Ring of Lies by Roni Dunevich

smoke, he felt along the exterior wall of the house, starting at the ground and reaching as far as he could above his head. He held his ear to the wall as he tapped at it randomly with the knuckle of his index finger.
    Nothing there.
    â€œWho’s the lady in the living room?” Ancona whispered to Alex.
    â€œA friend.”
    â€œOne of us?”
    â€œNot exactly,” Alex answered.
    â€œCan she be trusted?”
    Good question.
    They hurried back inside and Ancona went down to the cellar. Alex stared out at the forest, uneasy. He couldn’t get the events at Teufelsberg out of his head. What was Jane hiding?
    The restaurant owner recognized her. She was close to Justus. Too close? And Justus had been killed.
    Was she a threat?
    Horrified by the idea, he shook his head.
    Were Justus, Istanbul, and Lisbon all slaughtered with the same brute force?
    It took massive arms to cut a man’s throat open with a bicycle brake cable.
    He was chasing a ghost. It was time to bring in the heavy artillery.

MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS, GLILOT | 02:27
    A spoon scraped the last of the Nutella from the bottom of the jar. In a dimly lit room opposite four huge screens lived a 365-pound creature. His fans said he was worth his weight in gold. The eight-core processor in his brain ran on sugar, chocolate, and junk food.
    â€œWhat the fuck? The Coke is salty!” He moved the red can away from his round face and belched.
    Tufts of bleached blond hair rose from his head like a cockscomb. He pushed himself out of his reinforced chair. His baggy rapper jeans hung off his enormous butt like a sack, revealing boxer shorts covered with images of Tweety Bird.
    The name of the man who ran Mossad’s IT division was Ethan Pinchas, but everyone called him Butthead.
    The phone on the desk chirped. He reached out an arm that weighed as much as the average leg, nearly crushing the cupcakes waiting their turn like a line of condemned prisoners.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œIt’s two in the morning, Butthead. Don’t you have a home to go to?”
    â€œHey, man. I heard you’re living the wild life in Berlin.”
    â€œNot quite. Are you writing this down?”
    â€œTyping.”
    â€œJustus Erlichmann. Grunewald, Berlin.”
    â€œWho’s Prince Charming?”
    â€œThat’s what I want to find out. They tell me you can access his computer now. Do some digging. Fast.”
    â€œWhat do I get in return?”
    â€œYour salary.”
    â€œWe’re on overtime.”
    â€œA pound of Leonidas?”

GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 01:55
    â€œYou don’t trust me,” Jane said.
    Alex remained standing at the foot of the steps.
    He lowered his eyes.
    â€œSay something.”
    â€œI almost shot you.”
    â€œAre you crazy? You think I killed Berlin?”
    â€œYou took me by surprise,” he said. Maybe he was wrong.
    Her stomach rumbled. She rubbed it.
    â€œI’m confused, more than anything else,” he said.
    â€œTactfully put.”
    â€œWhat would you think in my place?”
    â€œI’d concentrate on what’s important. Nibelungs are being killed, right now, in the middle of the night. We can put a stop to it. We may be the only people who can.”
    She had come as soon as he called, just like she had three months ago in London.
    â€œLet’s go down to the cellar, Alex. They’re turning the rest of the house upside down. We can search Nelli’s boxes.”
    â€œNelli?”
    â€œHis wife.”
    He remembered the odor of his empty apartment.
    â€œI can’t.”
    Jane started down the stairs, stopping a moment to breathe him in. Then she descended to the cellar alone.
    Naomi once said that the cellar is the house’s subconscious. That’s where you store the things you want to forget but can’t abandon completely.
    Ancona appeared out of nowhere. “The house is plastered with microphones. The system’s connected to the Internet,