by Nathan Ronen
The plot of this book, its characters and their names are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance between the plot of the book and actual events or persons is entirely coincidental.
Where Shadows Meet
Nathan Ronen
Copyright © 2018 Nathan Ronen
All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.
Translation from the Hebrew: Yael Schonfeld Abel
Contact: [email protected]
Contents
Acknowledgments
A personal note
Prologue
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
Chapter 77 Chapter 78 Chapter 79 Chapter 80
Chapter 81 Chapter 82 Chapter 83 Chapter 84
Chapter 85 Chapter 86 Chapter 87
Epilogue
This book is dedicated to my sister Naomi Sharon, may she rest in peace, whom I miss dearly, and who passed away in 2008 from leukemia when she was only fifty-seven.
Acknowledgments
A loving thank you to my wife, Denise Ronen, who has always been there for me: empowering, supporting and encouraging. This is my opportunity to apologize to her for all the times I disappeared on her because the characters were running around in my mind, calling me to sit down and write their stories.
I’m grateful to my close friends, who contributed to the Hebrew edition of this book, each in his or her own area of expertise, whether in suggestions for plot twists, professional knowledge in the intelligence or operational fields, insights regarding the characters’ traits or psychological profile, or copyediting:
Shlomo Zimmer, Tani Geva, Elia Herzberg, Gideon Perry, Joe Amar, Nathan Amar, Haya Calmi, Momi Castiel, Eli Wasserman, Lina Sharon, Rabbi Arye Pomeranz, Hezi Gilad, Abigail Urman, Henry Delman, Etty Levkovich, Ruthie Ben Ephraim, Limor Meirovitz, Micky Kramer and Gideon Alon.
Special thanks to Amitai Lev, my talented son-in-law, for designing the Israeli edition of the book, now a bestseller.
And finally, enormous thanks to Amnon Jackont, the editor and historian who is broadly knowledgeable in so many areas, who protected me from scattering in too many directions, focused me, and is largely responsible for the correct, rapid pace of the plot.
A personal note
The book before you tells the story of special people, who dedicate their lives to the public good and therefore pay a high personal price. They don’t do so merely out of ideology, a sense of duty or altruism. They are addicted to adrenaline, to control, to action, and to the fact that they do extraordinary things legally and with authority.
This is a fictional tale dealing with the Israeli intelligence system in general and the Mossad Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in particular: a small, brave agency, operated by exceptional people, imbued with a sense of purpose and high motivation to serve their country while totally identifying with its Jewish morals and democratic values.
The Israeli intelligence community is an integral part of Israeli society, with its ills and advantages. It has good intentions that lead to bad deeds; exalted values alongside misguided, criminal or dangerous delusions; love, hate and envy; sacrifice and abuse. An impossible mix of truth and lies, discretion and excess, confusion and dissembling, come together to form a tangled knot that is difficult to unravel.
Intelligence communities throughout the world like to perceive themselves as a brotherhood of camaraderie and purity. But like in the most austere monasteries, they reveal evidence of hatred, internal rivalries, envy, jealousy, and all other human weaknesses.
This is not just another action thriller, but rather an espionage drama, telling the tales of the protagonist, the people surrounding him, and the complex relationship among them. I’ve woven the plot from autobiographical elements, freely using both actual historical and fictional events in order to enhance the drama. I’ve peppered the plot with the various types of people I’ve encountered in the course of my life, intertwining all of them within an imaginary saga that does not exist merely in the single plane of the plot of an action thriller, but also in the depths of the hero’s mental grappling with the twists and turns of his life.
This book should not be viewed as a faithful recreation of actual events or a description of real people. This is a fictional creation, shaped solely by creative considerations. Therefore, the contents of the novel and its characters should not be attributed with documentary or historical significance. There is no direct overall relationship between the novel’s characters and reality.
Plenty of research has gone into this book; I hope the details are accurate. I have verified them with security and intelligence professionals, experts on the Middle East, academics in strategic research institutes in Israel and abroad, clinical psychologists, and consulted professional literature as well.
Humbly,
Nathan Ronen
Prologue
October 2007, ‘The Office’
October 2007. Friday afternoon. The ‘Anemone’ secured phone on Arik’s desk in the bureau of the head of the Mossad Intelligence Agency, generally referred to as ‘the Office,’ buzzed noisily. After a few beeps indicating the synchronization of the automatic scrambling system, Arik heard the voice of the head of the Mossad’s Paris bureau, Haya Calmi.
“Arik, good news. Your French pal, Admiral Lacoste, was appointed as head of the DGSE1 today. I called his office to convey your congratulations as head of the Mossad, and also sent a large bouquet of red roses to his office.”
“That’s great!” Arik said. “Thank you!”
“The most interesting thing,” Haya said, “was the reaction to my flowers. Within two hours of sending the flowers, a messenger arrived with an official thank-you letter, signed in the admiral’s handwriting, expressing his gratitude. The intriguing thing is that inside the official envelope, I found a smaller envelope, sealed with wax and bearing the stamp of the head of French intelligence. Your name was handwritten on it, along with the word ‘Urgent.’”
“Open it!” Arik said.
“Hold on a minute,” Calmi replied. Arik heard the sound of the envelope being sliced open with a letter opener.
“I don’t get this at all,” Haya said. “There’s a white piece of paper, with a handwritten number that looks like a fifteen-digit, international phone number to me, and a three-word sentence: ‘Cherchez la femme.’”
“That’s very i
nteresting, but it still doesn’t tell me anything. Are you familiar with the number?” Arik asked curiously.
“I don’t know. The area code is strange. I don’t know any country or city with that area code. I suggest you pass it on to the Technology Division. It’s their area of expertise.”
“Read out the number to me, please, and send me the source by diplomatic pouch. It’s possible the note contains more material written in invisible ink, and I want the Technology Division’s labs to check it out,” Arik said.
Calmi began dictating the number, while Arik wrote it down. Fifteen digits in all. This was not a phone number familiar to him. He tried to dial the mysterious number, and the English-language reply from the international operator came immediately: “The number you are trying to reach is not in service.”
He buzzed the internal intercom, and his P.A Claire answered promptly. “I need you to take something urgently to the person on duty in the Technology Division,” Arik said, his tone businesslike. “Make a copy, and ask Intelligence and Research to try to decipher the message as well.”
Half an hour later, the head of the Technology Division, Dr. Yuli Ebenstein, was on the line. “Arik, this was indeed written in a format meant to masquerade as an international phone number, but that area code doesn’t exist for either a country or a city. I ran it through our algorithm system, and the most logical option is that this is a set of two seven- and eight-digit numbers. Whoever sent this to you apparently wanted to camouflage the true nature of the numbers, but also knew we would easily realize that this is not just some girl’s phone number.”
Arik smiled to himself. Lacoste was well known as an aficionado of crossword puzzles and logic challenges.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re saying it’s not some woman’s number. What is it, then?”
“It looks like a set of coordinates to me. The best idea would be to contact the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Mapping Unit. But I don’t think anyone of substance is there right now. Just whoever’s on duty. They’re all on weekend break, you know how it is.”
“Thanks a million,” Arik told him. “I’ll take it from here.”
A moment later, he was on the line with Hagay Barel, the deputy of Dr. Alex Haimovitz, head of the Intelligence and Research Division.
“Hi, Arik. We looked into it using our new Galileo system. Hypothetically, it looks like the intersection of two sets of naval coordinates: north and east. We think it should say: Latitude: N 12˚ 27.805; Longitude: E 53 ˚49.4243. When we checked it against the global maps, we found a point about 120 miles north of the Socotra archipelago, in the middle of the Arabian Sea, in the shipping lane from the Far East to the Gulf of Oman, or a sea path from the Persian Gulf through the Gulf of Aden in the direction of the Red Sea. I’d still verify it with Naval Intelligence,” Barel concluded.
“And what’s the meaning of the phrase ‘Seek the woman’?” Arik asked.
“If it really is at sea, we think it’s the name of a ship. But that’s only an initial hypothesis, no guarantees,” Barel said, in a way characteristic of analysts, who were not eager to commit.
Arik pressed the intercom button again. “Claire, please get me Navy Commander Major General Eli Sharon.”
Arik loved Sharon like a brother. Years ago, they had been roommates in the elite naval unit Shayetet 13’s fighter course, and had climbed up the ranks simultaneously as team commanders in the naval commando, and later as division commanders. More than two years ago, Eli had assisted him, in his capacity as commander of the Operations Division, in establishing a surveillance base in South Azerbaijan, on the Iranian border, as well as a front-line Mossad logistics and surveillance base. Both of them were sons of Holocaust survivors, and often, during integrated operations that included elite units Sayeret Matkal2, the naval commando and Mossad Special Ops Kidon fighters, they would converse in Yiddish in order to prevent anyone listening in, whether an enemy or an ally at the command post, or from understanding them.
The intercom buzzed again. “Sharon will get back to you on the Red Line in a few minutes. He’s hosting the Navy staff meeting,” Claire updated him.
Until the call came through, Arik entered the Secured Room adjacent to his bureau. This room contained the only standalone computer station with an internet connection. For information security reasons, all other Mossad computers were connected only via an organizational intranet, classified in accordance with the user’s degree of authorization and security clearance. All defense system computers could not connect to the internet. No active computer in the Mossad had a dock to a USB flash drive or a disc drive.
He booted up his personal computer, went online and typed the word Socotra. He discovered it to be an uninhabited, unique island opposite the coast of Yemen. “Socotra,” he read from the Mossad’s information database, “is part of a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, named after the largest island among them. Socotra is located about 215 miles south of Yemen and about 155 miles east of Somalia.”
The Red Line clattered again in his office. “Arik, hi, it’s Eli Sharon. I’m very busy, but I was told that it was urgent,” the Navy commander said.
“I’m sorry to bug you on a Friday evening, but this is an operational matter. I need your help. I received some urgent info from the head of Pyramid about a set of coordinates that we believe is in the middle of the sea, in a shipping lane from the Far East to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait,” Arik said.
“What’s out of the operative range is what’s of routine interest to me,” Eli Sharon replied. “What’s out there?”
“For a while now, our system has registered an item about a ship bearing North Korean or Iranian missiles headed for Gaza. We issued an EEI3 briefing about it to all our Western intelligence allies, and a while ago, we received a tip about the location of a cargo ship carrying containers and cylindrical metal packaging headed toward the Port of Sudan. We suspect these are weapons and strategic SSM missiles intended for the Hamas in Gaza.
“And this can’t wait?” Sharon asked. “I have a meeting Sunday morning with those leeches from the Ministry of Finance’s Budget Division, in preparation for authorizing the Navy’s five-year armament plan.”
“If Pyramid’s head of intelligence is sending me coordinates on the day he enters office, he’s probably signaling us that there’s a large, unusual weapons delivery that could disrupt the balance of power. He sent me the location of the vessel so that we would handle it before it’s too late. I have to pinpoint the location of that vessel, if it actually is a ship. Can you allocate it to someone?”
“Let me look into it. Israeli Navy submarine Dolphin is currently on silent cruise in the Persian Gulf, east of the Port of Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. But it’s too far away, and I don’t have any other vessels in the area. I might ask Admiral Scott Swift, commander of the US Seventh Fleet docking in Manama, Bahrain, to send out a naval patrol plane from their front-line naval base in Diego Garcia to look for your ship at sea. Let me get back to you.”
“Great idea,” Arik said.
“Okay. Someone will call you. Bye,” Sharon concluded and returned to his own affairs.
* * *
1The General Directorate for External Security is France’s external intelligence agency, nicknamed Pyramid, is the French equivalent to the American CIA.
2Sayeret Matkal is the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, a Special Forces unit that is part of the Intelligence Corps, within Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
3 Essential Elements of Information
Chapter 1
September 2007—The Apartment on 28 Yakinton
St., Jerusalem
At 1 a.m., the phone buzzed with increasing volume on the dresser next to the bed of Arik Bar-Nathan, the prime minister’s national security advisor. Arik slept as his partner embraced him, the two of them spooning as they slu
mbered.
Eva thought she heard their baby Leo crying in the adjacent room, and woke up in a fright. She lay in her bed, listening; the strange noise was emanating from the operational red phone. She whispered in Arik’s ear, “Lieblich, it’s for you, from the office.” He sighed, turned over, and fell asleep again.
Since leaving his role as head of the Mossad’s Caesarea Operations Division more than a year ago, and being promoted to his elevated position in the Prime Minister’s Office, Arik Bar-Nathan could allow himself a deep night’s sleep. His work at the Prime Minister’s Office lacked the crazed, adrenalized tension characterizing his field duties in the Mossad. His staff position in Jerusalem left him free time to spend with his girlfriend and young son. He had left behind his previous home in the Tsuk Kedumim neighborhood at Palmachim Airbase, replacing it with the handsome apartment he had rented for them in Givat Massuah in south Jerusalem.
Arik Bar-Nathan had never been a kitchen and maintenance kind of guy. Others were in charge of cleaning and organizing his home. He was a hedonist who always liked to have the best, and was a proponent for the cliché “life’s too short and there’s no instant replay.” He liked good wine, good food, thrillers, theater, movies, off-road vehicles and fast cars, and old Harley Davidson bikes he could restore in the basement of his old house on base.
Arik was aware of the fact that not everyone liked him. Some people at the office referred to him as “Arikore” behind his back, short for “Arik the Smiling Whore,” as it was his custom to always annihilate his enemies face-to-face, with a small smile of satisfaction curving his lips. Some would also testify that he was a man who was fiercely controlling, a perfectionist who was not easy to work with. Being nice wouldn’t get you promoted to head of the Israeli Mossad’s Caesarea Operations Division. But on the other hand, he also had his few brief moments of grace, in which he knew how to relax and turn on the charm, along with a razor-sharp sarcastic sense of humor.