by Dov Alfon
“Putain,” she said in a whisper, and then again, like a mantra, “putain, putain, putain.” She wasn’t sure if she used the obscenity in reference to him or whether she was describing herself. Her phone beeped again.
“Call me, I have a big, grade A gift for you.”
“Putain.” This time the insult locked cleanly onto its target. She switched off the mobile and took toiletries and a towel from her locker. She removed her raincoat and, looking in the large mirror, remained naked for several minutes, tears running down her cheeks.
Under the shower nozzle she began to feel like herself again, her spirits slowly reviving under the stream of warm water. But when she saw her raincoat on the bench, she remembered everything and burst into tears once more. She left the building dressed in her own clothes: a pair of light-blue skinny jeans, a green nylon jacket and trainers. She hung the raincoat over a parking bollard, from where it would no doubt be snatched up by a beggar.
In the bustling square next to the Pompidou Centre she sat down by the fountain with its colourful, funny sculptures that she liked. She gazed at the painted figures spurting water at each other, lit up a fat joint and let her mind wander. By the time she was ready to move on, she knew she was going to demand that Wasim double her fee. She also knew there was only one thing she wanted right now – to forget everything that had happened.
Chapter 15
At first Léger struggled to accept the idea that a camera had been installed in a place prohibited by law. Once it sank in, he was uncertain if he required the investigating judge’s legal clearance to watch the footage. He contacted the juge d’instruction, who contacted the justice department, who got back to the juge d’instruction with the vague instruction “to act in the best interests of the investigation according to your discretion, with the understanding that a human life might be at risk”.
Abadi and Chico were waiting in the meantime at the police post, and nearly an hour went by before Léger returned to take them back up to the top floor. He seemed to be in worse physical shape than he had been earlier that morning. As they waited in silence for the lift, Léger fixed his eyes firmly on the ground, his jaw set firm.
The site was now illuminated by police spotlights, and technicians in white lab coats ambled to and fro, grumbling that the crime scene was contaminated and the set-up unprofessional. You could almost hear Léger grinding his teeth as they crossed the cordoned-off area on their way to the El Al container.
The door was open now. Posters from the Israeli Ministry of Tourism hung on the wall. “Jerusalem celebrates three thousand years”; “In Israel your roots will grow wings”; “Israel, your true home”. A bulb dangling from the ceiling gave off a yellowish light which granted the sofa below it an almost cheerful appearance.
On the sofa, between two agitated French policemen, sat a man with blue eyes and white hair who was no youngster. He could have been a model in an advertisement for an executive car, someone who had done his homework and had assessed the competition before deciding on a Lexus. “Abadi, I’d like to introduce you to Ron Barak, El Al’s security officer in Paris,” Chico said.
Barak sat with a straight back, an air-gapped laptop on his knees, his gaze challenging everyone around him. It was impossible to tell whether the appearance of the Israelis was a relief or a disappointment. Léger’s English, which up to now had been rather limited, improved miraculously thanks to the sudden rage that flared in him. Even his terrible French accent seemed less strong.
“Colonel Abadi, this man on the couch here, this man by the name of Ron Barak, has been brought in for questioning. He is an Israeli citizen residing in Paris on a special visa, and is obliged, among other things, to co-operate with the representative of the French Republic. But for nearly an hour now he has been sitting on the documentation of a kidnapping from an illegal camera he had installed in the airport, and he is refusing to hand over the footage to me. The juge d’instruction has just permitted me to arrest him for obstruction of justice, but I have decided to agree to his request to summon the Israeli investigators of the case, in a final, last-ditch attempt to persuade him to co-operate.”
Not a muscle on Ron Barak’s face moved. Abadi knew the type, and could read his thoughts: The French can drop dead, I’ll never talk. Long live El Al’s independence. Tell my mother I was a loyal soldier.
Abadi asked himself with whom he would rather be stuck on a desert island, the grumpy French commissaire or the cocky Israeli security officer. He might just let the raft sink.
In some ways the security officer’s attitude was enviable. Most people, certainly in a city like Paris, are sensitive to what people around them think of them. Barak, and this was quite clear, was utterly indifferent to what anyone might think.
He spoke English with a heavy Israeli accent. “At 10.10 a.m. the passengers who disembarked from El Al flight 319 reported that one of the passengers, a young high-tech employee by the name of Meidan, had disappeared following an unsuccessful prank in the arrivals hall of Terminal 2A. It should be noted that the police here did not bother reporting this disappearance to El Al’s security. I only found out about it from the passengers themselves.”
Even Chico, who so far had seemed quite blasé, understood that this confrontation was not going to take the investigation anywhere. “Now that all this has been straightened out, the competent authorities of our two countries have approved the transfer of the security footage to the investigating officials,” he said to Barak with the studied nuances of a politician. “I suggest that we look at the footage right away. Every minute counts.”
But Barak was unimpressed. “I arrived at Terminal 2A, but the locals refused to let me approach the witnesses. Only after a lot of wasted time did it turn out that the missing passenger had gone to the top floor, where El Al’s kosher food storage is currently located. I was requested to hand over to the police the security camera that was installed here for the duration of the construction work, and obviously I refused.”
“The camera is unregistered, unauthorised and unreported, secretly documenting the workers and everything that happens on the floor, twenty-four hours a day, in violation of the privacy laws and the unequivocal instructions of the French police!” Léger yelled. He had finally lost it.
“God save us from the French police,” Barak said, and Abadi wondered how long it would be before he mentioned the Holocaust. A minute? Half a minute?
“As I said, it’s all been settled,” Chico reminded them, the strain evident in his voice, “and you, Barak, are required to present the footage to the investigation team.”
“But it doesn’t work that way,” Barak said. “I need the consent of El Al’s chief security officer. I don’t know you people, and this is El Al’s property; it isn’t personal.”
“Let me explain to you why it is personal,” Abadi said. He chose to speak Hebrew in a friendly tone, one that would keep their hosts in the dark. “It is personal, because if you don’t give them the tape in the next minute, I will personally make sure your security clearance is knocked down to a minus. There will not be a single official job in Israel in which the person in charge will not get a phone call from me warning him about you. You’ll find your name on suspect lists you didn’t even know existed. Amira Hass and Gideon Levy will have a higher security clearance than you. This is my promise to you, and that makes it entirely personal. You have thirty seconds to make a decision.”
Barak seemed surprised. You could almost hear the wheels of his mind turning while he tried to assess the odds that Abadi was bluffing.
“Fifteen seconds,” Abadi said.
Just as he had been taught on his course, Barak was performing a damage control assessment. After twenty-five seconds of heavy silence, he switched on the laptop.
Chapter 16
In the waiting room of Aluf Rotelmann’s chambers, the participants of the special meeting were taking advantage of the forced break. A string of notifications on their mobiles transmitted
news alerts concerning the possible abduction of an Israeli in Paris.
The resemblance between this initial information and the alert that appeared on The Most Wanted list they had just discussed was clear, even suspicious. The senior officers had taken over the secure computers, and in no time agreed that, according to all indications, the missing Israeli, Yaniv Meidan, had no connection to the Intelligence Corps.
“I could have told you that at the outset, but instead you people had to make all this fuss,” the secretary grumbled. One of the Mossad representatives sat beside Oriana and explained to her in a fatherly tone that he had never given any credence to the alert, so he was not one bit concerned by the news. They’ll find him in some bar in Paris in no time, and we can all call it a day. Oriana nodded without interest. The Mossad representative asked if perhaps they could grab a coffee together after the meeting to get to know each other better. He suggested the McCafé in the nearby mall.
Finally rid of him, she was free to read her messages. Two urgent ones. The first an official letter from the head of Unit 8200, whom she had yet to meet.
“The Commander extends his gratitude to you for standing in for the head of Special Section following the unexpected release of Sgan Aluf Shlomo Tiriani. The Commander of 8200 has requested that the new head of Special Section, Colonel Zeev Abadi, assume his new role a.s.a.p. You will therefore cease serving as acting head at midnight.”
The rest was the usual fluff. “The Commander is confident that you will aid the new head of Special Section’s transition into the role in any way possible. The Commander has been very impressed with your ability to fill the role without prior warning or preparations, and has added his acknowledgement of these achievements to your personnel file.”
Well, that was short-lived. She felt the pang of an insult, although of course it was unwarranted. She was out of her league by every known military standard, certainly in seniority and rank. She was surprised to feel so disappointed, and tried to find an explanation for it as she opened the second message.
It was a summons to a secure video call, today at 4.00 p.m., with the incoming head of Special Section, Colonel Zeev Abadi. This was plain weird. If he was still abroad, why was it so urgent for him to talk to her today? And if he had already returned to Israel, then why a video call and not a standard orientation meeting at the office?
She approved the summons and wrote down the details on her secure screen. The code number with which she was supposed to connect to the call in three hours did not appear in her unit’s database, and she had to approach the chamber’s obnoxious secretary and ask her to find out to which facility the number belonged.
The secretary ran the decryption with a minimum of enthusiasm, looked at the screen, ran it again, and then said with surprise: “Well, I’ll be damned, it’s the code room in the Israeli embassy in Paris. The adjutant asked me just a moment ago to find out how to contact them.”
Oriana annotated her notes below the summons with an exclamation mark. After a moment, she scrawled another, much larger exclamation mark alongside it.
They were called back into the conference room, but this time there was no ceremony over the seating, and not even the ceremony of the commander’s entrance. Zorro stood at the head of the table and did not bother waiting for everyone to enter before concluding the meeting.
“I’m sorry for the delay, we had something that needed looking into. As you may have read, an Israeli passenger seems to have been abducted from Charles de Gaulle airport. I’m happy to say that the classified information delivered to Aluf Rotelmann confirms that the news has nothing to do with The Most Wanted item. So we can put it behind us. Most of what I had to say to you has already been said, so I suggest we break. A summary will be sent to you before the end of the day.”
The officers made for the door like children at the end of a long day at school. Oriana took her bag and stood in the line by the exit.
“Not you,” Zorro called out to her, and, adopting a more formal tone, said, “The representative of 8200 is requested to stay a few moments longer.”
Chapter 17
The juge d’instruction was young and very nervous. He consulted with his superiors in a loud voice, while his agitated pacing interrupted the efforts of Léger’s technicians to connect Barak’s laptop to the large screen. Abadi monitored the preparations with growing, if not entirely focused, concern.
When everything was eventually ready they still had to wait, because the juge d’instruction asked that the floodlights outside the container be turned off, and the forensic team objected on the grounds that they could not work in the dark. Throughout the furious argument Léger looked as if he was about to pass out. “This is how it is in France,” he whispered with embarassment to Abadi, who smiled graciously without saying that it would have looked much worse in Israel.
At last the signal was given. Barak pressed the button, and Meidan was there on the giant screen.
The camera was sophisticated, perhaps too sophisticated. It pivoted every few seconds to encompass the area around El Al’s container from every direction, rendering the documentation frustratingly fragmented. It had a very sensitive audio microphone, which created an odd soundtrack of background noises. Abadi felt as though he were watching a strange work of video art, an homage to a classic black and white film lacking only the narrating title cards: “The protagonist does not notice the trap”, “The villains sneak up from behind”, “The blonde undresses”, “The protagonist begs for his life”, “The End”.
The flashing clock on the corner of the screen lent the drama its rhythm. It displayed 10:48 when the cheerful ring of the lift’s arrival was heard and out stepped Meidan. “What’s that?” he exclaimed with surprise in Hebrew. The honeytrap followed him out.
From this footage it was clear that she was not as tall nor as attractive as the witnesses had described her. She was also younger, perhaps not even twenty. She held his arm, both to steady herself in her high heels and to coax him out of the lift.
He still seemed amused, if somewhat bewildered, and his first steps were hesitant. He too looked very young, almost a child. He dragged his suitcase, whose wheels struggled to advance along the makeshift gravel path. She pointed to the dark construction site, signalling their destination. “Parking, parking,” she repeated. He was heard translating the word to himself in Hebrew, and looked at the forklift with interest, as if he had just been considering buying one.
When the camera pivoted again, the lens locked on him; that was the frame they could use for the missing person notifications. Léger’s men shot him questioning looks, and in reaction Léger turned his gaze to Abadi, who shrugged.
The camera continued to document the couple walking slowly, but at 10:49 it started pivoting again and they disappeared from the frame. He was heard joking with his kidnapper in English about the limo awaiting them and the champagne they would pop. She did not respond. His voice grew louder as they approached the container and its microphone. Moments later he was clearly heard saying, “It looks like you’re leading me somewhere very romantic.”
She apparently understood the word “romantic” because she burst into laughter. Encouraged by his success, he kept chatting away. The volume level of his voice remained the same for an entire minute, and when the camera returned to them, at 10:50, it became clear why: they were standing in the same spot, right in front of the container, while she leaned against him to remove her heels.
The sudden intimacy must have awoken the voice of reason within him. The microphone picked up his apprehension as he tried explaining to her that it was a case of mistaken identity.
“It isn’t me, I’m not that passenger, it was a joke . . . ” (10:50:15)
Was he starting to understand? Did he suspect that the joke might be on him? Run, you moron, run, Abadi thought. Had he broken into a run towards the lift at that moment, he would have had a chance of saving himself. But what man would leave a barefooted girl on a deserted constru
ction site without attempting to explain his good intentions? And what Israeli would leave his suitcase behind unattended?
The camera began pivoting again, moving to the dark area of the site. On the screen two men appeared. They were unmistakably South East Asian. “Des Chinois!” the juge d’instruction called out, and they did indeed look Chinese. They stepped out of the dark in the couple’s direction. With his back to them, Meidan failed to notice the danger. The blonde was now leaning into him with all her weight, while he tried again to explain his prank.
“It was just a joke, you see . . . ” (10:50:22)
They advanced stealthily with hurried and silent steps. Both in black suits with dark shirts, they looked like a thousand other businessmen who land in Paris every day from South East Asia. But they crept ahead like commandos, and Barak’s sensitive microphone did not pick up the slightest sound from their steps on the gravel. Meidan did not stand a chance.
“Well, I’m sorry, I have to go.” (10:50:46)
When the Israeli finally gave up hope of finding an elegant way out of his altogether unamusing prank, the digital clock on the camera flashed 10:51:04. The camera caught him turning back in the direction of the lift, tugging his suitcase behind him. He was heard saying, in Hebrew, as if making one final joke, “O.K., enough, bye-bye.” Those were his last words.
She understood the “bye-bye” perfectly well, and reached out to grab him. Turning towards her, he must at least have seen the Chinese. The camera started pivoting again and caught them leaping on their prey like tigers in a nature film. The investigators ran the footage again and again, trying to freeze the moment. It was impossible to detect a knife or any other weapon, but professionals like that could presumably make do with their bare hands.
