the depths of his suffering, Rafael realized that even in the presence of utter barbarianism some souls harbored morsels of humanity, like lonely flowers blossoming amid smoldering plains of ash. Having correctly deduced that Rafael could not have endured such torture unless innocent, and at great risk to themselves, his saviors had spirited him away and placed him in a safe house until he recovered.
Since then, Rafael had been a man on a mission for both himself and for humanity. His work had carried him around the world in the pursuit of criminals and terrorists; Mafioso henchmen in Palermo, Sendero Luminoso assassins in Peru, corrupt police organizing abductions in Colombia, and al-Qaeda cells all over the globe. Ironically, taking out the terrorists had turned out to be far safer than working as a soldier. Hatred of extremists seemed a universal theme. Rafael had realized that nobody cared if an al-Qaeda operative was found facedown in a sewer conduit in Berlin with a crowbar lodged in his skull, or in flames by the side of a lonely desert road in Kashmir, or hanged from the roof beams of a church in Santiago. Rafael’s work was the only perfect murder: one where nobody gave a damn about finding the perpetrator, and he was proud to serve MACE in eliminating terrorists.
The sound of a distant car jerked him from his reverie. The kids had vanished, and Rafael moved out across the open ground and disappeared into an alley. At the end of the alley was a narrow street faintly illuminated by a light somewhere off to the left. Few of the streetlights in this part of the Strip worked with any reliability, a further aid to his movement.
Opposite the alley was a four-story building, one side of which hung in chunks of tattered masonry and steel shattered by countless mortar rounds and aerial incendiaries. The other side of the building was intact but clearly abandoned.
It was a common tactic of insurgents to occupy recently bombed buildings. The Israelis, having blasted them to pieces, would consider their job done and move on to other more interesting targets. Insurgents would occupy those shattered hulks and use them as storage depots, hideouts, and, in this case, entrances to tunnels dug beneath the foundations of the abandoned buildings. It was much harder for Israel to spot tunnels that began beneath buildings than it was to identify those that fed from the Gazan border into the smuggling network beneath Egypt.
The building was the third such location that Rafael had checked since slipping into Gaza an hour previously. The first two had been empty, a fact quickly confirmed by Rafael’s observation that they sat unguarded. This one was different. Sitting on a doorstep outside the building, a watchful Palestinian teenager smoked a cigarette. The building had no visible lights and indeed was unlikely to have any running water. Therefore, the foot soldier was guarding something that lay within. Insurgent groups used a network of teenage layabouts to run errands or keep an eye on sensitive locations, far too many for Israel’s intelligence organizations to run tabs on or interrogate.
Quietly, Rafael slipped out of the shadows and sauntered with his hands in his pockets across the road. Although he looked directly at the young man, his senses scanned like radar up and down the street on either side of him. The area was deserted, as he had expected at this time of the night. Gaza was not so much governed by Hamas’s police as ruled with an iron fist, and anybody out at night was likely to attract their attention. For that reason, he would have to be quick.
The teenager saw him the instant he emerged from the shadows, suddenly trying to look tough rather than bored. He flicked the butt of his cigarette away.
Rafael, having removed his scarf, revealed a set of neat white teeth.
“Salaam,” he said softly.
The boy nodded once, looking Rafael over. “You should not walk the street at night. It is forbidden.”
“I’m on my way home,” Rafael replied easily, producing a packet of his own cigarettes. “Would you care for one?”
The youngster looked at the proffered packet, and then at the butt he had flicked onto the street before him. “I just had one.”
“Ah,” Rafael nodded, “but these are American, Marlboro. Have one for later.”
The teenager’s eyebrows lifted in surprise and he reached out for the cigarette that poked from the open pack.
There was no haste in Rafael’s movement, even though it happened in a blur.