by Nathan Ronen
“To me? I don’t believe it. That son of a bitch was talking about me to the prime minister?” Geula asked, her discomfort apparent.
“I knew you’d be interested. I’m only taking this sort of risk because of my feelings for you. I brought you the recording. No one will notice I took it home for the weekend.”
“Can I listen to it?” she asked eagerly, taking the bait.
“Only if you promise me that you won’t lose control or tell anyone about it, and especially don’t lash out at this Mr. Schein, who would understand that we’re tracking him.”
“What are you, a little kid? I’d be overjoyed if that slick American gets the hell out of here. And besides, you know I have a high security clearance.”
“I want a kiss before I play it for you, to seal your promise,” he said. She kissed him swiftly, impatient to listen.
He extracted the CD from the envelope, making sure she saw that it was one recording of many, and that she read the inscription on the envelope identifying it as material belonging to the Jerusalem National Police HQ’s Investigation and Intelligence Division.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he told her, “and when I get back, we’ll talk about the rest of the day.”
He inserted the CD into the computer and pressed Play.
Geula immediately identified the voice of her boss, Ehud Tzur, talking on the phone to Arthur Schein. The atmosphere was jocular, an exchange between two men that veered into gossip concerning Geula, the office manager.
“Why do you keep that disgusting squat creature around?” Arthur asked in Hebrew with a strong American accent. “Every Prime Minister’s Office in the world picks the very best—beautiful, educated girls, and I can’t understand why you hang on to that ugly woman with the hairy face.”
“I can’t fire her. She’s been with me since she was a girl. She’s loyal and does good work for me…” Ehud Tzur replied. “Especially during the periods when everyone left me since they saw me as a dead horse politically.”
“Ehud, I commend you for your loyalty, but you’re prime minister now, not some young lawyer dealing with minor cases in Jerusalem. You need someone classy, not some primitive relic who goes around abusing the poor women soldiers who work in the office. She’s really pathetic, that Geula, a mean woman with a low self-image, a kind of drone who’s risen to power. Do you know she picks up things at the market without paying for them?”
“How do you know that?” Tzur asked in disbelief.
“From my driver, who chauffeurs her around when she’s shopping or running errands for your office. One day she’ll get you in trouble with her shenanigans. You can’t trust her.”
Geula was weeping uncontrollable tears of rage. She was furious.
“Do you have anyone for me? Some chick who speaks a few languages and can travel abroad with me? The kind of girl who would watch my back and also project the right sort of image?” Tzur asked.
“I’m sure we can find you someone good. You’ve got to get rid of that evil Geula.”
“But who’d take her? She doesn’t have a family, or any education; she’s a simple girl, and I can’t just throw her to the dogs.” At this stage, Geula rose from her seat and clicked her laptop shut. She could no longer bear the patronizing attitude and the way they were talking about her. As if she were damaged goods.
Sasha emerged from the shower with only a towel wrapped around his thighs. He found her sobbing in humiliation.
Sasha held her tightly. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I thought you should know what was going on behind your back. You should start making your own recordings of all your conversations with Ehud Tzur; all your private exchanges about things that only the two of you know, about funds, about donors. You know more than I do, right?”
She buried her head in his shoulder and cried. Sasha stroked her hair. “I’ll give you a tiny recording device that you can hide in your bra. No one will notice.”
“That son of a bitch. I’ll show him,” she muttered furiously. “All the cash I hid in my home safe for him, all the duplicate payments he took for travel expenses from several different organizations when he flew abroad to lecture there, the accounting ledger listing the actual expenses, compared to the inflated fictitious invoices I passed on to the treasurer for him, the houses he bought at a ridiculous price that were actually bribes from families of donors who have financial interests in Israel. He’ll rue the day if he ever decides to throw me out!”
“Let the politicians take care of themselves,” Sasha said, kissing her softly on the lips. “You have to look out for number one. I’ll back up every recording you bring, and you can use them the minute you find out you’re being demoted. But you have to bring me the originals, because otherwise, the Shin Bet will search your home without your knowledge and make the evidence disappear.”
“But I don’t really want to hurt him. I’m just angry right now,” she wept.
“Of course you won’t hurt him. Ehud Tzur isn’t even the target. The only one we want to get is Arthur Schein. But if you’re holding ammunition that scares him, he wouldn’t dare toss you out. And that would also be your revenge on Arthur Schein.”
“You’re right,” Geula said. “I love you, and I’m so glad I have a good friend like you by my side during such a difficult period.”
* * *
43 Japanese pickled vegetables
Chapter 67
Les Grands Boulevards, Paris
Eddy Constantine took the elevator down from his lavish apartment on the fourth floor of 60 Avenue Montaigne, one of the residential floors above the store dedicated to prestigious Italian fashion and leatherwear label Gucci, straight to the basement parking garage housing his state car.
He liked to leave home early, before the slow morning traffic caused by commuters arriving in Paris from the suburbs.
Being a suspicious man by nature, he circled his car, as was his habit, peering down below it to search for signs of a car bomb or a surveillance transmitter. Finally, he surveyed its interior, seeking indications of a break-in. Calmer now, he entered the car and pressed the remote control button opening the doors of the parking garage. The Citroën C6 took off with a screech of tires into the broad boulevard, turning left at the traffic circle on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt. Eddy Constantine’s sharp eyes did not fail to notice the tall, slim figure looking in his direction, clad in a tight leather outfit, face obscured by a motorcycle helmet, and leaning over a light green Kawasaki Z300 motorcycle with a thundering engine.
Eddy Constantine drove by the leather-clad figure, glancing in his side mirror to see whether the motorcycle was following him. He turned at the large square, choosing to swerve toward the La Défense district, in the opposite direction from his office. The green motorcycle followed.
He increased his speed, looking in the mirror. The motorcycle disappeared, and instead, a blue Audi 8 filled his rear-view mirror. Eddy eyed the driver and the female passenger next to him. They looked Mediterranean, young and handsome. The driver was wearing a gray hoodie, with a blonde girl sitting beside him.
In order to allay his fears, he veered wildly from the wide boulevard onto a side road, and saw the Audi stay right behind him. He had an odd feeling. His heart was beating rapidly, but he didn’t want to call his colleagues at the national security agency. Too many times, such incidents were false alarms, and he wanted to avert any leers from the office security officer; there was no doubt that he mocked his boss’s “spy syndrome” behind his back.
From beneath his seat, Eddy produced his PAMAS-G1 service pistol, chambered a magazine, and placed it on the seat next to him.
Driving back in the direction of his home was out of the question, and so he continued to cruise through Paris’s main boulevards, snaking through various plazas in an attempt to shake off his tail. He accelerated and slowed down, but the blue Audi remained a short d
istance behind him.
He drove for a whole hour, spitting out silent curses, taunting his pursuers to expose themselves and their purposes. When he turned on Avenue Foch on his way to the Arc de Triomphe, the blue Audi suddenly disappeared from his rear-view mirror.
Where the hell were they from? Who could they be? Maybe the Saudis? Or the Russians? Perhaps Americans? Or maybe hitmen hired by one of the industrial corporations, such as Thyssenkrupp, who realized he was betraying them? What did they want from him? He dismissed al-Qaeda. They were impatient, and would have already opened fire on him when he exited his home parking garage. Mossad agents would not have dared take action against him on French soil. He knew that within the spy code of conduct, attacking a French intelligence officer within France proper was a type of red line that was never crossed.
After years of training at memorizing tiny details and spotting lookouts and trackers, he was certain. Someone was still following him. But who? And the next question—why?
He glanced in his mirror and saw about seven vehicles behind him. A black van had joined the procession of Paris’s morning traffic jam. It was the kind of Citroën van serving French security forces, with tinted windows. It was close enough to maintain eye contact, but also far enough so as not to cause the target under surveillance to panic. He knew the drill.
Eddy Constantine decided to check whether it was merely his imagination and paranoia, or whether someone was indeed tailing him. He began to honk his horn and zigzag between the cars, affixing the flashing light serving police officers to his windshield.
The problem was that at this hour, he had no chance of maneuvering quickly through morning traffic. He was stuck. He turned on the siren, but no one moved to clear a route for him. Everyone was in a hurry, and the French actually enjoyed blocking the path of the solitary flic (cop).
The black van began to pass the cars between them, advancing toward him. Eddy looked back warily. The van was now in the lane on his right. Two burly young men, wearing black, were sitting in the front seat. They looked French. Their hair was buzzed short, and they were wearing sunglasses. They looked like army men. Were these his people, members of the French security service, or perhaps some commando group?
The blue Audi suddenly popped up in the lane to his left, and the blonde in the passenger’s seat smiled at him. The green Kawasaki motorcycle now appeared behind him. A closer look revealed that its driver was a woman, with a suspicious bulge on her waist. Was it a gun?
He was now trapped between four vehicles. In front of him was a white Ford SUV that occasionally braked abruptly. It was a kind of ‘diamond’ setup characterizing the agency he had actually not expected to find here. This was the tailing method used by Israeli Mossad agents: different yet similar vehicles, clean but not too clean, dirty but not too dirty, all of them driving carefully, taking care so as not to attract too much attention.
He was surrounded, and knew the deal. They would lead him to a location that would be convenient for their purposes. However, his mind refused to accept the facts. After all, the Israelis wouldn’t dare follow the head of the Operations Division of the French intelligence service. Could these be the fighters of a country or an organization trained by Mossad personnel? There were many of these throughout the world.
He decided to feign cooperation, grabbing hold of his pistol and cocking it so it was ready for action.
He still thought his imagination might be playing tricks on him. He was amazed that the Israeli Mossad had not planned something less public. The vehicles stopped at traffic lights together, accelerated together in the large traffic circles, and did not initiate any move. Perhaps the time had not yet come, but he realized that the stage had been set. Apparently, they were waiting until he made a mistake of some sort, and then would tighten the siege, pursue him and cause him to stop.
Thoughts raced through his mind at breakneck speed. He scanned every option. It was possible that everything taking place was a maneuver intended to distract his attention from something completely different that was currently happening. The spy in him always searched for a hidden meaning behind the words or the action. Some would call it paranoia; however, in the world of spies, paranoia and a suspicious mind were a guarantee for a long life.
Eddy wasn’t the type to trust other people, including his own wife and children. The circumstances of his life as a white boy born to French settlers in Algeria, being orphaned at a young age after his parents were killed by the local revolutionaries, his wretched life in a church orphanage in rural northern France, including obscene acts he suffered at the hands of the priest, and his life in the French Foreign Legion all shaped his tough, uncompromising character.
For thirty minutes, he did nothing, merely driving along at a steady pace, heading out of town, toward Charles de Gaulle Airport, in an attempt to wear down his pursuers’ focus. Perhaps he could frustrate them somewhat and decrease their alertness. He led them toward the ring road surrounding Paris, the Boulevard Périphérique.
At some point, on the Périphérique heading south, he came to a decision. He yelled out a juicy curse in French intended to ease his internal pressure: “Sac à merde!” The decision had been made. He pressed down abruptly on the gas pedal, and his state car accelerated to the full capabilities of its 2,000-cc engine, beginning to truly speed up. He decided to drive south, in the direction of the office, where they wouldn’t dare touch him. He also knew they wouldn’t dare open fire, since if these were indeed Mossad agents, it was a known fact that the Mossad was too smart to hurt innocent civilians, and any irregular activity would cause the aggressive Traffic Police to swarm to the scene.
The operational driving courses he had taken served him well now. He pulled the steering wheel sharply to the left, crossing three lanes at once, causing the drivers around him to brake abruptly and honk while cursing Constantine’s mother with a variety of the juiciest profanities available in the French language.
He cheered as the maneuver worked and his pursuers disappeared within the tangle of cars that he himself had created. When he heard the sound of cars crashing into each other behind him, he burst out in manic laughter, beating the steering wheel with his palm, feeling very pleased with himself, and shouting out, “Enculé—up yours!” raising his middle finger in a gesture that could not be misinterpreted.
At a sign indicating the exit to the 20th Arrondissement, he cut left abruptly from Boulevard Périphérique. Hurtling through the first traffic circle with screaming, smoking wheels, he turned to a side road leading to his office.
When he arrived, he waited in his car for several more minutes, huffing and puffing as if he had just run the 110-meter hurdles race, until his heartbeat slowed down. He then called a number somewhere in Africa.
“We have to be careful,” he said. “I think the Mossad’s on my tail.”
“We’ll be careful,” Field Marshal Idris Ma’alum replied calmly.
He did not know that the microphones concealed within his driver’s seat cushion were transmitting everything that was going on to the Mossad’s computers, including his curses, his sudden accelerations and his reckless driving.
In the basement of the embassy, Zohar Oren, the officer on duty for Digital Fortress’s Paris extension, smiled in satisfaction, picking up the phone receiver: “We now know everything about him,” she told the person on the other side of the PPP line in Tel Aviv.
Chapter 68
The Mourners’ Apartment on 12 Rabbi Maimon St., Neve Sha’anan, Haifa
“El Maleh Rahamim, Merciful God, Who dwells above, give rest on the wings of the Divine Presence, amongst the holy, pure and glorious who shine like the sky, to the soul of Ethel, daughter of Nahman Beyman, who has passed away,” the cantor sang at the funeral. Although he had been raised in an atheist home, Arik knew his mother would want a proper Jewish funeral.
After the funeral, Arik and Naomi returned with their f
amilies to their mother’s house, where all the mirrors had been covered with sheets, as tradition dictated. He was surprised by the fact that his mother’s neighbors had prepared them a meal of condolence, the first meal eaten following the interment of the dead, which included round foods, such as eggs, lentils, bagels and olives, as a symbol of the circle of life.
Naomi and Arik sat in white socks on a thick mattress placed on the floor. Dozens of people he did not know or did not remember came and went, shaking the mourning family members’ hands. All his friends from Israel’s security agencies, and especially from the leadership of the Mossad, arrived, shook their hands, and immediately drove back to work.
Arik caught the eye of Jonathan Arieli, head of Caesarea Division, and signaled him to approach. “Keep on planning the execution of the plan in Morocco. Please come see me here tonight after midnight, when everyone’s asleep, and we’ll iron out the details. In three days, I’m ditching the Shiva here and going to Morocco with you guys.”
“Are you sure?” Jonathan stammered in embarrassment, immediately regretting the question after registering the look Arik sent his way.
In the afternoon, the door opened and Eva came in, carrying a small travel case. She was wearing a gray business suit and her blond hair was pulled back with a rubber band. Naomi walked over and hugged her warmly. Arik’s adult children, Michael and Nathalie, approached her with obvious affection.
Arik didn’t notice her arrival until Eva was standing in front of him, looking embarrassed.
Their eyes met. Arik grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her into his parents’ bedroom, where he embraced her warmly. She hugged him back, whispering in his ear that she knew how painful it was to lose a mother. “I know how important Mother was to you, and I want to tell you I’m so sorry that you’re going through this.”
Arik could no longer maintain his restraint. His eyes grew teary, and he clenched his teeth in an attempt to regain control. Eva sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled him toward her shoulder. She stroked his head as if he were a child, causing the liberating sobbing to burst out of him. He cried for the death of his mother, for himself, for their relationship, and for the intense way he missed Leo, his little son.