Good and Dead (An Avner Ehrlich Thriller Book 2)

by E. L. Pini

  It made sense. No one had more to gain from destroying the Emba Soira station than the Iranians. But since when did they cooperate with ISIS? It was quickly becoming clear that someone was fucking with us, and I said so to Froyke.

  “Yes, which means we’re in deep shit,” he said.

  “Certainly deep shit, and probably deep fake,” I said, sipping from the second glass I’d poured myself. “Get Albert to look over this again. It fits so well – Tehran, urban, academic. Nothing ever fits this well. Tell him to check for audio manipulation.”

  “You got it, boss,” Froyke said, and pulled out a familiar sheet of paper from his desk. “I told you everything will work out. I’m tearing this up.”

  “Not yet, Froyke.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know that this fits our plans.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Verbin and I, our life, the baby. We’ve got all sorts of plans. We might go away for a while. We haven’t settled on anything yet…”

  “Yes, I know about Johns Hopkins,” Froyke said with some degree of mischief. I was genuinely surprised. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “You’ll… talk to her.”

  “Yes, what are you so surprised about? The dear doctor is only a wife to you. But me? She keeps me alive,” he said, smiling.

  “Fine, talk to her if you want, but I also have a say in this. And most of that say is directed at Moshe.”

  “You didn’t leave him much choice, you know. But it’s all been taken care of, including the PM’s office, in the new agreement. You’re taking over my position already. Rank, wage, pension, all of it.”

  “I don’t want your position and you’re not going anywhere. If you go, so do I. Capisce?”

  He just looked at me.

  “Just wondering,” I said, “when you and Moshe said, ‘the PM’s Office’ wanted me gone – you meant Mordechai, right?”

  “If Moshe and I knew that for a fact, the putz would already be one ball sack lighter. Of course, he is the only one around who’s got a solid connection to them.”

  “And a clear interest,” I added, and moved the laptop over to the side so I could climb on the table and disconnect the smoke alarm. Froyke smiled. “Sit down, it’s handled,” he said, and took another box of goodies out of the drawer.

  “Here. Light one for me, too.”

  “Sure, just what the doctor ordered. When did you do that?” I nodded at the sensor.

  “I didn’t. You did. I just never got it fixed.”

  “You sly dog.”

  I lit a chubby Cohiba, let Froyke have a puff, and we watched that god-awful video again.

  “Wait. Pause,” I said. “Zoom in around his wrist. Let’s see that watch.”

  It was a white and exceedingly elegant Rolex.

  “Look at that Rolex,” I said. “There must be a couple of thousands of it, at least…”

  “But it’s worth a check,” Froyke finished my sentence for me, and immediately roared into the intercom – “Nora! You’ve got a visitor. Yes, now, right now!”

  The sheer volume clearly indicated – the old man was getting better. Nora appeared at the door a minute later and slapped a kiss on the top of my head, then another on my cheek. When she leaned over the keyboard I couldn’t help but glance at her glorious cleavage. Deep enough to teach philosophy, I thought, remembering that Harlan Coben book. Nora suppressed a smile and leaned closer to whisper “My eyes are up here,”

  “Do you think it’s possible to locate this wristwatch?”

  “For you? Everything’s possible. Seriously, it’s so good to have you back.” She glanced at Froyke. “Finally someone around here’s got a goddamn clue.”

  She sat down in front of the laptop, magnified the watch, and quickly brought up the Rolex catalogue. Some of the models were fairly similar, but none of them was an exact match.

  “So obviously not a standard model… it does look expensive,” she muttered. “Good, this is good. Okay. I’m on it. Later, boys,”

  She planted another kiss on the top of my head as I failed to avoid another peek at her cleavage, then left.

  “Nora and Albert will track him down. You find him and tear him apart. Consider this a personal request,” said Froyke.

  It was the sort of request I couldn’t refuse. “I’ll tear the dreck apart, but that’s it. After that, no promises,” I said, and got up.

  “Sit down, I’m not done with you,” he barked. I grinned and complied.

  “What can I do for you, boss?” I asked. “You know, the doctor’s waiting for me at home, we just got back from…”

  “I know damn well where you got back from, but right now you’re going straight to meet with Moshe and Professor Be’er for lunch. The professor is first in line to become the new head of the NSC and he wants to meet you. They’re waiting for you at a conference in Herzliya. Siboni will drive you.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Like a heart attack.”

  “First of all, I already have lunch plans with Kahanov. Two, I couldn’t give two shits about the almost-head of the NSC. This is the same asshat that told the Iranians to buy nuclear warheads?”

  Froyke nodded and looked into his teacup. “I’m sure you know the connection here could easily be circumstantial. And he isn’t necessarily an asshat just because he happened to have the same idea as you.”

  “And yet, somehow, I still don’t give a rat’s fart. Same goes for Moshe.”

  “Like it or not, he’s about to head the NSC, and you’re about to head this division.”

  “Come on, Froyke, enough of this division head nonsense. I’m not taking your job. When you go, I go.”

  He laughed. “Do you intend to accompany me there, too?” he pointed upward.

  “Sure, for a while. Just until you get settled. How’s your leg?”

  “Happy that it’s no longer with us.”

  He fiddled with one of the unlit cigars, and his face grew solemn for a moment. “You know what, Ehrlich” he eventually said, “You go with Kahanov. Forget the conference. Let those two sweat a bit. I’ll let Bella know.”

  I got up and saluted him.

  “Give Bella my undying love.”

  “Pff. Get your ass out of here before I change my mind.”

  17.

  Kahanov was waiting for me downstairs by the car. The minute he saw me, he cried out, “What did I tell you, huh? Shmucks folded like a cheap table, didn’t they? Told you they’d come begging. I guess the whole “everyone can be replaced” shtick is just that…. How’s Froyke doing?”

  “Perfectly serviceable.”

  “Verbin got him back on his feet, yeah?”

  “How’d you get along with the monsters?”

  “Oh, the kittens? I brought them a nice sack of leftovers from Moyshe Zalman the butcher and things went swimmingly. We saw a big porcupine on one of our walks – Garibaldi gave it a heart attack, but that was about it.”

  The sun set over Jaffa like a painting from a children’s book. Babai came to greet us, and in his wake came thirty-seven small appetizers and a plate of red mullets, paired with a bottle of El Namroud arak. Far on the horizon I saw the silhouette of a fishing boat.

  “So, did you see this?” Kahanov pulled me away from the sunset, and placed today’s Haaretz on the table in front of me, pointing at a specific article. It was a translated piece from the Washington Post. Some lines had been highlighted.

  “Read,” he commanded.

  “Our submarines, the same submarines which recently appeared in the headlines as a tool employed by the fake-news media to discredit our Prime Minister, are the very thing which gives us any power of deterrence. In the world of political science, we call this ‘Mutually Assured Destruction.’

  “These subs are spread out a
ll around, watching, menacing, and nipping any thought of retaliation in the bud. You can rest easy – and I’m not revealing some big military secret here – these submarines have docking and resupply bases not too far from home, in northeast Africa. Our satellites are constantly monitoring from above, supplemented by an array of surveillance stations erected across the surrounding mountains with the help of our African allies. And these are only some of our undertakings concerning this matter. So if, like others, you are wondering how it is that the great nation of Iran, with its 82 million people, does not respond to any of these actions – the answer is simple. They know that we will not let them. There will not be a second Holocaust.”

  “Who is this idiot? Please tell me it isn’t the Prime Minister.”

  “No, but it is his apostle, Professor Be’er, at a conference in Herzliya. It’s been a hit on Fox News, they’ve basically been replaying the interview on repeat. If Hilik was still Director of Security at the Defense Ministry he’d yank the man’s balls right off. Now tell me, what could possibly move the intended head of the National Security Council to say these things?”

  “A, he’s an idiot.”

  “B?”

  “He’s a coward, and an idiot.”

  “C?”

  “He thinks it creates deterrence, because he’s an idiot.”

  “D?”

  “The idiot might as well have given them the station’s coordinates,” I said.

  “It would be mind-numbingly easy to locate with the details he provided,” Kahanov concluded.

  “When was this published?”

  “This morning, it’s today’s paper.”

  “No, originally.”

  “A week ago in the Washington post,” he said. “What’s bugging you?”

  What bugged me was that this interview was published about a week before the murder. Was this reckless provocation related to the brutal murder of Gigi and his family in Emba Soira? The thought was so troubling I almost automatically rejected it. My phone vibrated and started playing “You Are My Sunshine.”

  “Verbin?” asked Kahanov. “Let me talk to her when you’re done.”

  “No, it’s Nora. Damn SIGINT demon decides for you what’s going to play when she calls.” I picked up. “Yes, Nora.”

  “I found your Rolex in a rare and special edition catalogue.”

  “Nice! I’m on my way.”

  I called Verbin to let her know I’ll be late.

  “Oh, you will be,” she said, and hung up. It’s a good thing telephones don’t slam anymore.

  Kahanov made a U-turn back towards Ramat HaSharon. “So here’s something odd,” he said, looking at me sidelong and pausing slightly for the anticipation. “We’ve been sitting on this guy, Sasha Kalinchevski, a molecular biologist from the Nes Ziona Institute. Ever since the whole Klingberg14 fiasco we try to keep tabs, you know. Anyway, guess what we found out?”

  “Oh, I bet he doesn’t observe the Shabbat. Or, God forbid, partakes of the swine?”

  Kahanov squinted at me inquisitively. “I always said that you were the – and I mean The – analytical mind of the middle-fucking-east. Well, no, we found out that he has a subscription to the National Opera. The Philharmonic, too,”

  “No swine, then?”

  “Guess who else has a subscription to those exact same events? Mr. Sokolov, that piece of shit that heads the SVR’s15 Tel Aviv station, Sergei Naryshkin’s buddy.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “It’s coming, it’s coming, bear with me. Sokolov has been wooing Kalinchevski for a while now. Becoming friends, reminiscing about the fatherland. Maybe he promises him a visiting professor position at a Moscow research institute, three lectures a year for a full year’s salary, without cutting into his institute work at Nes Ziona.”

  “Are you going somewhere with this, man?”

  “You might wonder – why am I telling you this?”

  “I do, I do wonder.”

  “Because we’ve combed the Opera and Philharmonic membership lists, and who should pop up other than this very shmuck – the other professor, this one!” Kahanov excitedly patted his briefcase.

  “You mean Professor Be’er?”

  “The same.”

  “I suspect that many of the names on those membership lists are Russian, though.”

  Kahanov nodded. “True. But you know what’s really interesting about this professor? Less than 24 hours after that interview gets published in the Washington Post, he gets an invitation to give a Ted talk.”

  “That might explain this careless bullshit he’s been up to. You on him?” I asked that which, under normal circumstances, would’ve gone unasked.

  “A bit. I’m sure we won’t find much. Other than standard assholery,” Kahanov said, pulling into the driveway.

  “Thanks again for taking care of the monsters,” I said.

  “No worries. But you better be treating Verbin right. I’m no marriage counselor, as you know, but…”

  “I know. It’s good,” I said, and we high-fived like basketball players before a game and I hurried up to the office. If Nora had tracked down the watch, it would be only a matter of time till she tracked down the wrist.

  * * *

  14Marcus A. Klingberg was an Israeli biologist and epidemiologist who in the 1980s was charged and imprisoned as a Soviet spy.

  15The Russian foreign intelligence service.

  18.

  Froyke’s computer screen was split in two; the right half showing the length of white arm with the wristwatch, and on the left a magnified image from the Rolex catalogue with the exact same watch.

  “Rolex Daytona, 6263 Oyster Albino,” Nora proudly declared. “The company only made four of them. The last one was sold back in 2014 to Bin Nayef, the Saudi prince…”

  Froyke and I exchanged glances.

  “For four million dollars,” Nora raised an eyebrow. “That prince would make an entirely acceptable sugar daddy.”

  “Meh,” said Albert, scrolling down the screen of his smartphone at supersonic speed. “Probably bought it when the dollar was low. The chronograph from the same series was sold to Paul Newman for 17 million.”

  “17 million dollars for a watch?” Froyke said disbelievingly. “Ridiculous.”

  “Four different sources,” Albert said, pointing at his screen.

  “All four in that little phone?”

  “Now that was a truly gorgeous man,” said Nora, her eyes dreamy. “Did you see him in Cool Hand Luke, cutting off those parking meters? Damn.” Receiving no reply, she turned to me and asked, “did you see it?”

  “I saw it, okay movie.”

  “Okay movie,” she derided. “If it isn’t Peckinpah or Tarantino spilling a year’s supply of ketchup and burning some town to the ground, then it’s ‘okay.’ Have you considered something might be wrong with your testosterone production?”

  “You think Ehrlich suffers from testosterone issues?” Froyke said, uncharacteristically joining our juvenile banter.

  “Clearly he is suffering from an acute surplus. Haven’t you seen Ehrlich Does Tehran?”

  “You done yet, Nora?”

  I’ve seen this happen more than once. When faced with something truly horrifying, like the murder of Gigi and his family, people sometimes regress into silly adolescent antics. I tried to get the team back into gear. Albert was the first to settle down and inform us, “Something did feel synthesized in the audio track you gave me. It’s hard to say for sure, but it could’ve been deep faked in a lab.”

  “Albert,” I said, “I don’t need you to tell me the audio might be synthesized, I already knew that. That’s why I asked you to make sure. I need answers, not educated guesses.”

  “Ninety percent. I can’t give you a guarantee.”

  I was ninety percent
and another ten sure that whoever slaughtered Gigi Ostashinski made efforts to mask their identity – this was fairly obvious, but what wasn’t was that the effort involved both in the costumes and the deep fake was not obvious, nor was it typical. This murderer was thorough, professional, and backed by considerable means, as well as being more knowledgeable about us than we’d like to think possible. I remembered that Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John, was eventually identified by his voice signature.

  “As far as the company in Switzerland knows, Bin Nayef still has his watch. The next one was sold to his highness, the Sultan of Brunei,” Nora said, and Albert added, “Small world. The Sultan was the one who financed Imad Akbariyeh.”

  “It’s peanuts to him, so he definitely didn’t sell it,” Nora added. “The next watch was bought in auction by one Ahronowitz, a Russian oligarch, originally from Moscow, currently residing in Tel Aviv. It was a bar mitzvah present for his son. I spoke to him – he is certain that he hasn’t sold it and that it’s somewhere around the house, though he isn’t sure where. The fourth and final watch – listen up, Ehrlich – is currently in Sotheby’s, who got it from the estate of your buddy Luciano Pavarotti. If you hurry up, maybe you can get it for yourself.”

  Bin Nayef, Ahronowitz and Sotheby’s are out, I though. That leaves us with the Sultan of Brunei.

  “What if it’s a fake?” Albert ventured, raising his hand. “Look, here’s my Patek Philippe – got it in Phuket for twenty dollars.”