“I will tell him. He wanted you to know that the patients are remarkably robust. Some of the strongest he’s operated on in years. He thanks you for the medicine. He says he is certain that upon their release, the patients will be more than able to accomplish any task you have in mind.”
“Convey my thanks to him.”
“What is the latest time he can stop treatment?”
“The ambulance will arrive at nine a.m.”
“Can you delay it?”
“It is a six-hour drive to their home. Rain is forecast for the first part of the journey. Under no circumstance can the ambulance travel at speeds greater than the limit. Part of the route is under construction. There may be a slowdown.”
“Why not fly?”
“We can’t risk anyone seeing the patients. As you can imagine, security in and around their home is stratospheric.”
“To be expected.”
“Will you be coming, my friend?”
“Sadly, no. I must return home. My master had been asking for me. It doesn’t do to keep the young prince waiting.”
“I had so hoped to see you.”
“Next time.”
“In a better world.”
“Thanks be unto God.”
“Ciao, my friend.”
“There it is.”
Danni ended the playback and set down the transcript. She was not in the offices of the SON Group but inside a SCIF—a sensitive compartmented information facility—at a Mossad outstation in the hills above Jerusalem. It was midnight. Seated across the table from her was Avi Hirsch, deputy director of Operations, Covert.
“Am I allowed to ask where you got this?” Hirsch was a sallow, hatchet-faced fifty-year-old, a lifelong veteran of the “office,” as its members referred to Israel’s foreign intelligence service.
“A client.”
“Really?” Hirsch looked at her askance. He’d known Danni for twenty years, give or take, had been one of her first trainers upon her intake and her case officer on several ops that ran beautifully and several that did not. “Tell me something, Major Pine, since when do you install your software on a client’s phone?”
“Long story,” said Danni. “I saw something I shouldn’t have. Maybe I even looked for it. I decided to do something about it. I’m not the devil, you know.”
“You had some of us fooled,” said Hirsch. “Keeping to yourself, pretending you don’t know us.”
Danni offered a weak smile. Guilty as charged. She’d declined Avi Hirsch’s requests for help on more than one occasion. Her company didn’t give away its software for free and the Mossad was notoriously tightfisted. “So, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” Hirsch said, giving a nasty laugh. “I think those two men, whoever they may be, are talking about building bombs. Explosives. Whatever you want to call it. It’s obvious, isn’t it? ‘Patients’ are explosive devices.”
“Agree,” said Danni. “I’m thinking vests. A concealed explosive device of some kind. An IED. Whatever they’re discussing, it’s sophisticated and requires some degree of expertise.”
“And it’s being transported tomorrow morning at nine a.m. local time—wherever that may be—for what sounds like immediate use.” Avi ran a hand across the back of his creased neck. “Jesus, Danni, you’re laying a real-time situation in our lap.”
“‘The Doctor,’” she said, an eyebrow raised playfully. “Suppose that isn’t just a clumsy codename. Suppose that’s what he’s really called. Ring a bell?”
“Syria,” said Hirsch. “We were running an operation against a terrorist named Al-Adnani, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. I think it was 2015.”
“Aleppo,” said Danni. “They had a guy who made their bombs—IEDs, vests, little pressure cookers that could take down a small house. An Iraqi. We had him on tape. He was good. They called him ‘the Doctor.’”
