by Nathan Ronen
It was a complex operation, but Iman was forming a clear, coordinated picture of all the preparations and the immense task management required. He had never studied project management or the methodology for managing numerous tasks distributed over time among a number of teams. He had not been formally educated on tracking the status of each mission as a project was being carried out through a Gantt chart58 or a PERT chart.59 He was also unfamiliar with terms such as ‘risk management and analysis,’ ‘process validation,’ or ‘decision tracking,’ but he was a genius when it came to management, and there was a reason Iran’s intelligence services sought him out to serve as an operations contractor.
Iman al-Uzbeki walked to the bathroom. He tore Ali Baba’s letter to shreds and burned it, then flushed it. He didn’t know whether someone had marked the letter with chemicals that could stain his fingers, and therefore walked over to the bathroom cabinet and retrieved a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the first-aid kit. Unlike bleach, hydrogen peroxide could remove any trace of DNA. He sprayed a fistful of peroxide on his hands and rubbed them together, feeling the fluid bubble and burn. He then opened a window and aired out his bedroom.
He felt thirsty and wanted to drink a cup of tea with a cookie. The Pakistani restaurant’s spicy food, fried in recycled oil, gave him heartburn. He left his locked bedroom and found his new wife sitting in the living room, browsing the Quran. She was praying excitedly for offspring. Television was unacceptable for devout Muslims unless they lived in a Muslim country, so that the contents of on-air programming could be supervised. It was also not considered proper for a religious Muslim woman to surf the internet without her husband’s permission.
Al-Uzbeki asked his wife to make him tea and she hastened to fulfill his request. She made it the English way, adding milk to the tea. He looked at her in amazement. He couldn’t stand milk in his tea, mistaking it for a colonial English custom. He poured the tea down the sink furiously, asking her to make proper tea. Her eyes filled with tears of insult, and she asked him to teach her. He steeped boiling water over black, fragrant Darjeeling tea in a teapot, waited a few minutes, and poured the aromatic liquid into a delicate glass. He drank the tea quietly, dipping the butter cookies she placed before him inside it. His body was present, but not his turbulent mind. He sat quietly, retreating into himself, tuning out her blather about the kind of curtains she meant to hang in the apartment, or the color of carpet she was planning to buy.
He had endless preparations to make and wanted to work with maximum compartmentalization. Iman al-Uzbeki had never trusted anyone. He was used to enforcing conditions of absolute segregation with every person on his network working solely on a need-to-know basis.
He knew he would allocate the tasks based on a priority schedule of importance and urgency. Each part of the operation would be assigned to a team manager and an accountant running his part from his home without knowing the meaning of the code words received. Everything would be cash-based. His wife would be the secretary and the coordinator, thanks to her excellent English. Each team manager would only be in charge of his own part, would be segregated from other team managers, and would never meet them. Ali Baba would head the entire operation and if he met a team manager, it would only be by video conference from an adjacent room while Ali put on a Guy Fawkes ‘Anonymous’ mask. No one would meet or know the name of top commander Iman al-Uzbeki. This had already worked wonderfully in Morocco, where they had blown up Casablanca’s main mosque on the day of its official opening, almost killing the Moroccan king. If it hadn’t been for the betrayal that took place there and the interference of the Israelis and French intelligence, all of North Africa would have fallen like a ripe fruit into the hands of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Luckily for Iman al-Uzbeki, he and his assistants had managed to escape at the last minute, fleeing to Venezuela, which was willing to accept them as freedom fighters.
His work as a teacher of Islam at the Grand Mosque would grant him the freedom to operate with relative immunity from British intelligence services, which were not eager to enter religious institutions due to the increased sensitivity to religious freedom.
One thing was certain: he did not intend to share information with anyone, certainly not his new wife, whose name he could not even remember. He was also planning to marginalize Colonel Rizkawi from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s London embassy. He knew Western intelligence agencies routinely offered traitors money and plenty of it. This money scared him more than the drones that had killed off his friends in Afghanistan without warning. As far as he was concerned, American dollars resembled a cold draft in winter. No matter how much you fortified your house, a draft would always find its way in through some crack. Therefore, absolute compartmentalization was the right answer for what he had in mind.
Aisha, Iman’s wife, continued to prattle on. She spoke Urdu with a British accent that sounded terrible to him. Her high, screechy voice annoyed him. He signaled her to shut up and pointed at her bedroom. As an Englishwoman, it was clear that she wasn’t used to such a matrimonial relationship, but she contained herself, getting up and going submissively to her bedroom. Perhaps she hoped he would bestow another conjugal visit upon her, doubling her chances of conceiving and fulfilling her dream of becoming a mother. But Iman al-Uzbeki already had many other thoughts and plans. He went into his bedroom, locked the door, and fell asleep in his clothes.
He dreamt about the people preparing for their suicide mission. He imagined them as they carried out their purification ceremony, preparing for their entrance into heaven and reading verses from the Quran, which would infuse them with courage and grant them strength and peace of mind in preparation for their transition. To him, they were heroes.
His thoughts wandered. He knew the most painful target for the British would be destroying the SIS Building on the Thames, which served as headquarters for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Possible secondary targets included the Israeli Embassy in London, the offices of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and the offices of the UJIA60 in the Jewish Golders Green neighborhood. He might also target The Jewish Agency for Israel. As far as he was concerned, they were all soldiers serving the Little Satan, Israel.
To destroy a building, he would need a massive truck bomb armed with hundreds of kilograms of high explosives. Such trucks had been previously used by Hezbollah operatives in the explosion at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, and the attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Argentina. To carry out the secondary attacks, he would need several suicide bombers. They would go into the offices in a synchronized manner and explode simultaneously in various locations in London.
His thoughts and the realization that everything was within arm’s reach imbued his turbulent mind with calm. For now, everything was going according to plan.
* * *
55The al-fātiḥah is the first chapter (sūrah) of the Quran.
56The Hindu Kush mountain range stretches from Afghanistan to the northern regions of Pakistan.
57The Battle of Tora Bora was a military engagement that took place in the cave complex of Tora Bora, eastern Afghanistan, from December 6 to17, 2001, during the opening stages of the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. It was launched by the United States and its allies with the objective of capturing or killing Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
58A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its inventor Henry Gantt.
59A Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) chart is a project-management tool that graphs a project’s timeline by task.
60The United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA) is a charity striving to enhance young British Jews’ sense of Jewish identity and their connection with Israel.
Chapter 39
The SIS Building, MI6 Headquarters, aka Legoland, London
A short time after his visit with Admiral Derby in Washington
, and after Eva and his kids had resettled in Israel, reuniting with the pater familias, Arik decided the time had come to meet his British colleagues so that he could hear details regarding the reorganization they had conducted in their intelligence service. Simultaneously, the Office’s reorganization committee began to put together recommendations with regard to the required organizational changes composed in collaboration with the employees.
He planned to spend two workdays in London and two in Paris in order to allow him to return to Israel and start implementing his conclusions within the work of the committee he had appointed.
***
The Range Rover Evoque sent by the Mossad bureau in the Israeli Embassy in London picked up Arik and Gideon Perry from their small hotel in the Belgravia district in London’s West End. It crossed the Vauxhall Bridge on the Thames, whose waters always looked brown and filthy with oil stains. They were on their way to a scheduled meeting with the members of the British Secret Intelligence Service’s Planning Department and possibly with Sir John, head of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. Arik gazed as if mesmerized at the British intelligence service’s large, impressive building, called the SIS Building. The driver perceived his gaze and commented with a smile, “You know that building is referred to as ‘Legoland’ or ‘Babylon-on-Thames’ due to its resemblance to the monumental tower unique to Mesopotamian temples in the kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, Elam, Babylon, and Assyria.”
“It sure is special,” Arik agreed, looking at the building’s green windows, which were glimmering in the sun.
“Those are ninety-millimeter-thick reinforced glass windows,” the driver told him. “They were installed after the IRA shot an antitank missile at the building in 2000. The chase scene in the James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough was also filmed there. Did you see the movie?”
Arik shook his head. He had never liked those fake movies where everything was too easy. The cars in these films drove fast, technological marvels blew up, and the hero always triumphed and won the starlet of the day, while constantly holding a martini glass that was shaken, not stirred. The real life of an agent was a lot more complex, included plenty of frustration, and constantly required a lot of patience. In the life of an intelligence operative, the failures outnumbered the successes.
The vehicle parked next to the reinforced entrance. The small group walked over to the reception desk, after first passing through a magnetometer that scanned the contents of their pockets and a security guard clad in cloth gloves who patted down their clothes.
Arik was hoping to meet Sir John, although no formal appointment had been scheduled. The two men had been acquainted for many years but had never forged a friendship or even an affinity. Sir John was an old-fashioned British gentleman. Arik always felt that Sir John treated him as a second in command, and with a paternalism of sorts, as if the British Empire was still thriving, and Sir John was a kind of high-ranked colonial officer in a pith helmet, talking condescendingly to a native of the colonies at the distant edges of the empire. However, this feeling did not make him take exception to Sir John but rather increased his curiosity about him.
Gideon Perry and Arik Bar-Nathan were asked to present identification documents and handed the receptionist their service passports. The woman at the reception desk directed them to the waiting room without raising her head from the computer, handing each of them a guest pass.
Arik was disappointed once more to be handed a regular visitor’s pass and not a VIP pass. Apparently, it was important to someone up there to convey the message, You are merely a small country in the Middle East, while we are the British Empire of the United Kingdom.
Fifteen minutes later, a young man approached them, pleasantly introducing himself as manager of the Planning and Organization Department within the Human Resources Administration and inviting them to join him. They took the elevator up and walked down a long corridor to the office of the deputy manager of the Strategic Planning Division.
“I thought I might meet Sir John,” Arik said in disappointment.
The department manager looked at him with some surprise. “I understand you’re here for a review on the reorganization within Great Britain’s intelligence service, in light of the adjustments carried out in the agency after receiving the conclusions of a committee of organization development experts. Am I right?” the young man asked with a polite, formal smile.
Perry and Arik nodded, exchanging embarrassed glances. They entered a handsome conference room and were invited to sit down.
Arik was disappointed by the fact that no one from Sir John’s bureau was waiting for them and that they been obliged to go through security like every other visitor. But he assumed that was Sir John’s way of indicating to them that as the head of the agency he usually did not meet with the deputies of allied intelligence agencies’ directors. If he did consent to meet them for a brief while, it would be a special, irregular gesture of respect toward his colleagues. And it was indeed hinted to them that at some point, he might pop in to briefly greet the guests from the Holy Land, but only if he found the time.
A handsome woman in her late fifties entered the conference room. Ms. Georgina Cunningham was deputy to the head of the Strategic Planning Division within the Human Resources Administration. She gave them a clever three-hour presentation that included a short break for small sandwiches with salmon, cream cheese, and cucumbers, British scones with butter and jam, and British tea with milk.
Arik listened attentively, taking notes on a series of processes and measures intended to respond to current needs. He believed some of the changes carried out by the Brits would fit the needs of the Israeli Mossad, while others wouldn’t.
He knew, for example, that the British idea of establishing an independent cyber authority as a separate intelligence agency might, in Israel, be enough in itself to trigger a war among the various intelligence services, which would not agree to relinquish their own departments focused on this topic. This was especially true of Unit 8200, part of IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, which had long expanded beyond the scope of military intelligence.
At Arik’s request, the Brits prepared a summary and an orderly set of slides for them. It looked as if serious work had gone into the project, and that the British viewpoint was aligned with the ideas of new Mossad Director Raya Ron.
They continued the discussion after the short lunch. At some point, Arik felt that he was done. He looked to Gideon Perry and could tell that he had had enough as well. In any case, Sir John did not come in to say hello, and Arik decided to pop into his office.
Gideon Perry did not approve of the idea.
“If it wasn’t important enough for Sir John to come say ‘hi,’ or if he was busy with something more important,” he grumbled, “then I certainly won’t be inserting myself somewhere where I’m not wanted.”
In fact, he preferred to head for the British Museum in order to see the stone tablets engraved with the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic from Mesopotamia was among the earliest literary pieces in the annals of humanity, from the Third Dynasty of Ur, around 2100 B.C. Gideon tried to convince Arik to come to the museum with him.
“You really should,” he said. “These are priceless cultural artifacts, treasures the Iraqi government saved from ISIS rebels who wanted to blow up the ancient temples in Nineveh and elsewhere. They’re records from the library of King Ashurbanipal, whose palace contained a large number of war illustrations portraying the Assyrian army in its victories against the Elamites, the Arabs, and the Babylonians.”
“Not today, maybe some other time,” Arik shrugged him off.
“Watch out for Sir John,” Gideon said with a serious expression. “His niceness is misleading. He’s a graduate of the British nobility’s education system. Externally, he’s as smooth as can be, but you’ll never know what he’s actually thinking.”
“Do I look like an unsophistica
ted rookie to you?” Arik asked with an arrogance of sorts.
Gideon laughed with the bitter experience of one whose own body was full of scars left behind by the betrayals of friends.
“I was once head of the Africa bureau in Nairobi, Kenya,” he said, “where I learned a local proverb taught to me by the head of the Rendille tribe: ‘You must walk a thousand kilometers in someone’s shoes in order to know them.’”
“This isn’t Africa,” Arik said, sneaking at the last moment out of the elevator that was heading down before the doors closed on Gideon Perry and their escort. He entered an adjacent elevator and took it up to the top floor, where Sir John’s office was located. The security guard, who saw Arik exiting the elevator with a regular visitor’s badge, was surprised to see him striding unaccompanied toward Sir John’s office. He asked whether he had a scheduled appointment. It was highly irregular to have a foreign visitor roaming the halls of MI6 unsupervised. Arik did not lose his equanimity and produced his business card.
The security guard looked at the card with obvious displeasure. He barked out a few words into a small two-way radio, and another guard emerged from the office and stationed himself behind Arik without saying a word. The unruly guest’s behavior was confusing them. They were not used to such boundary-challenging conduct. After less than two minutes, Rachel, Sir John’s administrative assistant, emerged from his bureau with a smile, warmly inviting Arik in.