The café in old town Limassol didn’t exist on Google Maps.
It sat between a shuttered antique shop and a boarded-up photography studio, its faded awning peeling under the sun, its iron tables coated in dust and memory. No menu. No music. Just bitter coffee poured in silence, served by a man who never made eye contact.
Alon and Nora sat across from each other beneath the slow spin of a warped ceiling fan, the air inside thick with heat and the scent of roasted cardamom.
“Why here?” Nora asked.
“Because she’s watching,” Alon said.
He stirred his coffee with the back of a knife. Old habit. Just enough noise to mask their words.
“She left a second signal last night,” he continued. “A data ping from the port relay. It mimicked Koren’s signature, but with a variation, a looped checksum. Something only Yael would do. A fingerprint.”
Nora glanced at the doorway. A narrow alley stretched just beyond, flickering with shadow.
“She wants a meet?”
“She wants us to follow.”
“And if Koren expects that?”
“Then we find out how far the game’s gone.”
At 17:06, the burner phone Alon had kept sealed in foil for 48 hours lit up.
ADDRESS: ELEFSIS BUILDING, DISTRICT 4. ROOF. SUNSET. COME ALONE.
The message deleted itself before the screen dimmed.
Nora read it over his shoulder. “She’s serious.”
“She’s scared.”
“She’s smart.”
Alon looked out toward the street. “Smart people don’t walk into traps.”
“Smart people build them,” Nora said.
The Elefsis Building was a carcass. Abandoned hotel turned squat turned memory. Five stories of cracked marble and blown-out windows. Rebar sprouting from concrete like rusted veins. Stray cats haunted the lobby.
Alon took the stairs slowly, listening for everything, his breath, his boots on the tile, the way the air changed as he climbed.
Each floor smelled different. Salt. Sweat. Charcoal.
The roof was open to the sky, the railings twisted, sections missing. Across the way, the city was a wash of rooftops, satellite dishes, and clotheslines flapping like forgotten flags.
She stood near the edge.
Yael Rimon.
Alive.
Black shirt. Tactical pants. A scar just under her jawline. Her eyes were the same, sharp, dark, too calm.
Alon said nothing.
She didn’t turn.
“It took you long enough,” she said.
“You’re dead,” he replied.
She smiled. Not warmth. Just exhaustion.
“That was the idea.”
They stood in silence, the wind tugging at the silence between them.
“Why now?” he asked.
“Because the project wasn’t buried deep enough. And someone’s trying to bring it back.”
“Eli.”
Yael shook her head. “Not just Eli. He was the match. But the fire’s older than him. Older than all of us.”
Alon stepped closer.
“You wrote the backdoor.”
“I was the backdoor,” she said. “They didn’t need the code. They needed someone to say it never existed.”
She reached into her jacket and tossed him a small hard drive. “Encrypted. Triple-folded. You won’t break it.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“You’re not going to decrypt it,” she said. “You’re going to deliver it.”
“To who?”
She looked at him, finally.
“To the only man Eli fears.”
Alon narrowed his eyes.
“Who?”
Her answer was a whisper carried by the wind.
But before she could say it again, before the words could settle,
A shot rang out.
Yael’s body jerked sideways, then folded.
Alon dropped, rolled, drew,
The rooftop exploded into chaos. Dust. Screaming concrete. Another shot.
He crawled to her, blood blooming across her ribs, her breath ragged.
She tried to speak.
Couldn’t.
Her hand pushed the drive toward him.
Then fell still.
Alon pressed two fingers to her neck.
Gone.
By the time he descended the stairs, the building was on fire.
No sirens.
No crowd.
Just the soft sound of crackling wood and the stink of betrayal in the air.
Nora was waiting in the alley, engine running.
She saw his face and didn’t ask.
“Drive,” he said.
“Where to?”
He looked down at the blood-slick drive in his hand.
“Somewhere no one remembers how to find.”