by Allan Topol
“I saw the whole thing from a window in the Defense building.”
“The son of a good friend of mine died from blows to his head.”
Khalid was moved almost to tears—not just for this one boy, but for all of those who had died and were injured. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He wasn’t the only one, of course.”
“I am ashamed. This is my country,” Khalid said. “But we can do something about it.”
Salmon paused to drag on his cigarette. He blew a smoke ring into the air. Finally he said, “That’s why I came this evening. I’m ready to join you in the coup.”
Khalid hugged Salmon. When they drew back, he looked him square in the eye. “We will succeed, my friend. We will succeed.”
* * *
Sagit hoped that David would understand why she had to go to Washington. He didn’t. He was not only irate and furious. He felt as if she had personally betrayed him.
“You might as well be signing Daphna’s death warrant and mine,” he said angrily, slitting his hand across his throat for emphasis. “Or sentencing me to life in prison. Besides, it’s a totally stupid, naive idea. Are you the genius who thought of sacrificing me at the altar of American-Israel relations, or was that your boss?”
They were having dinner at a modern restaurant in Jerusalem called Taverna. She had thought it would be best to tell him about her trip in person before she went to the airport, but after hearing his reaction, she was no longer sure. At least, the hour was late, and the restaurant was deserted.
“Why not wait,” he said, “before telling the Americans? I have a foot in the door with Madame Blanc. Let me get the whole story, including the identity of her Saudi partner, find out a way to engineer Daphna’s rescue, and then you can go to Washington.”
“We can’t do it that way. We’ve worked too hard to develop a cooperative relationship with the American government at all levels. We can’t break that commitment.”
His face darkened. He was furious. “At least you’re honest enough to admit that I’m the sacrificial lamb.”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“Just another week is all I’m asking you.”
She bit down on her lip. Personally, she would have done what she wanted, but it was out of her hands. He was sophisticated enough in intelligence matters to realize that. “Sorry, David, we can’t do it.
“Let me talk to Moshe, your boss.”
“He’s already signed off. We think going to Washington is the right thing to do.”
In frustration, David pounded his fist on the table. “You don’t understand how Washington works,” he told her.
She responded stubbornly, “We think we can save you and still get what we want.”
“And how exactly do you think we can pull that off?”
“Why don’t you leave that up to us?”
He laughed contemptuously. “You’re like a babe in the woods. They’ll eat you alive in Washington, and laugh when they spit you out.”
She knew very well that he might be right. Washington was a jungle, but she refused to share those doubts with him. “You underestimate me. I’m capable of playing what you Americans call hardball.”
He laughed at her. “You’ll never even get a chance at bat, to carry on with your stupid metaphor.”
“But I think—”
“For God’s sake, Sagit, I broke the jaw of a general who now happens to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which makes him President Waltham’s top military adviser. I’d like nothing better than to get even with that bastard who made me give up my life as Greg Nielsen.” He leaned forward, his face close to hers, his expression grim and taut. “And his desire for revenge has to be every bit as great as mine. He’s also a tough political animal and good at manipulating the media. What chance do you think I’ll have on trial before a military court for the murder of those innocent Americans?”
“We don’t think it has to happen that way.”
“You’re probably right.” His voice was laced with disgust. “Once Tehran gets wind of the resurfacing of Greg Nielsen, they’ll have a hit squad take me out. Is this my punishment for fucking and running in Paris?”
She turned red with anger, shouting at him through clenched teeth, “You’re out of line, David.”
He was equally loud. “Well, if you won’t hold off going to Washington for my sake, at least do it for Daphna.”
She lowered her voice, becoming professional again. “We’ll work with Margaret Joyner on keeping our moves confidential. We won’t endanger the girl.”
“Go ahead. Have a nice trip. Kill both of us.”
She had had enough of him tonight. The last comment did it.
It was already ten-thirty. The Mossad driver was waiting for her in the front of the restaurant with her bag in the trunk. Without saying another word, she stood up, put some money on the table and walked quickly toward the door.
As she climbed into the back of the car, she replayed the conversation in her mind. She was trying to decide if maybe he was right about what would happen in Washington. However, what kept flickering in her mind was Moshe’s suspicion concerning the two million dollars, David had received from Madame Blanc.
* * *
Daphna tossed and turned exhausted but unable to sleep. Suddenly anxious, she jumped up and ran over to the door, checking that she had remembered to turn the dead bolt. Then she sat down in the chair in the corner and pulled her knees up close to her chest, rocking her whole body while she whimpered softly.
Every day of her captivity had left her more depressed. The women inside the house, Mary and the others, were all nice enough to her. The food was good. The house was comfortable, and she could roam around it at will. No one followed her when she was inside. Outside, it was a different matter. There was a swimming pool in the fortresslike mansion that was perched alone on top of a hill, encircled by a high stone wall. Once she stepped outside to use the pool or just to get some air, she knew very well that she was in a deluxe prison. Four armed men stood guard on the inside perimeter of the wall, and they all watched her closely.
It was the idea of being a captive that was wearing her down, the idea that she was so helpless, at the mercy of her captors if they turned on her.
After what David had told her, she knew why they were holding her. So he would help them with whatever they wanted to do in Saudi Arabia. But what if he couldn’t help them? What would happen to her then?
And even if he could, then what? He wasn’t her real father. Why should he care what happened to her? Why should anybody care? Why should anybody come?
She thought about her mother and the bomb on the bus. What does the world want from Israelis? Why don’t they leave us alone? We want to enjoy our lives and families like everybody else. Why do we always have to be the targets for lunatics and madmen? The whipping boys for pompous, supposedly high-minded world politicians?
She had loved her mother, though they had never spoken about emotions or love. Yael was too tough for that, too hardened, too self-reliant. All those years she lived alone, she never complained because Daphna’s father had been killed in the Yom Kippur War.
Just then it occurred to her that she had only herself to depend upon, now and for the rest of her life. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself take action. She would begin here in this house. Tomorrow, she would start finding a way to escape.
Yet she thought about the four armed guards, and she was filled with terror.
Then she stiffened. She had more backbone than that. As an eighteen-year-old, she had gained admission to the Israeli air force—the most difficult and prestigious branch of the Israeli military. She had come through basic training with distinction and was selected as part of an elite group to fly helicopters. She had learned plenty about survival and escape. Now was the time to begin applying some of those lessons.
She walked over to the window of her third-floor bedroom and looked out. All was silent un
der a full moon. An armed guard leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette, his gun on the ground. She tried to raise the window, but it didn’t budge. She quickly realized it had been nailed shut. That was enough for tonight, she decided. Tomorrow, she promised herself she would begin trying to find a way out of this prison.
* * *
David sat at the table in Taverna and slowly sipped a double espresso. The conversation with Sagit had left him drained. Now that he had cooled down, he was convinced that she had good intentions in making the trip to Washington, and that she honestly believed she could somehow save him and Daphna. The difficulty was that her mission was doomed from the start.
David could see the outcome as clearly as the palm of his hand. Last year he had followed in The New York Times General Chambers’ selection by President Waltham and his confirmation by the Senate as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the highest-ranking military officer in the country. It had been a smooth process. The issue of Chambers culpability for the Dhahran attack five years ago—or at least David’s view that Chambers was at fault for not heeding the CIA’s information and beefing up defenses at the facility—never even was raised. On the other hand, the general’s broken nose and jaw, inflicted by a renegade, crazed CIA agent, had been discussed in a way that evoked sympathy for Chambers. It was a classic example of the military closing ranks behind one of their own. Chambers would no doubt below sky-high when he found out David was in Israel. Outraged beyond belief, Chambers would demand David’s immediate extradition and trial. How could Sagit hope to stand in the way of the pressure he would mount? To David, the outcome was certain. He would have to develop a plan for himself based on that premise.
As soon as he returned to his house at the kibbutz, he took a large map of Israel and its neighbors out of a desk drawer, unfolded it and spread it across the kitchen table. The country was so small. It was a sliver of land, the size of New Jersey. But right now for David that small country represented a virtual prison.
Escape by air was impossible. He was certain that Sagit wasn’t bluffing when she told him that Passport Control would pick him up if he used either his Israeli or earlier Russian passport. He had destroyed the passports the CIA had given him in Saudi Arabia, not only because they would trigger an alarm, but because he had known that upon entering Russia, where he was constantly subject to search, he had to be totally clean.
He focused on the border crossing points by car. There was at least one into Jordan at the Allenby Bridge and another into Egypt in the Sinai, but the results there would be the same, because passports were subject to careful scrutiny. His eyes ran over the broad expanse of the Judean desert. He could wander in it, like Bishop Pike, but to what end? Physically, the Jordan River was easily crossable, but that wasn’t the problem. Because of Israel’s diligence in trying to keep out terrorists, the entire border was carefully monitored with sophisticated electronic devices. If he attempted an illegal crossing, even from west to east, he would likely be shot.
Thinking, David put his head into his hands and closed his eyes. There had to be an answer.
Suddenly, he had it.
Fishing boats went out from towns along the coast south of Haifa. He could buy his way on one of those boats and pay the fisherman to get him to a small port in Lebanon that wasn’t carefully guarded.
The U.S. currency he had brought back from a trip to Geneva two years ago and hidden away, for an emergency like this, would enable him to bribe an Arab truck driver to take him to Tyre or Beirut, where he could hire a boat to take him to one of the remote Greek islands. From there, he could make contact with Bruno and lie low until Bruno found a way to rescue him. As soon as Bruno got him to Geneva, he would tell Bruno about Daphna. Bruno’s contacts in France were like tentacles reaching throughout the country. He would find a way to win Daphna’s release. Guards could always be bribed for money. Anything’s possible. Then he would withdraw Madame Blanc’s $2 million from the bank, take on a new identity and disappear again, this time to Venezuela, where there was a thriving oil business that could use his services. He raised his head and smiled. It was all falling into place for him now.
* * *
Within a half hour David had filled a small knapsack with clothes, toiletries and cash from Europe he had hidden, while Tschaikovsky’s Pathetique was playing on the stereo in the living room. He slipped into the knapsack a picture of Yael and him that had been taken a year before her death. They were at the kibbutz swimming pool having lunch. He rummaged through several drawers until he found a picture of Daphna in uniform standing next to an Apache helicopter, and he packed that as well. Taking the pictures might prove to be a problem, but that was a risk he was willing to take.
* * *
At seven o’clock the next morning, he set off for the coast, driving one of the cars of the kibbutz. As he drove, a strange melancholy began to grip him. He felt badly knowing that he would never return to Israel. He wasn’t Jewish. He was Lutheran by birth, an atheist by choice. Yet he had come to love this peculiar, stubborn, idealistic country, thrust into a sea of hostile neighbors, even after Yael’s death.
Then reality abruptly struck him like a blow to the face. Suddenly, in the light of the morning, the plan he had developed last night didn’t make much sense. How could Bruno win Daphna’s release? Even if he could, resettlement in Venezuela wouldn’t be an answer. Two governments with powerful intelligence networks would be scouring the world for them, not to mention Madame Blanc and her thugs. Besides, that wouldn’t be a life for Daphna, running and hiding with him.
And what about for himself? He was sick and tired of running and hiding. Five years of it was enough. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but he felt weak and tired. He didn’t have the energy or the desire to start over from scratch one more time. Anything would be better than that—even facing the music in Washington, if that’s what he had to do.
He pushed down on the brake, turned the car around and headed back to the kibbutz. He’d just have to wait and see what Sagit could pull off for him in Washington.
Chapter 11
“CIA Headquarters in Langley,” Sagit said to the driver as she climbed into a cab at National Airport.
Riding past the Potomac River on the right, Sagit wondered what emissaries of small nations must have felt when they came to Rome at the time of Julius Caesar. This was her sixth trip to the United States—all on Mossad business. Each time visiting the monolith in its seat of power was a sobering experience. The emissary didn’t have much leverage.
On the long flight from Israel, Sagit had slept little. When she wasn’t reading the books about Saudi Arabia that Rachel had given her, or rehearsing what she would tell Margaret Joyner, she thought about her most recent visit to Washington, last year. Following three days of intensive discussions with CIA and DIA people, Joyner had arranged a two-day working session with Sagit and three CIA antiterrorist specialists at a lodge in central California.
Sagit was thrilled by the trip. She had never been to California before. Raising her eyes high among the giant redwoods in Muir Woods and standing below the cliffs in Yosemite blew her away. The incredible vastness and beauty of America were mind-numbing to the Israeli, whose idea of a forest was a grove of pine trees planted by pioneers fifty or sixty years ago. Sagit tried to capture as much of it as possible on film with her Nikon.
In addition to the humbling vastness of the country, that two-day session gave Sagit a chance to get to know the CIA chief. Margaret Joyner was the first woman to hold the post of CIA director. A petite woman with short gray hair and a small pair of black framed reading glasses that typically rested halfway down her nose, with a brilliant analytical mind and independent judgment, Joyner was from San Francisco, where her two married daughters lived. Her husband, a high school English teacher, had been killed in a car crash in Potomac, Maryland. While driving home from a high school prom he had been chaperoning, he was struck by a drunk driver.
At the time of her husband’s dea
th, Joyner had been in her second term in the U.S. Senate, where she had risen to chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which oversees CIA activities. Under her leadership, the committee shifted from critic to careful supporter of a revamped CIA, which finally rid itself of the last of the Cold War warriors in senior positions.
Two terms in the Senate were enough for her amid the tortoise-like pace of action and the frustrations of the world’s most deliberative body. As she was winding down, she threw her support, early and forcefully behind then Pennsylvania governor Harry Waltham because he was basically a decent and honorable man even if he wasn’t the most brilliant presidential candidate of all time. As a result of Joyner’s support and hard work, Waltham carried California, which was the difference between victory and defeat. A grateful president-elect offered her any post in his administration, and she picked Director of the CIA, because of her intelligence background in the Congress. The good old boys at Langley almost went berserk at the idea of a woman in the job, but Waltham considered Harry Truman his role model. So he said, “To hell with them.”
Sagit had learned from Joyner that in American governmental decisions, personal friendships and relationships often carry the day in complex matters of policy. Sagit was hoping that she had forged enough of a relationship with Joyner to influence her now. As the cab stopped at the guardhouse at the end of the CIA driveway, she mentally ran through her planned pitch one more time.
Margaret Joyner was waiting for Sagit in her huge seventh floor corner office, which faced toward the Potomac and Washington. All the CIA chief knew from Moshe’s call yesterday was that Sagit was coming on a matter of the utmost importance, and it was essential that no one else be present at their initial meeting. Intrigued by the seriousness in Moshe’s tone, Joyner had acceded to that request.
As a secretary ushered her into Joyner’s office, Sagit was pleased to see on the wall a photograph she had taken of Joyner in front of a giant redwood. Joyner’s ubiquitous silver thermos of coffee and two china cups rested on the round table in one corner.
