Free The Assassins by Gayle Lynds Page A

Eli had gotten the scientist to reveal the location of Saddam’s top-secret nuclear complex outside Baghdad. The result was, Eli got away without a trace, and a few days later the Israelis bombed the hell out of the installation. After several years, for no apparent reason, Eli left Mossad and began to freelance. Mossad handled it quietly. Losing someone as good as him is a bad outcome for an intelligence agency—unless, of course, the agency is using the former employee for off-the-books work. I’ve heard his brother, Danny, is strange but as gifted a sniper as his brother.”
    “I want photos of both. Every piece of information you have.”
    “I’ll have Gloria assemble dossiers. What else did you learn?”
    Ryder described the limestone pieces with the cuneiform symbols. “Lara didn’t know what they were or meant, and I have no idea either.”
    “Eichel’s just killed seven people to get them,” Tucker said. “If he finds out you have them, he’ll come after you.”
    “Probably. Do you want to send your people here to investigate, or are you going to wait for the locals?”
    “I’ll helicopter in a team,” Tucker decided. “Where was Lara supposed to deliver the limestone pieces?”
    “He’s not delivering. Eichel is picking them up.”
    “I’ll send backup for you.”
    “There’s no time. You’re too far away. And besides, I’ve bugged Lara so I can follow him, and I planted an open cell on him, too, to listen in on any conversations. He’ll tell the Eichels about me, and I’m hoping they’ll take him along to get as much as possible out of him. That way we can track them.”
    “I like it.”
    Ryder cocked his head, listening. The engine noise of a vehicle approaching the hunt club floated up the snowy hill.
    “They’re here,” he told Tucker. “Before I go, I assume Eva’s at the Farm. She needs to know what’s happened and that she may be at risk. But if I call, they won’t let me talk to her.” Trainees at the Farm were incommunicado.
    “I’ll handle it,” Tucker agreed. “Watch your back.”

 
    17
    Williamsburg, Virginia
    A light snowfall dusted the lawns and lampposts in Colonial Williamsburg. A tavern door swung open, and the aromas of strong ale and Virginia barbecue drifted out. Smiling and giving every evidence she was enjoying it all, Eva Blake moved with the throngs of tourists admiring the historic sights.
    In truth, she was in field training, halfway through the CIA’s six-month tradecraft school for spies at the Farm. Williamsburg was only a few miles away, which was why locals often served as unwitting participants in off-campus exercises.
    A pair of enormous oxen plodded past, their bells jingling. Playing her role, Eva lifted her digital camera, joining other visitors as they snapped pictures. Then she turned and took more photos, this time of actors in period costumes and, finally, a row of picturesque houses with tall dormer windows.
    Angled as she was, Eva again glimpsed the silver-haired woman a half block behind, pushing a baby carriage. The woman gave every appearance of being a grandmother taking her infant grandchild for an outing, except the buggy probably held a lifelike doll. Eva believed the woman was surveilling her. In Farmspeak, the woman was a shadow. And she was good at it, no doubt retired FBI or CIA.
    Eva crossed the street. She wore a short brown wig over her long red hair, a quilted thermal coat, and flat-heeled black boots. With no makeup and her sensible clothes, she was more likely to be ignored than to be identified as a spy-in-training.
    She repressed a smile. Her life was so different from when she was a curator at the Getty Museum, in Los Angeles. In those days there were gala fund-raisers, candlelit dinners to convince rich collectors to loan art, and of course the constant navigation through the piranha-infested waters of international museum work. She had loved it. But then it was the culmination of years of pulling herself up