Saving Sophie: A Novel (47 page)

“The lift will not work at all without the code. Here, look. To engage the lift in either direction you must first double-press the pause button. That will prevent the guards from operating the lift. They’ll push the bottom button, and when the chair fails to move, you’ll offer your assistance. Standing in the doorway, blocking their vision, when you double-click the middle button and the platform engages, this panel behind the center console, above the air-conditioning vent, will release. There will be two loaded handguns inside. Leaning over to guide the wheelchair will place your hand in proximity of the guns. Your actions should not be visible to others.”

Liam stepped on the runner. His frame blocked the door. He pressed the middle button twice and then the bottom button, the lift engaged, and the back of the center console opened. He saw the two small handguns inside.

Yonit smiled. “There, you have the weapons.”

Liam managed the maneuver without detection from behind, placing the guns in the inner pockets of his jacket as the wheelchair was lowered to the street.

Liam nodded. “Very smooth.” He ran the test again without a flaw.

“Then it’s a go for tomorrow at noon,” Eliezer said. “You’ll reassemble in Kiryat Arba. Godspeed, ladies and gentlemen.”

S
EVENTY
-F
IVE

“L
UBANNAH, WHEN SOPHIE COMES
home from madrassa, I’m going to talk to her and I want you to talk to her with me.”

“Does this concern her father and his visit?”

Al-Zahani nodded. “It does.”

“I want no part of this.”

“Lubannah, I appeal to your reason. Did I not arrange to take her from Chicago, that depraved and unholy land, and bring her here to Hebron, just so that you could be with her?”

She nodded.

“Have I not always had her best interests in my heart? Do I not raise her as my own daughter?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Then stop questioning me. Cooperate with me and help us to take the next step; to sever all ties with her American past. To help her accept her life here.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“Just be supportive. Talk to her with me. And when Sommers comes, help me to calm her and comfort her on her loss. That’s all.”

“What loss?”

“Sommers will come, he will offer us money, we will allow him to see Sophie, that she is being raised properly, and he will leave. Sophie will be told the truth—that he has left her for good. She must make a break with her futile, incessant pining.”

“I will talk to her. I will support you, but she is strong-willed, like her mother. She will not believe us. When Sommers comes, she will be uncontrollable.”

“Leave it to me. I will handle it.”

Bashir entered the house with Sophie. “The little one had a very good day. Her teacher told me so.”

“Really?” al-Zahani said. “Tell me, Sophie.”

“Teacher said my painting was the best in the class.” She held up a watercolor on construction paper.

“Very, very good.” Al-Zahani held it up, turned it from side to side, and smiled. “I see many trees. Where is it?”

“It’s a park in Wisconsin where my daddy took me.”

Al-Zahani shook his head and put the picture on a table. “Your Jadda and I would like to talk to you. Sit down, here.” He patted the couch. “You know, your father has not talked to you in many, many months.”

“But, that’s because—”

“No, wait.” He held his hand up and closed his eyes. “I have demonstrated to you that he left the city, left your house, and, most importantly, left you. He quit his job. And he went away by himself to be apart from everyone he knew. Including you, Sophie.”

“I don’t believe—”

“Wait, wait, child. No one knew where he went. You made the phone calls. His house was empty. He quit his job. But I knew how sad you have been about this. So I said, I have to find this man for my Sophie. I searched and searched. And I sent men all around the world to find your father. And you know what? I finally did it. I found him.”

Sophie jumped off the couch. “You did?”

She threw her arms around him and hugged him. “Oh, thank you, Jaddi. Thank you.”

He patted her on the head. “Do not thank me so much yet. Your father did not want to come here. He didn’t want to see you, I am sorry to say.”

Tears welled up in Sophie’s eyes. “You’re a liar. You’re a big liar.”

“Wait, wait. I knew you would say that. So, I made him promise to come here anyway. He is bringing some papers. The papers will say that he wants us to raise you here in Hebron. You will see for yourself. He will be carrying a satchel when he comes, and inside that satchel will be the papers.”

“No, he won’t. He will want to take me home. And I will go with him.”

“Oh, my child, I despair deeply of your impending disappointment. I ask only that you not get your hopes too high for something that will not happen. He has told me he will not take you with him. He has moved on in his life. Please, child, do not take my word for it. See for yourself. He will come here tomorrow and in his hand he will have a case. When you see that case, you will know that I have told you the truth. Then, if you will leave us alone for a little bit so I can review the papers, I will let you go outside and talk to your father all you want. That is, if he will even stay long enough to talk to you. If I’m lying about what I’ve said and he wants to take you home, you can go with him. I will not stop you. But if I’m telling the truth, then you have to stop all this crying and pining about going back to Chicago.”

Sophie looked at Lubannah. “Is this true?”

“It is true, my Sophie. It is all true.”

“When is he coming?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

S
EVENTY
-S
IX

M
ARCY, KAYLA, AND JACK
took their places in the van, pulled away from Mossad headquarters, and followed Yonit’s car toward Kiryat Arba. The hills looked peaceful in the moonlight, their tranquillity belying the havoc that was sure to await them beyond the next ridge. Yonit took the southern route past Yavne, Kiryat Gat, Beit Guvrin National Park, and into the West Bank through a southern checkpoint. She dropped Liam at a four-story building and drove off. Kayla pulled in seconds later and parked the van along the curb.

“Yonit will be here in the morning,” Liam said. “She’ll have the briefcase, our microphones, and Kayla’s nurse’s uniform. She assured me al-Zahani would take my gun from me at the front gate and that the hidden-gun trick would work perfectly. Not so comforting, I’m afraid. Oh, and she said to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Why don’t we take a ride by the house in the morning?” Jack said. “Maybe I could catch Sophie on her way to school. We might be able to avoid the confrontation altogether.”

“Jack, you’re dreaming,” Liam said quietly. “Do you think he’s going to be careless with Sophie on the day he’s expecting five million dollars?”

Kayla nodded. “She’s never alone anyway. She’s guarded to and from school. You know we could never do that.”

“Let’s be honest,” Marcy said. “You wouldn’t do it if you could. Sophie’s your passport into the compound. If Sophie was walking down this street by herself, you wouldn’t stop to pick her up. That’s the sorry fact of the whole thing.”

“Stop, Marcy,” Jack said. “If it wasn’t for Kayla, we’d never see Sophie again. This is the only way I can bring her home.”

“He’d better get clemency or immunity or something for doing this,” Marcy said. “He better not put his life on the line to stop a terrorist attack just to return to prison. You need to take care of him.”

“I promise, I’ll push as hard as I can,” Kayla said.

*   *   *

A
T MIDNIGHT THE APARTMENT
was dark and quiet. Liam found a bottle of Jameson in the cabinet, poured a couple of inches into a glass, and sat alone on a stool at the kitchen counter, musing over the events that had brought him to this juncture. A call from Walter Jenkins, a meeting in a conference room, and a simple skip trace turns into a firestorm in Hebron. Life’s road has funny turns.

He reached into his pocket and took out a picture he had ripped from a magazine before he left Honolulu. Solitaire wedding rings. There had been no time before they left, it all just happened so fast. It would have to wait until he got home.

“Buy me a drink?” Kayla said, sliding onto a stool beside him.

He filled another tumbler and placed it before her. They clinked their glasses.

“You know, there’s no way this goes down easy,” Liam said. “Jack’s a sitting duck, no pun intended.”

“As long as they think it’s just a ransom exchange and that you’re the muscle he brought from Chicago, we have the element of surprise. They won’t be ready for the IDF.”

“I like Yonit. Her fearless bearing, that inner strength, I can see why men would follow her into battle.”

“And women.”

He nodded and smiled sheepishly. “And women, of course. That’s an unusual name: Yonit.”

“In Hebrew it means ‘dove.’”

“‘Dove’? Oh, that’s terrific. Just what we need.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

Liam looked down, swirled the whiskey in his glass. “How do you see this playing out?”

“I hope it’s pretty much as Eliezer and Yonit have said. We’ll pull up to the gate, the guards will search us—”

“I’m not giving up my gun.”

Kayla pursed her lips. “They won’t let you go in with it.”

“We’ll see. I don’t trust this hidden-gun trick in the van, and I’m sure not walking into a terrorist’s house unarmed.”

Kayla shrugged. “Well, you’ll have to play it as you see it. You’ve been in situations before. Just don’t lose sight of the mission. We need to get inside the house, to al-Zahani.”

Liam took a sip of his drink. “You mean
you
need to get to al-Zahani.”

Kayla looked hard at Liam and emptied her glass. Liam freshened it.

“This mission doesn’t depend on ransoming Sophie,” Liam said quietly. “A military squadron could neutralize the compound in a New York minute.”

“
Neutralize?
As in ‘destroy’? Of course. But what of the terrorist operation? What of the IEDs already in place in Jerusalem? The threat is legitimate, and we don’t know the particulars. I’m positive the secrets are locked away in the outbuilding, and we can’t allow it to be destroyed. If everything goes down as planned, that’ll be the best of all worlds. We’ll get al-Zahani and enough information to stop the attack.”

“And our evil doctor? You don’t want him neutralized, do you? That’s too easy. This mission’s about you and al-Zahani.”

She took another drink. “I want him alive. He needs to be interrogated. He’s a fountain of information. But you’re right, it’s more than that. It’s personal.”

“It has to do with the wedding, doesn’t it?”

Kayla nodded and took a deep breath. “Yes, it does. His gang of terrorists, the Sons of Canaan, killed my husband, Brian Cummings. We’d been married barely three years. Two teenagers shot him out of the window of a car on the streets of Hebron. At Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the holiest of sites. They fired wildly at the wedding party and sped away. A wedding party, Liam. Just peaceful, happy celebrants, dancing their way to a marriage ceremony at a holy site. Not soldiers, politicians, combatants. Not policy makers or oppressors. They threatened no one, they harmed no one. Just a fucking wedding party. They all deserved to live long, happy lives. But they were cut down by brainwashed, misguided youths, driven to murder by hateful puppeteers.”

“And al-Zahani?”

“The most wicked of them all. He was not only vicariously responsible for the death of my husband, he personally murdered my sister.”

Liam said nothing. He sat in shocked silence, his hands wrapped around the tumbler. He stared at the counter, unable to meet her gaze. Finally, he lifted his head. Kayla’s eyes were red but her face was steeled.

“Until Jack and I talked recently, I hadn’t put the pieces together. I didn’t know what al-Zahani had done. I didn’t know the depths of his wickedness. I had no idea until I learned the details of Jack’s story. Then it all came together.” She pushed her glass over for a refill. “My sister, Naomi, was to be married that day.”

“She was the bride?”

Kayla nodded. “She was standing right beside me. I was the maid of honor. I held her as she fell.”

“Oh my Lord, I’m so sorry.”

Kayla emptied her glass. “As she approached the ceremony on the happiest day of her life, she took a bullet. Critically. In her lower abdomen. She needed medical care immediately. They shouted for a doctor and were directed to al-Zahani’s home by a security guard. Joshua, her husband-to-be, carried her unconscious body into al-Zahani’s house. Reluctant at first, al-Zahani agreed to treat her. He stopped the bleeding and bound the wounds. He saved her life!”

Liam looked at her quizzically.

“He wouldn’t accept any money, or even a thank-you. He directed Joshua to take her to an Israeli hospital, which we did.”

Kayla reached over and grabbed Liam’s forearms. He felt her fingernails dig into his flesh.

“Naomi lay at Jerusalem Memorial for three days, recovering nicely. We talked about my husband. She comforted me. We talked about the others, the ones who were laid to rest while she was in the hospital. I urged her to reset the wedding as soon as possible, for herself, for my husband, and for all those who wanted to rejoice with her.”

Kayla paused, her lips quivered. She moistened them with her tongue. “And then … then the infection set in. At first she thought she had the flu. But then it got worse. The doctors attributed it to the Good Samaritan care she received after the shooting—closing the wound and being stitched in a nonsterile environment. A likely consequence, they said. They would treat it with antibiotics, they said. But they couldn’t control the infection. It was a wildly aggressive bacterium. It had spread internally, attacking her organs. It ate her up from the inside out. She died six days later.

“Until I met Jack, I never realized what had really happened. He told me about his wife, Alina, who had come to Hebron when her mother had a heart attack, and returned to Chicago with an infection. Just the same. The doctors could not control it and she died. The way Jack described Alina, all the symptoms, he could have been talking about Naomi. And then I remembered the boy in the hospital, the one I told you about.”