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.
âWhoâs the lady in the living room?â Ancona whispered to Alex.
âA friend.â
âOne of us?â
âNot exactly,â Alex answered.
âCan she be trusted?â
Good question.
They hurried back inside and Ancona went down to the cellar. Alex stared out at the forest, uneasy. He couldnât 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 manâs 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.
âWhat the fuck? The Coke is salty!â 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 Mossadâs 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.
âHello?â
âItâs two in the morning, Butthead. Donât you have a home to go to?â
âHey, man. I heard youâre living the wild life in Berlin.â
âNot quite. Are you writing this down?â
âTyping.â
âJustus Erlichmann. Grunewald, Berlin.â
âWhoâs Prince Charming?â
âThatâs what I want to find out. They tell me you can access his computer now. Do some digging. Fast.â
âWhat do I get in return?â
âYour salary.â
âWeâre on overtime.â
âA pound of Leonidas?â
GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 01:55
âYou donât trust me,â Jane said.
Alex remained standing at the foot of the steps.
He lowered his eyes.
âSay something.â
âI almost shot you.â
âAre you crazy? You think I killed Berlin?â
âYou took me by surprise,â he said. Maybe he was wrong.
Her stomach rumbled. She rubbed it.
âIâm confused, more than anything else,â he said.
âTactfully put.â
âWhat would you think in my place?â
âIâd concentrate on whatâs 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.â
She had come as soon as he called, just like she had three months ago in London.
âLetâs go down to the cellar, Alex. Theyâre turning the rest of the house upside down. We can search Nelliâs boxes.â
âNelli?â
âHis wife.â
He remembered the odor of his empty apartment.
âI canât.â
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 houseâs subconscious. Thatâs where you store the things you want to forget but canât abandon completely.
Ancona appeared out of nowhere. âThe house is plastered with microphones. The systemâs connected to the Internet,