Twelve Days by Alex Berenson Page B

lions eat out of his hand. Now he was due for his reward.
    If only he hadn’t been so very, very wrong.

5
    TEL AVIV
    N o one had ever accused Vinny Duto of being a patient man.
    Today he had no choice. For his flight to Israel, he had borrowed a jet from his friends at Boeing, who were still good for a favor or two. Nonetheless, he brought along a pair of bug zappers to make sure that the conversation he was going to have couldn’t be recorded. He trusted the guys who’d lent him the plane. But not that much.
    The jet itself was nothing fancy, just an old 757 that would need to refuel in Rome on its way to Tel Aviv. Duto didn’t plan to touch Israeli soil, though. He would have a drink with Rudi in the cabin while his pilots stretched their legs, or whatever it was pilots did after a five-thousand-mile flight, and then go home. He wanted no Israeli immigration records of this trip.
    But when they landed at Fiumicino, a message from Rudi waited on his Samsung.
Not tonight. Chemo wiped me out.
Duto cursed to himself. He was not a sentimental man, and he didn’t fear death. It came for everyone, and it would come for him, too. Meantime, he had choices to make, chits to cash, problems to solve. A preoccupation with mortality was an indulgence, a weakness.
    Still. Lung cancer. He called Jerusalem.
    “Vinny.” A whisper.
    “I hoped I’d get to see you tonight.”
    “My doctors have other ideas.”
    “I have a present for you.” Duto nudged the box with his toe. A radio-controlled Hummer, almost two feet long, one-twelfth scale. RC cars were Rudi’s only known indulgence.
    “Unless it’s a new lung, you can keep it.”
    “Better than a new lung.”
    A faint sound that Duto recognized as a laugh.
    “What if I come to you tonight? In Jerusalem?” Though he hated to leave a trail.
    “Vinny.”
    “Tomorrow?”
    Another laugh. “I hope I live long enough to watch it happen to you, Vinny.”
    “Rudi.”
    “It’s good. Everybody else treats me like I’m dying. You’re the same prick as ever. You landed already at Ben Gurion?”
    “Rome.”
    “All right, stay there tonight. I feel better in the morning, I’ll call you.”
    “Thank you—”
    Rudi hung up.
    —
    Duto splurged, booked himself a room at the Artemide. He hadn’t been to Rome in thirty years. By the time he checked in, the sun had set, but he had time at least to take a cab to St. Peter’s, see the great dome, cross his chest and pretend to pray. Instead, he made the mistake of logging in to his email.
    He spent the next six hours taking advantage of the time difference to keep his D.C. staffers busy. So be it. The Vatican wasn’t going anywhere.And when he woke in the morning, he found a text from Rudi.
BG 4 p.m.
So he’d lose two full days to this chase. He hoped the conversation would go well, though he had reason to believe it wouldn’t.
    —
    The man at the base of the 757’s stairway looked only vaguely like the Mossad chief whom Duto remembered. He was a crumpled copy fished out of the trash. The old Rudi was lean and strong, with the ropy muscles of middle age and a shock of dark curly hair. The new Rudi was bald, even his eyebrows gone. His neck and shoulders had sunk into themselves, like a careless surgeon had taken them out and lost a bone or two before putting them back.
    Duto started down the stairs. Rudi shook his head and dragged himself up, step by step. He reached the top step breathless, as if he’d just crested Everest. Duto wrapped him up, dragged him inside, where he flopped into a cracked leather recliner that had probably seemed luxurious in 1987.
    “Don’t die, Rudi. Trouble if you die.” Duto poured him a glass of water and tried not to stare as five long minutes passed. Finally, Rudi sighed and put down the glass. He looked around the cabin, his eyes settling on the jammers, each the size of a deck of cards, with a single green light blinking steadily on top.
    “I’m not sure I’m comforted by the fact you