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suburbs than a Seppah operator. McGee mentally tagged him Mr. ML, for Mustached Lebanese.
“Was he armed?”
Shafiq shook his head. “I saw nothing.”
McGee scratched his chin. “And why do you think he is Seppah?”
“Because they treat him like a god, Mr. Jim.”
“They?”
“Everybody.”
McGee struggled for the correct Arabic words. They came out of his mouth distorted. “How does said treatment manifest itself?”
The Palestinian looked at McGee, confused.
McGee tried again. “How do you know they treat him like a god?”
Shafiq blew more smoke through his nostrils. “Because I heard when they took him to see the Sheikh Yassin, Yassin kissed both his hands and asked for his blessing.”
The self-proclaimed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was the wheelchair-bound godfather of Hamas. In the past year, the sixtysomething quadriplegic son of a bitch had sent dozens of homicide bombers out to kill hundreds of Israeli women and children.
The guy with the big mustache had to be important. Very important. McGee had read the security files on Yassin and knew the bastard was no hand-kisser.
McGee said nothing, but his mind was working overtime. Immediately he sent a Steg-encrypted message to his boss in Paris about the handkissing incident and got a terse message back: Have your agent get us a picture.
McGee set up a clandestine meeting with Shafiq. Obviously, this was potentially a huge development. It was now just before the Jewish New Year—a little over two weeks to Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and the thirtieth anniversary of the 1973 October War—exactly to the day, October 6.
If the Seppah was about to make a move in Gaza, that was significant. It confirmed McGee’s own suspicions that the reconciliation being backchanneled from Tehran was a diversion. It told him Iran was still attempting to destabilize the region by using terrorist surrogates like this Mr. Mustached Lebanese—and that they conceivably might act on October 6. The Iranians were already involved in Iraq: hundreds of Seppah had crossed the border to take charge of Iraq’s Shia majority. If McGee could confirm that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was simultaneously planning something in Gaza—supporting Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades’ operations during the Jews’ High Holidays—the consequences could be cosmic.
McGee pulled at his right ear. He wished he had the polygraph results so he’d have some indication of whether Shafiq was fabricating or not. But he didn’t. He was flying seat-of-the-pants now—hurtling blind through opaque clouds with no sense of up or down because the fucking artificial horizon wasn’t functioning. Damnit—he didn’t want to pull a John-John. He shot a quick glance at Shafiq, who was talking earnestly with one of the other gunsels. On the one hand, maybe he was being played. But on the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. Either way, the clock was ticking.
And Shafiq was coming up with good stuff again. Maybe they were over the hump, whatever the hump might have been.
McGee had war-gamed the session. He’d decided on a direct approach. So he didn’t mince words. “You must get me a photograph of this man, Shafiq.”
The Palestinian’s eyes went wide. “Mr. Jim, Mr. Jim, I cannot,” he stammered.
McGee understood the young man’s fear. But it didn’t matter. McGee needed hard evidence. Paris wanted paper. It was time for Shafiq to deliver.
Shafiq was balky, but McGee insisted. Wore the Palestinian down. He put it to the kid in no-shit Arabic. “I did favors for you—and you keep telling me how much your family owes me. But I ask for nothing. I do more. I pay you—I have your thumbprint on the receipts. And what do I get in return? I get bullshit stories from you about a man in a black leather jacket and a white shirt with no collar who has Lebanese bodyguards and moves around a lot. That’s not enough, Shafiq. It’s time for you to earn your keep. I don’t need