Russian Resurgence

by Allan Topol

  He laughed. “I doubt that. You’ll always be working.”

  “And you’ll always be trying to get yourself killed.”

  Her words stopped Craig. She had been after him lately to give up car racing but he had refused. He loved what Fittipaldi, the famous Brazilian driver had called, “the zensation of speed.” And he was convinced the crash in Sardinia that landed him in the hospital had been a freak event—once in a lifetime. He was a better driver now. He was confident it wouldn’t reoccur.

  Still, he regretted that his racing was their one bone of contention since they had been living together in Paris. She repeatedly told him, “I can’t believe I’m more worried about you now than when you were doing counterterrorism. Why don’t you go back to private security work the way you did when you left the CIA the first time? At least then you had a gun for protection.”

  “Too boring,” he had replied. “I want the zensation of speed.”

  After finishing his espresso, Craig finally found his running shoes and made to leave for his delayed run.

  “When will I see you,” Elizabeth asked as he headed toward the stairs.

  “Hard to say. I’m going out to the track later in the morning. Bruno wants to make some adjustments to the Jag.”

  “Don’t be late. I made a nine o’clock reservation at a new little place in Le Marais. It’s very trendy right now.”

  He loved that she was always coming up with new restaurants for dinner. He tended to stick with the tried and true. “You’re dull when it comes to restaurants,” she once told him. “This is Paris. An incredible number of chefs here can really cook. My goal is to try as many of them as possible.”

  He had to admit she had a point.

  Craig kissed her goodbye, then raced down the one flight of stairs to the ground floor and outside. He took a couple of minutes to stretch. Then he set off.

  As Craig ran, he reflected on his current situation. His personal life with Elizabeth was ideal. They had fun together. The sex was great. And she wasn’t talking about marriage any longer. Craig was relieved. Having lost both his wife, Carolyn, and his daughter, Francesca, Craig had no desire to get married again.

  Career wise, he was becoming restless. For the last year, following the wrap up to the murder of Federico Castiglione, who Elizabeth had referred to as his benefactor, Craig hadn’t been involved in any espionage or counterterrorism work. It was the longest stretch in his life. Car racing was exciting and a challenge, but he missed the action of the world of espionage—his world.

  As the sun broke through the clouds, Paris was coming to life. It was a gorgeous morning. Energized, Craig picked up his pace as he passed the Musée de l’Orangerie and approached the Place de la Concorde.

  Elizabeth was convinced he missed “the game” and was itching to get back into counterterrorism. Though he denied it, she was right, of course. Still, he was thoroughly immersed in rally racing. After his victory in Stresa the previous year racing as Enrico Marino, he had gained prominence in the world of rally racing. His next big race would be in a month in the Swiss Alps, starting and ending in Geneva. According to one of the racing rags, Enrico Marino was the favorite.

  An hour later, Craig wasn’t the least bit winded as he ran down the stairs to the Quai Anatole-France. At the bottom, he dashed straight ahead along the Seine. The path was concrete, unlike the dirt and grassy area on the right bank. He disliked the hard surface, which was brutal on his knees and hips—a reminder that he was no longer in his twenties.

  Normally cars were barred from the Quai, but up ahead he saw four vehicles parked along the embankment. One was a police car, another an ambulance. Coming closer, he saw eight people milling around and peering into the river. Three were in police uniforms.

  At a distance of ten yards from the scene, Craig stopped and looked at what was happening. None of them paid any attention to him. As he watched, he noticed two men in the river in wetsuits. It had rained heavily the previous day, and the Seine was brown with runoff. They had placed the still body of a man into a harness-like contraption, and those on the embankment were in the process of raising it. Craig heard the word “mort” as someone stated the obvious: of course, the man was dead.

  Instinctively from his years in espionage and counterterrorism, Craig moved closer to get a look at the man. He must have died a short while ago because his facial features were still intact. Dark skin, maybe Arabic. A mustache but no beard. A full head of black curly hair.

  Suddenly, Craig stopped in his tracks, a horrified look on his face. He recognized the dead man: Amos Neir, an Israeli from a family of Moroccan Jews. Amos had been a Mossad agent when Craig worked with him in the Middle East in his former life as a CIA agent. But more than that, they had become friends over the years.

  Craig inched a bit closer and looked at the body. Amos was fully dressed in a dark suit with a blue shirt open at the collar. Craig saw discoloration around the neck. He might have been strangled before being dumped into the river, Craig thought.

  Not wanting to be interrogated by the French police since his relationship with Amos involved classified CIA work, Craig turned around and ran back in the direction he had come.

  He recrossed the river and reached the Tuileries, safely out of the crime area, then he sat down on a park bench and put his head in his hands. He wept for his friend Amos. But he had to do more than cry. Craig called his friend Giuseppe, who had succeeded him as the director of the EU Counterterrorism Agency.

  “Where are you?” Craig asked when he had Giuseppe on the line.

  “My office in Paris”

  “I need to see you.”

  “When?”

  “How about thirty minutes?”

  “Come to the office. I’ll move things around.”

  That was all Craig needed to hear—he quickly ran over to flag a passing cab.

  Giuseppe split his time between his offices in Rome and Paris, unlike Craig, who only had a Paris office when he was the head of EU Counterterrorism. In Paris, Giuseppe had retained Craig’s office in the La Defense complex as well as his secretary, Maxine.

  In the cab, Craig recalled the first time he had met Amos. Craig had been a young CIA agent assigned to the Middle East at the time. He had been operating undercover in Jordan when he received a summons to Langley to meet with Ralph Bogart, the director of Special Ops. He was surprised and thrilled to be invited to attend a meeting with some of the top CIA leadership as well as Deputy National Security Advisor Veronica “Ronni” Moss, and a US Army and Air Force general.

  He had no idea what the subject was until Ronni Moss began speaking. “We’ve become increasingly worried about Iran’s effort to build nuclear weapons,” she had said. “The regime in place since the mullahs deposed the Shah is a horror. We can’t allow them to attain nuclear weapons—not at any cost.”

  As he listened to an hour-long discussion about the Iran nuclear program and the risks it posed to the United States and her allies, Craig was puzzled as to why he had been invited.

  Then Bogart said, “The Israelis have developed a very detailed plan to damage a critical component of the Iranian program by blowing up the computer control center for Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, which is south of Tehran, about eighty kilometers southeast of Kashan. They have a Mossad agent, Amos Neir, who has been undercover in Iran and knows the area. It’s a two-man job. They’re prepared to supply a second man and do it alone, but they’ve given us an offer to join them. We would like to accept that offer. Craig, are you willing to take on this assignment? In view of the risks involved, the decision is up to you.”

  Craig was both pleased and flattered. An assignment like this could be a wonderful opportunity to advance his career at the CIA. He eagerly accepted.

  The next day Craig flew to Israel for intensive planning sessions with Amos. The two of them hit it off immediately and enjoyed being together. While both were married with young daughters, ethnically and culturally they were very di
fferent. Amos was descended from Jews who had lived in Morocco for six hundred years after the Jews had been expelled from Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the country. His grandparents had moved to Paris while his parents immigrated to Israel.

  Craig’s father, the only survivor in his family from the Nazis, was rescued as a small child in Northern Italy by a US Army officer and raised in Monessen, Pennsylvania, where Craig was born and grew up. Craig and Amos shared a desire to make their countries and the world a safer place. Both were fearless. Amos, who studied and read history extensively, saw the world in terms of a broader historical perspective.

  The Mossad had planned the operation down to the last detail. Craig and Amos had papers identifying them as employees of a French consulting firm that had a contract to work in Iran.

  Everything was proceeding according to plan. They succeeded in blowing up the computer control center and were slipping back to their escape vehicle when they were spotted by two Revolutionary Guards.

  Their instructions were that if either were captured, the other should try and escape to provide an eyewitness account of what they had seen in the facility. When the guards moved up on Craig and Amos, Craig went on the offense, shouting for Amos to run. Though Craig fought hard, they managed to knock him to the ground and began beating him.

  Disregarding their instructions, Amos refused to leave Craig behind. Instead, he whipped out a knife and stabbed both Iranian guards, likely saving Craig’s life. Then they hightailed it out of the facility to a safe house. From there they were transported in the back of a vegetable truck to a Caspian port.

  Both the United States and Israel had been extremely pleased with the result of the operation, and Craig’s CIA career took a major leap forward.

  Craig was jarred from his reverie as the Paris cab pulled up in front of the La Defense complex. He hurriedly paid the driver before finding his way to the building’s elevator.

  When he entered Giuseppe’s suite, Craig’s former secretary, Maxine, smartly dressed in a powder blue suit with a white silk blouse, looked up from her computer. She peered over the top of brown-framed glasses resting halfway down her nose and said, “Nice outfit, Craig.”

  “I was jogging.”

  “Gee, I would never have figured that out. Giuseppe’s waiting for you,” she added.

  Craig opened the door and entered the office, which looked exactly as Craig had left it. “Monastic,” a French official had once described the interior. The only furniture was a desk and a couple of chairs. A small oriental carpet covered part of the wooden floor. Craig had neither the time nor the interest in decorating. By the time Craig and Giuseppe greeted each other, Maxine was walking through the door with two double espressos.

  Giuseppe said, “Not for me. I have to do something about my blood pressure.”

  After Maxine had left, Craig collapsed into a chair and closed his eyes, thinking with anguish about Amos, Daphna, and their children—such an incredibly close family.

  “You look like hell,” Giuseppe said. “What happened?”

  Craig described what he had just seen.

  “I remember you telling me about your relationship with Amos Neir. I’m so very sorry to hear that. . . . Do you know whether he was still with the Mossad?”

  “I know he was nine months ago when we last got together in Milan. He was talking about retirement sometime late this year. So I assume the answer to your question is yes, but I have no idea whether he was in Paris on Mossad business.”

  “Let me check something,” said Giuseppe, turning to his computer. After a pause he turned back to Craig. “I checked a list of Mossad agents operating in Europe that we got from Tel Aviv. He’s not on it.”

  “Those lists are never complete. Moshe tells you what he feels like.”

  “For sure. Regardless, if a Mossad agent is killed in Paris, whether he’s on an operation or not, and dumped into the Seine, we have to assume it’s the work of terrorists.”

  “Absolutely. That’s why I called you immediately.”

  “I better let Moshe know that one of his people was killed,” sighed Giuseppe, reaching for an encrypted phone.

  Craig listened while Giuseppe told Moshe about how the Paris police had pulled Amos Neir’s body out of the Seine.

  Craig wondered what the venerable Mossad director’s reaction was as he watched Giuseppe listening intently, finally stating only, “Yes, I understand,” before hanging up. With a thoughtful expression, Giuseppe returned the phone to his desk drawer.

  “Well?” Craig asked impatiently.

  “Moshe said he’ll talk to his prime minister and have him call the French president. The goal is to get Amos’s body out of France and back to Israel immediately—before his death is picked up by the press and becomes a major incident.”

  “You think he’ll be able to pull it off? Once the head of French intelligence finds out, he may insist on an investigation before Amos’s body is sent back to Israel.”

  “The good news is that Jean-Claude is in Turkey for a couple of days.”

  “I notice you didn’t ask him what Amos was doing in France. Whether it was Mossad work or something else.”

  “No,” Giuseppe said. “I’d like you to do that for me. I assume you’re going to Israel for the funeral.”

  Craig nodded.

  “I think you’ll have a better chance of getting reliable information in person.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Good. I’ll call Moshe back and tell him to talk to you as my representative.”

  “You’re forgetting one small problem,” Craig reminded him.

  “What’s that?”

  “After my plastic surgery, I don’t look like Craig Page did when I worked with Mossad people, and my passport and all of my IDs are in the name of Enrico Marino.”

  “I’ll explain that to Moshe.”

  “It still won’t be easy.”

  “You’ll find a way to get around the obstacles,” Giuseppe assured him.

  “I appreciate your confidence.”

  Giuseppe reached into the credenza behind his desk, pulled out a cell phone, and handed it to Craig. “It’s encrypted. French state of the art. Almost as good as Israeli. You can use it to call me.”

  “I better head home to pack,” said Craig.

  “Elizabeth will be pleased that you’re getting back into the game. The last time the three of us had dinner, while you were in the men’s room she told me how much she hates your car racing. ‘Craig’s putting his life on the line for nothing,’ she said. And now it will be for something.”

  “All I want to do is find out who killed Amos Neir. I’m not putting my life on the line.”

  “Regardless of what happens, this will be for a good cause. My car and driver are out front. He’ll run you back to your apartment.”

  As they made their way slowly across town in heavy Paris traffic, Craig thought about the call Elizabeth had received that morning concerning the murder of a Hungarian national working for a Swiss bank. The woman had been killed at about the same time as Amos. Both in Paris. To be sure, this was a huge city and it was easy to conclude two deaths on the same day was a coincidence. But maybe not, Craig wondered. Amos was likely tracking a terrorist in Paris. Was that terrorist the one who killed the Hungarian woman and eliminated Amos when he realized Amos was in pursuit?

  Craig realized his mind was off on a flight of fancy with no hard evidence. All he had to go on was a gut feeling based on his experience, but those had often been correct in the past. He’d be interested in Elizabeth’s reaction.

  Despite being exhausted from a sleepless night after the fire, Nick was barely able to close his eyes as the Air France plane made its way to Paris. He kept seeing flames shooting up from his grandparents’ house and engulfing them—he couldn’t get the image out of his head. The CNN announcer’s words, “burnt beyond recognition” reverberated over and over again in his brain and sent chills through his body.

  Nick w
rapped a blanket around himself and tried to keep his arms from shaking and his teeth from chattering. At least he had Emma Miller to take care of him. Thank God for that. Though he tried not to think about the fire, he couldn’t help it. He wondered what had happened. Did the Russians shoot his grandparents first and then set the house on fire? Or did they set the fire while they were still alive and sleeping? Either way, it was too horrible to contemplate.

  For a diversion he turned on an airplane movie. Explosions went off in the violent action film—no relief there. Midway across the Atlantic, he started to think about the reason he was flying to Paris. Emma would take care of him. And the black case he was clutching contained a sealed envelope with a message for her. Grandpa had entrusted him with this important assignment, and he had to concentrate on completing it.

  At long last he heard the pilot say they would be beginning their descent into Charles de Gaulle Airport.

  Nick tried to calm his apprehension as he followed the throng of passengers moving from the plane through the space-age glass and steel Air France terminal. He followed the signs for “ARRIVING PASSENGERS,” and “BAGGAGE CLAIM.”

  Approaching passport control, Nick felt a wave of anxiety. He was traveling under a false passport. What if the agent asked him questions about Jonathan Hart? How could he answer? With moist fingers, he slipped his passport under the window to the bored and tired-looking man behind the glass and held his breath. The agent yawned, never even glancing at Nick, and stamped the passport.

  Nick took his passport and followed the signs for baggage claim. Not having checked any bags, he went right to the exit. Emma had told him that she would meet him when he had exited.

  Once he walked through the sliding glass doors, he saw lots of people milling around and a score of men in suits and ties holding signs. He looked everywhere but didn’t see Emma. He wandered around the area, but there was still no sign of her. Perhaps she was stuck in traffic and would be there soon.

  An hour later, when Emma still hadn’t come, Nick called her phone number, but no one answered. He struggled to stave off panic.