When Shadows Collide (An Arik Bar Nathan Novel Book 1)

by Nathan Ronen

  Ehud Tzur was perceived by his rivals as a hedonistic type who had long ago exceeded the boundaries of good taste. This time, however, he was apprehensive. Even for him, this was one step too far. To murder the head of the Mossad or make him disappear was completely over the top, even from his perspective.

  To deal with the gatekeepers, he actually relied on the ‘formers.’ They were people who suckled from the nipple of the state, growing wealthy as a result of their connections and the right shady deals. Some of them were Boris’s neighbors in Caesarea, while some lived in various moshavs27 in the Sharon region. They were nouveau-riche who had joined the country’s top ten-percenters and were among his close allies. They supported him financially and pulled strings on his behalf behind the scenes in recruiting major labor unions to support his party.

  He relied on them to make deals to re-elect him, not because he was the best candidate for the country, but because he was the most convenient one for them politically. He knew it and perfectly understood the give-and-take involved. He realized that in return he would have to pay a price. It had already been agreed that he would allow them to purchase Kesher, a state-owned media company, and take over the communication market, a goose that laid golden eggs. He had already agreed to assist them on the regulatory front by bending Israel’s media laws. He intended to remove the overactive minister of communication from office and take over his role. He already had a candidate to serve as the ministry’s director general, who was well-aligned with his intended CEO of Kesher, on behalf of one of the ‘formers.’ The bankers in the group had already agreed to provide their friends with a massive loan in order to leverage the deal. Everything was wrapped up and ready to go.

  The first part of Boris’s offer, while very tempting, was shocking to him. Cornfield was a man who had earned his position fairly and Tzur did not want to end his career violently. The head of the Mossad was not a healthy man, and he preferred to wait patiently for the time when things in the Mossad stabilized, and he would pick a different candidate. As for the other gatekeepers, there was not a single person who could not be framed, or else have the skeletons in their closet exposed and given a different spin. Tzur’s political experience had already taught him this lesson.

  On the other hand, the more he thought about it, Boris’s solution regarding the hackers who would help him recruit public support through social media suddenly seemed like an option that should not be entirely dismissed. He knew this tactic had already been successfully employed in other countries in Eastern Europe, and apparently in the United States as well.

  “Okay, leave it to me,” Boris said, as if he could read his mind. “I only want a file with the address and photo of the objects. I promise you they’ll go kibinimat, straight to hell. And you’ll owe me. Don’t worry, I’ll come one day to collect the debt. We in Russia have a proverb that says you don’t need to keep a dog if you yourself bark. So, you make up your mind.”

  Confused, Tzur did not understand what Boris was getting at, but shook his extended hand. They began to climb the stairs to the house’s main ballroom, where a dance troupe from Uzbekistan had already taken the stage and embarked on a spirited display of folk dancing.

  Suddenly, Ehud Tzur panicked. He feared he had been recorded and did not know who would end up with the material. He wanted to make sure no one did anything for the time being. Therefore, he returned to his host and told Boris or, more accurately, the recording, “Actually, don’t do anything yet. I want to think about it some more.”

  The oligarch smirked, his face twisting in contempt. “You have to decide if you are boss with balls or tagalong wimp. I think it’s time you signal to your security heads who’s the boss here. It’s important they understand you give them orders, not the other way around, and if they don’t obey, there’s a price.”

  Throughout the extravagant party, with A-list singers and dancers brought over from Russia, Ehud Tzur was wrapped up in his own thoughts. He barely tasted the delicacies served to the table in plates adorned with a gold stripe. His wife Monique and the hostess Maya pranced around in the ballroom illuminated by massive crystal chandeliers, barefoot and drunk on pink Champagne, which flowed like water. They were surrounded by the hostess’s friends, celebrities in their own minds—singers, hairstylists and neighboring wives, who arrived out of curiosity to see the most over-the-top house in Israel.

  Surprisingly, Tzur actually liked the aggressive, Russian-style approach. On his way home from the party, he decided he would appeal to the public with a ‘tiebreaker.’ Suddenly, he thought how to turn things around in his favor, how to endow himself with an aura of ‘Mr. Security’ he so needed. He would ride the glory of the Mossad’s operation in Chad and the yellowcake affair without first informing the heads of the security agencies. After all, he was the boss, and what were they going to do? Collectively resign? They were too chicken to take that route.

  He was filled with a strange self-confidence.

  As they arrived in Jerusalem, Monique was pleased to see the self-satisfied smile on her husband’s face, and whispered to him, quite drunk, “Great party, right? Maya says Boris was really impressed with you. Look at the Cartier pink gold necklace she gave me, embedded with diamonds, along with a stunning pair of ten-karat diamond earrings. Do they look good on me?”

  “You like everything pink.” He smiled tiredly. “For you, life is entirely rosy, like that Edith Piaf song. But don’t you dare tell anyone about that set, otherwise, according to the Gift Act, we’ll have to declare it as a gift for purposes of safekeeping and registration, and they’ll take it away from you.”

  She did not reply. Ehud Tzur did not notice as the bodyguards removed several crates of pink MOET Champagne from the trunk and followed the lady of the house to the residential floor.

  * * *

  20Proverbs 24:6

  21The Yamam, or Specialized Central Unit, is an Israeli counterterrorism unit, one of four special units within the Israeli police.

  22“Cheers” in Japanese.

  23“To your health” in Russian.

  24“To you, dear prime minister” in Russian.

  25Cozy Bear, classified as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 29, is a Russian hacker group believed to be associated with Russian intelligence.

  26The New Israel Fund (NIF) is a U.S.-based non-profit organization whose goals include social justice and equality for all Israelis.

  27A moshav is an agricultural community comprised of individual farms.

  Chapter 20

  Game Theory

  In the depths of the Aquarium,28 the prime minister was sitting with his secret political advisor, the American Arthur Schein, whom Tzur had covertly flown back to Israel. They were discussing the elections Tzur intended to conduct soon.

  Arthur Schein was not just another election advisor. He employed American detective agencies run by former FBI and CIA employees who investigated rivals on his behalf. He paid generous American salaries to hackers who were veterans of IDF’s Unit 8200 and the Shin Bet, and who knew how to ferret out every personal secret and every bank account. He was expensive, but the information he brought with him made him the one who knew where all the bodies were buried. For the right price, he was willing to dig them up for his client. He was the organizer. He knew everyone worth knowing. He understood how things truly worked in Israel, and his stomach acids digested every vile creature and piece of scum revealed when the right stones were overturned. No shaming campaign was beneath him—for the right price, of course.

  Schein was a squat man who always wore Ted Baker suits. He had a large head sporting a silver mane, and his inquisitive little rabbit eyes peered out of John Lennon-style glasses with a platinum wire frame.

  “I’m sick of all of the ministers of this coalition of horrors, whom I didn’t choose,” the prime minister explained to Schein. �
�I’m looking for a good excuse to resign and declare the dismantling of the Knesset, in order to surprise them and catch them unprepared. In any case, this coalition won’t last long. My ministers hate each other, and they hate me most of all. The problem with Israeli politics is the multitude of parties and the inability of a political leader like me to unite them under one faction, headed by me.”

  “We Jews have always been a tribal people,” Arthur Schein sighed. “Ultra-Orthodox versus secular, left versus right, settlers versus liberal post-Zionists, Sephardic versus Ashkenazi, Ethiopians versus Russians. Every two Jews establish three synagogues.”

  “I plan to catch them with their pants down,” Tzur said. “I’ll conduct a press conference with no advance notice and come out with the entire story of capturing the Iranian yellowcakes. I won’t consult my minister of defense or ask him first, and I imagine he’ll be pissed off and threaten to resign, and as far as I’m concerned, it would be great if he did. I’m sure Mossad Director Cornfield will blow his top, but I’ve got a replacement for him, too. We’ve got Arik Bar-Nathan there as an accessible alternative whom we can install as Mossad director without creating too many shockwaves.”

  A broad grin spread across his face as he finished outlining his plan. He had fallen in love with the idea of coming out to the press with a major revelation and inciting a media circus, which he intended to conduct from center stage; envisioning his image at the heart of a major press conference, including the international media, appealed to him greatly. He was already imagining the fat headlines in newspapers all over the world with a large photo of himself on the front page.

  Tzur knew he would be attacked in all the Israeli media outlets and by Cornfield and the other ‘formers’ from the security agencies. He also knew he would be accused of an act of folly: even successful folly was still folly. But as a politician consigned to the sidelines for many years who had now made it to the top, he knew that ultimately, everything was measured by the final result, and he intended to go all in to reap all the rewards.

  “Hold on! You’re putting the cart before the horse,” Schein scolded him. “If this scenario takes place, and they’re all certain you’re heading for instant elections, I suggest you do the exact opposite in order to confuse them. Do you know the horror stories of American poet and author Edgar Allan Poe?”

  Ehud Tzur shook his head.

  “The author has a wonderful saying: ‘The best place to hide is in plain sight.’”

  The prime minister stared at him, puzzled.

  “If the minister of defense really does resign as a result of your move, take on his role yourself,” Schein explained. “It’s always best to come to the election as the person in charge of the army and security. If the heads of the coalition parties think they’re heading for elections anyway, and start applying pressure from the right in order to establish a hardline image for the elections, I suggest you call a press conference and start berating them in public, in an officious manner, for delving into petty politics due to a personal agenda, while you yourself reach decisions only due to pertinent considerations, out of a deep concern for the Israeli public.”

  “I like the way you think,” Ehud Tzur displayed his most charming smile, one that concealed his cynical slyness. As Arthur Schein looked at him, a chill went through him. In Tzur’s eyes, he saw a frozen, emotionless expression.

  As the Knesset began its winter session, a week later, Ehud Tzur approached the podium at the Knesset assembly and gave the speech he had composed along with his political advisor. Everyone was utterly caught by surprise by his ‘sacrifice speech,’ officiously delivered, in which he reproached them for their facile preoccupation with petty politics, particularly in this period of terrorist attacks and existential dangers to the Israeli people.

  * * *

  28A nickname for the prime minister’s office, where the jokers say piranhas swim.

  Chapter 21

  An Exercise in Deception

  During the first week of September, a month whose end would mark the beginning of the Jewish High Holidays, Cornfield found it odd and even suspicious to be summoned to a Heads of Intelligence Agencies Committee meeting on Thursday at 7:45 p.m. For years now, the committee’s meetings had traditionally taken place on Sunday morning, before the government meeting that began at noon.

  All his attempts to find out what was going on were to no avail. The entire staff of the Prime Minister’s Office kept their mouths shut, conveying only that it was a one-time procedural change due to the approaching holiday.

  Cornfield arrived at ‘the Aquarium’ in the Prime Minister’s Office, where he found all the heads of all the Israeli security agencies. They were led, stunned, to the briefing room where they were surprised to find representatives of the global media. Cornfield rose and demanded that the Prime Minister’s Office’s spokesperson tell them what was going on and was scolded by office manager Geula Mordoch. She asked him to sit in the front row in preparation for a dramatic announcement by the prime minister, which would be broadcast live on the eight o’clock newscast in all media networks. Sitting in the front row with him were members of the Security Cabinet, the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the chairperson of the Heads of Intelligence Agencies Committee, the Shin Bet Director, the chairperson of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, the commissioner of Israel Police and the chairperson of the National Security Council.

  “I can’t believe that megalomaniac is still doing this,” Cornfield muttered to himself.

  Precisely one minute before eight p.m., Ehud Tzur entered the hall, heavily made up, wearing a light blue suit and a red tie. The lights went out in the room and the spotlights above Tzur came on, focusing on him. Cornfield felt that he and his friends were merely extras in a show to which they had been unknowingly lured.

  The Mossad, an agency with sharp instincts that was aware of every minor event in enemy countries, had utterly failed to collect simple intelligence in its own backyard. No one at the Mossad or the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service, had known that the Government Press Office, which was directly subordinate to the prime minister, had issued a personal invitation, conveyed by a special courier, to all heads of foreign press editorial departments stationed in Israel. They were invited to a special press conference in which the prime minister of Israel would issue a dramatic statement.

  During the day, print and electronic media editorial boards tried to figure out why the event was being portrayed so dramatically. All of them were laconically answered by the Prime Minister’s Office’s spokesperson that the conference concerned an unusual occurrence, international in scope, which would shock the world.

  The press conference was scheduled for eight p.m., the time at which all major Israeli newscasts went on the air. Ever since the morning hours, international TV crews from all over the world had begun gathering in order to snag a good spot in the briefing room. The first two rows were reserved for the heads of the security agencies and members of the Cabinet.

  “Good evening, and thanks to all of you for coming on such short notice. Tonight, you’ll witness the revelation of something the world has never seen before,” Ehud Tzur began. “Tonight, we’ll expose unequivocal proof of the nuclear capabilities that Iran has concealed from the international community in its secret nuclear archive. We’ll reveal Iran’s secret files, which the Mossad has retrieved from secret archives in Teheran. The Iranian leaders deny they want nuclear weapons, but I’ll prove here that Iran has lied to the world.”

  Cornfield was paralyzed with shock. The operation referred to had in fact taken place while his predecessor had been in office, but it had been kept absolutely secret. The photocopies of the materials obtained from Iran had been brought in utter confidentiality to the attention of the intelligence agencies of the countries that had signed the nuclear agreement with Iran.

  This time as well, T
zur relied primarily on the visual medium as he displayed hundreds of binders that supposedly contained copies of the material obtained by Israeli intelligence. The prime minister spoke almost exclusively in English, directing his message at the global community.

  As Ehud Tzur heaped more praise on the Mossad, Cornfield, sitting in the front row, was filled with an uncontrollable rage. He knew Ehud Tzur was trying to pull one over on him. After all, he had warned the prime minister that the Iranians would retaliate. Why did he need this entire production? The prime minister’s lack of consideration for his advisors, and his decision to establish himself as “Mr. Security” at any price, without taking the cost into account, stunned Cornfield. He saw it as a blatant lack of professionalism, not to mention a gross violation of the rules of operations security, compromising the country’s safety.

  Ehud Tzur gave a presentation. Slide after slide displayed images of a structure in Teheran in which, he claimed, “…they hid the nuclear archive. Few Iranians, and even fewer Israelis, know where it is. From outside, it looks like a harmless site, like a neglected warehouse, but inside, it contained Iran’s nuclear archive, stored in immense safes. Several weeks ago, in a rare intelligence achievement, Israel obtained half a ton of material from those safes. And here’s what we’ve got: 55,000 pages, and another 55,000 files stored on 183 discs. Everything you’re about to see is an exact copy of the Iranian material.

  “Here’s what was found in the files: documents, presentations, plans, photos, incriminating videos, and more,” Tzur continued dramatically. “We have shared this information with the United States, which can confirm these facts. We’ll also share it with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). For years, we have known that Iran has a secret nuclear plan: the Amad Project. We can now prove that Iran is concealing the contents of this project in order to develop nuclear weapons when it can. This is an original presentation based on the files, and this is the mission: to design, manufacture and test five nuclear warheads, each equivalent to ten kilotons of TNT per missile. That’s like five of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima, loaded onto ballistic missiles.”