by E. L. Pini
The Gendarmes securing the perimeter solemnly let us through. Large, dark bloodstains spotted the sidewalk. The Italians, unfortunately, have no ZAKA1. Roberto wandered the ruins, stunned, bruised and covered in black soot. Bruno ran toward him and they hugged. I hurried to reach out my hand before he got around to hugging me as well. I measured the distance from the remains of the entrance to the charred skeleton of the taxi with my steps. Twenty feet. The blast radius had left nothing to chance. I asked Roberto how many of the customers preferred cash to credit. Roberto glanced at Bruno, who nodded. “Over ninety percent of the patrons pay with credit cards.”
I snapped a picture of the restaurant’s sign, which had oddly survived the blast and now appeared to float in midair. I sent the photo to Nora, with instructions: Digital Albert would get into the restaurant’s accounts and pull out the percentage of Israeli credit cards.
The Israeli victims had been three couples, Cohen, Ziv and Perlman—the families of military industry workers, celebrating their retirement together. Tragic, really. At least they didn’t bring the grandkids, I thought, feeling a sudden rage. Like Froyke, I was never an advocate of reprisals and blood vengeance. An organization like ours should operate according to established goals and strategies, not vendettas. It’s the politicians, on both sides, who divert us into those esoteric, nonstrategic, excessively bloody news items. And still, I was infuriated by the six dismembered bodies of those pensioners, hardworking welders and smiths, workers for the military industry. I promised myself, and Froyke, that I wouldn’t stray from my goals. But before all that, I intended to find the fucker responsible and beat him into a bloody pulp.
We left Roberto and drove to Harry’s bar on Via Veneto, the location of Bruno’s “private office”—a dimly lit booth, furnished in heavy wood and leather.
“Two Macallan, piatto di salumi and some peace and quiet,” Bruno tossed at the waitress as we entered. Once she had delivered our provisions and left, he drew his head closer to mine, stared at me pointedly, and whispered, “You ever heard about something called pentaerythritol tetranitrate?” He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“PETN,” I replied with a calm that I knew he’d find maddening.
“CH2ONO2, detonation velocity eight thousand, four hundred meters per second. It hasn’t been used since World War I due to oversensitivity to heat and friction.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Please, make yourself comfortable. Take your shoes off,” said Bruno, unable to mask his frustration. I shoved off my $890 Guccis, which were supposed to fit “like a glove” and instead fit like my ass. Bruno went on, “Only ashes left from the taxi and its passengers. We have nothing… the remains of one body and the doors locked. The driver probably locked it from the outside, put some distance between them and activated. The taxi’s stolen, and no one saw the bastard’s face. Your people probably think it was aimed at the Israelis. I don’t. You guys always think everything is about you.”
“Could it be business-related?”
“No,” said Bruno. “I checked. Roberto pays very generous protection, directly to the local boss.”
“If it isn’t business, the only reasonable alternative is Islamic terrorism. And if so, why has no organization taken responsibility for this boast-worthy feat?”
“You’re right,” he said. “That is unusual.”
Nora got back to me, informing me that the amount of Israeli credit cards didn’t even reach 0.005 percent of the restaurant’s annual revenue. I let Bruno know. He raised his eyebrow and swallowed the insult.
“Zero point zero zero five percent of revenue, and ninety percent of the trouble. Always the same with you guys. This is not an anti-Israeli attack, Mr. Ehrlich. These Islamists want to conquer us. Us!” He struck his chest with his palm. “Toss all of them back into the fucking desert.”
We concluded the meeting with homework—Bruno would check his European colleagues for other uses of PETN as a primary explosive, and I’d try to track its supply routes. The driver and the bomber operated within Italian borders, so I was expected to leave their identification to the local authorities. We both knew this wouldn’t happen, and neither of us brought it up.
Bruno dropped me off at the Hotel Excelsior and got out of the car to hug me. A motorcycle sped by us, nearly taking the door of Bruno’s Maserati with it. I had to apply friendly force to stop him from running after it. Bruno settled for three full minutes of continuous swearing, never repeating the same word twice. It reminded me of another motorbike that had passed us by five years ago, when Bruno and I had met. It was our first collaboration. A jihad network was planning a series of bombings at the embassy, the Great Synagogue and the Jewish school in Rome. We eliminated them all, though there were a few we could have arrested. Bruno preferred to save the taxpayers some money and avoid blackmail kidnappings. The only one who managed to escape was the commander—an exceptionally bright young man by the name of Imad. The same Imad Akbariyeh now commands the Shabwah camp, the last real foothold of jihad in crumbling Yemen, from which he sends his convoys to both the Sunni Hamas in Gaza and The Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon. This previously unheard-of combination between Sunni and Shiite terrorism was probably what had allowed the camp to survive the chaos.
This same Imad, of course, abuses Anna on a daily basis. I’m still convinced, to this day, that he was that biker who flew past Bruno and me five years ago. And for a brief moment, I wondered if he could be the one who’d passed us just now. Bruno had finally exhausted his arsenal of profanities and was asking when to pick me up tomorrow.
“Pick me up? Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the airport. Time to show you the door.”
5.
East of Shabwah camp, on the hills looking over Hadhramaut, stand a dozen whitewashed prefab buildings. The UNICEF Child Hospital. The medical staff consists of seven volunteer doctors and one dental hygienist. The hospital is run by Dr. Anna von Stroop, who specializes in pediatrics and ultrasound. Her second-in-command is Dr. Patrice, a Jewish pediatrician from Paris. To the east of the hospital, behind a massive bulge in the earth—nearly a hill—lies the solar farm. Two and a half acres packed with hundreds of photovoltaic cells, converters and generators. The farm—capable of producing up to 1,650,000 kilowatts—was planned and installed by an Italian company, Green Systems Energy (GES). The company won the bid by the World Bank after it offered three years of quarterly service and maintenance, free of charge.
Dr. von Stroop sat in her office, downed the remaining cognac in her glass, grew angry at herself, and immediately brushed her teeth. Her classic beauty was accompanied by a veneer of hard resilience, further emphasized by the short, boyish cut of her full blond hair.
She breathed on her palm to check that the smell of the toothpaste overcame the cognac, hung the stethoscope on her neck, and left, heading toward the patients’ rooms. The white prefabs shone like suns, forcing her to shade her eyes. If it weren’t for the solar farm reinforcing the meager trickle of electricity provided by the Yemenites, this place would be uninhabitable, she thought.
She began her rounds with the children. The lines of her face, usually angular and symmetrical enough to have been drawn by a computer, softened instantly when she approached the beds. The children trusted her completely, surrendering to her compassionate hands. For tough, hardened desert children, this is no small matter. Hamid, the “nurse” appointed by the fighters, lumbered behind her, his green scrubs occasionally flashing a glimpse of his camouflage combat uniform. Hamid was posted by Imad “to help translate,” and mostly to guarantee that the medical staff, and the equipment, was devoted to his fighters. Hamid maintained a reasonable distance from her, paying close attention to the doctor’s pear-shaped ass and perky breasts. Anna arrived at Abdu’s bed—a sweet Sudanese child with jet-black skin, whose leg had been amputated. She stroked his hair.
“Hey, Schatzi, remember wh
at we learned yesterday?” Abdu and Anna bumped fists.
“Yeah,” said Abdu, “but I don’t know how to say it…”
Anna smiled. “Messer, Gabel, Schere, Licht, sind für kleine Kinder nicht. Knife, fork, scissors, flames, have no place in children’s games.”
An electronic whine suddenly erupted from Hamid’s walkie-talkie, followed by a stream of instruction in Arabic. “The commander requests you come to his office, immediately!” he relayed to Anna.
“Whose commander?” challenged Anna, her eyes never leaving Abdu’s medical chart.
When she was finished, she met Hamid’s discomfited gaze. “I’m busy right now. Tell him to call me when my shift’s over.”
She kissed Abdu on the forehead and left to wash her hands with disinfectant in the small restroom near the staff room. She took off her scrubs and pulled a striped Valentino blouse over her head, draping it over the tailored jeans. She closed her eyes and smoothed her hands over the fabric. She liked this shirt. She then took off her black horn-rimmed glasses and examined the minuscule beginnings of a line near her eye. A flash of concern momentarily clouded her bright features. The pressure was still there, whenever Imad summoned her.
Three months ago, when she’d met Avner at a hotel in Rome and tried on the hand-sewn Valentino blouse, she’d realized that when the fear would appear—along with the weakness that followed—she would wear this, and overcome them. It was clear, when she looked into Avner’s loving eyes, that he would always be there for her when she needed him. When she asked him whether a white-and-blue striped blouse wasn’t a bit on the nose, he smiled and pulled out another wrapped box. Inside was Steven Harper’s Dreamer, and he opened and flipped through it to point to the sentence, “The best spy hides in open day, where everyone can see.”
Occasionally, in moments of weakness and regret, Anna returned to that book, that sentence. She derived a great deal of satisfaction from the ability to be someone else. To be on the outside, looking in on that new someone, being able to decide how she behaved, how she interacted with the people around her. With courage? Indifference? Contempt? Compassion? Would she choose an immediate, or delayed response? Her control of the character was perfect. Unlike her control of herself.
At times, when the weakness appeared, she felt as if she were dreaming; the ground dropped away from under her, plunging her into a deep, black void. Without end, without gravity. The dive was curious and not necessarily unpleasant, languid somersaults and delicate, gentle drifts, like a space capsule ballet. No end existed to this void, nor, apparently, a way out. Terminally adrift, Anna thought, and wished for a final, powerful blow to end it all. It was truly addictive.
She shivered at the sound of the metal hinges. Imad walked in, wearing his camouflage uniform, hugged her from behind and kissed her neck. Anna tried to turn around, but he held her there.
“Look into the mirror,” he said, pressing his forehead to the back of her head. She fiddled with the sophisticated armband computer in her hands and looked into his burning black eyes, framed in long, thick eyelashes.
“What do you see?”
“A horny, exotic Arabian prince that I’d very much like to fuck.”
She reached behind her to hug his neck before glancing at the armband. “Later, though. I have to go on my run. Join me this time?”
“Running! In this heat?”
“I have surgery today. If I don’t go now, I won’t go at all.” Inwardly she added that forgoing the run would mean failing to report to Avner, and she attempted unsuccessfully to calm the slight twitch in her eyelids.
Imad was about to reply but stopped short when his walkie-talkie sounded an irritating buzz.
He awarded it a glance and his face grew solemn. “I have to go now. You are absolutely insane. Take a water bottle with you. And when you get back, I’ll show you who gets to fuck whom.” He kissed her neck and left.
Anna smoothed her fingers over the striped shirt one last time before changing to her running clothes and beginning a slow jog toward the solar farm. The sun beat down on her, and the heat of the golden desert sand penetrated the rubber soles of her running shoes and burned her feet. Annoyed, she wondered why the hell Avner had positioned the farm so far from the hospital, though she quickly realized that the distance and the small hill were reason enough.
She fondly recalled Avner, wearing the green technician coveralls, accompanied by Albert the tech genius, Luigi and several other Italian technicians—innocent and perpetually cheerful—as they’d installed these panels while playing Puccini arias on the mobile karaoke machine.
Anna stretched her neck, using the stretch as an excuse to raise her eyes and scan the sky. She activated the satellite location app on her running computer to find that her satellite was, indeed, approaching—she imagined that she could almost see it, a dim, sort of pale star, progressing with infuriating slowness. It would take forever for the satellite to reach its optimal reception point.
As the satellite approached, she aimed her armband at the nearest row of solar panels and pushed the “reset” button twice, just like Albert had shown her. She counted three seconds and typed in distance and heart rate data that granted her a “Boston Qualified” status for the Boston marathon. If the computer says you can run the Boston marathon, you’re in good shape.
When Avner received the BQ result, he’d realize that a substantial missile convoy was preparing in Shabwah. The number of the first decimal place in the heart rate denoted the number of days remaining until the convoy headed out. If the date of departure was unknown but could be estimated, the heart rate would exceed ninety, so the number of days would be counted without the zeroes and divided by two—meaning a pulse between ninety and one hundred read as four to five days until the convoy’s departure. An unusual pulse of over one twenty denoted a late warning, under three hours until the departure of a previously unknown convoy. If everything went smoothly, the transmission would be received in the encrypted transmitter in one of the solar panels, and from these it would be continuously transmitted to the satellite, over and over again for five minutes. When the five minutes had elapsed, any record of the transmission would be purged from the solar panel transmitter. Another push of the “reset” button would erase any evidence from the running computer.
At times, Anna wondered why Avner had enabled such limited communication: the dates of the convoys, a call for extraction, and that was it. Anything more complex, she had no way of reporting—but he always told her, “KISS,” and kissed her before adding, “Keep it simple, stupid. The convoys are what matters. The rest isn’t worth risking you.”
Anna punched in the appropriate code—a missile convoy would leave Shabwah in four to five days—and began jogging back to her room. On the way she passed Hamid and flashed him a smile. He didn’t return it, only stared at her. A small shiver went down her spine as she ran past him to her room to shower before her surgery.
6.
Anna’s transmission called for an immediate assembly of all members of the “Forum,” or as Froyke referred to it, “the national steering committee for Yemenite affairs.” The usual members of this committee, apart from Froyke and yours truly, were Ami Kahanov from the Service2, and Tamir, a young major from the operating division of the intelligence corps, a good kid whose tall figure and confident posture reminded me of Eran. Representatives of the relevant intelligence-gathering units as well as representatives from the operational end units, the air force operational division, the Matkal special reconnaissance unit and marine commando Flotilla 13. Apart from the usual forum, representatives from Unit 8200, from the satellite division of Visual Intelligence Unit 9900, and of course G, the new commander of air force operations.
“Froyke won’t make it,” Bella informed me and suggested that I take Nora with me to avoid “embarrassing the organization.”
Nora, my intelligence officer, laid out the decry
pted data that signal intelligence had gotten off the satellite, as well as an up-to-date review of the Iranian missile arsenal, and our preventive action aimed at “Quds Force,” which had forced them to seek out new smuggling routes.
She added that according to our most recent intel, the missile convoy could leave Shabwah on its way to the Gaza Hamas at any point over the next twenty-four hours. As for the exact contents of said convoy, she assured us that “you’ll know as soon as we do,” adding that “an update could arrive at any time.” I gave her a surreptitious thumbs-up—she had done an excellent job—and she replied with an undecipherable look that could’ve meant anything from false modesty to who did you think you were dealing with here?
Colonel G, who’d been one of the air force’s finest combat pilots, was only recently promoted to command the air force operational division. This was his baptism by fire. Perhaps for this reason, he left his dark Ray-Bans on throughout the entire meeting. After taking his seat at the head of the table, he signaled with his laser pointer to one of the technicians. A large plasma screen rose up from the conference table.
Colonel G drew a red laser circle around the Shabwah camp.
“We’re prohibited from operating within Yemen. Too much politics,” he said and shifted the laser toward the Sinai desert. “We can’t operate in Egypt for similar reasons. This is what’s left.” He lasered a small circle around Port Sudan, near the Sinai border.
“This is our hunting ground,” he concluded, suppressing a slight smile. “Unfortunately, not far enough from here to get the Iranians jumping to conclusions.”
