by Oliver North
He zoomed in on the image, looking for signs of injury. He could see what appeared to be blood on Rachel's collar, some swelling around her nose, and a cut on her lower lip. But her eyes drew his attention: they were not turned down or away from the photographer, no sign of dejection or fear. When the photo was taken, Rachel was staring straight into the lens. And in her eyes, Newman could see only defiance.
Lieutenant Marks was reading a printout of the e-mail.
“Smart fellow, this one. He was careful not to use any of the ‘red flag' words that would alert GCHQ or other monitoring agencies. He was either lucky, or he knows his way around security.”
After several seconds of staring at the image on the screen, with Lieutenant Marks looking over his shoulder, Newman clicked the mouse to print the photo. As the color printer on the table next to him began to warm up, he keyed his computer to respond to the kidnappers' e-mail.
“Don't reply just yet,” Lieutenant Marks said. “Our guys will want to check out this e-mail and try to trace it. He pulled out his mobile telephone and punched in a preset number on the speed dial. “Ben, it's me. Listen, I need you to come to the Hospice of Saint Patrick in the Old City as soon as possible. Bring your computer. I need you to do a trace.” He ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.
“I don't expect them to make things that easy for us,” Newman said. “I'm guessing they hijacked someone's account and sent the message through a series of hacked computers. There's no telling where they are, or even where my reply will go.”
“Yes, you're probably right. But we need to try. Maybe the kidnapper is careless or isn't all that familiar with computers. If he's sending this through a server in a country friendly to his cause, it wouldn't matter because they'd never cooperate with us and give us access to him anyway.”
Newman picked up the cell phone that the IDF man had given him the day before in the hangar at Ben Gurion Airport. He dialed the preprogrammed number for Major Ze'ev Rotem's mobile phone.
“It's Peter Newman, Ze'ev...I just got an e-mail message from the kidnappers. I thought you might want to check and see if you also received one.”
“I received a message too. It says: ‘We regret taking your wife. It was a mistake. She will be returned to you by Peter Newman after he meets with us. Do not try to come with him, and do not involve the authorities. If you disregard this warning and involve them, the police, or your own service branch, your wife will not be returned alive. We will notify you when and where you will be able to get her back.’”
“There is an attached photo file of her,” Rotem said. “What did your message say?”
Newman read him the message.
“So...all along it was you they wanted,” Major Rotem noted. “Who are these kidnappers? And why do they want you?”
“I have no idea. We're waiting for an IP computer expert to come and try and trace the e-mail. Maybe you should have them do the same with your message.”
“My Duvdevan unit has already taken care of that. Our software is probably more advanced than that of the IP. I'll have my man come over there too.”
“Has your guy had time to track your message and see where it originated?”
“Yes. Theoretically, it was sent from a computer café in Belgium, after being routed or forwarded from France to Switzerland to Italy to Lebanon. At each switching point, it was encrypted and decrypted using a total of four different codes. The original message was probably faxed to the guy in Belgium, using coded language, and re-sent from there. We're still working on tracing the reply address, but that's probably going to end up at some dummy e-mail account somewhere. By the time the Internet providers track it down, he will have already gotten the reply message and skipped. There'll be no way to find him.”
“Well, so much for that idea,” Newman said. “So, is there any reason to wait to reply to my message? I'd like to get the ball rolling. Today is almost over, and I want to get whatever instructions they are going to give right away. As you yourself said, ‘Kidnappings don't age well.’”
“Tell the IP officer what I told you, and then go ahead and answer them. It's more important that you make contact with them as soon as possible to let them know you'll be waiting for their instructions. You're right. We don't want our wives stuck with those animals any longer than necessary.”
Newman hung up the phone, turned back to the computer, and clicked the “reply” icon.
Lieutenant Marks started to protest, and Newman's explanation about what Major Rotem had just told him did little to appease him. “Colonel, you cannot just do as you want. The IP is in charge here, and if you want to get your wife back, you're going to have to work with us.”
Peter typed “OK” in the subject box and sent it on its way, just as instructed. He turned and looked at Lieutenant Marks.
“Well, with all due respect, Lieutenant, I'm doing what I believe needs to be done to save my wife. I'm not going to sit here waiting all night for you guys before getting back to the kidnappers. I want to go get her and bring her home as soon as possible.”
“Why do the kidnappers want to meet with you? How can you do them a favor? What are you holding back from us?”
“Listen, I know you guys are trying to help me to get Rachel back. But since I don't know who the kidnappers are or what they want, I have absolutely no idea what that favor is. In fact, I can't even speculate.”
The Israeli detective shrugged and sat down to wait with Newman. Seven minutes after Newman sent the e-mail, the phone extension in his office began to ring.
Newman was reaching for the phone when Lieutenant Marks said, “Wait. Let me make sure that they have the tape machine running to record the call.”
Newman nodded and waited for Marks to pull a radio from his belt clip and speak into it. The phone rang three more times. Marks signaled with a “thumbs up,” and Newman picked up the phone.
“Hello...this is John—uh...Peter Newman,” he said in the most emotionless voice he could muster.
The voice on the other end, filtered through a modulating device that changed the caller's pitch and timbre, began immediately. “I will not give you time to trace this call, so listen carefully. Tomorrow morning go to the Tel Aviv airport and take Turkish Air flight 46, to Istanbul, Turkey. In Istanbul, you will take Gulf Air flight 5633 to Damascus.
“There are two reservations made for each flight. One reservation is in the name ‘Peter Newman,' and the other is in the name ‘John Clancy.' We do not care which name you use, but once you have the boarding pass for your flight to Istanbul, go to a courtesy phone and page ‘Mr. Kline,' and tell them to have Mr. Kline go to the gate from which you will be departing. Don't bother to look for anyone—no one will meet you there. It is our way of knowing you will be on the flight. When you land at the Damascus airport, go to the International First Class lounge on the second level and wait there for a telephone call for you, in the name of ‘Mr. Edwards.' The call should come within thirty minutes of your flight's arrival. It is then that you will receive your next instructions.”
“Why don't I just give you my cell phone number, so that you—” Newman started to say, trying to buy more time for the IP listeners to trace the call.
But all he heard was a click and dial tone as the line disconnected. As he hung up, he told Lieutenant Marks, “I hope your guys were able to get a trace on the call.”
Marks shook his head. “Not enough time...especially if it was an international call. Your caller knew that, and that's why he kept it so short.”
Newman was upset with himself for not thinking to check his email as soon as he arrived back home—if he had, perhaps he could have gotten a flight that day and flown to Syria a day earlier to get to Rachel.
Oh, God...please protect my wife…
PFLP/Hezbollah Compound
Hamah, Syria
Wednesday, 18 March 1998
2130 Hours, Local
“Are you all right?”
Rachel look
ed up and nodded. Dyan was standing by one of the chairs in the locked room. She had been pacing the floor for what seemed like hours. Rachel had been sitting on the floor on one of the filthy mattresses, thinking and praying, eyes closed.
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“I think things will work out all right. The European guy”—their code for the well-dressed man with the manicured nails—“said he sent e-mails to our husbands and he was waiting for an answer. I think the European is the one who planned this whole thing, and he's making Peter come to meet with him.”
“It's so confusing,” Dyan said. “He told me I was taken by mistake—that they really meant to kidnap you, Sar...uh...Rachel. And he knew you and your husband have different names and identities.” Now there was hurt and anger in Dyan's voice. “You were living a lie. How could you do that to me? I'm your friend.”
Rachel was silent for a few moments.
“It hasn't been easy, Dyan. You're right, though; I guess it was living a lie.”
“How do you rationalize that with your faith?” asked Dyan. “Aren't Christians supposed to abide by the Ten Commandments just like Jews?”
“Yes,” said Rachel, and then added gently, “but you, as a Jew, should understand that sometimes circumstances force us to do such things...like when Christians hid Jews during World War II and lied to the Nazis. There are some who would understand what we did, and I'm sure that some Christians would condemn us for using false identities to save our lives. But those who point the finger of blame must live incredibly easy lives, where the only decisions they have to make have very clear distinctions between good and bad, you know, easy decisions. As Peter says, ‘It's a lot tougher to know what to do when the only choices are bad and worse.’ That's why we pray for God's guidance...to know—even when we make wrong choices while trying to do right—that we're forgiven.”
Dyan was quiet for awhile and then came and sat down on the floor next to her friend.
“And now...do you hear God telling you we are going to get out of this safely? You don't even seem to be afraid of what might happen to us. Are you?”
“Of course I'm afraid,” Rachel said. “Anyone in her right mind would be scared. I don't want to die. I want to see my little boy again. I want to be with my husband again. But I'm not afraid of dying, if that's what you mean.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know where I'm going, and I know why I'm going there,” Rachel said. “I may or may not survive what those men do to me, but I know God has forgiven my faults and failures, and I know that when I finally die I'm going to be with my Lord and Savior. But I'm human, Dyan, and I pray that when I die, it will be later and not sooner.”
Dyan sat and stared at Rachel, then said quietly, “Are you praying that we both get out of here?”
“Absolutely, and I'm praying that—” Rachel's response was interrupted by the sound of the padlock on the outside of the door being unlocked, and then—a knock—something that hadn't happened before.
The heavy wooden portal swung open, and there in the doorway was the European, silhouetted by the bare bulb in the hallway behind him. To his left and right stood two of the young Arab men who had kidnapped the women. They were holding AK-47s.
The European stood there for a moment and surveyed the gloomy room and the two women sitting on the mattresses. “Excuse me, ladies,” he said in English. “You will be pleased to know that your husbands have acknowledged our e-mail. Mrs. Newman, I just wanted you to know—your husband will be here tomorrow.”
Sayeret T'zanhanim HQ
Duvdevan Command Cente
Tel-Nof Air Force Base, Israel
Wednesday, 18 March 1998
2235 Hours, Local
Newman and Rotem were seated at the conference table inside the Tel-Nof AFB operations center, surrounded by the command cell of Rotem's counter-terrorism unit—the XO, S-2, and S-3. Twenty minutes after responding to the kidnappers' e-mails and Newman's receipt of instructions to go to Damascus, both Newman and Rotem had been picked up by an IDF helicopter at the Bikur Holim Hospital helipad and flown directly to Tel-Nof.
“Are you sure you could tell nothing from the voice?” asked the Intelligence officer. He had before him on the table a digital audio tape recorder. They had replayed the tape several times already.
“No, I don't recognize the voice,” Newman said, rubbing his eyes.
“Well, it almost has to be someone who knew you before you became ‘John Clancy' three years ago,” Rotem said.
“Could it have to do with the mission you were on in 1995?” asked the Operations officer. “Perhaps one of the major players...”
“I suppose so, but I can't imagine how,” said Newman. “The UN officials are all gone—Harrod, the guy in Washington, is now a college professor and Hussein Kamil, the Iraqi, is dead.”
“Who else in your government knew your real identity besides General Grisham?” asked Rotem.
Newman pondered the question for a moment before replying, “Other than my immediate family, and other ones I know and would trust with my life—like Skillings and Goode—I just don't know.”
But that very question had been nagging at his mind. He couldn't tell the Israelis about the mission he was supposed to be on right now, hunting for missing nuclear weapons in Iraq. But the fact that Rachel's kidnapping happened right after he gave his commitment to General Grisham to help find the missing nukes seemed like too much of a coincidence. Had someone inside the U.S. government, perhaps even someone close to the general, found out about him and his secret identity? Did he still have enemies within his own government, perhaps even within the Corps? That idea was too much of a stretch for his mind to grasp. It just didn't make any sense.
Yet there was no escaping the thought that maybe the kidnappers, or someone close to them, had access to General Grisham's top secret, classified information. Any other explanation defied the odds of probability and logic. Newman came to the conclusion that someone—either inside Grisham's command or linked to CENTCOM in some way—had access to secrets that were putting his life, and his wife's, at terrible risk.
Newman wasn't the only one in the room in a quandary. Rotem was deeply concerned about his own wife and her safety. The e-mail he had received indicated that his wife would be released unharmed; yet he was a veteran in dealing with terrorists and knew that this was highly unlikely if she really was in the hands of the Hezbollah, the PFLP, or any of a half-dozen Middle Eastern terrorist groups—particularly if they had somehow learned he was a Sayeret officer. From long experience, Rotem knew that if Dyan was being held by any of these terrorist organizations, about the best he could hope for was that she might be traded in exchange for the release of a bunch of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
Nothing they had learned from the e-mails or the voice-altered phone call to Newman had changed Rotem's original assessment that their wives were being held in Syria. And, as if by way of confirming his intuition, Newman had been given instructions to go to Damascus. The IDF officer had been certain the women were being held at a known PFLP safe house—which had proved a blind lead. Yet Rotem's instincts told him there must be another location not far from the safe house where they were being kept. He knew the terrorists' methods and procedures too well. Major Rotem believed since the PFLP didn't know that the Duvdevan had discovered their escape route and safe house, there would be no reason to arbitrarily abandon it. So...they probably have another place nearby, Rotem thought, another safe house or some place that the Duvdevan hasn't discovered yet, a place they use as insurance. They probably alternate back and forth between them.
Now, with less than seven hours before Newman had to be at the airport to board the first leg of the flights that would take him to Damascus, Ze'ev Rotem had come to the conclusion that they could take no chances. Even though the kidnappers had warned both him and Newman against contacting U.S. or Israeli authorities, and had warned Rotem specifically against coming w
ith Newman to Damascus, the IDF officer had made up his mind—he would take his team back into Syria to back up the Marine.
“In case they decide to capture you and keep or kill our wives, we need to have a backup plan,” Rotem said.
“Go on,” Newman said.
“My men and I will go back into Syria to the place we rendezvoused with the other team yesterday. We will meet the team again and find cover in that desolate area just northwest of Hims. I am convinced the kidnappers are hiding someplace near there.”
“But how can you still be so sure? I mean, by now they could even be out of Syria. When I get to Damascus tomorrow morning, they could give me a message to go somewhere else. We have no idea where these guys are keeping our wives.”
“That is possible, but unlikely. There are too many logistics in transporting their prisoners. It was enough for them to get the women out of Israel and into Syria. My guess is that they have another place—another safe house—probably near the one we know about in Hims. Furthermore, it is unlikely that they will take them very far because they want to get closure on this matter as much as we do. It would not make sense to send you on a wild goose chase to come and meet them or look for our wives. Unless they simply want to kill you and not force you to do this favor, I think they will take you to the women so you can verify they are alive and well. That is why I want to take my men back to the Juwaykhat area and wait. You will find the women for us.”
“Great,” said Newman, his fatigue and frustration showing. “Then what do I do, pick up the phone and tell you where I am, supposing I even know? Or maybe you want me to wear a wire. I'm sure the terrorists wouldn't think of looking for one.” Newman rolled his eyes.
“Have a little more faith in us, my friend,” said Rotem kindly. “We can't have you do anything as conventional as wear a wire. Naturally, the first thing they will do is check you for a wire, and if they found one, they'd obviously execute you on the spot and leave before we could find the place. I'm thinking of something a little more sophisticated—and safer for you.”