Honor Among Thieves

She woke with a start to find they were entering the outskirts of Baghdad.

It had been many years since Dollar Bill had seen the inside of a jail, but not so long that he had forgotten how much he detested having to associate with drug peddlers, pimps and muggers.

Still, the last time he had been foolish enough to get himself involved in a barroom brawl, he had started it. But even then he only ended up with a fifty-dollar fine. Dollar Bill felt confident that the jails were far too overcrowded for any judge to consider the maximum thirty-day sentence for such cases.

In fact he had tried to slip one of the policemen in the van fifty dollars. They normally happily accepted the money, opened the back door of the van and kicked you out. He couldn’t imagine what the San Francisco police were coming to. Surely with all the muggers and drug addicts around they had more important things to deal with than mid-afternoon middle-aged barroom drunks.

As Dollar Bill began to sober up, the stench got to him, and he hoped that he’d be among the first to be put up in front of the night court. But as the hours passed, and he became more sober and the stench became greater, he began to wonder if they might end up keeping him overnight.

“William O’Reilly,” shouted the Police Sergeant as he looked down the list of names on his clipboard.

“That’s me,” said Bill, raising his hand.

“Follow me, O’Reilly,” the policeman barked as the cell door clanked open and the Irishman was gripped firmly by the elbow.

He was marched along a corridor that led into the back of a courtroom. He watched the little line of derelicts and petty criminals who were waiting for their moment in front of the judge. He didn’t notice a woman a few paces away from him, tightly gripping the rope handle of a bag.

“Guilty. Fifty dollars.”

“Can’t pay.”

“Three days in jail. Next.”

After three or four cases were dispensed with in this cursory manner within as many minutes, Dollar Bill watched the man who had shown no respect for the canon of Irish literature take his place in front of the judge.

“Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace. How do you plead?”

“Guilty, Your Honor.”

“Any previous known record?”

“None,” said the Sergeant.

“Fifty dollars,” said the judge.

It interested Dollar Bill that his adversary had no previous convictions, and also was able to pay his fine immediately.

When it came to Dollar Bill’s own turn to plead, he couldn’t help thinking, when he looked up at the judge, that he appeared to be awfully young for the job. Perhaps he really was now an “old-timer.”

“William O’Reilly, Your Honor,” said the Sergeant, looking down at the list of charges. “Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace.”

“How do you plead?”

“Guilty, Your Honor,” said Dollar Bill, fingering a small wad of bills in his pocket as he tried to remember the location of the nearest bar that served Guinness.

> “Thirty days,” said the judge, without raising his head. “Next.”

Two people in the courtroom were stunned by the judge’s decision. One of them reluctantly loosened her grip on the rope handle of her bag while the other stammered out, “Bail, Your Honor?”

“Denied.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The two men remained silent until David Kratz had come to the end of his outline plan.

Dexter was the first to speak. “I must admit, Colonel, I’m impressed. It just might work.”

Scott nodded his agreement, and then turned to the Mossad man who only a few weeks before had given Hannah the order that he should be killed. Some of the guilt had been lifted since they had been working so closely with each other, but the lines on the forehead and the prematurely gray hair of the Israeli leader remained a perpetual reminder of what he had been through. During their time together Scott had come to admire the sheer professional skill of the man who had been put in charge of the operation.