by Dov Alfon
Tomer’s mind scrambled for excuses while he waited for the chaos he remembered from his course on security protocol to unfold – screen lockdown due to unauthorised entry, the sounding of an alarm and an instant video recording of the suspect on the central system. But, astonishingly, none of these happened. Neither the alarm nor the video was activated, the screen remained lit, and in fact the file downloaded in the normal way to his own user folder as if it had not been copied from another user via a shared computer.
He looked at the screen, struggling to understand what had just happened. His confidence was so shaken by the inexplicable non-event that the relief he felt at being spared an investigation, not to mention the terrible humiliation, did not help. Like every soldier in Special Section, he had come into the course computer savvy, and all the skills he had put to use over the past months only deepened his current confusion.
The person he was supposed to approach with such questions was his commander, but even in his state of extreme infatuation, Tomer realised he shouldn’t push his luck. The only senior figure around at the moment was Boris, who was in the throes of exasperating conversations in Russian with Rav Turai Yerminski’s friends from his previous base. And besides, he might infer that the section rookie’s hypothetical question was not so hypothetical.
There was a computer whizz who had served with him on the course, who, once they arrived in the unit, had been assigned to the technology department. Tomer located him in the internal system and called him on the secure line.
“I have a stupid question about material from the course, Yossi,” Tomer said.
“I’m not sure I still remember the material from the course.” Yossi’s voice was friendly, but also cautious.
“It’s about the alarm that’s triggered after the entry of an unauthorised user,” Tomer continued with as casual a tone as he could muster. “Do you remember under what circumstances that doesn’t happen? I mean, what could explain a user downloading another user’s file on a shared computer and the alarm not going off?”
“There’s no way that could happen, you don’t need me for that,” Yossi said. “Everyone knows the situation you’re describing is impossible.”
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“Is that a quote from the course book?”
“Either that or from Sherlock Holmes, I’m not sure,” Tomer said. “What I’m asking you is what kind of bug would lead to the situation I described?” There was no way this was a bug, he knew that much. “Maybe it’s some kind of computer glitch . . .”
The statement was stupid enough to be a risk, but it was sure to elicit a response. Yossi, Tomer recalled, was reliably literal in his thinking.
His friend considered for a moment. “Then it has nothing to do with the computer,” he said. “It’s the Intelligence Corps’ central system . . . Way above some specific terminal. The central server acts like a proxy for all its users, c’mon that’s basic, so it would be the central server triggering the alarm.”
“Free as ever with the technobabble,” Tomer said, desperately trying to maintain a lighthearted tone as he weighed Yossi’s confirmation of his fear. “So if the central server is only a default proxy, right, then the person who controls it can decide whether to protect a specific computer in the system – or not?”
This time there was a longer silence, at the end of which his interlocutor sounded less confident and more concerned. “I suppose, theoretically, yes, it’s possible. A certain user could be disconnected from the system, and their computer, their actual machine, could be infiltrated. If this has happened to you, we have to report it, like, right away. I mean, like, now.”
“No, no, what are you talking about, you don’t understand,” Tomer said, his manner overly cheerful. “It’s 100 per cent theoretical, I’m preparing a test for new soldiers and I wanted to stage a similar scenario, to check if they’d know how to react.”
“You moron, you really scared me,” his friend said with undisguised relief. “You have nothing better to waste your time on? What were you planning to do, ask the Chief of Intelligence to disconnect a user from the main proxy just because you feel like scaring some new soldiers? You’re stationed in an important section, stop messing around.”
Meanwhile, Oriana’s computer had switched to sleep mode, and on the screen before him the official Unit 8200 screensaver appeared. Below the Intelligence Corps symbol, warnings flashed, one after another, from the information security department. Biblical verses, Buddhist sayings? His eyes traced one of them: “Deceitful men shall not live out half their days; But I will trust in You.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Tomer said and hung up. He gazed around him helplessly. Oriana had not returned yet; two more unresolved items to be added to the list of open questions she had asked him to draft. Someone in the top echelons of intelligence had ordered the installation of a rootkit to monitor her computer. Who? And why?
Chapter 44
In Paris, Commissaire Léger considered calling it a day, going home, then taking two sleeping pills.
He hated Roissy. He hated bodiless murders. He hated investigations that were dumped on him outside his administrative scope of responsibility. And today he learned that he also hated hotel greeters in red uniforms, hidden security cameras and Israeli investigators. He was supposed to monitor the work of the forensic teams on the construction site. He was supposed to launch a criminal investigation into the leaking of the security camera footage to the Israeli media. He was supposed to supervise the gathering of initial findings from the victim’s body, once they actually had a body. He was supposed to provide the juge d’instruction with hourly updates on his progress on all these fronts.
Nonetheless, he called his driver and stretched out on the back seat. If he had hoped to sleep the whole way home, he soon discovered that was not going to happen; high-pitched voices and piercing sirens emerged from the police radios in the car.
“What is it, what happened?” he asked the driver.
“A double homicide on the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir, Commissaire, in front of the new national library. A double assassination apparently from above: whoever did it used a drone.”
“In which arrondissement is that?”
“The bridge probably belongs to the 12th, Commissaire. But it still hasn’t been established that they’re getting the investigation. Maybe it’ll go to the border police, since they were Chinese.”
“Who were Chinese?”
“The victims and the killer, Commissaire. He used microdrones that hone in on the victims. That’s what the news reports said.”
“Turn up the volume,” Léger said. His voice was hoarse, almost frantic, and he had to point at the radio so the driver would understand.
The reporters’ voices, almost hysterical now, emerged from the speakers. The eyewitnesses repeated that it was “like a scene from a movie”, but none could explain what they actually saw. “It’s unbelievable that such a thing could happen in the middle of Paris,” the broadcaster said. “We have Paris’ Préfet de police on the line. I assume you’re very busy right now, so thank you for agreeing to talk to us.”
“It’s my public duty. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak here, and to assure the public that we’re committed more than ever to protecting the peace and the security of the capital’s residents.”
“What peace and what security?” the broadcaster wanted to know. “Microdrones operated by an assassin who is still at large, in a double homicide in the heart of Paris, that’s peace and security?”
“It’s a serious crime. I’ve assured the maire that the assassin will soon be apprehended. This is a case of underworld figures settling scores, a war between international criminals which has no connection to France.”
“So you’re optimistic?”
“I’m a bearer of good news today,” the Préfet said. “The murder has already been solved. We’ve
linked this assassination to the abduction of an Israeli passenger who landed in Charles de Gaulle airport this morning, a criminal pattern characteristic of drug deals. One of the victims fell into the river and is still missing, but the second victim has been identified as the perpetrator of the abduction at Charles de Gaulle airport. As I said, underworld figures squaring accounts. We will soon locate the assassin, and it is our intention to dismantle this criminal organisation.”
“So we can expect an arrest?”
“Now that the murder has been solved, the rest is only a matter of time and perseverance,” the Préfet said. “The case has been assigned to the head of the special team investigating this morning’s abduction, Commissaire Léger of the Paris police, an officer with vast experience. I have every confidence that he will complete his investigation with exemplary expedition.”
“Turn it off, turn it off!” Léger shouted at the driver.
The driver pulled over to the side of the road, uncertain how to proceed. He turned off the radio but did not dare switch off the siren, which kept wailing. Léger looked through the window, bemused, registering expressions of surprise and curiosity on the faces of passing drivers. He tried to sit upright, but a shooting pain in his back momentarily paralysed him. He also felt a vague pressure in his chest – an impending panic attack or a heart attack? One way or another, his body was telling him what his enemies had long known: he was finished. He could not handle the pressure of the present because, from head to toe, he was made of yesterdays.
The forces that controlled the present had put him in an impossible position. He had been publicly assigned an investigation that had now been labelled a success when it was certain to be a failure. He had been asked to solve “with exemplary expedition” a drug case that had nothing to do with drugs. He had been instructed to come up with criminal findings that matched a gang war, which effectively put an end to any attempt to involve the only authority that could actually handle this case – the counter-intelligence agency. He had also been publicly described as an officer “with vast experience”, which meant a perfect candidate to force into early retirement when the magnitude of the failure eventually surfaced.
The only way to save face was to play this game in the opposite direction. He needed to show, just as publicly, that this spiralling chaos had nothing to do with the Paris police and everything to do with power games within the world of espionage.
There was only one spy who might be willing to play those games with him. Admittedly, he was a spy in the service of another country, but as far as Léger was concerned, that was a minor detail.
“Give me the police radio,” he said to the driver. In some strange way he felt his strength returning, and even his headache had gone. He might be finished, but he had every intention of putting on one final show.
Chapter 45
Oriana climbed the wooden ladder to reach the high folding table. Plastic-wrapped bundles of washed uniforms filled the space, giving off a sharp smell of industrial detergent. She lay on her back, her head cushioned by two packs of Dacron uniforms.
She looked at the black telephone and willed it to ring, as if she were reliving her teenage years. When is he going to pick up the phone and call me?
To the delight of the quartermasters, she announced that the laundry service was closing early due to a security inspection. Once she was alone, she scattered the jamming instruments around the facility, more for her personal sense of security than to prevent tapping, which usually took place hundreds of kilometres from the target. She intended to have as brief a conversation as possible. Two words would be enough: Vladislav Yerminski.
She could not imagine how Abadi would be able to locate the soldier without any information on his whereabouts. Should he search wedding halls, the Eiffel Tower or the mairies? Where would Rav Turai Yerminski be, an intelligence soldier gone off to get married without suspecting that waiting for him in the city of his dreams was a deadly Chinese commando team accompanied by a glamorous blonde, a honeytrap who had demonstrated her fatal power of attraction that morning?
Would he prove more resilient than Yaniv Meidan? Do men try their luck with every blonde they meet, even when they’re about to get married? She could not say. She did not really want to think about it, which is probably why, as if through sheer telepathy, the telephone rang.
“Hello, Oriana,” Abadi said, and for the first time, she noticed his voice, soft and soothing like the sea.
“One of our men actually was on the flight,” she said. “His full name is Vladislav Yerminski, known as Yermi. He belongs to the gold mines’ department in the south.”
There was such a long silence, Oriana feared for a moment that he had not caught the reference.
“I was afraid that might be the case,” he finally said.
Oriana said nothing.
“Do we know where this soldier is staying?”
“No. It’s a special leave. He wasn’t required to fill in an overseas travel form, and he didn’t.”
“Why did he get a special leave in Paris?”
“It seems he recently met a girl from France, and they decided to get married. I guess the wedding’s in Paris. The base had no choice but to approve the trip.”
“Who is the girl?”
“We don’t know.”
“Does he have friends who might know the bride? A name even?”
“We have called all his associates and no-one knows. There’s barely anything on him on the internet. He has not submitted any application to any governmental agency in the past two years, and all there is on him in the state’s databases is the issuing of an I.D. card at sixteen and a driver’s licence at seventeen and a half. His address in the census registration is his parents’ house in Ashdod, and they aren’t answering the telephone. He doesn’t have a criminal record, he never filed a lawsuit, and was never sued.”
“Do we know what he’s doing in that department? I thought they didn’t have grechkos over there.”
“No-one uses that word anymore, Abadi,” Oriana said and burst into surprised laughter. “It’s like saying ‘shiksa’ or ‘goy’.” She was relieved to hear Abadi laughing as well.
“Grechkos” had been a nickname for Russian-speaking radiomen in the unit. Back in the period when the unit listened in on Nasser’s Soviet advisors in Egypt. It was definitely a pejorative term, named after some anti-semitic Russian, and it implied a certain suspicion towards Russian immigrants who had yet to prove their loyalty to the State of Israel. Grechkos were not allowed to serve in El Dorado or any other sensitive department.
“Anyway, you’re right, there are no Russian-speakers in that department. He must know some other language.”
“Which language?”
“We don’t know.”
“We do know,” Abadi replied. “You know it yourself. It’s the only way the facts connect.”
Oriana became contemplative. She thought she could hear his peaceful, deep breaths on the other end of the line.
“You can’t be sure,” she said, finally.
“I’m pretty sure. His base won’t confirm it for you?”
“No. The department’s network intelligence officer explained to me with unbelievable arrogance that the department is above our clearance, and that he’d talk to me only at the head of southern command’s authorisation, and then only face to face.”
“He might get what he’s asking for sooner than he thinks,” Abadi said, in the same nonchalant voice. Oriana laughed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“You really are playing the hot-headed Mizrahi Jew for me, Abadi,” she said.
He thought she was a much better conversationalist, natural and breezy as if she had known him since childhood, her voice playing scales of intimacy that he would not have been able to replicate even after years of practice. Compared to her he felt too cautious, too alert, too sharp, like a wanted man deliberating whether to turn himself in. He tried to conjure up the memory of her l
aughter but his brain rang instead with the sound of the new volume of Military Ethics Law as it had thudded on his desk.
“. . . all prejudicial conduct between a Tzahal commander and his or her subordinate shall be punished at the discretion of the military court and shall lead to immediate dismissal before trial.”
The rule book. In the corner of his mind was the niggling thought that he had missed something important.
“What were we talking about a moment ago?”
“That we won’t get the head of command’s authorisation to enter the base.” Her voice resumed its matter-of-fact precision, leading him to wonder if he had imagined it all. He sat on his childhood bed and pressed the telephone into his ear.
“Before that. What you said before we talked about the department.”
“That we don’t know where Vladislav Yerminski is staying in Paris.”
“And what else?”
“That he got a special leave to get married in Paris. And that we don’t know who the bride is.”
“There was something else, something you said we didn’t know.”
“How he got to that base?”
“No.” It was driving him crazy. Dutifully, she repeated each detail: “We couldn’t find any close friends. His referees barely know anything about him. His parents aren’t answering our calls. He has almost no internet presence. He has no criminal record, no court records, he hasn’t submitted any applications to the governmental databases . . .”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it? That he has not submitted any applications to the governmental databases in the past two years?”
“Yes.”
“What’s so unusual about that? I haven’t submitted any either.”
“That’s because you aren’t getting married. Neither is he, apparently. If he really was travelling to Paris to get married, he would need a birth certificate, a single-status certification, a population registry extract. He didn’t submit any applications, because, like you, he didn’t need those forms, he didn’t in fact go to Paris to get married.”