Turning toward Imri, Nir nodded. The new Kidon agent lowered his gun, and Nir walked to the other side of the bed. He removed a photo from a pocket in his cargo pants, held it up to the sleeping man’s face, and lit both up with his penlight. No doubt about it, it was him. Nir tucked the picture and the light away and drew his gun once again. Then he waited to let his eyes acclimate to the soft moonlight passing through the gauzy curtains into the room.

The man lying on his back was Dr. Horst Lindner, a German nuclear physicist with a PhD from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and post-doctoral work at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Institute for Nuclear Theory located on the University of Washington campus. Considered one of the leading minds in centrifuge development, his career had been on a strong, if not meteoric, track. Then quite suddenly, he quit his job and disappeared from all the assemblies and functions and symposiums where those in the world of nuclear physics tend to gather. Six months later, he moved from his tract home in Seattle to a mini mansion in the suburb of Laurelhurst.

That’s when the Mossad put eyes on him. They’d been watching him for a year, recording his two months gone, one month home schedule and his regular flights to the Middle East, particularly to Tehran. Some snooping within Iran uncovered that Dr. Lindner was now one of the primary physicists involved in the engineering of uranium centrifuges in the nuclear facility in Karaj.

Nir and Imri were here to put a stop to that. It wasn’t that the man was doing anything illegal. It’s just that in the eyes of the Mossad, the doctor had made a very poor career choice.

Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

02:40 / 2:40 A.M. CEST

Nir pointed his pistol at the man’s face.

“Dr. Lindner. Oh, Dr. Lindner.”

The deep breathing of the German physicist never changed.

Nir turned to Imri. “Heavy sleeper.”

Imri shrugged.

Extending the barrel of his 9mm, Nir tapped the man on the forehead.

Lindner groaned and made a sleepy swipe across his face.

Nir tapped a little harder, and the man’s eyes snapped open.

“Augh!” he cried, scooting back into his wife.

Nir hushed him. “Quiet, Dr. Lindner. Your children are in the next room. You don’t want to wake them, do you?”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“My name is irrelevant. What I want is to talk to you.”

As if suddenly noticing that his wife hadn’t awakened, he turned to look at her. “Ilse,” he said, shaking her. When there was no response, he turned back to Nir. “What have you done to her?”