by Brad Taylor
A day and a half ago, the police had come storming into the upper balcony of the church, waving weapons and screaming at everyone to freeze. Which, of course, caused everyone to run.
Jennifer and I had remained where we were, me protecting the unconscious body holding the bomb from some idiot stepping on it, and her restraining the jackass from New York. Soon enough, we were the only ones on the upper deck. The police took one look at the body at my feet and went batshit, shouting into radios and waving guns in my face.
Aaron and Shoshana made it up to us, and began talking reason. The police called in an EOD team to dismantle the bomb, and while we were waiting, the man wearing it began to wake up. I put him back to sleep, which is to say I bounced his head against the stone, and that was it. We were arrested despite Aaron’s proclamations of innocence.
The cops bundled Jennifer and me up, shouting in Hebrew at Aaron, and he said, “Pike, I’ll get you out. They want to know who the other man is. Is he a threat?”
The New Yorker and his wife were off to the side, waving their arms in the air and demanding to be let go. I said, “I don’t know if he’s a threat, but he tried to stop me from taking that guy down.”
Yeah, I’m an asshole, but he would think twice before acting like a jerk again. I’m pretty sure he spent the rest of his Holy Land tour in a jail cell.
Jennifer said, “Pike, that’s not fair.” But it was too late to take the words back even if I’d wanted to. They cuffed him and his wife. The last I saw of them, she was cussing him out and trying to slap his head with her manacled hands, the police fighting to keep her off of him.
We’d spent the rest of the time in a jail cell, getting interrogated by one guy after another, and giving them nothing—because I had no idea what the risk would be to Shoshana and Aaron, and I wasn’t going to place them in someone’s crosshairs.
The second night we’d been allowed to sleep, and early the next morning a new man entered the cell all by himself. He was older than the others, maybe sixty-five. Maybe more. He said, “Do you know who I am?”
On the bench, Jennifer caught my eye, saying nothing, but telling me not to treat this guy like I had the last. And I thought she was right. This man had an air about him.
I said, “No, sir. I don’t.”
He nodded and said, “You did a great service two days ago. One that must remain hidden, unfortunately. Can you do that?”
I said, “So you found out the border police guy was in on it. And now you can’t let that be known.”
He grimaced and said, “Yes, but it’s more than just protecting a reputation. If his role is exposed, the status quo of the holy sites will be placed into jeopardy, and with it, more death and destruction will occur. More protests, more killing, more everything. The people will turn it into a conspiracy of epic proportions. You have no idea how a little bit of truth can be turned into a monument of lies.”
Having lived through Abu Ghraib, I was all too familiar with it. I’d captured plenty of foreign fighters in Iraq who’d been convinced that we were raping whole villages on a Christian crusade solely because of the pictures from that travesty.
I said, “I get it. Trust me, I do. There was an Islamic Waqf member who was captured. He was not involved. What happened to him?”
“How do you know he wasn’t involved?”
“I just do. Please tell me you aren’t cleaning him up as a loose end as well.”
He chuckled and said, “You’re wrong. He was involved. But he was tricked. He thought he was doing good. He was not, but he’ll be okay. We aren’t evil.”
So that’s why Shoshana said he was hiding something.
I remained quiet and he said, “I’ll ask again, how did you know about him?”
I said, “Look, we’ll keep our mouths shut. You guys do what you guys do. We have no reason to get involved here. We just came to visit friends, and we stopped two terrorist attacks. I’d think that would matter.”
He said, “You have yet to ask to see your embassy. Why is that?”
I said, “I don’t want to get them involved. If I do, it’ll be just one more problem.”
He nodded and said, “Because you have something to hide as well, perhaps?”
My temper slipped against my will. I said, “Because I’m trying to help you assholes out. Fine. I demand to see my embassy. I’ve had enough of this shit.”
He’d laughed at that point, banging on the cell door for the guard. He turned back to me and said, “Shoshana told me you would only take so much. But I had to be sure you could remain quiet. I appreciate it. As does the state of Israel. Of course, you’ll get no official thanks.”
My mouth fell open and he said, “You’re free to go. You only have about an hour to get to the wedding.” He handed me a card with nothing but Hebrew lettering on it, and said, “You’ll need that to get in.”
He’d left at that point, without even telling me who he was. The young guard had released our handcuffs, returned our property, and we were unceremoniously kicked out onto the streets of Jerusalem. We’d called Aaron, then Shoshana, but neither had answered.
Jennifer said, “Let’s go to the Temple Mount. Maybe they really are getting married.”
We’d gotten our bearings, learning we were at a police station northwest of the Old City, about a mile away. We flagged a cab and raced to the Jaffa Gate, the cabbie telling us the whole way that the important sites in the city were on lockdown and that he could give us a tour of something else.
We thanked him, exited, and went through the gate into the Armenian Quarter, the stone streets now swarming with military personnel. We ran east, entered the Jewish Quarter, and were stopped at the stairwell leading to the plaza of the Western Wall, the area ringed with men holding weapons. I presented the card the man had given us, and like had happened before with Aaron’s pass, the guard’s eyes went wide, and he called his superior.
That guy came over, and he, too, was impressed. He made a radio call, said a few words, stiffened at the response, and let us in.
Jennifer said, “What is on that card?”
I said, “I have no idea, but I’m keeping it. Hopefully it works in other countries as well.”
She smiled and we jogged down the steps, breaking into the plaza and finding it deserted, except for a small grouping in the center. Jennifer saw a patch of cloth held aloft in the air, like it was set up to protect someone from the sun, and she said, “That’s the chuppah. That’s the wedding.”
We jogged forward toward the crowd and a policeman came forward, stopping us. He said something in Hebrew, and I said, “I don’t speak that shit. English.”
Taken aback, he said, “I’m sorry. This is closed to outsiders.”
Aggravated to no end, I thought about just punching him, when someone shouted. We both turned, seeing Shoshana parting the crowd. She was wearing a white dress that went all the way to the ground, and she was grinning from ear to ear. Behind her was Aaron, also wearing white.
Shoshana locked eyes with the policeman, a little bit of the dark angel coming out, then turned to us, smiling again and waving us forward. Like a light switch had been flicked on and then off, it caused the policeman to melt away.
We ran forward, the small crowd staring at us as though we were intruders. Shoshana wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. Aaron kissed Jennifer on the cheek. The mood of the audience shifted, now realizing we were special, and I felt like thumbing my nose at the group. I doubt Shoshana had hugged any of them, and I’m sure Aaron hadn’t kissed them. Because outside of Shoshana, Jennifer was the only woman there.
Aaron said, “I didn’t think you guys would make it. I’m so sorry for your troubles. I’ve been calling anyone who I thought could help.”
I’d said, “Well, you finally hit someone who matters. Who was he?”
“The Ramsad who put Shoshana on my t
eam years ago. He has a soft spot for her.”
I’d laughed, saying, “Well, with you, that makes two people on the planet.”
He’d said, “No, with you, that makes three.”
Shoshana hit me on the shoulder and said, “There’s more than three.”
I smiled and said, “Prove it.”
Jennifer said, “I make four.”
Shoshana smiled and said, “You make more than four. You’re worth at least two of Pike.”
I laughed and said, “You got that right.”
She took Aaron’s hand and said, “If you know that, then why did she have to put a note in the wall?”
Jennifer’s mouth fell open and Shoshana said, “Aaron knows my worth. It’s why I didn’t write a note like Jennifer. It’s why I’m getting married.”
She started leading Aaron back through the crowd, toward the rabbi waiting expectantly. I said, “Wait, what’s that mean?”
She turned and said, “You’ll figure it out, Nephilim. If the last few days have shown me anything, it’s that you always do.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRAD TAYLOR is the author of the New York Times bestselling Pike Logan series. He served for more than twenty years in the US Army, including eight years in 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, commonly known as Delta Force. He retired as a Special Forces lieutenant colonel and now lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Read on for an exclusive extended excerpt of Brad Taylor’s
OPERATOR DOWN
A Pike Logan Thriller
Available January 9, 2018, wherever books and ebooks are sold.
1
Being a spy is a lot like being a bank robber. In espionage—as in crime—it’s always the little things that get you. You can plan for an entire operation, allowing for one contingency after another, foreseeing when and where things might go wrong, but you inevitably miss the little things. A drop of sweat on a doorknob, drywall shavings left behind after the installation of a bug, a nick from a tension wrench in the brass plate of a lock. Small things with huge impacts.
In this case, the little thing happened before Aaron Bergmann had even left Israel, when a travel voucher routed through Mossad headquarters included a man who had been specifically excluded from the mission read-on. For a specific reason. And that little thing would prove devastating for Aaron and his neophyte apprentice.
Casually tapping the tablet in front of him, Aaron said, “Alex, turn just a tad bit to the right. I’m missing the man on the left.”
Across the table from him Alexandra Levy shifted slightly, her face aglow. She said, “This is so exiting! Straight out of a James Bond movie.”
He chuckled, then said, “Right there. Good.” He hit record on the tablet.
Alex stiffened a little bit, as if she were posing for a photographer, holding her angle. She whispered, “That thing will really read their lips? Tell us what they’re saying?”
Aaron said, “Yep. If you can keep the camera on them, but don’t look so rigid. Relax a little. I’ll tell you if it shifts off.”
Aaron continued manipulating a piece of software in his tablet, something that was highly classified and usually reserved for active Mossad agents. A simple button camera in Alexandra’s blouse was tied by Bluetooth to his tablet and seemed to be out of a 007 movie, but in truth, both were commercially available to anyone who wanted them. The secret was the software churning through what the camera sent it.
Artificial intelligence for facial recognition had grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, and the Mossad had taken that in a different direction, focusing on the spoken word. They’d replicated the human act of lipreading in the cyberworld, designing a software suite that could decipher what was being said without hearing sound.
Alex relaxed her body a bit, contrition floating across her face. “Sorry. This isn’t my expertise. You should be doing the camera work.”
He laid the tablet on the table and took a sip of beer, saying, “You’re doing fine. This beats working in the diamond exchange, right? Keep up the talent and I might recruit you for my firm.”
She grinned and said, “No, no, this is enough excitement. I enjoy being able to help—I’ve never even been to Africa—but I’ll stick with my boring job.”
There was no fear in the statement. No realization of the risk. It was like she thought they were executing a high school senior prank. She had no idea of the threat level.
That would come later.
She glanced over the balcony toward their target and said, “Besides, I don’t think your partner would agree to that. I think she hates me.”
Three people sat at the table they were filming, two white and one black. Their target was a man of about thirty-five, and unlike the rest of the patrons in the restaurant, he was dressed in a suit as if he were still working in his office in Israel. The other white man looked like he was about to head out on a safari, wearing cargo pants and a shirt that had more pockets than a photographer’s vest. He had shaggy blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and a feral quality. Aaron had seen his type plenty of times before, but only in war zones. It intrigued him.
The final man was tall, with a thin mustache and coal-black skin. He was dressed like a local but didn’t act like one. Ramrod straight, he showed not a whit of humor. Had they held the meeting at a café in downtown Johannesburg—where the target was staying—they would have attracted attention by their very disparate appearances, but they didn’t here. Which explained why Aaron’s target had chosen this restaurant. The one thing remaining was to find out why the meeting was occurring.
The only man Aaron recognized was the one the Mossad had asked him to track—an employee of a diamond broker in Tel Aviv. The other two were a mystery, but he’d know about them soon enough, when they reviewed the footage later.
The primary problem with the lipreading software was choosing a language—try to lip-read German when the target was speaking Chinese and you’d get gibberish. Here, in the township of Soweto, just outside the city center of Johannesburg, South Africa, he was sure they were speaking English. There was no way the black man spoke Hebrew, and he would be astounded if his target from Israel spoke something like Swahili or Afrikaans. No, they’d be speaking English, and the fact that his method of recording the conversation came through in visual rather than auditory form was a plus in the current environment.
The outdoor balcony they were on belonged to a restaurant called Sakhumzi, as did the patio holding the target’s table. Just a stone’s throw from the historical houses of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu, in the section of Soweto known as Orlando West, the restaurant hosted a smorgasbord of local food and native performers and was a permanent stop for tour groups large and small traveling to see the ghetto made famous in the uprising against apartheid. Because of it, there was a constant drumbeat of laughter and clapping—something that had no effect on the lipreading software. As long as Aaron could keep a line of sight with whoever was talking.
Aaron focused on the computer, tapping icons and ensuring three computer-generated squares remained over the men’s mouths. He said, “Position is good. Keep that.” When he hadn’t responded to Alex’s statement, she repeated, “Your partner doesn’t care for me at all. I thought she was going to throw me out of your house.”
Aaron looked up from the tablet and said, “Shoshana? She doesn’t hate you. She’s just mad because I brought you instead of her. She was aggravated at me for the decision. It’s nothing personal.”
Making sure not to disrupt the camera angle, she said, “I don’t think so. When you left the room, she was . . . a little scary.”
Aaron laughed and returned to the tablet, offhandedly saying, “You need to get to know her. She’s not all knives and death threats. She just acts that way. She understands that she didn’t have the knowledge base for this mission. When we fly back, I’ll take yo
u to dinner. The three of us.”
Alex smiled and said, “I’d like that. I think she thought . . .”
Aaron looked up from the tablet and said, “Thought what?”
“That we . . . I mean, you and me . . . might . . .”
Aaron scoffed and said, “You’re twenty years younger than me.”
She said, “Yeah, but it was the Mossad that asked me . . . you asked me . . . I mean, they wouldn’t do that unless it was for a reason.”
Aaron realized she thought she really was in a movie. And that she was hitting on him. A twentysomething sabra who worked inside the Israeli diamond exchange, she was no doubt attractive. Brown hair, brown eyes, liquid skin, and a quiet intelligence surrounded by an innocence he no longer possessed, he would have hunted her like a wolf a decade ago, but no longer. She deserved to live in her innocence. His entire existence was ensuring people like her could do so. He decided to put an end to the fantasy.
“Alex, I picked you because you understand the diamond market. Yes, you’re attractive, which meant I could use you to blend in, but I need your knowledge. Period. You watch the tape, you tell me what they’re talking about within the diamond world, and I write an assessment. That’s it. This isn’t a complex thing. We’re not here to save Israel from Blofeld. We’re here to save Israel from embarrassment. That’s all. It’s a simple mission.”
Turning red, she tilted forward and whispered, “What does that mean? I wasn’t suggesting anything.”
