Finally, he began to feel the welcome sensation of descent, as the public address system broadcast the usual final-approach routine with an Israeli twist: return seat backs and tray tables to their upright and locked positions, make sure all window shades are raised, do not use cameras or binoculars in Israeli airspace.
As soon as he was off the plane, he charged ahead of the other disembarking passengers, swerved to avoid colliding with an old man in Orthodox garb who had stopped to plant a kiss on the mezuzah at the end of the jetway, and sprinted down the corridor to passport control. Having heard that Israeli airport staff are trained to look for any sign of agitation, he tried to keep his impatience from showing as the inspector pored over every page of his passport as if it were the latest bestseller, and her computer screen as if she intended to read all the customer reviews on Amazon.
“What is the purpose of your visit to Israel?” she finally asked him.
To save it from a bioterror attack, if you’ll just let me through in time. “Sightseeing.”
“Have you been to any Arab countries?”
As if no danger could possibly come from anywhere else. “Not lately.”
After scrutinizing his passport a while longer, she slipped in a blue and white entry card. Apparently, enough visitors had asked for it, instead of the stamp that would render their passports invalid for travel in most of the Arab world, that it had become standard procedure. Fox grabbed his passport back and passed into the baggage claim area.
A huge banner greeted arrivals with “Welcome for Passover,” in English and Hebrew. The strips of pinpoint lights over the luggage carousels, reflected in the mirror shine of the floors and ceilings, made them look like roulette wheels in a giants’ casino. Appropriately, he thought, considering the gamble he was taking by coming here.
Spacious though it was, the hall was as much of a mob scene as any American airport on the eve of Thanksgiving or Christmas. The carousels were surrounded by jostling hordes of visitors from all over the world, with attire ranging from black suits and coats to tank tops and rainbow-colored tights, from fedoras and long sideburns to baseball caps and fluorescent orange headphones, from protruding prayer shawls to protruding boxer shorts. There was no shortage of pilgrims arriving for Holy Week, either: Italian priests, Korean nuns, Africans in tribal costumes, and Americans in black leather vests with patches reading “Bikers for the Lord.” The air was filled with a Babel of languages. Fox heard Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, Tagalog, and English with accents ranging from Ireland to his Virginia home—nearly everything, in fact, with the conspicuous exception of Arabic.
Forget about needles and haystacks. Hay was stationary, and a needle would stand out in it. This would be more like searching a teeming hive of honeybees for a single intruding yellowjacket.
He made circuit after circuit of the carousels, shouldering his way through the crowd, occasionally muttering an “Excuse me” that went completely unheeded, and trying to look like any other passenger searching for his luggage, all the while scrutinizing the luggage of the other passengers as closely as he could.
Adler had told him that the airport would be under heightened security, but all he saw were a few guards in their blue uniforms with no visible weapons. He noted the tinted windows set high in the walls, and hoped there was more to the security apparatus here than met the eye.
During one of his circuits, he saw a backpack sitting unattended on one of the benches.
In one of the side pockets, it had a large water bottle in an insulating sleeve.
The cap on the drinking tube was hanging loose.
Fox ran up to the nearest guard, hoping that the information they had furnished to Israeli intelligence had made its way to him, and that he could understand English. Fox knew some biblical Hebrew, but that was no more likely to help him in Tel Aviv than classical Latin would be in Rome.
“Excuse me!” Fox said. “You may have been briefed that someone might be trying to smuggle in a biological weapon. I think that’s it, there in that backpack!”
The guard gave him a stare, and then called to his companion. They exchanged a few words in Hebrew, and the other one spoke into his radio.
From some place of concealment somewhere, two police specialists in hazmat suits came running to the bench, carrying a transparent plastic bag with built-in gloves.
A woman ran in front of them and grabbed the backpack off the bench. As she slung it over her shoulder, she let loose with a machine-gun volley of angry Hebrew first at the officers, and then at Fox. He was glad not to be able to understand the words, but still, her face and voice conveyed her meaning unmistakably.
As she stomped off, one of the guards gave Fox a glare, while two more shared a snicker at his expense. He hadn’t even cleared customs yet, but he felt as though Israel had already declared him persona non grata.
Face flushing, he resumed his patrol, grateful that the throng of people would at least shield him from the guards’ view.
A two-note chime sounded, followed by a recorded announcement in Hebrew and English: “Attention please. Carrying weapon is prohibited in all terminal hall. Thank you.” Fox wondered that, for all the money the Israelis had poured into this airport, they couldn’t have spent a little extra to have their grammar checked.
The screen above one of the carousels lit up with the number of a flight from Frankfurt. As Fox watched from a distance, he saw a fair-haired young woman fumbling with a duffel bag. She took out a sweatshirt and put it on, then suddenly clutched her abdomen with a grimace, zipped up the bag, and hurried off in the direction of the restroom.
It was well done. Any casual observer would think that she was suffering a sudden bout of traveler’s diarrhea. And yet, there was something just slightly overdrawn about the performance. She would have been fine as a stage actress, but she would need to work on subtlety if she wanted to be an Oscar candidate.
He moved in for a closer look at the bag. The two zipper tabs were linked with a padlock, and a plastic tube protruded from between the tabs.
Next to it, waiting for her bag to appear, stood a woman with long red hair.
“Emily!”
Fox ran toward her, but his path was blocked by a surge of tourists from Brazil, one of them holding a plumed hat that must be part of a samba costume. He tried to shoulder his way through them, but they filled the space between carousels completely.
Fox jumped onto the conveyor and clambered over the oncoming suitcases. “Emily!” he called again.
She looked up. “Robin! What are you doing here?”
He pointed at the bag on the floor next to her. “Move away from that! Quickly!”
Two guards converged on him. “Hey!” one of them shouted in English. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Fox jumped off the carousel and pointed at the bag. “There’s a suspicious object in there!”
These were different guards than the ones who had witnessed his false alarm, but apparently word traveled fast. The one he had spoken to turned to his colleague, with a shake of his head and a shrug of exasperation, and said something in Hebrew that included a word like meshuga.
“Look at it!” Fox urged. “Look at how the zipper is locked around the tube!”
Emily turned back. “He’s telling the truth.” She pointed to the woman who had left the bag, and was now almost at customs. “I saw her put something in and walk away, leaving it.”
Fox whirled to face her. “Emily, for God’s sakes, run!”
They ran for the exit. One of the guards, with another shout, gave chase. The other spoke into his microphone, and to his relief, Fox saw the police specialists reappear in their protective gear. Apparently they had decided the threat was worth taking seriously after all.
The woman who had left the bag was on her way out into the arrivals hall. Fox and Emily charged through the green lane at customs, the guard still hard on their heels. “Nothing to declare!” Fox shouted over his shoulder to the inspectors.
The woman slipped into the crowd, to reappear a moment later on the escalator up to the departure level.
In a moment, Fox understood. She had never intended to leave the airport. Her plan had been to fly in, drop her lethal cargo, and fly right out again. She would have anticipated that, with all the hordes passing through the baggage claim area, it would be hours before anyone discovered what she had done—and by that time, she would be in the air.
“Miriam!” Fox shouted, pointing. “The escalator!”
With no more prompting than that, she grasped the situation. She pushed her way to the escalator, and pressed the emergency stop button.
The elevator lurched to a stop. The suspect lost her balance for a moment, but then recovered and charged up the rest of the way. Leaving Emily with Miriam, Fox took the steps two at a time after her. The guard chasing him now had two more with him as reinforcements.
The suspect reached the top of the escalator, jumped aboard the next one, and ran until her path was blocked by an elderly tourist with his suitcase resting on the step next to him. She jerked the handle from his startled hands, and sent the suitcase tumbling down the escalator as she ran past him. Fox leapt over the obstacle and kept up the chase, the guards behind him doing the same.
The suspect stepped off the escalator on the departures level, and ran toward the giant silver menorah that marked the entrance to the gates. As she passed a bench where a passenger sat sipping a coffee, she snatched the paper cup out of the woman’s hand and hurled it down onto the smooth, shining floor behind her, right at Fox’s feet. Too late either to dodge or jump over it, he slipped and fell.
The guards caught up with him and seized his arms.
“American intelligence!” he shouted, craning his head in the woman’s direction as the guards pulled him to his feet. “She’s the one you want!”
...
Fox sat in a windowless interview room, facing a security agent across a table. Someone wasn’t paying attention in interrogation training, he thought. This table is blocking the interrogator’s view of the subject’s body, and giving the subject a barrier to hide behind. Amateurs.
“Tell me,” the agent said without preamble, “how did you know what was in that bag?”
Fox gave him the look he used on students who came to him with dubious excuses for missing exams. “Do you do interviews often?”
The agent glowered at him. “I’m the one asking the questions here!”
“Then do it right, can’t you? You need to start with neutral control questions, build rapport with the subject, establish baseline, observe how he looks when he’s relaxed and telling the truth. Otherwise, how could you pick up on changes in his behavior when he’s lying? Come on, we did joint training exercises with Shin Bet and Mossad all the time. Didn’t they teach you anything?”
The agent jumped up and pounded the table. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Robin Fox at your service. Former U.S. Army intelligence, now consultant to the CIA.”
This threw the agent off balance. “And the woman who was with you?”
“Is from the office of a U.S. congressman.” If Rick had an office in his house, then it was technically the truth.
“The woman you just apprehended,” Fox went on before the agent could respond, “we have strong reason to believe, is a member of the same group that recently attempted a biological attack on American soil. She is a person of interest to the United States. I need to question her.”
The agent regained his composure. “You’re joking, right? I can’t let you do that.”
“Can’t, as in you refuse? Or can’t, as in you don’t have the authority?”
The agent made no answer.
“Very well,” Fox pressed on, “if you don’t have the authority, I need to speak to someone who does. Like your superior, Avi Harel.”
The agent blinked, undoubtedly wondering how Fox knew the name of the director of Shin Bet. “Any information you have, you can give me.”
“This is a high-level investigation. How can we be sure that you have the proper security clearance? Anything further I say on this matter, I can only say directly to Mr. Harel.”
The agent hesitated. “Wait here,” he said gruffly, in a brave attempt to hold on to his authority. He left the room, and returned after a few minutes.
“Come with me.”
...
To get to FBI headquarters, all Fox had to do was get off the Metro at the Federal Triangle stop, walk to the Hoover Building, push his way through a revolving door, and announce himself. Here, he and Emily were riding in a car with darkened windows to a building whose address was a closely guarded secret. Its agents scoured the Internet continually to detect and strike out anything on satellite maps that might give a clue to its location. And any pedestrian who happened to wander within a hundred yards of it would be accosted by the security forces.
They were given a thorough search and escorted to the office of the director of Shin Bet, Avi Harel. Fox’s first impression was that, except for the shaven head, he looked like an Israeli John Adler: the same blazer, the same open-collared shirt under it, and the same pattern of lines around the eyes that had seen too much. Apparently, it was the uniform for senior intelligence agents all over the world.
“Well?” was his greeting. There were two chairs facing his desk, but he made no move to invite them to sit.
“You’ve heard from your field agents about the biological attack on Ben-Gurion Airport?” Fox asked him.
“Of course.”
“Allow me to present,” said Emily, “the man who stopped it.”
It was kind of her to give him the credit, although not entirely accurate, since she had certainly done her share as well. But the important thing was that Harel had evidently decided they were worth a few minutes of his time, after all. He gestured to the seats facing his desk. They sat.
“My name is Robin Fox. I’m with the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, working with the FBI and the CIA to investigate the terrorist cell that your suspect belongs to.”
“And I,” Emily said, presenting another one of her husband’s business cards, “am representing the office of U.S. congressman Frederick Paxton, a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. You know—the one that decides how to allocate the foreign aid budget.”
Their introductions might have been more impressive if they had had the chance to freshen up and change into more professional clothes, rather than having to make their case in the unkempt, bleary-eyed condition of travelers just off a transatlantic flight. Still, their words had the desired effect. Now they had his attention.
“We’ve been questioning one of her accomplices,” Fox continued, “and we have some information you might be interested in. There’s a strong possibility that the next strike may be somewhere in Israel or the occupied territories.”
On the last word, Harel’s shoulder rose as the corners of his mouth turned down. Fox pressed on. “Come on, are you really going to sit there and act like that doesn’t concern you? You’re too good an intelligence officer for that. If there’s an outbreak of Zagorsk in the territories, you couldn’t build a wall high enough to keep it out of Israel. One soldier, one tourist, one kid in a settlement slipping out on a lark…that’s all it would take.”
“What can you tell me?”
“First things first. There are two small requests I would like to make. One, I need to have a shot at interrogating the prisoner myself.”
“You want I should let you question my prisoner?”
“Yes, please. And second, I would like to inquire into the case of Leila Halabi. I believe my colleague, John Adler, has already been in
touch with you about her.”
Harel gave him a look that, if put into words, would have begun with “What the…” and ended with “…are you talking about?”
Fox saw no sign of deception in his expression. Of course, it was highly probable that the director of one of the world’s premier intelligence agencies was a consummate liar. But it was at least equally likely that a certain member of another such agency, in his own country, had been less than forthcoming with him.
Emily stepped in. “The United States Peace Research Institute, of which my hu—” she covered her slip with a cough, “—my boss is a leading supporter, has invited her to Washington for a symposium. She was apprehended at the Rachel’s Tomb checkpoint one week ago, on the twenty-sixth of March, and is now being held in administrative detention at HaSharon prison.”
“I have no knowledge of that.”
“Does that mean whoever arrested her was not acting on your orders?” Fox asked.
“Do you have any idea how many detainees we process each day? Do you think I review each case personally?”
“This one happens to be an internationally famous educator and writer. Are you telling me no one so much as dashed off a memo to you?”
“Whether they did or not, this is an internal matter within the State of Israel.”
“So you say. But when an American research institute arranges a public event, and one of our speakers disappears into Israeli detention, it becomes an internal matter within the United States of America.”
“If she doesn’t make it to Washington for the start of the symposium,” Emily added, “of course we’ll have to explain why, in front of all the television cameras. It’ll be just like the time when they had to give the Nobel Peace Prize to an empty chair because China chose to lock up the laureate. Is that really the kind of publicity you want for Israel?”
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