by Ward Larsen
“And maybe some coffee?”
“Yeah, that too.”
11
Among the world’s spy agencies, Mossad punches far above its weight class. This is due in part to efficiencies, not to mention a perpetual wartime footing. It is also a consequence, however, of a perpetually challenged budget. Capital projects are kept to a minimum, and case officers are drilled from the outset to save a euro wherever they can. Which was why, just prior to crossing the Belgian frontier, Slaton stopped for gas.
Luxembourg, he knew, had some of the cheapest petrol prices in Europe.
He pulled into a village called Rombach, directly on the Belgian border. The stretch of the Sûre River that separated the countries was a mere hundred meters away. The hamlet was mostly residential, and according to a road sign, merged on the Belgian side with a place called Martelange.
Even though Anna had minimized her black eye, they agreed it could still draw attention. For that reason, she pumped the gas while Slaton ducked into the small travel center. He purchased two cups of coffee and carried them to the nearby counter. There he found himself stilled.
Was it two sugars and a cream? Or the other way around?
Slaton’s thoughts went awry when he sourced the problem. Katya had been two-sugars. Anna the reverse.
He went through the motions and grabbed a wooden stir stick.
The lapse was fleeting, but off-putting all the same. For the last three years he had committed himself absolutely to work, becoming the best assassin he could be. Among the necessary sacrifices: he hadn’t been on a proper date since his wife’s death. It was a shifting of priorities he’d easily ignored, yet now he sensed a change. Anna had stirred something in him, brought on by a mere touch of his hand on the bridge last night.
He shook it away and left his own coffee black. Now wasn’t the time for distractions.
Slaton turned toward the door, and he was halfway there, a cup in each hand, when the scene outside caused him to freeze: in front of the Renault, parked in a good blocking position, was a white car with an orange diagonal stripe. A squad car of the Grand Ducal Police. A lone officer was climbing out, his eyes squarely on Anna as he spoke into a chest-mounted microphone.
As Slaton stood motionless behind the glass door, a teenager opened it for him. It was an act of kindness he couldn’t ignore—not without drawing attention. He went through, thanked the kid, and immediately turned hard left toward the side of the L-shaped parking area. Anna remained calm as the policeman circled to the far side of the Renault and took a hard look at the license plate. More talking on the radio. The police had nailed their car. He recalled that Anna had used it on the op last night. Had she parked too close to the hotel? Did it have something to do with her stop at the store afterward?
No time for critiques.
He dropped the coffees into a trash can and continued around the building’s corner. Looking through a right angle of two corner windows, he had a clear view of the scene. Anna was not in physical danger. Yet she was at risk of being arrested. Slaton’s SIG was in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket, but that hardly applied. He wasn’t going to engage in a gunfight with a cop who was doing his job.
As he began plotting an intervention, a second police car wheeled into the lot. That greatly compounded the problem. His mind went into overdrive, every sense on alert for an opportunity. Slaton was good at talking his way out of situations, as was Anna. That was core curriculum in their training, practiced in the real-world laboratory that was Tel Aviv, honed ever since in day-to-day operations. Escape any dangerous situation using the lowest level of resistance. He saw a woman putting air in her car’s tires at nearby compressor station. She’d left the car running. He could put it in gear, manufacture a harmless accident to divert attention. Or he could trigger the tilt shock sensor on the Porsche behind him—Slaton had been schooled on the best way to set off most factory-installed car alarms.
Two officers emerged from the second car, one male and one female. A third car appeared on the cross street to the right, two shadows inside. His view of the situation darkened. The response was too heavy, too quick—far more authority than what this small town warranted. Had they spotted the plate earlier, perhaps flagged it using traffic recognition software? Had the cars been following them for miles? Again, he pushed the questions away. His tactical options were narrowing severely. Against one or two cops they might have had a chance. Intervene with some indirect action where no one got hurt. Build an opening, make an escape. But now, against these numbers?
It was all but impossible.
Anna was talking to two officers, clearly buying time. She was facing away from Slaton, and he saw her right hand flutter behind her back. She was waving him off.
Of course she was right. A narrow window remained in which he could disappear. That would be the textbook move. The smart move. He had his phone—he could contact headquarters. Bloch could get ahead of things, start working channels through the foreign ministry. It might be a public relations disaster, but no one would get hurt.
The problem: Slaton wasn’t wired for diplomacy. He was, by both training and temperament, a hard-core interventionist. He kept looking for openings. The SIG felt like an anchor beneath his jacket. It was a wrenching internal battle, but in the end, the voice of an old instructor echoed in his head. There’s a fine line between resourcefulness and recklessness. You have to find it and abide by it.
As much as it ran against his grain, as much as the demons dragged him elsewhere, Slaton knew there was only one choice. He turned and walked away.
* * *
Bausch was at Le Cristal, interviewing a front desk receptionist, when his phone vibrated. He took a priority call from headquarters and learned that the Renault had been located.
“Where?”
“Rombach,” the command post duty officer said, “on the Belgian border. We have three units on scene and a young woman has been taken into custody.”
“Do you have a description?”
“Standby.” Thirty seconds later, “Apparently she’s a rather attractive blonde, late twenties. The name on her identity documents is Sophie Bauer, an Austrian national.”
Bausch doubted both the name and nationality. Ever since learning about the hack on the hotel’s security system, he was viewing everything through a prism of doubt. “Was she alone?”
“I don’t have anything more, sir. This just came through and I thought you’d want to know about it.”
“All right, get her to the station as quickly as possible. And have the uniforms take pictures of her documents and send them in advance.”
The duty man read back the orders and rang off.
Bausch pocketed his phone, told the desk clerk they would have to finish up later, and hurried out to his car.
12
Four minutes after walking away from the gas station, Slaton was in Belgium. He dodged bicycles as he crossed the Sûre River beside two lanes of traffic. There were no border crossing constraints, and on entering Rombach’s sister village of Martelange, Belgium, he maneuvered to the nearest high ground to get a look at the distant gas station.
From an ancient cemetery atop a hill he could see the three patrol cars, two of which had the Renault blocked in. Anna was no longer in sight, and he was sure she’d been put in one of the cars. An officer was searching the Renault’s trunk. Slaton had left behind little of note. His passport, phone, and weapon were all in his possession—standard on an op—and there was nothing in his rollerbag that would raise suspicion.
There was, however, one problem. Anna operated by the same rules, and so she still had the Beretta Nano. Slaton knew it was in her handbag—it was also standard practice that case officers shared the location of their weapons. This presented a problem: the gun laws in Luxembourg were strict. No civilian could own a firearm without going through a lengthy registration process, and foreigners were prohibited from bringing weapons into the country. All of this had been covered in
the pre-mission briefing. It was conceivable Anna had ditched the weapon when she’d seen the police coming, perhaps dropping it in a trash can. Or better yet, into the bed of the work truck that had been parked at the adjoining pump—now probably miles away.
He chided himself for losing focus at the coffee stand. In those critical seconds he might have intervened, or at least gotten a better take on the situation. In the end, he decided the issue of the gun was a minor one—assuming Anna was being truthful about not being the shooter last night. Slaton wanted to believe it, now more than ever. Weapons charges Anton Bloch could manage; murder was something else.
Slaton spotted another police car, this one on the Belgian side. Different paint scheme, one officer behind the wheel. It was arriving from the northern road and didn’t pause near the bridge. A good sign, most likely a coincidental appearance. All the same, he edged behind a chestnut tree budding with new growth, another year’s shade arriving for overwatch on this tiny garden of souls.
As the Belgian squad car passed, Slaton tried to imagine how everything would play out. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, Anna’s legend would fall apart. Calls made to Austria, her passport looked at closely. Mossad’s documents were good, but the information age had its way. He had to presume he’d been seen arriving with Anna. Her attractiveness was a double-edged sword—last night an advantage when it came to luring Moussa, today a beacon for every red-blooded male at the travel station. Someone would remember her, and perhaps also that she’d arrived with a man—on the tall side, athletic build, sandy hair. A man who’d gone inside and purchased two cups of coffee. On top of that, Slaton had seen cameras both inside the store and around the gas pumps—the modern bane of all clandestine operators. One way or another, his presence would be noted.
The mere act of crossing the border, simple as it had been, had bought him some time. The Belgian police car was gone, but could reappear at any moment. The authorities on this side of the river operated under an entirely different command structure. They would certainly assist the Luxembourg police, if asked, yet that kind of coordination took time. Slaton gave it thirty minutes. By then, he needed to be on his way.
He walked back to the street and turned into a tiny commercial district. As he searched for transportation options, he was thankful to have over a thousand euros in his pocket. Cash was best for not leaving an electronic trail, although in an increasingly cashless world it also drew attention. He saw an old car for sale in the driveway of a house, yet it didn’t look mechanically sound and one tire was flat. A bus might work, but they often had cameras, and sometimes alert drivers. Ride sharing would necessitate setting up an account using his false identity, and thereafter leaving an electronic record of his movement.
He was ducking under the awning of a tiny retail strip, intending to use his phone to explore public transportation, when a map in a window caught his eye. He edged closer, studied it in detail. It showed not only the roads in the area, but other paths that wouldn’t appear on a traditional map. Slaton backed up and regarded the business in front of him. The building was old and weathered, closer to a barn than a retail establishment, all dirty windows and paint-peeled siding. Yet it was perfect for its niche enterprise.
He weighed the idea carefully and decided it met all his requirements. Simple, cheap, and best of all, virtually untraceable. It was his best option.
First, however, he had one very important phone call to make.
* * *
“Where are you?” Bloch asked. He was leaving a follow-up meeting with Mordechai, getting the latest on the data cache from Moussa’s laptop.
Slaton’s voice was distant, traffic in the background. “Martelange, Belgium. We’ve got a problem.”
Bloch came to a dead stop in the brightly lit hall, a portrait of Golda Meir glaring down reproachfully. When assassins called in with “a problem” it was never a good thing.
“Anna is in police custody,” Slaton said.
“What happened?”
“They somehow tracked our car, blocked us in at a gas station right before we crossed into Belgium.”
“What’s your status?”
“I wasn’t in the car when the police showed up. Three patrol cars came, one right after the other. I didn’t see any way to intervene, at least not without creating an international incident. I left on foot and crossed into Belgium. I’m working on alternate means of transportation as we speak. I’d recommend you get in touch with the foreign ministry—this is going to require some diplomacy. Anna can stall through an interrogation, but her docs won’t hold up for long. Sooner or later, they’re going to find out she’s Mossad. They’ve probably already linked her to Moussa’s death. Witnesses at the hotel can place her at the bar with him last night, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Israel would have wanted him dead.”
“Was she carrying a weapon?”
“Yes, but it can’t be tied to Moussa’s murder. I asked her point-blank, and she swore she didn’t go back last night.”
“You believe her?” Bloch listened for any hesitation. There wasn’t one.
“No, Anna did not kill him.”
The director heaved a sigh. “All right. I will reach out to the prime minister and tell him we have a disaster in the making.”
“We should also assume the authorities are looking for the other car.”
“We heard from Yosy only minutes ago—he and the 8200 team are in France and nearly to Paris. Still, it’s a valid point. I’ll tell him to ditch the car immediately.”
“Where do you want me?”
The question gave Bloch pause. It was delicate ground, and his tone turned cautious, deliberate. “There has been a development. According to information taken from Moussa’s laptop … we believe his brother arrived in Luxembourg last night.”
“Ramzi? He almost never travels. Why would he go to Luxembourg?”
“The reasons are not completely clear, yet there was mention of him appearing in person to sign some documents.”
A lengthy pause on the Belgian end. “Or maybe he went to kill his brother.”
The thought had crossed Bloch’s mind as well, but the logic escaped him. “I agree, the timing is suspicious. But why would he do such a thing?”
“Why would he kill innocent women and children thinking it would make the world a better place? I stopped trying to understand these butchers a long time ago. It wouldn’t be the first time brothers turned on one another. Moussa handles a great deal of money, Ramzi does a great deal of killing—there’s a lot that can go wrong in a family like that.”
“Perhaps. On the other hand, if Ramzi wasn’t responsible—he might search for his brother’s killer himself.”
“Do you know if he’s still in the city?” Slaton asked.
“We’re scouring the data, but there are no specifics other than a meeting they’d arranged with a lawyer tomorrow.”
“I could go back and—”
“No! I know what you’re thinking, David, but now is not the time! You must get clear and make your way to Brussels. By the time you arrive, I will have your passage to Tel Aviv arranged. One case officer in jail is enough.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Slaton said.
The call ended.
Bloch stood looking at his phone. He felt like a launch officer in a missile silo who had no idea what button he’d just pressed.
13
Slaton found the building’s interior even more rustic that the outer façade. The wooden floor was beaten and scraped, and old paint flaked from the walls. A big rolling door at the back opened to an expansive parking apron, and through the opening he saw gray-stone gravel cut with narrow ruts. Ardennes Bikes was open for business.
Slaton was the only customer in the shop, and he quickly had the manager’s full attention. He saw only one other employee, a lanky teenage kid at a workbench who was adjusting the brakes of an expensive-looking road bike. In a corner of Europe noted for its circuitous roa
ds and mountain trails, Ardennes Bikes carried everything from ten-thousand-dollar electric bikes to used cruisers with coaster brakes. They were available to be bought, sold, rented, consigned, or if the trade was right, probably bartered.
He explained to the owner that he was visiting from Sweden and wanted to spend a few days touring the area. He preferred to stay on trails, but allowed that certain segments of his planned route would require using roads. He also hinted that, taxes what they were in Sweden, he would prefer not to rent, but rather purchase a quality used bike and eventually ship it home. The owner, a rail-thin Belgian with a dense five o’clock shadow at noon, smiled broadly.
Slaton could easily pull off being a Swede—documents aside, he spoke the language fluently, had Nordic genes, and was intimately familiar with Stockholm, having lived there as a boy. The manager seemed far less interested in his heritage than the prospect of a sale on a slow spring day.
Trying not to appear rushed, Slaton took a shine to one of the first options presented, a gently used touring bike with removable saddlebags. After settling on the price, he picked out accessories to go with it: helmet, combination U-lock, touring map, a charcoal all-weather riding jacket, and a pair of wraparound sunglasses. He paid cash, and remembered to ask for a receipt to “show Swedish customs when I get back home.”
The manager accommodated every request, and soon Slaton was wheeling the bike out the back door. On the gravel apron the teenager adjusted the bike’s seat and handlebars until everything fit perfectly. Slaton slipped him ten euros, and got directions for picking up the nearby trail.
* * *
Slaton set out just under his thirty-minute wire. The map, folded to cover the beginning of his intended route, was tucked inside his riding jacket. It was a mere thirty-two-mile ride to his destination—under normal circumstances, easily covered in a few hours. For a man on the run, however, it might take longer.