Ten minutes earlier he’d been facing an unknown spell in prison—a week, a month, the rest of his life. He’d been separated once more from the woman he loved. More importantly, he’d lost any chance to stop what was coming: the detonation of a nuclear device at the Palace of Versailles. Now, in the blink of an eye, all that was behind him. He was a free man. All charges against him had been dropped (provisionally, at least). He’d been told that Ava was to be freed as well. But he felt no closer to doing what had to be done.
“Can I have a word?” asked Mac, pulling Jane aside before anyone could say no.
“Sure. What is it?”
Jane was nearly as tall as him, blond, blue eyed, and nearly as fit. She’d dropped twenty pounds since he’d last seen her. Her cheeks had hollowed, her gaze lost its warmth. Dressed in a tailored black suit, crisp blouse, she looked every bit the agent on the rise. He knew her future, and he didn’t like it. “Spill,” he said. “What are you doing here? I want it all.Please.”
Jane stepped closer, eyeing him warily, as if measuring what to tell him. “Ava contacted me in August.”
“August,” said Mac. “That’s two months ago.”
“It goes back farther than that,” said Jane.
“How far?”
“March, I believe.”
“Ava’s known about this since March?” said Mac.
Jane nodded. “Not all of it, but the beginnings.”
Mac winced. He couldn’t help it. March? His breath left him, and he experienced a wave of dizziness. He wasn’t sure what surprised him more: how terribly hurt he felt or how he could have missed it. “She never said anything.”
“She couldn’t,” said Jane. “She knew you.”
“That I’d want to help,” said Mac.
“That you’d jeopardize everything you have together. Your new life. Your freedom. Katya. She thought you’d gotten off light the last time. Odds were against that happening again.”
Mac set aside his feelings—his anger, his humiliation, the damage to his fragile male ego—to consider this. More true than false, he decided. He had gotten off light.Even so ...“You said ‘the beginnings.’ Give me the rest.”
Jane laid out the story, stating the facts as she knew them. Her words. She told him about Dr. Gerhard Lutz, about Ava’s meeting TNT at the clinic in St. Moritz, and about her subsequent theft of the blueprints for a new transmitter designed by Dr. Abbasi of the Natanz Research Facility.
“She stole them from his house?” asked Mac, interested in clarification.
“Yes.”
Mac felt his stomach clutch. He knew better than to ask how.
“Did you know about Samson?” asked Jane.
Mac shook his head and listened intently as Jane recounted how Ava had lost possession of the tactical nuclear weapon.
“It nearly broke her,” said Jane. “The weight of it, losing something like that. She held herself responsible. And then, after so many years, the chance to retrieve it falls into her lap. What choice did she have?”
Jane continued her narrative, stating that Ava only came to her after her contacts at Mossad had been killed—not just Zvi Gelber, but Dr. Lutz too. And after a man named Rosenfeld, a deputy of Itmar Ben-Gold, the Israeli minister of defense, warned her to back off.
“Yehudi Rosenfeld,” said Mac. “I’ve heard the name.”
Jane said that she had submitted Ava’s information, including the blueprints from Iran, to her superiors at the Agency, in this case colleagues working in the Directorate of Analysis. The response took longer than such an urgent matter demanded. A week passed. Then another. Something was up. She could feel it.
Finally, an answer came: The plans were deemed bogus, though how and why, no one specified. Further, there was nothing in the files about Israel having ever lost a nuclear weapon, one named “Samson” or anything else. It was Jane’s turn to receive a slap on the hand. Langley ordered her not to pursue the matter. Ava Attal, they stated, was considered by Mossad to be compromised. No other explanation was given, excepting one caveat. Continued contact with Ava was forbidden and would jeopardize Jane’s current posting, her career, and maybe—one sinister email confided—more than that. Mossad had a way of dealing with enemies.
“But you didn’t let it go,” said Mac.
Jane pulled a face.As if.Mac felt a surge of pride. Yes, she was still his daughter. “I called Ava the same day to tell her what happened,” she said. “Ava wasn’t compromised; it was Ben-Gold and, evidently, Langley as well that were compromised. I told her I’d do whatever I could to help.”
“You knew about the Jules Verne?” he said.
