Final Stop, Algiers: A Thriller

by Mishka Ben-David

  And apart from him, perhaps.

  I’d meant to sleep at my parents’ home but instead, as soon as I reached Haifa, I took the next train back to Tel Aviv. I needed to lay out before Niki all my fears and all my love. To find with her, a way of keeping us together. From my point of view, that would mean her being out of Udi’s squad.

  I arrived home just before midnight. Niki wasn’t there. Her little trolley bag was in the entrance hall. I went down to the garage. Our car was gone.

  The blood was hammering at my temples as I started the motorcycle and set out for the base. The parking lot there was visible through the fence and our car was standing there. So was Udi’s. I felt as if my body was imploding. I hadn’t slept for three days and nights but I had to know what was going on. I stayed there, standing next to my bike and watching, for over an hour, in the shadow of a deserted industrial structure opposite the entrance to the base, perspiring from suppressed tension.

  At two a.m., Udi left the main building. He was stooped and walked with heavy steps to his car without looking left or right, threw his bag onto the backseat, laboriously plunked himself behind the wheel, and drove off. I expected Niki to follow immediately after him but she didn’t. For about half an hour I kept on burning like a fire out there, debating whether to go in and have it out with her, but I knew that in my overheated state, I would ruin everything. What if she had simply gone back to sleep at the base because she didn’t want to stay at home alone, after everything she’d been through? And what if Udi had simply been there to write up his mission reports, so they’d be with the division chief and the director of the Mossad next morning?

  My bike’s engine roared when I started it and I left my helmet off to let my head cool down as I rode back home.

  The insistent ringing of the phone woke me a few minutes past eight. It took me a moment to realize where I was.

  “Everyone’s here already, waiting for you,” I heard the voice of Irit, the secretary. Shit. I had collapsed onto the bed in my clothes and hadn’t set the alarm. I looked around and saw Niki hadn’t come home.

  I quickly got myself organized to leave, and when I looked at my mobile phone I saw that I’d missed three calls, all of them from the apartment during the time I was on the train to and from Haifa.

  This time again it was the deputy chief, Jack, who came to debrief us. The chief may have been with the squads that had gone to Ukraine or Latvia, Switzerland or Germany – we weren’t given any information about them. There was some criticism of the methods we’d chosen to carry out our mission, to the effect that they were too simple and too open. We were told that two firemen had been injured, something we had not intended, and that prevented any dialogue with the Austrian authorities on the subject of the two companies.

  “If they were people we could talk to from the start, then we wouldn’t have needed this operation,” Moshik remarked.

  After the technical part of the debriefing, in which each operative described exactly where he had stood, what he had seen, where he had moved to, and all the others said whether they thought it could have been done better and more efficiently, Udi announced that the team would be on leave until the beginning of the next week – two days, plus the weekend. Then he told me to come to his office. I looked at Niki, who hadn’t uttered a sound during the debriefing, apart from describing her part. She wouldn’t let me catch her eye.

  “Am I to understand that you two have broken up?” Udi let fly at me as soon as he’d closed the door and before he sat down at his desk. My heart dropped. Was this what Niki had told him?

  “I didn’t know we have to talk to you about what goes on between us.”

  “Boaz” – this time he made sure to let me know he was speaking as my commander, that this was a formal and not a personal conversation – “I am not a marriage counsellor. I have only one thing on my mind, operations. I am asking you because I have to know, for operational reasons.”

  “What’s the connection? From your point of view, anyway, we are not a couple. Make whatever plans you have to.”

  “I asked you a simple question. Can you answer it?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her about it yet, so do you expect me to discuss it with you?”

  “Don’t worry, I do not take or deliver messages between the two of you. Tell her later whatever and however you want to tell her. I have to know …”

  “If you don’t deliver messages, how do you know precisely what is happening?” I interrupted. “Look, right now you’re giving me a message from her.”

  “When the driver tells me you went to your parents, and then Ruth comes to sleep in her room at the base, one doesn’t have to be a big genius to see something’s gone wrong between you. And I also heard what you had to say before.”

  “‘Something’s gone wrong’ is a correct description. And that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

  “Does that mean I have to find another couple for the mission in Algeria?”

  This destination was news to me. “I thought it was Tehran or Damascus?”

  “That was urgent, we couldn’t wait for you, and other teams have already set out. Right now we’re prepping people for Beirut and Algiers, and I’ve made it clear that the state your relationship is in makes it impossible for me to give you Beirut. Algiers is a little easier for foreigners but the mission itself is a little complicated.”

  I grasped what Udi was telling me. There was an important mission, about which I still knew nothing, and there were other people who would execute it if I said no. And no, I did not want another couple to go there. I wanted to be there. I had to be there.

  “You don’t need us as a couple. You need us as two operatives with the cover of a couple. And that’s what you have. All the rest is none of your business.”

  “It’s more complex than the way you’ve put it. The mission requires you to behave like a couple, and at the moment it doesn’t look like you can do it. I’m also looking to the future, beyond Algiers. I have to know what’s happening between you.”

  “What’s happening between us is not even clear to me,” I said finally. “But I think that even if we do stay together, both of us won’t remain part of this team.”

  “You’re thinking about leaving?”

  “Me?” I was astonished. “No. But I don’t think I can go on when Ruth’s here too.” I could also be formal and use her codename.

  “Because?”

  “We’ve already spoken about it. Ask yourself.”

  “Don’t think you’re acting in a film here, Boaz. It doesn’t suit you. Ruth is an outstanding operative. I do not want to lose either you or her.”

  “You’ll have to choose.”

  Udi sighed. “Again, I’m not your marriage counsellor. As I see it, what you’re saying now is that I don’t have a couple for the Algiers operation. It’s a pity but I’ll have to live with it. The State of Israel will have to live with it. Whatever the case, I’ll have to know where the thing stands. From her I have not heard any notions about leaving. For me, she is in. On Sunday, when we get back from leave, tell me where you stand.”

  I felt the ground trembling under my feet. This could be a twist in the plot that I hadn’t thought of. Niki staying, with me or without me. I had perceived our relationship as her condition for joining and staying in the Mossad. Was there a substitute for that, for me? Namely Udi?

  When I left his office, I felt that my ability to resolve the triangle of me-Niki-the Mossad, or me-Niki-Udi, was slight. And somehow I lacked the energy to have it out with Niki, now that I had been faced with the possibility that she would stay on in any case.

  I slipped into Moshik’s office when I saw him sitting there, to avoid having to go past the room where Niki was.

  “What’s the story with Algiers?” I asked him, without any preliminaries.

  Moshik had seen me going into the meeting with Udi, and apparently assumed that Udi had briefed me. He wasn’t the most discreet of men, as I had already learn
ed, and he willingly filled me in.

  “Since we wrecked the Iranian supply route to Gaza via Sudan with that air raid, and since you bumped off their Khartoum office staff, almost all their weapons assistance has been going through Damascus and from there to Beirut. Half stays with Hezbollah, and the other half is shipped by sea to El Arish, and from there in tunnels to Gaza. That route has also been given quite effective negative treatment, some of it by other Mossad squads and some by the naval commandos and the air force. You’ve heard of the attacks on convoys in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, and the seizure of boats carrying arms. But recently alarming amounts have been coming in, and there are indications that the Iranians have found a new corridor – via Algeria and from there direct to Beirut.

  “How come Algeria? It’s a long way off the route.”

  “You know that in recent years there’s been a civil war going on there, with about a hundred thousand dead, because the Islamic party won the elections and the army didn’t let it take over the government. So the Iranians have hitched a ride on the situation there.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “In the beginning they funded and armed the Islamist militias, who perpetrated worse acts of terrorism in Algeria than anywhere else in the world, but as it wasn’t happening in Israel it didn’t make the headlines here. When the Iranians saw that wasn’t helping – because the Algerian army also massacres without thinking twice – they apparently did a deal with the army. If it permitted them to use Algeria as a hub for weapons shipments, they’d stop arming the militias. It’s not altogether clear,” he added when he saw the perplexed expression on my face, “but what is clear is that the situation is enabling them to ship arms via both air and sea, in the guise of innocent cargo. If it’s by air, they change the planes’ call signs, markings and flight numbers, and they continue on to Lebanon as if they were Algerian aircraft. We have to do something about it.”

  “What’s that something?”

  “First, to get a grip of what’s actually happening. What planes or ships are bringing the stuff in, and how it is then sent on to Lebanon. Other units are trying to find out what exactly the Iranian involvement is in Algeria, and who in the government is working with them. Then it will be decided how to act and against whom.”

  “And what’s our role?”

  “After Udi made it known that you had potential as a couple, it was decided that part of the intelligence gathering would be up to you, and we’ve been waiting for you to be free and ready for it.”

  “When you say ‘you,’ you mean Ruth and me?”

  “Correct. It needs impeccable cover, which she has, and when you’re teamed up with her, it extends to you too.”

  “And aren’t there any others like us in the other teams?”

  “Each team is tailor-made according to the requirements of the mission and there are already teams doing what they have to do. After we analyzed the Algiers mission, it was clear that a couple was needed. You surely don’t want Ruth to be teamed up with someone else,” he chuckled, not knowing that he was treading on very sensitive ground.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, you’re taking me into matters of cover, which I don’t know about and don’t want to go into. But I’ll tell you what I do know, intelligence-wise. We’ll have operatives in Iran to report when a consignment is dispatched. Intelligence will keep track of the plane or the ship, and your job will be to keep a lookout on the airfield, or the port, or both, and to identify the arrival of this kind of cargo, and report when it departs. Then there’ll be a team in Beirut to observe their arrival there and complete the puzzle.”

  “Sounds a bit far-fetched,” I said. “How are we supposed to know precisely which plane or ship is the one.”

  “You don’t know everything yet and you aren’t familiar with all of our capabilities,” Moshik put me in my place. “If it’s a ship, there’s no problem at all, because you’ll be able to keep a lookout from your hotel room in Algiers. I’ve already located a suitable hotel. If it’s a plane, you’ll get exact intelligence on the time of departure, the model, the colours, and there will be a whole array of means of knowing exactly when it is due to land and ready for take-off. You’ll just have to verify the flag change and so on. You don’t need to know any more.”

  “It’s still not clear why a couple’s is needed, or particularly airtight cover.”

  “This is a job that will take time. For example, we don’t know if the ships are unloaded in the port and the containers are then loaded onto other vessels, or if they change their names and flags and sail on from there, and that will require a stay of a few days in Algiers, in your hotel, or even recon patrols in the port itself. And if it’s a plane that takes off in Iran, let’s say in the afternoon or the evening, then you’ll have to be at your lookout post at night, and our research has told us that’s a place where no normal foreigner could have any logical reason for being and that there are security patrols there. From what I understand, the planners reached the conclusion that your cover is just about the only one that will work: an artist who has decided to paint the sunset from that point, or Algiers by night, and it’s better that he’s got a girlfriend with him so if they stay there until late at night they can pretend to be lovers who couldn’t control their passion, or something like that.”

  Moshik noticed my dismay and saw fit to add: “Don’t take me at my word. As I’ve said, I don’t deal with cover stories. Just heard some things.”

  “Why does it have to be us? Surely the huge Mossad can find male and female operatives with cover that entails having sex before, during and after?”

  “I agree with you that this is a dumb kind of moral code,” Moshik bent over towards me and whispered, “because whenever we put a male and a female into the field with the cover of a couple, even when they don’t have to fuck, they never pass up the opportunity.” He burst out laughing. “But the huge Mossad has found original solutions, and I know of at least another two teams that have already had such missions, because they came up with the required operational tool. That is to say, they picked the right operatives and custom-built their cover according to the mission and the circumstances on the ground.”

  I exhaled the air that had been trapped in my lungs. The ship mission sounded simple, the aircraft one more complicated, and both seemed to be important. But so far I didn’t feel a sense of compulsion or commitment. Moshik apparently detected this, and again he bent towards me.

  “You still have to get the intelligence in an orderly fashion. But only so you’re not in for a surprise, I’ll tell you this: because of the situation in Jordan and Syria, all kinds of characters on our wanted list have been looking for places to take it easy, outside of the region. Algeria is accepting them with open arms. Bassam al-Sultan went there not long ago, and we know he’s taken up residence in a nice house overlooking the sea in the Casbah.”

  While Moshik was imagining the hotel room overlooking the port or the slopes of the hill overlooking the airfield, I was now picturing the narrow alleys of the Casbah. There, living in relative peace and quiet, was Bassam al-Sultan, the top of the pyramid responsible for killing Dolly and five other people in that particular suicide bombing, and the deaths of dozens of others and the wounding of many hundreds in other terrorist attacks both before and after it. This was reason enough for me to do everything necessary to get there.

  The tension between Niki and me wasn’t a secret in the squad, and I saw the anticipation on the faces of my colleagues as I walked up to Niki, who was concentrating on some paperwork.

  “I’m done here. You coming?”

  She turned to me. Her downcast features lit up for a moment, and then darkened again. She had not seen in my face what she had hoped to see.

  “I’m coming,” she said, and tidied her desktop with a few absent-minded movements.

  I’d arrived in a taxi that morning because it was raining heavily so we naturally went home together in our car, which was in the
car park from the previous night.

  There was no way that I could put off talking about the things between us that had to be cleared up.

  “I don’t know yet about the upcoming mission, but I want you to leave the squad after it’s finished,” I said. “This whole set-up, with you and me under Udi, with Udi manipulating us however he sees fit, with him teaming you up with himself – I can’t live with it.”

  “I know. I’ve spoken to him about it.”

  “And …?”

  Niki raised her beautiful eyes to look at me. “You are important to me. Our relationship is important to me. But if it has suddenly just about broken up about nothing, or perhaps about stuff that crossed your mind and that never actually happened, then I don’t know. I don’t know if my leaving the squad will solve anything. Something else will crop up to make you jealous. I think you have to learn to get over it.”

  She was talking like someone who’d been in psychological counselling.

  “It is not exactly jealousy,” I replied with the answer I’d worked out in advance over the past few hours. “It’s knowing clearly that someone in my immediate surroundings is doing whatever he feels like doing with my woman.”