Nicole took a deep breath to tamp down her anxiety. It was times like this that she wished she had some god or higher power she could rely on. Just someone or something that would watch over her to make sure she was all right. But that wasn’t the way she was raised. Toughen up, girl. Between you and that guy on the other side of the border, you’ll be okay.

The more Nir had explained the plan to her that night, the more it reminded her of a movie she’d seen with her twin brother when they were kids—Ocean’s Eleven. A group of con artists led by Danny Ocean, played by George Clooney, break into the vault of a Las Vegas casino. Nir hadn’t seen the film, so they’d streamed it.

Nir loved the comparison, as had Tzadik when Nir passed it on. Soon it became the lexicon from which the operators drew their legend names and the planners identified the steps of the operation. Tzadik became George Clooney, and the team’s number two man was Brad Pitt. Nir had to settle for Matt Damon’s stuffy character for his nom de guerre. Technically, Nicole should have been Eddie Jemison after the Ocean’s Eleven tech geek, but Tzadik had been kind enough to christen her Julia Roberts instead.

If all goes well in this movie, Matt Damon’s going to get the girl and George Clooney will go home alone, Nicole thought with a smile as she monitored the static recording.

A voice broke through her musings. “Julia, George. Cash in your chips.”

“Cashing in,” she replied as she took her fingers away from her mouth. She’d been blowing on them. After just five seconds of keyboard work, the series of security feeds on her top monitor glitched almost imperceptibly. For the next six hours and 29 minutes, this video of an empty warehouse would loop every five minutes.

“Jackpot,” she said into her microphone, confirming that her work was done. Suddenly, her coms were filled with a flurry of words she couldn’t understand but knew were a mixture of Azeri and Farsi. Twisting open a thermos, Nicole poured herself some hot chai and settled in. For the rest of the night her job was twofold. First, to avoid freezing, and second, to ensure that all the activity about to take place in the live lower monitor didn’t find its way into the looping video streams displayed in the monitor above.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

MOSSAD SAFE HOUSE, ASTARA, AZERBAIJAN—22:58 / 10:58 P.M. AST

Why do the Iranians have to make everything so difficult? Nir thought as he watched the minutes count down.