by Brad Thor
He didn’t want her modeling because he wanted to keep her dependent upon him, for everything. The schedule, the insane travel, the assignments—all of it conspired to keep her isolated. Even when she did meet men from the Mossad, it was always when they were in the field. And the ones she liked were never assigned to her team more than once.
And then there was the work. While the pay was better, she was still in the sex trade. Bentzi, for lack of a better word, was simply an overeducated, government-employed pimp. He paid her, housed her, picked out her clothes, and told her where to go and what to do. She wasn’t a Mossad agent, she was a Mossad asset and she carried no delusions to the contrary.
She was nothing more than a tool—a tool that Bentzi, and on a grander scale, Israel, could use to secure things it wanted. Tools were hard, cold objects that waited to be picked up for a job. Once that job was through, they were hung up, put in a box, or cast aside.
Maybe some affection from Bentzi would have made a difference. She caught snatches of it from time to time. It was why she liked to drink with him.
If they were someplace he felt safe, like the house by the sea, sometimes she could get him to go beyond a second drink. That’s when the real Bentzi came out. Unfortunately, those times were too few and much too far in between. They weren’t enough to nourish a person. She needed more and there was a very good chance that Bentzi didn’t have more in him. The only way she was ever going to find what she needed was to get out.
But to get out, she needed a plan. Pierre Damien was it.
The fact that Bentzi believed she had fallen for him stunned her. She was a good actress, probably better than most, but she had never been able to fool him about anything. When she said she hadn’t fallen for him, she had meant it.
Nevertheless, he had decided to recall her. It wasn’t like Bentzi. Some jobs took longer than others. He knew that. She had never failed him before. She wouldn’t start now. She just needed more time.
This wasn’t about Bentzi. It wasn’t even about Israel. This was about her. If she had given him what he wanted, the assignment would already be over. She wasn’t ready yet. There was still something she had to put in place. When it was done, she would gladly give Bentzi everything, and then she would disappear.
Sitting in her apartment, she understood the pressure he was under. And though she had not seen Bentzi’s boss, Nava—she could sense that she was in Geneva. Bentzi always acted differently when she was around. More than likely, Helena figured, it had been Nava who had pulled the plug on the assignment and had moved to have her recalled to Israel. That would explain a lot.
Most of all, it would explain the high-level of concern the Institute—as the Mossad was known—was expressing over Damien.
Before being inserted into the United Nations, Helena had been given a heavily redacted file on him. The product of a Canadian father and an American mother, Damien possessed dual citizenship and had made his initial fortune in oil and natural gas, eventually branching out into petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. He had been married only once and had lost his wife to cancer. They never had children, and he never remarried. Business and philanthropy were his passions.
Up until his forties, Damien’s philanthropy had helped fund research into illnesses, like the cancer that had taken his wife, and had provided money to hospitals and universities, which saw his name placed on the wings of several buildings. Then, something changed.
It started with a book—a small, scholarly treatise that cracked a mental door. That book led to others, which led to lectures and documentaries. Those led to a reexamination of who and what he was supporting through his generous donations. He had made his money by taking from the earth, but he had never given anything back. It was an epiphany packed with revelations, one of the greatest being that he had done the world a favor by never having children.
When interviewed by the media, Damien was always quite candid about his conversion, and his belief that the earth couldn’t sustain its current rate of human growth. Even with technological advancements like fracking, crop management, and vaccine production, there were a finite amount of resources being divided up among an exploding population.
People were not only breeding like rabbits, but thanks to advances in sanitation and medicine, they were no longer dropping like flies as one researcher had put it. Left unchecked, it was a death sentence for the planet. Damien had committed himself to doing everything he could to make sure that didn’t happen.
In one of the articles Helena had read, an interviewer had labeled Damien a Neo-Malthusian—someone who advocated for population control programs in order to preserve existing resources for current and future generations. Damien, as he always did when people tried to put labels on him, laughed it off. The Mossad didn’t, because they knew what Damien really was.
In addition to being a supporter of overpopulation theory, he was a eugenicist who believed that favorable genetic qualities should be advanced while unfavorable traits should be limited, or discontinued altogether. He dreamt of an earth with a much reduced, “healthier” population.
That, in and of itself, would never have been enough to rise to the attention of Israeli intelligence. People were free to subscribe to any crackpot ideas they wanted. But what had piqued the Mossad’s interest in Damien was his particular enmity toward the Jewish state and the considerable wealth he was applying against it.
Via multitudinous foundations and so-called “advocacy” organizations, he was waging a global public relations campaign bent on painting Israel as the source of all the Middle East’s problems.
In the United States, he sent groups into American churches to poison congregations. On college campuses, his organizations recruited addle-brained university students to spread the message about “the real Israel.” Then he funded similar propaganda organizations in Israel, targeting young Israelis and convincing them their nation was evil.
Was it anti-Semitism? the Mossad wondered. Anti-Zionism? A combination of both?
The more the Institute looked into Damien, the more astounding the extent of his efforts became.
The man seemed particularly committed to weakening Israel’s relationship with the United States. Billboards and newspaper ads had been taken out exploiting low points in their relationship and highlighting events such as the spying of Jonathan Pollard.
He had established a legal foundation that paid American lawyers to go after U.S. Defense contractors with class-action lawsuits on behalf of Palestinians wounded and killed by U.S.-made weapons.
Prostitutes were paid to sleep with and then threaten to blackmail pro-Israel Members of Congress while on Congressional delegations to the Jewish state. Ultimately, the hookers would back off, claiming that they had been hired by the Mossad and couldn’t go through with it.
And then there was the UN.
Over his adult life, Damien had been offered plumb international ambassadorships by three different Canadian Prime Ministers. Each of which he had declined. Despite his professed love of Canada, where he made his home, he had been too busy running his businesses to focus on running an embassy.
That changed, though, in his sixties when he stepped back from the businesses and spent more time focused on his philanthropy. When Damien was asked to serve Canada at the United Nations, and was told which position he would get, he accepted.
He already had a good relationship with the Secretary-General and was honored when the General Assembly voted to appoint him to be Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Population Fund.
The Fund touted itself as the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy was wanted, every birth was safe, and every young person’s potential was fulfilled. They prided themselves on shrinking the size of families while simultaneously making them healthier. It was the perfect place for Damien.
As an Under-Secretary-General, he not only received
diplomatic immunity, but he was also admitted to one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, Secretary-General’s Senior Management Group, or SMG for short.
The fifty-member SMG acted as a quasi board of directors, advising the Secretary-General and helping to ensure the coherence and strategic direction of the entire United Nations organization.
The UN had always been a hotbed of anti-Zionism, but Damien was like a bellows when it came to fanning the flames. Whether it was his charisma, or the esteem that members held him in because of his vast fortune, he possessed tremendous sway. He never missed an opportunity to harm Israel.
He was also very anti-America.
Normally, this would have provided an opportunity for the Israelis and the Americans to work together. A foreign diplomat working behind the scenes to undermine the efforts and image of both countries cried out for a concerted effort. Though his tactics were different when it came to the United States, Damien was working even harder and pumping even more money into weakening it. The sticking point was his dual citizenship.
But because he held American citizenship, the United States was limited in what it could, and would, do to him.
Had Damien been palling around with terrorists in Yemen, they would have droned him. But America took its rights of free speech and free association very seriously. Damien was free to donate to whatever causes he wished. If no laws were being broken, American intelligence made it perfectly clear that it had no desire to begin an investigation. Israel was on its own when it came to Pierre Damien.
It was incredibly shortsighted on the Americans’ part. While the Israelis respected the United States’ views on its freedoms and founding documents, it was the height of negligence to allow those same freedoms and documents to provide cover for subversion. It was like Palestinian terrorists using hospitals and schools from which to launch rocket attacks. At some point you had to make a choice. Do you sit still and absorb the attacks? Or do you go in and eliminate the threat?
As far as Israel was concerned, there was too much at stake to just sit back. The threat needed to be eliminated. And so, they had decided to go after Damien and take him out.
But on the night they did, something happened that changed everything.
CHAPTER 20
* * *
The United Nations Secretary-General had planned a retreat for the full SMG to the picturesque Austrian village of Alpbach. That’s where the Mossad had decided to take out Pierre Damien. Nava Itzik and her Metsada team were mobilized and tasked with the assignment. Ben Mordechai would carry out the hit.
Alpbach looked like it had been built by Hollywood set designers. Cradled in a narrow valley, surrounded by lush meadows, the flowerboxes of its wooden chalets exploded in riots of color. Soaring pines gave way to jagged mountain peaks. It was clear why it had been voted Austria’s most beautiful village.
Though not given to such thoughts, Bentzi had found himself thinking that there was probably no more perfect place for a honeymoon. But he hadn’t come to Austria for a honeymoon. He had come to kill Pierre Damien.
The Institute was very nervous about the assignment. Not only because their target was a diplomat who held dual American and Canadian citizenship but also because a previous Metsada team had botched the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the cofounder of the military wing of Hamas.
Al-Mabhouh had been wanted for numerous offenses, including the killing of two Israeli soldiers, as well as the purchase of arms from Iran to be used in Gaza.
The Institute had tracked Al-Mabhouh from Damascus to the Al Bustan Rotana hotel in Dubai. So had Jordanian Intelligence, which wanted to capture him and bring him back to Jordan to stand trial. Instead of taking a breath and figuring out how to handle the Jordanians, the Metsada rushed their operation. Almost immediately, mistakes started happening. It was amateur hour.
Though they succeeded in killing Al-Mabhouh, they didn’t succeed in making it look like he had died of natural causes. It took ten days, but Dubai officials eventually ruled it a homicide and began piecing together what had happened. In the end, still images from CCTV cameras of twenty-six Mossad agents were released to the press, as well as the names and countries of origin on the passports used to enter the country.
Once the names were out there, it became evident that the Mossad had stolen the identities of Israelis who held dual citizenship in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, and Australia. The Dubai authorities also arrested two Palestinian Fatah operatives who had been assisting the Mossad team.
It wasn’t as bad as the botched CIA operation several years earlier to snatch radical Egyptian cleric Abu Omar off the streets of Milan, but it was an embarrassment nonetheless. The Institute wanted the smallest footprint possible and absolutely no mistakes. The message had been sent from the top—if you screw up, don’t come home.
The Institute had done its homework. They knew Pierre Damien—his quirks and idiosyncrasies, habits and routines. They also knew diplomatic boondoggles, which was exactly what the SMG retreat to Austria was.
There was always a big night at these things and for theirs, they had rented out the best restaurant in town. That was when Nava wanted to strike. Bentzi had agreed. Damien would eat too much and drink too much, making him an easier target and his “accidental” death all the more believable.
The Under-Secretaries-General departed the chalet hotel in a convoy of vans and minibuses accompanied by their UN security teams.
The housekeeping staff had been instructed to begin their turndown as soon as the guests had left for dinner. Bentzi watched from outside. Once Damien’s room had been serviced, he exited his vehicle, threw on a small backpack, and approached the chalet.
It was overcast, and there were no streetlights in the village.
Bentzi avoided the small stay-behind team and worked his way around back. It wasn’t a good night for his hands. He had difficulty climbing, and it took longer than it should have. When he finally reached Damien’s third-floor balcony, his hands were in a lot of pain.
He always carried two pills in a small paper envelope just in case. Pausing, he popped both and then, after pulling on a pair of special latex gloves, went to work on the lock for the large glass door.
The suite resembled the pictures he had viewed on the hotel’s web site. The walls were clad in knotty pine, the floors covered with a patterned carpet similar to the drapes. A feather duvet lay across the foot of the bed, and a row of thick pillows in perfectly pressed cases were staged along the headboard. The crisp, white sheets had been turned down and bottles of water had been left next to the bed along with a card forecasting tomorrow’s weather. After checking the bathroom, Bentzi made his way into the sitting room.
There was a couch, a coffee table, two side chairs, and a dresser. In the corner was a vintage tile stove. Not far from it was a desk. What there wasn’t, was a laptop.
The Institute wanted a copy of Damien’s hard drive. Because the death was supposed to look like an accident and not a robbery, the computer needed to remain behind. Damien had left for the dinner empty-handed, so it had to be somewhere in the room.
Bentzi checked the front closet, and there, on a luggage stand, was Damien’s suitcase.
It was a ubiquitous, soft-sided piece. It’s main compartment had been zippered and locked shut. Removing a pen, Bentzi applied pressure to the teeth of the seam and easily opened the zippered area. Inside, was a locked hard-sided briefcase. Sliding it out, he took it over to the desk.
The locks were tricky and the pain in his hands only compounded their difficulty. He took a deep breath and willed himself to slow down. Damien and his colleagues would only just be getting into their salads by this point. Even so, Bentzi radioed his team surveilling the restaurant for a situation report.
Once word came back that the party was still on cocktails, Bentzi relaxed and focused back on the case.
The thin picks were a challenge for him to hold, much less manipulate with his crooked fingers. The job should have taken seconds, not minutes. Had Nava known the state his hands were in, she would have replaced him. But she didn’t know, and Bentzi was determined to see his assignment through.
When he finally had the case open, he lifted the lid and looked inside. There were several file folders on top. Beneath those were Damien’s laptop and an additional cell phone. He had been spotted using an Apple phone and this one appeared to be an Android. Bentzi took it out and set it next to the case on the desk. The laptop would take the longest, so he decided to work on it first.
Opening his backpack, he removed a small tool kit and extracted an electric screwdriver. Once he had found the right sized head, he flipped the computer over and removed the screws from the bottom.
With the cover off, he slid an incredibly sophisticated black box the size of a paperback from his pack and began attaching leads to different places inside the laptop. He then depressed a power button on the black box and began to copy the hard drive.
The device used to suck the data out of the cell phone was smaller, about the size of a hockey puck. After finding the right USB cable, he connected the two and powered up the phone.
As the electronics did their work, he opened the physical folders and sifted through the papers. The first two were spreadsheets with budgets—dry, boring data that appeared related to Damien’s businesses. But the contents of the next folder stopped Ben Mordechai cold.
The cover page was innocuously labeled “Outcome Conference,” yet what he found on the pages that followed was anything but innocuous.
It had been prepared for a subgroup of the SMG called the “Plenary Panel” or P2 for short. Bentzi had never heard of it. Members of the panel were neither identified by name, nor their country of origin, only by number—one through seven.
After acknowledging a string of recent setbacks, the document outlined P2’s chilling goals:
