by Dana Arama
“I find it hard to believe that he would sacrifice his son without a fight,” Gideoni said
“You find it hard to believe? You, of all people. An Israeli who has seen many Muslim children sacrificed and encouraged by their parents to become shahids?” I reran the footage and looked at them again, her unsure stride, the paleness of her face, her struggle to breathe and her dazed eyes. “They really look awful. Especially his son.”
“I am sure he will accept her request once he sees their situation. If they looked as if they had just come in from the spa, it wouldn’t have affected him, right?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead I turned my attention to one of my agents who had just walked in with an assessment of our forces.
Murat Lenika,
November 15, 2015
The whole event started out one way and ended completely differently. First, Yassin jumped up towards his son where he lay on the floor, picked him up in his arms, sat on the floor with his back to the wall and cradled the child in his arms. And, with his son close to his heart, he rocked back and forth monotonously and whispered sentences in a language which I didn’t recognize, but it sounded like Arabic chanting.
“I am going to get a doctor to come,” I said to him. Yassin didn’t change his position but nodded his head. I picked up the receiver and dialed the reception. A male voice answered me politely. “We have an emergency,” I said, “And we need a doctor urgently!”
The polite voice answered politely, “I have put in a request. Please wait patiently, the doctor will arrive in the next fifteen to thirty minutes.”
“It could take fifteen to thirty minutes until the doctor comes,” I said out loud.
The one with the soft voice, whom I had learned was Karrol Assad, grabbed the phone out of my hands and yelled a chain of curses to the clerk, who tried to shorten the waiting period.
“That’s how you do it with these infidels!” Karrol Assad told me after he hung up the call.
Ten minutes passed and there was an eerie silence in the room and just the frightening raspy sounds of the child battling to breathe. Suddenly the child woke up and started coughing.
“Give him some water,” Yassin said and both Karrol and I jumped up to go and get a glass. Karrol beat me to it.
“Maybe I should go and check up on your wife,” I suggested cautiously and walked up to the closed door of the bedroom.
“Yes. Check if she is alive.” All of Yassin’s warmth and empathy towards his son disappeared when speaking about his wife.
I opened the large door slowly and carefully. The room was dark, and I called out: “Mrs. Graham?” I heard groans from the bed. I left the door open and walked towards the huge bed. The green wife now looked red. I leaned over her and touched her forehead; it was burning up.
“Would you like some water?” I whispered to her. She opened her blue eyes ever so slightly and answered me with a sneeze, which turned into a rasping heavy cough.
I repeated my question and she answered weakly, “Yes.” I looked around and I managed to make out a table holding two bottles of mineral water and two glasses. I poured some water into one of them and tried to give her the water. She took two sips and fell back into the cushion behind her.
I went back to the main room and said, “I think she has a fever too.”
Laura Ashton,
November 15, 2015
My boss said, “I know it is not a rational decision, but it came directly from the Oval Office. Someone there decided to play the cowboy. So, if you recognize Yassin, shoot him.”
“I can’t do that. That is in complete contradiction with the understanding I have with the Israelis.” I took a deep breath and reminded him, “If the kidnapped boy is not in the room, there will be no way of finding him.”
“If we have to pay the price of one boy’s body, then so be it. We will be preventing the deaths of many others. There are others in the room. Maybe one of them will be able to direct us to the kidnapped boy. We can’t rely on solving all the problems with just one person.”
“Despite the fact that this one person put this whole intricate operation together?”
“The decision to shoot him and then to publicize the news. When his men hear the news, they will realize that there is no reason to go ahead with their scheme and no-one to claim it. If they realize we managed to take down the head of their organization, we will get to them as well.”
“And what if it causes them to go ahead with all this madness anyhow?”
“According to our profilers, this operation has come about because of one man and his personality. In cases like these, when the leader is neutralized, the cult disperses.”
“This is not a cult; it is a terrorist organization!”
“It has the characteristics of a cult. According to the profilers.”
“So, the profilers are wrong.” I was frustrated. “Did you emphasize to the decision makers in the Oval Office that maybe Yassin has already given the green light and that he is the only one who can stop this nightmare?”
“Their estimation is that he will never give the signal to stop the attack. So, if he won’t cooperate alive, we will use his body as a message to warn them.”
The conversation with my boss ended and a new conversation, one we had been anticipating, started. The voice recognition recognized Murat Lenika. I listened to the conversation and the agent who took the call said a doctor would be coming shortly. We knew the situation in the room couldn’t be good. The bugs we had planted in the adjacent rooms were our contact with what was going on in the room and were limited to specific areas only.
The conversation continued with another male voice, and the agent answered him courteously, too. In the beginning he gave the same answer and then gave in and answered, “The doctor will be there in less than ten minutes.” Then I heard a flood of curses in English with an Arabic accent. The agent once again promised, still very courteous, that he would do his best to get the doctor to come earlier. There was another flow of curses and then the call was disconnected.
“We will send the medical team up in another five minutes,” I notified the team and added with determination, “If you identify Yassin, shoot him.”
“Shoot to wound?”
I looked him in the eyes and answered with a decisiveness I didn’t really feel, “Shoot to neutralize. To kill.”
“That was not the agreement,” one of the agents said quickly. “According to the orders from before, we first make certain the kidnapped boy is there and only after that, if the terrorist is armed, we shoot to injure, otherwise we will lose the ties to the kidnapped boy and all the information that only the terrorist can give us.”
Another agent said with determination, “If the kidnapped boy is not there, we are supposed to hold our fire.”
“I am sorry, the new orders I have received from above are to identify Yassin and take him out.”
In a matter of seconds, I had an incoming call from Gideoni, which made it clear to me that he had men in my system. “I understand you were given orders contradicting our understanding. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t give such an order. Please, Laura. Yassin has to remain alive, at least until we know where the boy is and what his plan is.”
“Yassin can’t be kept alive. The estimations are that with his body we will obtain control.” I repeated what I’d been told without really believing it.
“He needs to know that there is a solution and that we have it in our hands. To get to this point and then to encounter such inflexibility is very frustrating.”
Gideoni didn’t have any influence on the situation and he didn’t like it at all. “You can do something else, like sending someone else, as a waiter or a housekeeper into the room to scan the place before the team arrives. I understand that you have no idea how many people are in the room at the moment and what their state is.”
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“You are not here so you cannot know. They won’t let any of the staff come inside, for sure not to scan the suite.”
He was silent. Out of courtesy towards him, I didn’t hang up even though I really wanted to. The Israeli Mossad had no place intervening and definitely had no right to say what he said next.
“You leave me with no choice. I have to initiate a move of my own against Yassin Graham.”
Murat Lenika,
November 15, 2015
Yassin’s phone rang and the feverish wife in the room was immediately forgotten. Yassin looked over at the ringing device, and, realizing the phone was too far away from him, looked at Karrol. “Answer the call,” he instructed, and Karrol complied. By the look on his face the caller had said something dramatic. Karrol said, “I am putting you on speaker phone. Repeat what you just told me now.”
“We received a message,” a familiar voice said on the other side of the line. “It said, I know you are not Yassin Graham. Tell him that his wife and child have been infected with a fatal virus, which takes 24 hours to ravage the body. Towards the end, those infected will suffer from a high fever and shortness of breath. If they don’t receive the antidote, there is no doctor in the world who can help them. They have ten hours to live.” He hesitated before he continued and, in the end, said, “The caller said that he has the antidote and demands in exchange to get Jonathan Niava.”
Karrol said, “Tell him everything, also what he said at the end.”
The familiar voice added, “He also said that the virus is very contagious to whoever comes in contact with the sick person. They will die too within 24 hours from the moment they have been exposed.”
I looked back at the woman lying on the bed and thought to myself ‘Fuck, what do I do now?’ I wanted to run and wash my hands and my face, as if the germs would vanish with the soap, but I knew it was too late for me. Karrol and I looked worriedly at Yassin. He was not the type you want to be next to when he received a threat like that. The monotonous rocking stopped. Yassin lifted his head and looked at us. His face was deathly pale, a tear rolled down his cheek, but his gaze remained icy like a stiff mask.
“I want to talk to two people now. The first, Sir Albright. He is an old friend of the family and is in the MI-6, British Intelligence Secret Services.”
“It will take me some time to try and reach him,” Karrol noted in his soft voice.
“It won’t. Use the ties of the estate’s secretary. Sir Albright will get me an antidote and a doctor from the American army or a doctor from the British embassy. And you,” Yassin ordered in a quiet harsh voice full of vindictiveness, “Organize a helicopter for this doctor!”
“They will try to force their way into the room and spray us all.”
“They will try and come in, but cleverly,” Yassin interrupted him, “They won’t use force and won’t spray as long as they think their kidnapped boy is here.” He tried to stop a sneeze and continued, “They won’t do it! We need to check for bugs in the suitcases and from now on, we only talk in whispers. Let the water run and turn up the television.”
“And the second conversation?”
There was a knock at the door. “That is most probably the doctor we ordered. What do we do with him?” Karrol asked.
“That is not a doctor. That is a killing squad. Send him away. I don’t want strangers to come in! Make sure that Sir Albright’s doctor gets here or some other specialist in infections and poisons.”
Karrol walked up to the door and shouted, “Go away.”
“But you ordered a doctor,” the voice on the other side of the door insisted.
“We don’t want you. We’re waiting for our private doctor.”
“Are you sure?” the voice asked, “Are you sure you are not risking someone’s life with this decision?”
“I told you I am waiting for a private doctor, now go!”
The knocking on the door stopped. Karrol asked again, “What is the second call you wanted me to make?”
“The group who are about to meet the professor in a few minutes. Talk to the one in charge of the team. I want them to draw him out to the farm, tell them not to interrogate, I want his car to be the only thing left that belongs to him. When they arrive at the farm, I want them to bury him there. He will be the first victim that will start this massacre and it won’t stop, even if we all die here in this room.”
“You are diverting their route and their timetable. They are supposed to be in Florida.” Karrol reminded him and then asked, “Do you really want to risk this whole operation? It can be done another way.”
“How?”
“Give this job to someone else. Do you remember your meeting with the Ku Klux Klan leader in Ireland last year?”
“I can get them to do it,” he said, unconvincingly, as if he didn’t have it in him to try and start the whole process over.
“They are under constant surveillance. They are a radical right-wing movement,” I said, “I heard about them on the news a few days ago.” They both looked at me as if they expected me to elaborate so I said, “Because of the upcoming elections and this character is said to be supportive of their activities.”
“He is right.” Karrol stopped looking at me and turned to Yassin. “It could put us at risk.”
I thought that maybe now I could do something good for the kid, at least try and save the father so I added, “You know that El Desconocido also has vast connections here and he still owes me, because the drugs haven’t reached the east coast yet. Would you like me to check with him?” Yassin stared at me with glazed eyes. I wasn’t even sure he had heard me. A moment of silence filled the room. It seemed that everything was in slow motion. Our thoughts, his reactions, the raspy sound of his son’s breathing in his arms. Then suddenly his son coughed and then it was as if everything came back to life.
“What drives your Mexican friend? Money? Ties?” Yassin was once again in charge.
“I think both.”
“Contact him. I want to explain the situation myself about what I want him to do there.” Yassin smiled and his smile was as frightening as ever. “Karrol will give you a secure phone and will listen in on your conversation. Don’t do anything stupid. I’m done with being forgiving.”
He looked at his son again and hugged him closely for a long minute. Only when he let go did he add, “I will handle the next phone calls myself. Whoever decided to hurt my son doesn’t know who he is dealing with and what price he is going to pay. I’m starting from the top, with David Cameron.”
Guy Niava,
November 15, 2015
I made use of the break and bought myself some water and a sandwich and then went back to the car. I looked around. The car park was almost empty at this time of night but still I looked carefully in all the darkest corners. Only when I was sure no one had followed me did I get into the car. After hours on my motorcycle, it felt claustrophobic, but the mission hadn’t been planned according to my personal taste in vehicles. I positioned my brother’s phone on the dashboard and connected it to the charger. The screen still showed the destination he had received. I knew that soon the destination would change according to the information I received from Laura. There was no one waiting. Not even terrorists, representatives of the megalomaniac. The gas gauge showed that my brother had filled the tank before he stopped to freshen up. I moved the seat back and repositioned the mirrors. He was either shorter than me by far, or his driving habits were very different from mine. I changed the radio station and peeled the plastic wrap off the sandwich. Ten minutes later, as I searched for the garbage bin, I heard Laura’s voice in my earpiece.
“What have you done?”
“What happened?”
“Besides a phone call from my boss, demanding explanations from his boss, Yassin has refused to let the medical team inside.”
“I hope you are not all
owing him to let his doctor into the room,” I said and inside me a ‘red alert button’ turned on. Yassin Graham hadn’t acted as predicted. This wasn’t the time for him to become soft, despite the agony of the people in the room with him. I said, “He will be convinced in the end. He doesn’t want to die this kind of death.”
“Don’t try and calm me down and don’t give me empty promises. Do you want to know what happened between the time the son and wife walked into the room and when we knocked on the door?”
“What happened?” I cooperated with her.
“Gideoni threatened to contact him and he went through with his threat.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Because we received an order to shoot Yassin as soon as he was identified.”
“Without trying to find out if Jonathan was in the room?”
She didn’t answer me, and I understood the problem. Instead of answering my question she rebuked me: “Gideoni and, I think, you too, went behind my back. And worse than that, behind the backs of the United States of America and the UK. Two of Israel’s closest friends.” There was no acceptance or understanding in her voice and it grew icier as she said, “From now on you are neutralized. You’re removed from this mission. And if you try to do another thing, you will be put behind bars until the end of this affair.”
There was no use getting into a political argument with her or throwing quotes in the air like ‘For the wise counsel thou shalt make thy war…’ I kept quiet. She would have to work out the political mess. In the meantime, we had a different kind of mess here, one involving a kidnapped boy and a ticking bomb. After a long silence I asked, “So what now?”
“Now I have received orders to stop everything and fold my forces until I can bring proof that the kidnapped boy is in their hands. In the meantime, I am sorry to tell you that all the cameras we did manage to get into the room show that Jonathan is not there.”
“We both know that Yassin is a ticking bomb, right?”
