“Big shit, huh?” she said, taking off her coat and hanging it on a wooden stand near the table.
“Yes. Awful.” He went silent. “I didn’t see her at all. I have no idea where she came from. She wasn’t there. And then that bloodstain appeared on her coat, growing ever larger, like some kind of a possessed flower. There was a girl there, Ya’ara, her name was Yasmin. I have no idea how it happened. What happened. I have no idea.”
Ya’ara had read the BBC News website report about Badawi’s assassination—and the fact that a seven-year-old girl had also been killed in the targeted killing operation—even before the telephone update from Aslan. Aslan made contact only after he had disengaged completely from Bethnal Green, dumped his clothing in a church collection bin for the needy in Hackney, and checked that no one was following him. When he finally got to King’s Cross train station, he turned on his cellphone and reported to Ya’ara. She could hear death in his voice and knew she had to see him face-to-face. She asked him to make his way to Newcastle, while she boarded the first flight out of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where she had spent the previous few days keeping track of the cadets.
The operation in Brussels had ended successfully, Yael Ziv’s killer was dead, and her team had dispersed, with Nufar and Assaf taking a train to Cologne and Batsheva heading to Paris. She had followed Aslan’s operation anxiously. She knew that the rules of the ops world didn’t allow for successes only. The seed of failure lies in every course of action, and when it comes to targeted killing operations, the risk curve rises steeply. And still, every operation is carried out in the hope that if the gods of operational statistics choose to make something go wrong, it’ll befall someone else. When pitted against the statistics, optimism wins the day. Because if one were to act in keeping with a sober assessment of one’s chances, one wouldn’t do a thing. Nevertheless, when a disaster occurs, it hits one hard, even if in theory it was expected.
“It’s not good for you to be here, you know. To knowingly enter a crime scene when you can avoid doing so is a mistake. Or rash.” Aslan spoke with obvious exhaustion in his voice. “This entire country is on the hunt now,” he said. “Not only did terrorists kill a Muslim leader, thus sparking intense rage among the entire Muslim community in Britain, they also murdered an innocent young girl. A girl who was on her way home from school, who collected Barbie dolls, who wanted to be a doctor. No one is going to pardon that. And here you are, stepping knowingly into this entire mess. You’re pushing your luck, aren’t you?”
Ya’ara realized that Aslan had busied himself in the interim with gathering particulars about the dead girl. It couldn’t have been very difficult. Her image adorned every newspaper in England. “I wanted to see you,” she said. “And more important, I need to see Sayid. He can’t be left alone after witnessing such a thing with his own eyes.”
Aslan recognized the criticism implicit in Ya’ara’s words. But he was dead tired and didn’t say a word. He could picture the girl he had killed, her hands drenched in blood and reaching out to him. Ya’ara saw his eyes lose focus. The skin of his face appeared to be graying right there and then. He was the strong man, the experienced man, some twenty years her senior. He needed her now, and she didn’t know how to help him. She rested her hand on his. It was ice cold.
“You couldn’t see her, Aslan. She must have been hiding behind her father.”
Aslan groaned.
“Look, you eliminated Badawi, that despicable man, whose incitement led to hatred and terror attacks and the murder of innocent people. We’re at war, Aslan. Remember that.”
“I murdered a little girl.”
“Aslan . . .”
“That’s what I did. You can spin the story however you like, but you can’t justify that.”
“You’re right, it’s terrible. But that’s war. War exacts civilian casualties, too.”
“Maybe. Whatever you say. I’m not even sure it’s our war.”
For a long while she looked at him without saying a word. And then she gathered herself and said, “You’re not yourself, Aslan. You’re going to regret the things you’ve just said.” Her eyes were frozen and hard as granite.
“Yes, you’re right there. I’m not thinking clearly right now. A few days in the countryside will do me good. I’ll walk and walk and focus on the cold and my aching muscles and maybe it’ll pass. You can tell me about Brussels when I get back.”
“I’ll tell you now.” Her report was concise and precise and devoid of emotion. She spoke as if she was undergoing a debriefing in the operations room.
“You’re crazy,” he said to her. “Taking on an unreasonable risk.”
“I couldn’t put the cadets in the ring. They’re too inexperienced.”
“Under such circumstances, you don’t go through with the operation. You were right not to put them up against armed guards in such close quarters, but crazy to do it yourself.”
“It was a calculated risk, Aslan. Look, here I am. I did it right.”
“Risk management. That’s a phrase that may suit a business administration course at Harvard, but not a targeted killing operation. You were outnumbered, facing professional security personnel, in an arena under their control. You played Russian roulette, that’s what you did.”
“I had the element of surprise on my side.” Ya’ara was taken aback by the anger she felt creeping into her heart. “I knew what I was going to do. They didn’t understand what was happening to them. I wanted to kill Hamdan. All they wanted was not to be killed. I scared them. I must have looked like an alien with that gas mask.”
“You played Russian roulette,” Aslan reiterated. “You took a gamble and won. But the statistics even themselves out. If you keep flying off the track, you’ll get yourself killed. And then you won’t have a unit, and won’t be waging a war, or doing anything at all. It’ll all end before it’s even started. Is that what you want? For it to end in nothing? In defeat?”
Her anger bubbled inside her. Her mission had ended in success. She was running the operation. In the unit they had set up, she outranked him. “Come on,” she said, caressing his hand without real feeling. “Let’s not argue now. We need to rest and process what happened to us.
“We managed to carry out two important operations in a very short time. If we continue at this rate, with the same intensity, we’ll make an impact. They’ll start to run scared. They’ll lose people, get into a panic, turn on themselves. And the European security services, too, will see that this war can be won, and they will also begin to take the initiative and mount operations. They’ll be a lot more focused and aggressive, even if it means having to amend the laws in the framework of which they’re required to operate.
“Aslan, we’re doing something right. And we’re good at it because we’re doing it a little differently. We think differently. We’re a little more daring. A little out of the box. And yet we’re still working properly. Intelligently, with planning. That’s why the unit was established. So that we can defeat these monsters. And that’s what we’ve started doing.”
Aslan stood up and placed a five-pound note on the table. “Walk with me to the bus stop. There are only two buses a day to the remote location I need to get to. Maybe you’re right. But you have to look after yourself. Look, you can see that I’m okay. Just a little pensive and extremely tired. But it’ll work out fine. It always turns out fine in the end.”
Ya’ara wasn’t convinced that Aslan was okay. But she knew him, and knew that the only thing he wanted right then was to be alone, in nature, his body warming from the physical exertion, the demons that had been troubling him pushed into a dark corner of his soul. She was relying on his inner strength, but knew that those reserves would run dry at some point, too—though probably not now. She thought about Sayid and mentally plotted the quickest route to get to him. She planned to see him no later than tonight.
Nufar and Assaf were in Cologne. Batsheva was in Paris. Ann and Helena were in Liverpool. Sayid was in O
xford. Aslan was here, by her side, the ice-cold air of Newcastle watching their breath turn into distinct clouds of vapor. She could picture the faces of all of them. They were her people, her unit. They were at war. This was what her war looked like.
53
COLOGNE, FEBRUARY 2015
“Can you fold this properly for me?” Assaf asked.
Nufar burst out laughing. “You mean to say you can’t even fold a map?” she exclaimed.
Assaf shrugged his shoulders. “It’s never been my forte,” he responded.
The café at which they were sitting wasn’t far from the Dom, Cologne’s world-renowned cathedral. The tourist map of the city in Assaf’s hands looked like a comedy prop. He spread it out across the table one more time, trying not to knock over the mugs of coffee or smear the paper with the remains of the butter and jam that had come with the croissant. He tried to reconstruct the correct order of the folds, and failed dismally once again.
“Come on, give it to me,” Nufar said. “Pathetic. Are sure you were an officer in the Combat Engineering Corps? Don’t you need to be able to dismantle mines and operate heavy engineering machinery for that? And you can’t even fold a map!”
“Enough. Move on. You’re humiliating me. And it’s not my fault. It’s you, you get me all flustered. I have to spend two weeks with someone like you in a big city in Germany and it’s not easy.”
“Tell me, Assaf, when are you going to stop with that? With your quick tongue, with the endless flirting? You don’t need to make an impression on me. And that’s certainly not the way to impress me. Okay?”
“You’re right. That’s not really who I am, it’s tiresome for me, too. Let’s try not to do it any longer. I’ll try, I mean,” he corrected himself.
“Really try, okay? A small town in Germany.”
“What?”
“You said we’re in a big German city, and that’s true. Cologne really is a big city. But you know that just a few kilometers from here, down the river, lies Bonn, about which John le Carré wrote a book called A Small Town in Germany. It always amazes me—a city that was once the capital of an economic superpower, of an important country, of West Germany. And now it’s becoming a mere footnote in the history books. All they’ll have to say about it in a few years’ time will be: ‘Served as the capital of West Germany during the period 1949 to 1990.’ ”
“That’s what they’re writing about it already. Look at Wikipedia.” He showed her the page he had opened on the screen of his phone. “The city’s already a footnote. Have you read his books, le Carré’s?”
“I have. A few. My father gave me two or three of them to read. He was the only author he read religiously, and I wanted to love the same things my father loved. To tell you the truth, I see his books as mementos from an era long since passed. Back then it was the Cold War. The wars these days are different.”
“Yes, and we are the soldiers fighting this war, which is going on right now. Do you feel like a covert fighter in a global campaign? Tell me truthfully: Did you ever think you’d be in this position?”
“No, it never once crossed my mind. I studied at INSEAD, after all. My objectives lay elsewhere. But the fact is I’m here now. Assaf”—she hesitated for a moment—“how terrible do you think it is for me to be happy that we managed to kill that Osama Hamdan guy? For me to be happy about the death of someone?”
“I’ve seen the footage from the security cameras that were in the synagogue. The images were aired on television constantly. He appears so calculating and cool-headed in them. He plucked the submachine gun from his backpack and opened fire on innocent people. With such brutality. He deserved to die. If someone has to do this kind of work, it’s good that we’re the ones doing it.”
“Yes, you’re probably right. There’s no point in agonizing over it, or feeling bad about not doing so. It doesn’t even suit me.” Her eyes glimmered, and she suddenly began to recite mournfully: “ ‘That’s the nature of the Palmach, which leaves no work to anyone who is not one of us.’ Do you know that old song?”
“Yes, yes, ‘Their nation wasn’t a mother to them’ . . .”
“Exactly. ‘She didn’t know they were heading out’ . . .”
“So you think we’re like the Palmach?”
“Enough, Assaf,” she said, turning impatient all of a sudden. “We’re starting to talk like old-timers. Forget the Palmach and everything else. We are who we are. Let’s go outside for a while. I need some air. Look at that cathedral. Can you imagine what this place must have looked like when it was first built?”
The dark turrets of the Dom towered above them. Ice-cold air was rising from the wide Rhine River that flowed below them, its waters murky and dark. They began walking in a southerly direction, against the flow of the current. A thin black dog was sniffing at the withered grass between the sidewalk and the fence.
They felt invincible. Two young and talented individuals who were in the right place at the right time. Nufar looked at Assaf, who was walking beside her. He had yet to find his place, she thought.
“That was very impressive,” he said to her. “What you did there with the computers, in Brussels.”
Nufar kicked at a stone.
He looked at her, uncertain if she had heard him.
“When we get back to the hotel,” she said, “I think you should call home. It’s important to keep in touch.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll do so, too,” she responded, but she didn’t know whom she’d call.
54
LONDON, MI5 HEADQUARTERS, FEBRUARY 15, 2015
The silence in the conference room adjacent to the bureau of the director of MI5 was deafening. Sitting there side by side were the head of the Counterterrorism Division, the head of the East London Field Department, and the head of the Desk Department. The head of the Research Department, with a cup of hot tea in his right hand and a stack of cardboard files under his left arm, was trying to open the door to the conference room with his shoulder, and only the quick reaction of his personal assistant spared the faded carpet, the color of which was already something of a mystery, from another stain. There was plenty of room around the shiny mahogany table, which was covered with a greenish shade of leather with gold trim on the edges. They were waiting for the director to enter. They had taken a hard hit, and knew their boss was fuming.
The interleading door between the bureau and the conference room opened and the MI5 director’s bureau chief walked in, greeting those present in the room with a glance. “Sir Robert will join you in a few minutes,” he declared. “He’s on a call with Number 10.”
When he entered the conference room, the look on Sir Robert’s face was more serious than ever. He sat at the head of the table and nodded to the head of the Counterterrorism Division, as if to say: Speak! The division chief motioned to the head of the Desk Department, Mary Clarkson, who clicked on her computer mouse.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said, her voice as soft and refined as ever. The image of Anjam Badawi appeared on the screen. “This is Anjam Badawi, a radical Muslim preacher from a mosque in Bethnal Green. Here at MI5, he goes by the code name Winter Fox. We arrested him three years ago on suspicion of incitement and posing a threat to public security. During the course of his detention, we were able to turn and recruit him, and in time he became our most valuable agent among the Muslim extremists in London. One could say, in fact, that he was our most valuable asset in the entire United Kingdom. Two days ago, while leaving the mosque after Friday prayers, he was killed by a single shot from a sniper. A second shot struck, presumably inadvertently, a seven-year-old girl, who was waiting outside the mosque for her father, one of the worshippers that day.” The screen displayed a picture of Yasmin al Hussein, sprawled on the ground, blood staining her white dress, her legs at an unnatural angle, one of her shoes tossed aside in the courtyard, the white sock on her left foot a stark focal point in the image.
“Do we have any idea who may ha
ve killed Winter Fox,” the MI5 director asked.
Clarkson turned to glance questioningly at the head of the Research Division. Terry James looked like a professor from the University of London, complete with thick-lensed glasses and a worn corduroy jacket. His appearance wasn’t a far cry from reality. James ended up at MI5 following an impressive academic career. He wasn’t from London, though, but from York, in the north, and had devoted most of his life to studying philology at Durham University. Before beginning his studies, he served for seven years in the SAS, the Special Air Service, the British army’s elite commando unit. He was older than everyone else in the room, even Sir Robert.
“No,” he said, “we still have no idea who killed Winter Fox, but we can hazard a guess. More so than guess, we can evaluate. First of all, the hit was the work of professionals. Ballistic examinations carried out by the forensic crime lab have identified the bullets that killed Winter Fox and the young girl as rounds from a Russian-made sniper rifle, used by the Red Army’s special forces, among others. According to the ballistic experts, the shots were fired in all likelihood from a distance of four to five hundred yards. The police are still searching for the precise location the sniper used. But they’ll find it soon, and maybe turn up some evidence there, too. Or so we hope. In any event, it all points to the work of a highly skilled sniper. Someone entrusted to carry out a targeted killing successfully from such a distance has to be.”
“Do you mean to say that the Russians assassinated Winter Fox?”
“No, Sir Robert, we have no reason to suspect them in particular. Russia’s military forces aren’t the only ones who use the type of weapon that served the sniper. It’s been used in the war in the Balkans, and we know that arms dealers are selling it on the black market, too. Here, in Britain, over the past two years alone, Scotland Yard has seized four such rifles from crime gangs. We believe there are a lot more out there. Our suspicions, therefore, are not directed at the Russians in particular, even though they also view radical Islam as an enemy, and as far as they’re concerned, combating Islamic terrorism is best done far beyond the borders of Russia. I believe we’re dealing with an intelligence organization of a state, and not an internal conflict between rival Islamic factions. The targeted killing was too professional a job to be attributed to them. And as for possible state involvement, there are very few countries that fight terrorism in such an active and aggressive fashion. We, the Americans, and the Israelis. And the Russians, whom I’ve already mentioned. Naturally, we didn’t liquidate the best intelligence source we had. And it doesn’t have the look and feel of an American operation either. Despite all their arrogance and audacity, they wouldn’t carry out a targeted killing operation like that on English soil.”
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