He calls now and again, but we haven’t talked in several months. I hope it still works. I hope he still cares enough to answer.

  Otherwise functionless, the phone only worked to call Ryan. When she pressed the number one ten times, a call was placed to Ryan. She had no idea how a phone could work like that, but this one did. When he had first given this cell phone to her two years ago, she only pressed “send” and his cell would ring. Last year, he told her it now required her to press the number one ten times. She imagined it had been programed to convert the ten presses of one into his real cell number, an exaggerated speed dial that could never be dialed by accident. After the third ring, she got a recorded message.

  What the hell? I’ve never gotten a recorded message on this phone. He always answers.

  “The person you called is not available at the moment and will not be for several days, perhaps a week, maybe longer. His phone will not ring and it will not accept messages. You will need to place your call again.”

  Oh, Shit. . . . Ryan, I need you!

  She opened the mini-fridge and took out a tiny bottle of brandy. Without glancing at the brand, she twisted off the cap and downed its content without pause.

  Not for a week. Is that week up tomorrow or did it start today?

  Linda gulped down a small bottle of vodka as a chaser for the brandy. Then she slammed the mini-fridge shut. She dropped the empty vodka bottle in the trash, and, for a moment, considered throwing Ryan’s cell phone in as well. Instead, she dropped it back into her purse.

  Okay, Ryan’s wherever. I’ve got to deal with this.

  Linda turned the light off, parted the drapes and looked out the window of her room. After a few minutes, she left the room dark and moved to the chair where the man had made her sit. Where he had shot Steffi face on the piece of wood.

  Ryan told her that when things seem to be coming apart, the time must be found to take inventory of the situation with emphasis on what was known. Okay, here goes: Steffi was safe, for tonight anyway. Ryan is . . . not available, for how long she had no idea. The men who have threatened her daughter were scary and efficient. They knew a lot about her and enough about Steffi. That’s what she knew. What she didn’t know was if she’d ever hear from Ryan, if he was safe, if he was alive. Brad had said she wouldn’t see him again, if he was telling the truth about only being a walk-on to deliver a message. She had no idea of the identity of the man who had just left her room. She was on her own, at least for now. Linda Darby against whomever—the world.

  I’m screwed.

  5

  LATE AT NIGHT, SOMEWHERE IN SYRIA:

  Ryan Testler had been in-country nearly seventeen hours. Since his twilight arrival, he’d been on the second highest hill northwest of Aleppo, Syria. He hooked his thumbs inside his waistband like a movie cowboy hitching up his pants, leaned into a rock, and watched the night arm wrestle the day for supremacy of the sky. The day was clearly in retreat, but expected back in the morning for a rematch.

  The ravine he was in, on the Aleppo side of the summit, offered a modicum of protection from the steady wind, but no shield from the millions of scattered stars gathering in the darkening sky. Three times, the lights of what appeared to be military trucks approached the hill where he was hunkered down. Once he drew his Glock handgun, but quickly returned it to his holster. It would be all but worthless against armed troops. For this mission, he would rely on guile and evasion, not brute force, well, except for the moment of the assassination. After coming another mile or so, all three times, the troop trucks turned away, apparently following a road not discernible from Ryan’s position. Before dawn, a Syrian helicopter flew over, but it didn’t land or release troops to the ground.

  As the hours passed and the morning ripened, he moved into the city of Aleppo where the Israeli Mossad promised to provide the sniper rifle he would need for his mission. The largest city in Syria, Aleppo, had been wasted into a macabre shadow of its once glorious and ancient self. Years of fighting and repeated bombings by the government forces of Bashar Al-Assad, the president of Syria, had left large parts of the once proud city in rubble. The Syrian forces of the Baath party recently reclaimed the portion of the city to which Ryan was headed, after pushing out the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The situation in Aleppo was fluid, and which forces controlled which blocks in which neighborhood was constantly subject to change.

  By noon, he planned to be registered in an out-of-the-way hotel in a heavily bombed neighborhood on the western fringe of central Aleppo. The hotel was owned by Ahmed El Sayed, a man who quietly claimed he was sympathetic to the plight of Israel while boldly cozying up to whichever forces were in control. The size of El Sayed’s sympathy ebbed and flowed with the size of payments he received from Israeli intelligence. Ahmed El Sayed was a whore with a different product.

  Before a fast and quiet Israeli helicopter, flying low in the mixed early night sky, had dropped Ryan inside Syria, there was a lengthy meeting on board an Israeli ship in the Mediterranean. The meeting was principally with a deputy director of the Mossad. Ryan was given a full briefing on his mission, and the opportunity to read their files on selected Syrians. The Mossad asked him at length if he knew or had heard anything about a major terrorist operation, reputed to be an assassination, rumored to occur within the U.S. or inside Israel. The Mossad told him the earliest rumors suggested a timeline that expired last week. More recently, refreshed rumors pointed to a new timeline, sometime in the next two to four weeks. Ryan could contribute nothing, and agreed he would pass along whatever might come his way. The deputy director said he would see Ryan again after his mission, at the debriefing.

  One of the specific files Ryan read several times was that of Syrian innkeeper, Ahmed El Sayed. The Arab apparently fancied himself a Middle Eastern Rick Blaine, the fictional character played by Humphrey Bogart in the film Casablanca. The differences between El Sayed and Bogart’s Rick Blaine were endless. As for appearance, the Syrian more resembled Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, than Bogart in Casablanca. Another difference, El Sayed had no patriotism beyond money. He preferred U.S. dollars which he considered to be the world’s primary currency.

  Ryan’s contact in the Mossad had him memorize a verbal signal which would identify their agent in Aleppo, along with the confirming reply he was to say in response. Ryan was instructed to expect no contact unless something of a significant nature changed. The plan, as constructed, was for Israeli Intelligence to make no contact other than leaving the rifle he would need in his room the night before the assassination. Still, he would be under observation as often as possible. He was given no description of the Mossad agent. Instead he was told the Israeli agent would know Ryan. That he should anticipate no contact and proceed on his own guts and guile.

  The Mossad file on El Sayed reported that to protect his small hotel, the innkeeper had for many years provided European women to high leaders of the warring groups—women who wore much less than the ISIL required dress code of hijab, a body and head cover, together with a niqab, a face covering. El Sayed wanted out of Syria and would sell any information or access he could glom in return for cash to add to his escape fund. Once fiercely loyal to Bashar Al-Assad, El Sayed sold himself to the Mossad after Syrian bombs killed his parents along with his wife and child. His family had been visiting with his parents when Al-Assad’s air force unexpectedly and mercilessly bombed the neighborhood where his parents lived. A direct hit flattened the family home.

  El Sayed was reportedly a coward. Ryan was not told how the Mossad knew this, but he was assured it was reliable.

  The next segment of Ryan’s plan called for him to alter his appearance. He would change from a scruffy unemployed man of the street to an international businessman. In the morning, El Sayed would provide Ryan appropriate clothing, luggage, and a room key to a suite in the Carlton Citadel Hotel in Aleppo. El Sayed bragged to the Mossad that he could arrange for the room in true Bogie fashion—without Ryan having to meet with anyone from the hotel. This meant El Sayed had paid someone in authority at the Carlton. El Sayed was not unique in Syria except for his level of achievement, which spoke well of his guile at working the angles with opposing forces. Many Syrians had ragged plans to escape at some point, in some way. Many left every day. As a true scrounger and fixer, El Sayed did not intent to follow the hoard of refugees crowding the roads out of Syria. These people all too often ended up with their noses desperately pressed against a Turkish border fence, or the similar barrier to another connecting country. He expected to leave Syria in style, by plane, to a quiet residence in some interim country, not in the Middle East. A country that didn’t ask many questions, and offered peace rather than the cesspool that had become Syria. He would bide his time, let things calm down and then go to his ultimate destination. His ultimate goal, America.

  Ryan’s mission was Mostafa Astarabadi, an Iranian nuclear scientist, who was visiting near Aleppo to attend his nephew’s wedding. If Astarabadi didn’t show up where the Mossad said Ryan was to assassinate him, his mission would terminate. He would keep the substantial upfront deposit, but the balance of his fee would not be paid. Zero hour was the day after tomorrow, Sunday, around noon during the party following the cousin’s wedding.

  #

  Ryan used the back stairs to reach his unregistered room in the Carlton Citadel where he immediately showered, trimmed his beard neat, and cleaned and filed his nails. After secreting the outfit of the down-and-out man of the street under the mattress, he applied cologne, donned some of the clothing El Sayed had provided in a hand-tooled leather suitcase, and became an international businessman.

  He pocketed most of the cash he brought with him, leaving one thousand dollars U.S. in the top drawer of the bureau in his room. He took careful note of the exact position of the stack of bills set tightly into the corner of the drawer. The direction of Benjamin Franklin’s face on each of the ten hundred-dollar bills was carefully arranged. The faces of Franklin on the first four bills he turned to face the center of the drawer. The next four Franklins left the paper face turned to the side of the drawer. The last two alternated between the two directions. He carefully positioned three pairs of men’s boxer shorts on top of the stack of bills and gently closed the drawer. If anyone opened the drawer and moved the boxers, they would dislodge the neat stack of bills without knowing they had been precisely set in place. Perhaps even disturbing the sequence of the denominations. Even if the intruder resisted taking the currency, an unlikely event, Ryan would still know his room had been searched.

  Ryan placed the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the hallway side of the door and went down to the bar. He took a seat at the bar and, as always, went about looking over the people in the room. Before his eyes got their fill, the bartender stopped across from him and rapped his knuckles on the counter. The barkeep mumbled something that Ryan took to mean what’ll you have, he ordered an Al-Chark in the bottle. After downing his first swig, he went back to looking over the patrons.

  Along the wall, in a table alone, sat a Frenchman Ryan didn’t know personally, but quickly recognized. Henri Benoit, a man of high position within one of Europe’s oldest major banks. Benoit was a man known in intelligence circles for doing favors for those needing under-the-counter services from a seemingly reputable bank with a multinational footprint. Benoit’s job was to bring that business to his bank and get it done. He was the bagman for the huge cash fees such services required, while insulating the bank’s top executives and shareholders from traceable involvement in the provision of said services. With full exposure, the worst the bank would endure would be possible embarrassment and a fine, both of which it could survive.

  U. S., British, and Israeli intelligence agencies knew Benoit’s portfolio of shady customers included ISIL and other terrorist organizations, as well as merchants of illegal drugs and weapons. For this, Benoit received vast sums paid directly to him in addition to the amounts he bagged and brought back to the powers at his bank. He worked only with certain underlings in his bank who knew his orders were never to be challenged. He was a master at crafting the paperwork to obfuscate the movement of monies internationally without complying with national and international banking protocols for reporting the transfers of such sums.

  Benoit was a distraction from Ryan’s mission for the Mossad. Despite that, finding Benoit without his big-city layers of insulation and security was an opportunity he couldn’t pass. All field agents must be ready to adapt to unexpected events. Seeing Benoit was such an event. As for the Mossad, they too, could certainly benefit if some avenue could be found to access the kind of information that periodically flowed through this banker. This would certainly be true for the U.S. as well as other countries with which American intelligence information is sometimes shared.

  When Benoit returned from the men’s room, Ryan had moved one stool to his left which put him a bit further around the curve of bar, a position that allowed him to glance toward Benoit without having to turn his head. Ryan finished his beer and ordered a second. He continued to surreptitiously watch Benoit, while bringing some shape to a preliminary plan to take advantage of this surprise encounter.

  After a while a woman came in. Her back was erect. The color of her mid-length hair was uncertain in the uneven light of the room. She stood at the bar with an empty stool between her and Ryan. Her lips, without lipstick, had rich color. Her breasts lacked prominence, or perhaps, understanding she was in a Muslim country, she chose undergarments to minimize their impact. Her forearms were feminine, yet toned.

  The bartender came to her and spoke without the mumble. “Welcome to the Carlton, dear lady. How are you?”

  “As good as can be expected. My car died.” She lowered her head, rotating it from side to side to express the frustration of her situation. During one of the rotations, she made eye contact with Ryan. “I’d like a whiskey sour. Please make it with liquid mix, not that powder stuff.”

  Ryan continued to look at the bartender while saying, “I’m sure it died with a smile on its grille in return for the joy of escorting such a beautiful woman.”

  Their exchange, intended to eliminate any suspicions, was different enough to not be uttered by accident.

  Contact.

  His instructions were to leave the when and where of further contact up to the Mossad. Something was amiss. Otherwise, this qualifying contact would not have been made. He assumed the eyes of the Mossad had been on him since he arrived in Syria, certainly since he entered Aleppo.

  The bartender put her drink on the counter, and wiped its edge with a damp bar towel. She put the back of her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn, and took the drink to the opposite end of the bar. For the moment, Ryan accepted that the Mossad agent had recognized the nattily dressed Benoit. Israeli intel was very aware of the man and his activities.

  Benoit was about six-three, as in six feet tall and three feet wide. Impeccably dressed down to the black mouse hanky peeking from the jacket pocket of his black pinstriped gray suit. Gray-speckled hair provided a roof over the half-reading glasses perched low on his thin nose, made narrower by his wide face. Reading glasses were not needed in the Carlton bar, but Benoit chose to look over them rather than remove them. His cufflinks grated on the bar as he dragged his overly full martini glass closer, leaning down to take a first sip.

  Ryan raised his own drink, Al-Chark, a local pale lager, while mentally sketching out a first plan for Benoit. Without moving his head, Ryan glanced toward the far end of the bar to confirm the Mossad agent hadn’t left. In the light of the candle on the end of the bar, her well-tanned Mediterranean skin looked as smooth as the sounds from Benny Goodman’s clarinet, and as lusty as John Coltrane on his tenor sax playing Body and Soul.

  6

  At nine, Ryan changed back into his coarse street look, did not check out, and left his room at the Carlton, using the stairwell and the back exit to the alley. The cash he had left in the bureau drawer, while he went out the night before, had not been touched. The bills were still wedged smugly into the corner of the top drawer, the sequence of the facings of Benjamin Franklin were unchanged.

  Apparently, I’ve not raised any curiosity among the powers in Aleppo.

  He made his way back to the hotel of Ahmed El Sayed, who hadn’t asked Ryan his name, choosing instead to simply refer to him as sadiqi—my friend. The file on El Sayed said he also owned a small glassblowing business in the rear of the hotel building. The public access to the shop was around the corner from the street behind the hotel. His connection with it was not publicized. Nonetheless, the protection he bought for his hotel from the government and most of the major warring factions similarly protected his glassblowing business. His payment for the protection was passing on bits of information he was told or overheard from those who frequented his establishment. That and his giving free residence to a small, immodest, and frequently-changing, group of imported European women. Their complimentary rent in return for their entertaining the higher-ups who decided when or if El Sayed’s hotel would be bombed or ransacked.

  Ryan walked into Ahmed’s office behind the hotel’s modest front desk. It had no windows and the lights were off. The man’s dark blue eyes looked black in the muted light of the candle on his desk, his sun-leathered face only slightly lighter. His body odor suggested an unbathed wrestler.

  “I need access to your glassblowing shop. Where do you keep your annealing oven?”