by Ward Larsen
He set out on a course perpendicular to the sea, knowing it would eventually intersect the coastal north-south highway. Slaton moved as quickly as the terrain and predawn darkness allowed—he doubted an all-out manhunt was underway, but he suspected someone in Lebanon was aware of his arrival. An hour earlier he’d seen a Lebanese Navy patrol boat heading in the direction of Kosmos, and he thought it might be Demitriou’s doing, perhaps a junior naval officer whose career would benefit greatly from single-handedly apprehending an Israeli spy. If so, Slaton was in the clear, because no self-promoting officer would document failure in his nightly watch report. A remorseful Demitriou would be chastised and sent packing, bringing the whole matter to a close.
As he moved east, it struck Slaton how different this insertion was from the last one he’d done. That mission had been bold even by Mossad’s standards, a plan to assassinate a top Hezbollah captain. Their target, a man more deserving than most of an accelerated journey to the afterlife, was scheduled to appear at a rally in the Ras Beirut district. The intelligence was solid, and the mission drawn with care. Slaton’s team had planned and trained for over a month, while Mossad’s facilitators, the best on earth, had provided faultless passports and visas, and virtually unlimited funding. Transportation, a safe house, even groceries were put in place by an advance team. Easy in, take the shot, easy out. And if anything went wrong, Slaton had an army behind him—quite literally if necessary.
Everything had gone smoothly, and when the moment of truth came he had been situated under a concrete beam in a construction site six hundred yards from where the target was to appear—a simple shot on the firing range, but considerably more complex when perched on loose gravel in light rain at dusk, and when your bullet was to fly over a busy market square with smoke wafting from meat carts and people shouting and car horns blaring. Slaton never got a shot that day. As was too often the case, their solid intelligence proved wrong. The target had simply never shown, and Slaton and his support element vaporized into the lingering late-September heat. Weeks of training, men put at risk—all for nothing.
He hoped his assumptions for this mission were more accurate.
After two miles Slaton found the old coast highway, which was little used since a more modern motorway had been built years earlier to the east. At the shoulder he turned south and assumed a modest pace. He paused near a grove of olive trees, and pulled out a flashlight and a nautical chart he’d found in Kosmos’ wheelhouse. The map was twenty years old, laminated against the sea and bent with folds by a skipper who still plotted courses on paper and measured distances with a pencil and mileage scale. But the chart depicted the coast in good detail, and as expected he was near a place called Baachta, forty kilometers north of Beirut.
Slaton began moving again.
* * *
It was well before daybreak when Slaton encountered a gas station along the southbound shoulder, and as he approached it a small delivery truck pulled off the road and parked in front of the diesel pump. A man got out of the driver’s seat and stretched.
Slaton mussed his hair, more than what the Mediterranean and a sleepless night had already done, and made his approach.
“Hello there.”
The man looked up, and in the yellow cast of a floodlight Slaton saw that he was quite young. A good sign, furthered when he replied in English, “Good morning.”
“Is there coffee inside?” Slaton asked.
“Always. Boutros runs his place all night, and he needs it to keep his eyes open.” The man appeared casual. Paradoxically, he would likely have been more cautious if Slaton had been Lebanese. An out-of-sorts European here was a curiosity, but hardly a threat. It was the displaced Syrians and the asylum-seeking refugees who would cut your throat for a few dollars.
“I’ve had a tough night,” Slaton said. “Drank a bit too much. As best I can remember, two very pretty girls took me for a long drive. Where the hell am I?”
“Near Baachta,” the young man said, not without sympathy, as he opened the truck’s fueling door and removed the cap. “And they left you here?”
“I’m afraid so.” Slaton pulled out his wallet and opened it just wide enough to show a ripple of cash. “Say, can you tell me if there’s a bus nearby that runs to Beirut?”
It took another five minutes. Slaton paid for a full tank of diesel, two cups of coffee, and soon after found himself in the truck’s passenger seat listening to the driver’s take on the new Lebanese prime minister who was, in his opinion, no better than the old one. Slaton was receptive at first, but soon slumped drowsily against the window. He needed the rest, and at any rate, a degree of lethargy was perfectly in character.
The driver soon gave up, and through heavy eyes Slaton looked out across the sea. The coastline was still dark, a black-velvet canvas flecked by clusters of lights. The forty kilometers to Beirut would pass quickly now, and with little physical effort. Ever so lightly, he slept.
* * *
The dump truck received its last load from the once-sleek skeleton at Wujah Al Hajar Air Base at twenty past five that morning. The city elder from Hamat had long ago departed—by now either asleep in his warm bed or being harangued by his querulous wife—leaving Mohammed and his son to finish things.
In the cast of the truck’s headlights they made one last check of the asphalt pad where the jet had been parked. They’d already picked up every bit of scrap they could find—screws, rivets, shards of plastic and sheet metal. When that was done Mohammed undertook the contract’s last and most peculiar directive. With a flashlight in hand, he walked the entire length of the nine-thousand-foot runway, kicking aside plastic bottles, an old car tire, and at the far end the remains of a dead goat that had probably had been done in by jackals that very night.
Once finished, Mohammed checked his watch. It was 5:42.
He drove his crane past the old airfield gate, which had not been closed in years, and the headlights faithfully showed the way home. Not wanting to disturb his neighbors, Mohammed slowed when he reached his property. The engine noise was just ratcheting down when he saw a peculiar sight over the shadowed hills. In the matte-black sky, a brilliant light seemed to be hovering to the north.
Mohammed pulled his crane to a stop in order to look more closely, and he in fact distinguished not one light, but a tight group of three, all dazzling white against the ebony night. He thought it might be an airplane, but the signature red and green lights were not evident. It was hard to tell just how far away the object was, but soon the lights sank low and disappeared behind the hill he’d just crested.
A number of thoughts came to mind, but one took hold. A silly idea, really, and one that defied all logic. Mohammed shook his head as if to dislodge the notion. Weary after a long night’s work, he put the machine back in gear and it crawled the last hundred meters, ending parked next to the already empty dump truck. His son, as usual, had beaten him to bed.
Mohammed dismounted, and as he walked the dirt path toward his house he took one last look over his shoulder. Seeing and hearing nothing, he chuckled.
“No,” he mumbled to no one in particular, “it couldn’t have been that.”
FORTY-FOUR
The city of Beirut, having been established some five thousand years ago, was not prone to fleeting change. So it was, when Slaton looked out over the Central District from the back of a cab early that morning, he did so with a loose sense of familiarity.
The driver kept his window open, and the scents of the city cascaded inside, garbage on one gust, saffron and cinnamon the next. As ever, Slaton saw a place divided deeply by culture and religion, yet curiously homogenous in appearance. There were Christians and Shiites, Bedouin and Sunni, labels largely indistinguishable as Slaton surveyed the crowded sidewalks. The only obvious misfits were the Westerners, men and women inclined to casual clothes and aimless strides, and who tethered themselves unfailingly to the logos of McDonald’s and Starbucks. To pose as one of that lot, he thought encouragingly,
would be simplicity itself.
Slaton exited the cab in the district of Saray, near Government Palace, and within sight of the Lebanese Parliament building where some of the world’s most ill-at-ease politicians resided. He struck out north on foot, and before reaching the harbor turned right, away from Boulevard Charles Helou. The seats of national power were no more than a mile behind him when things began to deteriorate.
The roads were the first thing he noticed, curbs crumbling where there were any at all, and suspension-rattling potholes dotting the asphalt. The architecture was forlorn, bent sandstone buildings that seemed to lean on one another, rooftops and balconies blending like some kind of time-hewn geological strata. Laundry lines were racked with designer dresses, and rusted rooftop aerials supported new dish antennae. Young men lacking both jobs and hope—a jihadist recruiter’s dream—stood slouched against walls with slow-burning cigarettes in their hands. Slaton found himself checking over his shoulder, although not as a matter of tradecraft. It was just that kind of neighborhood.
By the time he reached Geitawi Boulevard the roads had fallen to a maze, not straight lines designed for automobiles, but ageless paths that predated any kind of municipal planning. After three wrong turns, he finally found number twenty-six. It was not what he expected.
Instead of a sturdy warehouse, he was looking at a group of apartments, three stories of stone and glass with a relatively modern visage. At the base of the building was a concrete block parking garage set into a steep hillside. In sum, 26 Geitawi Boulevard, while by no means opulent, seemed a respectable residential address. The obvious problem—this was not where any arms dealer would keep a valuable cache of weapons.
Slaton crossed the street to the entrance, as he did so trying to map the floor plan of the units above. All three floors appeared to be of the same layout, windows and balconies arranged in uniform mirror images. Each floor had four units—A, B, C, and D?—which he estimated to be two-bedroom affairs. There was an iron gate at the portico, and he paused to check a much-altered directory of tenants. Right away he saw two possibilities: in 3B, M. Nassoor, and in 2A, M. Habib. Could either be Moses? he wondered. The name Habib looked like a recent entry, sharp ink on fresh paper. Nassoor had seen sunlight and the elements—of the two, the only one likely to have been in place two summers ago.
It wasn’t much to go on.
Slaton looked up and down the quiet street. One block away loomed the silhouette of Geitawi Hospital, among the largest in the city, and he supposed many of these apartments were occupied by professionals who worked there. At this time of day, some would be occupied. Wives or husbands, nurses who worked the graveyard shift. Reaching the gate, Slaton got his best break of the day—someone had wedged a brick between the gate and its frame to keep the lock from engaging.
He passed through without hesitation, and bypassed the elevator for the staircase. As predicted, he found four doors on the top floor, the nearest marked 3B, which was M. Nassoor. The door looked relatively new but its frame appeared feeble, certain to give way to a stout kick. Was that the best approach? In a perfect world he would fall back and watch the place for a few days, perhaps identify M. Nassoor. He could log the patterns of all the residents, and choose a clean method of entry and multiple paths of egress. Unfortunately, time was not on his side. Ben-Meir had likely already come and gone, which put Slaton further behind each minute. He was studying the lock, and wishing he wore a more substantial heel than what Bruno Magli built, when he heard a voice from inside. A woman speaking Arabic, giving instructions. Then the squeal of children.
Everything felt wrong. It wasn’t the feral kind of doubt that preceded imminent harm, but a sense that he’d somehow miscalculated. Could there be another 26 Geitawi Boulevard? Was he in the wrong district? What kind of armaments would anyone keep in a two-bedroom apartment full of women and children?
The door handle rattled.
Slaton bolted back to the stairs, the door of 3B creaking open just as he cleared the first landing. In the street he rushed around a man on a bicycle before disappearing into the recesses of a nearby courtyard.
What am I missing?
He watched the entrance and saw a woman emerge. She wore Western clothing, and seemed to be struggling with something as she backed out. Then he saw what it was. Two young children—a girl of perhaps five and a boy in a wheelchair. The boy’s age was hard to gauge; he looked limp, and his limbs were malformed. His head lolled to one side, and his body rocked as the chair negotiated ruts in the sidewalk. They set out at a relaxed pace in the direction of the hospital, the girl skipping alongside while her mother dutifully pushed the chair.
Slaton wasn’t sure what to make of it. He waited until they were out of sight, then moved back to the iron gate and found it still blocked open. At the foot of the stairs he hesitated, still sensing he’d gotten something wrong. Straight in front of him was the parking garage—it looked like a fortress, heavy block walls and iron bars across the openings. He moved closer and saw assigned parking spaces, including one marked 3B. And next to that …
A seed planted in his mind.
Each parking spot had a corresponding storage room stenciled with the apartment number. The door of the closet marked 3B looked sturdy, just like the others, yet the owner had added a secondary lock with a thick hasp of tempered steel.
Slaton scanned the garage: three cars, one scooter, one motorcycle. There was no one in sight. He went to the nearest car and found it locked. The second, an old Citroen, was a convertible whose canvas top was already torn near the rear window. Slaton reached inside, unlocked the driver’s door, and seconds later had the trunk unlatched. He retrieved the lug wrench from the spare-tire well and went to the door marked 3B. He ignored the sturdy lock, which would have entailed serious work, and instead simply pried the door from its hinges. Seconds later he pulled the door clear. Slaton stared at an empty closet.
His hope faded again, only to rekindle when he took a step inside. In the three-meter-square space, the first thing he noticed was a pattern on the floor. The groomed concrete was covered with dust—like every surface in Lebanon that wasn’t regularly swept—and he could see marks where something had been kept. No, where something had been removed.
Slaton leaned in closer and saw dozens of round outlines that might have been made by gallon-size paint cans or jugs of bleach. Or if he were a pessimist? Binary, chemical-laden artillery shells? He stood with his hands on his hips. Were these outlines a signature of what Grossman had tried to buy for five hundred thousand U.S. dollars? Could anything so valuable have been kept in a parking garage storage closet?
His eye then caught on a tiny plastic case on the shelf in front of him. It was the size of a matchbox, almost invisible in the unlit storage closet. Slaton took the case in hand, and before he could study it he noticed a second one up higher, on a louvered vent near the ceiling. It was held in place with two strips of tape, and Slaton used the crowbar to reach up and flick it down. He searched carefully and found a third above the door frame, again secured with tape. He scanned from wall to wall but found no others.
Slaton stepped back into the garage and studied the three cases in good light. They were identical, each half the size of a credit card and formed as a thin plastic box with a cover that could be rotated open. The covers were each affixed with a tiny printed label. He snapped open the first case and found six distinct surfaces inside: each shone like unexposed film and was stamped with numbers.
All at once, Slaton realized what he was looking at.
It was a thoroughly discomforting conclusion, yet it answered the most difficult question. What could have been kept in this closet that was so valuable? What was worth the death and destruction that had tracked Slaton across a continent?
Now he knew.
He snapped the plastic case shut, and studied the label on the cover. All three devices were imprinted with the logo of Geitawi Hospital. Underneath that was a name. Indeed, a name he had seen before.
Moses.
Or more completely, Dr. Moses Nassoor.
FORTY-FIVE
“His name is Osman Tuncay.”
Sorensen was briefing Director Coltrane in a conference room at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. All around Coltrane were the heads of working groups, including Near East, South Asia, Information Analysis, and Terrorism Analysis. Jammer Davis sat quietly in a corner.
Everyone was weary after a long night poring over satellite imagery. They’d so far found no sign of the MD-10, so Sorensen had begun tackling the problem from alternate angles. A driver’s license–quality photo filled the wall-mounted screen behind her.
“He’s one of the pilots from the alleged crash in Brazil,” she continued. “We began with his passport, then immigration authorities pulled a good shot from closed-circuit cameras in the arrivals concourse at Brasília International. Our computers fed all of it into facial recognition software, which hit on this picture. The confidence level is very high. He’s Turkish by birth. The photo you’re looking at is from the employee database of an airline called Arabian Air. Tuncay flew there for eighteen years, but he was recently let go in a downsizing. His employment history with the airline checks out against his European pilot certificate, medical records, and training logs.”
“So he really is a pilot?” Coltrane asked.
“It seems so. From there we used ONYX.”
The director nodded and said, “I’m familiar with it, but others here might not be.”
Sorensen explained. “ONYX is an experimental software program designed to crosshatch varied inputs—it compares our own files to police reports, news links, and intel briefs from sister services. The idea is to find quick connections amid all the raw data.