to say in response, his exhausted mind filled with a haze of frustration. Byron Stone looked at Shiloh.
“Sir, I have a great deal to do and I need Mr. Malik to assist me.”
“Of course,” Shiloh agreed, to Ethan’s dismay.
Malik offered Ethan a sly grin from the corner of his mouth before striding confidently out of the room with Stone, Cooper, and Flint.
Shiloh turned to Rachel.
“MACE has offered a permanent escort for you, despite everything that has occurred, and they believe that it still may be possible to locate your daughter.”
Rachel nodded. “What about Ethan?”
Shiloh glanced in Ethan’s direction.
“Mr. Warner will be escorted from the country this morning,” he said.
Ethan stared at the minister in disbelief.
“Do you really think that I’m lying about all of this? One of the men with us in the tunnels was Hassim Khan, a scientist who had worked with Lucy. We thought that insurgents were holding him, but Hassim himself said that they were friends protecting him from the same fate that Lucy is now facing.”
“Where is Hassim Khan now?” Shiloh asked.
“He’s dead,” Rachel said softly. “He was killed by the same man who took Ethan’s video camera.” She looked at Ethan. “Too many people have died here; we can’t handle this alone anymore and we’re running out of time. If Lucy was here, she’d probably be telling me to do this, before the peace process renders her useless to her captors.”
“You don’t know that,” Ethan said. “We can’t just give up and—”
“We’ve achieved nothing!” Rachel insisted. “We’re no further now than we were yesterday, except that I’m exhausted and have spent much of my time being shot at.”
Ethan sighed, rubbing his temples with one hand.
“I know, but even if this is the work of politically motivated insurgents, Israel’s in no better position to search for Lucy than we are. We can’t abandon the search.”
“It’s my decision,” Rachel said, “not yours. I’m leaving this in the hands of Israel. Go home, Ethan; there’s nothing more we can do here right now.”
Ethan held her gaze for a moment, surprised by her sudden conviction, and then sighed.
“Fine,” he said, looking at Shiloh. “In that case, can you remove these damned things now?”
Shiloh looked at the handcuffs, and nodded for one of the guards to remove them.
“Come,” Shiloh said to Rachel, taking her arm, “we can discuss our next move over coffee.”
Ethan watched as Rachel was led away by Shiloh, desperately scouring the recesses of his tired mind for some way to deter her. He was about to call after her when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and listened for several seconds as a pulse of excitement whizzed through him.
“I’ll need a little help to get there,” Ethan said. “I’m at the Knesset. Call this number.” He recited a cell-phone number from memory, and then rang off.
“Who was that?” Rachel asked over her shoulder.
Ethan hesitated. “No one.”
Moments later, he was being prodded from the room by the Knesset Guards.
The Knesset Guards pushed Ethan into the back of a government sedan as soon as he’d finished his phone call. As he got into the vehicle the two men took their places in the front seats.
Ethan glanced at the doors as the sedan rolled out of the Knesset compound. Both were locked and controlled from the front seat by a panel of switches on the center of the dash.
As the vehicle joined the main road away from the Knesset, Ethan saw a white jeep pull in alongside. He refrained from looking directly at it, but could see Safiya Luckov driving, her long black hair billowing out behind her as the jeep passed the sedan and gently eased into place in front of it.
Ethan tensed, waiting to see what would happen next.
Ahead, a set of lights turned red at a junction. He could see Safiya braking gently as she eased up to the lights. The sedan began to slow. Ethan lifted one arm up and braced it against the back of the passenger seat.
In an instant, Safiya’s jeep suddenly braked hard and then flew into reverse, accelerating backward. Ethan’s escort yelped in alarm as the jeep smashed into the sedan with a crunch of shattering plastic and rending metal, and instantly two impact bags billowed out from the dashboard as the windshield imploded with a tinkling avalanche of glass chips.
Ethan lurched forward between the seats, reaching out and hitting the two lowest switches in the panel on the dashboard. He heard the whine of the central-locking