Page 4 of End of Days

The men shook hands, then glanced his way. He ducked his head and moved to the back of the bar. They went deeper into the establishment, getting out of his earshot.

The new man gestured to seats at a corner table, saying, “Shoshana, it’s been a while. Still in the game, I see.”

She gave him a stare that caused him to recoil, saying, “Jeremy, I don’t play games.”

She took a seat, setting her beer on a windowsill to grow warm. He looked at Aaron, who smiled and said, “I don’t, either. Why the call?”

They both sat down and Jeremy said, “We have a delicate situation in Europe. We want you to investigate. We’ll pay the way, of course.”

“But?”

“No but. This time we aren’t looking for a cutout for operational reasons. Well, we are, but not why you think. We believe we’ve been compromised over there, and we need someone completely clean. A team that hasn’t been used in a while, with no contact to Mossad.”

“What happened?”

“You know Gideon Cohen, correct?”

At the name, Shoshana stiffened, a little of her dark angel leaking out. Aaron said, “Yes, of course. Way back when he was the man who placed Shoshana on my team.”

Shoshana said, “He was the only one in the Mossad who believed in me.”

Jeremy nodded and, without any preamble, said, “Well, he’s been killed.”

Shoshana took the words like a physical slap, her eyes going wide. Aaron put his hand on her arm, then said, “What do you mean, ‘killed’?”

“He summers in Switzerland, and he’d taken to paragliding. The man who took him up into the air killed him.”

“How on earth did that happen? He’s a formerRamsad,for God’s sake.”

Jeremy raised his hands and said, “I know, I know. Trust me, the security team is going through their own hell. The bottom line is that the man that usually takes him up—who had a background check—was found murdered. And the new man who took his place killed him.”

Shoshana hissed out, “Who did it?”

“We don’t know. That’s why we want you. It’s like 1972 all over again. If they’re starting to target us, they certainly knew enough to penetrate. We can’t trust our infrastructure there. In fact, we’re spending all our time protecting others in the continent now. We need someone clean. Which is where you come in. All we want you to do is find out the connections to the paraglider, track them down, and then give us the intel. No wet work. Just tell us who it is.”

Shoshana said, “That’s not going to happen. If I find them, I’m going to kill them.”

Jeremy drew back and said, “No, you won’t. You operate under our parameters. We don’t want to start an international war here. That’s the mission. Can you do that?”

Shoshana started to spit something out and Aaron touched her hand again, saying, “We can do that. What do you have?”

Jeremy went from Shoshana to Aaron, then said, “The riser to the paraglider was cut intentionally. The rescue parachute on the pilot’sback was nothing but dirty laundry. Inside of it was a note. It was intentional, no doubt, and the note says it’s going to get worse.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper. On it was a facsimile of what had been found on the bodies.

Aaron took it, seeing,

You attack us with impunity in Syria and Iraq from the air, like cowards. And now we attack you man to man. Our reach is long, and our patience is infinite. This man is not the first to die, and it will not be the last, Little Satan. Tell the Great Satan they are next.

Aaron looked up and said, “Who is it? The Iranians?”

“We honestly don’t know. The pilot is an Iraqi expat who earned refugee status in Switzerland. After digging into his past we’ve found some contacts with Keta’ib Hezbollah, but the money train isn’t there. We have tracers on all of their accounts. Keta’ib Hezbollah paying for a man to learn to paraglide and then killing aRamsadis something we would have found. At least we think we would have. Something else is going on here. And we want you to find out what that is. Which is why there is no lethal authority.”

He turned to Shoshana and said, “You want to find the man who killed your mentor, and I get that, but he is dead. He blasted into the earth just like Gideon. We want to know what’s happening. Some in the Knesset and the military are already demanding action against Iran, but we want to make sure it reallyisIran before we end up in a war we didn’t want. And we can’t use anyone in Europe to do it, because they penetrated us somehow. Whoever it is sure as shit isn’t a militia in Iraq. It’s something else. That’s what we want to know.”

Shoshana nodded, but he could see her mind spinning. He said, “Can you do that?”

She said, “Yes. But we’ll need some support.”

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