While his face remained impassive and pleasantly curious, his mind raced with this information, just as Ayala’s mind had when Barrett had first told her of the plot in Neal’s basement. He, too, quickly surmised that there were only a few countries that could monitor them that way, and among them, only Russia had ever shown any enmity toward Israel. Even Russia could not truly keep tabs on them in the way that Ayala was describing. But who could. He knew who could, of course, and he knew where Ayala now lived, and this was very disturbing to Saul.

She carried on, “I cannot tell you much, not yet, but there are some things I need you to do. Firstly, there is a woman in the Israeli armed forces who works for this group. I need you to work on holding her back from advancement, and I need you to do it without being discovered.”

He nodded, “And the name of this agent?”

“Raz Shellet, she is a new officer training to be a pilot in the Israeli armed forces. When the time comes, she will be in charge of distributing the virus. As long as she is ground based, she cannot do any harm. The people I am working against cannot get a military plane into our airspace without being destroyed by our extremely extensive defenses. Slow her, and you slow them. But do not try and kill her, they will simply replace her, and I may not know who that replacement is. Better the enemy we know.”

He nodded again, what she said seemed reasonable, for a lie. “So, ’yala, are you going to tell me what this is really about, or are you going to lie to me all day?”

She smiled, then opened her bag. He flinched as he saw the syringe she was taking out, and fear momentarily took him. He reached for the small revolver in his jacket pocket involuntarily and she smiled.

“Saul, really?” she laughed a little, holding the syringe up and flicking its end, “If I wanted to hurt you do you really think you could protect yourself from me?” she looked at him with the implied threat and he lowered his hand. God, this woman, she was serious. What was she doing here? For that matter, what was he doing here?

“This is an antidote to the drug they intend to spread. I am going to inject you with it now.” she said this as the fact it was, and he clearly took it as such, nodding somewhat reluctantly and rolling up his sleeve. “It will not hurt, and within a week you will begin spreading this cure to others, I do not have time to explain how or why.”