There was a brief silence, interrupted only by Grozny’s coughing, brought on by his talking.
“You may be right, Casey,” Jim said. “Unfortunately, at this point there is not much we can do but wait and see what plays out. But knowing what we do know, and considering Israel’s actions—assuming Israel is the country that would like to see you dead—it’s safe to say that the more we learn about the Baltic Venture, the closer we’ll come to finding out the truth in all of this.”
Jim stood up and looked around at the people in the room. “Okay. I want everyone...,” he looked at Pete, “with your permission, of course, Pete.” Grozny nodded. “I want everyone to look deeper into the Baltic Venture. Ed, see what you can find out about anything and everything that was moved either on or off that ship in Kaliningrad. George, I want you to sift through anything coming out of Iran regarding the upcoming talks. I know you have done a lot from the side of the Western countries, China, and Russia on this, but I want to know what Iran really hopes to get out of Ankara. Oscar, check with our contacts here and in Israel to see if anyone knows anything about the leadership’s intentions with regard to the Baltic Venture and also the P5+1 talks. I know they are not a party to those talks, but their lobby, both here and abroad, is probably in high gear right now. Susan, see if you can find out where the ship is. I suspect the Russians are getting close by now. And also try to figure out how the Iranians planned to get the missiles from Algiers. We never really answered that question. That’s it, folks. Keep me updated on what you find. Pete, I’ll let you know everything I get as soon as it comes to me.” Everyone finished jotting down their new assignments and got up from their seats. Those in folding chairs put them back in the coat closet in the corner, and everyone made their way back to their own desks. Susan waited for Casey.
“Sir,” Casey said to Jim, who was straightening his own notes that he had taken during the meeting. “If it’s all right, I would like to work with Ms. Williams on this. I really have nowhere to go right now, and I would like to help solve this puzzle.”
Jim looked at Susan, who thought for a second and then nodded in acquiescence. “That’s fine. I have to tell you that, although we deal primarily with open sources and other unclassified material here, we still have strict rules regarding the sensitivity of the information we handle. Will that be a problem?”
“No, sir. I held a Secret clearance in the Navy, so I fully understand about discretion and need-to-know.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “Well, let’s hope we figure this thing out before things get out of hand. And I didn’t say it before, but I am sorry about your friend. I know what it’s like to lose someone you care about to hostile fire. I also know that when you find yourself in the crosshairs, you better watch your back. Hopefully the threat didn’t follow you from Georgia, but you can never be too careful.”
“I’ll try, sir. Thank you.”
Casey shook hands with Jim and followed Susan out the door of Jim’s office.
“I didn’t know you were in the Navy,” Susan said when the door closed behind them.
“I’ll tell you about it over a beer someday,” Casey said and followed Susan back to her cubicle.
Chapter 29
The Mossad operative started the stolen Nissan Sentra when he saw the overweight Russian leaving the building. He would have said the man was obese, but the excess kilos seemed to suit the gruff-looking Russian. Lev Cohen likened the man’s visage to that of a large bear, fattened in preparation for winter hibernation. He took comfort in his own physical condition whenever he saw someone like Pete Grozny. It wasn’t conceit. Cohen knew full-well that he was no longer the hardened killing machine that carried out his country’s bidding both lethally and efficiently, without question or remorse. Not that he was weak or incapable, but he lacked the razor-sharp skills that defined his early career.
A few months into his service with the Israeli Defense Forces, 19-year-old Lev Cohen was selected for a special mission that would take him beyond his country’s borders for the first time and open the door to a life he never knew existed outside the realm of schoolyard gossip. The target was Khalil Ibrahim al Wazir, popularly known as Abu Jihad, or Father of the Struggle. He was the founder of Fatah and a leader in the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Al Wazir had been in exile in Tunisia for years, yet from his new base, he began organizing a Fatah youth movement back home to add fuel to the Palestinian uprising that would become known as the First Intifada.
As a new member of the elite Sayeret Matkal, Lev’s commanders had placed a tremendous amount of confidence in the young soldier by assigning him to the commando raid. The targeted assassination was a combined effort of the Mossad, Israel’s internal security service commonly known as Shin Bet, and Aman, the IDF’s intelligence branch. It was also Cohen’s first combat experience.
On the evening of April 15, 1988, two units of the Sayeret Matkal were delivered to the Tunisian shore in rubber boats by Israeli frogmen. The thirty soldiers were met by seven undercover members of Mossad who handled the pre-raid planning and set-up inside Tunisia. The men boarded two buses and were driven to Abu Jihad’s neighborhood. All telephone services in the area were jammed, precluding the raid’s pre-disclosure by a wayward good Samaritan. When the buses arrived, the soldiers and Mossad operatives quickly broke into two predefined groups—one was assigned the important task of securing the grounds of the villa, while the other was to enter the house and exterminate the target and anyone else who tried to prevent the mission’s success. Lev Cohen was assigned the breacher role and was to be the first one in the front door.
As practiced, the assault team split into three separate entry points around the house. Within seconds, each of the three groups was in position at the front, rear and north side of the villa. Lev Cohen’s squad leader slapped him twice on the shoulder, and Lev swung the heavy metal cylinder, impacting the door just to the left of the knob and releasing the nervousness in his body—adrenaline and training now taking over. The door and framing at the entrance shattered, and another man tossed a grenade into the opening. A second later, the explosion signaled everyone to commence the assault.
Lev had thrown the battering ram to the side and moved swiftly and purposefully through the smoke, assault rifle pointed directly in front of him. He nearly tripped over the body of a man, or what was left of him, who had been killed by the grenade. Lev barely took notice of him as he mounted the stairs with three of his team directly behind him. A man in a dark jogging suit appeared at the top and raised an automatic rifle to halt the Israeli team’s advance. Lev put two three-round bursts into the man’s chest and throat before he could fire a shot. The man fell harmlessly to the floor.
As soon as he reached the top, Lev Cohen stepped to the right and knelt down to cover his teammates as they joined him. The next soldier did the same on the left side of the stairs. The last of the four, the squad leader, quickly checked the motionless would-be-defender to determine if the man was Abu Jihad. He was not. The Israeli proceeded straight to the back room. He was accompanied by another, while Lev and his compatriot on the other side of the flight of stairs went to secure their respective sides of the top floor.
Gunfire erupted on the bottom floor, followed almost immediately by even more shots from the back room. A woman began screaming frantically, amplified by the deafening silence that engulfed the house when the shooting stopped. Lev heard several voices call “clear” from various parts of the villa. He was ready to do the same when he heard a whimper from under the bed in the last room he was to secure.
Lev Cohen would not have been faulted for opening fire immediately, tearing the mattress and anything between it and the floor to shreds. Instead, he ordered firmly in Arabic, “Come out! Come out from under the bed! Now!” The whimpering became more forceful, but did not increase in volume. He saw the bed ruffle move, followed by a crown of brown hair. Lev continued to aim his rifle, prepared to pull the trigger, when hair was followed by a young teen
aged boy. Lev soon discovered that the source of the whimpering was a small girl who emerged next. He surmised that she was three years old at best, perhaps younger.
The two children stood unmoving. Only the slight shaking of the crying girl gave any indication they were possibly aware of what horror had just been unleashed on their quiet home. But it wasn’t so quiet, Lev reminded himself. This house had been used by its owner—these children’s father?—to organize violent Palestinian resistance movements that were responsible for the deaths of many Israelis. Lev kept the rifle leveled on the boy with his right hand and patted him down for weapons with his left. When he found none, he shouted, “Clear. Two children, north bedroom. Unarmed.” The woman in the back room continued to wail, though not as frantically.
“Roger,” came the response. “All clear!”
A voice broke onto the radio and signaled for all teams to withdraw. The boy had not taken his eyes off of Lev since coming out from under the bed. The girl had not stopped looking out the door of the room towards the sound of the grieving woman. Lev looked at the children and lowered his rifle. “Go,” he told them. “Go to your mother.”
The children did as they were told, and Lev followed. He watched as they walked cautiously down the hallway to the room where he saw what he would later find out was the body of Khalil Ibrahim al Wazir, Abu Jihad. The Palestinian militant had been riddled with more than two dozen bullets. His debt to the families of the Israelis he butchered paid in full. Lev watched as the woman appeared in the doorway and fell to her knees, embracing both of her kids. Lev Cohen quickly put the image out of his mind and bounded down the stairs towards the rest of his team, the waiting buses, and home.
After the successful assault on the al Wazir villa, Lev Cohen was given a commendation for his actions that night. It was filed in a safe at Sayeret Matkal Headquarters. Lev’s participation in the raid, indeed the raid itself, was deemed too classified to be made public, and he was sworn to silence. It was a set of rules he would learn to live by, no matter what the assignment—even after said assignment was discovered by the media, which, inevitably, some were. In addition to the commendation, the Mossad operatives in Tunisia were so impressed with Lev Cohen’s performance they offered him a job when his compulsory two-year service in the IDF was complete. They cited his restraint in not killing the unarmed children as evidence of both his maturity and his sound judgment. Lev accepted their offer.
Since that day in 1988, Lev Cohen had participated in many covert assignments, either as part of a team or solo. He operated on nearly every continent around the globe. Sometimes the job was a benign intelligence gathering mission—not without danger, but not a calculated violent act either. There were plenty of those, as well—most notably, the assassination of the Secretary General of Hizballah, Abbas Musawi, in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1992. But just like any organization, the Mossad had changed over the years. Partly out of the necessity of dealing with the New World Order as the American President Bush, Sr. was fond of calling it. But also because politicians, and those who worked behind the scenes in that realm, had, in Lev’s view, lost sight of what it meant to defend the country, and how the Mossad fit into that new perception.
Cohen first voiced his concern over the missions currently being given to Mossad operatives in 2001, during a question and answer session following a speech by then-Director Efraim Halevy. In a respectful but critical tone, Lev asked the head of the intelligence organization why operatives were being sent on clean-up missions around the world to cover the actions of politicians in their own country. He asked how many people had died in the five years prior that were truly a danger to the existence of Israel? Hamas? Yes. Hizballah? Yes. Iran? Most certainly. But why low-ranking politicians and businessmen in Italy or Spain, whose influence in Israeli affairs could be shut down with a phone call between state leaders? Or even intelligence directors?
Cohen’s successes shielded him from being punitively black-listed in the Mossad after that exchange. His actions were well-known, and he had even achieved a small cult-like following of admirers among some of the younger operatives. But it did mean his superiors thought twice about what assignments to give the man. It also meant that Lev Cohen was not afraid to speak his mind when something didn’t seem right to him. It was almost expected of him.
In 2004, after the assassination of Izz al-Din al Sheikh Khalil, a senior member of the military wing of Hamas, Cohen went from criticizing mission choices to questioning tactical methods. Khalil was killed in Damascus, Syria, when his car exploded. It had been booby-trapped by Mossad agents the night before. Lev felt the killing was justified, and he even applauded the terrorist’s death, but he shook his head when he heard about the method used to dispatch the Palestinian. “Aren’t we above using terrorist tactics on terrorists?” Lev asked his commander. “Or are we afraid to face our enemies as soldiers?” Lev’s boss chided him for fancying himself a purist and criticizing others’ methods. The job was done, and Khalil was dead. That was what mattered, the commander argued and directed Cohen to get out of his sight.
Six months later, Lev Cohen was transferred to Washington, D.C., as an autonomous asset to be called when needed. Lev knew that meant he was no longer wanted, and they gave him what was generally thought of by most Mossad personnel as a shit assignment. Somewhere where he wouldn’t be a problem to others, specifically upper-management. But it also meant they wouldn’t have to retire him early. Lev’s bosses didn’t want to be seen as unfairly biased—not for someone with Lev’s track record, who was more of a nuisance than anything else. So for over three years, Lev Cohen collected a paycheck every month, filed his required reports and expense documents every quarter, and did nothing. Until now. And wouldn’t he know it, it was a clean-up job. And one that wasn’t going very well by any standards.
Cohen saw the big Russian in a late-model, silver Mercedes-Benz, emerge from the underground parking garage beneath the office building across the street. He put the Sentra in drive and eased up to the red light. The Mercedes turned right onto W. 70th Street when there was a break in traffic. Lev followed the vehicle visually while he waited for the signal to change. When it was his turn to move, he sped out into the intersection, but had to wait for two oncoming vehicles to cross before he could make a left and follow Grozny. As he turned, something caught his eye. To his right, a man struggled with a pizza box while he opened the building’s door—the same building Pete Grozny had just exited moments before.
Lev Cohen had just seen a ghost. Or what should have been a ghost, if Cohen hadn’t missed. It was Casey Shenk, his Savannah target. Lev continued to watch through his rearview mirror as Casey disappeared inside. The sound of a horn honking in frustration shifted his attention. He had unwittingly slowed down a little too much for the car behind him. Lev extended his middle finger to the other driver in the customary New York fashion and put more weight on the accelerator. He refocused and caught a glimpse of the Mercedes as it turned left on Amsterdam. Lev thanked the traffic and the stoplight at that intersection for allowing him to keep his mark in view.
Cohen had been given the specifics of his assignment late Sunday night after he arrived in New York. His mission was purely reconnaissance. Gedide had decided to send two other operatives from Israel to dispose of Pete Grozny. Lev Cohen’s job was to track down Grozny, determine the man’s place of residence, and identify any potential difficulties the other Mossad men might face. When Lev pressed his superior for a reason behind the assassination, he was given the canned answer of “vital to national security.” The phrase was not exclusively the intellectual property of America. Even his own government used the stonewalling tactic with its citizens when it believed they did not have a need to know.
Lev pleaded his case, but was told in no uncertain terms that he was strictly to act as the forward set-up man on this mission. Gedide told him to meet the other Israelis on Tuesday morning and give them all of the information he had gathered. And then he was to return to Israe
l.
Lev Cohen walked to the alley next to his hotel. He did not trust the thin interior walls of the building with preventing his neighbors from eavesdropping on his conversation. The encryption software on his satellite phone would help with electronic surveillance interception, but it did not prevent Mrs. Golding, his 78-year-old neighbor from listening through the ventilation ducts. He checked his watch and did the quick math that told him it was almost eight in the morning in Tel Aviv. Then he called Eli Gedide.
“Gedide,” the voice answered.
“It’s Cohen. I have completed the reconnaissance of the mark in New York. Your men will not have any problems.”
“Good.”
“As long as they keep it simple,” Lev added
Gedide let the last comment pass. It was too early in the morning to get upset at Cohen’s insubordinate criticism of Gedide’s operation. “Thank you for your observations,” he said. “You will meet them Tuesday morning, as planned?”
“Of course.”
“And then your work in America will be complete,” Gedide said. “I am sure you cannot wait until you return to Israel. Perhaps you should take a well-deserved vacation. Maybe some time in Eilat?”
“Perhaps,” Lev answered curtly. He knew Gedide didn’t give a shit what he did when he returned to Israel. As long as he laid low for the last few years before retirement. He also knew Gedide was only talking through his teeth when he said Lev deserved a vacation. One is not rewarded in the Mossad for botching a hit, nor for speaking out against the policy decisions of one’s leaders. That was why he was sent to America in the first place, and it was why he was being brought home. Lev’s growing contempt for the man was mutual, and both knew it. “But before I pack up and leave, you should know that there may be a new development.”
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