“Please. No more. I’ve told you everything I know.”
The words were barely distinguishable, most of his teeth now scattered near the drain, mingled with several pints of his blood. He convulsed after the last word and dry heaved. A yellow trickle of bile ran from the corner of his now-ragged mouth and down his neck, stopping on his chest near one of the ugly welts the soldering iron had seared into his tortured flesh.
“I do not believe you. You are lying. Protecting someone or something. Hoping that they will get you out of here. You have built yourself a nice network over the last twenty years, haven’t you? You are a big man now in Ukraine – a big swinging dick in the new regime, eh? I bet you think any minute one of your cronies is going to pull enough strings or pay off the right person and you will be released. Well, I hate to break it to you, but that is not going to happen. You belong to me. I own you. And I will prolong this unspeakable agony for days – weeks if necessary. You will tell me everything. It is just a matter of time,” Illyovich said, his voice harsh from forty years of smoking and prodigious quantities of cheap vodka.
“No. I swear. It’s the truth.”
Illyovich blew a stream of bluish smoke at the ceiling, stained yellow with nicotine from countless prior exchanges in the room, and shook his head, his wolfish features unnaturally pallid in the industrial fluorescent light.
“You have to help me. Give me something new. I have heard this story enough to last a lifetime. You are like a broken record,” he complained, as if the prisoner’s tortured confession was a personal affront, an insult to his intelligence.
“It is…the…truth…”
“Enough of this. Let us try the electrodes. Maybe our friend here will be more favorably disposed to veracity after a few hours of shock treatment?” Illyovich said to Makarev with a reptilian grin.
Makarev reluctantly closed the magazine and set it on the stainless steel rolling table next to the collection of saws, knives, and drills, which he then wheeled closer to the subject. On the lower shelf, next to an industrial grinder, a variable transformer trailed two wires: rubber-clad cables with an inch and a half of exposed copper at the tips.
The naked man’s eye roved over the device and he screamed in abject horror as Illyovich, a look of boredom on his face, left the room, a cloud of toxicity following him out the door.
Back in the observation room, Illyovich took a seat next to two officials and stubbed out his cigarette.
“Do you think he has told us everything?” the older of the pair asked, his gray hair clipped close to his head in a crude buzz cut.
“Probably. But it has not done us much good, has it?”
“Then that is the whole story, at least as far as he knows. They did a deal with Kuwait, sold them the nukes, and then six months later Iraq invaded on a pretense. Sounds to me like the Iraqis were tipped off that Kuwait had the bombs, and either wanted them for themselves or wanted to eliminate the threat of them. Then the U.S. jumped in almost immediately, after sending nothing but green lights to Iraq and rushed to Kuwait’s defense – but too late. So Iraq had the devices, but the U.S. could not say how they knew, because if Kuwait had had them, as a close ally, the U.S. probably had its hand in the matter.
“Fast forward a decade, and the U.S. is getting more nervous about the nukes as Saddam is agitating for oil sales to be denominated in gold – getting way too big for his britches and endangering the dollar’s survival as the world’s reserve currency. And worse yet, pushing to ignore OPEC’s quotas and increase production threefold, which would drive the price of oil down, threatening to harm the Saudi cartel, and the U.S. oil companies’ profits. So they use an invented WMD story to go in and get them. Only they cannot have their own people’s hands on them, so they outsource it to…the Mossad.”
“Yes, but that is where the trail ends. We have excellent sources within that group, and they never located the nukes. That is a dead end,” Illyovich griped, tapping out another cigarette from the crumpled packet.
A hideous shriek echoed through the chamber at the first jolt of electricity to a part of the naked man’s anatomy that was particularly sensitive to pain.
Illyovich turned down the wall speaker volume. “I think it is safe to say that nothing useful is going to be discussed in the near future in there. How do you think we should proceed?” he asked.
“Let us see what we can get from digging within the Mossad. At this point, it seems like all trails end there,” the older man said, standing, his tolerance for the endless pall of noxious smoke in the small observation room at its limit. “Call us if you get anything more.”
Illyovich watched the two men leave. He lit his cigarette, then reclined in his chair and fondled himself as he watched the torture proceed. For the last five years, the only time he ever got aroused was during one of these sessions, and he’d learned to never waste an opportunity. A few minutes later he rose and bolted the door, the speaker volume back up for his enjoyment, then returned to his seat to finish his stimulation, the anguish from the delirious captive fuel for his twisted fire.
Chapter 17
Jet returned to the Mossad office the following day, anxious to get going. The director had sent for the documentation team, which was working furiously on creating identification that would pass muster in a chaotically hostile and suspicious nation like Libya. Since the fall of Qaddafi, the country had been in turmoil, with various factions fighting for supremacy even as a new government struggled to take control and restore some semblance of a central rule of law. But the religious intolerance between different sects, the minority and tribal discontent, all combined with the sudden lack of a strong leadership, had resulted in many areas slipping into anarchy – yet another oil-rich nation supposedly freed of an oppressive regime by a coalition of troops under the auspices of the United Nations, which had resulted in tens of thousands of citizens slaughtered even as the country was ‘liberated’ to protect them.
When Jet strode into the conference room, the director’s secretary was waiting for her with another pile of files. She handed them to Jet and, after apologizing for the director running late, the harried woman left Jet alone to her research.
Half an hour went by, and then another, and Jet was growing restless when the conference room door opened and the director entered, trailed by several subordinates. He made introductions and then took his customary position at the head of the table. He cleared his throat and spoke.
“The NSA has narrowed the location down to an address in Benghazi. We’re trying to get a team in from Tripoli for surveillance, but they aren’t the most skilled at this sort of thing. I’d prefer specialists, but one of the issues we’re having is that the political situation there is in flux, to put it mildly, and so the entry requirements are changing by the day. As of right now, the only way we can get anyone into Libya is by obtaining a visa at the airport in Tripoli once the plane lands, which is problematic. But we hope to have the situation resolved in another day – we’re working on developing a contact in immigration who is, shall we say, flexible. More to follow on that as we have additional information.”
“We should have a passport for you by tomorrow,” one of the subordinates said. “We’ve chosen Italian due to the political ties between Italy and Libya. The hope is that we can achieve an insertion shortly thereafter, at which point you can coordinate with the team on the ground.”
Jet frowned. “I have a problem with that part – where I coordinate with the locals. In my experience it’s a recipe for disaster. These are rarely people who are up to par, and whenever there’s a complication in a mission, it’s due to someone on the ground being an amateur. I’d just as soon leave them out of the mix and do the surveillance myself once I’m there. I suppose it can’t be helped that they have to be on site until I arrive, but I want to limit their involvement to a passive support role, unless we have the good fortune to have a top-flight covert ops commando loitering around there.”
“I understa
nd your sentiment, but you need to adjust your expectations. We’re working under an extremely tight schedule, and don’t have time to be that selective,” the second subordinate warned.
Jet sat back and eyed the man. “These men, the targets, are all ex-Mossad, with advanced training in search and destroy, infiltration, explosives, surveillance and counter-surveillance, and a list of other specialties as long as my arm. If you put amateurs up against them, I’m out. I can guarantee a disaster. It’s that simple. The more well-intentioned but under-qualified personnel you have in the field, the greater the chances of the mission ending in failure.”
The director held up a hand as the discord looked ready to escalate. “You have a good point, and one we should take under advisement as we pencil out a strategy. But I don’t want to argue. The purpose of this meeting is to bring you up to speed on what we know and have done to date. We have a pair of operatives en route to Benghazi from Tripoli. We’ve acquired satellite photos of the neighborhood, which we’ll have later for you to study. We’re lining up weapons and gear so that once you’re in-country, you’ll have everything you need. In short, we’re doing everything we can, but we still don’t have the building under observation, which means that by the time anyone gets there, they could be gone.”
“I’d say that’s a pretty big problem, wouldn’t you?” Jet ventured.
“It’s occurred to me. But it is what it is. We have to do the best we can in light of the situation.”
“So you’re sending me in blind, to an unstable country in an intermittent state of civil war, supported by dilettantes of questionable competence, in pursuit of highly skilled targets who might have already flown the coop. Is that about right?” she asked, her tone deliberately neutral. “This is how people get killed.”
“It isn’t a perfect scenario, I’ll admit, but considering that, I’ve asked for our most experienced field analysts and mission planners to convene here this evening, once our people are in position and can send us more intelligence, so we can come up with a strategy for taking the house – recognizing that support will be limited, and the natives will be decidedly unfriendly. I’d like you to participate in that meeting. Out of it will come our course of action moving forward.”
“Am I correct that even at this moment, the targets could be walking out their front door, wheeling a suitcase nuke down the sidewalk, and we would have no way of knowing it?” she asked, ignoring the director’s statement.
“We have a satellite moving into position. We should have a live feed any moment,” the first subordinate said.
“Then everything since the phone call till, say, now, has happened in the dark. Did I leave anything out?” Jet gave the director a withering look. “Gentlemen, with all due respect, if you want to stop these men, you need to be better than them. To say that your performance to date has been lacking is charitable. Any advantage we might have had is largely gone, and really, as far as I can tell, we’re depending on luck now – which is a lousy substitute for a plan.”
“Now just wait a–” the second subordinate blurted.
“No, you wait a minute. This is a comedy of errors. We have a nuke, we have a location, and yet we’ve managed to do nothing with that information. And now, I’m supposed to go into hostile territory on a wing and a prayer in the hopes that the targets are as slow-witted as we are. Were you able to at least put a locator on the phone number?” Jet asked.
“Yes. It’s a cell phone, and it’s still at the house. So that’s a bit of good fortune,” the director affirmed.
“Which could mean they’re still there, or that they decided to leave the phone when they left.”
The director pushed back from the table, the meeting having gone differently than he’d hoped. “We’re going to let Weinstein remain free for now. If Benghazi doesn’t yield results, he’s our only lead to The Council. I wish we had more solid information to go on, but everyone’s doing the best they can. Please plan on attending the meeting. It’ll start at six p.m. Now, if nobody has anything more that I need to be here for, I’ve got some other matters to attend to. I’ll ask the three of you to be civil in my absence. I know this is frustrating, but we’re all on the same side,” he said, with a warning glance at Jet.
She nodded, disgusted and troubled at the way things were developing. But it would do no good to take it out on the lesser lights. And realistically, she needed the Mossad’s support if she was going to have any chance at success, so she didn’t need to start creating waves that might distract them from identifying a key piece of information at a critical time because of any confidence issues.
“I’ll play nice. But I want it on the record, if there’s going to be any, that this is not getting off to a good start,” she said grudgingly.
“Very well. Noted. Now please use your valuable time productively, and I’ll see everyone here again at six.” The director took one more look around the room before leaving.
Jet tuned out the pair of subordinates as they droned on, updating her on the deteriorating situation in Benghazi and describing the various insurgent factions that had turned the city upside down. She already got it – it was as near a war zone as possible without having shock troops racing through the streets gunning for anything that moved. That didn’t trouble her nearly as much as the sense that the entire operation was already slipping away from her. It would be a miracle if the targets were still at the house by the time she touched down, and she didn’t like to depend on divine intervention for her plans to succeed.
She sat back, lost in thought, and fleetingly wondered how Hannah was doing, on the other side of the world with a surrogate taking care of her instead of her mother. Glancing at her watch, she resolved to slip out of the meeting and call both Hannah and Matt as soon as possible. The desire to hear her daughter’s voice was almost a physical need sometimes – to reassure herself that this wasn’t the real world at all, but rather an artificial construct she would soon be finished with.
And Matt. She’d spent a troubled night with him dominating her dreams, the memory of their parting replaying in her mind like a tape loop on infinite repeat. This crisis couldn’t have come at a worse time, and a part of her just wanted it to be over and didn’t care about the ramifications of another detonation. People did horrible things to each other all the time. It was the way of the world.
She was pulled out of her musings by one of the subordinates asking a question, and she realized that she’d completely spaced out and hadn’t registered anything they’d said in the last few minutes.
“I’m sorry. Are we keeping you from something important?” he asked, a thinly veiled insult in his tone.
Jet looked daggers at him, and then decided that this battle wasn’t worth fighting – there was no point in antagonizing the director’s underlings. She sat forward in her chair and offered an insincere smile.
“Actually, yes, but that’s not relevant. I don’t think I caught that last bit. Sorry. Have you figured out where the bomb is?” she asked, then focused on the task at hand and put Hannah and Matt out of her mind, at least for the moment.
Chapter 18
Jerusalem, Israel
Ben Eshel left the restaurant with his young girlfriend hanging from his arm in a dress that was little more than a skin-tight T-shirt pulled down over the uppermost reaches of her long tan legs, leaving little to the imagination and even less to modesty. The nightspot was a trendy place, expensive, with small portions and big attitudes, the heady smell of pricy cologne and exotic perfume blending with the palpable scent of money in the air. Ben secretly hated places like it, but his companion loved nothing more than seeing and being seen, and he was willing to play along in order to keep her happy.
He had met Rachel two months before, at another high-end bar, and had been delighted when she’d seemed interested in him – no doubt a function of his buying Rachel and her girlfriend a bottle of champagne before sidling up to them and making conversation. From that encounter had come a
date where he had lavished delicacies upon her at one of the hottest restaurants in Jerusalem, and then spent the evening dancing at an impossible-to-get-into disco that he’d read about in magazines – the trick to entry being the right denomination bills surreptitiously slid to the doorman, who had palmed them as adeptly as a magician before sweeping the velvet rope aside and welcoming the guests like royalty.
Ben was in his late thirties, average-looking, tall, his dark hairline receding, a kind of geeky man who had, of late, stepped up his game with a new wardrobe and an upgraded attitude – courtesy of a recent financial windfall that had been as unexpected as it had been welcome.
Rachel giggled, alcohol being her preferred social lubricant, and pulled closer as she teetered down the sidewalk in impossibly high heels that showcased her dancer’s calves, which in reality needed no help. She was twenty-three, with jet black hair and hazel eyes, all white teeth and easy laughter and good times – a wannabe actress between jobs since her receptionist position had been phased out, and in no hurry to find another now that Ben had appeared in her life and generously agreed to help her make ends meet with her small apartment while she considered opportunities more in line with her ambitions. Ben didn’t mind – he, more than most, understood that everything in life had a cost, and the charms of a woman fifteen years younger than he was were no exception.
They slowed as they approached his new white Mercedes coupe, gleaming at the curb. He opened her door for her in what he imagined as a chivalrous manner, and watched with admiration as she slipped into the passenger seat, her toned body as lithe as a serpent, and wondered to himself again at his good fortune.
When he’d been approached by an old university acquaintance and offered the opportunity of a lifetime, he had quickly jumped at the chance. He’d run into hard times with his corporate security business – when he had started it, he’d imagined an infinite demand from companies looking for the very latest electronic countermeasures to safeguard their secrets from corporate spying. However, the reality had proved far less lucrative than he’d hoped since leaving the army, where he had been an explosives specialist with the bomb squad. Being arguably the best hadn’t translated so easily into a stellar civilian career, and he had been scraping by for the last few years.
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