by Adam Palmer
‘But she initiated contact, not vice versa?’
‘She didn’t like what her husband was doing.’
‘Can we trust her?’
‘Walk-in assets are always potential bait. But we have ways of verifying. Everything she’s told us checked out.’
‘But if she was your asset, why did she have to go through the embassy?’
‘I was treating her as passive. Once we ID’d the key people from her, we maintained silence.’
‘So what’s changed?’
‘They’ve changed. They’re becoming more active… and more dangerous.’
He told her about the murder of Harrison Carmichael and Roksana.
‘Does it check out?’
‘According to the British press and the police statements, yes. The fire, the ante-mortem injuries. They’re planning to do a report about it on a programme called Crimewatch.’
‘And have we passed on any of the information that she gave us?’
‘Not yet. We’re hesitant about passing it on. We don’t want to compromise her position at this stage. We may want to use her more actively, either to flush out more of their members or to disseminate misinformation to them.’
‘So we’re going to let these murders go unpunished?’
‘No, but right now the most urgent priority is tracking down this Goliath. We don’t actually know his real name. And at the moment, we don’t even know where he is.’
‘So what do we know?’
Sarit and Dov went back together some four years, when she was the eager young twenty-year-old immigrant from Ireland, fresh out of her two-year army service. In those days, she was called Siobhan Stewart. At eighteen, she had left her sheltered middle-class life in Cork and volunteered to work in Israel and ended up staying. The trigger for her decision had been a visit to the Holy Land the previous year with her family during which her brother had been killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem along with twenty-one other people. She herself had been one of the 135 wounded, albeit comparatively mildly.
After that she had tried to understand both sides in the conflict and not merely jump to a conclusion based on emotions alone. But what she found particularly galling were the one-sided condemnations when Israel retaliated against the organizers and planners of a whole spate of similar suicide bombings that followed.
So the following year, bypassing the more traditional picking-apples-on-a-kibbutz option, she had volunteered for eight weeks of equally menial duty on an Israeli army base under the auspices of an organization called Sar-El. It was soon discovered that she had a sharp mind and was a fast learner and so she ended up being given duties that a foreign volunteer would not normally be trusted with.
This was followed by her bold decision to apply for permanent residence and volunteer for a full two years of service in the Israeli army, much to the horror of her parents. After some gruelling interviews to test her sincerity, and in the face of plaintive appeals to come home, she was accepted by the Israeli army and spent the next two years serving in communications. She also changed her name in that time to the more Israeli-sounding Sarit Shalev.
In the course of her two-year stint, she was based at the Urim monitoring unit in the Negev Desert – a vast array of large satellite dishes that picked up information from telecommunications satellites over the region, covering everything from India and China to Europe. This enabled them to monitor not only cell phones but also intercontinental landlines and shipping. Ultra-fast supercomputers and highly sophisticated software analysed the voice and text messages for keywords and particular phone numbers of interest.
Upon leaving the army, she was planning to go to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study psychology. But she took the fateful decision of responding to an ad for a job interview involving ‘interesting work abroad’. After passing that interview and several more – where they looked at motivation as well as intelligence – she went through a rigorous initial training course, that was itself part of the selection procedure. Only then was she inducted into the Mossad and the real hard work began.
One of the first lessons she learnt was that the hunter can all too easily become the hunted if alertness flags, even for a moment. This was a lesson that she learnt all too well on one of her training exercises, when her designated target turned the tables on her. She had assumed that she had an advantage, because the targets were not told which of the ‘hunters’ in the exercise had been assigned to them. But he had been alert and set an ingeniously baited trap, making himself look careless so that she made her move with insufficient preparation.
He had punished her for the error by capturing her and then twisted the knife by subjecting her to the embarrassment of being marched hogtied back to the field HQ for the exercise. It was a humiliation that she resolved never to be exposed to again. And she never had. But more than that: it was a humiliation that she was determined to avenge. The problem was, she couldn’t just seek revenge willy-nilly. She had to maintain her professional façade in order to avoid failing the final selection process. But she suspected that her instructors were aware of her intentions and used it to their advantage.
So she waited patiently until she got the chance to get back at the trainee who had sandbagged her, and when it was delivered on a plate, she grabbed it. It took a while, because the exercise assignments were random. But she knew that despite her self-restraint, their instructors had evidently picked up on her competitive spirit, because in the very last exercise, they had made her former nemesis her designated hunter. And she suspected that this assignment had not been as random as it was supposed to be. However, unlike her arch-enemy, she did know who her hunter was, because when he opened the envelope, he had given himself away by the glint in his eye – as powerful a ‘tell’ as any she had seen.
From there it had been easy. Just like he had done in the first exercise, she had used a subterfuge: making it seem like she thought another of the class was her hunter, a nerdy type, smart but socially awkward. When the real hunter closed in for the kill, he avoided the obvious trap that he had set for her – and fell into the subtle one instead.
The trap – the idea for which came from a story she had read – consisted of allowing herself to be captured in her flat. The hunter had persuaded the trainee whom, she appeared to think of as her assigned hunter, to help him. She ‘captured’ the trainee and then her real hunter captured her – or at least thought he had. Certainly he had her tied to a chair, which he meticulously photographed using his still camera and videotaped using hers. But this didn’t surprise her. She knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist rubbing her nose in defeat in a macho display. But the exercise called for her to be ‘delivered’ to their field HQ. Until then, it wasn’t complete.
However, between the moment she had captured the decoy hunter and the real one captured her, she had taken out a bottle of sparkling wine from the fridge and told the decoy hunter that she was going to drink to celebrate her victory and record it on video. The real hunter had picked the lock and pounced before she could open the bottle. But he made the mistake of assuming that an unopened champagne bottle couldn’t be drugged – or more likely he hadn’t thought about it at all.
In fact, it is possible to open the bottle, lace it with Rohypnol or GHB and then reseal it. She had not only done this, she had even carefully preserved the foil and re-covered the plastic stopper. And Mr Macho Israeli couldn’t resist the urge to drink her sparkling wine before her eyes and then pour some over her, accompanied by the crude words: ‘I like you wet.’ (He later explained that this was to ‘toughen’ her up to the real world of espionage and was not in any way a representation of his real self.)
She had wanted to smile, as he had already drunk enough of the drugged sparkling wine. But she held her facial muscles, showing great patience, to maximize her victory. It was only when he held the bottle to her lips and offered her the chance to toast his victory – which she politely declined – that he got his first inkling
of what was about to happen.
‘Why don’t you want to be magnanimous in defeat?’ he asked mockingly.
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she replied. ‘It’s magnanimous in victory; defiant in defeat. Besides, I want to stay awake.’
That was when he realized. But by then it was too late, he was already feeling the lethargy that precedes unconsciousness. So a few hours later, it was the hunter who was deposited bound and gagged on the floor of the field HQ by a triumphant Sarit. Then, after three days, when his sleeping patterns had returned to normal, she was confronted by her ‘victim’ again and told the whole story.
She was led into an office – amidst the utmost solemnity – and found herself facing a tribunal. Her first instinct was panic, assuming that it was some sort of disciplinary tribunal. But that assumption was contradicted by the even more terrifying fact that her deadly foe was on the tribunal. The chairman of the panel introduced him as ‘Dov Shamir’ and explained that he was not a trainee but a long-serving intelligence officer and one of the training team. This in itself was none too reassuring, but what did put her at ease was the fact that Dov was smiling, and it was not a gloating smile, although there was perhaps a hint of mockery about it.
The chairman went on to say that they had identified her early on as a promising recruit for training as a kidon officer. This meant that her job would be assassinations of Israel’s enemies and not merely intelligence gathering like a regular katsa.
Dov had been assigned to bring out the best in her, to put her through her paces and test her to the limit. And she had passed with flying colours. He was to give her one-to-one coaching, and after that they had got on like a house on fire. It was obvious that he respected her – especially after she had turned the tables on him. And it was also obvious that he was attracted to her.
‘What we know is that he’s extremely dangerous,’ he said to Sarit.
‘But why should that concern us?’
‘For several reasons. Apart from anything else, what Daniel Klein is doing involves discovery of old material pertaining to our ancient history and the doctrine that forms our very justification for having a homeland in this part of the world.’
‘So what?’ said Sarit with a cheeky grin. ‘We’re going to execute him for challenging biblical dogma?’
‘We’re not going to execute him at all unless he becomes a threat to us. But you have to understand that we may be facing a much bigger threat here: a threat to our very survival.’
‘What threat?’ she asked, knowing that Dov was not one for idle talk.
He told her the nature of the threat… and she listened with growing alarm.
Chapter 14
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
‘That’s what he told me, just before I drove to the airport.’
Daniel and Gabrielle were on a plane back to London. Mansoor hadn’t been happy about them flying out like that, when they were supposed to be collaborating on the most important paper of all their careers. But Gabrielle was clearly upset and Daniel had been in shock when he discovered from the police when the fire had occurred.
Daniel realized that it was on the same morning that he had visited Carmichael and he had been racking his brain trying to remember if he had seen anyone at the time.
‘So let me be clear about this. He said that the plagues could recur?’
‘He said the plague in the singular. When I pressed him, he specified the sixth plague.’
‘Which was?’
‘Boils… on the flesh.’
‘Look, I shouldn’t say this about my own uncle, but he was suffering from the early stages of dementia.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then we shouldn’t really be surprised about the fire. It was probably an accident.’
‘That wouldn’t account for the injuries that the post-mortem revealed.’
Gabrielle looked away, blushing.
‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that… do the police have any idea who might have done it?’
‘If they did, they didn’t tell me.’
‘Then why are you so sure that his death has anything to do with this nonsense about the sixth plague?’
Daniel thought for a moment.
‘Maybe it’s just the timing. One minute, he’s telling me something that sounds awfully conspiratorial. I dismissed it at the time – for the same reason as you did, because of the dementia. Then, right after that, he dies… in a fire… after both he and Roksana have been subjected to other physical injuries.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘He mentioned the incident with the fiery snakes and the bronze snake on a pole.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a passage from the Bible,’ said Daniel, rummaging through the light bag he had taken on as hand luggage. He found his copy of the Bible and thumbed through it. ‘Here it is: Numbers 21, verses six to eight.’
And the Lord sent fiery snakes into the people and they bit the people and many of the Israelites died. And the people came to Moses and said ‘We have sinned because we spoke against the Lord and you; pray to the Lord and he will take the snakes from us’ and Moses prayed on behalf of the people. And the Lord said to Moses ‘Make a burning one and put it on a pole and it shall be that all the bitten ones that see it will live.’
‘Burning one?’
‘It’s widely understood to be a bronze or copper snake.’
‘But how does that relate to the plagues suffered by the Egyptians? There wasn’t a plague of snakes, was there?’
‘No. And I wasn’t clear what he meant when he mentioned the sixth plague – which was boils – in the same breath. But it wasn’t so much the fiery snakes I was thinking about. It was the snake that Moses put on the pole to save the Israelites who had been bitten by the snakes. It reminded me of the symbol we saw on that clay jar.’
‘The Rod of Asclepius?’
‘Yes, or some sort of Egyptian precursor to it. I was wondering if that could be some symbol associated with Moses. I think that the association has been suggested in the past.’
‘Maybe it is. But why did Uncle Harrison think the sixth plague could recur?’
‘He never really said. I think it may just have been…’
He didn’t want to say it.
‘A symptom of the dementia.’
Daniel avoided Gabrielle’s eyes.
‘But in that case… why are you worried about it?’
Daniel forced himself to meet her eyes and he chose his next words carefully.
‘Because now I’m not so sure. I was thinking about what Mansoor said about the food poisoning outbreak. Did you see any sign of it when you were there?’
‘No, it happened after I left.’
‘Because I was just wondering if Mansoor’s covering up for something.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I can understand them closing down the dig because of food poisoning, but why didn’t they allow us to go there?’
Now it was Gabrielle’s turn to think for a moment.
‘You have a point. He did seem a bit cagey.’
A few hours later, when they landed at Heathrow, they found themselves held for a long time while the doors were kept closed and the passengers were told to stay in their seats. Eventually, when they were opened, four uniformed policemen entered the aircraft and made their way straight to Daniel.
‘Daniel Klein?’ said one of them.
‘Yes,’ Daniel replied nervously.
‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’
Chapter 15
Goliath was lying on the bed in his hotel room, thinking about how he had failed his mentor. Arthur Morris had told him to keep track of Daniel Klein. But he had lost sight of him, quite suddenly, and now he was feeling guilty.
When first given the task, he had asked if he was to kill Klein, but Morris told him not to ask questions. He would be told later if anything more was required of him. Right no
w all he had to do was keep tabs on Klein and report in regularly to tell Morris where he was.
And Senator Morris had always been good to Goliath – even giving him his nickname which he said was a sign of respect. Goliath was the more worthy opponent, the senator had told him once. In a fair fight he would have won against David. He was the victim of Jewish treachery. And contrary to popular mythology, the Philistines were culturally more developed than the Jews. Indeed, after becoming king, David had chosen a personal bodyguard of Philistines because he didn’t trust his own people.
Goliath felt a debt of gratitude towards Senator Morris, because it was Morris who had saved his life – or rather stopped him from taking his own life. In the old days, when Goliath was plain old Wally Carter, his wife had left him for another man and had taken him to the cleaners with the aid of her smooth-talking Jewish shyster. Between them they had played up his size and his occasional tendency to lash out when things did not go the way he wanted. And he had watched as the house was sold from under him and she took most of the money as well as the children. Watching them drive away in the car had been the most painful thing of all.
But when he was about to jump to his death, it was Senator Morris who had stumbled across him by chance and talked to him for three hours, persuading him not to. After he was hospitalized for mental illness, it was Arthur Morris who had provided him with the lawyer and the doctor’s reports that secured his release. It had been Morris who had invited him to his home and treated him like a son and told him that God had a plan for him. It had been Morris who had trained him in various social skills that enabled him to get on with people better than he had in the past and without the former awkwardness that had plagued him. It was Morris who had explained that the social conventions and manners of the upper classes were just a form of acting and it could be learnt like any other role.
