Christine sprinted toward the waterfront, dodging bicycles and skirting bystanders who were gawking at the wrecked café behind her. The café where Anton Bloch was lying in a pool of blood. She looked back and saw the big man giving chase, negotiating cars as he crossed the street. One nearly hit him, horn blaring, and Dr. Christine Palmer, avowed healer, wished it had done so. She was moving fast now, not the sloppy gait of a frightened woman, but the driving stride of the hurdler she’d been in high school. Even so, the man was gaining. She didn’t see his partner, the driver. Had Bloch shot him? Christine decided it made no difference. One man with a gun was enough.

Her feet pounded the path along the water’s edge. On her left was a busy street, the far side lined with hotels and shops. On her right was the harbor, tour boats tied along a short pier, a passenger ferry unloading. Her lungs were heaving. Christine was in good shape—she jogged fifteen miles a week. But running for your life was different.

She heard the alternating wail of a siren in the distance. The police had to be speeding toward the café—but that was the one direction she couldn’t go. Nearing a congested crosswalk, Christine spun to avoid a collision with a woman on a bicycle. She’d just gotten back in stride when she saw something that brought her skidding to a stop. A hundred feet ahead—a car with its hood raised. A silver Audi. The second Mossad man was leaning into the engine compartment, but he was looking directly at her.

For the first time Christine felt a moment of panic. These were professionals like David. The car was perfectly positioned, and since it was illegally parked on the shoulder, the driver had raised the hood to feign a mechanical issue. It would work for a minute, maybe two, and that was all they needed. Probably right out of the Mossad field agent handbook. The big man was fifty feet away, skirting the street. He’d slowed to a quick walk and was panting with the grace of a bull.

Her head kept wheeling, left and right. No way out. They had the angles covered perfectly. All too late, Christine realized her mistake—by going to the waterfront she had boxed herself in, made their geometric problem that much easier. She could scream, call for help, but the police were busy elsewhere—shots fired, bodies in the street. And anyway, these two Mossad operatives would handle a hysterical woman as smoothly as they’d positioned their car on the curb with a raised hood.