Blind Mission: A Thrilling Espionage Novel

by Schmidt, Avichai

  In room 501 of the eastern wing of the Sheraton Hotel, not far from the White House, Dan Greenberg sat well fed and comfortably clothed in front of his open suitcase. He had already checked the wavelengths of all the stations received by the television in his room, then paused to enjoy the good meal he had ordered. It was reasonable to assume that, at this very moment, a clerk in the reservations office of the hotel was comparing the initials “NB” scrawled on his room service bill with the name and signature signed on his registration form when he checked in: Neal Brown.

  There was no point in putting things off. Greenberg carefully folded up his sleeves and went to work. Once again he marveled at how right his instructors had been in the army demolition course he had taken so many years before. The central idea that had guided them was simple: constant drilling, over and over, day and night. It was only the precise mastery of the smallest details, accompanied by the endless repetition of instructions until the various operations became second nature that would (perhaps) prevent a mistake. And in that profession even the smallest mistake could mean death in the best case, and horrible maiming in the worst.

  There were two wires in front of him, red and black, which he had to press into a small dough-like lump that resembled the modeling clay used by children, but was in fact a powerful plastic explosive. He took the wire probes of a current-tester and measured the output of three small batteries of the type that powered quartz wrist watches; then chose the one that was strongest. Next he heated a small soldering iron and used it to join to other wires to the two poles of the battery. He now looked at his watch and was pleased to see that the entire operation had taken less than 45 minutes.

  After arranging his tools on the table, he rose and went down to the street. At a small coffee shop not far away he ordered himself a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee, and sat down to examine the day’s newspapers; concentrating especially on the approaching conference. An hour later he returned to his room and went over the automatic procedures he had carried out previously another three times. A half hour and one cup of coffee later, after he had regained complete control over his body and thoughts, he assembled the last device. It was different from the four others: bigger and 10 times more dangerous.

  * * *

  The people began arriving at Washington’s hotels on Wednesday afternoon. They came singly, in pairs, and some even in organized groups. Among them were locals, people from other American cities, and some who came from Israel, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Two of them had even been summoned urgently from Hong Kong and Singapore. None of them knew why he or she had been told to drop everything and rush here.

  There were 80 of them, men and women. They were neither young nor old, neither ugly nor beautiful, neither short nor tall, neither thin nor fat. They did not wear glasses or hats, gloves or jewelry. An outside observer might characterize the only thing they all had in common as a lack of anything unique.

  This fact, however, was greatly significant. All of them were agents of the Mossad. Nevertheless, only a few of the other members of the Mossad had ever encountered them in their work. The “dancers” – as they were known among the secret service professionals – belonged to the surveillance unit of Israel’s security and espionage service, and usually were only called in for very special assignments; such as the hunt in South America for Adolf Eichmann in the early 1960s or the finding in Tunisia of the arch-terrorist Abu Jihad in the mid-1980s. All of them had years of experience in surveillance. They knew how not to stand out or draw any attention to themselves, even when surrounding their subject with rings upon rings of personnel and vehicles. They knew how to blend in to any surroundings, and could change their identities like chameleons form one minute to the next. Each one was considered a master of his or her field: there were those who tracked on foot or in vehicles; experts in monitoring and navigation; data banks and team leaders. The latter were the ones who now coordinated the personnel among five different hotels, which were carefully chosen for their being within walking distance of each other.

  By 4:30 p.m. all the dancers were on stage, as they said in the profession. Within a few hours they had to learn the secrets of the city and become expert at them: the main streets, alleys, one-way streets, bus lines, and overall traffic patterns. They were trained to read and to remember city maps and complicated road maps, but this time they did not need this skill; as a city of primary international importance, the capital of the United States was included in everyone’s training. Now they only needed to refresh their memories, to make note of a few recent changes in traffic patterns, and to familiarize themselves with several news skyscrapers; mainly in order to establish agreed points of reference.

  At about 8 p.m. the head of the surveillance unit, Ron Ya’acobi, received photographs of the subject. He was given five photos: full face; right and left profiles; full figure, front and rear. The latter two were life-size, prepared specially by the Mossad photo lab. Ya’acobi distributed copies among his subordinates until midnight, with no instructions other than not to let the subject out of their sight for even a second.

  By 3 a.m. everything was ready. In the parking lots of the hotels there were 14 rented cars, in the trunks of which were various changes of clothes for men and women – from fancy evening dress to well-worn track suits – and in the glove compartments of which were new, detailed road maps. Each car was equipped with a powerful communications radio, and the entire network was checked out twice before being declared operational.

  * * *

  If anyone had suggested to Marilyn Green that in her moonlighting job she was actually being operated by the Mossad, she would have laughed in his face; had she been convinced of it, however, she would have had an uncontrollable anxiety attack.

  The 26-year-old brunette, who was employed as a keyboard operator at the New York head office of one of the largest international credit card companies, had no idea of the identity of her controllers or of the importance of the information she periodically transferred to them. The $500 she received in an envelope each month when she gassed up her car at a certain station in southern Brooklyn made it extremely unlikely she would ever change her mind about helping out. It was not for any professional or intellectual quality that Marilyn Green received the regular payments, but for her unlimited access to her company’s main computer. She did not have the slightest suspicion that the information she had provided in recent years had more than once brought about the arrest or elimination of several prominent leaders in Palestinian or other terrorist groups – such as the Baader-Meinhoff gang, the Japanese Red Army, and the Irish Republican Army.

  In exchange for the money, Marilyn was asked to add some 20 names and numbers, twice a day, to the hundreds of names and account numbers which she fed into her terminal in the course of her work. If she came across some activity regarding one of the cards she was asked to check, all she had to do was dial a certain number and report the time of the transaction and the place of business.

  Once about two years before, she happened upon such a transaction just as it had taken place. She ran excitedly to a public phone in the corridor and called the number.

  “The purchase was made in the main branch of the Kaufhoff department store in Munich, Germany. The card owner was charged 248 euro,” she reported.

  The voice at the other end of the line thanked her briskly and broke the connection. Hassan Hanoun, one of the leaders of the Radical Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Europe, did not imagine that using the credit given him by his controllers could get him in trouble. He never knew that the few minutes he spent waiting for the cashier’s assistant in the shoe department on the third floor of the department store to wrap his new shoes decided his fate. Not even Marilyn Green could have made the connection between her innocent report and the news of his murder that was published the following day – even if she did read newspapers.

  Now, at 9 a.m. on Thursday, for the seventh time in the past three days, Marilyn was trying
to spot some credit card activity in the account of someone named Jennifer Robbins.

  Zero. On the screen in front of her the message flashed over and over: “No transactions.”

  * * *

  Whistling to himself, Dan Greenberg took a pair of faded jeans and a flannel shirt, crumpled them up and stuffed them into a clothes press in the entranceway of his hotel room. When he removed them a few minutes later, they looked just as ragged as he wished. He next took a razor blade and made a small slash in the shirt, then ripped one of the back pockets from the jean and made a small slash below the right knee, pulling loose several threads as a final touch. Excellent! He then went into the bathroom and took a can of shoe polish, into which he dipped the end of a damp towel, which he then used to smear several large dark stains on the jeans and a smaller one on the left shoulder of the shirt. Once more he stuffed the clothes into the press -- this time only briefly in order to dry them –and when they emerged they looked as if someone had been rolling around in the mud for them for days.

  Very good. These clothes would help him spot the people who had caused him to be there in the United States, without them spotting him. He knew they were still searching for him. The most reasonable place for them to do so, therefore, was exactly where they hoped to find him: here in Washington, near the White House. And if they were thinking about places close the official residence of the American president then Lafayette Square, Pennsylvania Avenue, and 15th and 17th streets would be logical places to begin looking.

  While continuing to work out his plan of action to himself, he stripped and put on his rags. He then put on a straw-colored wig, one of those he had bought in New York, and contemplated one of the plastic scars; but finally overcame his impulse to stick it on. At last he stood before the mirror. He extracted the lace from his right shoe and left the other one untied. Charmin! Nobody would recognize him, and more importantly: his image was now so repulsive that it was reasonable to assume no one would stop to give him a second glance.

  But he had one remaining problem: he could not leave the hotel this way. Sighing, he stripped again and put on proper attire; stuffing his costume into a plastic bag.

  A little after 10 a.m. a vagrant dressed in torn jeans left the public toilets at the bus station near Pennsylvania Avenue. No one paid any attention to the dirty tramp who made his way towards the avenue. He looked like one of the homeless who cruised the area, and like them had probably spent the night on a bench in the park.

  And now where? Dan Greenberg knew that if he were in charge of the searchers hunting for someone near the White House, he would first of all set up hidden observation points at each entrance to the avenue leading to the president’s residence. Similarly, he would have five or six people cover the various entrances to the White House itself, with two persons on the main entrance. Here the emplacement was simpler, since these people could easily conceal themselves among the tourists swarming over the place every hour of the day. It was thus better to concentrate on the entrance to the avenues; there it would be easier for him to spot the watcher.

  Dan slowly began to advance up the street. From time to time he would stop at a garbage bin and sift through its contents. As repulsive as this action was, it suited his disguise and gave him the time he needed to comb the surrounding area carefully. No; the person he was looking for was not one of the phone company technicians setting up a portable shelter in the middle of the road in order to install underground cables. They weren’t mobile enough, and their emplacement was too complicated to be fake. It also wasn’t the hot dog vendor at the next intersection. Such vendors needed a municipal license to stand there with their carts. Without a license, the city inspectors would swoop down on them like birds of prey. It could certainly be the man and woman sitting in the blue car parked at the sidewalk. They aroused his suspicions because they were absorbed in a road map far too long. It could also be the street sweeper in brown overalls a little further down the street. Anyone could put on work clothes and pick up a broom, stand on the corner and pretend to work; nobody would pay any attention to a street cleaner. And maybe the sweeper is a partner of the man and woman in the car? Dan turned and began walking back the way he came, checking to see if all the watchers were still in place.

  * * *

  In parallel to the dancers, another unit had been activated: the “parasites”. This arm of Israeli intelligence was established following the murder of the Israeli sportsmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when the Mossad was searching for Ali Hassan Salameh, the man behind the heinous attack. Ads were placed in the classified sections of Israeli papers seeking Israeli citizens who had mother-tongue fluency in a second language. There are many people in Israel like this – the children of immigrants from all over the world who continued to speak their native language with them. The Mossad had no difficulty recruiting people who could be sent abroad and be considered – after the appropriate training and familiarization – to be natives; but only after it was determined that they were capable of quickly forming whatever social ties were necessary for gleaning information. A few months after the idea was raised, the first of the new recruits – some of them even having citizenship of the countries they were sent to – arrived to comb the pavements of the large cities of Europe. They sat on benches in Austrian cafes, spun on the stools of the bars in Germany, spread out in French restaurants, rubbed elbows in Italian espresso bars, packed into British pubs, and even visited mosques in an effort to establish contact with anyone who looked like an Arab. Results were not slow to come, and the information collected was of startling importance. The parasites unit quickly expanded. Now centers were established in North and South America, in Africa, and Australia.

  Larry Stevens was the name of the commander of the U.S. unit. On Thursday morning he studied the photo he had received, then slipped it into the inside jacket pocket of his blue suit. He took a small communications radio and clipped it to his belt, running a microphone down his left sleeve, where he secured it with a special clasp. Next he put on a pair of special sunglasses, and checked the operation of the miniature earphones built into the frame. Everything was in order. He then drove to the parking lot closest to the White House, got out and straightened his suit, and walked towards the street.

  The morning was almost gone and nothing was happening.

  * * *

  Yes; it was the third time he had noticed the man in the blue suit. There was something in the man’s behavior that Dan Greenberg didn’t like. He thought for a while and then finally figured out what it was: the man was too elegant. Men in custom-made suits don’t usually walk around for fun; their type is always hurrying, always rushing somewhere. They also usually carried fancy briefcases, unless they were on their way to a restaurant for lunch – and it was only 11. No! The man did not fit in to the human environment of this hour of the morning, decided Greenberg. He had to find out what the man was looking for.

  For a quarter of an hour, Greenberg followed the man in the blue suit down the avenue; until he was almost certain that he was right in his estimation. The man walking along and carefully examining the passersby was not here for pleasure. And why did he raise his left arm from time to time and draw it towards him? Was there perhaps a microphone hidden in the sleeve of the well-dressed young man? Greenberg decided to check him out.

  Dan needed another 10 minutes to complete a flanking maneuver that placed him some 100 meters ahead of the man he was stalking. While sifting through a garbage bin near the edge of the sidewalk he could now steal a glance at the man as he approached, without arousing suspicion. The man lifted his left arm again, and Greenberg didn’t take his eyes off of him. Though he tried to cover his mouth with his hand, Greenberg could see his lips moving. He froze. Had the man spotted him? Had he shown more curiosity than the circumstances demanded? Had he been identified?

  His heart beat faster and his breathing quickened. It seemed to him that the man was coming straight towards him, but taking an eternity to do so. No
w the man in the blue suit was just a few steps away. No; the man was not ignoring him at all! He was appraising him for a long moment, and with great interest.

  Greenberg was busy pulling out a filthy can of Coca-Cola from the depths of the garbage bin. He held it up and shook it as if trying to see whether there was still something to drink, then wiped the top of the heel of his hand, put the can to his lips, and swallowed the nonexistent drink.

  The man in the blue suit turned away in disgust, and without a second thought moved to the other side of the sidewalk. No; he had not identified Dan. With a look of satisfaction, Greenberg crushed the can in his hand and threw it back into the bin; while taking the opportunity to steal a quick glance to the right and verify that he was not mistaken. There were earphones in the frames of the man’s sunglasses. Now Dan knew the man was equipped with a sophisticated communications system.

  It was nearly 11:30 and the man had almost reached the White House. Something drew Dan’s attention and he immediately knew what it was: the blue Ford – the one that had been parked at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue!

  The tramp stood and waited. There was no doubt. He positively identified the man and woman sitting in the front seat. The young man in the blue suit advanced down the sidewalk towards them, and Dan held his breath. The next moment he knew that his assessment was right. Only someone watching the trio with great concentration could see the slight hand movement of the man as he walked past, and the almost imperceptible nod of the head by the man in the car.

  It was now clear to Dan beyond all doubt that these people were connected to one another. He also knew for certain that they were all looking for him. It was obvious to him that he now had to concentrate on the couple in the car. They, he believed, would lead him to the top; to the man he wanted more than anything, because he had turned his life upside down and was trying to control him like a puppet on a string – to the man in charge of the Mossad, Nahum Porat.