The Heat of Ramadan, page 36
Moshiko, the young security guard from the office, solemnly led the way down the stairs from Eytan’s apartment. Ben-Zion had been smart to send a familiar face; otherwise, Eckstein might have blown his head off right through the door. Two “gorillas” from Peaches—AMAN’s internal security department—brought up the rear. The giants did not say anything, and they didn’t have to. Eytan could feel their looming power, underscored by the fact that their footfalls were nearly silent as they descended along behind him.
Yesterday he had been suspended without pay, all but a de facto dismissal from the Service. Today he was being summoned to Headquarters, and the appearance of an armed escort did not bode well. Given his participation in a renegade counterintelligence operation, he hardly expected to receive a commendation. The Israeli military system encouraged bold improvisation, even insubordination when absolutely warranted—but if you were bucking your superiors you damned well had to be able to prove your motives pure and your results brilliant.
Colonel Ben-Zion frowned on anything short of blind obedience.
Eytan was not shocked by this latest turn of events. He had half expected it, and he told Simona not to worry too much about him. However, he then kissed her goodbye, handed her his Browning and two full magazines, and instructed her to shoot anyone who tried to enter the apartment.
“But I have to go back to work sometime, Eytan,” she had protested, waving the pistol with a carelessness that made Eytan wince.
“You’re pregnant and you’re not feeling well,” he coached. “Your boss is a doctor. He’ll understand.”
“Half the damn country is pregnant,” she continued to argue.
“Please, Mona. Please.” Something in his tone caused her to sadly acquiesce.
The silent, plainclothes quartet walked out into the bright sunlight of Eytan’s parking lot. As they headed toward a row of cars, Eckstein tried to break the mood.
“So he’s finally giving you something interesting, huh, Moshiko?”
“This is more like punishment, Eytan,” said the young man. “Believe me.”
Eytan gave up making small talk.
Colonel Ben-Zion’s private car was waiting with the engine running. It was a long black Oldsmobile, driven by a war cripple, which was a cynical selection that allowed Ben-Zion to tool around in a gas-guzzling boat of a vehicle.
All of the men fit easily inside, even though Benni Baum was taking up much of the backseat.
“Ah!” Baum clapped his hands as Eytan fell in beside him. “Prisoner Number Two.”
“Et tu, Benni?” Eytan winced as he tried to adjust his stiff knee.
“We’re in the same leaky boat.” Benni slapped him on the leg. “Save the Shakespeare for Itzik.”
The car pulled out of the lot and headed up past the Promenade with its spectacular view of the Old City.
“You’re in a bright mood today,” Eytan said.
“Well, it’s a beautiful afternoon,” Benni replied. Then he squeezed Eytan’s thigh, signaling his captain to shut his mouth.
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Benni smoked a cigarette, then snuffed it out in a rear-door ashtray. However, he then field-stripped the butt and dropped the debris on the floor of the car. One of the gorillas shot him a look. Baum just smiled at him. . . .
They arrived at the door to Ben-Zion’s office. Heinz pulled it open, wearing the expression of a firing-squad commander. The two gorillas took up posts in the hallway, while Moshiko excused himself after giving Eytan a shy, apologetic look.
Colonel Ben-Zion was standing in front of his large picture window, his hands clasped behind his back, his head angled downward as if he were watching the sidewalk traffic on Jaffa Road. His khaki-colored civilian shirt was wrinkled and sweat-stained, and the hair at the back of his head was rumpled and flattened to his skull, as if he had not managed to shower in recent days. He did not turn when Eytan and Benni entered the office.
His secretary was sitting at her dictation post next to his desk. She looked up at the summoned officers and said, “They’re here, Itzik,” as Heinz closed the door.
“You may go, Ariella,” said the Colonel.
The girl was always happy to be dismissed from her boss’s high-voltage environment, and she gathered her notepads quickly.
“You too, Heinz,” the Colonel added.
The Aryan-looking captain seemed not to have heard correctly, for he just stood there without moving.
“Yes, Heinz,” Ben-Zion reiterated. “That’s what I said.”
Heinz trotted out reluctantly after Ariella.
When the three men were alone, Ben-Zion turned from the window. His usually tanned, handsome features looked jowly and haggard. His eyes were bloodshot.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” the Colonel asked quietly. His voice had none of the bluster of his frequent harangues.
Eytan said nothing, waiting for a cue from Benni. But Baum just lit up another cigarette, and Eckstein put his hands in his pockets.
“There is no such thing as compartmentalizing from me,” Ben-Zion said. “From each other, yes. But not from me.”
The Colonel walked over to his desk. With his finger, he touched some papers, yet he did not seem to be really reading anything. Eytan thought him somewhat sobered, drained of his usual acerbic lexicon. Despite his own motives, Eytan suddenly felt somewhat ashamed, like an errant child standing before a disappointed father.
He was amazed at how quickly their effort had been blown. Who had leaked it? Romano? Never. Sylvia? She was hard as a walnut. Horse? He was Benni’s man—first, last and always. Badash? The GSS man would more likely double for the Syrians than squeal to Ben-Zion.
Arthur Sorelli was certainly an unknown quantity, yet Benni would never have brought in a foreign agent unless he was absolutely sure of him. Yudit and Yablokovsky were the most likely candidates. They were young, and they had never been field agents. They could be easily frightened.
“Don’t bother looking for scapegoats.” The Colonel seemed to be reading Eytan’s mind. “You can’t run a peoolah tachtit right under my nose.” He used a derisive term for underground action. “It’s like your own daughter fucking her boyfriend in the basement. . . . You can smell it.” There was actually some hurt in his voice.
Eytan and Benni still said nothing. They were both somewhat shocked by Itzik’s tone of resignation and surrender. They had expected an explosion, a screaming match, and they were ready to shout right back. Yet they were unprepared for this.
Ben-Zion moved behind his desk and sat down. He poured himself some orange drink. One of his telephones rang, and he looked at it and it stopped. Ariella was smart enough to know when to intercept.
“The Kenya team has nothing,” he said.
Eytan held his breath. Colonel Itzik Ben-Zion was openly admitting an operational failure. He wished to hell he was recording the event, for he hardly believed his ears.
“Neither does Cairo.” Ben-Zion finished the juice, then he picked up a pencil and tapped it on his desk without looking up. “Our people in Larnaca have circumstantial items—a dented VW minibus, purchased sight unseen, of course. Nothing of any value yet. Dagan was Mossad now, as you know. They’re giving us everything they can.”
The Colonel looked up at Eytan, and he held his captain’s gaze for a long moment as he twirled the pencil. He could not come out and admit that perhaps Eytan’s Kamil theory had some merit, but something in his look told Eytan that this was not, after all, going to end in a dank prison cell across the courtyard of the Russian Compound.
Ben-Zion rose from his chair. He put his hands behind his back again, and he spoke as he paced slowly before his window.
“I must ask you, gentlemen, about an additional matter. And I expect a truthful answer.” He turned and faced his officers. “An advisor to the Prime Minister, a Major Rami Carrera, has been reported as missing by his wife and co-workers. He failed to show up to work today. I don’t suppose you two know anything about this?”
Eytan felt his heart begin to race. He used every physiological trick he’d ever learned to focus all of his energies on keeping his blood pressure down and his skin cool. Getting Rami Carrera to a safe house in Maalé Adumim had been no small effort for him and Baum. They had raced along the Jerusalem–Jericho highway at breakneck speed, just to keep Carrera from jumping from the car, while they pleaded, cajoled and offered the barefaced truth. Unflinching, they even allowed him to threaten them with a loaded pistol, a fact which ultimately convinced the major that he was not being hijacked by Arab terrorists. Finally, Eytan’s rapid-fire sputtering of place names, army exercises and fellow soldiers from their mutual officers’ candidate school served as proof to Carrera that his escorts were truly “AMAN-niks.”
“What was that name, Itzik?” Baum asked with blatant innocence.
“Carrera. Rami Carrera.” Ben-Zion stared at the pair suspiciously, but they had been trained to lie like rug merchants, and he did not really expect to read anything in their faces.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” Eytan asked.
Ben-Zion waved the question off. “So you know nothing about it,” he stated.
Eytan and Benni looked at each other and shrugged. They wanted Itzik to order an all-out search for Carrera, but the idea had to be his own. All the same, Benni could not help prodding.
“There’s a standard drill for these things, Itzik,” he said with just enough condescension.
Eytan took his cue. “He sounds like a sensitive asset. It could be a PFLP snatch operation. Or even Hezbollah.”
Ben-Zion seemed not to hear. He walked back to his desk again, sat down, and picked up an internal phone.
“Get me Liaison,” he said. Then, “This is Ben-Zion. That Carrera search I told you to set up? It’s a go. Contact all the necessary police and GSS people. Make it countrywide, and get it moving quick.” He hung up.
Eytan let out his breath, swallowing the urge to expel a victorious whoop. He was tired of standing. He had not slept much since the morning, and his knee ached. He limped over to the couch, sat down, and lit up a Time.
“I will make an arrangement with you two,” Ben-Zion suddenly said. “As you well know, this is not the first time that I may have ordered an operation to be conducted ‘off premises.’”
The Colonel was hinting that he might allow Eytan and Benni to continue their work. They listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“It would also not be the first time in the history of intelligence work that an agent has been ‘dismissed.’” He angled his head at Eytan. “Only to be asked to continue his tasks as a free-lance.”
Eytan smoked in silence.
“I have the authority to bless your operation,” Ben-Zion said in full voice. “Or dismantle it, if I wish. If you can show me, now, that you are being productive, I shall reconsider.”
Baum turned and walked to the window. Eytan watched, wishing he could read the major’s thoughts. Ben-Zion’s challenge was really directed at Baum, for the two ranking officers were of equal experience and bull-dogged tenacity, while Eytan was more the junior whose career hung in the balance. Baum would have to act carefully, for Itzik could well be bluffing, entrapping the men into revealing their insubordination firsthand. Baum made a move that relegated Eytan to the role of messenger.
“Eckstein,” Benni ordered. “Get Shabak on the line and have them patch you in to Uri Badash.”
Eytan got up. Ben-Zion gestured at a telephone, and Eckstein asked an AMAN operator for GSS headquarters. When he had Badash on the line, he waited for Baum’s next instructions.
“Ask him to pull all red-flagged foreign passports from the past three days.”
Eytan relayed the message, then he told Badash that he was in Ben-Zion’s office in Jerusalem. He rang off to wait for the return call.
The port services in Haifa, Ashdod, Ben-Gurion Airport, Gaza, Eilat and the Allenby crossing would have recorded all foreign entries into their data banks. Passports that matched alert codes from allied intelligence services or Interpol would have been flagged for investigation.
After a few minutes, the phone rang. Itzik took the call himself, which made Eytan’s spine go stiff. The Colonel’s conversation with Badash was all business, the distrust barely disguised. Mostly, Ben-Zion listened. Then he hung up and recited the information.
“Two passports are suspect,” he said. “One belongs to a Belgian woman who may be a PLO mule. She was detained at Ben-Gurion. The other is an American passport. A backcheck through the U.S. State Department indicates that it was stolen in Munich six months ago. The registered owner is one Mr. Roger Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein is presently at home in Philadelphia. However, his alter ego came on through, and the idiot control clerk cannot recall a description.”
Though the summer sun had defeated Ben-Zion’s air conditioner, the certain knowledge of a penetration chilled the room to silence. At last Ben-Zion rose from behind his desk, though he did not feel compelled to actually mention the name Amar Kamil.
“You two gentlemen must have work to do,” he said, as if Baum and Eckstein were lagging about. “As you may be somewhat vulnerable, Mr. Eckstein, I will assign two babysitters to you.”
Eytan thought that Ben-Zion just wanted to keep tabs on him. He tried to wriggle out of it.
“Itzik, I’d much rather you put them on Ettie Denziger.” As he said it, the words confirmed his nagging fears for his surviving teammate.
“Unlike you,” Itzik sneered, “Tamar Shoshani can take care of herself.”
Benni took Eytan’s arm to keep his captain from screwing up the whole deal. He walked Eytan to the door.
“And, gentlemen,” Ben-Zion said before they could exit. “If you find something, I will take the credit,” he assured them. “And if you don’t, I’ll have your balls.”
* * *
Baum and Eckstein were conversing in Bavarian dialect, which deeply annoyed Eytan’s babysitters. One of the giants actually spoke German well, but the officers’ exchange was doubly shrouded in Municher slang and encrypted references, making it about as comprehensible as whale song. There was nothing the bodyguards could do about it. They walked along behind the pair, their stature reduced to that of a couple of toddlers on a playground, left out of the game because they couldn’t speak Pig Latin.
The strange quartet moved along the corridor on Floor Two and then down the stairwell to the main entrance. Benni squeezed Eytan’s shoulder.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
Eytan turned and bowed to his escorts. “Take me home, gentlemen.”
They rode back to Eytan’s apartment block in a grey Opel Kadett, the two young toughs in the front bucket seats, identical sunglasses, big arms hanging out the windows, like college ball players in a carnival bumper car. Eytan sat in the back and smoked. He only asked one question.
“Haven’t seen you two before. You from Jerusalem?”
“Tel Aviv,” said the driver.
“Uh huh.”
Eytan did not go upstairs. He wanted to, but he was not going to pop in, see Simona for a minute, and then leave her again. He had the keys to his Fiat in his pocket.
“I’ll take my own car now.”
The babysitters jumped out of the Opel to join him. He turned on them.
“Now, boys,” he lectured impatiently. “We’re not going to travel as an entourage, like nervous Italian cops.”
“We’re supposed to stay with you.”
He stepped a bit closer, shaking his head and lowering his voice. “I’m a decoy, people. A target.” He was improvising, yet as he said it the truth rang home like the big bells on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He was exactly that, which was why Ben-Zion wanted him operating again. “How do you expect me to function with you two holding my hands?”
“We’re supposed to stay with you.”
“So stay with me.” Eytan got into the Fiat and started the engine. “Just not too close.”
The giants made to run for their Opel. “Where to?” the driver called to Eckstein.
“Wingate.” Eytan pulled out of the lot.
He lost them at the first major intersection. The light was going red at Derech Hevron, and he rolled to a stop behind a taxi, letting the Opel creep up behind him. Then he gunned it, jumped around the taxi and cut through a blur of enraged drivers as he careened around an Arab bus and zipped down into Gonen. He sped over the railroad tracks, left on Ben Zakai, all the way around to Herzog, up Ben Zvi. He was already exiting the city for Tel Aviv, while the two out-of-towners still foundered somewhere in the industrial zone, cursing and spitting.
The babysitters were sure of only one thing—Eytan surely was not going to Wingate.
That, of course, was precisely his destination.
* * *
Boaz was pleased, and actually quite surprised, to see Eckstein again. The instructor was out on the sand lot near the obstacle course, putting a platoon of paratroop commandos through their paces. Half of the young men held M–16 bayonets in their hands. The other half were trying not to get stabbed.
Boaz walked away from the group. He pointed at Eytan’s head.
“Nice haircut,” he said, perusing the blond spikes that Eytan had attempted to comb flat. “Very modern.”
“I need a refresher,” Eytan said without ceremony.
Boaz looked at his student’s eyes. “Oh?” Like most martial artists, he was a student of body language, facial expression. Eyes. “Now?”
“Yes.”
Boaz glanced over Eytan’s body. “Where’s your pistol?”
“My wife has it.”
The Krav-Maga instructor raised an eyebrow. He was not about to ask for the details. He had been in the business long enough.
“Then you’ll be needing another one, I think.”
“Afterward.”
“Fine.” Boaz turned to his students. “Chadal!” The paratroopers stopped battling one another and dropped their tired arms. “That’s it for today. Tomorrow at seven.” They walked off toward their barracks, speculating optimistically about the odds of getting an evening pass into Netanya.
