"I don't think I will be needing a Swiss passport as soon as I had previously anticipated. Get out of my way. I'm leaving." Mevlevi secured his briefcase, then swept past Wenker and made his way down the short corridor toward the door. Blood sloshed from his Italian loafers.

"Dammit, Mevlevi," Wenker yelled in English. "I said you're not leaving this room." The lanky bureaucrat charged into the corridor, brandishing a compact pistol. "What the hell have you done to Nicholas Neumann?"

Mevlevi stared at the gun, then at the man. He had been right in suspecting he knew the voice. It belonged to Peter Sprecher, Neumann's former superior at USB. He didn't think a banker would shoot an unarmed man. He, on the other hand, would be fully justified in using his pistol. A case of self-defense. But before he could draw his gun, the banker was coming at him, an enraged expression drawn across his features. Sprecher slammed him against the wall, asking again what he had done with Neumann.

Mevlevi was momentarily stunned. He let his body go slack under the larger man's grip. "I told you, Mr. Sprecher. Neumann was taken ill. A cold. Now let me down. There's no reason we can't be civil about this."

"You're staying here until you tell me what you've done to Nick."

Mevlevi bucked his left knee into Sprecher's groin and brought his forehead down upon the man's nose. It was a neat trick. He'd learned it as a young stowaway on an outbound steamer to Bangkok.

Sprecher reeled and fell against the wall. The pistol dropped to the floor. Mevlevi deftly kicked it away while reaching into his jacket and withdrawing his own Beretta nine millimeter. Bad business to leave bodies behind in a five-star hotel. Changing the linens daily was one thing. Disposing of corpses, quite another. He picked up the briefcase in his left hand and leveled the gun in his right. But Sprecher appeared to have seen this coming. The hand that had been nursing his broken nose shot forward and arrested the pistol's downward path. The other hand latched on to the briefcase.

Mevlevi grunted and urged the pistol lower, stopping when its muzzle grazed Sprecher's shoulder. He pulled the trigger and a bullet blew Sprecher across the narrow corridor. His back slapped against the wall. His face registered the greatest surprise. Yet one hand remained fixed to the briefcase, forcing Mevlevi to advance a step. Mevlevi rammed the pistol into Sprecher's chest, feeling its snout jab the sternum.

Never had a man take three shots and survive, he had told Neumann.

He pulled the trigger twice more in rapid succession. Both times, the chamber clicked on empty. Out of shells. Mevlevi spun the gun in his hand, accepting the warm muzzle as a grip, and raised it high above his head. A few smacks on the cranium would do the trick nicely.

A sharp knock on the door froze his motion.

Sprecher, all too much alive, yelled, "I need help. Come in. Now."

The door flew open and Reto Feller barged in. He looked at the scene, muttering confusedly, "Sprecher? Where's the count? Does the Chairman know you're here?"

Mevlevi's eyes shifted from one man to the next. With a whiplash snarl, he crashed the pistol's steel butt across the chubby interloper's face. The interloper fell to the floor, slamming onto Mevlevi's injured leg.

Mevlevi yelped and tried to jump back, but Sprecher's stubborn hand remained in a death grip upon the briefcase handle.

"Bastard," mumbled Sprecher, who by now had crumpled onto the floor, arm seemingly glued to the briefcase. "You're staying here."

Retreat, Mevlevi heard a voice urge him. Get the hell out of here. To Brissago. To the main square. One hour. The situation was messy. A gunshot had been fired. A man had yelled for assistance. The door to the hallway remained open.

Retreat.

Mevlevi extricated his foot from the florid man's inert body. He gave the briefcase another yank, then abandoned it, holstering his weapon as he stepped into the hallway. He gave Room 407 a last look. One man was unconscious, the other growing weaker by the minute. No threat there. He poked his head outside the room. Elevator a far distance to the left. Interior stairwell a few feet to his right. Exterior stairs at the end of the hall, also to his right.

Mevlevi chose the safer path and hurried to the exterior staircase. Forget the limousine. It was compromised. He'd skirt the hotel entrance and walk the short distance down the main road to the stand of restaurants he had seen when arriving. From there he could call a cab. If his luck held, he could be in Brissago in less than an hour. And across the border a short time thereafter.

Khamsin will live.

CHAPTER 65

General Dimitri Marchenko checked his watch, then strode across the hangar floor. The time was 1340 hours. Nearly noon in Zurich, where Ali Mevlevi was arranging the transfer of eight hundred million francs to a government account in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. He felt a ruffle at the back of his throat and knew his nerves were acting up. He told himself to be patient. Mevlevi was nothing if not exact. He'd probably call at twelve on the nose. No point worrying until then.

Marchenko walked to a circle of soldiers standing guard around the Kopinskaya IV. He saluted, then approached the bomb. The weapon had been placed on a small wooden table a dozen paces from the Sukhoi attack helicopter. It lay on its side; its inferior lid had been removed. Time to program the altitude at which the bomb would detonate.

The pilot of the helicopter stood next to the table. He was a handsome Palestinian smiling broadly while shaking hands with his Kazakh comrades. Marchenko had learned that there had been fierce competition among the pilots to determine who would receive the honor of dropping "Little Joe," a knock-down-drag-out fight to see who would joyously be vaporized at the moment of detonation.

The pilot described his flight plan to Marchenko. After takeoff, he would keep the aircraft close to the ground to avoid radar, maintaining a fifty-foot ceiling while keeping his airspeed a brisk hundred forty knots. Five miles from the Israeli military post at Chebaa in the hills overlooking the Lebanese border, the chopper would climb to a thousand feet. He would activate the Israeli transponder and pass himself off for one of dozens of routine flights that daily shuttle between Jerusalem and the border outposts.

Once inside Israeli airspace, he would establish a southeasterly course and make for the settlement of Ariel on the occupied West Bank. The distance was short, about sixty-five miles; flying time less than thirty minutes. Approaching Ariel, he would descend to two hundred feet. He had memorized a map of the town and studied dozens of pictures of it. When he had spotted the town's central synagogue, he would bring the chopper down to fifty feet and detonate the bomb.

Marchenko imagined what the Kopinskaya IV would do to the small settlement. The initial blast would create a crater more than a hundred feet deep and three hundred feet wide. Every man, woman, and child within five hundred yards would be vaporized instantly, as a fireball hotter than the face of the sun roasted their bodies. Farther out, the shock waves would crumble most wooden structures and ignite any others that were still standing. In little over four seconds, the entire settlement of Ariel, and every living being in it, would cease to exist.

Marchenko lifted the nuclear weapon, bringing the LCD nearer his eyes. He hesitated for a moment, realizing that he would be directly responsible for bringing death to over fifteen thousand innocent souls. He scoffed at his wounded conscience. Who in our world is innocent? He programmed the bomb to detonate at an altitude of twenty-five feet. He checked his watch. Ten minutes before twelve in Zurich. Where was Mevlevi?