“Come over here,” Lahav called to the ramsad as he walked toward Dafna’s workstation. That made Nicole cringe a little. When Ira Katz just glared at him, Lahav added, “Ha’mefaked.” The old man rose and followed him.

From among the row of pens in his shirt pocket, Lahav pulled a long green one with a metallic end. “Lightsaber,” he said to the ramsad with a grin. Then he waved it around making lightsaber-y sounds as if he were expecting some sort of reaction. When he received none, he pushed on the end, and an internal laser projected an X-wing starfighter onto Dafna’s monitor.

Circling the image around one man standing on the top deck of the yacht, he said, “This is Saad Salim. He is the owner of the boat. Exiled Saudi. Owns ASEnergy, an oil company—no surprise there. Also major financial and weapons supplier to militias, including Hezbollah and Hamas. Probably supplied a whole bunch of the four thousand Katyusha rockets that landed on us from Gaza back in May.”

He shifted his starfighter to the man next to him. “This is General Arash Mousavi, head of the Intelligence Division of the Quds Force of the IRGC. He is very close with General Esmail Qaani, who took over Quds force after Mousavi’s previous BFF, Soleimani, played catch with a hellfire missile. Torture, murder, rape—he’s a real turd. The rest of these guys around here are the IRGC soldiers Mousavi brought. Best we can tell, that’s unusual for his little yacht excursions.”

“Got it. And I’ve already read up on Ali Kamal, so there’s no need to brief me on him,” said the ramsad. He looked the young man over. “You’re Lahav Tabib. The analyst from the Fakhrizadeh operation.”

“Yes, Ha’mefaked.”

“I thought so. That was some good work.”

Yossi started making kissing noises from his workstation but quickly broke into a coughing fit when the ramsad turned toward him sharply.

To Lahav, he said, “And this view is from Chinese satellites?”

Lahav pointed to Nicole. “She’s the one you want to talk to about that.”

She was sitting at the conference table with a laptop open in front of her, watching everything happening, including the exchange between Lahav and the ramsad. After spending so many hours at her workstation, she’d needed a different view. She’d wiped everything else off this portable computer and reprogrammed it to be a home base from which she could control all her work, then moved to where she now sat.

“Yes, it’s Chinese, Ha’mefaked,” she said. “Our satellites are good. The Americans’ are better. The Chinese satellites are best.”

“How much longer will they let you have access to their cameras?”

“Until they realize I have it. I’m guessing we have 15 to 20 minutes before I have to find us another Chinese bird.”