“All right,” the dancer repeated.
Gisela had a key to the sliding vehicular door. As she manipulated it, Kelly searched the shadows for his aluminum Smith and Wesson. It seemed none the worse for having been fired and dropped without ceremony, though it would get a proper cleaning if Kelly had the opportunity. He had no .38 Special ammunition, so the gun was useless for the moment, as well as a dangerous link to the killings here. Peter and the driver weren’t going to be a problem: very likely they weren’t Turkish citizens, and they certainly weren’t Amcits. But Doug was another matter, one that could land Tom Kelly in shit to his hair line – on the slim chance that he survived long enough for that to matter.
He velcroed the snubbie back in place on his waistband anyway. It’d been a friend when he needed one; and people who ditched their friends at the conclusion of present need wound up real quick with no friends.
The door rolled back with the rumble of well-oiled trunnions.
“The only thing I can’t figure,” said the veteran easily as he followed Gisela to the van, “is you working so close with the Jews and not figuring what they’d do if they got ahold of me.”
The woman froze stock-still, then turned. “What?” she said sharply. “I do not understand.”
Kelly blinked in false puzzlement. They were standing close; he could see her face was set like a death mask. “Well, you know about me, don’t you?” he said. “About the White Plains and – an’ all?”
“What do you mean about the Jews!” Gisela demanded. She had reverted to German, and her tongue flicked unintentional spittle when she said “die Juden.”
“Well, who the hell did you think Doug worked for?”
Kelly responded, adding an undertone of anger, equally false, at the woman’s obtuseness. “Surely you knew.”
Gisela was swaying. “The American Central Intelligence Agency,” she said in a distant voice, a mother begging the surgeon for the answer his face had already told her was a vain hope.
“Christ, I thought you people were professionals,” Kelly snapped. “He’s Shin Bet, the section of Israeli intelligence that reports to their Ministry of Defense. They really did play you for suckers, didn’t they.”
And then he caught the blond woman as she stumbled forward into his arms.
“Easy,” the veteran said as he patted her back, pretended concern in his voice and unholy joy in his heart for having won one, having manipulated a subject into total submission. In this case, on the spur of the moment and without any significant amount of preparation. . . . “Easy,” he repeated gently. “Are you all right to drive? I just thought you knew.”
Gisela straightened as if bracing herself to attention – shoulders back, chin out, arms stiff at her sides. “Yes,” she said, and drew a shudderingly deep breath. “Yes, of course. I’ll have to report this to the . . .”
She turned around abruptly, perhaps to hide her expression or a tear, but she reached back for Kelly to show that she was not trying to cut herself off from him. “Come..” she said, “we must get first to the airport.” She was speaking English again and her tone, if urgent, was not panicked.
“Right you are,” murmured Kelly.
The doors of the van were not locked, nor did the vehicle have a lockable ignition. Gisela turned the switch on the steering column and stepped firmly on the clutch so that the back of the clutch pedal engaged the starter button beneath it on the firewall. The engine spun easily and caught at once. The woman turned on the headlights and cautiously engaged what turned out to be a sticky clutch.
“You must understand,” she said, her face set, as she reversed to face the vehicle toward the door, “that I acted in accordance with my orders.”
She braked, shifted gears, and went on, “We worked with the ones we thought were CIA, but it was always to further the Plan, to gain time until the day came. Not for – their purposes, though we did not know they were the Jews.”