He arrived at the Capitol knowing that a target was on his back, despite the handshakes and smiles.
“Director Whittington, we appreciate you appearing before us this morning,” Harriet Katz, the Senate majority leader, announced when Whittington entered the secure windowless basement chamber with burgundy carpet, fluorescent ceiling lights, and walls designed to prevent electronic eavesdropping.
Although he had not been sworn in, Whittington was directed to a witness chair facing the Gang of Eight, who were sitting in elevated seats like courtroom judges. As he twisted in the chair, trying to get comfortable, Whittington suspected that the chair had been intentionally designed to make him fidget. It was wide, armless, and appeared to be well-cushioned, but when he sat, he could feel two lateral support bars jutting into his tailbone. The arch of the chair’s back forced him to stick his chest out and hips back to gain any sort of lumbar support. Within minutes, he was hurting, but he had no other choice.
“First,” Whittington began, “let me confirm that Julian Levi, while the target of an assassination, was not injured while attending a wedding in Lake Como. There are two suspects, and both remain at large.”
He briefly recounted details of the attack. “Thankfully Director Levi was smuggled out of the villa in a wedding caterer’s truck and rushed to the airport. He is safely on his way back to Tel Aviv.”
“Let’s begin with the obvious,” Senator Katz said. “Who tried to kill him?”
“Fathi Aziz, a Palestinian terrorist who leads the Jihad Brigade, has taken credit for the attempt. I have spoken to Director Levi, and he has identified the actual perpetrators as an assassin by the name of Saeedi Bashar and his daughter, Tahira Bashar.”
“Saeedi Bashar,” the veteran senator repeated. “Why does that name sound so familiar? I remember now. He was known as the Roc. I thought we helped the Mossad terminate him with one of our drones.”
“You are correct, Senator. We assisted the Israeli government in a drone attack that destroyed a vehicle that the Mossad believed Bashar was riding in. Director Levi now says his agency was mistaken, and the Roc is alive.”
“Some of us were not on this committee when that event happened,” Representative Ginger Shaklee, the House majority leader, said. “It would be beneficial, Mr. Director, if you would share with us more about this Palestinian assassin.”
Whittington opened a folder that he’d brought. “Saeedi Bashar was born in Gaza City in Palestine. His parents returned there after graduating in the 1960s from colleges here in the States. His father, Bijan Bashar, fought in the Six-Day War against Israel in 1967, was wounded, and lost both of his legs. He later became a philosophy professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. His wife taught English in a local school for girls.”
Whittington glanced up from her file. Everyone appeared to be listening intently.
“Saeedi Bashar graduated from the Tehran University of Medical Scientists. While a student, he met his wife, Sana, a nursing student. They married and settled in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where he worked at the al-Awda Hospital as an emergency room surgeon.”
“A surgeon?” Shaklee interrupted. “This suspected killer was once a surgeon?”
“A very good one, actually,” responded Wittington. “Then Jabalia was hit by numerous Israeli air strikes in retaliation for Palestinian rocket attacks. To the best of our knowledge, before these air strikes, Bashar was not politically active. But his wife and his only son were killed when a bomb exploded in their apartment building.”
“You mentioned a daughter—Tahira,” Shaklee said.
“That’s right. His other child. Apparently she was at a relative’s during the air strike and was not injured. It appears that after those strikes, Bashar joined Hamas, where he underwent his military training. Although he initially worked as a doctor for Hamas, he began gaining notoriety as a highly skilled marksman. The Mossad lists him as being responsible for the sniper deaths of a dozen Israelis in Hamas border attacks. He was arrested after he was sent to Riyadh to assassinate a royal Saudi family member, but he escaped from prison. He next appeared in a series of videos uploaded on the internet, although his face was blurred out. The videos showed him shooting at Israeli soldiers on patrol in Gaza. In one, he fatally shot three men. The Mossad targeted him after linking him to at least fifteen Israeli fatalities, including one of the army’s major generals, in a daring attack.”
“‘Daring’?” Shaklee asked.
“Yes, he somehow managed to slip through Israeli security and enter the general’s well-guarded home. Apparently, the Mossad still doesn’t know how he penetrated its security. He tortured the general by surgically removing patches of his skin before puncturing his heart. It was a horrific death.”
“Is he still part of Hamas?”
“Before the drone attack, the Israelis reported that he had left Hamas and was operating on his own. A gun for hire, of sorts, as long as the target is someone from the West, primarily Israelis.”
“What about his daughter?” Katz asked. “I don’t remember any mention of her before.”
“We only became aware of her in the last few days. We don’t know much, but we assume he has trained her to help him.”
Several long minutes later, Whittington’s time in the torture chair ended. He was pleased with his performance. No one had mentioned Garrett or Mayberry. There’d been no questions about the murder of Nasya Radi in Arlington, and Whittington had intentionally avoided any mention of it and them.
He was outside the Capitol, about to enter the government car waiting for him, when someone yelled his name.
“Director Whittington! Time for a question?” Washington Interceptor investigative reporter Robert Calhoun was hurrying toward him.
The two security officers protecting Whittington immediately stepped between the director and the approaching reporter.
“Brett Garrett and Valerie Mayberry,” Calhoun shouted. “Did you send them to Lake Como? Are they working for the agency or the bureau?”
Whittington slipped into the waiting limousine’s back seat without answering. Once inside, he cursed.
Twenty-Three
4:38 a.m.
The motion detector emitted a quiet beep, waking the Roc in his rented Paris apartment. He’d hidden its monitor in an air vent next to the staircase. He checked the miniature camera that he’d positioned in the hallway. Tahira was approaching the flat’s door.
Although he didn’t see anyone with her, he still reached for his Heckler & Koch VP70 handgun—a 1970s-era pistol that could fire three continuous rounds with a single trigger pull. Excellent for close-range combat, in case she was being followed.
A full moon cast slivers of light around the edges of the heavy blankets that he’d draped over all the windows. He reached the door before she did and detached a trip wire connected to a US military claymore directional mine.
She rapped on the door. Two times. Then three more. Their signal. He turned the lock.
“Papa,” Tahira whispered as she entered the dark room, shutting the door behind her.
“I’m here,” he said, switching on a lone bulb. She moved toward him, smiling, bowing her head. He grasped her shoulders with his hands, but they did not embrace. It was as affectionate as he ever had been with her.
“Tell me everything,” he said, leading her to the room’s table and chairs.
She described being chased by the two strangers, the Porsche explosion, her train ride to Claviere, the hostel clerk who’d arranged for two sex traffickers to bring her undetected into France.
“What was the name of this hostel clerk?” he asked.
“Farrokh. He did not tell me a last name, but he said he was from the Iranian town of Zarabad, where his wife and daughter are buried. He said they were killed by a disease created by the Americans, and he gave me this for my protection.”
She showed him a pistol.
“This is Iranian made,” he said, “and new. It is polymeric, issued to I
slamic Revolutionary Guard intelligence officers.”
“He told me he was former Quds Force.”
For several moments, the Roc remained silent, pondering what she had just told him.
“The men who brought you to Paris, these sex traffickers, how did they treat you?”
“They never spoke to me. I had them drop me at the Champs-Élysées because I didn’t want them to bring me here.”
“In the dark, it is easy to be followed,” he said. “By someone trained. By former Quds Force.”
“I made certain no one followed me.”
“We need to leave now,” he said.
“Papa, please, I’ve not slept and I’m hungry.”
She did look exhausted. “Two hours,” he said. “No more. I’ll gather our things and wake you.”
5:38 a.m.
“Remember you’re here only to observe,” Esther whispered.
“We understand,” Valerie Mayberry said.
Esther looked at Garrett.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, “only as advisers. But tell me, how do you know the Roc and his daughter are hiding here?”
“We have sources.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do, but before you kick in the door of a Paris apartment where a professional killer is hiding, you might want to be a hundred percent certain your sources are telling the truth.”
“This address came directly from Director Levi.”
“Where’d he get it from?”
“The person who gave it to him.”
Garrett, Mayberry, Esther, and four Mossad operatives were moving quietly along the rue Simart, a diagonal street that intersected with the rue Ordener. All eyes were on a corner apartment on the top floor of a building at the intersection of the rue Ordener and the Square de Clignancourt. They crossed the rue Ordener and entered the square, which consisted of parkland surrounded by apartments and businesses.
“RAID? GIGN?” Garrett asked, using the acronyms of France’s elite counterterrorism units.
“RAID,” Esther replied.
“The gendarmes would have been a better choice than the local police,” he said. “I’ve dealt with both before.”
“You’re an adviser,” she scolded.
“Yes,” he retorted, “and I’m advising.”
An eighteen-foot-long black van was parked under trees across the square from the targeted apartment. The RAID commander greeted them when they entered but didn’t offer his name. His face was hidden behind a black ski mask, which was customary for RAID—Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion—operations.
“Each exit is covered, especially on the roof,” he said. “Now that you are here, we can proceed.”
A map spread out on a table offered a bird’s-eye view of the area. Monitors on the wall were linked to body cameras worn by the first squad of eight RAID commandos responsible for capturing the Roc and Tahira.
Each of the newcomers was given an earpiece.
“Allons-y!” they heard the RAID commander say. On the monitors, they watched the squad cross the park and enter the 1860s-era building. Despite modernization, the structure’s bones remained largely unchanged. A French bank occupied the street level with apartments on the five floors above it. A single staircase led to them. No elevator. The suspects’ apartment was on the sixth floor. When the commandos reached that floor, they paused on the top stair and the squad’s leader used a miniature camera at the tip of a flexible extension to peer around the corner into the hallway. The Roc and Tahira were in a unit at the corridor’s farthest end on the commandos’ right. The RAID team would have to pass by four apartments on each side of the hallway before reaching it. To the left of the staircase were eight apartments, four on each side and a ninth on the end: a mirror image. Using hand signals, four of the commandos stepped into the empty hallway. Two looked left, two right, protecting each other’s backs. One commando on each side crouched low. The other stood directly behind him, ready to fire over his shoulder. All four were armed with Beretta M12 submachine guns.
The hallway was now secure, so the commandos on the staircase pressed forward. The lead officer was clutching a sixty-pound blast shield capable of stopping rounds from a Kalashnikov-style assault rifle. Those behind him each held the shoulder of the officer in front of him, doing their best to stay behind the shield. In centipede fashion, they moved quickly down the hallway, arriving at the end unit’s door without being challenged.
“They are now ready to breach the door,” the RAID commander inside the control center told Esther, Garrett, and Mayberry, all of whom were transfixed on the body-cam images that could be seen clearly on the monitors. All of the commandos except one now squeezed together behind the blast shield. The one who wasn’t protected was carrying a tactical battering ram, used to smash through locked doors.
In a well-practiced move, the officer swung back the battering ram and slammed it hard against the apartment door, busting the door from its frame. When it flew backward, it hit the trip wire attached to the claymore. More than seven hundred steel balls exploded into the hallway. The velocity of the deadly projectiles knocked the RAID officer clutching the blast shield off his feet, sending him backward into his fellow team members. Although the commandos were wearing body armor and protective helmets with clear face shields, and were hiding behind the blast shield, the steel pellets ripped into their exposed arms, legs, and necks. All of them collapsed on the hallway floor, either dead or seriously wounded.
The blast was so powerful that even the four officers midway down the corridor, whose job was to keep the hallway clear, were pelted by the flying steel balls.
The claymore at the apartment entrance was not the only booby trap. Identical claymore mines had been placed facing each of the flat’s four windows, meant to kill anyone rappelling from the rooftop. Linked to the one at the front doorway, they all exploded, breaking the morning silence and peppering the parked cars below with projectiles and broken glass. Some steel balls flew across the park, striking the command-post van.
Inside it, the RAID commander ripped off his headphones, grabbed a submachine gun, and ran out the doorway across the park to the apartment building. Flames licked from the flat where the Roc and Tahira were believed to be hiding.
Esther removed her headset.
“You coming?” she called, moving toward the van’s exit.
Mayberry was right behind her, but Garrett hadn’t moved away from the monitors.
“Garrett?” Esther yelled.
“Advisers, remember?” he calmly replied.
They left him alone in the van.
Garrett moved from the body-cam screens to the neighborhood map on the table. The apartment building was connected to its neighbors, creating a giant horseshoe when seen from above.
Garrett returned his attention to what was happening inside the building when the monitors showed the RAID commander with his backup team entering the sixth-floor hallway. Several began dragging the dead and wounded back to the staircase. The commander, backed by three of his commandos, entered the apartment. The sprinkler system had doused most of the flames, creating clouds of gray smoke. They checked the main room.
“Clair! Clair!”
Next was the larger bedroom, where they froze, surprised by what they found. Garrett watched through the body cams. A hole big enough for a man to drop through had been cut into the floor, allowing access to the apartment directly below.
Garrett exited the van and ran across the park away from the apartment building to an opening that led onto the rue Joseph Dijon. By the time he reached that narrow street, he’d drawn his Sig Sauer. To his right was the boulevard Ornano intersection and a couple walking about twenty yards ahead of him, not paying attention to the sirens and speeding emergency vehicles rushing to the apartment building.
He chased after the couple but by the time he reached boulevard Ornano, they were descending into the underground Simplon Metro station. He continued the chase and hurried down its steps
but stopped when he reached the bottom of the stairs. A convex mirror mounted on the ceiling showed him what was waiting around the corner: the Roc, armed with his Heckler & Koch VP70 handgun.
Garrett took a deep breath. Steadied himself. He would drop low and fire as soon as he turned the corner. But when he checked the mirror, the Roc had retreated.
Garrett hustled around the corner.
The 1908 underground station was similar to those found in New York City, only cleaner—white ceramic tiles illuminated by buzzing fluorescent ceiling lights, billboard ads posted on the curved walls of the half-moon-shaped chambers. There were two levels, a mezzanine and, underneath it, boarding platforms. Double tracks ran through the station’s center. Northbound passengers descended the staircase on the left side of the mezzanine. Southbound customers crossed over a bridge to descend the right-side stairway. Still holding his Sig Sauer, Garrett dashed onto the center of the mezzanine bridge so he could see both platforms.
It was a few minutes after 6:00 a.m. Paris trains had been running for a half hour, and morning commuters were congregated on both sides beneath him. From his mezzanine perch, he scanned the passengers, searching unsuccessfully for the Roc and Tahira.
A horn sounded, warning those waiting on the left platform that a northbound train was arriving at the station.
Anxious, Garrett did another eye sweep. There he was. The Roc had embedded himself in a gaggle of teenage girls dressed in yellow-and-green school uniforms—unknowing human shields on the northbound platform.
Shakedown Page 14