A Long Night in Paris: The must-read thriller from the new master of spy fiction

by Dov Alfon

  “The truth is that I don’t know, Commissaire.”

  “The truth is that you maybe don’t know but you do have your suspicions, Colonel. Would you mind sharing them? Oh and anything else you may have found in this mess. Please excuse my men while they perform a quick search, just to be sure . . . My apologies.”

  Two policemen reached for Abadi’s pockets, their arms under his own. “I haven’t found anything,” he said, his patience now gone, “and I doubt if the Chinese kidnapped Yerminski and hung around to perform this search,” he said. “We saw the commando unit bolting from the hotel. They had Yerminski’s suitcase, but they didn’t have Yerminski.”

  Léger watched Abadi shrug the officers away and heard the snap of silk as he straightened his jacket. He opted for reconciliation.

  “We have a very neat crime scene here, it’s a space we know well, unlike at Charles de Gaulle There is a lot of physical evidence, and there are cameras,” he said, adding as much for himself as for Abadi, “I’d like to see the minister’s spokesmen stick to their claim that this is a drugs deal now! We have two more dead, and another Israeli kidnapped in a military-style operation, complete with guns, silencers and a sniper rifle.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Commissaire,” Abadi said, but he himself had not been mollified. “Since Yerminski is not suspected of any crime in France, the Israeli security services would like to take official possession of his suitcase.”

  “Corporal Yerminski’s suitcase will remain in our custody, Colonel.” The older man smiled as he spoke, his eyes fixed on Abadi’s. I might have tried the same, he thought. More finesse, perhaps. But the same.

  “Yes, it contained some very interesting hacking equipment, and of course you would know more than me about such things, but I’m told it’s all quite standard and is most unlikely to be the reason for the kind of mayhem we see here.”

  Léger looked around, drawing the intelligence officer’s gaze, along with his own, to the scene of destruction. “Oh, and it contained some clothes, too, so we’ll find you a clean shirt. It seems that both you and young Vladislav are close in height and size.”

  Abadi complied. He undid the buttons on his bloodstained shirt and took it off as Léger left the room. Before long, the commissaire returned with Yerminski’s suitcase from which he pulled a navy blue shirt with bright contrasting trim. He offered it to Abadi with care, and in complete silence, as if in expiation.

  Chapter 69

  The advisors sat in the chambers of the Prime Minister’s Office and waited. Two were on the sofa, two more waited in chairs by the desk, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff waited in the guest armchair, and only the Military Secretary waited standing up. They did not know how long they were supposed to wait, since none of them was sure the Prime Minister would show up at the late debriefing meeting he himself had summoned.

  The ringing of a telephone cut through the silent vigil.

  There were four telephones on the Prime Minister’s desk. The white phone, a Tadiran Coral D.K.T.-2320, was connected to the secure switchboard and was for direct calls from the Minister of Defence and senior Tzahal personnel. Next to it was a black telephone, a Nortel M.3904, which was connected to the regular switchboard in the Prime Minister’s Office and was for internal office calls and transferring screened external calls. The grey phone, a Telrad 79-100-0000, was for the Prime Minister’s private calls. And next to it stood the red telephone.

  The red phone was made in Taiwan, a Uniphone U.D.-F1016. It had been purchased a year ago in Office Depot by the Prime Minister’s communications advisor, who was next to the Military Secretary on the sofa. The advisor had summoned a photographer from the Government Press Office to record a meeting presided over by the Prime Minister on the eve of Operation Cast Lead, and had wanted a red phone to appear in the photograph, thinking it would contribute to the deterrent effect.

  But when the engineering department was asked urgently to install the red phone in the office, it turned out it did not comply with the switchboard’s technical standards. The advisor left the red telephone unconnected on the Prime Minister’s desk, and so it appeared in the photograph published in every newspaper, right between the Prime Minister and his Chief of Staff, a red telephone imbued with meaning but without a cable. And it had been standing there ever since, next to the other telephones.

  The ringing stopped, then immediately started again. The shout of the office’s night secretary was heard through the door. “Avraham, it’s for you guys, pick up! The white one.”

  Avraham, the Chief of Staff, approached the white phone. “It’s for you,” he said to the Military Secretary, who glowered at him.

  The Chief Military Censor was on the line. She had been given an odd instruction by the Prime Minister’s office, via the Chief of Staff, to keep an eye out for and suppress impending news of the killing of a Chinese tourist in Paris. The censor asked what she was supposed to do with such an order. The Military Secretary considered admitting that he had no idea, but said he would enquire and get back to her.

  “Did any of you ask to censor news about the killing of a Chinese tourist in Paris?” he asked no-one in particular, but glancing suspiciously at the communications advisor. To his surprise, the political advisor raised his hand.

  “That’s what this meeting is about,” he said. “I didn’t want anything published before we made a decision about what we’re going to do.” The Military Secretary wanted to ask what business was it of his, but instead he explained to him, with elaborate patience, that military censorship could in no way block a foreign news item that had been appearing on every website around the world over the last few minutes.

  “Then maybe they should make clear that any item referring to the involvement of an Israeli in the killing has to go through our censorship.”

  “We’d only be raising the editors’ suspicion about Israeli involvement in the story, which for the time being has no connection to this morning’s kidnapping story,” the Military Secretary said. “It’s running now in the foreign news as a brief item. If the Military Censor sends them such a message, every editor will immediately look for an Israeli connection. This isn’t a good time of the day to raise this kind of ruckus. The T.V. channels are getting ready for the evening news editions and the papers haven’t sent tomorrow’s front page to press yet. We have to maintain media silence for at least another hour, and then everyone will be off to bed anyway.”

  The political advisor shrugged. “Whatever you think,” he said with ill-disguised contempt. Reaching for the white phone again, the Military Secretary called the Chief Censor and explained it was a misunderstanding, and that she could ignore the instruction. There seemed to have been a blunder when the original message was sent.

  Deep down he knew that was not true. A blunder described a deviation from expected behaviour, whereas everything that had taken place in the Prime Minister’s Office was consistent with its normative behaviour. What the Prime Minister’s men thought had nothing to do with what they said. What they said had nothing to do with what they did.

  “All in all, we accomplished our goal,” the political advisor said. “We’ve made it clear to the armed forces that we’re on top of this thing, that we’re running it, and that they can’t make decisions without us surprising them.” Everyone nodded.

  Chapter 70

  The head of Unit 8200 was not in his chambers. Oriana’s friend the bureau chief was the only one waiting for her in the office, and for some reason she was in civilian clothes. Was the dress from Zara? Banana Republic? Topshop? Oriana, who would have given a lot for a shower and a change of clothing, lay on the sofa and stared at her with open envy.

  “How do you get authorisation for civvies here? On the second flight of stairs I realised I’ve been sweating in this stinking uniform since this morning’s meeting. Can I have the uniform exemption they gave you, like, just for tonight?”

  “Can I have the body they gave you, like, just for tonight?�
� the bureau chief said. “Trust me, if I looked like you, I wouldn’t mind being in uniform 24/7.”

  They had met at an advanced training course for intelligence officers and been friends ever since. It was a cautious, somewhat shallow friendship, the kind with a potential that would never be fulfilled. Oriana had not forgotten that her friend from the office failed to give her a heads up that a new commander was about to be assigned to Special Section.

  “I’m sorry I could not tell you about Abadi,” the bureau chief said, as if reading her thoughts.

  “Nonsense, don’t worry about it,” Oriana said.

  “I guess I was afraid you’d file a complaint, like you threatened to do to Oren this morning.”

  Oriana was not sure her friend was joking. “What, you’ve already heard about that?”

  “There isn’t an office in the Intelligence Corps that hasn’t been buzzing with the story,” the bureau chief said. “When the officers returned to their departments from that meeting it was all they could talk about.”

  “It’s a shame they didn’t talk about how Aluf Rotelmann has become tired of the autonomous behaviour of 8200.”

  “Who even cares about him?” the bureau chief said. This time, Oriana was sure she was not joking. “The unit commander certainly doesn’t.”

  “Where is he?” Oriana asked. “I was told to report a.s.a.p.”

  “He’s landing at Ben Gurion in two hours, that’s why I’m in civvies, I’m picking him up. But here, you have a love letter from him. Three letters, actually, which is more than I got from him today.” She handed her three envelopes, each bearing a Tzahal sticker with a barcode, “For Segen Oriana Talmor, Top Secret – To Recipient Only”.

  The first envelope contained a copy of a Tzahal temporary change of station order. Twelve soldiers from the criminal investigation division of the Military Police were to report at 23:30 to the 8200 headquarters for temporary placement in Special Section. Her name appeared on the order as their new commander.

  “What am I supposed to do with twelve military policemen?” Oriana asked.

  “I’ve been working on that order for the past two hours,” the bureau chief said. “Don’t tell me it was a waste of time. I have the criminal investigation division’s authorisation – you wouldn’t believe the logistics involved. Every administrative department was already closed and we had to involve the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.”

  “I’m sick of having only the Vice Chief of Defence Staff intervening on my behalf,” Oriana said. “It’s so humiliating. Why can’t I get backing straight from the Chief of Defence Staff?”

  “Maybe Tzahal’s Chief of Defence Staff doesn’t want to be involved in these internal wars. So he’s putting the raid on his deputy.”

  “What raid?”

  “Open the next envelope.”

  The second envelope contained a unit operation order, in which the head of 8200 defined her as the person in charge of Operation Long Night, a surprise inspection of southern base of Unit 8200 which included the gathering of every document related to Rav Turai Vladislav Yerminski and the seizing of any evidence that could help locate him in the French capital. The order had a complicated line code: 23:55APR16F8200HSPS01:00APR17NHSCCSBNIC001.

  Oriana rapidly deciphered the figures. The order would be effective at 23:55, turn into an open investigation, and copies of the order would be sent to the head of southern command, the commander of the southern base, and the Chief Network Intelligence Officer. The time of the raid was set for 01:00. The head of 8200 assigned the H.S.P. – the head of Special Section – as commander of the operation.

  “Will Aluf Mishne Abadi be back by one in the morning to command the raid?”

  “How could he be back? He has to stay in Paris, it’s a huge mess over there.”

  “But the operation commander is specified here as the head of Special Section.”

  “That’s why the time of the order is five minutes to midnight, dummy. How did you ever get to be outstanding cadet of the course? Everything in that order is valid until 23:55, meaning exactly five minutes before you stop being the head of Special Section. You’re the one who’s raiding the southern base, not Abadi.”

  Oriana looked again at the line code. 23:55APR16F8200HSPS01:00APR17NHSCCSBNIC001. Indeed, there was no room for error: today, April 16 at 23:55, the head of 8200 would appoint the head of Special Section to command the inspection raid on April 17 at 01:00, an hour and five minutes after the order came into effect.

  Like most officers at the 8200 headquarters, Oriana had never been to the southern base, and certainly did not have the necessary experience to search for something that someone would want to hide there. It was possible that the investigation was too urgent to postpone the raid until Abadi returned; it was also possible that the failure of the investigation was so predictable that they preferred to pin it on a junior officer.

  “How am I supposed to get there, with my Fiat 500? All those military police are going to get there with their cars?”

  “Open the third envelope.”

  Chapter 71

  Subsequently, when Commissaire Léger was invited to lecture at the École Nationale Supérieure de Police about the most dramatic night the major crimes division had known under his watch, he would make sure to leave out these next two critical hours. The cadets would look at him with sparkling eyes, yearning to hear the secrets of his success. Capitalising on a surplus of slides and the general excitement his presence evoked, it would not be difficult to conceal this link in the chain of events.

  He would say, for instance: “At this stage, 21:00 French time, we had a total of five bodies, one Israeli, one French and three Chinese. You must remember that the other Israeli, Vladislav Yerminski, was still defined as a missing person and we had no way of knowing at that point whether he was dead or alive. We certainly did not know that we would see many more victims, and that the event would eventually earn the macabre name by which it’s known today, ‘The Night of a Dozen Bodies’. But what we did know by then was enough for me to achieve a major breakthrough at exactly midnight, with help, of course, from our Israeli colleague, Colonel Zeev Abadi.

  “The coveted breakthrough might seem to you, in hindsight, logical and predictable. But you mustn’t forget that at 22:00 we were confronted with a new murder scene, in the low-rises of “the Woods” on the outskirts of Paris. It would have been only natural for us to be thrown off by the perpetrators, and fail to connect our case with the discovery of the bodies of two drug dealers. And yet, despite all the seemingly unrelated crime scenes throughout this entire affair, we caught the misdirection, and by midnight we knew who we were really after.”

  Even after he became more confident, presenting his full version at the Command Course for the sixth or seventh time, the commissaire was honest, straight and gave credit where it was due. “In theory, the new information that reached the investigators at Le Grand Hôtel should have thrown us off. And indeed, it threw me off. I was sitting in the security room at Le Grand Hôtel when I got the detailed reports from the new crime scene near Belleville. It all seemed obvious, and I put two and two together. That was a mistake, but I did not realise that. I remember that, throughout those two critical hours, Colonel Abadi completely ignored the reports arriving from the scene, insisting on reviewing the hotel footage over and over again, typing away on his strange telephone, turning his back on our rampage as if it had nothing to do with the case.”

  When he delivered his presentation in the early years, this would be the point when Léger delivered his punchline. But with time, as he gained experience, he would develop the technique of a seasoned lecturer, waiting for the raised hand of one of the alert police cadets, who would ask if the commissaire had found an explanation for the Israeli’s behaviour.

  “Yes, indeed, young man, today I have an explanation for that,” Léger would then reply in a booming voice before his audience. “Later on, I happened to watch a documentary series about Easter Island,
famous around the world for the Moai statues scattered across its coast, those mysterious giant heads. The narrator asked why the statues were all positioned facing the island, with their backs to the ocean. And the answer was that the heads were looking at the inhabitants to alleviate their fears, and turned their backs to the dangers coming from the sea, since, according to their mythology, the gods do not have to see the evil spirits to know their intentions.”

  Léger would let the last sentence linger in the room for a while. He would sip from his water before stating what he considered obvious. “And that’s how I realised, at exactly midnight, that Colonel Abadi was like a messenger from the gods who had come to save us from our mistakes. He looked away from the information we wanted to communicate to him because he did not need it, because at that point he had already worked out the identity of the forces facing us and the diabolical strategies they intended to pursue.”

  Chapter 72

  Beyond the city limits, the night sky cleared. Oriana filled her lungs with the cold, sweet air, as if storing oxygen.

  Abadi’s instructions were to organise the convoy between the main car park at the Tzrifin base, from which the vehicles were to be gathered, and the Yad Mordechai intersection, from which the convoy would enter the Negev desert and the south district’s command zone. Summoning everyone to the point of departure made the most sense, but Oriana did not know anyone there and the very thought of all the required permits exhausted her.

  She scheduled the pick-up point in the middle, at the entrance to the naval base in Ashdod, where she had cracked one of her first cases, a string of thefts from shipping containers. She was not superstitious, but for such a crazy mission she preferred a place in which fortune had once smiled upon her. She was not anticipating many smiles at the southern base when they burst in.