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

by Nathan Ronen

  Ali Baba nodded.

  “Simultaneously, I want some of your guys to walk around and try to locate the Israelis,” Iman continued. “It’s not that big a neighborhood. How many hotels could there be? And any foreigner will stick out immediately. After all, they have to buy food somewhere, or order takeout. I’ve got plenty of unfinished business with that man, Arik Bar-Nathan. He caused a lot of our people to die as martyrs in Morocco, and along with the French, thwarted out plan to kill the Moroccan king. I promise you, in the name of Allah, he’ll meet his end here!”

  Iman reached out under the table. They exchanged the masculine handshake of Al Qaeda members, undetected by anyone else’s eye. It was not considered acceptable for a man to touch a religious Muslim woman in public.

  Ali Baba remained sitting in his place. His eyes accompanied Iman al-Uzbeki’s towering figure as he doddered laboriously upon his high heels. He saw Iman change into leather sandals before dipping out of sight. He then joined the squat feminine form waiting for him outside. Finally, Ali Baba saw them entering a passing taxi and taking off.

  Ali Baba retrieved a sophisticated iPhone from his pocket, searched for Sir John’s nickname, “Saladin,” and wrote him a message on Telegram.77

  “The cobra has emerged from its lair. Seeking to bite Shylock.78 Continuing preparations for action; still no final target. I’ll know it only a few hours before activation.”

  Ali Baba did not properly estimate the extent of Iman al-Uzbeki’s paranoia. He did not trust anyone, including his deputy. Suddenly, he no longer felt safe in England and feared a trap. Therefore, he decided to disappear and resurface on another occasion when he saw fit.

  Initially, he returned Aisha to their apartment, gave her 1,000 pounds for expenses, and said he had to leave for two days for a conference of Muslim religious officials in the city of Brighton. She asked no questions. It was how she had been raised. This would prove to be the last time she saw him, and he would never see his daughter.

  The next morning, Iman al-Uzbeki showed up for work at the mosque as usual. He went down to the basement himself and concealed the suicide vests in strong black plastic bags. He later returned with the students from his Islam seminar, who were equipped with big black trash bags. He had told the students that they were packing away leftover construction and cleaning materials for recycling, thus contributing to their community’s environment. Under his supervision, they packed all the bottles, containers and bags of raw materials used to prepare the bombs into the black bags. Even in their worst nightmares, the students would never have believed that these were the basic ingredients used to prepare a powerful, lethal bomb.

  Iman thanked them and gave them a fifty-pound note so that they could take a break and buy themselves some pastries at the nearby large market. He then walked over to an internet café and searched for a moving company with a Pakistani name that also rented out storage space.

  An hour later, a moving truck showed up along with porters carrying empty cardboard boxes. Iman was present as they packed up the entire contents of the secret storeroom, based on his instructions, and transported everything to the moving company’s storage units near London Luton Airport in Bedfordshire County, about 35 miles from London city center.

  A cleaning crew comprised of Pakistani workers that he had booked began to clean out the site. They operated a powerful industrial vacuum cleaner. Iman asked them to disinfect and clean the basement with plenty of bleach in order to verify that not even a trace of DNA had been left behind to indicate what had taken place there and allow skilled trackers to follow his precious cargo. He then took the passenger seat next to the driver of the moving truck and drove with him and the movers to the storage site. They loaded the entire contents of the basement into a used steel container, converted into a storage space rented out on a periodic basis. Thousands of similar containers filled a fenced area with no questions asked about their content or the identity of the owners. Iman paid in cash for six months of storage, left a fat tip for the porters, picked up the keys for the container and called a cab.

  Iman al-Uzbeki went underground again, disappearing along with all incriminating material. After his painful failure in Morocco, from which he had escaped by the skin of his teeth, he was suspicious of Ali Baba. He was suspicious of Colonel Rizkawi. He did not trust anyone and was now recalculating his route.

  * * *

  77Telegram software provides a chat option in which messages are entirely encrypted, as well as public chat channels, in which messages can delete themselves after a specified timeframe.

  78A reference to the Jew in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; in this case, Arik Bar-Nathan.

  Chapter 55

  The Salvation Army Shelter, Whitechapel Road, London

  Arik and the Mossad team at the safe house were unaware of the fact that Iman al-Uzbeki had gone underground. They had been tracking him for a long time and now had a lead, and as skilled hunters, they had no intention of letting go. As far as they were concerned, the chase was still in progress.

  At the entrance to the Salvation Army shelter was a large sign referring patrons to the clothing stockroom where they could pick up clothes for free. Tal Ronen walked over to the shelves displaying the used clothing and chose a pair of gray baggy pants, a loose shirt, cloth shoes, a sweater, and a raggedy coat. The team members who followed him at sporadic intervals also chose locally made clothes that would allow them to blend into their surroundings. The shelves offered clothes of all kinds, styles, and sizes. They needed to look their “best” in preparation for Friday prayers the next day at the Grand Mosque.

  Their goal was tracking a lone wolf who was an extremely dangerous man. They believed he was masquerading as an imam’s assistant, teacher Ali Hassan Barqat, who was teaching Islam in East London’s large mosque in the Whitechapel neighborhood.

  However, they needed to be sure.

  Arik required positive identification. The Mossad had already suffered a humiliating misidentification, which had caused a Kidon team in July 1973 to carry out a hit on a young Moroccan man named Ahmad Bushiki under the mistaken belief that he was Ali Hassan Salameh. Salameh, nicknamed Abu Hassan or Red Prince, was one of the leaders of the Black September terrorist organization, which had massacred eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics on September 6, 1972. Ever since then, the Mossad took extra care to verify the identity of its target. In case of any doubt, the ongoing order was to cancel the mission.

  The Mossad team had already been tracking the new teacher at the mosque. In recent days, they had noticed a new bruise that appeared in the middle of his forehead, indicating that he was praying with special fervency. Iman al-Uzbeki’s previous pattern of operation clearly indicated that he was planning a mass-murder somewhere. The problem was that Arik and his team did not know where or when. But the assessment was that it should take place in the next few days.

  Planning such an attack was not the kind of work performed by the usual type of zealots. Arik was troubled by the fact that someone was helping this target move freely through the world; someone was funding him, and apparently, he had local collaborators. Only a rich country could establish such a standard, and Arik had no doubt who was behind it: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Foundation of the Oppressed.

  A Mossad operational team was completely different from a police or secret service team. First, the chance of exposure for Kidon personnel was significantly lower due to the skills, tactics, and resources at their disposal. In other words, those being hunted by Kidon agents never knew the Mossad was on their trail. In the rare cases when such people went to trial, they still did not know how they had been captured.

  In contrast, the police were fond of quick arrests, aiming to remove threats to the public as quickly as possible. However, that did not solve the problem, merely neutralized the immediate hazard. Intelligence agencies and spies wanted to exp
ose the entire infrastructure. Mossad personnel allowed their targets to continue their everyday lives and make progress in planning their attacks until the final phase, whether dealing with a suicide attack, kidnapping hostages, or mass murder. This mode of conduct enabled the members of Kidon to expose the cell in their sights, developing what they referred to as an “intelligence assessment.”

  Operational personnel had to be patient. They were always examining the situation from the inside, observing their victim’s methods of operation, financial support, recruitment and planning processes, hierarchy, and the connections between the various teams. Their goal was not to thwart a specific attack, but rather to use it in order to identify, foil, and eliminate ten others.

  The mobile command post cameras, stationed across from the mosque, filmed the large courtyard while the cameras planted by the Graces team in the mosque’s ceiling transmitted what was taking place inside it. As the congregation of worshippers streamed to the mosque, Arik noted the small number of women entering, in contrast to the hundreds of men.

  Tal Ronen, dressed like a panhandler, lay on the ground at the entrance to the mosque. His right leg was folded back, creating the false impression that it had been amputated.

  “Zero-one, can you hear me? This is Control,” Arik whispered through the system.

  “Affirmative, go on,” Tal spoke into his nano-transmitter, the size of a box of matches, hidden in his belt, its earpiece also serving as a concealed microphone.

  At that moment, a nice woman threw several coins into his cup. She seemed somewhat tense to him. Tal could see on her face that she was repulsed by his artificial stump and the stink emanating from his clothes.

  From the suite’s command post, Etty Levkovich monitored the cameras installed around the mosque and reported that the target and his wife had been spotted walking toward the mosque.

  Great news. Arik smiled to himself. He was pleased, hoping they had finally located the right man. But it was good to have another pair of eyes confirming that the correct target had indeed been spotted.

  Masha Kramer, who had been on duty in the war room during the night shift, woke up and joined Etty Levkovich with another cup of coffee. She looked at the main screen in the operations room and did not like what she saw. She believed the face visible on the screen did not quite match Iman al-Uzbeki’s face. The algorithms in her facial recognition software, Cyber Extruder Aureus 3D, made in Israel, indicated changes in the comparison of his facial features to the archived photo of the arch-terrorist. The distance between the eyes was similar, as were his height, posture and manner of walking, but something wasn’t quite computing. The program, which performed 25 million pattern comparisons per second, and was operated by artificial intelligence, determined a similarity of 80 percent, but no definite identification. Masha looked at the device again and again. She had her suspicions, and her gut feeling told her that something was wrong. But everyone was so certain that this was indeed al-Uzbeki that she didn’t want to be the killjoy once again. Therefore, she decided to keep her suspicions to herself. She had never trusted the sophisticated electronic instruments, but rather her intuition, based on a wealth of experience.

  “Zero-one to all stations,” Tal transmitted to the command post vehicle. “Target is entering the courtyard with his wife.”

  Several minutes later, he transmitted again. “Target is entering the mosque. I can issue an alert when he exits, but I can’t go in with him! I’m disabled, remember?”

  A brief smile flitted upon the faces of the warriors in the command post vehicle.

  Tal Ronen hated the intervals when the two-way radio was silent, while he waited for a preparatory order intended to launch the entire Kidon entry team into action.

  The radio silence emphasized the warrior’s loneliness throughout the long moments of waiting. He felt his legs falling asleep due to the cold infiltrating his body from the sidewalk. The chill crept into the joints of his thighs. He wiggled his toes in his ratty sneakers, trying to get the blood flowing through his body by vigorously rubbing his legs. It had started to rain, and the temperature plummeted. Therefore, those going into the mosque did not turn their gazes toward the poor beggar. Even the local police officer on patrol ignored him. He was deep undercover, his disguise proving highly successful.

  The mosque was filled to capacity. The imam stood before the mihrab,79 his gestures a silent signal to the large Muslim congregation of worshippers behind him to follow his lead.

  When the prayers ended, Alma whispered into her concealed transmitter, “All stations, this is zero-seven!” She was the youngest member of the Three Graces, a part of Team 2, dressed as a young panhandler holding what appeared to be a baby wrapped up in a blanket, at the women’s entrance to the mosque.

  “Zero-seven, this is Command, over.”

  “The women are starting to leave the mosque,” Alma reported.

  At first, the women were the only ones to leave, most of them wearing a full abaya cloak over their regular clothes. The more religious among them also wore a niqāb face covering and black gloves. Sixteen women left the mosque, all talking together. Only two of them trailed behind.

  “Command, this is zero-seven,” she whispered. “Earlier, I counted fifteen women entering the mosque. Was I wrong? I’m sure I wasn’t. Suddenly, there are sixteen women here.”

  “Zero-seven, got it. Hold on,” Arik said.

  “Command, can you hear me? This is zero-one,” Tal said.

  “Go on.”

  “This is zero-one,” Tal Ronen whispered from the men’s entrance. “I hear movement from inside the mosque. The men are starting to exit the prayer. Our guys are spread out across from all the entrances, camouflaged as custodians and gardeners. I don’t see our target. Can all stations keep an eye out for our target? It’s possible that he changed his appearance.”

  Arik looked at the ten screens in his tactical HQ vehicle. It was always necessary to stay alert to the possibility that the target with a thousand faces had changed his outfit inside the mosque. The camera on the command-post vehicle’s roof was transmitting images that were being automatically synchronized with the facial recognition program’s algorithm as well as the physical motion identification software. The camera’s software scanned the hundreds of people who had entered the mosque, comparing their physical characteristics to thousands of photos of terrorists included in the Mossad’s ‘Pool’ database.

  As the male worshippers began to leave the mosque, Tal Ronen realized that their target, with his white skullcap, black beard and gray Pakistani-style outfit, who had entered the mosque with his plump wife, was not among those leaving. Tal also remembered that the target had been wearing open brown sandals with no socks, as was the custom among Darwishes—Muslim believers, often Sufi, who devoted their lives to religion and scholarship, sometimes adopting an ascetic lifestyle.

  His sixth sense immediately told him that something was wrong.

  “This is zero-one,” he transmitted. “All stations, track all site departures. There’s a mass exodus from the mosque.”

  The large mosque, which could contain 7,000 worshippers at a time, was entirely full. The massive crowd exiting all at once made the trackers’ job difficult. Most of the men turned west, toward Altab Ali Park. This was helpful in terms of coverage for Tal, who was sitting on the southern side, but prevented him from seeing the target of the hunt.

  Most of the women headed south, away from the mosque, other than the two who had lingered behind. They were wearing full Afghan burkas and passed by Alma in their long, dark blue cloaks, which absorbed the heavy rain now falling.

  “The target’s wife was wearing a green abaya, right?” Alma asked hesitantly.

  “She won’t necessarily be leaving in the same outfit,” Arik commented.

  The two women from the mosque passed by Alma and headed north. At that moment, she heard a messa
ge from one of the trackers over the radio, which seemed misleading to her. “There’s a good possibility that the target is heading south about 150 yards from the mosque and still walking. Same outfit described when he entered the mosque. I can’t see his face right now.”

  Alma was angry at herself. Could she have made a mistake counting the women? She glanced at the two women in their blue burkas as they passed her. One was plump and short with a ripe derriere, while the other was skinny and tall. When the burka lifted as they walked, Alma noticed that one of the figures was wearing open-toe brown sandals. The shape of the foot and the curving nails were masculine, as if they belonged to someone unfamiliar with pedicures.

  That can’t be a woman’s foot, Alma thought to herself.

  “Command, this is zero-seven,” she whispered. “The target may be heading north, dressed as a woman. Full blue burka, open-toe sandals, six foot two, slim, athletic frame, walking next to another plump, short woman in a matching burka. One hundred percent a woman based on her large chest and the way she walks. The description is identical. Control, please confirm!”