WASHINGTON DC: The Sadir Affair (The Puppets of Washington Book 1)

  Chapter 12

  When Samuel closed his laptop, he sat looking into space absentmindedly. He had just learned from his source in Paris that Khalid was on the move. He had been followed from Ottawa to Washington D.C. and then he suddenly disappeared from their radar. That bit of intel unsettled the Mossad agent. Knowing what your adversary looks like is of prime importance when your assignment calls for the elimination of the party concerned. Moreover, he didn’t know when his target would land in Sydney, if that was indeed his destination.

  He wiped his face with his hand, got up and decided to go for a swim at his favourite beach. He grabbed a discarded towel from the back of the chair in front of the fireplace and walked out, slamming the front door behind him. As he crossed the little bridge leading to the path down to the beach, Samuel stopped, turned around and retraced his steps. He couldn’t stay in Manly or in Sydney for that matter. He had to leave town as quickly as possible. The American expression of being a ‘sitting duck’ was appropriate in this instance, and he didn’t want to be one in the middle of this pond.

  The house being let fully furnished, it took no time for him to gather his meagre belongings into a couple of suitcases, clean-up the remains of his lunch, and throw the trash in the bin on his way out. He put the cases in the boot of his car, his laptop and cell phone beside him on the passenger seat, and within an hour, he was on the road. His destination: Melbourne, a city sprawled at the top end of Port Phillip Bay. It didn’t have the charm of Sydney nor was it favoured of the same mild climate. Yet, it was the city of his birth, and as such, Samuel knew it like the back of his hand. He knew where to live, where to pass unnoticed in a crowd of collectors and literary minds or students and patrons of the arts. He would be close to the Botanical Gardens, to the main drag to the city centre, and to most businesses of which he knew a few. He wanted to lose himself until such a time as Mossad would locate his prey once again. He wanted to be the hunter not the hunted.

  Samuel kept the top of his convertible down until he reached the busy highway to Newcastle. He stopped at a petrol station, filled up the tank and went into a pub to grab a sandwich before heading down the road. He would arrive at the outskirts of Melbourne the next morning. He did not intend to dilly-dally on this journey. He wanted to get to South Yarra, on the edge of the river by the same name, as soon as he could. He knew a woman who owned a flat at the top end of Caroline Street and nestled at the end of a laneway. It occupied the third and top level of a building, and although a very attractive place, it was not endowed of a view. The balcony faced a bank of tall pine trees that would prevent anyone from spying on him from any given direction. Samuel wondered if the lady was in town still. Used to take herself to Queensland in April, she would remain in her house, which stood facing one of the numerous beaches along the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, until the following spring. Millicent was her name. Samuel knew her well. She had been a friend of his mother for many years and he remembered her most fondly for her poetry. She was a prize-winning author and her work made the bestsellers’ list on more than one occasion. Wanting no one to know that he was back in Australia, Samuel had not contacted her since his return, and it would have to be that way until better days. When would those be, he wondered. A Mossad agent doesn’t retire; he is retired, put out to pasture or eliminated when his usefulness runs out. For some reason, the thought led him to recall the time he spent with Talya. He had retired her. He wished to God, he had never been involved in that case. She was now living the life of a recluse, according to the latest reports, because of him. He hated himself for it. Every time her face appeared in his mind’s eye, Samuel wished he could cry, be at her feet, asking for her forgiveness. More than anything at that moment, he wanted to kill Khalid, the man for whom his enmity would never have a parallel. Hate was a companion Samuel favoured when it came to slay an adversary of Khalid’s calibre and value. Besides being a Muslim, Khalid represented everything Samuel abhorred in a human being. His domineering character, his deceitful conduct, his unending string of excuses when it came to explain or justify any of his actions, everything in the man spelt lies and evil undercurrent. The second man in this triangle, Dr Hendrix, was inconsequential. Samuel bore no animosity toward him. On the contrary, he was grateful for the way he cared for Talya from the minute she had been hospitalized.

  Shaking himself out of these unwanted, roaming thoughts, Samuel drank a bit of the coffee he had purchased an hour ago. Staying alert and awake for the rest of the journey was his prime objective.