by JT Sawyer
His hands trembled as he gripped the cellphone. “And our arrangement—my daughter, she gets bumped to the top of the list for the experimental cancer drug?”
“I am a man of my word, Benjamin. She will be taken care of as promised.”
Chapter 19
To ensure their evasion from the authorities, Mitch, Dev, and Petra each traveled separately and departed Israel at different times and locations. Eva was told to stay put until they contacted her. The safehouse had enough food and resources to take care of her needs for the next week and would be the most secure place to hide out until Dev and the others returned.
Each arrived on flights to Zurich and then rendezvoused at a café outside the airport that Petra had frequented in the past. Following protocols from their former urban evasion training at Gideon, each of them had constructed improvised weapons using common items from their surroundings. Petra had a foot-long section of rebar procured from a construction site that he secured in a side coat pocket; Dev had purchased a pair of athletic socks and filled the insides with rocks found near a playground; and Mitch had bought several six-inch steel tent stakes from a hiking store and had tucked these in his beltline in various locations.
Eight hours later, they were gathered at a table near the rear exit. With their hunger abated from a hasty meal, they began discussing their next step in locating the mysterious Victor.
“So, all we have to go on is a postmarked letter from last year and your mother’s story,” said Mitch.
Dev grimaced. “Yeah, her wonderful tale that she kept from me for a year.”
“Sounds like she had her reasons,” said Petra, who was looking over at a petite redhead sitting alone a few tables away.
“Either way, it has led us here. So now what?” said Mitch. “What should we be looking for? You’ve mentioned very little about Victor so fill us in on him—habits, quirks, appearance and anything else that might help, because Switzerland is starting to feel pretty expansive.”
“He’d be in his early sixties now,” said Dev, who sat with her fingers interlaced while she stared ahead at the patrons walking through the front door. “Victor was a tall, thin man but had huge hands. He was supposed to be exceptionally skilled in knife-fighting—you two would have a lot to talk about,” she said, winking at Mitch. “He also walked with a slight limp from an old injury to his hip. He used to joke when I was little and say it was from getting bit by a crocodile but I knew it was from jumping out of too many planes.”
“I can relate,” said Mitch, pressing his hand against the small of his back.
“Out of the three of them, Victor was always the reserved one—always analyzing everything and everyone around him even when he wasn’t on duty. That’s what made him such a brilliant cyber-intel guy later when the Mossad got their program up and running.”
“He spent his last few years working in that field, didn’t he?” said Petra.
“Yes; his hip injury prevented him from doing any further missions abroad so he was involved in cyber-warfare instead for his remaining time in the service.”
As Mitch finished his black coffee, the waitress made a beeline for the table. Instinctively, each of them let their hands slowly slide below the table and rest near the improvised weapons in their pockets.
The blue-eyed woman with uneven dimples motioned over her shoulder to the front door. “The cab you requested is here.” She grabbed the empty plates and walked away.
They each gave one another puzzled looks and then Dev pointed to the security camera in the corner of the café, which she had noticed upon entering. “Looks like someone has taken an interest in our arrival and it’s probably not the manager.”
“Victor?” said Mitch.
“Let’s go find out,” said Dev, who walked cautiously towards the door but with intent in her steps.
The man in the white-and-blue taxi had three-day-old scruff and was in his late thirties. He rolled down the window as Dev approached.
“Who sent you?”
“Lady, I go where dispatch send me,” he said in broken English, his yellow teeth distracting Dev. “I was told two men, one woman need ride.”
“To where?”
He flipped down the visor and removed a torn piece of paper with a scribbled address on it. “Beverin Nature Park.” He pushed the paper closer to his face to read his own writing. “Says, you birdwatchers wanting to see Eurasian Doves.”
The man put the paper back and tapped on his meter, which was already accruing minutes. “Let’s go—you coming or not.”
Mitch shrugged his shoulders at Dev, who had her own dismayed expression. She looked around at the other pedestrians and rooftops then got into the car with Petra and Mitch following behind her. Petra insisted on sitting up front despite the driver’s objections, then the vehicle sped past a double-decker tour bus, heading north away from the city.
Thirty minutes later, they were deposited at the entrance of a regional park and the taxi driver spun the vehicle around after receiving payment from Dev.
The idyllic setting could have been used in a postcard: a kettle-shaped pond was nestled in a conifer-lined depression amidst the backdrop of the snow-capped Swiss Alps to the north. The crisp smell of newly mown grass hung in the cool air and a flock of ruddy geese were flying in a v-formation overhead. Given their elevated stress levels, everyone welcomed the sight and sounds of such a tranquil setting.
The quaint park was occupied by a group of elementary school children running down the trail to the right while an old caretaker in faded blue overalls was raking the pathway to the left beside his tool-lined golf cart.
The three of them walked along the narrow trail while pausing at each interpretive sign to read the displays on local birds until they came to one marked with the title of the Eurasian Dove.
“I’m guessing we’re back to using old school dead-drops, which makes me hopeful that this is Victor’s doing,” said Dev.
She felt around the underside of the metal display until she located a small box attached near the support bolts. She removed it and saw a tin mint container with a small magnet glued to the bottom. Dev popped open the lid and found a single piece of rolled paper inside with an address.
Petra pulled out his phone and entered the numbers. “Looks like another park about a half mile from here.”
Mitch’s head was swiveling as he scanned the high and low points in the forest for any suspicious movement. “Normally, I wouldn’t mind being out in the middle of nowhere like this but right now the city feels a little more comforting. I hope this scavenger hunt doesn’t go on too long.”
The caretaker had already driven off in his golf cart and the children’s voices had faded into the woods. “Looks like we head north,” said Petra, glancing at his phone and pointing towards a well-worn trail across a plank bridge.
Moving across the muddy field, Mitch paused out of habit to study the ground, noting the array of tiny bootprints amidst the larger tracks of the caretaker. He noted the appearance of the stride of the older man as the prints headed back to where the golf cart had been parked. The angle of the toes on the right were pitched out further than the left and one side had more tread detail where that foot had pushed off with great force with each step. He scanned the area for the caretaker but the cart was gone. He thought back to their conversation earlier in the café and recalled Dev saying that Victor had an old hip injury, just the type to create such an imbalanced stride though a dozen other things could also lead to such a display.
“What’s up?” said Dev, who had stopped before the bridge and called back to Mitch.
He shook his head in the negative as he pulled his eyes away from the revealing substrate then trotted to catch up with the others. The last thing he wanted was to give Dev false hope that Victor had been there. He still wasn’t sure himself of what was going on with this enigmatic figure in the Leitners’ past.
Arriving at the playground twenty minutes later, they searched for signs
of someone or something that could lead them to their next clue. Petra nodded with his chin towards a swing set where a mother stood pushing her five-year-old daughter. To her right was a twelve-inch white line of chalk adorning the angled steel post that was anchored in the sand. To the casual observer, this would have been ignored as the playground antics of children but to Petra this was one of the hallmark indicators of a dead drop. Such chalk lines are still used in spy tradecraft throughout the world. These diminutive chalk marks adorn the walls, sidewalks, and buildings of many cities though they go unnoticed by those unacquainted with the pattern.
He walked over and sat in a swing two seats over from the mother and child. Petra needed them to leave and hoped his presence would do the job but the young woman only looked away whenever he tried to make eye contact. Growing impatient, he began rocking back and forth while looking at the woman. “What an adorable child you have—I mean really adorable,” he said, letting his voice lower in tone as he looked upon the child with a toothy grin.
She quickly plucked her daughter from the swing and briskly walked away to her car while glancing over her shoulder. When she had driven off, Petra knelt down beside the steel post and dug in the sand. A few inches down there was a glass pickle jar with a note inside.
He opened it up and unfolded the paper, handing it to Dev as she and Mitch walked up. “You have a way with woman,” said Mitch, who was studying the ground again and saw the same footprints from the caretaker.
“And kids,” said Dev, who was smirking at Petra as she read over the note. “This is a hand-drawn map leading to a building marked as The Farmhouse, a mile to the north.”
Petra jabbed Mitch in the side. “You oughta be right at home then, country boy.”
“I was a rancher, not a farmer—get it right by now.”
“Let’s go,” said Dev, leading the way. “Before the police show up from the call they’re about to get from a creeped out mother.”
Chapter 20
The video editing room at the i12 News station in Tel Aviv was quiet. The features editor had just left after finishing his coverage of a grisly murder victim found on the east side of town. The rest of the night crew had gone home and Jill Albright found herself alone, reviewing an old interview she had done with Devorah Leitner last fall. The woman had left an impression on Jill and she found it hard to believe that Gideon was being accused of the crimes that she had just reported on. Jill felt like she had to force out the conjecture during her live broadcast that morning before the entrance to the formerly esteemed company.
When she had finished, she picked up her yellow notepad and glanced at the names; the top one read Benjamin Amadi. She tapped her stubby wooden pencil on the name, her eyes flitting between her scribblings and the frozen video image of Devorah Leitner.
She picked up her phone and speed-dialed her editor. “Donald, I’m working on some new angles on the Gideon story. Can you tell me who made the call to you the morning of the raid on their offices? Who tipped you off that that was going to be happening?”
“Shit, Jill. It’s twelve-thirty. Get some sleep—or are you still at the office?”
“I’m not tired. Just some things that don’t add up about all this. Like the timeline on the purported killing in Romania. How did the Shin Bet find out about this so fast? I mean, Romania is a pretty tightly controlled place and their media got wind of this right after it happened.”
“Jill, you know I’m not going to reveal who my source was. One day, heaven forbid, if you’re ever a managing editor of a news station, you’ll understand you can’t divulge all of your confidential sources to your field reporters.”
“Was it Ben Abadi who was in charge of bringing in Leitner and her crew from the airport? I located his name from the Shin Bet website. He’s the boss of the Tel Aviv division, right?”
“Abadi?” he said with a startled voice. “Yeah, he’s the Shin Bet commander, alright? But he’s not the person who called me about the tip-off.”
“So, who…”
“Just stop right there before my mood gets any more pissy from being jolted awake. We’re done jabbering. Now, go get some goddamned shut-eye, Albright. And if you pester me again, you’ll be reporting on kids’ soccer games for the next month.”
She hung up and pulled herself closer to the desk, her spine going erect. She retrieved the unedited footage her cameraman filmed earlier of the Gideon takeover, focusing on the early scenes after she and her crew arrived. Just after the first group of Shin Bet agents began their orchestrated takeover, she noticed three figures in the far left corner hastily rushing out the side exit. Jill froze the image and inched closer to the monitor. She rewound the clip again several times, enhancing the faces. Two of the men were stocky and had brush-cuts. The large man in the center was balding and was seemingly being gripped on either arm by the other two.
Hmm, none of those guys look familiar but… She paused her thought and scrolled down to the left hand of the middle figure. He wore a silver Claddagh ring on his left ring finger. Her heart fluttered and she leaned back, resting her elbows on the desk. She swiveled her chair around to another monitor and pulled up the footage from the earlier murder victim her colleague had just reported on. The victim’s face was too disfigured and his teeth too broken to allow for any dental records to verify his identity. But she remembered he was wearing a similar ring. Jill quickly scanned the footage, her hand gripping the mouse like it was a stick shift in a sports car. Coming to the image of the victim’s hand, she enhanced it and then overlaid it onto the visual from the other computer.
Shit, that looks like an exact match. This guy was snagged from Gideon by those two goons and then hacked up like that—why? What is going on?
Chapter 21
The black limousine with tinted windows sat underneath the Ninth Street Bridge near the wharf. A fog had trickled in from the coast and seemed to be encapsulating the vehicle, its smoke-gray tendrils probing for an entrance through which they could slip.
Two men sat up front, one of whom was busy examining images on a ruggedized laptop. In the back seat were Uri Belkin and his chief financial advisor, Martin Bollousa. The balding figure was glancing at his tablet; his bifocals slid down over his oily nose as he pored over Uri’s financials.
“With the Romanian affair over, I have paid the remaining customs officials there who allowed our boys to get in and out. We’ve also dismantled the website of the company that Gideon thought they were hired by and scrubbed the web so there are no traces of that operation. So, that is taken care of.”
He tapped on the screen and scrunched his eyes at the next chart. “And the pediatric physician of Benjamin Amadi’s daughter—he has been nicely compensated for his assistance in fabricating the girl’s cancer diagnosis and providing the injections that were causing her anemia.”
Uri nodded, watching the fog collide against the windows and transform into tiny beads of moisture. “Change is the only constant in our life. To adapt, to migrate, or to die—those are the three choices an organism must face in this world. Amadi chose to adapt, which was certainly to my benefit.”
Bollousa went on scanning his tablet, unaffected by his boss’s philosophical musings. “We just have the offshore operation underway right now and then our desert ops base, which will be shutting down in a few days. After that, any footprints connected with dismantling Gideon will be removed.”
“Good, then why don’t you fly to Egypt and wrap things up there. After that, there isn’t much for you to do until next week after my inauguration.”
Martin slid his tablet into his leather satchel and then removed a cold wine spritzer from the mini-fridge beside his left leg. “Very well. I could use a break for a few days. Time to visit my boy and my wife.”
Martin was eager to have some time away from Uri. His boss had grown increasingly irritable and paranoid during the past few months. Martin had seen what happened to men in Uri’s circles who were on the receiving end of his fury.
When he first signed on with Uri over a year ago, he thought it would be to just slip occasional intel out of Gideon, where he had been briefly employed. After he had stolen the black box, he knew that his time at Gideon was over though his trail had been covered. Uri offered him protection and a position heading up his finances. The monetary incentives were significant enough that Martin ignored where his further entanglements with Uri would lead. Now that his obligations leading up to the election were nearly completed, he was considering his options for survival. Though, with Uri rising to power in the Knesset, he knew the claws of servitude were about to dig deeper into his ever-yielding flesh.
The muscular figure sitting in the passenger’s seat swiveled around, holding up the laptop and pointing to several green blips on the screen.
“Sir, we discovered that the bugs in the phones of the three Gideon members all went down around the same time, shortly after the Shin Bet released them.”
“What location?”
“They were spread out but all within about two square miles of one another.”
“Triangulate those spots and see what apartment complexes, abandoned warehouses, and shuttered businesses show up within that zone. Any of those would be the types of places I’d consider for a safehouse. They will have had a secondary rendezvous point here in the city—find it.”
While the man could be heard tapping on his laptop, Uri pored over the information gleaned from listening to Dev’s debriefing by Tamir back at Gideon. She hasn’t called me yet to ask for a favor with her predicament. I wonder, does she suspect I’m involved? What did Anatoly ever reveal to her about that mission in Africa? And how the hell is that slippery old fuck Victor involved in this? Dead, my ass. I should’ve known he had some hand in this. Did he discover the location of my diamond mining operation? Is that what he and Anatoly were doing working together?