by D S Kane
Boric wandered through the Marubiru as a tourist, wondering aloud in Japanese about its construction and which companies had their offices there. No one spoke to her. No one even noticed her.
Cassavilla researched Maru’s organization and stumbled onto knowledge about his personal habits. He smiled as he told Shimmel, “According to a Japanese blog on the Yakuza, he always travels with a team of bodyguards; about six on average. Sniping from afar when he is out of his office, from a taller building seems the safest way to kill him.”
Boric had William Wing hack into Maru’s email and Wing messaged back, “Maru has a sense of irony. He sends jokes via email to his lieutenants. According to what I can find, his only bad habit is arrogance, his willingness to arrange appointments out in open locations, albeit with the bodyguards.”
Shimmel took all the intel he received and assembled it to design a tactic that would take advantage of Maru’s only known faults.
As the sun rose on their third day in Tokyo, Cassavilla and Boric sat across from Shimmel in Avram’s hotel room. Cassavilla noded. “We’re ready to make contact with Maru. What exactly do you want us to say? Any longer-term objective? Or just get him to meet as soon as possible?”
Shimmel sipped tea from a china cup. “We can’t meet until Alister’s team is ready in Riyadh, and Michael and Ralph are ready in Tel Aviv. So, not just yet. We can use Maru’s sense of the ironic to our advantage. It might be best if we play on that through our suggestion of where and when, and then see if he goes along or tries to alter our suggestion. At the very worst, we would gain valuable intel on his thinking process and might be able to use that.” He pointed out the window in the direction of the docks. “Our best alternative is at the shore. There are so many places there that would give us high ground for a sniper. But I think to get him to agree to a place near the wharf is not likely. Given his ironic sense of humor, we might try suggesting the Meguro Parasitological Museum, at just after lunch, 1 p.m. Tokyo time.”
Given that the museum at 4-1-1 Shimomeguro featured over three hundred species—including a mammoth thirty-foot tapeworm found in the stomach of an unsuspecting man—Shimmel decided it was probably better visited before lunch. Therefore he would have them propose meeting after lunch. The museum opened at 10 a.m. Cassavilla and Boric both chuckled, and Shimmel continued. “Exactly. Then he’ll suggest a counter, probably a place where he feels safe outdoors. But until the Riyadh mission is ready to commence, we cannot arrange to kill him. Stay ready to go, but do nothing until I tell you.”
Shimmel dismissed them. He decided his next steps were telephone calls to McTavish in Riyadh, and Drapoff and Giondella in Tel Aviv. He looked at his watch. It was still too soon to call anyone. He set his wristwatch alarm, tilted his head back and took a nap. He fell into a dream where brutal combat missions had him thrashing.
Chapter Thirty-Four
November 5, 7:49 a.m.
King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Major Alister McTavish looked out the rented jet’s windows as the corporate jet descended over the runways at King Khalid International Airport. From his research, he knew that Riyadh’s skyline was mostly modern but included scenic ancient alleyways, empty and quiet.
He still had too many unanswered questions about their logistics. The lack of a complete plan threatened to overrun his mind. He turned away from the window and braced as the jet settled to the tarmac and slowed.
McTavish headed this Middle Eastern mission just as he’d headed the successful Riyadh mission the previous year. He spoke most Middle Eastern languages and had been assigned as a military adjunct to Saudi Arabia when he was a lieutenant with US Special Forces. He had risen to lieutenant colonel but ten years ago was forced to retire after a series of budget cuts stalled his promotion. He’d drifted for a while after that, eventually becoming a mercenary to employ the only skill set he had practiced for over twenty-five years.
The major scanned the contents of the personnel folder. Including himself, the team consisted of five mercs. Each had served with him last year in their Riyadh mission, and each was fluent in Arabic and had a specialty in hand-to-hand combat. One of them had experience in chemical interrogation and poisons, but none had sniping or evasion tactical skills. There had been no one available to serve those functions, and the team would rely on his own rusty skills in operations. As the plane taxied toward its hanger, he reviewed the personnel folders of his team to see if there were other holes.
The oldest was Lieutenant Colonel Sandra Schmidt, a petite, middle-aged, dark-haired German who specialized in chemicals and undetectable poisons used for interrogation and assassinations. Lester Dushov had trained her in both interrogations and bomb disarmament while working at Mossad. Just a few months prior, she’d served with him by keeping a nuclear device from obliterating Washington, DC.
The youngest was Captain Halid Sambol, a tall, olive-skinned merc from Jakarta who spoke flawless Arabic. His specialty was assault tactics and ops, a skill McTavish hoped he would have no need of for this assignment. He’d also been with the Major on the recent Riyadh mission.
Lieutenant Henry Harrington was a quiet man ruled by logic. A chess champion as a teenager, Harrington had joined the US Army when he realized he couldn’t make a living at chess. He was well organized, capable of strategic as well as tactical planning.
Corporal Lisa Orley was as French as her sister, Sylvia Orley, the merc who Alister had heard now claimed she owned William Wing. But Lisa was much shorter and quieter. Older than her sibling by almost a decade, she was a venomous woman who rarely spoke. Her expertise was hand-to-hand combat and she enjoyed killing.
McTavish closed the personnel folder he’d just reviewed, and rose from his seat. “Time to go. We’ll take two taxis to our hotel, the Golden Tulip Andalusia Hotel on Olaya Main Street.”
In preparation to support both of the missions, a few days before, Michael Drapoff had flown to Tel Aviv with Major Ralph Giondella, where they planned to use Drapoff’s Mossad contacts and technology to jam all communications to and from Riyadh while the assassinations took place. The two had done exactly that, together, during the previous Riyadh operation that resulted in the deaths of the two older Houmaz brothers. But Drapoff, a yahalom, was sure that last year, silencing Riyadh and Nangarhar was a cake walk, compared to Riyadh and Tokyo
Their commercial flight on El Al arrived before noon on a clear autumn morning when the temperature in Tel Aviv still felt comfortable. Giondella checked them both into Deborah Hotel at 87 Ben-Yehuda Street, at the city center, while Drapoff took a taxi to Mossad headquarters in Herzliyya. Drapoff was eager to get the Mossad’s yahalomim working with him and Giondella as soon as possible.
Drapoff walked through the lobby of the Mossad’s offices. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief as he watched the taxi leave. It was warming fast. The building he’d entered blended into the city, appearing to be a high technology office. He took the elevator to the basement, where armed security guards met him. “Shalom, David,” Drapoff said to the taller one. “I’m here to see Colonel Geller. And there will be another joining us, Major Ralph Giondella. Shimmel arranged this.”
In response, Private David Dory nodded and beckoned Michael to walk to the security desk.
Drapoff lowered his arms when the private had finished running an electronic scanner over him for explosives and weapons. Dory shouted, “He’s clear,” over his shoulder to the other armed security guard, who opened the massive steel battle door. Drapoff entered and took another elevator ten stories further down, deep below the sub-basement.
As Michael emerged from the elevator, Jacob Geller smiled as he approached. “I got the brief from Ben-Levy yesterday. Welcome, Michael. It’s been a long time. We’re to do exactly what we did for you a few months ago?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Well, it won’t work. Mossad’s Directorate of Operations determined that the Saudi Government has j
ust completed a total upgrade of their global telecommunications servers and we haven’t yet figured out the quirks in their new specs. They started the process as a result of your attack on the Houmaz compound, and it’s been rushed into place. We don’t know its vulnerabilities. The best we can provide will be about fifteen minutes of blackout. Whatever you do must be completed during that time frame or we won’t be able to guarantee cover.”
Surprised, Michael realized that the plan they had devised, with timing specific to the minute, would now have to become precise down to the second. He thought, fifteen minutes. During that time the assassinations of both Maru and Houmaz must occur, because that’s the only time we can guarantee that any call from Maru to Houmaz will be prevented. He shook his head. “It’ll be like shooting at a specific speck of dust on the needle in a haystack.”
Drapoff called McTavish and told him. He hoped Schmidt hadn’t heard the call on the cell phone’s speakerphone. He was sure she’d worry about it and possibly do something stupid.
Then Drapoff called Shimmel. Shimmel asked, “Are you ready to extinguish telecommunications?”
“Uh, General, we have a problem. Solvable, but not good for us. You see, the Saudis have installed an upgrade to their global telecommunications, and…”
By 8 a.m., Shimmel had dressed and took the elevator to the lobby. He crossed the street and visited a nearby copy store—the Japanese version of FedEx Office—and completed constructing the “evidence” they would plant at their Tokyo hotel and at the crime scene. The day was cloudy when he arrived. Shimmel walked to the counter. “Does anyone here speak English?” One of the store clerks came forward and smiled. The general pointed to his cell phone, and merely said, “I need to print several documents of a competitive nature. Therefore, I must do the printing myself. Microsoft Word files.” With the clerk’s help, they did just that, Shimmel had the clerk count the pages, leaving his fingerprints on every sheet, and returned to the hotel room before 9 a.m.
He called Drapoff. “Please begin the countdown now. We’re about to call Maru.”
Just after 9 a.m. Tokyo time, 3 a.m. Riyadh time, Cassavilla called Maru, and speaking Japanese very slowly in a sugar-sweet voice, he told Maru, “My name is Abdul Hassain. Achmed Houmaz sent us as a special delegation to meet with you and help you create bids that will garner the approval of the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning. There are two of us traveling together, myself and a woman named Ayla Khan. We work for the Ministry. When and where can they meet? We need to discuss wrinkles on bidding, billing, and building in Saudi Arabia.”
When Maru went silent, Cassavilla added, “We’re only here for a few days, and must return to Saudi Arabia as soon as possible. We’ve never been to Japan before. Ayla and I were thinking of doing some sightseeing. Neither of us is likely to return to Tokyo anytime soon. We plan on visiting the Meguro Parasitological Museum today after lunch. Can we meet there at 1 p.m?”
This time would be ideal for the Riyadh team since it would be 7 a.m. in Riyadh, still too early to call Houmaz.
He assumed Maru would ponder how his security could monitor the meeting. “Yes. I can be there. We can walk outside for a few minutes while you explain how your procedures differ from those in Japan.”
As he hung up, Shimmel tapped Cassavilla’s shoulder and nodded. “I’m surprised he agreed to our suggestion. His sense of humor must rule him more than I thought. Now I’ll call Major Giondella in Israel. It’s almost 5:30 a.m. in Tel Aviv. He and Michael Drapoff can get Mossad started with the communications blackout. They’ll stop all telephone and email into Riyadh just before the start of the business day in Riyadh at 7 a.m., to keep Maru from confirming our presence with Houmaz. Please tell the others to prepare for phase two of our mission.” He rose from the desk chair and walked to the window. It was 10:28 a.m in Tokyo.
Shimmel sent Corporal Charles Isley to enter the museum and position himself inside the men’s room with a Bluetooth headset in case one of Maru’s bodyguards visited there.
With a layout of the museum in his head, Shimmel had Corporal Billie-Jo Casselton, their best sniper, scout the surrounding buildings. She found one with an unlocked door to the roof. It had a clear view of the museum entrance a few doors away on the corner of Shimomeguro. Casselton bolted the roof door behind her and took up her position on the rooftop, then used her cell to call Shimmel and let him know she’d completed her set-up.
Less than fifteen minutes after the telephone call Shimmel checked the last box on his printed version of the plan: they were ready.
Casselton sat on the roof, eating a take-out bento box of sushi and fried tofu from the coffee shop in the building’s lobby. Isley stood on the seat of one of the bathroom stalls with a syringe filled with a mild tranq to put a bodyguard to sleep if it was required. Boric and Cassavilla returned from lunch at the coffee shop and entered the museum, touring and waiting for the arrival of Maru and his bodyguards.
Sandra Schmidt sat in McTavish’s hotel room in Riyadh, along with the rest of the team. Everyone was dressed in business suits, since they were all going in as management consultants for Brewster, Jennings and Associates from Boston. Their cover “client” was the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning on University Street in Riyadh, and their “assignment” was to conduct a study on the long-term effects of Saudi Arabia’s petroleum refinery vent gasses on global warming. Schmidt worried about the technology to be used in the assassination. She was assigned the role of terminator, something she’d never done before.
Wing had hacked into the calendar that Houmaz’s assistant, Shariff, maintained for his boss. William entered the assignment into the Ministry’s records and set the meeting for the start of the business day. Of course, the team had no one of Jewish descent for obvious reasons.
To make the death of Achmed Houmaz look like an accident, their plan called for a haldol cocktail, including a lethal dose of fentanyl, an “undetectable” poison, a few molecules of ricin, and a small amount of botulism. The drug would be delivered via a battery-operated Medi-Jector needleless syringe gun, ensuring a “clean” assassination. The cocktail was developed by Mossad in Israel, at the Ness Ziona.
While recovering in a Tel Aviv hospital from his gunshot wounds in Maui, Dushov had gotten one of his contacts there to FedEx a container of the poison to the hotel they’d be staying at in Riyadh, along with the Medi-Jector. The drug had to be injected into the carotid artery to have immediate effect.
Schmidt had argued to simply use air in the battery-operated syringe, since that low-tech version of this assassination was almost foolproof and nearly undetectable. But Dushov had said “No. If they conduct an autopsy, it’s possible the bruising and especially clotting at the injection site will show more obviously with air than with the Medi-Jector cocktail.”
She quietly fumed. So now there’s one less thing that can go wrong in autopsy if we’re successful in killing Achmed Houmaz. And—at the same time—there’s now one more technological thing that might go wrong if anything associated with the delivery mechanism fails to work.
Schmidt worried about the battery in the jet injector and kept turning it on to make sure it still had enough juice. Surely they’d all get beheaded after torture if this high-tech chemical didn’t work as expected.
McTavish said, “This mission looks easier than Shimmel expects, so stay alert and in focus.”
She nodded along with the rest of the team. They were all aware of the potential for death following mission failure. Still, she thought, it’s a straightforward mission, all things considered.
McTavish knew he was brilliant at just one thing: battle tactics. But there was no skirmish here, and no tactics were necessary. It was just an operation. A black ops surgical strike, to be sure. He’d never been involved in an assassination.
Not a man normally affected by potential outcomes, this time he fretted as his team sat there in his hotel suite ready to go.
Their plan would have two of the team presen
t the draft outline of their report to Achmed Houmaz, at the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources at the offices on Airport Road. Their appointment was set for 7 a.m. Schmidt would excuse herself to go to the rest room, but come behind Houmaz and administer the poison to the side of his neck, using the jet injector nested in the cuff of her suit jacket.
It would take Houmaz less than a second to realize something was wrong, but by that time his lungs would have stopped working, keeping him from calling out. The Mossad estimated time to immobility at less than a second and death at four to five seconds. The poison would dissipate in about two hours, decomposing into compounds normally found in an older person with minor kidney problems. Any autopsy would show a myocardial infarction.
In McTavish’s hotel room the mercenaries gathered and prayed for the success of their mission. The Major wondered if praying for the death of someone was sacrilegious. They had just over a half hour to complete their mission. The telephone lines in Saudi Arabia would be going out soon.
As dawn brightened the city, McTavish’s cell phone rang. He heard Giondella say, “The clock will begin ticking in thirty minutes. Get your asses in gear.” McTavish looked at his watch: 6:28 a.m. They all hurried from the hotel room, through the lobby and out into the street. McTavish scanned the hotel driveway. Where were the taxicabs?
Chapter Thirty-Five
November 6, 10:58 a.m.
