by JT Sawyer
Victor stood up and walked within an inch of Dev, removing the largest photograph from the mantle. It was contained in a bronze frame adorned with maple leaves stamped on the sides.
He held it close, staring at it as if his eyes were penetrating another world. “Do you recognize this picture?”
She nodded. “Yes, Poppa had that same picture in his office at Gideon. It was on his desk beside a photograph of you, mother, and me from a trip we all took to Cyprus that one summer.”
“This is the west coast of Sierra Leone. The picture of your father’s is from a mission long ago.” He gently tapped the frame with his other hand. “This one was taken two years ago when I was there just before I blew Uri’s diamond mining operation to hell.”
Dev glanced at the photo then took a step back. She stroked her fingers along her chin then squinted at Victor. “Two years ago—that’s when we got word that you had died.”
“I had been working part of each season in the refugee camps in Liberia. These were places that took in those who had been fortunate enough to escape from the slave trade in Sierra Leone—an industry largely fueled by the many illicit diamond mining rings that dotted the countryside. I kept hearing about this one operation in particular near the coast, the henchmen of which were not from the region—not even from Africa in fact. I had been trying to unravel their illicit network and finally traced their operations to the exact same location your father, Uri, and I had rescued an Israeli physician from years ago. Imagine my surprise when I found that this entire operation was being run by Uri himself—I saw him with my own eyes as he was leaving the goddamned encampment two years ago!”
“So, you destroyed his operation to…to do what? I mean why not take this back to the Israeli government?”
“And bring up an off-the-books mission that the Mossad did in West Africa years ago? I would be immediately disavowed and Uri would close up shop for a while until things cooled down. No, the best solution was to cripple him and take apart his foothold in Sierra Leone and for that to work, I had to make it appear as if I had died to erase any suspicion in Uri.”
“My father told me about a lot of things he did while in the Mossad, some of which was open source material and some he probably shouldn’t have divulged in retrospect.” She tilted her head and shot a glance at Victor. “He never spoke about Sierra Leone, though.”
Victor sighed and put the picture back down slowly, like it was made of porcelain. “You may find as you grow older that you are finally grateful for a failing memory.”
“Your humanitarian work in Africa, Uri’s involvement there, and my father’s silence on the matter—what happened on that mission?”
He rested both hands on the mantle and let his head hang low. “On the surface, we were successful—it went off without a hitch. After we inserted into the country from the coastline, we located the Israeli doctor and were on our way out. But Anatoly couldn’t look away from the captives we were leaving behind. He decided to violate orders and return for the dozens of locals that were held there. Uri was strongly opposed, at least initially.”
“And you?”
“Your father had a way of needling me into seeing things his way. Those poor souls in the mining camp were barely hanging on by a thread. They were viewed as disposable commodities and most wouldn’t have lasted another week under those conditions.”
“And Uri no doubt had other considerations in mind, probably the diamonds that were still there.”
Victor slowly nodded while biting his lower lip. “After we secured the doctor with our boat team back at the coast and sent them on their way, Anatoly radioed out that the three of us were going to be delayed and would meet at the secondary extraction site in an hour. We went back to the camp along a different insertion point to the north. It was midday and there was a change of guards so no one had noticed that the doctor was missing yet.
As we descended this hill down to the stream bed where the workers were, we snuck behind the supply tent of the headmaster. He was counting the week’s find of raw diamonds at his shack.” Victor held out his hands like he was holding a basketball. “Let’s just say the pile he had in the shack was like nothing I ever dreamed possible in such a seemingly barren region.”
He walked around the table, his eyes seeming to search the ceiling for the details of the trip. “The three of us hung back and argued about what we should do—or more like Uri and I were arguing with your father about taking the diamonds.”
Victor ran his slender fingers through his wavy silver hair. “Anatoly insisted on freeing the captives then worrying about the diamonds later. We killed the headmaster and his bodyguard,” Victor said, making a knife-thrusting motion with his hand while he grimaced. “Then Anatoly went to place explosives at the base of the water towers and fuel truck near the main camp. Uri and I were supposed to sweep in from the rear and dispatch the remaining guards while Anatoly freed the workers.”
“But the diamonds were right there before you,” Dev said as her eyebrows scrunched together.
“Yes, the diamonds—all those raw diamonds just sitting there. Uri began shoving them in his pockets. I…I forgot about everything else, even about watching for Anatoly, who was heading into harm’s way outside the shack. We stuffed every pocket we had until they were spilling out the top. There was so much, it sifted through my fingers like sand and we laughed like greedy schoolboys.” His pupils had widened and his mouth hung open for a second. Then he looked at Dev and his shoulders began sagging.
“A few minutes later, the explosions rocked the camp and we bolted outside. In the chaos of shooting the guards, one of them must have got off an AK round near the propane tank by the shack. It went up in flames, destroying what was left of the diamonds. After the battle, Anatoly suffered a mild concussion from the blast. We had to help him to the extraction point. He was pretty out of it for the next week and never knew what we had done.”
When Victor had finished, he collapsed back into a chair like he had just finished a marathon. The silence that filled the room made it seem like a cavern and Dev was certain she could hear her own heart beating. She stood up and walked to the window, staring past her own reflection out into the cobalt blue sky. “So, this explains where Uri has been getting his funding to stomp out his other political opponents so efficiently.”
“Yes, most definitely, and with his return to Sierra Leone a few years ago and the subsequent mining operations he undertook, there’s no telling how much more he’s managed to put aside.”
“But if he has all those riches, why even bother climbing up the political ladder? Why not buy an island somewhere and retire?”
“An ambitious man like Uri has no concept of sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere. I believe his end goal is to use his funds and power to work his way right to the top and rule Israel one day.”
“Then he must think you, if he knows you’re alive, have some information on him which could thwart his election.”
“But I don’t, other than what I just shared. I designed three black boxes for Anatoly to store any encrypted files about his research into Uri’s undertakings in Africa that he could share with me discreetly. I know he had pieced together a few things but there was no hard evidence linking Uri back to Sierra Leone. The man was too thorough and had created shell corporations to disguise his undertakings there.” Victor relaxed his posture, letting his chin hang down. “Anatoly told me just before his death that he had finally obtained the evidence he needed—some photographs that he was going to upload to the black boxes as JPG files. This was just before he was coming to meet you in the States last summer.”
Dev held her hands out and traced an outline in the air with her fingers. “I recall seeing a small rectangular black box atop many other flash drives in my father’s private safe at Gideon shortly after taking over there but with the three thousand other things I had going on, I never got around to going through it. When I finally went back to look into it, it had disappeared.
It was the first hint I had that we had a mole within Gideon, possibly Martin Bollousa. He was relieved of his duties with my company around that time and now works for Uri—has to be him.”
Victor was silent, his eyes fixed on the floor while he tapped his index finger on his knee.
“Why would Uri come after me and shut down Gideon for some boxes that didn’t contain more than a smattering of loose ends related to his doings in Africa?”
Dev continued talking, sifting through the myriad details percolating through her brain. “One of my contacts at the Shin Bet said our cyber-computer director was taken away for questioning but I couldn’t find out anything else before I fled.”
“James—James Ratner?”
“That’s right but how…”
He raised his hand and cut her off. “Anatoly came to me a few years ago before my ‘death’ and asked if I could create an encrypted computer drive that only he could access. Those were the three black boxes I mentioned. I walked James through how to upload new material. He was the only other person besides me who knew how to work the device. The black boxes are also self-regulating in that they perform internal diagnostics whose changes then get relayed to the other units. This occurs every three months.”
“Are you sure? How do you know that that function is still operational?”
Uri walked back to the desk and opened a hidden drawer beside Mitch. He removed something from a green satin pouch and handed it to Dev. “This is the second black box. I’ve seen what’s on it. There’s some nebulous information about Uri’s undertakings but nothing like a smoking gun.”
She took the device and rolled it around in her hands, studying the contours and side ports. “Doesn’t look like anything special.”
“If Uri has one of those in his possession then he will have the same information; but he’s probably also discovered, as I did, that there was an aborted upload of JPG files that Anatoly tried to send before his death, the origin of which is unknown even to me. Those files—those photographs that he said he took—must be located at the site of the last black box. If you can find those then you may have all you need to bring down Uri.”
“This explains a lot—why we were set up in Romania, the abrupt takeover of Gideon by the Shin Bet. All of this is connected with the approach of the election in Israel.”
“Uri needed you to pick up your father’s trail—to piece together all the breadcrumbs so he could locate the evidence before the election. He can’t have anything possibly connect him back to Sierra Leone or it will destroy his chances of gaining a seat in the Knesset.”
“Well, wait a minute, you designed the damn things. Can’t you trace the location of the remaining device?”
“They were programmed to constantly scramble their GPS marker to prevent their detection by hackers. But because I designed the original cloaking algorithms, I was able to triangulate the general location of the third box. It’s somewhere on the Greek island of Zakynthos but where is beyond me. I have studied endless satellite images and photographs of that island but could never pinpoint a place that stood out as a safehouse.”
“Hence the term,” she said with a smirk. “That’s the region that was devastated by a hurricane last summer as I recall.”
“Yes, that’s right. They’ve only just now recovered economically from that.”
Dev whispered the name of the island, remembering its location from the mental map in her head.
“This is why Uri allowed you and your crew to so easily slip out from Israel—to lead him to the place where the photographs were located. Surely he must be tracking you somehow.”
Victor moved to the edge of the window and peered out through the corner to the street below, remembering the many times in younger days when he had been a hunter of other men. He cast a penetrating gaze upon the city block for anything out of the ordinary. Victor hoped that the dead-drops he had employed were enough to elude any of Uri’s foot soldiers but he also knew just how ruthless his old friend could be in completing a task, especially one of this magnitude.
Chapter 24
Eva had just finished washing out her soup bowl and was reclining on the couch. Her internal clock was skewed and she couldn’t sleep despite it being past midnight. She let her eyes float over the walls and shelves of the small living room, taking in objects from her husband’s past and trying to distract herself from the dangers that lay ahead for her daughter.
Eva looked over at the suppressed pistol on the table beside her and was reminded of the earlier battle in her house. She was grateful Mitch was there and that her timing with her shot was so poor. Eva thought of Mitch as a son and hoped that one day it might be more like son-in-law. She didn’t always understand his cowboy humor and western expressions but knew he had a calming influence on her spirited daughter. Despite the past year of turmoil, Dev had a rare smile in her eyes when she was with Mitch. Knowing they were together now gave Eva some relief and she felt her eyelids start to lower.
Her drowsiness dissipated when she heard commotion on the sidewalk below; people were yelling. She hobbled over to the window, standing to the side so she didn’t silhouette herself as her husband had taught her. The odor of smoke pierced her nostrils, the cloud growing thicker as it swept up the side of the building. Eva could see flames licking the walls on the ground level and figured someone must have been careless with a grill on their porch.
The smoke was increasing and she retreated back to the kitchen, grabbing the burner phone Dev had left her and shoving it into her pocket. She grabbed a wet washcloth and pressed it to her nose and mouth as a burning odor crept in beneath the door. Her eyes were watering as the smoke thickened, obscuring the room. She felt for the counter top then used it to skirt along the kitchen until she was next to a closet. Her throat was burning and the washcloth felt nearly dry. Eva went to reach for the door handle, stopping briefly to search the room for the pistol and her purse. Neither were visible. Tears were streaming down her pale cheeks as the billowing gray clouds muffled her vision. Time is running out—I have to get below to the street.
She flung open the door and moved along the hallway to the exit sign at the back of the building. Taking the stairs down one flight, she shoved the back door outward and plunged into the dark. Her searing lungs began vigorously sucking in the fresh air, every cell in her body screaming for oxygen.
She felt an arm on her shoulder. “This way,” said a young man’s concerned voice. “The whole building could go up at any minute.”
They ran as fast as her fragile knee would allow until they were near the fence that separated the property from a cemetery at the rear of the building. Then she felt another hand grab her—this one much more firmly. The two men lifted her off her feet and moved her forward as an approaching vehicle drove up alongside them. She started clawing at the man’s hands to her right as they shoved her inside the open door of a limousine.
“Gently, boys, gently. She’s a delicate flower—at least on the outside,” said a familiar voice inside. She looked up into the face of Uri Belkin.
Chapter 25
Dev glanced at the photo of Africa on the mantle again then she swung back around towards the dining room, her arms folded across her chest. “And you—what were your ambitions after coming home a rich man after that mission?”
Victor kept his eyes focused on the street while speaking softly as his mind floated over the landscape of his past. “Shortly after returning, all of us were nearing the end of our time in the military. Once I was out, I took a year-long vacation and lived like royalty. With my previous connections, it wasn’t hard to find a fence for the diamonds but I only sold off what I needed to live a life of debauchery in Southeast Asia.”
“The beer and brothels became too much after a while,” Dev said with a smirk. “I remember you were out of touch during my first year in the Israeli Defence Forces.”
“I won’t even try to justify my actions. I eventually became this disheveled beast of a man tha
t I dreaded seeing in the mirror each day. What we did—taking those diamonds for ourselves—was wrong.”
“So, that’s why you got involved with humanitarian work in West Africa.”
“I used the remaining diamonds I had to fund several relief camps for the refugees fleeing from Sierra Leone. It became my life’s work,” he said, holding his hands in the air and looking around at his modest possessions. “Every penny has been put back into providing food and medicine to the people I screwed over all those years ago.”
Dev’s expression softened and she pulled up a seat beside the tired man. She was still bitter at him for fabricating his demise but at least she understood his motivations and respected his attempt at retribution for his past actions. She lowered her voice as her eyes darted around the room, finally settling on a picture of her father on the mantle.
Victor placed his weathered hands over hers and moved closer to her. “Anatoly was the finest man and warrior I’ve ever known and his memory shouldn’t be smudged by mine or Uri’s avarice. Anatoly never knew what we did though he wondered, on more than one occasion, how I was funding my getaways after we retired. It wasn’t until I approached him a few years ago about Uri’s involvement in Africa that I came clean.”
She look into his eyes and squeezed his hand as she relaxed her shoulders and settled back into the chair. “You know we really should do this more often.”
He smiled and brushed his large hand across the back of her hair. “My sweet girl, I’ve missed you the most out of everyone. Leaving you the way I did was like having a spear thrust through my heart. You were the one person in my life with whom I could always let my guard down and just be myself.”