“I’ve seen it.”
“Good. So?”
“So what? We knew they’d figure it out. I told you this would be a repeat of Dubai. I guess the P.M. didn’t care?”
“Perhaps. We’d get blamed even if the bastard cooked himself, so perhaps the P.M. decided it was worth being rid of him.” Orgad slapped closed a folder, flapped it into his plastic out box. “What did they find? What do they have on you?”
Gur shrugged. “Lots of video, I’m sure. We took out the camera covering Talhami’s door, but it’s impossible to get them all, it’s not even worth trying. It’s not like when you were in the field anymore.” It was hard to picture this gray-fringed, paunchy, bald old man as a trained killer, but Gur knew better. Menachem Begin hadn’t looked much like an assassin, either. “Nothing physical in the hotel. We didn’t stay there except for the couple of hours around the job, and I made sure the team kept their gloves on. The Qataris will eventually find the rooms we stayed in, but the maids will have taken care of anything we left behind there. So, probably nothing.”
Orgad nodded, folded his hands over the faded windowpane-plaid shirt stretched across his belly. “At least you didn’t look into the cameras, like those idiots in Dubai.” He pointed to the newspaper. “Still, there you are on the front page. I have a meeting with the Director at ten. He’ll want to know why we can’t manage a simple job without becoming media stars. What do I tell him?”
“Tell him we can’t do this shit anymore.” Gur twirled the newspaper back onto Orgad’s desk blotter. “1972 was a long time ago. There’s too damn many cameras now. There’s biometrics in the passports. There’s watch lists. You can’t use cash anymore. It’s over, Chaim. Let’s just build ourselves some more drones and kill these bastards from a thousand miles away, like the Americans.”
Orgad frowned, eyed Gur across the cheap laminate desk. Gur avoided him by roving his gaze around this monk’s cell of an office. The only wall decorations were the official photos of the President and Prime Minister. In this line of work, you didn’t accumulate a lot of pictures of yourself with your co-workers, far less with the high and mighty.
Finally, Orgad stopped nodding. “Those are the words of a tired man.”
Gur flashed back two weeks: the nighttime view of Doha from the twelfth floor. That miserable prostitute-addict they’d dredged out of the guest-worker slums at the southwest end of the city, a jumble of skin-wrapped bones dead on the bed from an overdose of pure Afghan heroin. That bastard Talhami, drugged and stuffed full of vodka before he followed the whore to hell. His team watching the scene unfold, surrounded by the beige luxury of yet another high-end hotel in yet another city he’d never wanted to see. This is how I serve my country. Would the man whose name he’d used—Jaakov Eldar—be proud of what they’d done?
“Raffi?”
“I can’t stop being tired,” he sighed. “We do this—” Gur pointed toward the paper “—over and over, and it doesn’t help. We’re not winning the war. We can’t kill our way to victory.” He knew he shouldn’t say these things to his boss, but he didn’t care anymore. He’d be happy to sit a desk for the next ten years until he retired. Maybe he could try to build another life if he wasn’t always a visitor to his own homeland.
Orgad nodded some more, then folded his arms on the desktop. “Well. You need a rest. Things always look dark after a nasty job. Tsach Voydievsky just left for embassy duty in Brazil, so the Director needs an interim day chief in the Watch Center. I’ll give him your name. With your face all over the news, you’ll have to stay home anyway.”
Whatever “home” was. “Thanks. We should keep an eye on those people whose names we used, just in case. We’ve put them in harm’s way, it’s the least we can do.”
“In case Hezbollah decides to go after them? You know that’s not how they play the game. Stay out of the nightclubs and cafes for a couple of weeks, wait for the bombing, then we move on, yes?”
Gur tried not to grimace. They had an obligation to those people. “Yes, of course.” He stood, turned to the door, then stopped. “When did you know it was time to get out of the field?”
“When I almost shot my wife sneaking into the bedroom with breakfast for me on my birthday. But you?” Orgad squinted at Gur, as if looking into his skull. “I think you’re close. We’ll talk in a few days. Shalom, Raffi.”
THREE: 13 SEPTEMBER, HARET HRAIK, SOUTH BEIRUT, LEBANON
Fadi Alayan stood on the seventh-floor balcony with his face turned to the buttery afternoon sun. Happy traffic sounds pinged off the apartment-block canyon to bless his ears. Car and truck horns, engines revving, squawks from tires spinning too suddenly or stopping too fast. Arabic rap, Lebanese pop, Nelly Furtado. An ambulance siren, the neighbors’ television turned too loud.
Noise was a good thing, a happy thing. After the 2006 war with the Zionists, this area lay destroyed, the streets piled with concrete rubble and torn-apart cars. You could hear from a block away the women crying in the night for the innocent dead. Among those dead were his wife and parents. He could still see the ruins of their bodies when his mind went to the wrong places.
Now the martyrs were buried, the apartments rebuilt and the markets open again. Kids played in the alleys and went to school. Alayan watched the people stream by on the sidewalks below his balcony. His pride stood tall inside him; in his own little way, he’d helped bring this area back to life.
Him, and the Party of God. Hezbollah.
“Fadi.” Alayan glanced over his shoulder to Kassim, who stood in the open sliding door. He looked himself again: carefully dressed, hair neatly cut, the dark circles gone from around his large eyes. The last job had been hard on them all. “Rafiq finally showed up. They’re all here.”
Alayan nodded, took one last look at the street parade, then followed his lieutenant into the white-walled apartment. He detoured to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Raya water from the humming refrigerator, then straddled the wood-frame chair at the little living room’s center. Two overused blue sofas met in the opposite corner. Two of his team sprawled on the sofa to his right; three, including Kassim, filled the one to his left, under the yellow-and-green martyr poster Ziyad had taped up the day before. Masoud Talhami gazed back at him out of the poster, clean and sober and serious in a dark business suit and kaffiyeh. The stupid son of a whore.
“All right,” Alayan started. “You men are doing okay? You’re rested?” He looked from face to face. Each nodded in his turn. Kassim lit one of his wretched Byblos cigarettes. Rafiq, as usual, looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. “Are you getting any sleep, Rafiq?”
“Trying not to, sidi.”
Alayan shook his head, bemused. “Well, stay out of the clubs tonight. Get your lives in order. Shave. We have work, and we’re going to be gone a while.”
His team woke up, sat up straighter, watched with sharper eyes. He could hear the speculation whir in their brains.
He nodded toward the poster. “The Qataris are certain the Zionists killed Talhami. The Mossad. So far they’ve released the names of twelve people on the country team, and they’re still digging. Knowing it’s Mossad, eight to sixteen’s the usual number.”
“I knew it,” Ziyad said. “Who else, except maybe the Americans?”
Alayan took a swig of water, thought about how to say this next part. “Sayyid Nasrallah pledged our revenge for this on al-Manar. The Council has decided we’re the ones to deliver it.”
Now all of them leaned forward, elbows or forearms on their knees, eyes locked on his face. Gabir smiled like a hungry dog, dark head bobbing over his tight green, long-sleeved t-shirt. “We finally get to drive a bomb into the Dizengoff mall?”
“No.” Gabir frowned; Alayan knew he’d pout now. “No, we’re not doing anything like that. That’s just what the Jews expect, and that’s not what the Council wants this time.” He folded his arms on top of the chair’s back. “Think about the Mossad for a moment.”
“Bastards,” muttere
d Ziyad.
“Maybe. But think of their reputation. Why does the world think they’re the best intelligence service?”
“Because fucking Spielberg made that movie about them,” Sohrab snarled.
“Yes, but why? Because they’ve got balls the size of melons. They tracked down Black September after Munich and wiped them out. They went at it for twenty years. They went all over Europe to do it. Even when they failed, like they did in Norway, they got through it with sheer balls.
“How many Hamas men have they killed? How many of our people have they martyred? I can’t keep track. They do it, and everybody knows they do it, and they still almost never get caught. Yes, Ziyad, they’re bastards, but, think about it.” Alayan watched the team’s faces harden. “I’m not praising them, don’t think that. But look at what they did to Talhami. He didn’t just die. He died a drunken heroin addict in bed with a Western whore. The Mossad didn’t just kill him, they destroyed his reputation. They used his own weaknesses against him. That’s what they do best.”
Ziyad and Sohrab looked away, not so willing to be indignant now. Good. Alayan needed these men to think, not just be mad. Anger would make them sloppy, and he couldn’t afford that, not this time.
“How would we have done a job like that? We’d get righteous and pledge our lives to Allah and blast the face off a hotel and kill dozens of people. All the Western news programs would show video of bloody women and dead babies and talk about ‘terrorists’ and ‘murderers.’” He watched Kassim nod; they’d talked about this before. “We probably wouldn’t even kill the man we’re trying for. That’s what the Jews expect. They expect us to be stupid.”
Ziyad’s eyes crinkled as if he would cry. “How can you say these things about our martyrs, sidi?”
“Because it’s true. Yes, we revere them, we pray to Allah to take them into his heart and reward them in Paradise, but we’re not winning the war. So we’re going to use Mossad’s rules.” He drained his water bottle and set it on the tiled floor beside the chair leg, waiting for the puzzlement to settle on the men’s faces. “The Mossad country team used American and European passports belonging to real people in those countries. They’ve been doing that for years. They did the same thing in the Dubai job, with Mabhouh. In that one, most of the people lived in Palestine. This time, they all live in other countries.” Alayan paused, let them think. “We’re going to find them and kill them.”
Gasps. Wide eyes.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Rafiq leaned forward, held up his hand to signal “stop.” “They’re not Mossad. They weren’t in the Gulf. Why are we wasting our time?”
“Because it’s what the Zionists would do if they were us.” He stood, rotated his bad left shoulder, then stepped around the chair. “What do we want to do? Kill Mossad agents? Who would care besides the Zionists? We want to send a message to the rest of the world. ‘Mossad is killing your people too. They brought this on you. They’re the real terrorists.’”
Alayan did another face check; five pairs of eyes stared back. Kassim and Sohrab seemed to be getting the point. He focused on Gabir. If the dullest one of them understood, they all would. “Remember, the Jews used to ask before they used other people’s passports. If these people let Mossad use their identities, they’re part of the same gang. If they didn’t, then they’re innocent victims of Mossad’s murderers. Look at the reaction after Dubai. Australia almost recalled their ambassador. The British started saying things we usually do. Now imagine if their citizens die because of something those Mossad bastards did.” He let them imagine. Even Gabir nodded now. “Rafiq, if it makes you feel any better, they’re all Zionists, just living outside Palestine.”
He watched them absorb the terms of this new mission. He’d prepared them for this over the past eighteen months; their surprise didn’t last long. It wasn’t time yet for them to know the rest of the Council’s orders. With any luck, that time may not come.
Sohrab, the slightest and youngest-looking of them, awash in a too-large blue track suit, put on the most evil smile. “When do we start?” His heavy Persian accent made his Arabic sound mumbled, even when he spoke up.
“We pick up our documents tomorrow. Once we enter Europe, we’ll travel on European passports. Gabir, how’s your French these days?”
“Tres bon.”
“Good. You’ll be French Moroccan again. If you weren’t so dark, we could do something else with you.” A couple of the others chuckled. Kassim ruffled Gabir’s shaggy black hair. “We’ll fly into different airports at different times and meet in Amsterdam in four days. We’ll make contact in the usual way. Save your questions until tomorrow. Now go get ready.”
Continue the adventure
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Table of Contents
Glossary
Cast
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
About the Author
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