by Ward Larsen
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1
The bullet struck slightly off center, ripples of energy transmitting through the target’s head and shoulders. The mist of debris blossoming behind was carried away by an indifferent wind. The hit, of course, was through and through. The shooter remained in concealment, although not as well hidden as he might have been. The next three shots were the same: center-of-mass hits, lethal, yet each slightly off the mark.
Standing on the observation platform, Major Avram Berkovic lowered his binoculars. He wasn’t studying the paper targets half a mile away—the shots would be scored by the computerized range system. He was instead watching one small notch amid the twenty acres of tawny scrubland spread out before him. He shook his head, dispirited.
“A problem?” said a gravel-laden voice from behind.
Berkovic swiveled on his stool and saw a familiar figure approaching on the wide wooden deck. He didn’t know the man well, but owing to his position few people on earth did. Anton Bloch was middle-aged and unrepentantly thick, his physique that of a wrestler who’d stopped trying to make weight twenty years ago. Heavy but not soft. His hair was gone on top and shaved close on the sides, a man who spared no time for anything artful when it came to grooming. This, too, came with his position. Bloch had been director of Mossad for three years. Berkovic had met him on a half-dozen occasions, always here at the training center, and always for the same reason. Mossad put the occasional candidate through his program at Camp Adam—the Israeli Defense Forces sniper course. And to his credit, Bloch took a personal interest in how his nominees performed.
Berkovic handed over the binoculars. “Ten degrees left, near the wadi. In the shadow of the small acacia.”
Bloch trained the optic on the spot. He had long ago done a stint in the army himself, more than the compulsory two and a half years. Having gravitated to military intelligence, he’d never been a front-line operator. One didn’t need to be to spot the ill-concealed student. A boot … no, a pair of boots protruding from a stand of brush that didn’t quite match those around it. The texture of the camouflage was wrong, the color more brown than green.
Bloch handed back the binoculars. “Not the latest one I sent you, I trust?”
“No, he’s IDF. It’s been getting harder and harder to find good talent. Kids these days, they love to play first-person-shooter on their Xbox. But take them out of their gaming chairs, put them outside? They blend in like oil on water. None of them have ever had their nose in a ditch, gotten a feel for the wind, sat still for a day waiting for a deer to come down a trail. Give me a hunter any day of the week over a joystick operator.”
Bloch nodded.
Berkovic smiled, an awkward compression of his weathered facial features. “That one you sent me last year—he was the real deal.”
“Actually, that’s why I’ve come.”
A radio crackled to life, a report of the prospective sniper’s score. Berkovic picked up a mobile handset and said, “Okay, that’s a little soft. Bring him in.”
Bloch looked across the low rolling hills. The red flags downrange disappeared, but as per tradition, the shooter didn’t move. An instructor in khakis walked out from the safety shed and made a beeline to the student’s position. He, too, had spotted him. Within a minute, he had the young man standing and was giving a debriefing that was nothing short of a hazing. Jabbing fingers, shouting, even knocking off remnants of the failed ghillie suit.
“Did Slaton ever get that treatment?” Bloch asked.
A brief snort of laughter. “Everybody gets that treatment in the beginning. The problem with Slaton was that by the third day we couldn’t find him. He nailed every target, but the instructors had no idea where he was. I had five of my guys out there, looking all over the damned hills. Granted, it’s a lot of ground to cover. In the end they ordered him to break concealment for the debriefing. Still nothing. They got out a bullhorn and began beating the bushes with sticks. We never found him—he just showed up right on time for the next morning’s training session.”
“Did the instructors come down on him about it?”
“Nobody said a word—it was like it never happened. The instructors took a liking to him, respected his abilities.” Berkovic filled out a form on a clipboard and hung it on a peg. “So, what brings you here? Have you got another one like him you want to bring in?”
“I wish I did.”
It was actually a rare event to send a Mossad recruit through IDF sniper school. It only happened when a recruit turned out to be an exceptional shooter, and didn’t obviate the usual training for tradecraft and language skills. In agency parlance, it was simply a matter of “training to strength.”
“Actually,” Bloch said, “I came because I’d like your insight.”
“On what?”
“Slaton.”
Berkovic regarded Bloch curiously. “He’s your guy. What could I tell you?”
“I suspect you understand his mindset better than most. His tactical nature, the way he thinks. The way he operates so … precisely.”
The instructor wandered to the OP’s front rail, then turned and sat on it casually. A carefree bachelor on the fender of a sports car.
“There was something different about him,” Berkovic said. “But it wasn’t anything he learned here. I can teach anybody to shoot, to stalk, maybe even to be patient. Some pick it up more quickly than others—that’s how we weed them out of the program. We give recruits a set amount time to progress, and if they don’t keep up, they’re out.”
Bloch again looked downrange. The instructor was giving the student something closer to encouragement now, a hand on his shoulder. Bring them down, then build them up—a time-honed tradition in military training. “What made Slaton stand out?” he asked.
“His eye for shooting was phenomenal. Funny thing is, if it hadn’t been I think he would have excelled anyway. If I had to use a single word, I’d say … commitment. Or maybe motivation. He was driven in a way I’ve never seen.” Berkovic gestured to a few chairs scattered around the deck. “When his time in the chute was over, he wouldn’t just go to the bar. He’d come here and watch, listen to the instructors’ critiques of other students. He was a sponge, pressing the guys in the shack for every scrap of knowledge, sometimes arguing they were wrong … and he made some good points. Even when he did go for a beer, he never stopped asking questions, never stopped learning.”
Berkovic paused, and when Bloch didn’t fill the silence, he said, “Any idea what pushed him so hard?”
A hesitation. “I won’t mention specifics, but suffice to say … he has an account to settle.”
“With an individual?”
“I would say our
enemies in general, although there is one particular man.”
Another snort of laughter from the sniper instructor. “Whoever he is, I hope he’s got his affairs in order.”
Bloch ignored the comment, and asked, “With respect to Slaton’s unusual intensity, do you think it could ever lead to problems with … discipline?”
“Discipline? As in following orders?”
A qualified tip of the head.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of him going rogue.”
“God forbid. David has completed quite a few missions now, and there have been no major issues.”
“What about minor ones?”
Bloch hesitated. “The ops were relatively simple, and he was always part of a team.”
“You’re worried about him operating alone?
“It’s bound to happen at some point, either by design or owing to circumstances. I want to be confident he’ll hold to his objectives, not leverage his skills to pursue his own agenda.”
Berkovic pushed away from the rail. “Director, you’re sending him out there to remove some very bad people. People who, given half a chance, would slaughter you and me in a heartbeat. Or for that matter, our families. I got to know David pretty well during his time here—nobody gets through the course without my personal seal of approval. He’s no psychotic killer and he’s no Girl Scout. He’s a reasonable, thoughtful human being who happens to be exceedingly lethal. You’re telling me has a score to settle. I don’t know what it is, but my advice to you is simple—use it.”
The radio again came to life. Berkovic lifted the handset and had a brief exchange with an instructor downrange.
When he was done, Bloch said, “All right. Thank you for your opinion.”
“Anytime.”
The director turned to leave, and when he was halfway across the platform, Berkovic called out, “But one thing …”
Bloch paused, turned back around. His heavy brow arched inquisitively.
“Whatever you do, be straight with him. Otherwise you might end up on his list.”
2
The fragrance tonight was lavender. This morning it had been jasmine. What the next day would bring was left to the whims of the staff olfactory specialist, a septuagenarian Swiss woman with shaman leanings.
The Hotel Le Cristal was among the finest in Luxembourg, a spaceship of opulence in a galaxy of gentrification. It carried its status with no small amount of pride. The lobby was a lustrous display of contemporary architecture, to the point that the bell staff were forced to shoo away passersby who mistook it for a museum. The splendid pool and spa were the essence of relaxation. From the front awning it was a mere stroll to the pleasant curves of the Alzette River, and a five-minute cab ride to the banking fortresses along Grand Rue.
Nearly all the hotel’s clients came for the same reason, yet they divided into two camps. One was comprised of bankers, lawyers, and wealth managers, conspicuous in their fine suits, tailored to overindulged measurements, and precise Swiss timepieces. Their clients were a distinctly less homogenous bunch: Russian oligarchs, Chinese businessmen, Arab princes, African strongmen, the odd South American drug baron. This faction was exclusively male, with a tendency toward thick gold chains and heavy security details. It was all little more than theater, and everyone played their part: to visit Luxembourg was to visit respectability. And Le Cristal was at the epicenter, a dazzling on-ramp to legitimacy.
* * *
The man climbing the back stairs shortly after midnight knew all of this. And much more.
At a glance, he fit none of the molds. He was wearing dark gray pants, a black weatherproof jacket, and solid hiking shoes. A baseball cap with the logo of an obscure Swedish hockey team was tilted low over his face. During normal business hours, in the main lobby or halls, he would never have fit in. Shortly after midnight, however, his appearance was less problematic. He could have been an investor, a lawyer, or even a private security man returning after a night on the town.
Tall and fit, he took the stairs two at a time as he passed the fourth floor. The fact that he’d opted for the stairs was another curiosity, but he had an answer if the question came: he’d missed his morning run due to the rain, and he was trying to compensate. Not surprisingly, he encountered no one.
David Slaton reached the fifth floor and paused behind the fire door. He double-checked, and as expected saw no cameras in the stairwell. He listened closely, watched for shadows on the crack of light at the bottom of the door. He saw and heard nothing.
He pulled out his phone and fired off a text:
Still on?
The reply was instantaneous:
Go.
He levered down the handle and pushed the door open with gloved fingertips. He saw no one in the hallway. The faint sound of a television carried from a room at the far end. Within seconds he was standing at the door of room 54.
From his jacket pocket he pulled out the entry device as one might a room key. It had been created by Mossad’s technology division, and Slaton pressed what looked like a standard key card against the circular electronic lock on the door. The card was connected wirelessly to a small box that remained in his pocket. A real key would have unlocked the door instantly, yet the cypher-pad required a pause as codes were run and signals transmitted. As it turned out, all of six seconds.
The light above the handle flashed green. A thunk as the lock released. Slaton slipped the card back in his pocket and dropped the handle. He’d been assured that his entry, along with the next exit, would be erased from the hotel’s computer system, which supposedly tracked every coming and going. Silent in, silent out.
His right hand was inside his jacket, firm on the grip of his holstered SIG P226. He didn’t draw the weapon as he pushed open the door—the room was supposed to be empty—but its contoured grip was a comfort all the same.
A light flickered on as he entered, motion-activated track lighting over the bed. This, too, was expected, a standard convenience in all rooms at Le Cristal. He touched the switch near the door to kill the lights, a one-second depression of the top button. Because the curtains on the window at the far side of the room were parted —verified twenty minutes ago from the street—he would be virtually on stage with the room illuminated. The light streaming in from the city was easily enough to work with.
The room was a suite, and he cleared it quickly. Bedroom, sitting room, closet, bathroom. All clear. He then stood still for a moment, his senses logging everything. Flickers of light from passing cars played on the building across the street. The TV down the hall no longer registered, and he heard occasional voices from the sidewalks below. The faint aroma of coffee could be explained by a half-full mug standing next to a single-serve brewing machine. Altogether, this became his baseline, and any changes would be noted, filtered, evaluated.
Slaton didn’t bother to check the scene outside—that was a picture he had already committed to memory from surveillance photos. Across the street was the Old World façade of Luxembourg’s Ministry of Mobility and Public Works building, its officious windows darkened until eight o’clock sharp the next morning. Five floors down would be Boulevard Royal, now a mere vestige of its rush hour self and shot with late night shadows by metal halide streetlights.
Preliminaries complete, Slaton turned to his objective. It lay on the writing desk, a laptop computer clamshelled shut. He lifted the screen and hit the power button. He’d been told he would have to do little more, but then, the technician who’d made that guaranteed had done so from a cushioned chair in a warm cubicle in Tel Aviv.
Slaton extracted a second device, this one the size and shape of a television remote control. Dubbed playfully by its creators CyBorg, it had a rat-tail wire that ended in a USB connector. He plugged it into a port on the side of the computer and hit the initiation button. While the laptop was booting toward its security screen, the red lights on CyBorg began blinking. Slaton had no idea what they meant, but he knew the designers of such gadgets lo
ved their LEDs. They also had little concept of operational risk—flickering lights in a dark room, no matter how small, could only draw attention. He turned the box upside down while it ran through its paces, putting the lights out of sight.
He’d been given an estimate of between five and fifteen minutes to crack the laptop’s security, upload its files, and install Trojan horse software that would continue surveillance going forward. Slaton’s cue that the job was done would be the laptop shutting down, backed up by a text from the nearby team from Unit 8200. This was Israel’s signals intelligence arm, a subsidiary of the IDF, and the two technicians they’d loaned out to Mossad were set up in a nearby safe house. Once the upload was complete, Slaton’s work would be done. The laptop’s owner was presently in the bar downstairs, and once CyBorg had worked its magic, Slaton had only to disconnect the device and leave without being seen.
While the digital theft ran its course, Slaton strove for patience. He’d been on far dodgier missions, yet this one was personal. He moved about the suite to see what else he could find. An open suitcase on the bed seemed inviting, but a cautious search produced nothing beyond dirty socks and toiletries. He was careful to leave everything exactly as he’d found it. The owner was an accountant, not a spy who would employ countermeasures or telltales. Still, Slaton didn’t want to leave any trace of his intrusion. He moved on, saw some loose change and a roll of breath mints on the bureau, a half-eaten candy bar on the nightstand. In the bathroom he found two prescription medications. The drug names on the bottles meant nothing to him, but he took a picture of each. In the long game, such things could prove useful.
He paused at the foot of the bed. In another hour, perhaps two, the accountant would be here, sound asleep. Slaton had not come to kill Moussa Tayeb. Not tonight. But that day would come. It might happen on Anton Bloch’s order, an official Mossad hit. Or he might take matters into his own hands. Either way, Slaton was going to make it happen.
