by D S Kane
He rose from the couch. “We need this, Mr. President. Our cyberwar capabilities are America’s biggest weakness. Please hide the funds I’ve requested in the current year’s revised budget, sir. Remember, with a drastically downsized CIA and NSA, we would come close to balancing the budget. It might ensure your reelection.”
The President nodded. “We’ll see. I’ll need you to keep this project quiet for the time being. Too many people know already.”
The President sat with a closed, blank expression, and waved him to the door.
Chapter Four
Allenby Bridge (King Hussein Bridge) border crossing from Israel into Jordan
June 18, 5:26 p.m.
“Passport and visa.”
Simon Fiernen pushed a document through the window. The desert breeze ruffled his gray hair and short-cropped white beard.
The guard opened the passport to a page showing Fiernen’s visa. “Business or pleasure?”
“I’m an archeologist. Petra ruins. Just came from Masada. He offered the guard a bored expression. In his head, the words “live your cover” kept repeating.
The guard stamped the passport and handed it back.
Fiernen drove north toward Amman. The car, old and in poor condition, reflected his identity. It didn’t have air conditioning, so he kept the windows open.
This had been the easy bit. At Queen Alia International Airport in Amman he would need another passport, another identity. The flight to Germany would take almost a day.
When he turned onto Route 15 north, a car cut in front of him. He slowed, not wanting attention. He intended the drive north to be uneventful. It might take him about three hours.
It was his first time outside Israel in eighteen months. He’d almost always sent cutouts to do his bidding. The last time, he’d visited London for a single evening and spent less than an hour in a student’s apartment. He’d recruited that student to work for him, but the results weren’t what he’d hoped. It was time now for another visit.
He steeled himself to the trickle of fear that ran down his back. It mirrored the perspiration and added to his discomfort. Outside the car, scrub dotted the desert. He strained against the impulse to go faster.
As he neared Amman, the roads were busier. He looked for the turnoff looping east at Al Jiza. Soon he passed the first traffic circle. He was close now. Then the second traffic circle and the road divided. He found the airport parking structure and stuffed the ticket into his pocket. He opened the car’s boot and pulled out a leather case. In it was the new passport. He tossed in the one he’d used at the border crossing and took the new one, for Herr Rickard Stossler, a businessman from Heidelberg. His German was perfect, so German legends worked best for his backstopped passports. His cobbler was an old woman working in Tel Aviv, and she was one of the best.
The old passport would work for his return trip. He dropped the leather case in the boot and removed a small suitcase containing only clothing. Opening the suitcase, he re-dressed in a business suit and white shirt but couldn’t bring himself to wear a necktie.
He took the suitcase and walked to the elevator. His flight was scheduled to leave in just about two hours.
It was years since he’d last visited Munich. That time, he’d killed two terrorists and one German intelligence officer. By the time he reached the terminal, he looked like any other businessman about to return home.
At the first security gate, the guard checked his boarding pass and passport and motioned for him to wait. Something had gone wrong. He hadn’t any idea of what, but his passport must have been flagged. He’d used a reliable cobbler, but anyone could be bought. And he’d defied the first of the Moscow Rules: Trust no one. Stay calm and think this through. I need a plan.
“You are Rickard Stossler?”
He nodded.
“Please come with me.” The guard walked toward a closed door in the corner of the terminal. Probably an interrogation room.
He scanned the area for escape routes. There were six nearby doors to the outside. The ones on his right probably led to the tarmac. Not good. The three to the left led back to the parking structure or out to the main entrance. Too far away. They were almost at the door to the interrogation room.
He spotted a tour group, more than thirty people. Twenty feet away and moving toward the terminal exit. If he timed it right, maybe he could be out the door before the guard could sound an alarm. He changed his direction and was about to commit to this, when the tour guide stopped his group and spoke to them.
The guard turned to face him.
He stopped and waited. The guard said, “Stay close.”
He nodded, and when the guard opened the door, he followed the man in. Aside from the two of them, the corridor was empty. The guard, very close to him, turned away to lead him down the hall.
He reached forward, gripped the guard by the neck and squeezed in the spot where a large neural ganglion controlling breathing and heartbeat was located. It took less than three seconds. The unconscious guard was easy to drag into a nearby closet, where he pulled off the man’s tunic and hat. In seconds, he’d donned the guard’s uniform over his suit and exited back into the terminal.
If he was lucky, a minute or more might pass before bad things happened. They’d want to interrogate him. That meant torture, and then disposal of his body. Before they let him die, they’d learn every secret he knew. He couldn’t let that happen. So many other lives hung in the balance.
Through the terminal exit, he ran to his car, ripped off the guard’s hat and tunic, and started the engine. In seconds he was back on the highway. I need another plan to get out of Jordan.
None of the neighboring countries had direct flights to Germany, except for Israel, but if he returned, his minders would spot him. What he was doing was off the books. He’d need another way to exit Jordan.
When he reached downtown Amman, he sought a souk where he could buy clothing. It took only minutes to find what he needed in the open-air market.
He’d need another passport, this one female. He ran a list of sayanim through his mind until he recalled one who’d served his agency as a cobbler. The man’s place of business was nearby. He walked the distance and knocked on the door. He held up the ID card bearing his real name to the tiny window, and the door clicked open. In less than another hour he’d acquired a new ID showing him to be a female in her early sixties, wearing the hijab he’d bought in the souk. He prayed the costume and passport would convince airport security.
The hijab concealed all of his face except his eyes.
By now, the original flight had already departed. He used his smartphone to book his alter ego on a flight to Zurich, with a second ticket using Herr Stossler’s identity going on to Munich.
This time, when he left the airport parking garage, he left everything he didn’t need in the car’s boot.
He’d stuffed a change of underwear into the hijab where a woman’s breasts would normally hang. He walked slowly, with the aid of a cane, stagger-stepping through security. Before the plane called for its passengers, he sent messages to their destinations.
Chapter Five
Dreitsbank headquarters, at Marienplatz 928, Munich, Germany
June 18, 5:26 p.m.
Three minutes late. Rain and lightning stormed over Munich and drenched Herr Friedrich Stamphil. His umbrella blew around his head as he rushed into the lobby of Dreitsbank.
He bought coffee, waited on the security line, and caught the elevator to his floor. Shook off his Burberry trench coat and hung it on the post at the back of the door along with his brown fedora. The umbrella went in a brass bucket.
He sat behind his desk trying to forget how he lost his fiancée to a terrorist’s bomb. I’ll never forget how she lied to me.
He popped the top off the coffee and took his first sip of the day.
Less than a year ago, he’d earned his MBA and hoped he’d find working at the bank exciting, but it wasn’t so. The brief hiatus betwe
en graduating and starting this job had changed him. This is all I have to look forward to?
The coffee woke him and shielded him from another senseless day. He imagined himself in thirty years, older, fatter, and waiting for a coronary to take him off the earth.
Outside, the rain blew against the windowpane through a steel gray sky. He swirled the warm liquid around in his mouth before swallowing. Painful memories of his recent gunfight in the Grand Souk in Muscat crept past his defenses. His hand clenched. The coffee spilled over the edge of its paper cup, burning his fingers.
Stamphil logged into the computer network that monitored activity on the floor. The repair queue for funds transfers was almost empty as the late night crew finished their work and handed the leftovers to the day staff. There was nothing yet for him to shepherd. Without thinking, he straightened papers on a corner of his desk by his inbox.
Then, he saw it. A paperback left beside his inbox, hidden where he’d find it, on top of today’s file folder. Not his book. He reached for the hefty tome and flinched at its title: Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas. Must have been left there for him by one of his handler’s helpers, a sayan, probably the man in personnel responsible for hiring him at the bank.
They promised to leave me alone!
He remembered a scene from The Court Jester, a movie his late fiancée, Lisa, had taken him to see at a classics film festival at the University of London’s student union. It had starred Danny Kaye. They’d laughed when the actor tried to decode instructions regarding which drinking vessel contained poison and which was safe to drink. He whispered the words without even realizing it:
The pellet with the poison’s
In the flagon with the dragon.
He’d been cursed with an eidetic memory. He remembered her touch, the closeness of her body. Now, she was dead, the same way his parents died. Murdered by terrorists.
He steeled himself for what he’d have to do next. In seconds his old training took over. His body stiffened and his pulse pounded, his vision narrowed. He could no longer smell his coffee. His hearing became diffuse but he felt as if he could hear everything in the building, from the elevator delivering workers to the floors, to the restrooms’ pipes. He waited and breathed deep to regain control.
He was ready.
He picked up the book and held it vertical on its spine, as he’d been trained. Then he let it fall open. It opened to the very page it was designed to. The page now showing had several lines, with a single pencil mark to the side of a line of words. It was a primitive cipher’s key. No one used such simple tools anymore and no one ever expected them. That’s why they had taught it to him.
He’d need someplace private for his work. Where? He took the book with him to the bank’s cafeteria, almost empty after the morning rush. A table far away from the entrance, hidden from view by a large potted palm. He sat at the secluded table, facing the entrance. Not perfect, but it would do.
He set his cell phone to a blank Word document. Examining each of the more than 600 pages from the front on, he found occasional dots in the margin of a line and copied the first word from the line into his cell phone. It took twenty minutes before he was back in his office. By now the building was alive with bankers working hard.
He placed the book in his desk’s cabinet, closed the door, and sat. Not even realizing it, he stroked his chin.
Knowing sooner was better.
He plucked a thumb-drive from his pocket. It booted a software program on his desktop that severed his computer’s link to the bank’s network, but made it look to the servers if he was still working. The program synced the cell phone with his desktop computer and copied the file he’d just created on the cell. His heartbeat accelerated. He watched the program process the file. A single line of text appeared on his computer’s screen:
Mother says take lunch at 12:30 at Bistro Terrine.
Mother? Damn! Someone he wanted nothing to do with.
He pressed the Enter key on his desktop and the program erased all traces of the file and itself from his desktop. It reconnected his computer with the servers. He found he was hyperventilating. The feeling both thrilled and disgusted him.
They’d told him he’d be at the bank for years before anyone tried to use him. They lied. It was what they did best. He felt a jolt of surprise and anger. He’d done so much for them. Why couldn’t he be left alone?
He thought of Lisa. It almost sent him spinning off his seat. Red hair in a French braid and olive eyes. He missed her wry humor.
He remembered another couplet from the Danny Kaye movie she’d taken him to see:
The vessel with the pestle
Has the brew that is true.
And the thing he knew best about covert work was that the most important skill was lying. Nothing was ever “true.” Lisa had lied to him. Even the decoded message was a lie.
He took several deep breaths and his head cleared. He felt centered. He settled in and worked the morning as if nothing had happened. As noon neared, he looked out the office window. The rain had turned to a drizzle. He donned his trench coat and fedora and left.
Bistro Terrine was at Amalienstrasse 89, near an intersection just a few blocks away in Schwabing, a trendy part of the city. The dicey part was to ensure he wasn’t being followed.
He walked through the crowded streets and crossed around puddles. Lisa had changed his life. She’d given him a clear direction and led him to become who he now was. And just who am I today?
He made three surveillance detection runs within two blocks of his destination. The windows of stores provided reflections and he searched to see if the same face presented itself more than once. He walked east-west, then north-south, and then entered the office building across the street from the restaurant. Inside the sundries shop, he held a magazine while he watched for someone familiar. But there was no one he’d seen twice. No one watching. No one following.
He scanned his wristwatch, and another surge of adrenaline hit him. He admitted he’d missed this feeling of being more than just alive.
What in hell did Mother want? He stared at the front door and walked toward the restaurant’s neon sign, glowing even in the gray daylight. He took a step off the curb and a truck’s horn blared at him. He jumped back as it passed, and shook his head. My skill set is rusty.
As Stamphil crossed the street, he swung his gaze left to right and back to left, to scan for trouble. He felt himself transforming and by the time he’d entered the restaurant, he was once again Jon Sommers. He took a deep breath and felt the familiar rush that came with his old persona.
Just like old times, with William Wing and Avram Shimmel.
As he breached the entrance of Bistro Terrine, on Amalienstrasse 89, the clouds opened and sunshine flowed from the street behind Jon Sommers. He was backlit, no one inside could see his face as he scanned the rows of tables.
For just a second, the light from outside illuminated the bearded, white-haired man he sought, seated at a table surrounded by wood and glass dividers near the rear exit and the restrooms. When the moment passed, his target was once again in darkness.
The least desirable table, perfectly suitable for a man like his former handler. A man who filled the world with lies and deceptions. The spymaster seemed older, thinner, more fragile.
Jon walked over and sat. How strange to see Mother outside Israel. He wondered what could bring him so far from the safety of his home. “I didn’t expect to hear from you for a very long time.” He thought about the political games the man played, and smiled. “You look like hell. How’s Herzliyya, Mother?”
The white-haired man wore a dark business suit and no tie. He seemed to ignore Jon’s snide question. Seconds passed in silence. It looked as if he almost smiled, but stopped himself. “This was a more complicated trip than I’d planned on, Jon. Thank you for coming.” His voice was a wispy growl.
“Let me remind you of something you already know. Collections
Department put me here in deep cover. As a katsa. A case officer, not a kidon. I don’t work for you anymore. Why are you here?”
“Patience. Have the foie gras in cherry port sauce. We’ll talk.” The old man’s whisper rose to a raspy monotone.
Jon took a deep breath, unclenched his hands. He shook his head, brought his face within inches of Mother’s, and whispered. “Okay. The foie. You know if you and I are seen together, it will be bad for the Mossad. Worse for me. And here in Germany, death for you. Your face is well known.”
Mother took a forkful. Closed his eyes as he chewed. “This is much better than the food we serve in the canteen at Herzliyya.”
Jon picked up his fork. “Yes, the food. What do you want me to do?”
Mother placed his fork on the plate. He moved his face close to Jon’s and whispered, “Without patience you will never succeed. We taught that to you when we attempted, unsuccessfully, I might add, to turn you into an assassin.” Mother picked up the fork, pointed it at Jon as if it was a weapon. “What a waste of time and money.” He shook his head. “I see you haven’t changed.”
Jon started up from his seat.
Mother gripped his arm. “Sit!” After another bite of the foie, Mother drew his face even closer to Jon’s. “We have a problem that requires a super hacker. Drapoff and his yahalomin are very good, but insufficient. We need William Wing. And he refused us. He won’t refuse a friend.”
Jon remembered everything in one big rush. It seemed all Mother’s lies started with a reference to friendship. Memories turned Jon’s eyes to slits. He remembered his parents’ car accident, and how Mother later revealed they were assassinated because they were Mossad spies. He’d claimed they were his best friends.
He remembered Lisa Gabriel, his fiancée, saw himself sitting in the library in London, where he read of her death days after a bomb exploded in her car in Herzliyya.
He thought about his recruitment by Mossad, his search for her murderer.