by E. L. Pini
“By the way, do you know why they call him ‘RP’?”
“More or less,” she said. “More less than more.”
“She knows enough. The clusterfuck awaits,” I said to spare her another retelling of the Chronicles of RP.
“Remind me later,” he told her. “Now, let’s talk.”
“We have a man touring Latakia. Communication channel is being set up as we speak,” said Nora. She showed him the photo. “He ID’d these two – Professor Habib Hamdani, and this is Yuri Rasputin.”
“The one who slaughtered our Gigi?”
I nodded and added, “He’s also the one who has the activation codes for the bomb.”
“Goody,” he said. “And how would you like them? Vertical or horizontal?”
“Horizontal and hermetically sealed.”
“Tartus, Latakia,” he said loudly, and a digital map of Syria appeared on the screen behind him, then shifted a bit to center around Tartus and Latakia.
“Huh?” Boyes wiggled his eyebrows with unadulterated pride. “You like that?”
“Now we know where our budget’s been spilling into,” I grunted at Nora.
“Hey, this was a donation,” he noted.
“A donation from the taxpayer?”
“From some… American Jew who got pissed at his kid for marrying a shikse and donated a few millions from his inheritance,” he said, laughing a bit, but soon grew serious again and focused on the image.
“Okay,” he said. “You are here, more or less, and we arrive from here.” He marked a path over the ocean.
“Lots of Russian alert systems down there,” I said, and Nora added that it was, in practice if not in theory, a Russian port.
“We’ll look into it,” he said, “but generally speaking, that won’t be a problem. I’ve got a whole cyber unit just itching to make them see nothing but black.” He lowered his voice considerably and added, “not to mention, remotely control of some of those systems.” He cleared his throat and, speaking normally again, asked, “Can you get the two of them in the same place at the same time? Hamdani and Rasputin?”
“Good question,” I said.
“Worthy of a good answer?” asked Boyes.
“They’ve been meeting, as you can see,” I said, nodding at the photo from the café, “but I see no way we can get them to meet on our terms. You know what? Let’s simplify things, here. We can get him –” I indicated Hamdani – “nice and horizontal, and then combine our forces to get the little dreck here.”
“Okay. Doesn’t sound too complicated. Pass us the intel, routes, security procedures, schedules, plans and contracts of the nearby buildings and streets and we’ll prepare the model. I estimate two months to full readiness, after drills.”
“Boyes!”
“What, RP? Let me guess, you were hoping for yesterday.”
“Not yesterday, I’m not unreasonable. Tomorrow.”
He rolled the tip of his Geppetto moustache. “Look, I can rush through our prep time and shorten the drills, but there’s the matter of approvals. Apart from the unit, I have the missile boats, at least one AS-565 Panther, air cover, the Flotilla, approvals from the General Staff, then from the Defense Minister and the PM – granted, those happen to be the same person –”
“Are there any other options?” Nora asked, just as I was considering joining Boris and going about things more manually.
“Yes, but none that I like. You can sneak in a couple of teams in civvies, tourists or something, we can get the tools and means to them at an agreed-upon rendezvous, and they’ll carry it out themselves. Quick extraction in choppers from the shore. When I think about it, there really isn’t much of a difference, apart from some logistics. Start pumping us the intel and we can move it along.”
“Not good enough.”
“Why? Because we can’t locate the sub carrying the clusterfuck?”
“Yes. And we probably won’t be able to, until we have a chat with the little dreck.”
“I see.” He fiddled with his moustache again. “you remember that old phrase? Only those with nothing to lose…”
I nodded and finished for him, “Chooses a sacrificial strategy.”
We left Boyes’ office, each to his own business. The pressure of the threat had noticeably transformed the decentralized mess known as the Israeli defense complex into a well-oiled machine with its fingers in all the pies. The Air Force began silent drafting of reserve pilots and aerial defense personnel, at the same time setting up the multi-level defense array combining the Patriot, David’s Sling and Iron Dome over as much territory as possible.
The Navy also brought in reserves – Flotilla 13, the submarine flotillas and battleship crews. The Service bore down on its usual suspects, revealing and shutting down turneries, chop-shops and metalworking centers across the West Bank on a nearly nightly basis. Nahum attempted to collect favors from our international counterparts, and received mostly sympathy, but also a promise of intel gathering. The PM had a long phone call with the US President, who promised to bring in his Sixth Fleet; Putin was still ghosting him. I immediately recruited Bruno and O’Driscoll’s help.
The immediate priority was to keep their sub fleet away from the region, “at all costs, but without a single shot fired.” And so, while the Sixth Fleet was approaching from the west, our own navy’s Flotilla 7 was moving the INS Dakar and INS Tanin in from the east, completing a pincer motion around the Iranian fleet, which was quickly getting the message. Unit 8200 intercepted so many urgent communiqués that their Farsi speakers had to pull double shifts. Just in case, I asked Albert to provide his collaborators at WikiLeaks with an improved edition of the standing orders for our second-strike subs, including a detailed list of targets – government and military facilities in the greater Tehran area, including electric, water and sewage infrastructure, and the underground facility in Fordo. Along with the document I also told him to send some sensitive tables describing the degree of damage and death toll according to the Wellerstein model32. From the moment it was out there, the document got millions of views, shares and comments across the web. The day after it was published, there were reports of break-ins, theft, and vandalism of computer equipment in private homes and communes that were said to house WikiLeaks personnel in England, Frankfurt and Sidney. A huge article in Der Spiegel attributed the break-ins to “the Israeli Mossad,” and the internet comments condemned Israel, asking, if Israel can threaten Iran with nuclear weapons and mass destruction, why not the other way around?
The whole thing became a PR dumpster fire, but the military goal had been achieved: the eight Iranian submarines were gone.
Despite this, the terror only grew.
The ninth sub, the stealth vessel, in true “silent killer” fashion, scattered the occasional ethereal trail but generally remained out of sight. The commander of naval intelligence told me, “We can’t see it, but we feel it here,” pointing at his neck.
And then, finally, some relief – it was Gigi’s old surveillance station at Emba Soira, of all places, which reported that the Rostov-on-Don had surfaced near the Saudi Port of Dibba, in the north of the Red Sea. This was the Americans’ home court, and therefore a direct statement by the Russians, part of Putin’s declaration of war on global US dominion – a Russian finger in the American eye.
But even more than this pissed the Americans off, it pissed us off, and the good news soon became another grim omen: the Rostov was clearly identified near Saudi waters, while the stealthy tracks of its twin kept flickering in and out of detection, always between Nahariya, Beirut, Latakia and Tartus. There was no longer any option but to assume the bomb was here, in our own back yard.
And Hamdani and Rasputin were holding its key.
* * *
32NUKEMAP, created by Alex Wellerstein, is an interactive map that calculates the effects of the deto
nation of a nuclear bomb.
53.
I needed to sleep, so I drove home for a few hours. Really, more than anything, I needed a breath of Verbin. I also had a painful urge to swim to loosen my fucked up vertebrae and spinal nerves, and I had to talk to Froyke – if anyone could help me pick this problem apart and make an informed decision, it was Froyke; and if anyone could convince me of their opinion, even if it was different from mine, it was Froyke. A few hours before that, Verbin had told me that she had found some experimental treatment at Johns Hopkins, still pending FDA approval, and had managed to get Froyke on the very short list of only ten patients so far who would participate in the trial. Froyke was already at stage four of the nightmarish melanoma that fucked the Flotilla 13 alums, but the professor running the experiment said that he expected full recovery of at least 45 percent of patients. Verbin told Froyke only after he was confirmed to receive the treatment, so as to not get his hopes up for nothing. Froyke, on his part, claimed this was a zero-sum game. “Either I win and he loses,” he said, looking up at the sky, “or the other way around.” He leapt at the opportunity, nonetheless, but the treatment had some nasty side effects, including incessant salivating, so he locked himself in his house and agreed to see no one other than Verbin, at least for the duration of the treatment.
When I got home I put on my PoolMate, dropped into the water, and settled for fifty pool-lengths, only a third of what Sasson’s regime required, hoping it would be enough for my slipped discs. On the thirty-second length, my right hand started to feel strange, and my heart momentarily sank as I feared the odd numbness I felt in the Frankfurt airport was coming back. I kept swimming nonetheless, the two dogs loping vigilantly around the pool, certain that only their presence was keeping me from drowning.
When I finished and climbed out of the water, I went to get a bottle of wine and two glasses, and sat down by the grave. A fresh mound of turned earth had risen on the left hand side – how I loathed those damn mole-rats. I made a mental note to go to the shed later and find some pesticide.
I drank some wine and brought Eran up to speed. I told him about Tehran and the red dot on Ali’s face, that I still see now and then. I told him about the events at the surveillance station in Eritrea, Gigi’s murder. I told him everything.
At some point Verbin came to sit with us, stealing occasional sips from my glass.
“Come on, honey bear. Help me convey these two hundred and fifty pounds of shame and bewilderment into bed.”
I remember only that I managed to respond that they were only two hundred and forty pounds, and not of shame and bewilderment – breakdown and bereavement, perhaps – but she was no longer listening.
The next morning I woke up to the marvelous scent of freshly-ground coffee. Waiting for me as well were a crunchy baguette and some lovely goat cheese from Avshi over at the Ya’aran farm. Verbin was squeezing oranges and looking fairly silly standing on the tips of her toes by the juicer, struggling to put her entire weight on the lever.
I came up to help, but she shooed me away, claiming that I was as wrung out as the oranges and needed to rest. I hazily tried to reconstruct yesterday, and remembered the mole-rat undermining Eran. I hurried to the shed, then removed the top of the small mound and shoved enough pesticide into the tunnel to kill a pride of lions. When I got back to the kitchen, Verbin asked how I was feeling.
“Excellent,” I said. “two hundred and forty pounds of rage and power.”
“Keep the rage for your buddies. I need some love. Come here, honey bear.”
When I hugged her, I suddenly knew what I had been missing during this shitstorm of a week, and I thought to myself, how the hell do I get her out of here? She won’t leave her patients, certainly not Froyke.
“Music?”
“Always,” I said, expecting the house favorite of Pavarotti and friends, which recently had been reduced to Pavarotti and Sting and some Bono, but Verbin surprised me again, playing Sting and Stevie Wonder’s Fragile. We went to bed and burrowed into one another. More than it was about the sex, it was longing and compassion, solace, and just when Sting began crooning Mad About You, Verbin let out a sharp yelp and jumped out of bed.
“What is it, love?” I said, and burst into laughter.
Garibaldi was standing an inch from the bed, his gigantic tongue pouring obscenely from his mouth. Verbin calmed down, and informed him that, while we do share everything in this household, love was an exception. I got up and went to the kitchen to make us ristrettos. She followed.
“All things in life have a cost,” I said.
“You want me to get you a meeting with Froyke?” she said, taking me once again by surprise.
“You are a witch.”
“Not really – Bella called to apologize for your recent no-shows and to check on Froyke, and she told me how much you’ve all been missing him now. I assumed no one misses him more than you.”
“An accurate assumption. But listen, what’s going on with Johns Hopkins? Anything new?”
Verbin looked at me, suddenly solemn. “I’m not leaving. Not now, definitely not Froyke. Look, I don’t know what exactly you’ve all been dealing with at work, but I know it’s dangerous and I know you won’t let it happen. Right?”
I hugged her. “Right. I wish I knew that, too.”
54.
I took Highway 1 directly to Froyke’s. He lived alone on the topmost floor in a relatively new building near IDC Herzliya. When it became clear that Aliza wouldn’t be coming back and that Froyke was on his own, Bella took over his living arrangements, which didn’t seem to be of any interest to Froyke. So she brought him the papers to sign and sold his land in Moshav Herut, bought the apartment in Herzliya, tucked away the remainder in provident funds and stable savings accounts, and strong-armed the contractor into installing a private, key-operated elevator with a door wide enough for a wheelchair.
“And you two, keep your big mouths shut,” she warned Moshe and me back then, when she brought us in for a final consultation before the buy.
I knocked on the door and went in. The sea was a little blue square visible from the balcony.
“Sit down.” He didn’t look surprised to see me. “I missed you.”
“So did I. Then why didn’t you –”
“Because then everyone would come. Moshe and Nahum and everyone.”
“Becoming quite the politician, aren’t you?”
“How else could I have smoothed over all your violations of orders?”
He got up, slowly limped toward the dark cupboard with the baroque engravings, and returned with a box of Cohibas and a lighter. I lit it and offered him his customary first puff, but he refused.
“I promised Verbin I’d be good till the end of the treatment. The cigars were a gift from O’Driscoll, by the way, along with a bottle of Macallan – for use after I get better. From what Verbin told me, he had to go all the way up to their Minister of Health. There are only a dozen test subjects, of which I’m the only non-American. Kind of awkward, him going to all that trouble.”
“Nothing awkward about it,” I said. “He’s a good friend. And he certainly owes us. And you look better. Are you better?”
“I am now, but it comes in waves. When it’s good, I feel better than I have in years, ever since I got sick – but the same goes for when it’s bad. So start talking before the weather turns. I know everything up to yesterday evening, more or less.”
I moved the chair downwind so Froyke doesn’t get any of the smoke. “So you’ve heard that they’re recalling their subs?”
Froyke nodded. “What did that take?”
I told him about it, including the WikiLeaks ordeal and the break-ins, then elaborated on the Navy and Flotilla 7. I was hoping to take him back to prettier, healthier days, back to when he was young and in the navy himself, but it seemed all I did was remind him of the Kishon training, w
here he’d gotten sick.
“What else?” he asked, and seemed interested mostly in the cyber front. I told him that the IDF media department had made sure to recycle the deceased professor’s leak about our second-strike subs, and that our own cyber units had been spreading it all over the web and making a great deal of noise.
“Brass tacks?” he asked.
“It seems they’ve mostly fucked off. Every sub but one – of course, that’d be the one with the bomb,” I said. “They’ve been toying with us. We counted eight Iranian subs and one Rostov, and then the Rostov vanishes, and when it resurfaces somewhere else, we think we’ve gotten rid of it, but really, it’s just traded places with the other sub, the one that’s carrying the bomb. It’s ghosting around like goddamn Pimpernel Smith, coming and going. The Russians are claiming they have no control over anything because the sub’s in Iranian hands, and meanwhile we’ve intercepted orders the Iranians have sent to the sub telling them that under no circumstances is it to come anywhere near Iran. We don’t know if they got it, because the guys from Electronic Warfare have been jamming the whole area, and to top off all this loveliness, we don’t even know who’s in command of the sub – if the captain’s Russian or Iranian – and if Hamdani’s in control or not. Either way, it has to resurface at some point…”
I suddenly noticed the Froyke’s face was contorting in pain. I sprang from my seat, but he waved me back down, saying, “I’m fine, just detaching it,” he said, referring to his prosthesis. “Here, put this away,” he said, handing it to me. I did as he asked.
“Look,” he sighed, “As stealthy as it may be, you’re right – every sub resurfaces eventually. At that point we can corner it with what will most likely be excessive force, but then what? Then what? Surely you realize that to sink it is to consign ourselves to living with a hundred megatons of death ticking away under our balls. But not drowning it means leaving things up to them, to do as they please. Whenever, wherever. First-strike, second-strike. I’ll have that puff, now, thank you.”