The Jericho Sanction

by Oliver North

  The GRU major had to squeeze past Komulakov in the narrow hallway that led to the tiny room. He yielded no space and made sure their bodies touched as she slid past him, her perfume lingering in his nostrils. Komulakov's eyes followed her as the door closed behind her. But when she was gone, the Russian was once again all business.

  The former KGB officer was impressed at how quickly his mole had responded to his questions. The computer disk that Morales had left at the dead drop in Foxstone Park on 29 January had reached Komulakov via the Russian diplomatic pouch on 3 March—quick by the usual standards. An SVR courier had delivered it in a sealed briefcase straight from Dzerzhinsky Square. After reviewing the contents of the disk, Komulakov had drafted an encrypted message to the SVR Rezident at the Russian embassy in Washington, containing a list of questions for Morales. By Thursday night, 5 March, the overseas Rezident in Washington had already placed a handwritten note with Komulakov's questions in a ZipLoc plastic bag at the Foxstone Park dead drop.

  The next morning, the Washington Post carried a Help Wanted ad, placed by the Washington Rezident as a prearranged signal to the mole. It read: “Mortician's Assistant, Board Cert. Rqd. 6 yrs exp. pref.” The Maryland phone number listed was bogus, but the phony ad informed the spy that it was an emergency, that he was to look for a delivery on the sixth.

  Now, a mere ten days after he had received the list of questions, Morales had delivered answers.

  It was easier than Hallstrom had expected. He had anticipated that Komulakov would pay handsomely for any and all information he could find on the Newman matter. Since Komulakov's name had appeared in several of the files, Hallstrom had started searching every entry pertaining to Newman in the computerized ACS database, even before he heard back from his SVR handler at the Russian embassy in Washington by way of the March 5 classified ad. He had chuckled at the irony of the ad: though there was no way his Russian handlers could know it, inside the Bureau, his nickname was “The Undertaker.”

  Hallstrom had been extremely careful that neither Komulakov nor any of his other handlers had ever learned the true identity of the mole who identified himself as “Julio Morales.” Still, Hallstrom knew it had long been evident to the Russians that whoever he was, he was highly placed within the U.S. government's national security apparatus. The former KGB general couldn't know it, but Hallstrom's current assignment as the FBI's liaison at the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions gave him access to a virtual treasure trove of secrets—including ongoing CIA operations and all overseas FBI investigations and counter-espionage activities. Also included in Hallstrom's purview were highly sensitive matters pertaining to U.S. military units and operations overseas. That's how he had discovered that Lieutenant General George Grisham, USMC, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command, had received the FBI interview report prepared by Special Agent Glenn Wallace, in which a TWA pilot named Mitch Vecchio claimed that the IRA terrorist Gilbert Duncan was actually a Marine officer named Peter Newman.

  By digging deeper in the ACS database, Hallstrom had discovered a computerized red flag dating all the way back to 1995, requiring any and all reports on “Peter Newman” or “Gilbert Duncan” to be forwarded by Flash precedence, eyes only, to General George Grisham, first at the Marine headquarters in Washington and then to Central Command, after the Marine general had become the CENT-COM CinC in April of '96. By searching back through the old records, Hallstrom had noticed that Grisham had also directed he be given immediate notice of any reports pertaining to a John or Sarah Clancy.

  It was while he was musing over the possible connection between Newman, the terrorist Duncan, and the Clancys that Hallstrom had stumbled onto a piece of information that seemed to tie it all together. As he was sorting through a stack of message traffic on the afternoon of March 8, searching for more classified nuggets to send to Komulakov, the spy found a brief back channel message from the DIA communications chief at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to a colleague at DIA HQ at Bolling Air Force Base:

  SECRET/NOFORN

  ROUTINE/PERSONAL

  DTG: 281830ZFEB98

  FM: COMMO, DIA STATION, AMEMB TEL AVIV

  TO: COMM CHF DIA HQ, BOLLING

  SAM, HOPE ALL IS WELL WITH YOU. I'M DOING ABOUT AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED IN THIS HELL HOLE. THERE SEEMS TO BE AT LEAST ONE PALESTINIAN BOMBING EVERY FEW DAYS NOW. WE'VE ALL BEEN TOLD TO AVOID NIGHT SPOTS, PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, ETC. IT'S QUITE A COMEDOWN SINCE OUR DAYS IN THE WHSR AND WHCA.

  IT MUST BE GETTING TO ME BECAUSE I'M BEGINNING TO SEE GHOSTS. YESTERDAY, WHILE I WAS WALKING ACROSS THE INTERSECTION IN FRONT OF THE EMBASSY, I THOUGHT I SAW THE GUY WHO CAUSED US ALL TO GET TRANSFERRED: THAT MARINE TROUBLEMAKER, PETER NEWMAN.

  THIS GUY WAS A DEAD RINGER FOR NEWMAN EXCEPT FOR LONG HAIR AND A BEARD, AND THE FACT THAT HE WAS DRIVING A PICKUP WITH ISRAELI PLATES. I WENT UP TO THE WINDOW AND ASKED HIM IF HE WAS AMERICAN, BUT HE SAID HE WAS IRISH. I EVEN JOTTED DOWN HIS LICENSE NUMBER AND HAD IT CHECKED OUT BY THE ISRAELI POLICE BUT THEY CONFIRMED THAT THE TRUCK WAS REGISTERED TO A JOHN CLANCY IN JERUSALEM. JUST GOES TO SHOW YOU THAT OLD WIVES' TALE THAT EVERYONE HAS A DOUBLE.

  ANYWAY, STAY IN TOUCH. LET ME KNOW IF ANYTHING OPENS UP THERE OR AT THE PENTAGON. I'VE BEEN OVERSEAS EVER SINCE THAT FIASCO WITH HARROD AND NEWMAN BACK IN '95 AND AM REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK TO SOME STATESIDE DUTY.

  WARMEST REGARDS, JONATHAN YARDLEY

  BT

  Hallstrom's pulse quickened as he read the message. He knew that, although these unauthorized personal communications through official channels were prohibited, they were commonplace among professionals. He also knew it would be highly unlikely for such a message to be widely circulated. Had he not been in the State Department's Foreign Missions Office, Hallstrom would never have known of its existence. Now, his investigative instincts, well honed from two decades in the FBI and almost fifteen years of surviving as a spy, told him that Newman, Duncan, and Clancy were all one and the same person. It might not be the kind of proof that would stand up in court, but “Morales” knew it would be more than enough for Komulakov.

  After reading the twelve pages of documentation, along with the cover letter from Morales, Komulakov chuckled.

  “Brilliant! Of course...where's the last place in the world you'd expect a terrorist to hide? The one country with such tight security that it would be impossible for him to hide there—Israel. Newman is in Israel!”

  Morales had even gone the extra mile: following the discovery of Jonathan Yardley's personal back channel missive, he had called the embassy in Tel Aviv and asked to speak to the communications specialist. After identifying himself as the FBI liaison at the State Department and putting the fear of God into Yardley for using official channels for personal communications, Hallstrom asked the young man if he still had the license number for the pickup truck he'd mentioned in his cable. After getting the tag number from Yardley—and warning him again about transmitting personal messages over government circuits—he called the Israeli police. The Israeli officer who took the call, anxious to satisfy an American FBI inquiry, supplied Hallstrom with the name and address of the vehicle's owner.

  In his response to Komulakov, Morales had thoughtfully provided the information to his Russian controller: “John Clancy, aka Gilbert Duncan, aka Peter Newman, resides at the Hospice of Saint Patrick, 35 Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem.”

  Hospice of Saint Patrick

  35 Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

  Tuesday, 17 March 1998

  0930 Hours, Local

  Rachel Newman didn't know quite how to answer her friend. Then she simply settled on a response that was generic and truthful as far as it went. “John's away on a business trip—to Tel Aviv,” she told Dyan Rotem.

  “That's odd,” Dyan said. “In the two years I've known you, I never knew your husband ever to travel on business. In fact, I don't think either of you have ever taken a trip anywhere, and I always see your husband working here at the hospice.”

  Rachel shrugged
and tried to change the subject. “What did you find out from your doctor? Did you get some good news?”

  “Oh yes! I almost forgot why I came to see you. Yes, it's good news. I'm pregnant! Can you believe it? I'm so happy.”

  “Is Ze'ev excited too?”

  “Yes, he very much wants a son. He's very happy.”

  The two women talked for another half hour about children, husbands, and the little details shared by friends with one another. Yet, as close as these two friends were, each of them had secrets they had never shared.

  Dyan was an Israeli, married two years to Ze'ev. She was originally from Canada and, as a teenager, immigrated with her parents to Israel in the mid-1980s. In 1993, Dyan met Ze'ev Rotem at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where they were both engineering students. They dated off and on during that time, but lost track of each other when Ze'ev left school and enlisted in the Israel Defense Force. It wasn't until the spring of 1995 that they met again, when Dyan had transferred to the Yellin Teachers Seminary in Jerusalem, where Ze'ev was posted for guard duty. They began to date once more, and some months later, on January 22, 1996, the two were married and moved to an apartment near Ziyyon Square, close to City Center.

  It was Ze'ev who had learned that John and Sarah Clancy were working at the Hospice of Saint Patrick. He suggested to Dyan that she should try and meet with Sarah and get to know her, that they might find they have some common interests. He was right. The two women with different backgrounds became fast friends and enjoyed spending time together. The pair did their shopping together, taking leisurely trips to the Ha'Bucharim or Me'a She'arim markets. Sometimes they would spend several hours strolling through Gar Ha'Alzmaut (Independence Park) or Ha’ Shalom Park (Peace Forest) to enjoy the sun, flowers, and tranquility, as well as each other's company.

  They had made arrangements for another such excursion to the park. Rachel had asked Ay Lienne, the wife of Isa, the hospice manager, to watch James while they were gone. Ay Lienne was a convert to Christianity from South Asia and had met Isa at a church planted by the Saint Patrick community in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they were both students before coming to study in Israel. The petite woman with two children of her own was glad to baby-sit for her friend, whom she knew as Sarah Clancy. Rachel's little boy, James, enjoyed playing with Ay Lienne's children, and Rachel often watched Ay Lienne's two toddlers when Ay Lienne had to run errands.

  After making sure that James had his favorite toys and that Ay Lienne remembered what time to put him down for his nap, Rachel and Dyan were finally ready to go.

  “Sarah, let's take my car,” Dyan said. “I'm parked just across the street by the Othman Taghmor.”

  The two women walked down the marble steps of the front entrance of the Hospice of Saint Patrick and let themselves out through the iron security gate, then out the big wooden door into the street.

  They were laughing and joking about Dyan's pregnancy and the weight she was liable to gain when, as they approached the Al Ahran Hotel and the minaret adjacent to it, a Mercedes sedan moved beside them on the narrow street, forcing them to walk close to the stone wall on the left. At the same time, a van pulled up behind them and stopped. Her mouth went dry as Rachel realized they were trapped between the two vehicles.

  The van door slid open beside them and four men jumped out. Then a fifth leapt from the passenger side of the front seat, carrying an Uzi automatic machine pistol. Before the two women could react, the four men grabbed them; hard hands clamped over their mouths, wrists, and legs. Rachel's eyes widened in fear, and she tried to scream. But the men holding her were too strong, and they dragged her into the van, pushing her down on the floor. Her face smashed into the hard surface.

  Dyan was shoved in on top of Rachel. The men's moves were quick and practiced; the women had no chance to escape. Within seconds, the van door slid shut and the driver began to pull away. The four men in the back wrapped the women's mouths with duct tape, pulled cloth bags over their heads, and tied their hands behind them with narrow nylon straps. The driver turned up the radio in the van, effectively drowning out the women's frantic efforts to cry out. Rachel and Dyan were only just able to breathe through noses that were smashed and bleeding. Realizing that with her mouth taped shut she could easily suffocate, Rachel went limp, feigning unconsciousness, hoping simply to suck in enough breath through her bloody nostrils to stay marginally alert. Once she appeared to be unconscious, the man who had been kneeling on her back got off her, and Rachel was able to catch her breath.

  The whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds. Rachel was certain there were no witnesses to the abduction.

  But she was wrong. The operation, swift and well-planned as it was, had been seen by someone else. Mordecai Miller, the duty officer in front of his video security system in the police station less than a kilometer away, watched helplessly. He quickly called Officer Nat Binyamin at Shin Bet headquarters to look at the dramatic scene on the preview monitor. Binyamin grabbed a microphone and immediately relayed a description of the car and van carrying the terrorist suspects and the two women.

  Binyamin then went to other cameras in the command center and rewound the tapes to watch the event from other angles to see if he could get a license number or a better description of the kidnappers or their captives. He knew time was critical and that they had to capture these criminals before they had a chance to escape or harm the captives.

  Rachel assessed her injuries. Her nose had stopped bleeding beneath the hood, and she could breathe more easily, although she felt sure her nose was broken. Her left knee hurt, throbbing from its scrape against the doorway of the van. And from the way her left wrist was throbbing, she was sure it had been sprained when her captor twisted her arm to tie her hands together. As she tried to roll over to become more comfortable, one of the men again pressed his knee into the small of her back, pinning her back to the floor of the van. Once more she felt a wave of panic as she tried to breathe through the thick fabric of the bag.

  She could feel Dyan lying beside her and heard her crying. Rachel was afraid too. She had no idea who had snatched them or where they were being taken.

  Rachel heard one of the captors speaking in Arabic on a cell phone or radio. She couldn't understand all of what he was saying, but she guessed he was speaking to his superior. She could make out the Arabic words for “one woman” and “two women.” Rachel guessed they had only intended to abduct one of them.

  He listened for a moment, then responded with a word that Rachel understood: “OK.”

  The driver asked a question and the man with the phone answered.

  And the van drove on, apparently unchallenged.

  The van drove to a place just outside the walls of the Old City, only twelve blocks away from the place the women were taken. There, it pulled into a garage with an overhead door that raised just as the van approached and lowered quickly after it pulled inside. The Mercedes continued down the narrow street, pulling into another garage. By now the police were looking for both vehicles, so the kidnappers knew that they had to switch to something the police wouldn't be looking for.

  The building was in an industrial area, and a large tractor-trailer truck was parked outside in an alley. The trailer was packed high with what appeared to be twelve-foot-long sections of eight-inch water pipe. There were two stacks of them, end to end, piled fifteen high and eight across on the flatbed trailer. In the center of the load of pipes was a rectangular wooden box, seven feet wide, seven feet long, and eight feet high. The frame of the box had shipping labels and stenciled markings identifying its contents as “Valves” and “Fittings” in English, German, Arabic, and Hebrew. If a highway check or customs inspection required the box to be opened, all that would be seen when the top or a side panel were pried off would be rows of neatly packed valves, joints, and couplings for a water main. And because the valves weighed hundreds of pounds, it could be expected that few inspectors would be zealous enough to lift them out. The box was chained d
own in the center of the load, between the two stacks of steel pipe.

  The only way to access this steel-encased box was from the underside of the flatbed trailer.

  Once the van pulled inside the garage, the four men pulled the women out of the vehicle and forced them to stand upright. A couple of the men steadied them, and the other two wrapped more duct tape about the women's ankles. They were picked up like rolls of carpet, carried outside to the tractor trailer, and stuffed upward through the opening in the bottom of the trailer until they were both shoved into a seated position on either side of the trap door. The metal door beneath the trailer clanged shut.

  Even through the cloth bag, Rachel could tell it was dark. She smelled diesel fuel and heard the idling of the engine.

  The engine roared louder, and she heard the sound of air brakes being released. The tractor-trailer rig began to move.

  Rachel and Dyan were cramped together with little room to move. After a few minutes of lying still in the darkness, Rachel realized the tape covering her mouth had begun to lose some of its adhesion. She pushed at it with her tongue and tried to open her mouth to loosen it some more. Finally it came loose and she could speak.

  “Dyan, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  Dyan moaned softly as she tried to answer. “Mmmm...mmmm.” A moment later, Rachel heard Dyan moving about.

  “Aaugh! Mine came off too,” Dyan said. “I think the blood from my lip must have softened it. I—I guess I'm all right. Are you OK?”