Trail of Blood

by Uzi Eilam

  “We’re on our way!” Gideon transmitted to Dan. “Stay close to us! Every minute counts now.”

  The two cars began to drive, as swiftly as they could, through Beirut’s dense evening traffic. Dan had already messaged the evacuation operation’s HQ on the Navy’s missile ship. Three rubber speedboats soon took off, headed for a deserted beach north of the town of Damour.

  “Gideon, I think another vehicle has joined us…” the driver calmly announced, as if he found this a routine occurrence.

  “Dan, do you see another vehicle following us?” Gideon transmitted.

  “I do. It is still far away, but we’ve got to get it off our tail…”

  “Full speed ahead!” Gideon commanded. “That is the last thing we need now,” he muttered to himself, whipping out his gun.

  The drivers of the two cars increased their speed, maneuvering between the vehicles on the streets. At a certain point, when they could no longer see the other car in pursuit behind them, the two vehicles turned sharply onto a side street and stopped. All of them held on to their weapons and waited…

  “Gideon, we can keep going down this narrow alleyway and exit in the direction of the coast road. We’re about twenty minutes away from the rendezvous point.”

  “Let’s wait a few minutes and make sure that we are not being followed,” Gideon decreed.

  Those were two long minutes, but now they’re over too, Gideon thought, still gripping his gun forcefully. The two cars continued driving south, on their way out of Beirut and toward the town of Damour. The beach to which the GPS device steered them seemed abandoned to Gideon and Dan.

  “I really hope that we don’t find out that the rendezvous point isn’t here. I can’t see anything in this darkness…” Gideon whispered to Dan, who had also exited the car and was standing beside him.

  “It has to be here…” Dan whispered, when suddenly three figures clad in black appeared before them.

  “We’re boarding the speedboats in one minute.” Gideon and Dan heaved a sigh of relief when they heard the sound of Hebrew. The commander of the Naval Commando team had already ordered the drivers of the two cars to clear out and return to Beirut. More Naval Commando fighters securing the area popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, and helped to load Dan’s equipment onto the boats. The two missile ships emerged from the darkness, and the entire force, along with Nimer’s son Hassan and Jamila, who were still unconscious, left the rubber speedboats for the deck of the rescue ship.

  “Welcome to Israel!” the commander of the missile ship greeted them. “You’re in good hands now.”

  “Thank you,” Gideon replied. “We just need to stash the son and Jamila somewhere safe. Make sure to call me when they wake up.”

  “We did it, Gideon,” Dan said, hugging Gideon. “A big ‘hats off’ to you for the smart, courageous leadership.”

  “Don’t underestimate your own part in the operation’s success, Dan. Thanks for everything. Now that we’re in the heart of the sea, we can report back to Israel and celebrate the end of this phase.”

  “I’ve already sent a message to our team with the code words ‘we’ve got the gift,’ and Nahari’s heard all about it directly from the Navy.”

  ***

  During the last two days, the members of the Talpiot team had not allowed themselves to leave the “war room.” Noam had stayed along with them as well, keeping up a vigil in front of the screens and breaking only briefly for short naps. The succinct message, “We’ve got the gift,” said it all. Cries of joy, claps on the back and an excited chorus of words filled the air of the room. The ringing of the internal phone halted the torrent of talk. Nahari was summoning them to his office.

  “Gideon and Dan are on their way to the Navy base in Haifa, and Nimer’s son Hassan and sister Jamila are with them,” Nahari began. “Congratulations on a superb achievement. It’s important now that we find out what’s happening in Teheran and, of course, in Beirut. Where exactly is Nimer? Does he already know what happened?” Characteristically, Nahari wasted no time and no words.

  “We’ve intercepted an urgent message conveyed to Nimer while he was still in Pyongyang,” Itzik from MID replied. “It instructed him to return urgently to Beirut, but we haven’t seen any confirmation that he knows what’s going on. He’s either on his way to Beirut or already there.”

  “We can assume Nimer knows that Hassan and Jamila are missing. It won’t be too difficult for him to figure out who’s responsible,” Noam said, resuming her usual analytic stance. “We are already in the next phase, and the question is what Nimer will do…”

  “What do you suggest?” Nahari interjected.

  “I can take responsibility for the captives. I learned Arabic back in high school, and during my bachelor’s degree studies as well. They’ll need some human contact with someone who’s not in uniform. I think it’s an important element that will also be a factor in our communications—which will begin soon, in my opinion—with Nimer the father.”

  “Okay,” Nahari concluded. “Thank you all. The important thing now is to identify what Nimer is doing and prepare ourselves for the next phase with him. Keep your eyes open and your ears on high alert.”

  Chapter 46

  The car was already parked across from the hotel entrance when his cell phone rang on the emergency channel installed on it. Nimer listened, his heart beating wildly, to the message delivered in a metallic voice: “You must return to Beirut immediately. Emergency, emergency. Your presence is essential.”

  “Is something wrong?” The general saw Nimer grow pale.

  “I don’t know, General, but it’s obvious that I have to return to Beirut immediately. I trust you to take care of things over here. I’m going up to my hotel room, and will be waiting to hear from you.”

  “I’ll take care of everything; don’t worry, my friend. Ms. Soon Mei is also here to help you make arrangements.”

  “Thank you, General,” Nimer said, hurrying into the hotel in order to prepare for his trip while still uncertain what it might entail. The first thing Nimer thought of was his sister and son at Shatila refugee camp. However, he forcefully banished the thought, focusing on other options concerning a major complication regarding Hezbollah’s military force, which would require his help.

  Nimer did not sleep a wink during the long flight to Beirut. Again and again, he tried to convince himself that he was being summoned due to a problem concerning Hezbollah’s military division. He reviewed the stages of the tunnel protection project, and found no flaw in them. Perhaps a new threat had materialized from the Israeli side? Or a new, troubling technology requiring a creative solution? He tried to push away the thought of his son and Jamila.

  “Welcome back, Nimer,” he was greeted by his friend Jamal, deputy commander of the military division, who was waiting outside the plane, leading Nimer to a limousine that was waiting with its engine running.

  “What happened? Tell me!”

  “I’m sorry to inform you of this great disaster…” Jamal placed his hand on Nimer’s shoulder, finding it difficult to utter the explicit words. “The Zionist enemy has managed to reach your family, Nimer… Hassan has disappeared, apparently kidnapped, and your sister along with him…”

  “Take me home immediately!” Nimer called out, unable to say another word.

  During the drive from the airport to the house in the Shatila camp, Nimer withdrew into himself, staying utterly silent. Before the car had come to a full stop, he had already exited it, striding quickly toward the empty house.

  “What happened to Hassan and to my sister? So is this how you watched over them?” Nimer attacked Jamal.

  “I don’t know the details, Nimer, but my people are looking into all the steps leading to the kidnapping,” Jamal tried to calm him down, to no avail. “They were on their way back from a scholarship ceremony. A Canadian organization was handing o
ut scholarships to outstanding students, and Hassan was the first among them. The Canadian lecturer offered to drive them to the ceremony and then back home…”

  “Who is this Canadian?”

  “We’re looking into that, but they said he was a guest lecturer from the university…”

  “And what happened after the ceremony?” Nimer persisted.

  “Like I told you, Nimer, they didn’t make it home.”

  “And what did you do in order to foil the kidnapping?” Nimer would not relent.

  “We activated our entire intelligence apparatus, and soon we’ll get a picture of the chain of events leading to your son’s kidnapping, as well as what happened later,” Jamal updated him, choosing not to respond to Nimer’s accusation. “Nasrallah sends his condolences, and wants to meet you as soon as possible.”

  Nimer arrived at the leader’s safe house and saw a solemn man who did not smile as he usually did. Hezbollah’s military commander was there as well, along with a senior intelligence operative. Nasrallah rose from his seat when Nimer entered the room and embraced him warmly. The leader was up to date on all the details Hezbollah intelligence had uncovered thus far, and promised that finding the kidnapped son and sister would be granted top priority. He also promised to investigate the extent of the security team’s responsibility for the abduction debacle. The Revolutionary Guard, the leader updated him, had been in the picture from the moment the kidnapping had been discovered. A team of intelligence and communication experts was on its way to Beirut. A commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, specializing in missions abroad, was also heading for Beirut.

  “We have preliminary information indicating the Israeli Mossad was responsible for the abduction,” the head of intelligence said. “We’re waiting for more information from the Revolutionary Guard; in the meantime, we are leaning toward the assessment that Dr. Gideon Ben Ari led the operation.”

  “That does not surprise me,” Nimer responded bitterly. “He has already been involved in attempts to thwart our actions, including sabotaging the tunnel protection efforts.”

  “I would not be surprised, Nimer, if it turned out that Dr. Ben Ari had been here in Beirut…”

  “I’m asking you,” the leader turned to the head of intelligence services, “after you receive the information from the Revolutionary Guard and from Quds Force, convey all the data about Dr. Ben Ari to Dr. Nimer. It must be done as soon as possible. Remember! This is your top-priority mission now! Get going, and bring back those captives,” he decreed.

  Nimer paced back and forth like a caged lion, leaving a meeting at Hezbollah’s military HQ for an inquiry with the dean of the Faculty of Sciences and Management, and from there departing to his empty house. The key to the mystery, Nimer deduced, lay with the Canadian; however, inquiries about him raised no leads that could further the investigation. Both the university and the Canadian Embassy reported that Dr. Pierre Depeau had a solid academic background. No one knew exactly what had happened after the scholarship ceremony. Nimer’s meeting with the Revolutionary Guard team that had arrived in Beirut to reinforce the investigation efforts did not yield any new information, either. Nimer was told that the enemy was using a new communication network that they had yet to crack.

  “At least get me Dr. Ben Ari’s private number, which you have monitored before,” Nimer required from the Guard team. “It might still be active.”

  ***

  Gideon and Dan could not afford to rest. Immediately after disembarking from the Navy missile ship and thanking the squadron commander, they arrived at Nahari’s bureau for a full debriefing regarding the operation.

  “Something has to happen now,” Gideon declared. “I believe that Nimer will try and get in touch. However, we cannot ignore the possibility that Iranian Quds Force operatives might intervene in an attempt to free the captives.”

  “My team has detected unusual activity taking place in Beirut,” Dan reported. “It includes reinforcement of cyber experts arriving from Teheran, and Nasrallah personally granting top priority to finding Hassan, Nimer’s son. We haven’t seen the Canadian Dr. Depeau’s identity being exposed. Some very good work was done in that regard,” Dan praised. “The son and aunt are under Noam’s care. She’s communicating with them in Arabic, and they are relatively calm,” he added.

  “Thank you all for a superb achievement,” Nahari said, “but this mission is not yet finished. There are still important stages to come related to guarding the captives, and figuring out how to get to Nimer and stop him from further activity. A lot depends on what Nimer does now,” Nahari concluded.

  Dan’s “war room” was teeming with surveillance and decryption activity. Each member of the Talpiot team was tracking the activity in Beirut and Teheran on his own screen. At this stage, they told Gideon and Dan, the communications from both Beirut and Teheran gave no indication of a breakthrough in regard to the circumstances of the abduction of Nimer’s son and sister. Gideon and Dan visited the safe house in which the son and aunt were being held, and were reassured to hear from Noam that everything was under control before returning to Gideon’s office in Nahari’s bureau.

  “What do you think that Nimer will do now, Gideon?”

  “He won’t just sit there twiddling his thumbs. Nimer is a man of action. He might initiate a revenge mission of counter-abduction. He could also…”

  “We’ve intercepted some new information fragments in the flurry of traffic between Beirut and Teheran,” Eviatar from the Talpiot team declared, storming excitedly into the room.

  “What is it exactly? Be specific!” Dan spurred him on.

  “Quds Force has received an order from Soleimani to prepare for an operation to free Nimer’s family members…”

  “Are there any details?” Gideon prodded. “Something that could help us prepare?”

  “It sounds like activation of Quds Force members who are already hiding in Israel or within the territory of the Palestinian Authority. My impression was that they do not know exactly where we’re keeping Jamila and Hassan, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “Yes. Definitely!” Dan said. “Maybe we should transfer them to a new location, and in any case, we should reinforce their security team…”

  “That’s true,” Gideon intervened, “but we have to make sure that security is discreet and that no one’s movements, including Noam’s, end up revealing the new location.”

  “That’s clear and imperative,” Dan responded, “but Eviatar, you had more information you haven’t told us about yet.”

  “I do indeed, Dan, and this is off the secured network, which they supposedly protect against any form of cyber activity. This is the network serving Soleimani and Nimer…”

  “This is our biggest success,” Dan explained to Gideon. “Using a smart algorithm we’ve developed for the Big Data work, we’ve cracked the codes on that channel. They still rely on it as the safest one they have. So, what went through there, Eviatar, regarding freeing Jamila and Hassan?”

  “Soleimani tasked Nimer with activating and coordinating with the members of Quds Force chosen to free the captives. The phone number for Quds Force’s people was mentioned only one time; it was in the West Bank area, apparently in a suburb of Nablus. With the Shin Bet’s help, we’re still looking into the exact location of the house of the Hamas operatives in the West Bank who are assisting the Quds Force fighters.”

  “That just reinforces our decision to change the location of the safe house. Noam and the security team watching over the new apartment have to be very conscious of their movements, and of any suspicious people who might show up there,” Gideon emphasized.

  “I understand, Eviatar, that you uncovered one more thing on the secret network?” Dan resumed, taking care to leave no stone unturned.

  “They were talking about a ‘device’ located in Israel, and Soleimani wanted Nimer to tell him t
hat he was certain it could be activated…”

  “A device? What could it be? Where? Something new that Nimer, the master of traps, has developed?” Gideon began to worry while still not knowing the exact source of his concern.

  “We have just started the decryption process,” Eviatar apologized. “It’ll take us a little time before any more information gets through. We are also being careful not to reveal that we have infiltrated this special channel. Of course, we’ll keep on using Big Data so as not to lose the ability to intercept these communications.”

  “Still, Eviatar, what can you add at this stage?” Gideon insisted on proceeding. His ominous gut feeling was relentless.

  “We believe it could be related to something, perhaps even an unconventional bomb, that might be activated at Kiryat HaMemshala, the government district in Tel Aviv. Apparently, only Soleimani and Nimer know exactly what’s going on. Soleimani’s question thus reinforces our assessment of the central role that Nimer is playing…”

  “I think, Dan, that this is a topic about which we need to get explicit information. This is a top-priority mission, and we need the full force of the Big Data algorithm to obtain this crucial information.”

  “We’re on it, don’t worry,” Dan replied as he and Eviatar departed back to their “war room.”

  I’m going to update Nahari both about the threat from Quds Force and about that mysterious device, Gideon decided. We cannot underestimate the information the young people just exposed.

  “What’s going on, Gideon?” the sharp-eyed Nahari addressed him before Gideon had even sat down in the chair across from him. “You seem tense to me this morning. Something about Nimer’s initiatives? You said he would have to act with unusual force now that we’re holding his son and sister.”

  “That’s true, Nahari, and there have been some developments…”