by Nathan Ronen
Arik could smell the stench of fear emitted in the cold sweat emerging from Asharf Ghani Abdullah’s pores. Therefore, he added the punchline that was always effective with religious Muslim interrogees: “And in the end, we’ll bury you in the forest, where the wild hogs live. You know they have no inhibitions about devouring human flesh, especially since we’ll bury you pretty close to the surface.”
The threat of a pig devouring his body shocked Ali Baba, who was a devout Shiite Muslim. He believed whole-heartedly that an Islamic shahid would end up in heaven, where seventy-two virgins would be awaiting him. But if his body was buried wrapped up in the corpse of a pig or devoured by this unclean animal, he would instead arrive in the depths of hell, and his soul would never know peace. His face expressed his obvious horror.
“Ali Baba, my friend, we’re not barbarians. I know everything about you. And there are things I can offer you in return for cooperation. The question is, who benefits if you die and disappear?”
Arik’s words left Asharf Ghani Abdullah confused.
“I don’t understand. Who could profit from my death? The murder of my agents and the disappearance of my entire organization?” he mumbled.
“And don’t forget the slaughter of your entire family, the slaughter of innocent lambs,” Arik added.
“You sons of bitches. You wouldn’t dare. There are laws…” Ali Baba declared firmly.
Arik burst out in a peal of laughter. “No one will even piss in your direction,” he said, bearing down on the most sensitive spots in Ashraf’s personality, as they emerged in his psychological profile, prepared by Ruhama Saltzman. “You’ll disappear, along with anyone you ever loved. All you have are daughters, and they’re very young. You won’t leave behind an heir or a male successor. It’ll be as if you never walked among us in this world. You won’t even leave behind a paltry gravestone for your poor mother to visit, since you’ll be buried in an English forest, far from home, being gnawed by wild hogs.”
Asharf Ghani Abdullah was a tough fellow. He kept his silence, while his mind raced frantically.
Tal Ronen was holding the MacBook that was Ali Baba’s personal computer, which had been brought along with him.
“What’s the password to your personal computer?” Tal asked roughly.
The mischievous spark that fluttered through Ali Baba’s eyelid did not escape Arik’s sharp eyes.
“No problem, I’m willing to give you the password to my computer,” he said.
“Drop it,” Arik said in Hebrew, his tone firm, snatching the laptop that the amazed Tal was holding. Tal’s face expressed incomprehension and anger at his boss’s paternalistic behavior.
Arik softened. “Sorry. I didn’t explain myself properly. I’m afraid he’s about to give you the wrong password, programmed in advance to destroy or delete all the files.”
Tal Ronen understood. He instructed one of the Kidon team members to take the laptop to Nina or Yahli Lev, the Mossad’s cyber twins, so they could crack its contents.
“I want to talk to you one on one,” Ali Baba signaled to Arik, moaning in pain.
“You don’t determine anything here!” ‘Tarzan’ raged, slapping Ali Baba’s face hard. Blood began to seep from Ashraf’s nose, but he did not move, did not groan, and did not shift his piercing gaze from the silhouettes across from him. The large flashlight was blinding him.
“I know you’re speaking Hebrew. Arik Bar-Nathan, I’m a soldier like you. I’m asking to talk only to you, in private,” Ali Baba said.
“Otherwise, you can just kill me now,” he added, and Arik could read in his eyes that he meant it. He was also surprised to hear his name called out in the most direct manner, even though it was clear that Ali Baba was guessing which of the three was his man.
Tal directed a fiery gaze at Ali Baba like a murderous dog just waiting to be released from his metal chain. He thought Ali Baba was impudent and was preparing to slap him again. But something about the terrorist’s stable and fearless look, indifferent to slaps, made him withdraw his hand and refrain from striking him.
Arik believed in a battle of wits and in psychological warfare, which he always preferred to physical torture. One of the principles of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the whitewashed expression for torture among intelligence agencies throughout the world, was that fear of pain was much more effective than pain itself. The only way to stop a control freak was to tell him something that would undermine his confidence that he was truly in control of the situation.
“You’re right, we’re both soldiers,” Arik said, “and I’m not enjoying this, but you must realize I’ll do whatever I need to do.”
Ali Baba nodded in understanding. His leg was obviously causing him great pain.
Rising from his seat, Arik turned off the blinding flashlight and asked Tal to bring him a syringe of morphine. He then handed Ali Baba a glass of water and cut the restraints on his hands so he could hold it. The terrorist looked at him gratefully.
With a nod of his head, Arik signaled Tarzan and Tal to leave the room. He then injected the requested numbing drug into Ali Baba’s thigh and said, “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” Ali Baba said softly. “I’m cold,” he added, his teeth chattering.
Arik walked over to the air conditioner and turned it off, took a cover and a wool blanket from one of the beds, and placed them on Ali Baba’s bare shoulders.
“I’m listening,” he finally said, taking off the ski mask in a kind of gamble conveying mutual trust.
“I am Iman al-Uzbeki’s deputy. But if you’re as good an intelligence operative as I think you are, you must understand that he keeps all his cards close to his chest,” Ali Baba began. “He’s never shared the exact details with me. He’s a big believer in maximal compartmentalization. Even I don’t know where he is at the moment. I just know I prepared the materials he needed to make the bomb. But he didn’t tell me the ultimate target. I prepare the explosive charges for him and determine their type, and I provide him with operators in accordance with the number of secondary targets. But he doesn’t tell me where to distribute them until the last moment. Do you believe me?”
Arik nodded.
“And now,” Ali Baba continued, “if you could please give me back the cell phone that was in my pocket when you caught me, since I think there’s someone important you want to talk to.”
Arik agreed. He was certain that Ali Baba was about to put him in touch with Iman al-Uzbeki.
The terrorist turned on his phone, searched for several seconds and found what he was seeking. He pressed the speed-dial button and gave Arik the phone.
“Hi, Ali, how are you?” he heard a friendly voice.
Arik reeled back. He immediately recognized the plummy accent of Sir John, head of MI6, and rage surged within him. “This isn’t Ali Baba. This is Arik Bar-Nathan, and I think we need to talk!”
On the other end of the line, Sir John was stunned. He had not predicted a scenario in which Ali Baba was captured by the Israelis.
“Arik, I need you to release Ali Baba now and return him to the place where you captured him,” he asked. “I can’t explain, but it’s highly urgent and highly important. I’ll explain it to you when we meet.”
Arik felt a stab of pain in his heart. It was surprising and painful, just like those moments in life when you step barefoot on a shard of glass, a week after thinking you’d swept up all the shards and fragments of the glass you’d dropped.
Good intelligence operatives couldn’t allow themselves to lose control. Arik felt betrayed, and the rage surging within him was compromising his judgement, steering him to a place in which his analytical brain was not productive. Therefore, he did not ask Ali Baba how many secondary targets they were dealing with. He was so wrapped up in himself and his own insult that he also did not ask about the location of the suicide bom
bers undergoing mental preparation in various apartments in London. Only Ali Baba knew the full scope of the preparations.
Somewhere in the background was an invisible master of shadows. Someone else behind the scenes was controlling this theater of puppets and for once, it was not Arik Bar-Nathan. His ego did not like this.
He summoned Tal Ronen back into the room and instructed him, “Take him back to the place where you netted him up and killed his people, and leave him there. Give him back his pistol, too.”
Tal looked at him in incomprehension. However, he already knew that when it came to such matters, sometimes there were secrets that were outside the scope of operatives on his level. Therefore, he helped Ali Baba get up and put on his clothes again without asking any questions.
Chapter 60
The Operations Center at Thames House, MI5 HQ
An urgent report arriving at the Thames House HQ in London stated that a man resembling Iman al-Uzbeki’s physical description had arrived during the evening hours in a rented vehicle in the city of Birmingham, where he was observed entering the city’s main mosque downtown, founded by the Pakistani-Afghani Sunni Deobandi movement.
The source reported that the target had left his vehicle outside the mosque, where it was immediately collected by collaborators, apparently in order to prevent the car from being broken into and equipped with surveillance devices. In addition, he was photographed coming in to wash his feet before the prayer and then disappeared. The source noted that attempts to seek him out proved unsuccessful.
Just like the story of the Al Qaeda members who carried out the attacks of 9/11 in New York, this item of information disappeared within a medley of tens of thousands similar pieces of intel intercepted by the British security service’s computers. No one linked the information to the frantic searches being carried out for Iman al-Uzbeki, and no one bothered to update MI6, a competing agency, or Scotland Yard.
Birmingham, the second-largest city in England and a two-and-a-half-hour drive northwest of London, is an industrial city with a million residents, a quarter of whom are Muslims. For al-Uzbeki, it was an excellent place to hide until the storm blew over.
At this stage, Iman al-Uzbeki decided to go underground. The materials he needed were waiting for him at a concealed location, and all he had to do was pay one more year of rent for the storage space. The best time to flee was at the height of the chaos, when the authorities didn’t know whom or what they were looking for.
As an arch-terrorist, he knew that at this stage he would have to assume a meditative position of sorts, willingly cocooning himself. Waiting would prove to be the determining factor in the battle. If your rivals were suspicious, they would come at a time when they think you aren’t expecting them, which might happen either sooner or later. Therefore, you needed to be there, staking them out, blending into your environment, breathing quietly, slowing your heartbeat to a minimum. You put yourself into a trance-like state with infinite patience, simply waiting and doing nothing, collecting intelligence and preserving your energy for the right moment to strike.
Waiting was a required skill for any practiced predator, which Iman considered himself to be.
When the moment was right, Iman al-Uzbeki would return and spread his wings when the time and place suited him. He would only leap into action once he thought his rival was smug and certain he wasn’t there at all.
What he didn’t know was that based on the information supplied by hacker duo Nina and Yahli, the Three Graces team had arrived in the wee hours of the night at the storage site where Iman al-Uzbeki was hiding his raw materials, rigging the door to the storage container in which he had concealed the explosives and the exploding vests with a powerful mine.
Chapter 61
Mossad Headquarters, Tel Aviv
Mossad Director Raya Ron was sitting barefoot in the lotus position on the carpet in her office. She was gazing out of the internal window in her high-rise office at the Mossad’s well-tended sculpture garden. The five pentagon buildings comprising the Mossad headquarters’ administration surrounded the garden from all directions, ferns and colorful petunias trailing down from their windows. They imbued an organization that was active twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, with a pastoral environment.
In Buddhism and the Brahmin mythology, the lotus flower is an important symbol of divine power, beauty, purity and eternal life. The lotus position is intended to encourage breathing, support the meditative practice, and nurture physical stability.
Raya had a secret personal plan that was her highest objective these days. Her doctor promised her that, considering her excellent physical condition, it was still not too late to make her dream come true.
She occasionally practiced yoga, which allowed her to clearly think of her next steps and the organizational changes she wanted to implement in this small, stubborn agency comprised of opinionated, dedicated people. She had liked and approved the direction of the initial report Arik had placed on her desk and was looking forward to receiving his final report, which would include the required stages of execution as well as a detailed timeline.
The secured Red Line on her desk rang again and again, but she ignored it. Her door was thrown open and Yair Knafo, her office manager, burst inside. He told her that Arik Bar-Nathan was calling from London, asking to conduct an urgent operational call with her from the Mossad’s London bureau’s encrypted phone line.
“Arik, I hope you have good news for me,” she declared, untypically cheerful.
“Raya, I’m a bit embarrassed, and I want to share what’s going on here with you,” Arik began, proceeding to tell her how things had unfolded since he received her approval for the London operation.
“I smell a rat here,” Raya said once he finished his report. “I think the British have been exploiting us for some hidden agenda of their own.”
“That’s exactly how I feel. As if there was some elephant in the room that everyone knew about all along, but I’m the only one who couldn’t see it.” Arik sounded quite low. “I feel exploited, and even humiliated. Maybe it’s my arrogance that made me miss the suspicious signs, and in the meantime, Iman al-Uzbeki has disappeared on us, along with all the explosives. All the potential suicide bombers have disappeared with their explosive vests and gone underground. It’s all my fault, and I take full responsibility.”
Raya Ron was impressed by Arik’s willingness to take responsibility. She believed a good leader was one who took on a little more blame and a little less credit.
“Arik, I appreciate the fact that you’re claiming responsibility, but our work at the Office is long-term Sisyphean work,” Raya said, uncharacteristically gentle. “These aren’t Hollywood-style missions where the hero returns to a happy ending with a scenic sunset and dramatic music at the end of the movie. We’re a learning organization. We’ll sit down, analyze all this and draw conclusions for the future. I’m not looking for someone to blame. I want you to wrap it up there and come back home. It’s not our problem anymore, what’s going on there. But please ask ‘Tarzan’ to warn all the Jewish organizations in London to keep their eyes open.”
“I’m sorry,” Arik said, sensing her disappointment.
“Let’s sum it up with a saying I once learned,” she replied. “The situation’s not as good as we hoped, but better than we feared. Right?”
Arik murmured noncommittally.
“Don’t take it to heart,” she implored him. “I once watched a show about lions in nature on the National Geographic channel. Even though the lionesses are effective hunters, most of their hunting endeavors don’t end well and they return to the pack empty-handed. Did you know they only manage to catch their prey on one out of every eight attempts, sometimes even less?”
“But that doesn’t stop me from feeling shitty. After all the effort and the pursuit, I feel like I had a breakthrough on a ‘no exit’ road,” Arik sai
d, his tone weary. “That’s the marvelous thing about our business. Our mistakes always return to haunt us. And ultimately, someone has to pay all the debts.”
Raya was briefly silent.
“I once studied yoga in some ashram in the city of Rishikesh in northern India,” she surprised him with a rare personal revelation, “and my guru taught me that sometimes, the problem isn’t the wrong answers, but rather asking the right questions.” For the first time, her tone reflected some softness and appreciation.
“Sounds a bit too deep for my current mental state,” Arik said tiredly.
“I can certainly understand you. But it’s not that bad. New things are going on here, and I need you here by my side.”
“The organizational change?” he asked.
“No. The execution will wait for calmer times. We’re in the midst of a major Iranian attack against us on several fronts, and I need you here as my right-hand man. It’s time to send Qasem Soleimani, head of Quds Force, to meet those seventy-two virgins waiting for him in heaven.”
“If it’s okay with you, when all this is over, I want to take a few days off to spend with Eva and the family,” Arik said.
“Of course, you need that rest,” Raya said.
Chapter 62
Settling the Score at St. James’s Park
Arik returned to the safe house in Whitechapel. Everyone present was tense and eager to hear about the results of Ali Baba’s interrogation and the end of the story.