by Nathan Ronen
The official work shift was defined as eight hours, but in actuality, activity hours were flexible. Those who wanted to stay on, or to nap briefly and then continue working, were allowed to do so. The lights were on constantly, and most of the employees sat across from their screens bundled in a thick sweater or a fleece blanket, as the air conditioning was always set to 70 degrees in order to maintain proper functioning of the computers. In an environment of this kind, it was no wonder that it was easy to lose track of time and space, or even the current season.
That morning, a young, skinny girl suddenly let out a scream of joy. “I’m in!” Applause and supportive roars of approval rang out all around her.
“Yay!!!” the willowy female soldier shouted out. She was wearing civilian clothes comprised of a skirt that stretched below her knees and a long-sleeved blouse, signaling her religious observance of the decree of modesty. The shift supervisor, Captain Yahel, on loan to the Mossad from the IDF, quickly rolled her office chair over, settling beside the young soldier. After a few exhausting days of unrelenting determination, Cyber Warrior Nina had managed to crack the passcode to the Darknet transmissions of a troll from Marseille calling himself Islam Anarchist.
“I laid out some avatar12 traps, acting under different identities on the Darknet. They established contact with him and gained his trust. He’s sure they’re hackers like him, active on TOR13, and they’ve been exchanging info on how to hide their computer’s IP address, how to use powerful broadband antennas to intercept open Wi-Fi networks belonging to stores or hotels, and how to download sophisticated software to obfuscate their tracks.”
“How did you bait him?” the shift manager asked.
“The oldest trick in the book: I got his testosterone going. My avatar appears on Darknet as Blowjob Marina, a seemingly anarchist character of Russian origin, with an image of a blonde vampire with lusty lips, sourced from Japanese anime.”
“You mean manga comics?” the manager asked with a smile, surprised by the fact that a religious girl was using an image from such an anarchic world.
“Yes. Erotic manga for adults.”
“You’re naughtier than I thought.”
“Me? The troll from Marseille is the truly naughty one. He performs large monetary transfers to a well-known shell corporation for the Islamic Jihad through Qatar Central Bank. Additional funds have been transferred into the same account through the United Arab Emirates’ Gulf Bank in Bahrain, and Saudi Credit Bank in Jeddah, but I think he’s playing us and rotating the accounts through TOR in order to camouflage the source of the funds, which is actually in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Each of his messages is routed through several anonymizers. The data transmits through servers in Iceland, Macedonia, Sweden, Thailand and Brazil before it’s ground into little pieces and sent to accounts all over the world. Anyone trying to track his IP will never know his real address.
“The message I managed to crack supposedly came from Reykjavik, Iceland, where the server used a 128-bit encryption, and from there it was transmitted to a different IP, listed under a different name. It was then bounced to several other IP addresses in a circular manner. It was forwarded about ten times, with a copy in every inbox at all kinds of fictitious addresses. It’s now indistinguishable and unlocatable. It’s become a random anonymous message, like ten billion other similar messages transmitted online every hour. He’s definitely good, this guy.”
“Way to go. I salute you,” the shift manager said appreciatively. “Check whether the source is Emirate or Iranian money, or someone else. Track their digital trail. Follow the money.”
“I’ve been tracking his FININT14 for a while now.”
“Can you identify whether it’s Iranian money?”
“I’m not sure it’s the Iranians. There’s someone here who wanted us to think the funding was Iranian. In my humble opinion, this is Islamic Jihad funding we’re talking about here. They’re not exactly best friends with the Iranians. Sunnis and Shiites, you know… And despite all the mines they’ve strewn in my path, I’ve identified the hub in Rabat, Morocco, via Marseille,” the young female soldier said confidently.
“Make sure he’s not on to you. Track him carefully. Patience is wisdom’s companion.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t be able to slip away. Virtual space is like the forest in winter. Hackers can hide effectively between the trees, but they can’t leave their hiding spot without leaving a deep footprint in the snow. I embedded our Spartacus in his computer. It’s a worm that impersonates him, allowing us to send text messages from his phone without his knowledge, or email from his computer without leaving a trace. But that’s not all. I inputted his info into the alert system we’ve developed here, which enabled me to map and locate all his friends and associates. All of them are located in La Castellane neighborhood in Marseille.”
“Stay close on his tail. I’m willing to allocate a few more of our cyber warriors to help you. Pay special attention to his and his friends’ cell traffic, including booking flights, scrambling signals, and mining data related to irregular fund transfers,” the shift manager said, wheeling her chair back to her station.
The reports from Cyber Warrior Nina’s computer flowed at a dizzying pace. The system charted graphs specifying the connections among various people and collecting photo tags and personal information. The algorithms flooded it with keywords, geographical locations and cross-referencing of events, ensuring automatic distribution with no human intervention. The computers’ capability included not merely screening the information, but also prioritizing its importance based on source reliability and keyword sensitivity. All of the information flowed into a central database called The Pool, located in the Intelligence and Research Division, eight floors above them.
Half an hour after Islam Anarchist’s computer was hacked, the screen on the shift manager’s desk was already lighting up with an urgent, blinking alert: “Based on the traffic transmitted by the computers of the trolls from Marseille, there’s a high probability that something unusual is taking place there. It might be too early to draw conclusions, but it seems as if a plan is being hatched for a coup in Morocco, or a reasonable suspicion of an attempt by the Maghreb Islamic Jihad to assassinate the king of Morocco.”
“That’s the golden tip we’ve been expecting for a long time,” Yahel, the young shift manager, declared in excitement, her eyes shining. “I’m going to go update the boss,” she said, knowing she and her entire staff should be praised and perhaps, as a motivating gift, also receive a weekend at a luxurious hotel in Eilat. She picked up the Red Line and waited.
“This is Amitai Lev, commander on duty at Command Post 8200.”
“This is Captain Yahel, shift commander at the Information Routing and Documentation Center at Digital Fortress. FYI, I’m issuing an urgent, classified report, Code Purple, for distribution the defense agencies heads, the Mossad director and the Mossad Division Heads Forum.”
* * *
12 An avatar is a fictitious representation of a user that can be used to carry out online fraud, for example, by participating in forums and chatrooms in which the avatar conceals the user’s true identity. It is one of the techniques used in cyber warfare.
13 The Onion Router (TOR) is free software routing encrypted, anonymous traffic among computers over the Internet through a network of junctions. It is used by hackers and avatars.
14 FININT or Financial Intelligence refers to intelligence regarding the sources of funding for terrorist and other criminal organizations.
Chapter 20
Arik’s Home in Jerusalem
He wasn’t afraid of being alone. He was solitary by nature, but now he was suddenly finding solitude difficult.
Ever since leaving the Prime Minister’s Office and being shamefully deposed from his role as acting director of the Mossad, Arik had tried to reconnect with his old friends at
social events in Tel Aviv cafes. But even there, in the group, he felt entirely alone. He was confused and isolated, full of rage over his banishment by politician Ehud Tzur and from the professional family he loved so much.
He was not a sociable person by nature, a magnet for jokesters or someone adept at small talk. He hoped people enjoyed his company because of his seriousness, the depth of his strategic vision and the broad perspective from which he examined every topic, as well as his sarcastic point of view, which was always funny to others.
Now, the vacuum in his life was unbearable. His attempts to contact businesspeople with a background similar to his own in order to find a place for himself in an international security firm also ran into obstacles. Everyone was hesitant to hire someone in conflict with the prime minister. People avoided him with various excuses. Some of them hinted that he looked like a broken man, recommending “as his friend” that he seek treatment, while others tried to fix him up with lonely women.
His efforts to find renewed closeness with his children failed as well. His son, Michael, was in the midst of his finals at the university, and preferred to spend the limited time at his disposal with his girlfriend. His daughter, Nathalie, had become extremely religious, so preferred to live in the world of the Torah, providing her with peace of mind.
The almond trees in the building’s garden were enveloped in blossoms that made each tree’s silhouette look like a bride in a pinkish-white wedding gown, fragrant and cheery with the buzz of the bees hovering around it. He wished Eva could see the enchanting sight she loved so much, and which reminded her of the blossoming cherry trees in her home country.
The greatest difficulty was found in their large, empty bed. He tossed and turned restlessly in bed, seeking Eva’s presence and imagining he heard baby Leo’s crying or his melodious laughter. Falling asleep seemed to take forever, and his dreams consisted of a nightmarish vision that recurred again and again.
In his dream, their recent conversations resurfaced within him, and he felt renewed guilt for failing yet again as a husband and a father. He dreamed that he was diving deep, as he had done as a young fighter in Shayetet 13, the naval commando. But suddenly, he felt that something had gone wrong with his pressure regulator, and he couldn’t breathe. He dove deeper with no control, calling to his son Michael for help. But his son was on a boat with his girlfriend, sipping a cold beer, laughing and saying he was busy. He called out to his daughter Nathalie and saw her in her home, in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood where she lived, showering his grandson. She couldn’t hear him calling. His beloved sister Naomi was no longer with him, either.
Arik woke up in terror, bathed in sweat. He got up to moisten his parched throat. He was bothered by the fact that Eva was not answering his phone calls. He tried to call her several times a day, at the hours when he believed she would still be home, but the call was always answered with the phone being slammed down. Sometimes, he was routed directly to voicemail, where he left declarations of love and yearning, but never received a reply.
He went back to bed and fell asleep. This time, in his dream, he was a lone naval commando fighter swimming in a deep, black sea, facing a strong current of frigid water, focused on reaching a destination. But this time, he couldn’t remember where he was going. He was familiar with the feeling of a fighter returning from the battlefield and experiencing a terrible loneliness when he encountered society. Sometimes, people could be on their own without feeling alone. Sometimes they might even want to be alone or “by themselves.” In contrast, loneliness was a negative experience in subjective terms, and this was exactly what Arik felt. Lonely, rejected and exiled. Cut off both from his professional family and his personal family.
In a moment of awareness, he realized, deep within him, that his cure was Eva. She was the barometer that allowed him to find his balance, his standard for a normal life. She was his family. He felt that he had to talk to her, had to explain to her how much he needed her.
Once again, he dreamed that he was calling her, and suddenly, she answered her Israeli cell phone.
“Eva, I can’t manage without you. You have to come back to me!” he shouted out to her with the despair of a drowning man.
Her response surprised him. She lashed out at him: “Yet again, it’s always ‘I’ and ‘me.’ You’re always at the center of everything. It’s always about what you need. It’s an impossible kind of egocentrism. What about ‘we’?”
In his dream, he found himself silent, speechless.
Arik wanted to tell her his story so that she would know and experience all that he had gone through along with him. A story with facts, events and sequences of anecdotes at its center. But his line of work tended to block his personal need to share. His embarrassing silence, his disappearances from their home without being able to explain why and for how long, caused misunderstandings and outbursts of rage from significant others, which sometimes, as with his own case, led to a crisis in the relationship.
“Are you aware that you’re saying nothing again? You always tell me, ‘Everything’s fine,’ as a way of shutting me up. You never share things with me. You only push me away,” she berated him in his dream.
“So when are you coming home?” he asked humbly.
“Once again, you’re going back to the question of when I’m coming back to you. Let me ask the opposite question: when will you be joining your partner and child?”
For what might have been the first time in his life, Arik realized that Eva was offering him partnership and acknowledgment of his deepest needs. She was inviting him to a shared observation, and accepting him without judgment. Once again, he awoke soaked in a cold sweat.
Arik understood that he had to travel to Germany and talk to Eva. But he didn’t want her to see him in his current condition, sloppily dressed, gaunt and extinguished. He decided to try and talk to her on the phone, and if she refused, he would go to her, having no other choice.
He rose and walked over to the shower, where he stood for a lengthy interval under the hot water washing his body, as he mentally scripted out what he was about to do. He finished the shower off with a stream of cold water, toweled off, put on his boxers and boiled himself a cup of Turkish coffee, tossing in a square of bittersweet chocolate.
At precisely 10 a.m. Israel time, he called Heidelberg University in Germany.
“May I speak to Professor Eva von Kesselring, from the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology?” he asked in his most formal English. The faculty secretary replied immediately with polite German pleasantness.
“Who’s asking for her, please?” she asked.
“My name is Arik Bar-Nathan, and I’m her partner,” he said.
“Eine minute bitte,” she said, startled, forwarding his call.
“Von Kesserling, bitte,” he heard Eva’s voice declaring formally, in a typically German manner.
“Eva, it’s me,” he whispered to her in Hebrew, as nervous as a teenage boy on his first date.
In the silence on the other end of the line, Arik could hear her rapid breathing.
“Lieblich, I can’t live without you,” his voice broke.
“Then leave everything and come here to be with your girlfriend and son. It’s quite simple, you know.”
“I can’t yet. The center of my life is here. My work, my entire existence…” he mumbled awkwardly, hiding the fact that he was, in fact, unemployed.
Eva was furious. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about us. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you always use your line of work as an excuse. It wasn’t the world of the Mossad that ‘created’ you and your psychological makeup—quite the opposite! Apparently, that world fit you like a glove, and so you chose that career. Your reasoning—your concept of what caused what—actually flows in exactly the opposite direction.”
“I don’t understand,” Arik said.
“Darling, if I’m your
partner, why don’t you open up to me? To whom are you going to tell all this if it isn’t me? How do you define intimacy? Is it nothing but sex? When you don’t let me share the things you’ve gone through, you’re actually creating a barrier of silence between us. I never asked you to reveal secrets, and I don’t need the confidential details, only to share the experiences of fear, pain or joy with my man.”
Arik stayed silent, feeling a moistness fill his eyes as he choked up.
“I don’t know. My parents, who were Holocaust survivors, taught me an insight conveyed through my mother’s milk, that all we ‘really’ have is ourselves, and we have to resign ourselves to that fact. In the Holocaust, a person was thrust out to deal with his own fate, and learned that he could only rely on himself.”
“Darling, I know you and the story of your life, and I love you just the way you are, with your pros and cons. You’re a big boy now, and it’s time to claim responsibility. All of us were boys or girls who experienced dependency, who had limited capabilities as children, who were controlled by others, who sometimes felt hurt and helpless. I’m willing to contain your dark parts without feeling rejected or betrayed, but if I’m important to you, you have to fulfill your part of the equation and go to therapy.”
“Me? Go to a shrink? I’m not sure…”
“You once mentioned Ruthie Ben Ephraim, the head of your agency’s psychology division. Go consult her.”
He remained silent; her words had had the desired effect. He knew she was right. There was no doubt that the time had come for him to deal with his immense need for compensation over a childhood of which he had been deprived in his youth—a child forced to assume a parental role, taking care of his younger sister in the shadow of traumatized parents, in the presence of concrete, material ghosts from the past.
A bell rang in the background. “I’m sorry, darling, I have to go to the lecture hall. It’s interesting that today, of all days, I’m discussing guilt, forgiveness and clemency.”