Strategic Depth Prologue CASCADE, WA He was halfway out the door when the phone rang. For a second, he entertained the notion of just leaving it, but common sense won out in the end, and he dropped his bag and his coat and picked up in the middle of the fifth ring.
"Yeah?" he said, maybe a little sharper than he'd intended.
"May I speak to Mr. Blair Sandburg, please?" the voice at the other end said formally. It was soft-spoken, and heavily accented. Middle Eastern, Blair guessed. There was an echoing susurration on the line that suggested it was an international call.
"Yeah, uh, speaking," he answered, so caught up in speculations that he'd almost forgotten the question.
"This is Yevgeni Reuben. I am the solicitor handling the estate of General Ephraim Dayan. Since you are mentioned in General Dayan's will, I'm obliged to inform you that the hearing will take place at 10 am, on the 15th of March. It's this Wednesday. If you're unable to attend--"
"Hey! Wait a second, Mr., uh - Reuben, was it?"
"That's right. What is the problem, Mr. Sandburg?" Yevgeni Reuben's voice never faltered, just stayed at that same, intensely annoying lawyer level that Blair had gotten all too used to in court.
"Well, let me see - who are you? Who's this Dayan? And what does it have to do with me? Are you sure you're talking to the right Blair Sandburg here?"
"Oh, I see. But you are the son of Naomi Sandburg?"
"Well, yeah. I am."
"I see. I take it General Dayan never contacted you?"
"No, I don't think so. Never heard about the guy."
"I see," the guy said yet again. It was starting to grate on Blair's nerves, to be perfectly honest. He didn't see, not at all. "Well, I suppose it's up to me to inform you then. General Dayan was your father."
That did it. Blair managed to squeak out a tiny, outraged "What?" but he didn't really want to know. This was just way, way out there.
Mr Reuben ignored him and just plowed right ahead. "General Dayan died this Saturday. His will includes you, and, as I mentioned earlier, the reading--"
"No, no, no - hang on just a sec, okay? Since when-- Why didn't I know about this guy? My mother always told me she didn't know, you know."
"That, sir, is a matter between you and Ms. Sandburg. However, it is clearly stated in General Dayan's will that he acknowledged you as his biological son - out of wedlock, of course. Now, about the reading. I have taken the liberty of reserving a seat on El Al flight 243, at 9 am, Tuesday morning. If you're unable to attend, you can give us the telephone number of your solicitor, and we'll negotiate with him."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute! You're calling from Israel?" Was that just his head spinning, or did the world just do a quick one-eighty on him?
"Yes, of course, Mr. Sandburg. The Dayan family residence is in Ramia."
"Right. Sure, okay." Nope, that was both his head spinning and the world tilting. Oh God, he'd have to call Naomi about this. Where was she, anyway? She'd said something about going back to India the last time they'd talked, hadn't she? She did leave a number - shit, it was somewhere--
"--and someone will pick you up at the airport." The smug lawyer-voice at the other end stopped, and Blair realized that he hadn't been listening, and that he was expected to reply, in a coherent fashion, to whatever it was that he hadn't been listening to.
"I'm sorry," he said weakly, forcing his fingers to relax the death grip they had on the innocent phone. "Can you give me your number? I'll have to call you back about this."
There was a brief pause. "Yes, of course," the guy finally said, and rattled off a number so fast he had Blair scrabbling for a pen.
"Got it," he said, and rudely hung up.
JERUSALEM The windows were open, and Danny could hear the high-pitched laughter of children playing in the yard. Leah winced every time one of the kids squealed. She'd never been bothered by it before. There were a lot of things getting on her nerves these days that hadn't before.
Danny wanted to tell her not to worry, but that kind of advice was not likely to be received gracefully. She'd tell him to mind his own business, she wasn't worried. Right, she wasn't worried, like she wasn't wearing her shoulder holster in her own home, like she wasn't just pushing her food around on the plate like she had done at every meal for three weeks now.
So he avoided the issue, instead complimenting her on her cooking, and talking about the weather and politics and that new restaurant they should try. She wasn't all that graceful about these efforts either, but at least she was managing some replies, monosyllabic though they were.
Finally, he gave up on conversation and just concentrated on eating, although he's lost his appetite sometime around the time he realized that she wasn't going to eat. He'd always let her moods direct his, and it was starting to annoy him a little, but that wasn't something he'd be wise talking to her about either. She wouldn't understand. The way things were now, she wouldn't even bother trying.
She was staring at the Wall, of course. Danny would bet a month's pay that she spent more time staring at that damn thing than she spent sleeping. All those pictures in their neat, black frames. There he was, and Leah, and her father in his heyday - in uniform, straight and imposing, or casual, smiling at his children. Her brother, all the cousins, colleagues and friends - so many of them gone now - all stuck forever on Leah's little altar.
Danny turned away from her, from the Wall. He looked, instead, out the window for a while. Not much to see there; the white-washed wall of the house across the alley, a few inches of painfully bright sky over the rooftops. The children had gone, called in to dinner by their mothers, and the sounds of the city were painless and harmless.
"Are you going to eat anything at all, Leah?" he asked, growing restless and uncomfortable with the silence. She didn't even look at him, but she did answer,
"I'm not hungry," before falling silent again.
"You'll get sick," he said, knowing that he was nagging, unable to stop himself. He worried, damnit. She was his friend, and she wasn't taking care of herself.
"You're not my father, Danny."
"If your father were here, he'd say the same thing."
"If my father were here, we wouldn't be having this conversation." She still wasn't looking at him. He tried to figure out which picture she was focusing on, but there were just too many of them. Sometimes he could hardly bear to look at them. He'd known these people too. He was struck by the thought that maybe the mute testimony of all those pictures was the reason why Ephraim Dayan never brought the American son into the fold. It wouldn't have been unprecedented to have done so, bastard or not, but maybe Ephraim just wanted to spare the kid the pain. Maybe. It would always be maybe, of course. The old man never talked about it. Leah never talked about it, and Danny could swear the two never talked about it with each other.
"Leah--" he tried again. "You're in charge now. People - the family - are expecting you to take the lead." Good call, asshole. Guilt her into talking to you. That'll work just splendidly.
But the horrible thing was that it did. She spun around as if the Wall had suddenly burned her eyes, and stared at Danny instead. Her face was too pale and she looked older than she had a month ago, but the eyes were as fierce as ever.
"I know, Danny. I just--" She broke off and composed herself in that disconcertingly sudden way he'd almost gotten used to after ten years. "Oh, whatever. What do I need to do first?" Her voice was dry and matter-of-fact, but Danny wasn't fooled. Damn, she was still just as closed down - just staring at another wall. He cleared his throat to buy a little time before he went on.
"Uh, right. The will, Le--" The rest of his well-meaning effort was drowned in the sound of crockery hitting the stone floor. Leah was on her feet before the glasses and plates had stopped rattling around. Danny stared open-mouthed at the ruin of their dinner. He was aware that he looked like a half-wit, but, as always when she had these little tantrums, he was just too stunned to move. They always came so quickly, so unexpectedly, that he never had the time to get ready for them.
"Goddamnit, Danny!" she yelled, her hands curling into fists at her side. "I will not be a part of that!"
"Leah--"
"Don't Leah me!"
"Just listen to me. Okay?" He was up before he had time to consider the risks, had her by the arm (still careful not to touch her too much - he wasn't fucking stupid, after all), turning her to face him again. "Just hear me out."
She twitched dangerously under his hand, but the defensive gesture was checked. She didn't acknowledge the request, but she hadn't punched his lights out either, so he took it as a yes.
"Your father was a good man, Leah. He was a good man, but he wasn't infallible. So he made a mistake. It was a long time ago, right? He was a young man. This is just his way of trying to do what he can for everyone."
"I don't want to hear it, Danny." She sounded tired again, the anger spent.
"But--"
"Not now, okay?" She turned stiffly and started towards her bedroom. Stopped in the doorway and looked at him with a forced little smile that was wholly for his benefit. "It'll be okay, Danny."
She closed the door softly. He stood where he was for a while, quietly watching it. Then he sighed and fetched the broom to clear up the clutter on the floor. He'd take care of this mess, and then he'd take care of the other mess, and then - then he'd get her out of this funk and back on the horse. She just needed some time.
When he got home, he called Uncle Yevgeni and asked for the phone number of the American brother.
"Good luck," Yevgeni said after he'd recited the numbers to Blair Sandburg's home, work and cell phone. "He's not very approachable."
"Well, I have some experience with that, Uncle," Danny said, not putting much of an effort in the levity. It wasn't really all that funny, anyway. If the people he cared about were a little more approachable, he'd probably have more hair and less indigestion.
"How is Leah?" Yevgeni asked, as if he knew exactly what Danny had been thinking. Maybe he did - it wasn't as if he didn't know Leah, after all.
"She's better," he said, hoping it wasn't a lie.
He only got the answering machine on Sandburg's home number. "You've reached the home of Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg, please leave your name and your number after the beep, and we'll get back to you."
He hung up before the beep. Tried the work number.
This time there was an answer, and it was, "Ellison." Oh, the partner.
"Yes, this is Daniel Sharansky. I'm trying to reach Blair Sandburg."
"Detective Sandburg is having lunch. Why don't you call back in an hour?"
"Actually, I'm calling from Jerusalem--"
"You're not one of those lawyers again? Sandburg isn't interested, all right?" Well, this was a whole bag of fun. This Ellison person seemed awfully protective of his partner.
"Look, Mr Ellison--"
"That's Detective Ellison."
"Right. Anyway, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a friend of Leah Dayan. That would be General Dayan's daughter--"
"Sandburg's sister."
"Exactly."
"Why isn't she calling? If this is such a big deal?" Yes, Leah, why aren't you calling your brother?
"Ms. Dayan isn't feeling very well. Now, if I could just--"
"All right, all right," Ellison said, and Danny could hear him talking to someone off the phone before the receiver was picked up again, and a different voice said,
"Yes? This is Blair Sandburg." Definite hostility there.
"Hi," Danny said, and he felt a little silly, because he was sure the relief was loud and clear in his voice. Hostile or not, the man was communicating.
"Hi back. Who is this?"
"I'm Danny Sharansky. I'm a friend of your sister's."
There was a silence that grew far too long to be comfortable. "My half-sister, you mean. Look, I talked to that lawyer of yours already. I don't want any money. I'd just like to talk to her, you know? I'm not interested in any will."
"You can't just say that. It's a big chunk of the family business we're talking about here."
"Hey, they didn't need me before, and they probably get along better without me now as well. I'm, like, thrilled to have a family and all, but it doesn't look like they're all that thrilled about me. All I've gotten so far is this obnoxious lawyer. And you, whoever you are."
"Yevgeni did say you were rude, and I guess he was right for once," Danny had to say.
"Yeah, man, whatever." Somehow, the guy managed to sound about fifteen years old, although his file said he was thirty. It must be an American thing. Or maybe he was genuinely upset.
"Leah doesn't mean to be stand-offish, you know. She's just ... upset. Her father's-- uh, your father's death was a great shock to her. Things are a bit confused around here right now. I'm just trying to get everything in order. There are legal implications..." He let the sentence trail off deliberately.
When Sandburg spoke again, he sounded almost contrite. "Yeah, I can see that. But you can understand that it's been sort of a big deal for me as well. I mean, three weeks ago I didn't even know I had a father. Or a sister. There was always just me and Naomi, you know. I'm still processing it all. And I don't want any money." Yep. He was Ephraim's son, all right. Stubborn as a mule.
"We just need you to sign some papers, so we can get on with business. As things are now, everything is on stand-by, waiting for you. If we could just get the legal part over with, detective?"
"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry." He even sounded like he meant it. "Okay, I can do that. And it's Blair. I haven't been a detective very long. Gets me all wigged when people keep calling me that."
When he got off the phone with Blair, Danny called Yevgeni to tell him everything would be all right - and he couldn't resist being a little snarky about his quick success, when Yevgeni's three weeks of efforts hadn't done anything but piss Sandburg off more. Then he tried to call Leah, but she didn't answer her phone.
CASCADE, WA "Who was this guy?" Jim asked when they got to the scene. Simon was there, the ME was there, not to mention the press. The jumble of people and people smells was overlaid by the heavy reek of explosives, burning oil, and the unmistakable bouquet of barbecued human flesh. Behind him, he could hear Sandburg mumble, sentinel-soft, "Dial it down, okay, Jim? Whew, this is something, man. Stinks." No shit. Jim dialled down, grateful for the fact that he could do this. Poor Sandburg and everyone else on the planet would just have to keep smelling the stuff.
"Car belonged to a Peter Vaughn," Simon said, lifting the yellow tape to let them through. "He's the CEO of JMJ Technologies."
"Oh yeah, I've heard about them," Sandburg said, coming up next to him now that they'd cleared the crowd. "They design weapons systems, right?"
"That's right."
Jim was already heading for the smoking wreck. "So, the body - ID'd yet?"
"Nah. There's not much left of it."
This was not an overstatement. The bomb had probably been under the driver's seat. Jim could see places where the twisted metal was covered with charred flesh. Barbecue. Good thing they hadn't had time for breakfast.
Sandburg seemed to be handling this like a pro. Well, he was a pro now, wasn't he? No need to coddle him at all. Sometimes - on those strange and lonely nights when Jim woke up at three am and couldn't go back to sleep to save his life - he missed all the coddling.
"You catching anything funky, Jim?" Business as usual, sure, but for some reason, there was an odd little quiver in the soothing Guide voice. Maybe there'd still be an excuse for a little Blessed Protector workout, after all. Still, Sandburg was working so hard on his calm and collected cop routine. It would be insulting to mother him.
Jim pushed his overactive protective insticts down and went back to the business at hand. There was nothing out of the ordinary at the scene.
"Uh, no," he said, already scanning outside the barrier of yellow tape. "--are those security cameras?" Rhetorical question; that was exactly what they were.
Sandburg was typing furiously. In fact, it looked like maybe the keyboard had offended him somehow, the way he pounded at it. It didn't take sentinel senses to figure out something was up.
"Okay, Chief, easy on the poor thing. What's going on?" There was no reply, and the typing continued unabated. Jim allowed this for ten more minutes before trying again. This time, Sandburg threw him an exasperated glance and settled down a little, affecting his completely insincere oh-master-what-is-thy-will expression. Depending on the day, this either annoyed or endeared Jim. Today, it worried him. The levity seemed hollow, and Sandburg's eyes wouldn't meet his.
"Spill," he said curtly. Not that direct orders ever worked with the master of obfuscations, but you can't blame a guy for trying, right?
To his surprise, there was an answer. "Um, yeah … well, you know where I'd heard of JMJ Technologies?"
"No, Sandburg, I don't. But I have a feeling you'll tell me."
"They're a subsidiary of Dayan Enterprises. I saw the name in the file they sent me. Dayan does the software for JMJ's hardware. Sort of a yin-yang thing. Heh." He fidgeted with a stray lock of his hair, still not looking at Jim. "I'm really hoping this doesn't have anything to do with, with, well, you know."
"You?" Jim supplied. Blair looked, if possible, even more uncomfortable. "Not everything in the world revolves around your person, Sandburg."
"Oh, come on, Jim," Sandburg said, getting over his awkwardness and jumping straight to annoyed. "It's a pretty suspicious coincidence, don't you think?"
"Sometimes, coincidences are just that - coincidences. Hence the term, Chief." Sandburg gave him a look that said, 'Yeah, right' in a lot of languages.
"In my experience, there is no such thing, man. I don't know when it got that way--" (which meant that he knew exactly when, probably down to the nearest hour or so) "--but my life has been kinda heavy on the mystical convergence shit lately."
There wasn't very much to counter this with, since Sandburg was perfectly right. And now that the connection had been pointed out to him, Jim was picking up that familiar tingle behind his eyeballs that he liked to call his cop instinct, but Sandburg usually referred to as the 'BP spidey sense'.
Later, when reports had been filed and the appropriate amount of fat had been chewed with Simon over the whole JMJ connection, Jim decided it was time to wade through that other connection, namely that of Sandburg's new-found and recently deceased father. The kid hadn't shown much interest in talking about it, which, in Jim's opinion, meant he probably should. At least, that's what Sandburg always said when the positions were reversed. So, payback's a bitch, turnabout's fair play, and all that. What it all came down to, when the bullshit cleared, was that Jim was just a trifle curious.
"So, Chief," he said. Sandburg peered at him over the rims of his glasses, like a spinster school madam. Funny how the glasses made him look younger, somehow. It didn't seem logical, but there it was.
"Yes, Jim?" The tone was perfectly neutral, but there was something behind it, something--
"Uh," he said, losing his train of thought. Shit, how did the kid do that? Still giving Jim the schoolteacher glare, still looking too young for the expression.
"You were saying..." Now there was definitely something going on. Yup, heartbeat speeding up, a slight flush of color on Sandburg's face. Still, the expression remained completely blank. Which, in itself was pretty damn suspicious. Sandburg never had a blank expression.
"About your-your--" Oh, for god's sakes! How hard could this be?
"My...?" No help from that direction, apparently. Now Jim was getting annoyed, and that always helped.
"Yeah, your father, Sandburg," he snapped. "You know, the General. Dayan."
Sandburg put his hands in front of his face and shook his head. It took a few scary seconds (during which Jim worried intensely - maybe the kid was having some kind of nervous breakdown or something) before it became clear that he was indeed laughing his head off.
"I'm sorry Jim," he sputtered helplessly. "I'm sorry, but you just looked so earnest. And worried. And, you know, you were trying to be me ."
Somehow, Jim managed to hold on to his annoyance. "That's right. You're not being you, so someone has to. Okay? So talk."
That shut down the hysterics like a switch thrown.
"Yeah, okay." And ... nothing.
"Your father. Your family."
"Yeah. Hmm. They're not giving off any welcoming vibes, if you know what I mean?"
"Hey, I know what you mean. I know about vibes."
"You still sound like me, man," Sandburg said accusingly, and there was a little residual giggling, but he didn't sound very happy.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. Nothing, I guess. I got along fine without them for thirty years. It's not like there has to be any changes." It sounded so much like defensiveness now that Jim was struck by a thought that was so obvious that he couldn't understand why it hadn't hit him before.
"Have you even talked to Naomi about this?"
Silence.
"You haven't, have you?"
Silence.
"Okay, as your partner - as your friend - I'm ordering you to talk to your mother. Get moving, detective."
"Hello." "Mom?"
"Oh, sweetie, how wonderful! How are things?"
"Great, just great. Look, mom--"
"How's Jim?"
"He's fine. You see--"
"Are things all right at work? You know, I've really had to search deeply to find my center again after that nasty incident. But everything's fine now. I spent two months in India - did you get the card? I had the most fascinating , enlightening--"
"Mom! Would you please, please just listen up?"
"Well, I say. All right, honey. What's on your mind? I'm picking up some very hostile energy from you. Are you sure things are okay at the department?"
"Naomi!"
"Okay, okay. I'm listening. I'm hearing you, sweetie."
"Tell me about Ephraim Dayan."
"Oh."
"Naomi?"
"Oh, dear. Did he contact you? I told him not to. I did."
"He's dead."
"Oh."
"I'm in his will."
"No! I told him, no money. Don't contact you, don't give us money. Oh, Blair, it was a long time ago."
"Yeah, mom, I know. Say, thirty years or so. What I'd really like to know - like, dying to, in fact - is why you never told me about it. About him, I mean."
"I didn't want you to be touched by any of that - that ugliness . You're a light soul, sweetheart. I didn't want to burden you."
"How about me never knowing, mom? How's that for a burden?"
"Blair - oh, honey, I'm not ready to face this right now. I need to meditate - find the center. You should probably do that too."
"I've had two months, mom. It hasn't helped. I'd like a few answers, really."
"You sound like Jim."
"That's funny, Naomi."
"I have to process this. Then we can talk and really open our hearts."
"Yeah, oka--"
"I love you, honey."
"Mom! Hey, mom. Naomi? Aw, fuck."
EL AL FLIGHT 251 The sky was black outside, not tinted with even the tiniest glimmer of false dawn, but if he were to put his hands around his face and lean very close to the thick pressurised glass, he knew he could see the stars. If he would ever consider doing such a thing, of course, which he wouldn't. Not here. Most of the passengers in the first class cabin were sleeping the sound sleep of the innocent, but Danny had come to the depressing conclusion that he was doomed to insomnia this time. Even the quiet hum of the engines, a sound that usually had him asleep in five minutes flat, didn't seem to work this time. He was completely, painfully awake. And that wouldn't have been so bad - he had a silly airport thriller to read, and besides, he'd never been one to be bored with peace and quiet - if his mind would have held up with the worst case scenarios for just a second.
Something was going on in Cascade - that much was certain. But what? Leah had been so sure, so very sure, making one of her famous (or was that infamous - the verdict would vary with the perspective of the observer) intuitive leaps again. Danny worried. It seemed to be his primary function these days: worry that Leah wouldn't hold up; worry that she was jumping to conclusions based on emotion rather than fact - although, truth be told, her fantastic instinct always had seemed grounded in emotion to him; worry that she'd be pushed into making rash decisions by this thing with the American bastard brother whose very existence she'd studiously ignored ever since Ephraim told her about him on her twenty-fifth birthday. He'd probably figured she'd be prepared to deal with the information by then. How wrong a man could be sometimes.
Yes, the brother. He was quite an enigma. Something of a wunderkind at his university, until he suddenly veered sharply into the left field and disappeared off the map, chasing mythical heroes and supermen, until, equally suddenly, he reappeared, apparently having falsified his doctoral thesis (this part of the story had brought a pretty unattractive sneer to Leah's face; she wasn't about to give Sandburg an inch of credit, and the lurid tale of his public humiliation had naturally served to further cement her opinion of him as a worthless bastard wanna-be), and decided to become a police officer. There wasn't much that made sense in that story. Danny had to admit he was getting rather intrigued with this Detective Blair Sandburg.
Pondering the minor mystery that was Leah's half-brother had momentarily taken Danny's mind off the more urgent mysteries, but the step wasn't far between the good Detective and his latest case. That was genuinely strange, the fact that Sandburg was one of the officers in charge of the JMJ Technologies case. Stranger yet that no one had made the connection and taken him off it. After all, the man practically owned half the company; surely he shouldn't be allowed to work the case?
Of course, the ownership wasn't completely public. It had been a long-standing policy at Dayan Business Inc. to keep the connections to those sorts of endeavours under wraps. The General liked to keep a clean house, and his doorstep would not be littered with activists, anarchists or journalists.
Blair Sandburg's involvement made their job more complicated. Leah had blown some steam on the subject earlier, before the drive to the airport. She was keeping a lid on it now, though. In fact, she seemed a lot more relaxed than Danny felt. Her head was heavy on his shoulder, but he welcomed the weight. She was all right. She trusted him, she was sleeping quietly, and she was all right.
She'd been so convincing at the briefing, dragging a somewhat reluctant Special Ops Command onto her side of the field with all of her usual flair and charisma. She'd had all the arguments: the connection to the family; the persistent rumors of Hamas activity in the area, the considerable risk of an escalation of violence. She'd told a couple of bold-faced lies as well - mostly pertaining to fictive contacts with the detective in charge. This part was what had Danny walking ruts in the floor of his brain. Was the interest in her brother the motivating factor in pushing so hard for this case? Why then wouldn't she so much as call him? His one short conversation with Blair Sandburg had left Danny with an impression of a fairly reasonable man, one who wouldn't turn away from a long-lost sister.
Sandburg wanted to meet Leah. That was a stated fact. Leah, on the other hand, seemed to abhor the very idea of his existence. There was a definite conflict here, between what she needed to do and what she wanted. This was, Danny had learned through hard experience, Leah's most obvious weakness - a complete inability to emotionally detach herself from family matters. She might be using the wrong part of her mind in this case. Danny would have to play the buffer again.
He turned away from the tediously opaque window - his own reflexion was an image he could live without right now - idly playing a little game of Anywhere But Here. Oh - Jamaica, perhaps. A white beach, mellow reggae music, a pretty, dark-skinned youth lounging on a beach towel. Leah, trouble-free and happy, reading her beloved French historians - Duby, LeGoff, Ladurie - under a parasol. Long walks over the hillsides, the coffee plantations. Oh, Blue Mountain in the mornings. The pidgin chatter of women in the market place. Go there - dreams come without a price. All this speculation was futile. If he could just get to sleep.
He picked up his paperback again and did his damnedest to catch the thread of narrative. Schlomo walked past them on his way down the aisle to the restrooms, looking sleep-mussed and adorable. They exchanged small nods, but Danny could see the deliberately circumspect eyes the young man was making at the sleeping form of Leah. Danny grinned with gentle amusement after the kid - poor guy had it bad. She wouldn't give him the time of day. Danny might, but that was a whole other kettle of fish.
There wasn't much left to see. A few overlooked lumps of glass and metal still lay scattered around the empty lot. A length of bright yellow tape with the legend POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS in angry black letters hung from a low branch of a slightly charred maple like a piece of rather morbid holiday garland. And then there was that great big hole in the pavement, of course.
It was vaguely elliptical, with ragged edge where the asphalt had not only splintered, but actually melted and run in the intense heat of the explosion. There had to have been at least two or three kilos of plastique in that car. Whoever did this was not kidding around.
Danny turned away from the too-familiar sight. Car bombs were, after all, not an unusual occurrence in his line of business - whether you were on the giving or receiving end of the unpleasantness was entirely up to your skill and sometimes just simple dumb luck.
Leah was on her way back out through the revolving glass door of JMJ, hopefully done with her interviews. Danny could definitely be done with this place. He'd never much liked bombs, anyway. If you had to kill someone, it seemed rather impersonal to plant a bomb and just sit back and watch. Killing should always be personal. Hell, if you're robbing a man of everything he is and everything he ever will be, you should at least have the common courtesy of looking him in the eye when you do it.
The sunlight seemed suddenly too bright, hurting his eyes, which was ridiculous. This was practically the Arctic; it was March. The sun shouldn't be a problem, but it was. The light was white and cold, nothing like the soft yellow of the sun at home.
Great. Jet lag was a bitch. He dug around in his coat pocket for his sunglasses, until he remembered that he'd hung them in his shirt collar. His eyes felt gritty and sleep-swollen, and hiding them behind dark glass was probably a good idea even if the day hadn't been so glaringly sunny.
They met up by the car. Leah looked absolutely pristine, wearing her business persona like an accessory. Not a hair out of place, not the barest suggestion of a wrinkle on her suit.
"Did you talk to security?" she asked when they'd both gotten in the car. She'd handed him the keys - she was here as the acting CEO, not as a soldier. Danny supposed he looked the part of the chauffeur. Well, her loss. She was always bitching about his driving.
"Yeah," he said, starting the generic rental with more care than it deserved. "They couldn't tell me much. Nothing suspicious had been reported all week, no security breaches went on record. Aside from that, of course." They both turned to look at the torn pavement as they rolled past the site.
"No security breach, indeed," she muttered. "Sloppy."
"There were no prior threats, were there?"
"Nope. Not to Vaughn personally, not to the company."
"So, someone - presumably more than one person - entered the enclosed yard, disabled two of the three cameras, planted a bomb in the CEO's car and left without anyone noticing. Either the bombers are very good, or the security here is a joke."
"My guess is both-- Oh for God's sake, Danny!" The last comment was brought on by a particularly sharp turn. She was glaring at him with affectionate exasperation, and that was exactly what he'd been aiming for. She loved it when he played fast and macho with the transportation. He told her that, just to see her smile. "In your sweetest dreams, Sharansky," she shot back, and for a second, things were all right again, just like old times.
"Just because you drive like a little old lady with a Trabant--"
"I've never even seen a Trabant, Danny." She shrugged, and the amusement fell off her like so much dust. "All right. There was some footage...?"
"Yeah, one of the cameras picked up something. Copy of the tape in the glove compartment. The quality isn't too bad. No challenge for the lab rats at all."
"Schlomo'll digitalize it," she said, digging out the tape and slipping it into the goodie bag with the rest of the data. "We can probably get a preliminary analysis by tonight. I have a first priority listing at the lab."
"And until then?" She looked a little uncomfortable, for the first time today. She didn't speak.
"How about talking to Blair Sandburg?" Danny said, finally, half-expecting a flare of temper. When none seemed forthcoming, he added, "It's his case. The police might even have an ID on whoever is on this tape. It could be good idea to establish contact at this point."
She was fidgeting with the folder in her lap, peeling away the label with a fingernail. Leah never fidgeted. It made Danny want to reach over and take her hand to stop the nervous motion. He controlled the urge.
"I'd prefer to wait until we know exactly what we have here," she said. Her voice was as cool as always, but she was still scratching at that label. "If it's just a random act of violence, there's no reason to talk to him at all."
Avoidance. Deflection. She wasn't usually this blatant about it, but he recognized the typical signs of denial. She really needed to see that brother of hers, and it didn't have anything to do with the case.
There wasn't much to go on here. Sometimes, a case could be like this. Like trying to climb a glass wall - no purchase, nothing tangible at all. It felt like he'd been reading the same reports for years. Nothing new in there. No motive. That was just … silly. In Blair's experience, people didn't get blown up along with their expensive German cars for no reason. But Peter Vaughn had checked out on all levels. Regular pillar of the community - not so much as an outstanding parking ticket. There was an ex-wife, but according to everyone, absolutely everyone , the divorce had been amicable. And even if it hadn't, the woman had moved to Denmark five years ago to remarry.
No disgruntled employees had turned up. No pissed-off ex-girlfriends, no gambling debts, no connections to organized crime. No financial tomfoolery, no blackmail, no stalkers, no nothing. The guy had a six-figure salary, a big car, an even bigger house. No children, married to the job.
Perhaps it was safe to assume, at this point, that the bombing wasn't a personal attack on the unfortunate Mr. Vaughn. The company, then. They designed weapons, so it wasn't entirely unlikely that some anarchist group or other would want to send a message written in fire and blood, or something like that. But not a peep so far, and it had been five days.
He leaned back in his chair and stretched. A good, long stretch. Paper work and frustration could give a guy such a crick in the neck. Funny how he'd never had that problem back in his academic days, when he could spend days and days again buried in books, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep-- And this was not the time to go dilly-dallying down memory lane, not when he was tired and frustrated and likely to work himself into a good case of the blues. And that was another thing he hadn't done much in the old days. He didn't do morose, so what the hell was up with him, anyway? Some sort of belated big 3-0 crisis, no doubt. The delayed effects of the trauma of having his life uprooted and planted in such a screamingly different pot. The sudden awareness of a father he'd never get to know.
"Coffee, Leah?" She nodded, but never even looked up from her morning papers. She looked as whacked as he felt, but she was already on her third - The International Herald Tribune. It was her third cup of espresso, as well. Third double espresso. Jet lag hit them both hard, but Leah never let that bother her, or slow her down in any way. Danny didn't think she'd let much of anything slow her down. She could go on, spick and span and efficient as can be, through fatigue, starvation, stab wounds, chemical burns; anything. Another thing he loved about her. Danny just felt like he wanted a nap, or two, or maybe twenty hours of good, honest shut-eye, but he'd never let her know that. Her energy kept him going as well.
She wasn't just reading those papers, though. She'd sat down only half an hour ago, when she'd realized the futility in pacing. The only thing that clued Danny in to her weariness - apart from the caffeine intake, of course - was the nervous habits. She paced. She tapped her fingers. She checked her watch every five seconds, as if that would somehow make time run faster, make the lab work faster, would bring about information and results sooner. When she wasn't at the end of her strength like this, he'd never know she was impatient.
Danny had just decided it was time for another long, sinfully luxurious shower, when Schlomo burst into the room, flushed and exited and almost incandescent with eagerness.
"We have a name!" he exclaimed, like he was pronouncing the birth of a royal heir. He came to a halt in the middle of the room, remembering his manners and forcibly stilling himself. "Um. Colonel, Major - this just got in."
He waved a sheet of fax paper with the air of - well, of Schlomo handing over critical information. "One of the guys on the tape - they ID'd him as Adil Mohammadi, born 1972 in Delaisheh on the West Bank. One of his brothers and two of his cousins are Hamas, no question."
Danny relieved him of the document, and eyed the attached photo of their next target. Energy flowed through him in that rush no drug could ever give him. Progress, thank god for that. Leah was next to him, grinning like a wolf in a business suit; nothing nervous or tired about her now.
"Schlomo, remember to thank the girls in research from me," she said over her shoulder, giving the kid a flash of that enchanting smile she used all too infrequently. "Oh, this is great. He might be here on Moroccan papers - as Saïd Ähläm Sähläm. We might be getting somewhere after all, gentlemen."
CASCADE, WA Sandburg still wasn't talking. Oh, he was talking of course, the neverending Sandburg monologue was doing just fine. Jim thought it was frankly amazing how many words Sandburg could use to say nothing at all.
Yeah, looking at things, they were just the way they should be: couple of guys hanging out in front of the tube, brewskis and pretzels and a very promising game just getting started. Make a couple of concessions for just who these two guys are - like the fact that the TV had the sound turned almost all the way down (Jim liked it that way, and Sandburg never listened to the commentary anyway - in fact, he usually supplied his own); or that the brews and the pretzels all come from that weird bio-dynamic organic new age flimflam store down by the market (Sandburg bought them, and it would never occur to Jim to admit that he actually preferred the stuff to the chemically saturated supermarket fare) - and you have a scene of harmony and domestic bliss. Right.
Only Sandburg wasn't talking.
Jim was mentally preparing himself for showdown, mark two in his ongoing campaign to Get Sandburg To Come To Terms With His Family. Granted, it wasn't Jim's usual tactic to be this persistent about an emotional issue that had nothing to do with him, but his justification in this case was that turnabout indeed was fair play. And besides, Jim really was feeling better about his own family - even talking to his father and seeing Stephen more than once in twenty years - now that he'd gone about it the Sandburg Way.
He had actually opened his mouth to say something to that extent, when he realized that someone was outside the door. He was up and moving by the time the knock came.
"Always in the middle of the game," Sandburg muttered from the couch. Jim ignored him and opened the door.
He couldn't tell what it was that gave her away. Granted, she didn't look much like Sandburg. Maybe it was something in her smell, or her posture, or something even more subtle - it didn't matter. He knew who she was as certainly as he knew that she was dangerous.
"Ms. Dayan," he said, feeling stupidly self-satisfied when her eyes widened.
She didn't stay rattled long, of course. "Detective Ellison," she shot back, and he could see that she was measuring him up just as he was doing the same to her.
And there was Sandburg now, staying behind him, as if he still were just the observer hiding behind a big, safe cop's back. Jim stepped aside, and Leah Dayan's eyes lost whatever imaginary warmth there could have been in the first place. The smile she tried on turned out almost sharklike, because it never touched any part of her face other than her mouth.
"Hi, Blair," she said and offered her hand. "I'm Leah Dayan." Sandburg almost flinched before he found his manners and took her hand. Jim had the impression that he was less afraid of her than he was of his own reaction. He's afraid he won't like her. "Yeah, I figured. Uh, right - come on in, won't you?" Sandburg stepped aside to let her in, and Jim finally took his eyes off her and looked at the tall, silent man standing behind her. Despite looming over Leah Dayan like the beefy bodyguard of a Hollywood star, he somehow managed to fade into the surroundings with eerie efficiency. Jim was ready to bet it was intentional.
"I'm Danny Sharansky," the guy said in way of explanation, and his smile was slightly apologetic and genuinely warm. "We spoke on the phone a few weeks ago."
"Yeah, I remember. What brings you two here?"
"I wanted to meet my brother," Leah Dayan said, still smiling that hideously cold smile. Sandburg seemed to be sitting on the fence between apprehension and excitement, but Jim could see his natural curiosity winning out in the end.
"Yeah, hey, that's great! You know, I never knew you folks even existed. Naomi - that's my mother - she wouldn't tell me. I thought she didn't know. Imagine my surprise, right?" Dayan's smile slipped off her face with alarming speed and her eyes narrowed. Jim groaned inwardly. The door wasn't closed yet, and it was already time for the first family argument.
Fortunately, Danny Sharansky headed it off at the pass.
"We're really sorry to intrude on you without notifying you first, but we were actually in the neighborhood, so we thought it would be stupid not to stop by." He had a hand on Dayan's shoulder, gently nudging her into the room - pretty much handling her like you would a half-tame animal. In fact, Jim observed, he seemed to be very particular about not touching any other part of her than her arm, as if a transgression would make her - what? Slap him? Bite him? Shoot him?
And with that thought came the sensory knowledge that she was armed. They both were, in fact. In the neighborhood, my ass. "Yeah?" Sandburg was saying, waving them all into the living room. "What are you doing in Cascade?"
"We're actually here on business," Dayan said, looking a little more relaxed now that the topic had moved on to safer subjects. "There's been a crisis at one of the company's collaborating partners. They have invited me to look into the matter."
It was very faint - she was good, he'd give her that - but it was there. That tell-tale flutter in the heart rate, a minuscule dilation of pupils, a change in the breathing pattern, and Jim knew she was winding them up. This was bad. This was, in fact, disastrous. It wasn't like Sandburg didn't have enough excitement in his life without this lying, gun-toting woman showing up out of the blue. And the fact that she was family - and she was: every move she made reminded Jim of Sandburg so much it was almost painful to behold - made everything so much more complicated. Sandburg might have grown up beyond his years these past six - seven months, but he still had some of that refreshingly endearing naïvete Jim had always envied him for: the ability to assume the best of everyone. Speaking from personal experience - there was nothing that could fuck you up quite as badly as family could, and Sandburg had not the slightest idea how bad it could be.
"Oh, do you have partners here in Cascade other than JMJ, or is that the one you're talking about?" Jim said, because he wanted to hear her reply. She eyed him coolly, but her voice stayed neutral.
"Yes, that's the one."
"That's some crisis," Jim said, trying to keep himself from baiting her on purpose, and probably failing. Sandburg was giving him little exasperated glances, probably trying to imply that Jim was being either tactless, inhospitable or annoying; or possibly all of the above. Jim was practiced in selectively ignoring him, so he did. "Car bombings aren't a usual part of the software business, are they?"
"Of course not," Sharansky said, and it was almost funny, the way he was trying to mediate and intervene with pointed glances and touches, staying behind the woman, ready to step in and stave off trouble. He was, in fact, doing exactly what Sandburg usually did with Jim - what Sandburg was doing right now, come to think of it.
He seemed to realize this himself, and, amazingly, winked knowingly at Sandburg. To which Sandburg replied by flashing a most endearing grin, and then Sharansky grinned right back, and now Jim really hoped he was imagining things, because there was no way that guy could be standing there making eyes at Jim's partner, in Jim's home - was there?
"Would you like something to drink?" Sandburg said, and he was still looking at Sharansky, still smiling.
"No thank you," Leah Dayan said, her eyes narrowing again. So, she wasn't impressed with the display of casual flirtation, either. "I think we should be going, really. We still have some matters to attend to."
"But you'll be staying in Cascade for a while?" Sandburg interjected, applying an old classic: the Sandburg Eager Puppy expression. Jim couldn't tell if it worked on Dayan, but it certainly did a job on her friend.
"Yes, we'll be working on security measures, and appointing a new CEO, so it might take a while," Sharansky said.
"Oh, good, then we can have dinner some day, right?" Sandburg was practically radiating eagerness now, and even Leah Dayan looked like she might be feeling a crack in her frosty shield. "Maybe tomorrow? I'll cook."
"That would be nice," she said, and for some reason, she seemed sincere now.
"Great! Eight pm fine? Maybe you can tell me a little about your family, Leah - and you do observe kosher, right?"
"Yes, of course," she said, as if he hadn't asked her three separate questions. Sandburg apparently took the 'yes' as universal, and seemed happy with it. Danny Sharansky smiled again, and Jim felt - just for a second, of course - like bitch-slapping the man for looking at Sandburg that way. But that was ridiculous, and Sandburg and Sharansky were just being friendly and social - as opposed to some other people in this very room, Jim added with an inward wince - and there were more pressing matters, such as those concealed handguns they were packing. He should have called them on that - they were foreign nationals, after all, and carrying sidearms was most assuredly not kosher - but he really didn't want to rain on Sandburg's parade this early in the proceedings.
However, it was time to run a check on the lovely Ms. Dayan, that was for sure.
"What the hell was with the attitude, Jim?" Sandburg said, predictably, almost the moment the door closed behind Dayan and Sharansky.
"What do you mean?" He wasn't being annoying on purpose, he told himself - he just needed a little time to work out how to break it to the kid. To find out what really was going on: there could, hypothetically speaking, be some perfectly innocuous reason for the guns, for the lying, for the offensive behavior; and if there was, he didn't want to upset Sandburg before it was necessary. Sandburg did tend to get upset over things like this. It was that sweet but misplaced faith in human nature he had - it played tricks with his judgement, occasionally.
"What do I mean!? You practically bit her head off! And you were glaring at Danny like he was sprouting horns or something." Sandburg had already started pacing, a sure sign that there was some inner turmoil going on. Jim stilled him with a gentle hand on his shoulder, and tried on an apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry, Chief. You know how I get - suspicious. It's a cop thing, you know."
"Yeah, well, I'm a cop too, if you hadn't noticed," Sandburg said, suddenly intensely interested in his left thumbnail. Jim could feel the heat of a blush on the kid's face, and he realized with rueful regret that he had forgotten again. Forgotten that the kid wasn't a kid anymore, wasn't a meek academic, wasn't helpless or weak or in need of protection - was, in fact, a Major Crimes detective with a gun and a badge and a very sharp and resourceful mind.
"Shit, Chief, looks like all I can do today is stuff my foot in my mouth. Maybe it's time to call it a night, okay? Been a long day. 'Night."
And he was off and heading for the stairs - it felt like avoidance, but it couldn't be helped right now. Sandburg didn't move, but he said, "Goodnight," and it sounded like the faux pas was forgiven, if not forgotten.
She'd kept up a frosty silence for ten minutes before Danny finally cracked and asked her about it. He couldn't decide whether he preferred the silence to the snapping and yelling. It all came down to the same thing: she was pissed off and she was taking it out on him.
"Don't even start," she said wearily. No snapping yet, though, which could be a good sign. Danny allowed himself a brief thought of Blair Sandburg, who looked nothing like his sister (although those big, blue eyes made him look almost eerily like a young Ephraim Dayan, and if there was ever any doubt about the lineage, it was gone the second he'd smiled) and was really quite lovely, in an unassuming, almost geeky way.
Nothing geeky about Leah, though, and she was what he had to contend with at the moment, and she was staring at oncoming traffic like every single driver had personally offended her, and she was gripping the wheel with white-knuckled fervor.
"Try to calm down or you'll snap the thing," he said, instantly regretting the snipy tone. Not the way to go when Leah was escalating her internal arms race.
"I am calm," she said, her jaw tightening.
"Okay, Leah, who do you want to kill?"
She didn't answer, and her face was set in stone.
"Leah?"
"You were flirting," she hissed with barely-checked vehemence. "With him ."
"What? Blair?" He had to think back. Had he been that obvious about it? "I... Well, you must admit, he's awfully cute, not to put too fine a point on it. And he's got a certain innocence about him that I re--"
"He's my father's bastard, that's what he is," she interrupted bluntly. And how strange that he hadn't realized that this was the problem. He'd misjudged her resentment completely. It wasn't the fact that Blair Sandburg was happy and untouched and doing whatever he wanted to do in America; or the money; or anything else but the fact that there was a Sandburg-shaped spot on Ephraim Dayan's shiny halo.
"Okay, Leah," he said, carefully keeping his voice neutral. Now was not the time to be offended on the behalf of the fatherless children of the world. "Your father made a mistake. Obviously. I just don't see how it's got anything at all to do with Blair. He's really just some guy who shares half your genes and not much else with you. He didn't even know about all this until a month ago. Maybe you should give him a chance."
She shot him an icy glare. "He's weak and soft, and there is nothing about him that makes me think we could share blood." Now that was a harsh judgement, even for her. Danny tried to mentally fit the description against his own image of the man. Okay, granted, there didn't appear to be anything threatening about him, but there was something there, underneath that laid-back live-and-let-live façade. Something that made Danny conclude that underestimating Blair Sandburg might be a grievous tactical mistake.
"You of all people should know the danger of first impressions," he said softly. She swore and pulled over so fast the car behind them had to swerve and honk like a perturbed duck. Danny was saved from hitting the dash with his forehead only by the grace of the seatbelt. He realized belatedly that she had misunderstood him, although it was ridiculous that she would think he'd walk that roughshod over her feelings.
She had her hands on his throat before he'd readjusted his internal inertia to the change in pace, and her fingers were steel grips on his pulse points.
Her eyes met and held his, and it was all he could do not to start babbling. Lord, she was closer to cracking than he'd ever seen her, and that included the aftermath of Tunisia.
But he met her eyes with all the trust and faith he had in him, and finally, she relented and released him. The fury had drained from her face.
"I know, Danny," she whispered almost inaudibly. "I know. Just don't fuck with me, okay? I'll deal with all that shit later." She flipped the car into drive and headed into traffic again. When she spoke next, she was all business.
"We'll get to the rendezvous by nine. David and Schlomo should have everything we need."
"Good," he said, putting all thoughts of pretty, young Jihad agents and pretty, young American cops out of his mind. "Let's go kick some Hamas ass."
CASCADE PD, MAJOR CRIMES The phone rescued Jim from death by paperwork (how come Sandburg never seemed to have as much of the dreaded stuff?).
"Ellison," he barked. You have to sound firm and authoritative on the phone - people could get the mistaken impression they can push you around otherwise.
"Detective Ellison, this is Jack Kelso. I have the information you wanted."
Jim did a quick scan around the bullpen before he answered. Sandburg was nowhere in sight - probably in the break room shooting the shit with the boys. Or flirting with the desk clerks. Or actually - god forbid - doing some honest-to-god detective work.
"Okay - what can you tell me about Leah Dayan?"
"Not one to waste time on pleasantries, eh, Detective?" Kelso said dryly, but Jim didn't think he sounded offended. "Can I ask you why you're interested in Mossad all of a sudden? Got trouble in paradise again?"
"She's Mossad?" Software, my ass. Lying, cheating--
"Why, yes. She's a colonel in special operations. Been quite active the last few years. She's done some pretty high-profile hits, like the Malta incident in '95."
"Son of a bitch," Jim said solemnly. He couldn't believe he'd let her just waltz into his home, armed and dangerous. Not to mention that she was invited to dinner.
"She's not in Cascade, is she?" Kelso said. "I'm told she's left Jerusalem."
"She's here, all right. And would you believe Sandburg's smack in the middle of it all?"
There was silence on the line.
"Kelso?"
"Leah Dayan's father, a retired general in the army, died in January," Kelso said suddenly. He sounded tentative, as if he were working on a theory he didn't quite want to believe. "Word has it that there was trouble with the will. An illegitimate child the General suddenly decided to make official. The theory is that she's gone to see this unnamed sibling."
"Well, that she has."
"I'll be damned. This is an unforeseen development."
"It's a goddamned mess. Do you think she's a danger to him?"
"It's hard to say. She's dangerous, without a doubt, but the Dayans have always respected family. Have you met her?"
"Yeah," Jim said, trying not to let his unease shine through. The Sandburg Trouble Magnet seemed to be in good working order. It's a miracle he's still alive. That thought did not make Jim feel any better. "She and a friend of hers - some big goon named Sharansky - came around the loft the ot--"
"Sharansky's with her?" Kelso interrupted.
"Yeah."
"Sharansky's her second in command. They're basically joined at the hip - worked together for ten years. He's the point man of her team. They might be lovers, but no one's sure."
"I don't think they are," Jim said glumly. There had been nothing about them that suggested that kind of intimacy, although they certainly had seemed very close.
"Anyway, I called up their files - they're not even classified, so you can have them. There are detailed notes of their methods. They wouldn't come here unless they have a mission. You'll have to watch out."
"Good. Mail them over."
"You know, you should tell Blair about this," Kelso said. Mind your own business, Jim thought uncharitably, but of course the man was right. It was just a question of timing. Dinner tonight was going to be unbearable enough without a suspicious, antagonistic Sandburg. There would be time to enlighten him afterwards.
"Thanks," he said. "I'll get back to you." Sandburg was in the hallway outside Major Crimes. Jim could hear him say "Hello," and "See ya, man" and "You too," to various cops and clerks and probably a few perps as well.
"Watch your back, detective," Jack Kelso said, and Jim muttered an affirmative and hung up.
"You coming, man?" Sandburg was behind him, radiating excitement. He sounded, for the first time in quite a while, like the exuberant kid he'd been when they first met. Jim looked at him, saw the light in his eyes, and decided to hold on to the bad news for the time being.
You're patronizing him, Jim's conscience piped in.
Shut up.
"Yup, I'm just about done here, Chief," he said out loud, making a show out of gathering his papers and stacking them neatly.
"Well, hurry up, man." Sandburg was already halfway out the door.
Ellison opened the door almost before Leah had knocked, as if he'd been waiting behind it. He waved them in with a smile that looked like it hurt.
"Good evening, detective," Danny said, trying hard to look and sound cheerful and harmless. Ellison stared at him as if he'd suddenly grown a second head. There was a silence that could only be described as uncomfortable. Then Blair Sandburg breezed right past his grumpy partner, wearing a huge, delighted grin and a flowery apron, saying,
"Hi! Welcome, Leah - Danny," and offering his hand to Leah, acting a lot like he'd been looking forward to this awkward occasion all day.
"Blair," Leah said, and Danny noticed that she didn't make an effort to smile back, which was a pity, because Blair had really given them all an opportunity to play nice.
"Thank you, Blair," Danny said and shook hands, and met Blair's eyes (which no longer reminded him of Ephraim Dayan - the General had never looked at Danny quite this way, for one).
"Can I take your coats?" Blair asked, throwing a short glance Ellison's way. The man jerked alive from whatever angry thoughts he'd been entertaining and mechanically took Leah's overcoat. Blair took Danny's, which was fine, because Danny wasn't completely comfortable with the looks he was getting from the man's partner. Ellison hovered over Blair like a big stormcloud.
Protective, Danny thought. Of what? That made him wonder, not for the first time, why they lived together.
He didn't find a good way to ask about that until Blair excused himself to get back to his cooking, and Danny offered to help. There was a couple of seconds of awkwardness when Ellison and Blair exchanged looks, Danny and Leah exchanged looks. Then Blair grinned like he'd never heard something as nice and wonderful before, and that was that. They left Leah and Ellison to their grumpy baiting (Danny hoping Leah would go easy on the man, knowing she wouldn't) and went to work on the salad and the taiyika auff.
"Why do you live with him?"
Blair looked up, a little too quickly. Danny felt like he'd stomped on something fragile and perhaps hidden, and hastily added, "I didn't mean to be nosy. You just didn't seem to be--"
"I just never got around to moving out," Blair said with a casual tone that was only slightly overdone. "It was supposed to be a week, but all kinds of ... stuff happened, and he kinda forgot to kick me out. And it's not bad. Great place, affordable rent, and someone to talk to at breakfast."
"I see," Danny said, and they went back to chopping vegetables and stirring pots, and the silence wasn't quite companionable, but it was close enough.
There wasn't much talk going on in the living room, either. Danny heard Leah get up, and saw her stand by the big French window, looking out at the city-scape and the glittering bay. After a while, she said,
"You have a great view here, detective," and Danny was almost sure she wasn't angry or resentful, just a stranger talking to a stranger about completely unimportant things. Good.
"Part of the reason I bought it," Ellison said. He'd joined her by the window. She didn't look at him, just kept her eyes on the horizon.
"It's a beautiful city."
"Sure. Dangerous and violent, though."
"Do you have big problems with crime?"
"Well, I suppose we see more than the usual share of that, being cops, but there's a pretty high percentage of violent crimes - homicide, armed robbery, hate crime, even some international terrorism to round things off." Danny flinched, but Leah stayed as cool as the weather outside. God, was the guy implying something? He couldn't have--
"Really?" Leah said, and she turned a little and threw a studiedly casual glance at Danny. It's under control , it said. Danny forced himself to relax, and turned back to the cucumber he was slicing.
Next thing he knew, he'd elbowed a spoon over the edge of the kitchen island, and the bright clang of it hitting the floor brought everyone's attention away from any dangerous subjects. Danny bent down to pick it up, and Blair did, too, and their heads met with a small thump. Blair laughed, and Danny had to join him, because the laughter was the crystal peals of a child. It was strange how the man, intelligent and professional though he was, melted away to expose that inner moppet whenever he smiled or laughed. There was that likeness again - Danny remembered thinking the same thing about Ephraim. The General had been such an imposing figure as long as he didn't crack a smile. Probably the reason why he did it so seldom, why a smile from him had been something so rare and rewarding - he couldn't afford appearing that young and vulnerable. Blair didn't seem to have any such compunctions. Danny rather suspected the good detective used the effect as camouflage, in fact. It could be useful to be underestimated on a regular basis. Further cause for Leah to avoid doing just that. They would have to talk about that. Yes. As soon as possible.
He tore his eyes away from Blair's laughing face - yes, he was lovely; too bad he was Leah's brother - and turned to Leah.
She was staring at them with a look of utter disgust. Oh, damn. Then he had to laugh some more, because behind her, Ellison was wearing the exact same face.
Blair, next to him, had stopped laughing, but he followed Danny's look and recognized the twin expressions of disapproval, and there was another bout of mirth.
Leah and Ellison turned away as one, back to the window and the neutral, watery-grey view of Cascade earning its name in another spring drizzle gathering itself into some real weather.
Blair looked at Danny and winked. Danny winked back, and they returned again to the food. There was nothing wrong with a little harmless, silly fun. It should have eased the mood, but unfortunately, that never worked with people so far into their mutual suspicion as Leah and detective Ellison.
Dinner was an exceedingly uncomfortable affair, despite Blair's conscious effort to keep things friendly. He blithered on about sports and the weather and the best places to get kosher food in Cascade, and sports again, and about his work at the PD; everything seasoned with amusing and harmless anecdotes that may or may not have been made up on the spot.
"Blair," Leah said, sounding like business again without prior warning. "I'd like you to come down to JMJ tomorrow, if it's at all possible. It might be good for you to have a look at the situation there, let the board know you exist."
Blair didn't look exactly thrilled at the prospect, but somehow, Danny got the impression he was just a little tickled that she'd ask him.
"Well, I guess it's necessary, right?" he said. "I'm just not real … you know, it's never really been my bag. But it's okay. I'll be there."
"It's all in disarray at the moment," Leah said. She was actually looking at Blair now, something she'd seemed reluctant to do so far. Her face was the image of gentle concern. "Poor Peter. It was quite a shock."
"Do the police have any leads?" Danny cut in.
"Not really," Blair said distractedly, and there was a little silence, and then his face turned determined, and Danny knew, just knew that he was about to say something personal, something dangerous, but it was as if Danny's brain had temporarily taken a leave of absence, because he couldn't think of a single way to stop Blair, so he could only sit there and listen as Blair said,
"It's been a really big deal for me, finding out that I have this whole family I've never even heard about. I'm sure you understand I'm kinda curious, right? I suppose you're an only child." The look on his face was a little morose; regretful, wistful. "Are there cousins? Are you a big family?"
Yes, it was disaster, because Leah's face was like a stone idol. "My brother is dead," she said, and Blair flinched as if she'd slapped him in the face.
Danny found his brain again and moved to intervene: "Did you grow up in Cascade, Blair?" but Ellison didn't, apparently, think that was relevant, because he kept at it, saying,
"What happened to your brother, Ms. Dayan?" and that was it, Leah was gone, Danny could see it, Blair could see it - he paled so quickly it was like a special effect in a movie - and Danny didn't give a fuck if Ellison could see it, because he just wanted to get Leah out of here before there was violence.
" Ben zonah ," she snarled, and Blair, who obviously had enough Hebrew to get the gist of that (and there was no mistaking the tone of voice, anyway), said,
"Hey--!" at the same time as Danny said,
"Leah--"
She was up and heading for the door already, only snapping a harsh, " Anachnu ausvim ," at Danny. Yeah, yeah, they're leaving, all right. Blair looked fairly devastated, and Ellison, the son of a bitch (Danny had to concur with Leah on that one), managed to look both smug and pissed off at the same time.
Leah was out the door with her usual flair and talent for the dramatic. The door frame rattled in her wake.
Blair was next to Danny now, following him to the door, looking miserable and a little like a puppy dog after a round with a rolled-up newspaper. "Oh, man--" he started, and Danny said,
"I'm sorry--"
and Blair said, "No, I'm sorry, Jim's--"
"Leah's--" This is ridiculous. Danny held up a hand, and the bewildered attempts at apology ceased.
"It's okay, Blair. It's not always easy to know what's ... what's safe to talk about. There's a lot of old pain." The look he got was warm, and he knew that Blair understood. He found himself liking this man more than he should.
"I get it, Danny. Well, I'll try to be tactful. It's just not my strongest side, you know? As for Jim - I don't think the word is in his vocabulary. Sorry about that, man."
"No need. Thank you for the food, Blair."
"Okay. Um, thanks." Blair opened the door, stood back. Danny glanced over his shoulder at Ellison, who still sat stiffly and angrily at the table.
"Goodbye." Before the door whispered shut, he caught a glimpse of Blair's face as he was turning away, and he looked positively furious. Guess Ellison is about to get tongue-lashed, Danny thought with a modicum of glee, before he headed down the stairs. Leah would probably need some of that, too.
He was angry. He was trying to hide it, because she didn't need any more fuel for her own anger right now, but it was hard, really hard not to yell at her.
Leah was still staring out the window as if she was thinking about napalming the whole city. Her hands were twisting in her lap like they hated each other, but couldn't let go anyway.
"That wasn't very smart, was it?" she asked, suddenly. Her voice was deceptively soft, and he couldn't tell whether she wanted him to lie or not.
"Well," he mumbled. He was not looking forward to this talk.
"What's your assessment of the situation, Sharansky?" she said, and he got it. He'd completely forgotten about the mission, what with ogling lovely Blair and negotiating (or trying to negotiate, at any rate) the verbal and emotional mine field of the family reunion from hell.
"Tactical error, Colonel," he said, and she nodded sharply. He went on, trying to make the best out of this mess. "It doesn't look like the police have gotten far with their investigation. Therefore, the failure to establish cooperative relations with Sandburg and Ellison is not significant to the outcome of this operation at the moment."
Her reply was tinged with just a smidgen of relief. "You're right. It was a waste of time, after all. We should proceed as planned tonight."
"Affirmative, sir," he said and there was no more talk as he grimly concentrated on driving, and she was presumably making plans for their later activities. But after a while she turned to him with an unpredictable question.
"Danny, what was your impression of Ellison?"
That was out of the blue, wasn't it? Danny regrouped. "Hostile," he said. "Very protective of his partner."
"Maybe he just didn't appreciate how you drooled all over the little bastard." She might have been angry still, but Danny could swear she was grinning.
"Sorry," he said, making sure his voice reflected how very sorry he wasn't.
"He's a strange man," she said, and Danny assumed she was still talking about Ellison. There was the tiniest hint of grudging respect there that she'd never succumb to if she were talking about her brother.
After that, the drive was quiet all the back to the house.
He parked in the usual spot and was about to get out when her hand briefly touched his arm. He looked at her, and there was an apology in her expression. She didn't pronounce it, of course, that wasn't the way it worked. All she said was, "Thanks, Danny," and it was enough, it always was. He knew what she meant. He'd known her for too long to expect overt demonstrations of affection. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he just touched her hand, the lightest of featherlight brushes, and she smiled one of her quicksilver smiles, the ones that were real and not just stage decoration, and slipped out of the car. He stayed behind for an extra minute, just letting the relief he felt run its course.
In which Leah and Danny just do their job CASCADE, WA Eli Weiz had called earlier, but Leah suggested that they wait until after dinner to make their move. They had the location - a house by the docks, rented under the name Saïd Ähläm Sähläm - and a surveillance tape showing Mohammadi and two as of yet unidentified agents walking in and out of the place all day yesterday.
Leah was wearing her game face: completely blank expression, eyes like chips of coal. Danny had always loved her like this, the perfect soldier stepping forward and leaving all the flaws and shortcomings of the woman behind, hidden and unnecessary in the anticipation of battle. He'd take the point, because that was his job, but he knew she'd be right behind him, watching his back.
Eli, David Ben-Asher and Schlomo Elizer were waiting in their nondescript rental. There wasn't much to be said; they all knew what to do.
"He's alone watching TV in the living room," Schlomo said, and Leah nodded. That was all it took. They spread out to their stations around the house.
Eli and David were experienced, well-trained agents, but they deferred to Leah without a smidgen of macho misgivings. Danny had always enjoyed the way no one ever thought of her as a woman, or the daughter of General Dayan, or anything at all other than a very good soldier; someone you could trust to stay cool even in the heat of battle; someone you would want behind you when things got down and dirty.
Leah picked the lock on the back door in a matter of seconds, and at exactly 10.45.00, Danny preceded her into the dark room behind it.
Danny's pre-battle exhilaration faded and smoothed out into that detached calm he'd come to expect after twenty years of fighting.
The blueish, flickering light of the television led them through the shadowy kitchen and into the living room. The merry sounds of the Tonight Show covered their advance, and it wasn't hard for Danny and Leah to make their approach unnoticed. Danny nudged the oblivious man with the muzzle of his silenced gun and said, in Arabic, "Get up."
Mohammadi jerked violently, and his hand scrabbled under the pillows of the couch, fumbling for but never reaching his gun. Leah had come up behind Danny, and the butt of the unlicensed 9mm she'd bought the day they came to America connected with the man's temple with a dull thud. He slumped in his seat, stunned but still conscious.
"Don't move," Danny advised him. Mohammadi didn't. He was too groggy to put up much of a fight when the rest of the team showed up to drag him bodily across the room and down into the basement, but he did struggle a little when they proceeded to strip him and tie him to a chair. David looped the rope around his throat and tightened it just enough to make him sit still.
"Weiz, Elizer, you're with me," Leah said. "We're turning this place upside down."
Danny met her eyes before she left. There was a tacit permission in her look, and he nodded. She usually left the interrogation part to him. He'd worked with David on this detail for years.
"You know who we are," Danny told Mohammadi. The man had stopped struggling, but he had that look about him that told Danny this was a guy staring right past them into paradise. He wouldn't be afraid of dying. This was probably going to get messy.
"You can get the electrodes," he said in Hebrew. No doubt Mohammadi understood it well enough, because his skin took on that greyish cast that comes in anticipation of pain.
"Whew," Conner said, wrinkling her nose delicately.
"Yeah, you said it," Joel muttered morosely. "Looks like we have another gang in town."
There was no doubt that this was the work of a professional. The body hadn't been unnecessarily mutilated, just a few, choice marks in choice spots. Burn marks. And, of course, the single shot to the back of the head.
"Interrogation and execution." Conner was peering over the ME's shoulder, trying to get a better look at the naked corpse. "Someone was not beating around the bush with it."
"He looks Arabic," said Joel, turning to leave. The forensics team was looking harried. There were too many people in the dank basement room.
"Yeah, isn't that great?" She dropped her latex gloves in a wastebasket and followed him out of the house. "Banks is going to love this. As if the Japanese and the Russians and the Italians and the youth gangs and everyone else wasn't enough. We haven't had the Arabs here yet."
"Who found the body?" Joel asked the uniform guarding the yellow-taped porch.
"Lady friend of the victim. She tried to call him, no answer. She had a key, and apparently she decided to investigate. His name is Saïd Ähläm-Sähläm.
"Thanks, mate," Conner said cheerfully. It escaped Joel how she could find anything cheerful about being dragged out of bed in the small hours to look at the corpse of a torture victim, but maybe they were all like that in Australia.
TUESDAY, MARCH 7 It wasn't a good way to wake up. The phone was bad enough, especially since he managed to push it off the nightstand in his efforts to get to it before Jim woke up and hit the roof (yeah, like there was any chance to avoid that), but his mother's cheerful voice, usually something of a happy pill for him, now only grated on his frazzled nerves.
"What is it?" he said, knowing he was taking his sleep-deprived annoyance out on Naomi; not caring a whit.
"I'm sorry, Sweetie. Did I call at a bad time?" She sounded so contrite that he came instantly awake. Naomi never asked if it was a bad time (maybe she always just assumed that it was a good time simply because she'd called, if it hadn't been otherwise). The implied almost-apology didn't exactly ameliorate his morning grouchiness, but it was a start.
"It's five-thirty, Naomi," he said, rubbing his eyes, trying to work up some enthusiasm. "Just tell me about it, okay? What's happened?"
"Okay, Blair. You see, I've thought about it a lot - I asked some spiritual advi--"
"Naomi." He knew he was hurting her, but if she could just fucking get to the goddamned point , already. He was struck by a thought somewhere half through an internal monologue consisting mostly of expletives in at least five languages: was he this annoying? Hell, he probably was. No wonder Jim was always telling him to get to the point. Oh god, I'm just like my mother. "Naomi," he said again, gentler this time. "It's very early, and I'm really kind of tired, so just tell me, okay? Or call me back when I'm half human. Say, noon or so."
"I just wanted to talk to you about Ephraim," she said, effectively silencing any and all swearing still going on in his brain.
"Okay, mom. I hear you," he said carefully, doing his very best to sound awake and interested. It wasn't hard, because he suddenly was wide awake.
She took a deep, cleansing breath, and said, "I met him in Gesher in 1968. I was staying at a kibbutz just ouside town, and he was stationed not far away. I knew he was a soldier, of course - he was in uniform."
"But--" Now he wasn't just awake, he was reaching some sort of superconductive clarity. His head felt like crystal. It was just too early to be getting this kind of story served over a scratchy long-distance line.
"I know, I know, honey. Uniform and everything." She laughed a brittle, nervous laugh. "He was just so... You know, you look just like him. He looked innocent."
Blair thought about that comment, and wondered if he should file a token protest. Then he figured he probably did look innocent from time to time, and let it go.
"He was very courteous," she went on. "Intelligent, educated - older. I was just sixteen, remember. I was blown away."
"What happened, mom?"
Another laugh. "I suppose it was pretty typical. It was intense and wonderful for about two months. Then I found out he was married with two children."
"Oh."
"Then I found out I was expecting child number three. I didn't know what to do. He told me he'd support me - he was an honourable man, in his way, I suppose." There was a long pause, but Blair didn't feel like goading her, so he just waited. Finally, she sighed and said, "I thought that was good enough for a while; I needed all the help I could get. But then someone told me about-- told me that Ephraim wasn't just a soldier."
"What was he then?"
"He was a murderer."
"What?" A confusing image of Leatherface tried to superimpose itself over Blair's faceless mental picture of Ephraim Dayan. That wasn't right - probably not that kind of murderer.
"Anti-terrorism. That was he was doing. Torturing, murdering - I know what they were doing, Blair. They killed children, and--" She cut off abruptly, and Blair heard her controlled breathing and knew she'd drifted off into some calming image.
"Mom?" he said carefully.
"Yes, honey," she said, snapping back so quickly he could almost hear it. "I'm sorry. It's still, after all these years - I trusted him, for some reason, you know."
"Well, if he had a babyface like mine--" Blair said, wincing belatedly at the lameness of trying levity in the face of thirty year-old pain.
"I told him not to send any money. I left as soon as I could, and never heard from him again."
"I guess he kept up with things anyway."
"I guess he did," she said quietly.
"I met his daughter."
"You did? She's there?"
"She really, really hates me."
"Oh, honey..."
"Yeah."
"You're late, Chief."
"Yeah, well. Sorry."
"And tell Naomi not to call at five-thirty in the morning anymore."
"You tell her that."
"Aren't you a bagful of sunshine this morning?"
"Fuck you, Jim."
"Hey, Jimbo, where's Sandy today?"
"He just left, Conner. Missed him on his way out, I guess. And I would sincerely appreciate it if you refrained from calling me Jimbo. Ever. Again."
"Sorry, Ellie. Sorry ! Okay, tell him I said hi. I'm heading out again. Me n' Joel got ourselves a jolly little execution-type deal on our hands. Real professional. You don't happen to know anything about Arab gangs or that sort of thing, Jimb-- uh, Jim?"
"What?"
"Hey, hey, cool it, mate! What's up with you these days, anyway? You're jumpier than a wallaby."
"Conner."
"Okay, forget I said that."
"What about Arab gangs?"
"This guy we have - he was staying in Cascade under an alias, but we think his real name is Mohammadi something-or-other. Doesn't have a record, but word is he's got a line in terrorism. Or had, since he's very much dead now. Tortured - electric shocks, they tell us. Pretty professional deal. Cause of death was - how do they put it in medicalese? - 'penetrative trauma to the cerebellum and medulla oblongata' - that is, he was shot in the back of the head-- Hey, where are you going? Jimbo! Christ, I'll never understand that man. Blimey."
"Okay, that's good. We'll go over the new designs tomorrow." She gathered up her files with quick, economical movements, her posture clearly dismissive. The guy in the swank suit - Blair had forgotten his name; he was the seventeenth or so they'd talked to already - recognized his cue and accepted it with grace. It was becoming abundantly clear that Leah - or her name - carried a lot of weight around here.
"Yes, of course, Ms. Dayan. Good day." He left, not affording Blair even the barest of glances. Blair felt inordinately ticked off by the disrespect. So he didn't look like a businessman even on a good day? So next to Leah - in her immaculate, dove-grey power suit and perfect make up - he looked, in fact, rather scruffy and disreputable (with hindsight, he might have chosen to wear something slightly more distinguished than his pretty threadbare tweed jacket, the one he'd bought at a Salvation Army Christmas bash six years ago. Good value for seven bucks, really, but hardly the look for the heir to a small fortune)? Wasn't any excuse to forget common courtesy, was it?
He looked back at Leah, and damned if she didn't look a little smug. This was probably the main reason for requesting his presence at this farce: some sort of ritual of humiliation. Yeah, yeah, let the bastard son have it, will you.
"Was that all of them?" he asked wearily, no longer bothering to put on his polite façade. She wasn't doing it, either. Blair had just - during the last three meetings, when his attention had started to wander - come to the depressing conclusion that he was never going to be good enough for his sister. She'd made up her mind long before she even met him; he'd never had a chance to win her over.
Didn't mean he couldn't ask her a few pointed question about the man he'd never known, her father, his - whatever, biological father. A father would be something more than just some guy who boned your mother for a couple of sweaty months on some kibbutz somewhere. Blair couldn't help wondering if the man ever thought about the part of him that was growing up fatherless a hemisphere away. Well, he'd have to have, considering the fact that he bothered to put Blair in his will. Why didn't he ever just call or something? Someone had apparently kept track of Blair's comings and goings - it wasn't as if he'd have been hard to find. A man like General Dayan - he wouldn't have let Naomi's protests stop him if he really took an interest in his son. There were probably other reasons, although Blair couldn't think of what they could be. The wife - Leah's mother - had died early (or so he assumed, having read the will. Leah was not exactly a fount of information, so Blair wasn't entirely sure). There really hadn't been anythi--
Stop it. Just stop. You're a grown man. You didn't want a father when you were growing up; you don't need one now. The man's dead; he remembered you in his will. That's it. Now shut up and try to make friends with the family you do have: namely, your sister. Bitch as she may be.
"So, Leah," he started, trying not to sound sarcastic. "What was your father like?"
She snapped around so quickly he hoped she didn't give herself whiplash. Then he flinched as her eyes met his. Oh shit. I wasn't just deluding myself - she really does hate me. And I didn't even refer to him as 'our father'.
She held his eyes with a gaze that practically spat venom, giving it just enough time to put the fear of god into him, before abruptly turning on her heels and leaving the room.
"Mother fucker ," he told the walls with disgust. And ran after her.
He caught up with her in the hall by the elevators. She didn't turn to face him, just stared stonily at the elevator doors as if they held the promise of redemption, or possibly a gateway to Shangri-La.
"Look--" he started, reaching out to grab her sleeve for emphasis. Before he even got close enough to brush the fabric, she did the same neck-bruising pivot again, and grabbed his arm and twisted. Bright, surprising pain shot up all the way to his shoulder, and it was all he could do not to crumble to his knees (which, given the circumstances, would have been humiliating beyond belief).
"Don't. Touch. Me," she hissed, and he felt about as big as a roach, and just as important. God, what was this woman's major malfunction? What on earth could have made her this fucking defensive? She was worse than Jim on a really bad day, worse than Jim back in the early days, when the least provocation could send him into a spitting fury (usually ending up slamming Blair against some convenient solid surface, usually a wall or a door). Jim had been terrified and confused and in pain - what was Leah's excuse for joining the Blair-abuse sewing circle?
Well, whatever her problem was, he wasn't about to back down. What was she gonna do? Kill him? Right. Never show fear - they can smell it.
"Let me go. Leah, let me go. If you don't like me - okay, okay? There's no need to get all physical. Besides, this is what we call 'assault on a law-enforcement officer'. It's a federal offense. I could arrest you just for the fuck of it, so just ... unhand me. We don't need to hate each other. I just want to know something about my father - and he is my father, and there's nothing you can do about it, okay. He's my father, and maybe I have the right to ask you a couple of stupid questions. Then you can fly back home to your big house or whatever, and we can both go on with our lives and never speak to each other again."
She let go.
"Thank you," he said with as much dignity he could muster. "Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. You were going to tell me what kind of man Ephraim Dayan was." Yeah, Leah. Did he put you on his knee and tell you war stories? Did he bring his work home?
She stared at him, her eyes glittering with what seemed to be equal shares of sorrow and hatred.
"I can't talk about him with you," she said with the chill of finality. "You're a mistake. Nothing but a mistake he made with some American slut when he was a young man." Again, he found himself watching her back moving away.
"Hey!" he shouted after her, recovering from his outraged shock. "I might be a bastard, but I can at least refrain from getting personal, you know. I don't go around insulting other people's mothers!"
She disappeared around a corner, and he felt suddenly bone-tired. There was a big clump of something heavy and cold in his chest. He slumped against the wall next to the elevator, pulling his arm over his face, closing his eyes. Deep breath - picture the ocean. Find the center.
"Are you okay?" The soft voice next to him startled him, and he did a fairly undignified lurch, probably looking like a first-class moron. Whatthefuckever.
"What?" he snarled, expecting one of the boardroom dorks that had so pointedly ignored him earlier.
It was Danny Sharansky.
"I'm sorry, I was looking for Leah," the man said, looking abashed. " Are you okay?" His eyes narrowed just a fraction, and he studied Blair's face with disconcerting intensity. "Did you have an argument?"
The sincerity of the question was somehow all it took. Blair didn't - for a very unpleasant moment - know whether he was about to burst into tears or dissolve into laughter. Thankfully, it was the latter. Danny stared at him with a small, confused frown, which only made the situation more tragicomic, and there just was no stopping it now - it was plainly a question of laughing or choking on it.
Between attacks of hilarity, he groped clumsily for the elevator button, hitting it with more force than it deserved.
"Oh - Danny," he squeezed out when he finally could, "she went that way." He pointed vaguely to his right. The corridor was empty, and looked pretty much like all the other corridors in the building. He suspected that Danny might know where to go, nevertheless.
"What--" Danny started, clearly at a loss. I must look like a maniac, Blair thought. He's trying to decide whether to call security or an ambulance. Maybe I have lost it, who the hell knows?
"She left in a huff, man," he grated. His throat felt funny after all that laughter - all that very joyless, harsh laughter. "She told me I was a mistake, called my mother a slut, and marched off. I'm picking up some seriously bad vibes from her, let me tell ya,
man."
It looked as if Danny was about to offer some sort of ameliorating platitude (there was a facial expression specifically designed for that purpose, and he was wearing it), but right then, the elevator pinged open and Blair could make good his escape.
As soon as the doors closed around him, he leaned his forehead against the wood-paneled wall. Tonight, he decided, would be an excellent night to get rip-roaringly drunk.
"--your number after the beep, and we'll get back to you."
"Okay, I'm about to get really drunk. Don't wait up. Don't try to stop me. I'm going to spend some time with people who don't have a habit of shoving me around and twisting my arms and I do mean that literally, Jim. Between you and Leah, it's a wonder I'm still alive."
Click.
Things were going to be okay. He could feel it now. In fact, things were going to be just great. In the past few hours, the world had slowly taken on a distinct, rose-colored tint, and boy, was it ever better than the gloom of the last few weeks.
Perhaps, his mind (never one to leave well enough alone) suggested, this suddenly mellow outlook has more to do with all those tequila sluggers you threw back than with any real balance or closure.
Oh, please. John and Marge didn't notice anything was wrong, did they? Nothing's wrong, all right? They'd cheered him on with enthusiasm, getting pretty plastered themselves. Not quite this plastered, but pretty jolly, in any case.
Now there was a good reason for feeling good - the company. John and Marge were, basically, the only friends he had left from his long and meandering academic career, and the warm fuzzy feeling he got from their calm and forgiving acceptance of the Dissertation Disaster (TM) was pretty damn cool. Or, indeed, warm. Huh.
And then there was the fact that they were easygoing, fun people, as opposed to a certain grumpy cop with supersenses, who seemed to be turning into a bit of a nag these days. John and Marge didn't pester Blair for answers he didn't have, didn't go on at any length about unresolved issues (and where the hell did Jim 'I am a rock, I am an island' Ellison get off giving Blair a hard time about sharing emotions? Hello? Someone needs to get his reality ticket punched), they didn't give him any of those long, quiet, creepy looks that said 'I can see right through you, and, frankly, there's not much to see', and they certainly, absolutely did not hate him because his mother used to believe in free love and a consequence-free environment back in the sixties.
Fucking great. Now he'd managed to analyse himself right back into depression. Where's the fucking par-taay, man? The situation with Leah was - to say the least - awkward. He'd tried his best, really he had, to give her a chance. Hell, he wanted to love her; blood was supposed to be thicker than water, right? Still, it was impossible to even like her - she was so goddamned difficult : standoffish, snotty, snipy, easily annoyed, prone to snap judgement; pretty much a queen bitch, and, he told himself with gentle regret, he didn't like to say that about anyone, but when the truth is the truth, it's, well, the Truth.
And the way she got along with Jim. Like a house on fire: as in major disaster. They couldn't seem to stop baiting each other at every turn, and it was all Blair and Danny could do to avoid fisticuffs - or possibly bloodshed.
So far, Blair had managed not to lose his temper with her, even when she acted like he was something the cat had upchucked on the bedspread. The afternoon at JMJ - whew. He should be fucking canonized for not exploding in her face.
Danny - now there was a guy you could like. If Danny hadn't been joined at the hip with the half-sister from hell, Blair might have-- No, if Blair hadn't been joined at the hip with Jim, himself-- So, if things had been different, that is, radically different, Blair wouldn't have minded a little no-holds-barred, unsweetened, no-strings-attached boinkage with the dude. He was sure it was mutual, too. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one who noticed. He'd seen Leah get that same 'is-there-something-smelly-here' look as Jim whenever Blair and Danny exchanged a look that lasted more than two seconds.
Stupid. And Jim looked so jealous . Nah. No way, not Jim. Nope.
He bumped into a car, giggling a little, feeling silly for thinking about Jim that way. Oh hell, where was his car? He dug around in his pockets for the keys, distractedly scanning the deserted parking lot for anything resembling a Volvo Amazon.
Oh yeah. Drunk. Bus. No car tonight. Tequila.
And of course, it was past one now, which meant he'd missed the last bus. Which, in turn, meant he'd have to leg it. Calling Jim at this hour would result in loss of body parts, at least.
On the other hand, it was dark, it was quite a walk, and he didn't have his gun (which was a good thing, anyway, since the only thing he'd be likely to hit in his current state of intoxication would be his own foot). Jim would tear off pieces of his anatomy for even thinking about walking home through the rough parts of Cascade unarmed. This was, after all, the most dangerous city in America. Or some such.
What Jim doesn't know--
Okay, walking.
By the time he was halfway, his head had cleared up some. Instead, he just felt vaguely nauseous. He turned the corner onto Wallis street.
Oh, this is great. Fucking great. The streetlights were out all the way down to Burnett.
It's an omen, his helpful, chickenshit brain supplied. Wallis street, darkness, one-thirty a.m. And look - isn't that a car, idling with the lights off?
"Fuck off," he muttered to himself, deciding not to turn and have another look. He walked a little faster, made a show of checking his watch as if he were late for some important meeting. Yeah, at half past one in the aye-emm. A meeting with pale death, more likely.
The street was deserted, eerily quiet. Where were all the gang-bangers? It should be the fucking witching hour for thugs, mugs and pugs right now.
He should be fucking grateful they weren't out in force - all those big, nasty lugs with their tattoos and shorn heads and attitudes and - yeah, that too - automatic weapons, against one drunken, unarmed, rookie detective.
His badge - it was in his wallet, right? Yeah. That was perfect. Unarmed, packing nothing but the fucking badge. Way to get your ass fried, my friend.
Jim was going to kill him, if no one else beat him to it.
Okay, that's it. He's calling Jim. Better him than some doped-up punk.
Decision made, he groped around in his pocket for his cell phone, before he remembered that it was still where he'd left it - in the glove compartment of the Volvo.
Fuck. There was just no end to this day. Or his goddamned fucking incompetence. With a casual glance over his shoulder - was that car still there? Sure, of course, damn right - he loped across the street towards the promise of a pay phone on the other side.
He dialled. Jim picked up the phone after only one ring. Oh, thank you, Lord, thank you kindly and sweetly.
"This better be good, Sandburg," Jim said with a grumpiness that didn't quite hide the concern in his voice. Blair felt a little tendril of warmth spread through his belly, quite apart from the tequila-related glow. Oh, he cares, he thought. He always cares.
"Jim," he said, meaning to launch his plea with a good, honest apology for being an asshole earlier (he had been, yeah, he'd been an asshole; Jim was just trying to help--), but he never got beyond the name. Something moved behind him, and he spun around nervously, but he never saw what it was, because all he caught was a sharp, whistling sound, a sudden pinch in his neck, and then silence.
Someone took care to hang up the receiver that had dropped from his hand.
4269 RUNEBERG ST. #563 He didn't know which sound woke him up: the angry banging on the door, or the rustle-bump of Leah rolling out of bed, hissing and spitting like a frazzled wildcat. It didn't matter; within seconds, he was on his feet, running towards the door and Leah with the reassuring weight of his Beretta in his hand.
She wasn't wearing anything more than an army-green tank top and a pair of plain cotton panties, but minor obstacles like partial - or indeed, on one memorable occasion, complete - nudity did little to stop Leah when she was feeling threatened. She cocked her gun and ripped open the door.
Danny stood back, mainly because he couldn't intervene without either hitting Leah or 'cramping her style', as she once put it. Also because he, as opposed to her, did feel a bit silly fighting in his skivvies. Not to mention the fact that most people who want to murder people in their sleep usually do not first wake up their proposed victims (and the entire neighborhood) by banging on the door and hollering obscenities like Mr. Hyde on ecstasy.
So, he hung back and watched Leah - who, at the moment, looked rather like Ripley at the end of that first Alien film (a cinematic masterpiece, Danny thought. Leah herself preferred 'Lawrence Of Arabia' for some reason) - as she pulled the fully clothed door-banger into the apartment with a force you had to have been on the receiving end of to know was there. She banged the man - it was clearly a man, and a large one at that - into the wall opposite the door, locked one arm across his throat, jammed her gun into his face and screamed, "Turn on the motherfucking lights, Danny!" She tended to swear a lot when she was roused from sleep by deranged people trying to break down the door.
The deranged person this time turned out to be Jim Ellison. He was staring at Leah with a rage so pure and white-hot that Danny could almost picture him tearing her limb from limb.
"What the fuck?" Leah said. Amen, thought Danny. Jim Ellison just stared at her - had the man completely lost his mind?
"Where is he?" Ellison said, and although he didn't say it loud, the threat came through with all the subtle finesse of an air raid siren.
"Who?" He blinked, as if this response was so completely outside the expected he couldn't even begin to process it. She repeated her question, pushing the gun a little harder into his jaw. He didn't seem to notice it. Then he simply took a step forward (he really didn't notice it, Danny realized with intense dismay), pushing Leah - who simply lacked the body mass to resist - backwards, and raised his head like a dog at point. His eyes unfocussed slightly. Leah refrained from redecorating the wall with his brains and instead threw Danny a quick, confused look. He shrugged. Maybe the man really had run mad at some point between Monday's dinner and the present.
Ellison's eyes cleared again, and he looked down at Leah, as if noticing her for the first time. "Where is he?" he asked again.
"Who?" said Leah, with affected patience. Ellison tried to shake her off, but she hung on like a pitbull with a bone. He didn't insist, but it didn't stop him from growling,
"Sandburg! What did you do to him?"
"What!?"
"You hurt him, lady - just one hair on his head, and I'll throw the book in the bay and come after you on my own."
"Excuse me," Danny said, because this was really starting to look unpleasant. "You already are on your own, and furthermore, you're accusing my friend of something, Detective. Mind sharing with the rest of the class? What's the occasion?"
"I'm accusing you both, Sharansky," Ellison snarled, once again attempting to free himself. Leah was starting to look seriously annoyed, and Danny thought she might just go ahead and pull the trigger if the big cop didn't stop struggling soon.
"Okay, okay," he said, resigning himself to another bout of negotiations. "Something's happened to Blair?"
Ellison stared at him for a long, disconcerting moment, stared as if he was contemplating the color of Danny's eyes or the luster of his hair (only with more than a hint of anger instead of the admiration one would normally assign to stares of that type).
"Oh fuck," the man said, finally. Lowered his hands and seemed to deflate. Leah didn't back off until Ellison spoke again. "Any ideas who might want to abduct Sandburg? I heard voices, thought they were speaking Hebrew, but I might have jumped to a couple of hasty conclusions."
Leah's look this time was filled with something bordering on regret.
"Look, people, if this has anything to do with your activities--"
"Shut up!" she snapped, immediately turning back to Danny. "It has to be Mohammadi's boys," she said, in Hebrew so the cop wouldn't understand.
"They must have figured out that he's... um."
"That he's my brother," she said quietly, and it was quite possibly the first time he'd heard her say those words regarding Blair Sandburg without making them sound like an expletive. "Shit. Shit. Shit!"
She was off and pacing, rubbing her forehead like she always did when she was working on some particularly tricky strategic puzzle.
"They'll kill him," Danny said, although it was unnecessary. She'd learned this the same way he had: through repeated, painful, personal experience.
She kept pacing. "I don't know, I don't know - they might want something--" she was saying, and he watched her struggle to stay in her military persona, knowing all the while that this hit her right in the solar plexus of all her weak spots. She might hate her brother with the weight of almost twelve years' worth of misplaced resentment, but he was blood - acknowledged by her father - and that would be enough to jam her radar.
"I'll call Schlomo, see if he can tell us where they hang out."
"Excuse me?" Ellison said sharply. He'd composed himself, but he was clenching his jaw like he was doing an endurance test on his molars. "You know what's going on, you tell me now. You're in my town, and my partner is missing. I'd like some answers."
There was something in the way he said it: my town, my partner, that made Danny wonder just how much of that dissertation Blair really had made up.
"He's a cop," Leah said, ignoring Ellison. Danny shrugged.
"He'll want his partner back."
"That's not very likely to happen, now is it?" But she didn't look happy saying that, and Danny knew she'd have to give it at least a try, regardless of her personal feelings. Blair could only have been taken for one reason: to get to Leah. It wasn't a thing you just ignored. "I don't trust him."
"We could cut a deal. We help him, he helps us, we all go our separate ways afterwards."
"He's a cop," she insisted, and of course it was true, but Danny had looked at the man a lot, and the way he acted the guard dog around Blair... It was just a question of finding out where his loyalties where the strongest.
"Leah, if we go after Blair without him, he'll do his own investigation, and that kind of scenario is just bound to have repercussions. A joint effort would be more efficient. We'll just have to trust him for the time being. He'll be pretty focussed on just finding his friend. He obviously already knows who we are, and he hasn't called in the troops. He might be ready to negotiate."
She walked three rounds around the room before finally coming to a stop. The mask had dropped back in place, and she was Colonel Dayan from head to toe, scant clothing notwithstanding.
"Okay, we'll talk," she said in English, giving Ellison the look she usually reserved for insubordinate troops - half contempt, half annoyance, with a dash of threat. He didn't look particularly intimidated.
"You can start by telling me just what brought this on," he said. She straightened her back even more.
"I think I'm going to be asking the questions right now. We have no reason to trust you. Besides, we both outrank you, captain."
"I'm retired from the military. I'm a cop now, and you don't have jurisdiction in these parts. So if you wanna break it down--"
"Hey, hey!" Danny waved his arms between the two of them when they started looking like they were sizing up good spots to punch on each other. "Can we just keep this civil? I don't think there's much time to waste squabbling like school children."
"Okay," Ellison said reluctantly. "You help me find Sandburg, and I won't call the feds. How's that for a deal?"
"Well, you help us find him, and I won't shoot you," Leah countered. "How's that?"
Oh, fuck . Time to think about why he made it his New Millennium's resolution never to drink tequila again. Jesus Christ and his mama, too, this was a headache and a half.
He vaguely remembered John and Marge laughing at something he said, but it was just a brief flash, and otherwise the events of the evening remained rather hazy. He wondered what time he'd gotten home - how he'd gotten home - and what the hell was he going to say to Jim? That part he remembered all too clearly; total recall, in fact. Acting like a complete asshole all day. Leaving a very impolite message on the machine. Oh yeah. The message. What was that? 'It's a wonder I'm alive'? Right. You know all his buttons and you just had to push them.
He wished fervently for a good-sized hole to hide in. He'd stay there for, say, the next ten years? Maybe by then Jim would have forgiven him.
The headache was gaining momentum, something he would have thought physically impossible just a few minutes ago. My head is going to split. It will split open like a rotten vegetable, and my liquefied brain matter will smell like tequila. He groaned (which only made the pain worse) and attempted to rub his temples. Attempted, because his arm wouldn't move.
Annoyed, he tried again. No beef.
"Huh?" he said aloud. Ouch. His mouth tasted like the inside of the men's room pissoir after a particularly busy Saturday night. And that weird cottony feeling--
Shit! Even thinking it that loud hurt his head, but he thought it again, consequences be damned. Shit. Shitshitshit.
This wasn't a tequila hangover.
The moment he'd finished this thought, the next came: I'm not in my own bed.
Fact was, he wasn't in any kind of bed. He was lying face-down on a cold and none too clean concrete floor. Amazing how he hadn't noticed that before.
That's what a tranq hangover does to you.
He knew this because he'd been here before: hell, he was the preferred hostage of most criminal groups in town, it seemed, and they were all really happy to feed him all kinds of sedatives. Maybe it's my effervescent personality, he thought. They have to subdue the killer Sandburg charm somehow, don't they?
His arms were tied behind his back, and they felt numb and heavy. He'd been here a while. The cold from the floor was starting to register on top of the headache (the headache to end all headaches, possibly forever).
He opened his eyes.
Nothing. No change at all. So - complete darkness. Isn't that fun?
THE LOFT "Okay, I'm about to get really drunk. Don't wait up. Don't try to stop me. I'm going to spend some time with people who don't have a habit of shoving me around and twisting my arms and I do mean that literally, Jim. Between you and Leah, it's a wonder I'm still alive." There was a short, contemplative silence after the answering machine tape stopped playing. Dayan didn't have the grace to even look a little guilty, but Jim decided not to ask her about whatever the hell she'd done to make Sandburg that angry. Hopefully she was feeling the same pinch of guilt Jim was. Not very likely, but a man could dream.
Sandburg's voice sounded harsh and raw and a little slurred. The wall of sound in the background seemed impenetrable to Jim. He closed his eyes and dialled his hearing up a few notches. Played the tape again.
A jumble of voices. Well, obviously Sandburg had called from a bar. Music - some sort of soft, mellow jazz. Jim sat up straighter and dialled up as far as he could, up to the very edge of a zone.
He could hear the band move on the stage, and it was a band as opposed to a recording. Jim could, in that place just between sound and silence, hear the acoustic sounds of the instrument under the blare from the loudspeakers. There was the tiniest lag there, a fraction of a fraction of a second of pause between the sounds.
He felt himself slipping, slipping - and shook his head violently, dialling down for all he was worth, wrenching his eyes open. Dayan and Sharansky were staring at him with twin expressions of incredulity. Jim supposed he must look just this side of deranged. He got his face and his senses and his fear under control. Damned if he was going to present anything but an immaculate façade to these two clowns.
Terrorist scum clowns, he amended sourly, and played the tape again, just to make sure.
"He's calling from a jazz bar with live band," he said finally. Sharansky raised an eyebrow (it didn't make him look like Spock, but Jim would have bet the guy thought it did). Dayan just stared impassively. That was a lady you didn't impress without putting some good effort into it. Jim wasn't going to try. He just got up and found yesterday's Cascade Times on the coffee table.
There were two clubs advertising live jazz, but one of them was a big band, and what he'd heard on the tape was just a double base, drums and trumpet combo.
"Jack's and Mike's," he said, already heading for the door. Dayan and Sharansky followed without question. They probably knew absolute certainty when they saw it.
"Yeah, yeah, I know Blair," the bartender shouted over the din. "And he was here earlier, but he left hours ago. His friends are still here, though. Try them." He pointed at a couple sitting right up by the stage. They had the slumped positions of serious party people on the wind-down.
Jim recognized them. O'Reilly, wasn't it? Marge was the woman, and her husband - oh, well. O'Reilly, anyway.
They didn't look away from the band until Jim slapped Mr. O'Reilly on the shoulder. The man's face lit up.
"Jim Ellison!" he said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the seriously drunk. "Where's Blair?"
"That's my line," Jim said. "When did he leave? Did he say how he was getting home?"
"Dunno," Marge said after a moment of solemn consideration. "He was pretty drunk, you know? But, on the other hand, so were we. Are we. Whatever."
"He was gonna take the bus," her husband supplied. "Said he was going to the bus stop, didn't he, Margie?"
"What time was this? One-thirty? Earlier?"
"Umm..." They looked at each other, giggling under their breath at some private joke Jim didn't want to hear. Then they both lost interest at the same time and turned back to the band.
"This is a great band," Marge declared.
"We come here all the time," the husband said.
"We didn't even know Blair liked jazz, but he really wanted to do some serious partying tonight."
"We don't see enough of him these days."
"Why do you think he wanted to become a cop?" Marge said to her husband, and Jim realized they had forgotten about his existence. He got up and left without calling their attention again.
"Last bus left at half past midnight," he said when they had cleared the din of the club. "If Sandburg was on it, he'd've been home by one. He called at one-thirty."
"So he walked," Sharansky said.
"What route would he take?" Dayan asked. Jim had to stop to think. They were a good hour's walk from Prospect, and the shortest way went straight through the rotten core of Cascade's most ill-reputed area. Roundabout where Sandburg had lived back in the half-forgotten time before he'd moved into Jim's spare room.
"Okay," he said finally. "You drive. We'll check the payphones."
There was quite an amazing amount of payphones in the area between the bar and Prospect Street. About half of them were out of order, but he had to check them anyway. His nose was itching with the effort of sifting through a million scents, his eyes felt gritty and tired, and there still wasn't any sign of Sandburg. They had driven around the most likely areas slowly, and he'd gone over the place with every sense, and nothing at all had come up.
Then it was there - right in the corner of his vision. Weariness and ache melted off him in a surge of adrenaline, and he shouted, "Pull over!"
There was a phone next to the stripped wreck of a Lexus. The graffitied booth took on an eerie cast in the low light - what was wrong with this city when all the streetlights could be out for a block and no one did shit? - and every detail sprung out in stark relief, as if reality was just a little more real right here.
Stuck to a piece of gum on the pavement next to the phone, flapping lazily in the mild morning breeze, was a long, curly hair. A single hair, but there might as well have been a note saying 'Sandburg Was Here'.
"This is the spot," Jim said. Sharansky and Dayan gave him a shared Look. Jim igored them and got out of the car.
Sandburg's scent still lingered faintly on the scene, mixed with the sweet-sharp smell of alcohol. Tequila, Jim thought. I thought he was giving it up in his resolutions.
There was no blood anywhere. What there was, however, was a fresh tire track outlined in greasy, black dust. He knelt and ran his fingers over it. It felt strange - heavy, somehow - and it smelled like oil and metal.
Sharansky had walked past him and was now talking on the phone in sharp and incomprehensible Hebrew. Jim wanted, just for a second, to push the man away because his presence was smudging and blanking out Sandburg's scent. He quelled the irrational impulse with an uncomfortable shrug.
There was more nattering going on now. Dayan was asking something. Looks were exchanged, and Jim felt some of his carefully exerted control slipping and shifting.
"What was that about?" he asked with more venom than he'd intended.
"We're going to take a break now," Dayan said. Her voice was tight, and Jim guessed he wasn't the only one with a fraying leash on their rage. It didn't soothe him to know that she was as pissed off as he was; quite the opposite.
"Hey! I'd appreciate it if you kept me posted here," he said. She ignored him with infuriating insouciance, and walked back to the car. There: now he'd had it with her. He could almost hear the snapping of the leash when he lost his temper.
"Hey!" he shouted again, and took three long steps to catch up with her.
His hand didn't even reach her shoulder before she'd spun around and swung a blow at him. She was fast, but he blocked it fairly easily, only to realize it had been a distraction, and he found himself, for the second time that night, looking down the barrel of her Beretta.
He could hear her pulse calming down again after the sharp spike of excitement, but her black eyes were still sparkling with fevered malice. Jim had seen that look before - it was a battle expression. He couldn't read her at all. How likely was she to just shoot him and get on with her business?
Then Sharansky was next to her, talking softly, soothing. She didn't break her stare, but her eyes softened just a fraction. After a minute or so, she stepped back and lowered her gun. Sharansky turned to Jim with a narrow glare. He didn't look as angry as Dayan, but he wasn't about to break into song, either.
"Don't touch her again," he said. "Next time I'll just hang back and see if she blows your brains out. Now get in the car. We're going."
Jim complied meekly, covering his bristling with a blank face. He was good at looking impassive - Sandburg could get so frustrated with that. Thinking about Sandburg made it harder to maintain the façade, but it wasn't impossible. Thinking about Sandburg right now was painful, of course. Funny how it didn't get easier, worrying about the kid. It should be routine by now, considering the frequency with which he got into trouble. It didn't get easier, though. It got harder every time.
He turned off the unnecessary contemplation with trained ease - another trait that got up Sandburg's nose, in fact - and concentrated on not killing Leah Dayan.
There was a long silence as Sharansky drove East at a speed that hovered just under ludicrous. Dayan was holding her gun in her lap like a pet. Jim could swear he saw her stroke it lovingly.
Finally she sighed theatrically and said, "It's Hamas."
"What?" Jim said. She switched gears so unexpectedly that he had a hard time following, sentinel senses notwithstanding. She holstered her gun and twisted around to meet his eyes.
"Hamas," she said, and now her eyes were carefully blank, with just a smidgen of easygoing contempt. "A Palestinian terrorist group determi--"
"I know what Hamas is," he interjected, trying not to sound insulted, although he was. Smug bitch.
She turned away quickly and didn't continue. Instead Sharansky picked up the thread.
"There's intelligence about increased Hamas presence in Cascade."
"So you two just march in and start torturing people to death? That's your solution?" Sharansky flashed Jim an angry look in the rearview mirror, and his heart rate picked up just a little. Dayan stayed perfectly calm this time, and answered,
"We're trying to stop them from killing any more civilians. That's what we're doing." She turned to face him again. "Do you think the CIA don't know about this? They can't find the bastards. What a bloody joke.
"As for the Hamas people - don't you think they knew exactly what they were getting into when they blew up that car? They don't need your sympathy, they need to be stopped."
Hey, hey - wait just a minute. Jim sat up straight, backtracking furiously. "You think they killed Peter Vaughn?"
"We know they did," she said coolly.
"How do you know?" She just looked at him, and he came to his senses. "Never mind."
Sharansky pulled up in front of a small house with peeling paint and a rotting picket fence. The neighborhood was poor but not especially troubled - the standard crime out here was domestic disturbances of all kinds. It wasn't a bad choice for a hideout. No one would pay any attention as long as things happened relatively discreetly.
The door opened as soon as they were on the screened porch. A tall and lanky man wearing a 9 mm in a shoulder holster waved them in. He glanced at Jim, but his face remained impassive.
The air in the house was stale and smelled faintly like mold and age, but the rooms were tidy and impeccably clean. They passed a small kitchen - with no dirty dishes in sight - and a bedroom-turned-office with several computers. There were two more men waiting in the living room.
Dayan said something in Hebrew, and Jim caught his name in there. Everyone turned to look at him. He felt a twitch of amusement when he recognized the expressions. They were all desperately curious, but working hard on their cool all the same. It was the face of tough guys everywhere. He'd used it himself.
Dayan turned to him, and her cool did not look forced. She nodded at the guy who'd opened the door. "That's David," she said. "And Eli--" a short, round-faced man about Sandburg's age, "and Schlomo." Schlomo was younger than the rest, hardly past twenty-five, and he actually made an effort to smile through his tough-guy act.
Next, there was a smattering of sharp commands, and everyone fanned out into various parts of the house, looking efficient and business-like, only to reconvene a moment later, armed to the teeth.
Schlomo handed Jim a gun. The serial number had been meticulously filed off, but Jim bet he could still feel them if he dialled up touch enough. He didn't say so. Instead he raised his eyebrow just a little at Sharansky, who was looking at him expectantly.
"You can't use your service weapon, obviously," the man said.
"I see," Jim said. He eyed the 9mm Glock suspiciously. This would be a real fine time to just leave. Call Simon, get a formal investigation going. Yeah, and get Sandburg killed for good.
He unholstered his own gun and replaced it with the Glock. There really wasn't much of a choice to make. He had to find Sandburg. The rest would take care of itself.
The list of possible Hamas hideouts that intelligence had supplied was a foot long, and not one place checked out. By noon, Ellison's façade was showing cracks, and by the time they headed back to Arthur A. Chester Street, he had stopped hiding his anxiety. Danny himself was feeling like hitting the bottle, but he couldn't let himself show it, of course. Leah would never let him live that down.
"Crap," she said as they sat down around the rickety coffee table trying not to look dejected, "I was supposed to be at JMJ this afternoon." She got up again and stalked past Ellison - who was standing sentry by the door, looking like he wanted to hit something - and picked up the phone.
Whatever they were telling her wasn't making her happy. Danny wasn't sure, but he thought there was a hint of fear in her expression. Of course, you never could tell with Leah, and in any case, it was quickly covered by what he liked to call her 'game face'.
"Someone delivered a videotape to me just an hour ago. They're sending it here now."
It took only ten minutes for the tape to arrive. As soon as the front door had closed behind the courier, Ellison came bursting out of the living room and snatched the tape out of Leah's hand. Danny could only stare and blink dumbly as the man sniffed the black plastic like a dog checking for piss tracks on a telephone pole.
After a while, Ellison handed the tape back to Leah without a word of explanation. Danny didn't think he wanted to know, so he didn't ask.
Leah pushed the tape into the VCR and hit play.
It was a close up of Blair looking angry and roughed-up. He was staring straight into the camera. Someone mumbled something and he nodded and said, in the sing-song voice of a kid reciting homework.
"To Leah Dayan: there's a payphone at--" he looked down, as if reading off a note, "--the corner of Topelius and Fifth. Be there alone and unarmed at five pm, or they'll--" He cut off and looked off camera, exasperated. "What? Yeah, okay, man. --Or Mr. Sandburg - that's me - will be executed."
There was a couple of seconds more of his face - during which he rolled his eyes theatrically - and then nothing but static.
"He seems to be holding up," Leah said dryly. She was impressed, Danny could tell, and she hated to admit it.
"Sandburg's good with kidnappers," Ellison said absently, still staring at the strobing screen as if he still could see his friend's face there.
"He wasn't badly hurt," Danny said unnecessarily. No one paid him any attention.
Suddenly, Ellison shot up, looking almost frantic. "Rust!" he yelled.
"Huh?" Danny said.
"Rust - that dirt smelled like rust. I know where he is."
"What?"
"They'd still be there - the rendezvous is in two hours. We can still--"
"What are you talking about!?" Leah finally snapped. Ellison stopped in his tracks and gave them both an appraising glance.
"This is going to sound really strange," he said reluctantly.
KOVERHAR Why do these things always have to go down on these abandoned industrial sites? Jim thought. There is a lot to be said for, say, a nice, tidy apartment, or a sunny beach.
Koverhar loomed darkly over them, all twisted scaffolds and broken windows. The furnace had been blown, but the actual steel plant still stood. They had blueprints (obtained quickly and illegally by the very clever and efficient Schlomo), but the place was a maze, and somewhere inside was Sandburg. Jim wasn't feeling optimistic.
"Okay," Dayan was saying, slinging an AK 47 that made her look ridiculously tiny over her shoulder, "this is the plan. There are up to six of them left in the building. They are most likely to be holed up in the basement. We go down in pairs - Eli and David take the West entrance, Danny with Ellison go in from the East, and Schlomo comes South with me. Make it a clean break - no prisoners or witnesses. Oh, and if you find Sandburg, try to get him out alive if possible."
"Hey!" Jim said, but the look she gave him was enough to make him swallow his protests. He'd let her know just what he thought about her methods later. When she wasn't packing an assault rifle, maybe.
There wasn't anything more in the way of orders. Jim could appreciate the smooth, well-oiled cooperation of an experienced team. Dayan worked a tight shift, that was for sure.
He followed Sharansky around the building without a word.
He was almost hoping they'd tranq him some more. The hangover was surely to prefer to the agony of cramps. One thing that never really comes across in the movies: the way everything just goes numb or seizes up once you've spent a few hours tied up like a parcel. It goes from uncomfortable to fucking agony in a slow but steady process, and all you can do is wiggle around and hope your strong and heroic and hopefully free partner comes to cut you loose before your legs go gangrenous.
And that was just ridiculous: the way he kept telling himself that Jim would find him. Shit, he was a cop now; he should be able to get his own ass out of these situations. He'd even managed it a few times when he was just a meek academic.
Unfortunately, these guys were professional and pretty damn good at tying knots. He'd been working on the knots for what seemed like days, and there wasn't the least bit of give anywhere. All he had to show for his trouble was a deep, painful cramp in his shoulder. To add actual injury to the insult, one of the bastards had walked in on his wiggling earlier and clipped him across the head with the butt of his gun. He didn't pass out, but it took a while before the little bird stopped twirling around his head.
They hadn't been too hard on him, all in all. They'd smacked him around a little for the benefits of the viewers before they made their contribution to America's Dumbest Home Videos, but nothing was broken.
Dumb or not, though, he figured the threat was real enough. He didn't understand Arabic, but he could put two and two together as well as the next guy. There was Leah Dayan, daughter of Ephraim Dayan: anti-terrorist officer. There was a bunch of Arabic gentlemen with a grudge. The picture was clear as a day.
And who's stuck right in the middle of the proceedings, getting the sharp end of the stick as usual? Why, it's our hero, Boy Wonder Sandburg. Sitting in the dark, tied hand and feet and feeling mightily sorry for himself.
If he didn't have such a blistering headache, he'd bang his head against the wall in sheer frustration.
The door banged open and sharp light poured in along with two of his captors. He recognized them from earlier. The short, stocky guy was the one who'd videotaped the proceedings, and the tall, stocky guy was the one who'd gone all slap-happy. Tall Guy packed an Uzi hanging from a strap over his shoulder. Shorty had a shoulder holster with what looked like a Glock.
Shorty produced a nasty-looking knife with a serrated edge and a hook at the end (Blair didn't really want to linger on what such a weapon could be used for; he'd seen way too many Friday the 13th movies), and cut the ropes on his legs.
"Get up," Tall Guy said curtly, and after taking one more look at the knife in Shorty's hand, Blair tried to comply.
It didn't work. His legs were like logs of wood, and all he accomplished was some sort of helpless, flopping motion, like a fish on dry land. Tall Guy uttered something that sounded like curse and grabbed Blair roughly and pulled him to his feet. Needles and pins clawed at Blair's legs, and he couldn't suppress a meek little whimper.
"Get up," Tall Guy said again, rather superfluously, since Blair was already standing. Or, at least, hanging in an upright position.
Shorty did some more cutting, and Blair's hands were free. He reflected that he probably should be making that last, desperate attempt at escape just about now, but the pain in his legs and shoulders put a damper on his enthusiasm.
Then his window of opportunity closed, as Shorty whipped out a pair of handcuffs. At least, Blair now had his hands in front of him, and that eased the cramps just a little.
"Walk," said Tall Guy. That single-syllable vocabulary was really cementing the image of Hired Goon.
"You know," Blair said conversationally, "it would really help if you just, I don't know, rubbed my legs a little. And a nice, hot bath would make it easier as well. But--"
Shorty grabbed his other arm, and they both dragged him out the door and down the corridor like a carcass.
"Yeah, that works, too. But it isn't nearly as nice, guys. Really." They were really good at ignoring him. Jim had probably issued a pamphlet on the subject. Maybe they got it in Palestine as well.
Okay, and now would be an excellent time for the cavalry to arrive. The stony looks on the thugs' faces didn't bode well for the Boy Wonder. A good time for Jim 'Batman' Ellison to swoop down, cape and all, and wreak his vengeance on the--
He didn't have time to finish the thought, because next thing he knew, a gunshot rang out in the confined space of the corridor. Shorty jerked and cried out, and suddenly, Blair's support vanished and he fell on his face with the grace of a clubbed oxen.
Above his head, he heard the stuttering rat-tat-tat of Tall Guy's Uzi. He threw his hands over his head and kept down. He thought he heard someone shout or cry out in pain, but it was all a bit of a blur, what with the echoes of the automatic fire bouncing between the walls and deafening him.
Then it suddenly ended. Blair opened his eyes and looked straight at Shorty, who was looking right back, advancing on hands and knees. There was blood on his shoulder, but the wound didn't seem to be lethal, or even much of a hindrance, because that nasty knife was in Shorty's hand, and the intent was fairly obvious. Blair's reaction didn't have very much to do with what was going on in his head (which was mostly gibberish at this point), but it was succinct and effective all the same. He got to his knees with a wail, raised his chained hands above his head and brought them down on Shorty's head. The suddenness of the action took Shorty by surprise and the blow hit him right in the neck. He crumpled on the dirty concrete floor with a flatulent hiss.
Blair lost his balance and toppled over, his face pressing into the rough cloth of Shorty's black coat. With an effort, he managed to roll over. A distant part of his brain kept insisting that he was hurt, that the knife had gouged a good chunk of meat out of his left armpit, but it was drowned out instantly when he looked up and found himself staring straight at Tall Guy down the barrel of the Uzi. Oh, fuck.
There wasn't anywhere to run, so Blair did what he'd done the last time someone had looked this intent on ending his life. He closed his eyes and just waited.
Shots rang out, and he was a little surprised that it didn't hurt at all. When he'd gotten shot before, it had hurt like hell. Of course, you can't hurt if you're dead. That made sense. Only, he knew what happened after death - there were jungles and mystical visions and things - and this didn't really feel anything like it.
After a while of confusion, it penetrated his foggy brain that the shots he'd heard hadn't been those of an Uzi, but rather the sharp, short bark of an assault rifle.
He opened his eyes and noticed that he wasn't dead after all. Tall Guy was now Dead Guy - Dead Guy With Half A Head, in fact. Ewww.
Well, damn. That was a relief. Considering that Blair had been about to become Dead Guy just a second ago. But...
He looked around. There was Dead Guy and Unconscious Guy (formerly known as Shorty), and then there was another still form a little ways ahead. Most likely the start of the trouble. Whoever he was, Blair was grateful. But--
There. A slight, black-clad figure with a rifle - yeah, that was an AK, and that was the guy who saved the day holding it.
The guy with the rifle approached, and Blair realized with a start that it wasn't a guy at all, it was Leah, looking deadly and sleek in black pants and pullover. She didn't look at him. Instead, she drew her sidearm, marched up and shot Unconscious Shorty in the head. Her expression never changed.
"Wha--?" Blair said, feeling slow and stupid. "What?" he tried again. Leah kept ignoring him. She turned around and walked back down the corridor to kneel by the fallen man. Her face was still impassive, but her shoulders were tense. She gently turned the man over. He was young - younger than Blair by several years, and he looked dead. Very dead. His chest was a bloody ruin, and Blair thought there might be a piece missing from his head as well.
What happened next seemed to take more time than it reasonably could. Some images blurred together, some stood out with haunting clarity: the shadow of the guy stepping out of the doorway; the Glock in Dead Shorty's holster; Leah bent over her dead friend, a streak of bright crimson across her pale forehead.
Again, no time or opportunity to think. I must be getting cop instincts or something, he thought as an aside when he got the Glock out of the holster and lifted it laboriously. It weighed a lot more than a gun should, but he held it steady and got a bead on the man standing behind Leah, standing behind her and lifting his gun and pointing it at her head.
Someone's gun went off, and for a bright, eternal second, Blair wasn't sure which one it was. Then the guy just fell over, so apparently--
Then Leah fell as well.
More of those bright, eternal seconds. Blair was almost getting used to standing on the precipice of disaster, but he still wasn't enjoying it much. And there was a sharp, growing pain under his arm somewhere. His legs still hurt, his ears hurt from all the loud shooting, his head was one big, screaming ache, and he was just sick of this situation. And Leah was getting up. Damn, she was like one of those dolls with sand in the bottom.
Now she looked at Blair, finally, and there was an expression in her eyes he hadn't seen before. Maybe it was just the utter lack of contempt. It was a nice change, anyway.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I think so," he said slowly, not feeling all right, but not exactly dying, either. "Are you?"
"It's just a flesh wound."
"Of course."
"That was a good shot," she said with only a hint of reluctance.
"Thanks."
"We need to move. Can you walk?"
With an effort, and absolutely no grace, he managed to scramble to his feet. On his way up, he got a good - too good - look at Shorty's ruined head. He winced and met Leah's eyes. He mustn't have hidden his reproach very well, because her mouth tightened and her eyes hardened.
"It's not your war," she said angrily. And that was just ridiculous, of course - after all, who'd just spent hours being alternately tied up and pounded at? But he kept his tongue with a conscious effort. She had saved his ass, and you don't go racking on the allies when the shit is hitting the fan this heavily.
Despite his worry and frustration, Jim had to admit that working with a true professional had its fine points. Sharansky hadn't wasted time bickering about rank and chain-of-command; when he realized what an asset sentinel senses would be in a seek and destroy operation like this, he relinquished command with a shrug and seemed happy to play second fiddle.
Sandburg's presence permeated the building. Jim could hear his heartbeat almost as soon as he entered, and he hung on to it like a homing beacon. At one point, he clearly heard Sandburg's voice say, "You know, it would really help if you just, I don't know, rubbed my legs a little. And a nice, hot bath would make it easier as well. But--" Jim didn't hear where that was leading, because Sandburg was drowned out by voices much closer, and the battle was on.
He peeked quickly around the corner ahead. Leaning back, he held up two fingers to Sharansky.
"Uzis. Hundred feet," he mouthed. Sharansky nodded. Jim did a silent countdown, and they stepped around the corner.
The second it took for the Uzi-carrying bad guys to react was all they needed. Sometimes, Jim thought, it's almost too easy.
Then he dialled hearing back up and heard echoes of shots coming from up ahead. And Sandburg crying out.
"Sandburg!" he shouted, and the pleasant feeling of the post-battle kick left him like it had never been there. Sandburg's heart was racing, but Jim couldn't keep listening, because next, there were more gunshots, and with the echo, it took a while before it died down.
It wasn't too far to run through the maze of corridors, Sharansky on his heels, the beacon of Sandburg's heartbeat coming into range up ahead.
They turned a corner, and there he was. Pale and bruised and weaving slightly, but alive and lucid all the same. Leah Dayan was right behind him, sporting a bleeding shoulder and looking a little dazed.
For a few seconds, everyone just stood staring dumbly, but then Jim took those last few steps and scooped Sandburg into his arms.
"Thank God," he said, because that was what you said when your friend has narrowly avoided death. Again.
"Tell me about it," Sandburg mumbled. He smelled like sweat and spent adrenaline and blood. A lot of blood, in fact. Jim backed off.
"Are you hurt?" Sandburg looked a little sheepish.
"It's just a flesh wound," he said flippantly. "I think Leah's hurt worse. We need to get out of here. I don't know how many there were, but--"
"We took care of two," Sharansky cut in. He was standing next to Dayan, not quite holding her, but letting her lean on him. She was getting the gray color of blood loss, and her face was tight with pain.
"Plus three makes five," she said quietly. "Could be another two, tops."
"I don't know how many they were," Sandburg said. "I think I counted four at most. There could be twenty for all I know."
Jim let his hearing spiral outwards, picking up the sounds of small animals scurrying through empty corridors, the groans and creaks of the building settling, the howl of the wind in the towers, the call of seagulls off to the West. Someone talking.
"I can hear two guys," he said. "Oh. It's Eli and David. No one else."
"Okay," Sharansky said. "Let's just go."
ARTHUR A. CHESTER ST. Blair felt like he was sitting in a bubble. There were ten inches of perfect calm around him, but outside the bubble was the frantic activity of an anthill. He knew there weren't more than five people besides him in the house, and Leah wasn't up to fretting at the moment, but the rest of them still managed to swarm.
He and Leah were sitting on the couch in a ratty living room in a ratty little house somewhere. Someone had told him the name of the street, but he couldn't quite remember. It was named for a president, only not. Maybe. Whatever.
He wasn't in pain. Quite the opposite, in fact. There had been some real horse pills earlier, and he was still floating in their wake. The world wasn't making much sense. He figured it probably wouldn't be any clearer if he were completely sober.
"How did you find me?" he said suddenly, surprising even himself. He wasn't addressing the question to anyone in particular, but Leah was the only one around, so she answered. She was being suspiciously nice to him, he noted. She'd even smiled - the tiniest, most minuscule smile; but it had been a genuine one.
"Your partner sniffed you out. He's like a bloodhound with a brain, isn't he?"
"That's my Jim," Blair agreed. It occurred to him that he might want to feel some worry, or possibly even dread at the thought of Leah knowing about Jim, but he couldn't work up any real excitement. He'd used up his excitement quota for the next quarter or so.
"Why did you shoot that guy? Shorty, you know?" It came out sounding a little dry and matter of fact, as if he were questioning her choice of detergent and not the cold-blooded murder of an unconscious man.
She made a small, aborted gesture that wanted to be a shrug but couldn't - on account of the bandaged shoulder - and said, "No loose ends."
"Oh," he said. It did make sense - in a terrorist sort of way, anyway.
"It's my job," she said, in way of explanation; as if it explained anything at all.
"Right," he said. There wasn't much to say. Their worlds didn't seem to overlap anywhere. He found himself wishing that she'd just leave. He'd be perfectly happy knowing she existed, as long as she didn't exist right here.
He remembered telling Jim once that he was happy not knowing who his father was. Right now, he couldn't tell if ignorance had been better. Right now he was feeling … well, nothing much. He wasn't feeling any kinship - any of that warm, fuzzy feeling he'd always imagined there'd be between members of a family. With Naomi, things had always been different; she'd been the start and finish and in-between of his life, and there had been no point of reference to describe the feeling. What he was missing here was that Thanksgiving-turkey-and-ballgames-with-dad feeling he'd picked up between some of his friends and their families. The Dayans were probably not a turkey and ballgames kind of family.
Leah shifted next to him, shifted and turned to him. Her eyes were enormous and black and completely devoid of resentment. That was nice.
"Blair," she said.
"Yes," he said. She looked down, and he could swear she would have blushed if she weren't too exsanguinated to work up the color.
"Look--" she started. Cut off. Tried again. "Look, this is probably the medication talking, but. Um ... I'm sorry. For. Well, I'm sorry." She turned away again, and that was it, Blair supposed. So...
"It's okay," he said. It wasn't, of course. People were dead, after all. What could be okay? Although, he amended, it was probably more okay for her. She had perspective. "I'm sorry about your friend, uh..."
"Schlomo."
"Right."
"He was twenty-three. I can't remember being that young."
"I can."
"You're not that old even now."
"Thirty."
"You've got time."
"This is a dangerous town. But I think I've lived, you know? I've had time."
"Yeah."
The conversation was set to peter out, but then Jim showed up, looking gruff but radiating exquisite relief when his eyes lit on Blair.
"I think we can leave now, Chief," he said. "We have some thinking to do."
"Huh?" He didn't feel up to it. His thinking cap was definitely filled with cotton for the time being.
"We have to figure out what to tell Simon."
"Okay, Jim." Jim could figure out what to tell Simon. Blair was going to sleep for a week. Or two.
He got up with some help from Jim. He looked at Leah, but couldn't think of anything appropriate to say. She smiled a small, crooked smile.
"It was ... interesting meeting you, Blair," she said. Points for diplomacy.
"Yeah. You too. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe we'll meet again. Or whatever." That was elegant. The German judge gives it a 5.5 for artistic merit.
"Maybe," she said softly. "Maybe next year. In Jerusalem."
Blair looked from her to Jim and back again, and thought some more about family. Maybe blood was thicker than water, but love was indeed thicker than blood.
Goodbyes didn't seem to interest anyone much. Danny came up and shook their hands, but he kept glancing at Leah. He was exuding the same air of relief as Jim. Thicker than blood, right.
In the end they just walked out. Jim had to half drag, half carry Blair to the truck, because whatever it was in those painkillers, it had done a number on his coordination and balance.
The sun was setting, and the streetlights were coming alight. The city seemed pretty friendly at twilight, which was funny and strange if you thought about it. It wasn't a nice city.
He turned to Jim and grinned, felt his face stretching and stretching. Jim looked at him and lost some of the gruffness.
"Are you hungry?" Jim asked. Blair shuddered with more drama than was entirely necessary.
"Ewww. Nah, man. I just want to go home." |
