed nervous when she returned his documents, eyes darting around the area in a way that initially seemed random, but then took on a concerning pattern.
“Welcome to Israel,” she said and then pointed to a civilian vehicle waiting some twenty yards away. The distance didn’t make a lot of sense based on where he’d come through, making the voice in the back of his mind grow in volume. When the woman hung ten feet back instead of walking alongside him, the voice started to shout.
By the time camo-clad men burst from a guard building to the right, Rapp was all but resigned to it. Balaclavas hid most of their faces and their movements were smooth, fast, and precise. Within two seconds, they were in a position to cut him to pieces with the pull of a few triggers. Unless their comrades in the towers got him first.
The impressive performance suggested that they were Sayeret Matkal—Israeli spec ops that he’d fought alongside a number of times.
Not today, though. One of the men screamed at him to get on the ground and Rapp complied, kneeling before lowering himself face-first to the asphalt.
He would have liked to believe that it was a mistake, but the Israelis tended not to make a lot of them. It was possible that Ben Friedman was still holding a grudge about the hole in his leg, but that seemed a little petty in the context of their long history. Rapp and Kennedy had stood by that son of a bitch too many times to remember.
His hands were secured with flex-cuffs and a bag was yankedover his head before he was lifted to his feet. An engine started up in front of him and he was stuffed into what he assumed was the vehicle he’d seen earlier. There was a slight chirp of wheels as it accelerated, but other than that, nothing. He had no idea where it would take him, but it probably wasn’t going to be the bar at the Royal Beach Hotel.
CHAPTER 27
NEARKESHET
GOLANHEIGHTS
SYRIA
RAPPmanaged to work the bag off his head, but the flex-cuffs had been replaced with steel ones that weren’t going anywhere. Fluorescent lights revealed a room measuring around twenty by twenty feet, with haphazardly whitewashed walls and a rough-hewn floor. The cell he was locked inside looked similarly temporary, basically a diver cage from one of those Shark Week documentaries. The takeaway was that he was cooling his heels in one of the many Israeli military encampments scattered along the border.
The question was, why?
For the hundredth time he looked up at the camera near the ceiling and, for the hundredth time, he found no answers. It wouldn’t be long, though. Irene Kennedy would be monitoring the situation and that meant she’d soon start asking questions. The Mossad had no choice but to deliver him back to the US or face her wrath. Whether thatdelivery would be via El Al’s first-class cabin or a coffin in the cargo hold remained to be seen.
Another hour passed before the only door accessing the room opened. The man who entered was in his early seventies, with a shaved head, deeply tanned skin, and a bull-like build that gave him a mob enforcer vibe. His untucked shirt hid the top of a pair of crisp blue slacks and, if memory served, the .38 revolver in the small of his back. More notably, he was favoring the leg that Rapp had shot him in, but it came off more as theater than injury.
“Hello, Ben.”
The Mossad director patted his long-healed bullet wound. “Hurts me more every year.”
“I should have aimed higher.”
“Perhaps,” he said, taking a seat in a folding chair near the wall.
“What am I doing here, Ben?”
“I’m sorry to say that you’re waiting to be turned over to the Russians in Syria.”
Rapp’s eyebrows rose involuntarily.
“You’re surprised. I suppose that’s understandable.”
An understatement. Friedman wasn’t just burning him, he was burning Irene Kennedy. She had countless ways to retaliate. Omitting critical intelligence that Israel counted on. Opposing the transfer of weapons technology. Dragging some of Friedman’s uglier skeletons from the closet. Or, if she was having a particularly bad day, sending Scott Coleman’s team to show him the error of his ways.
Rapp just stared, causing the man to shift uncomfortably.
“Of course, I owe you an explanation, Mitch. After everything we’ve been through together, at least that, no? And to be fair, an explanation is in my best interest.”
Again, Rapp didn’t respond.
“Irene called and asked me to help you get across the Syrian border and into Israel. Of course I agreed. Why wouldn’t I help an old friend?”
