Tsunami Connection

by Michael James Gallagher

  These documents and cover clothes had been prepared and regularly changed over the years. They were kept in his secure wall safe since eight years earlier when he was working closely with his Mossad counterpart, codenamed Antioch, on an ultra-secret project started by his father, a General in the Mukhabarat, the Egyptian Secret Service. He checked his dedicated secure cell phone. Sure, enough, there were map coordinates hidden in a text message showing a real but unrelated phone number.

  He quietly walked down twelve flights of stairs without breaking a sweat. Years of discipline were paying off tonight. Before opening the door to the car park, he put on a pair of skin-toned surgical gloves.

  In the parking garage, he went directly to space number 86. There was always a grey Mercedes Benz W123 parked in it. He had passed it many times, often wondering if he would ever need to leave by the clandestine route under the car. The keys to the Mercedes were in his gellabiya, secured by duct tape. He ripped some tape from under his arm. Stuck under the tape, there was a key. He slipped the key into the lock.

  For an instant, the alarm appeared ready to start, but instead, one soft sounding beep opened the door. He got in and backed the car up about one meter, leaving it in the parking space, but away from the wall. He stopped the car, got out, closed the door quietly, and his trained eyes panned the garage. No one was leaving by car tonight. He was alone. He slipped down, unhitched and then lifted the cover of a water drainage sewer and air circulation duct.

  It was a tight fit, but claustrophobia had never been one of Shafiq's problems. Having trained in the desert every month of his professional life, heat was also not problematic. Lying on his back, he re-secured the cover and started pulling himself toward the edge of the building. The sounds of night, a night full of protests and some gunfire, grew steadily louder as he approached his exit location. As he traversed the hundred-meter tunnel, he heard voices coming gently toward him.

  The voices grew steadily louder as he got closer to the exit. Just as he arrived under the outlet cover, someone above flicked a cigarette end into the grate. It landed on Shafiq's gellabiya and threatened to set him on fire, but he calmly stubbed it between his thumb and forefinger without so much as a wince of pain at his burning flesh.

  Still lying on his back, he reached up and unscrewed the securing bolt using a pair of pliers left there years ago by a much younger Shafiq for just that purpose. He exited under a tree behind a shrubbery on Talaat Harb Street. He walked against the throngs moving towards Tahrir Square. The mood was hostile.

  People on this street were supporters of President Mubarak. They were converging upon the side of the square controlled by pro-government mobs. The other side of the square was full of pro-democracy supporters. Everyone was carrying wooden sticks or pilfered stonework as weapons. Some, but not all, bore the demeanor of the ideologically slanted activist, eyes filled with dark determination.

  A small group of young men stopped Shafiq at the corner of Adb el-Salam el Areaf Street when he turned right. They were a militia controlling street access. He feigned pain and showed his hand, which he had been holding on his left shoulder. Blood was leaking through his garments.

  The young city boys operating the checkpoint reacted more to his camel smell than his wounds. He muttered, Al Azhar, the name of a large mosque, which was offering free medical services to demonstrators of all political persuasions. "Go, father," the young men said in unison, using the affectionate term for an older man in some Arabic communities. Their eyes softened and they sent him on his way. "Allah Akbar," said Shafiq. He pretended to be weak for one hundred paces then recovered his hand from his wounded shoulder. The theater makeup stopped oozing from the pouch taped onto his skin under his garment. He walked faster towards Mohamed Abdo Street, under the shadow of the great mosque.

  In an entranceway near the mosque grounds, a young person called out, "Father, God is great. Come and share food. Sit." Shafiq was stunned to recognize the face of his Israeli contact, a woman under a striped gellabiya similar to his. He sat. They drank tea from an heirloom-like tea set. A hookah gave off the scent of apricots.

  "This," whispered Yochana, gesturing open handed to the seething crowd on their way to the mosque, "is not good for either of us."

  "God is great. His wisdom supersedes our ability to understand," said Shafiq, a little too loudly, for other curious ears milling about nearby.

  In the bottom of his cup, a mobile phone number appeared. Shafiq memorized it as it faded and disappeared. His heart leapt a bit, knowing from the method of message transmission that he might yet have a way out of this developing mess.

  "Don't forget your phone," said Yochana, pointing to a phone she had surreptitiously deposited on the tray beside the teapot.

  Shafiq made his way back along Al Hazar for a while and then turned right on Port Said. He would avoid all the troubled center area of the city by this route. He had to find a place to call and receive a secure message.

  The only place that was truly safe was his office. He retraced his steps back to the mosque and followed the same route he had used earlier. His behavior became more and more belligerent. Someone dropped a long hardwood switch and he ran to scoop it up. He melted into the crowd now, moved with them through militia checkpoints, which harassed people, arbitrarily arresting anyone who could not produce identification cards connected to whatever partisan group was manning the checkpoint.

  Twelve young men with bloody headscarves sat, hands bound between their legs, on the pavement, behind this particular checkpoint. Their crime was the possession of a pro-President Mubarak identity card.

  Different young men stopped Shafiq on the corner of Areaf Street this time. The pro-democracy groups had taken sway over a large swath of the center tonight. It was like this on a daily basis. The political stripe of those on the street often changed on an hourly basis. Better the devil you know than the one you don't, thought Shafiq. He was carrying identity documents for both sides, pro-democracy in his left pouch under his gellabiya, and pro-Mubarak in a pouch under his right arm.

  Without being bothered this time, he passed the checkpoint. He felt it was ironic that these young men touched their hearts and slightly bowed their heads while using the same salutations as the opposing young men had earlier. "God is great. Go in peace, father," they said. Was that not proof that they should be able to compromise, reflected Shafiq.

  He was approaching the tunnel entrance point behind the bushes that he had used earlier, but something told him not to go there. Instead, he made his way to the front of the building where he had worked for twenty-six years. As he turned the corner, Shafiq was aghast by what he saw.

  The doors of the GIS Headquarters were broken down. Smoke poured from the upper floors and prisoners were flocking out the exits, some in blood-stained clothing.

  "That message from Yochana may've saved my life. Must make haste," Shafiq said to himself.

  He made his way through the hysteria. People pushed and shoved one another, shouting accusations and creating turmoil. The sound of Army vehicles, screeching to a halt, combined with the noise of people rocking these same vehicles in an effort to tip them over.

  All these occurrences contributed to the cacophony of anarchy. As if controlled by a puppeteer in the sky, all heads suddenly looked up at the arrival of commandos dropping down onto the roof. Shafiq made his way through the throngs, looking up and cursing again, using his package of actor's makeup to simulate injury when anyone questioned why he was leaving the scene.

  As a Lieutenant Colonel, he was privy to the location of a secret office built a few streets away in case of emergency. He made his way to a nondescript entranceway on El Tahrir Street, off Bab el look Square.

  On Tahrir, there was a restaurant called Fatatri Pizza. It was open twenty-four hours a day. It was also a cover for Mukhabarat agents of higher rank. In the basement, he passed through a stall in the back of the room containing videos of young women. There was a hidden door covered with thick burla
p. Under the sack cloth, there was a numerical keypad. Shafiq entered his code.

  The stainless steel partition slid into the floor, revealing a dank stairwell. At the bottom of the stairs sat a stiff looking military man in uniform. Three stars on his epaulets identified him as a Captain, a much higher rank than usually kept watch here. His right hand toyed with the trigger of a silenced Berretta M9 pistol, the pistol of preference of the Egyptian GIS, while his left hand took Shafiq's proffered identification card.

  Unlike the boys on the street-level checkpoints, this guardian had a swipe terminal and he quietly swiped the card. Looking at a small screen, he faced Shafiq, returned the Lieutenant Colonel's identification card, and then put his pistol back into the holster under his left arm. "Sir," he said, pointing to a second keypad, "you must enter your second code here."

  Shafiq complied, nodded and proceeded down an air-conditioned hallway, lit by overhead neon. Emergency lighting boxes sat ready every ten meters. The communications room was at the end of a thirty-meter walk. Another keypad glowed on the door at the end of the passage. The lights flickered and auxiliary power took over.

  The disguised Lieutenant Colonel entered a partially compartmentalized room lit mostly by computer screens. There were no women in the room. The men were all about Shafiq's age and dressed in civilian clothes. The hardness of their bodies gave away strict training regimes, marking them as military men.

  No one took notice of him as he sat in front of a terminal and prepared to dial into a secure Military Intelligence server. Once on the server, he dialed the number Yochana had given him in the bottom of her cup of tea. It was February 2, 2011. An unrelated message flashed on his screen: President Mubarak Resigns.

  A pop up window demanded secure code numbers. Shafiq ignored the instructions on the general security screen; he spoke into his encrypted device, closing the door behind him, believing he was making his message secure even in this office. Unknown to Shafiq, as the message from Yochana played out, a traitor to the Mubarak regime inside Military Intelligence, was recording everything at every terminal in the room, using hacking software planted the night before, even at this secure, officers-only location.

  Yochana's talk of the need to have a training exercise threatened the following year. It was essential that Shafiq arrange to plant a suicide bomber with an explosive vest and an RPG that Yochana would provide. The bomber would use a faulty rocket launcher.

  In exactly one year, in the Sinai, near Nuweiba next February 2, 2012 at dawn, the bomber must pop up from the sand, aim his RPG at the passing helicopters and pull the trigger. It is imperative, and explicitly stated by Yochana, that the rocket launcher must fail.

  Shafiq understood that Yochana's purpose was to make certain that an unnamed member of the training group in the helicopters should feel threatened and become more ambitious as a result. Details would follow. As recognition of his long service in Egypt, in a program known to few and started by Shafiq's father just after the Camp David Accords were signed, Yochana arranged to make Shafiq comfortable at Mossad's expense in Buenos Aires.

  Shafiq thought of MacAuley as the go-between. That treacherous bastard still owes me and now money is less of an object, thought the Lieutenant Colonel. He typed on secure email and organized a meeting between MacAuley and Amir in Edinburgh, Scotland at MacAuley's convenience. Shafiq also arranged for Amir to deliver Yochana's instructions to MacAuley. The double agent would meet MacAuley. Shafiq also told MacAuley that Amir's name had changed to Tony. The meeting place: 15 Stenhouse West, Edinburgh, Scotland, Amir's house.

  Amir and MacAuley had worked together before, so the location would make MacAuley less jumpy than usual. All this was set in motion while hacking software automatically copied all messages and forwarded them to another secure server in the offices of the nascent security services of the Moslem Brotherhood, the likely next government of Egypt. This unknown sharing of information made Shafiq's well-intentioned plans suspect, but neither Shafiq nor Yochana knew of the Moslem Brotherhood's subterfuge and likely treachery to come.

  Now Shafiq had to get out of Egypt before the maelstrom engulfed him. The gist of the message from Yochana revealed a tunnel into the Gaza Strip as a likely means of exiting the morass of Egypt in revolution for a GIS officer. She gave him some codes he would be required to enter into the fresh one-time-use cell phone she had given him to confirm his crossing on the day of making the move.

  Shafiq was grateful, but skeptical. He knew he needed to make his own way to Israel. He would make the call codes when the time came, but implement a more secure tactic. Luckily for him, he decided not to use Yochana's exit strategy. Without Shafiq's knowledge, the new secret police of the Muslim Brotherhood had recorded the conversation with Yochana and planned to booby trap the tunnel she had mentioned. Had Shafiq used Yochana's exit strategy, he would have perished. His paranoia saved his life.

  Shafiq's next stop was to visit the apartment of a co-conspirator from Shafiq's trips to Afghanistan as an arms procurement officer for Yochana and Mossad. During these clandestine trips, Shafiq often worked with a man called Kamal.

  On this night, at the end of President Mubarak's reign, Shafiq could change into business attire while in Kamal's home and contact a senior executive at Royal Dutch Petroleum. Over the years, he and the Dutch Petroleum executive, called Haqikah, a name ironically meaning 'honest', had often used a company-sponsored airport near the oil development sector of Egypt, and a Learjet available to Haqikah to transport people, but never weapons, to many different parts of the world.

  Since recent political instability was forcing Royal Dutch to move people out of the country, Shafiq could be part of the exodus and go unnoticed using one of the three legends, or false personalities, including safe cell phones, credit cards and passports that he had built up over the years for just this purpose. Money he had put aside from arms purchases in Afghanistan for Yochana would cushion him.

  His Egypt was gone. It was time to accept reality and move on. Oddly, for someone who prided himself as a patriot, the prospect of changing allegiance appealed to him, yet the speed of his acceptance of his betrayal surprised him. He had always thought of himself as above treason, an agent's agent.

  Despite years of taking Shafiq's money, Kamal received the GIS man less warmly than he had expected. At the door to a luxury villa in Al Rehab City that Shafiq's lucrative payments had helped finance over the last few years, there was the sound of modern music and the scent of freshly cooked food. Spices filled Shafiq's nostrils.

  "There's no work needed here, father," said a slender, Indian-born gentleman, whose bearing suggested military training gone soft. His Arabic accent betrayed time spent in Pakistan. He moved to close the door in Shafiq's face, but the GIS man anticipated his gesture and forced the hardwood switch that he held under his gellabiya between the frame and the door. Shafiq uttered a previously agreed upon code word and a surprised man looked again as he opened the door.

  "We agreed never to meet at my home," said the man, as he reluctantly let Shafiq through the door.

  "Salaam Alaikum," answered the GIS man, using a Somali pronunciation of Allah that Kamal and Shafiq had shared on another mission together.

  "The tongue of the Prophet always sticks in your throat. Though I expected you might be required to break our understanding, I would never have recognized you. You even stink like a camel."

  The yielding voice of a young woman cooed an affectionate name from the next room, "Alby, Who's that?"

  A soft-skinned, round, young woman in her early twenties came into the entranceway. Her dark, watery, eyes took in the scene in front of her and her nose flinched, but her good manners took over. She glanced downward, taking her eyes from the two of them, the picture of submission.

  "I told you never to come to the door," snapped the older man. "This is business, child. Prepare coffee for my guest. Leave the coffee on the kitchen table and go downstairs to watch one of your music videos. We must not be disturb
ed."

  Shafiq's eyes roamed over the young woman as she turned and left the two of them alone in the entranceway. Always the consummate actor, Shafiq imitated the young woman's tone and repeated her affectionate name for the middle-aged Indian.

  "Alby," he said, using exactly the sensuous roll of the tongue that the young woman had expressed.

  "So you caught me. My wife is visiting her sick mother in Alexandria. I am only human."

  "She must be expensive to keep."

  "You heard that tone in her voice. I don't care if it's false. It stirs me to the point that cost is no object."

  "So this is what our little projects have financed."

  "Among other things."

  They walked to the kitchen and took in the black coffee and sweets on the table. Kamal bent under the kitchen sink and produced a plastic garbage bag.

  "Your clothes," he said, "Put them in here. I assume you are here for a change of clothes. That madness downtown last night! You are lucky you escaped."

  "I have been walking for hours. Do you have tape to seal this bag? I must take these garments with me. Where I am going I may need them," said Shafiq.

  "Come with me to the guest room. Your change of clothes is in there."

  "I need a phone as well."

  "There are four one-use phones beside the locked box you gave me last year, above the clothes on the right. The phones are still sealed in their original packaging, as per your strict instructions."

  "You are always competent."

  "The Jewess contacted me today. I thought you may be paying a visit, otherwise I would never have opened the door," said Kamal, lapsing into the singsong intonation pattern of India, his head bobbing from side-to-side.