I had killed people on this hopelessly bollixed mission, but that had been in self-defense. Shooting someone point blank while they were helpless to defend themselves was another thing entirely. I flashed back to the scene in the hotel room in Vienna where, fueled by adrenalin, I had executed a wounded man. Maybe I wasn’t so different, after all.
Sasha approached Yudin, still tied to his chair, and put her face very close to his.
“Listen, you fat shit. Now you are going to tell us everything we want to know. There is one dead person and one about to die in this room right now, and it would not bother me to add a third.”
She straightened and brought the pistol to bear on the oligarch, who tried to shrink into the upholstery, his bravura now dissipated.
Sasha left him to contemplate his predicament while she released me from the zip cuffs. She knelt in front of me.
“I need to see your wound.”
It was painful even to raise my left arm far enough to pull up the blood soaked sweater. She examined my side, probing none too gently, her aggressive energy still not fully used up.
“You’re lucky. You might have a broken rib or two, but other than that the damage is superficial. She found some towels in the bathroom adjoining the study, poured some of Yudin’s expensive whiskey onto them and dressed the wound with long strips torn from the towels.
“That should do until we can take care of it properly. How do you feel?”
“Not good, but not so bad that I can’t finish this.”
It cost some effort to stand up, and I stood swaying for a moment waiting for the nausea to pass, still wondering what had happened to Ronan.
When the room had stopped spinning I said, “You’d better have a look around.”
She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. “Why?”
“But what about …” I couldn’t mention Ronan’s name if they were to maintain the fiction that he was operating independently, but Sasha immediately understood.
“Don’t worry. Everything is under control.”
She jerked her head in the direction of the doorway, and there was Ronan, standing well back out of Yudin’s line of sight. The Israeli nodded and smiled grimly as he replaced his pistol in his holster. He’d held back so as not to reveal himself and risk blowing the plan -- he was that cold-blooded. My initial distrust of the man was turning to distaste. The guy was as much a thug as the Russians.
Of more immediate concern was the fact that there was no way to know whether the gunshots had been heard. It was unlikely, given the spacious grounds surrounding the villa, but prudence dictated that we complete our task quickly.
Encouraged by Sasha and the presence of two corpses and the unconscious man on the floor, the “oligarch” turned cooperative and described the Voskreseniye organization’s off-shore financial network sufficiently to permit us to gauge the amount of damage we had done, as well as how far there still was to go.
Anxious now to please he volunteered the name of a high ranking Moscow city official, former KGB General Vitaliy Mikhailovich Shurgin, as the head of Voskreseniye. There was plenty of information for Mossad analysts to chew on.
Sasha tore up Yudin’s study, and with some grudging directions from him discovered some interesting electronic devices and documents. All of these, plus Yudin’s laptop computer were bundled into a bag made from another of the oligarch’s luxurious giant bath towels.
We left him tied to the chair and joined Ronan in the foyer. My side burned like hell, and I was anxious to get out of there. The Russian that Sasha had overpowered was beginning to groan and would soon recover consciousness, but he was in no condition to come after us.
Instead of heading for the exit, Sasha helped me to a seat and moved away to confer quietly with Ronan in their own language. After a moment the big Israeli turned and went into the study.
“What the hell is he doing?” I was startled. “If Yudin sees him it'll ruin everything!”
Sasha did not reply, and then Yudin shrieked and there was the cough of a silenced pistol.
Ronan returned to the entrance foyer. “What did you do?” I was angry. “You killed him in cold blood!”
“We'll talk about it later,” replied the Israeli. “We have to get out of here before we have any more unexpected visitors. There’s no time to waste.”
He led the way back through the house to the veranda doors we had entered originally. Ronan practically had to lift me bodily to get me back over the wall.
Sasha took the wheel again, and Ronan sat in back with me. Once we were well away from the neighborhood he made a call on his cell phone then gave Sasha directions. After a half-hour we pulled up to a doctor’s office on the outskirts of Marbella where a nameless surgeon of Jewish origins gave me an injection, patched up my side and bandaged my torso tightly.
Ronan announced that we would drive through the night to Madrid, where help was waiting to get us onto an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.
If the broken ribs and the sutures were painful, the sudden disgust that had seized me when Yudin had been murdered in cold blood bothered me even more. How many more lives had to be taken? It had been bad enough before Marbella, but now the Russians would hold me responsible for three more deaths, including Yudin and his girlfriend, both bound and helpless when they were killed.
CHAPTER 51 – Tel-Aviv, February 22
I woke up in a bed in a private hospital room that I would learn later was in a special wing of the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, just outside Tel Aviv. The window permitted the bright sunlight to illuminate the fresh flowers that decorated the metal table at my bedside.
The doctor in Marbella had shot me full of antibiotics, put in temporary sutures, and tightly bandaged the broken ribs. Large and regular doses of painkiller served to make the long drive to Madrid tolerable, and I managed some fitful sleep in the rear seat.
El Al security assured a quick and discreet entry to Barajas Airport where the we received the sort of VIP treatment that must be afforded routinely to celebrities to get them quietly and unobtrusively through the rigors of boarding. First class seats, more painkillers, and a really fine single malt whiskey finally combined to ensure that the long flight to Israel passed in relatively pain free sleep.
Several stern and quietly efficient men dressed in white met us at planeside at Ben Gurion Airport and bundled me into an ambulance. The indefatigable Sasha sat at my side. Her ministrations belied the ruthless operative that I now knew lay beneath the attractive exterior. Ronan also rode with us, but I pointedly ignored him throughout the journey. Unperturbed, the Israeli sat quietly with his own thoughts, the Mossad’s very own Golem.
Memories of arriving at the hospital were vague. The ambulance had pulled into a basement bay, and they had wheeled me to an elevator that carried us to an upper floor where a team of doctors and nurses waited. A quick needle in the arm, and now I awoke in this room.
My appetite returned with a vengeance and I was just finishing a lunch of fresh fruits, juice, olives, hummus, and bread when there was a soft rap at the door, and Ronan entered smiling broadly in a pretty good imitation of the shark from “Jaws.” Some people look scary even when they don’t intend to, but I’d given up trying to fathom the Golem’s intentions.
“You look well, Harry.”
He came and stood at the foot of the hospital bed where I lay propped up in a sitting position on snow white pillows.
“Are you ready to get out of here?”
The acrimony resulting from the murder of the helpless Yudin had not abated. On top of that I still didn’t understand how the two intruders had gotten past Ronan. I still didn’t know how much I could trust him. Was he my savior or my jailer?
“Yeah, but I’m not sure where I might go. I’m a mad dog murderer wanted on several continents, you know.” The ever considerate Israelis had made no effort to keep the truth hidden from me. I had been the recipient of a steady stream of the international press. The story originated by the Washingto
n Post about the rogue CIA officer turned killer had spawned a cottage industry dedicated to blackening the name of Harry Connolly. More than a week had passed since the Vienna incident, but the story was still going strong.
What was worse, I realized I had only myself to blame for having trusted Jake Liebowitz, and even more so for having accepted the fool’s mission he had offered. My situation was acutely untenable.
Unfazed by my bitter observations, Ronan eased his large frame into the chair beside the bed and sat there staring at me, his expression inscrutable. He was wearing khakis and a leather bomber jacket over a loose fitting black silk shirt. He looked like a Russian Mafioso.
“The doctors tell me you’re recovering nicely and should be none the worse for wear after a week or so of rest and recuperation. We have one of our safehouses waiting for you near the beach in Caesarea, a few kilometers north of here. You need a rest and some sea air after all you’ve been through.”
R&R sounded good, but what then? It wasn’t hard to envision the nightmare of entanglements that would be required to clear my name, if it could be cleared. All my bridges were in flames.
In the absence of a reply from me, Ronan continued, “Aren’t you curious about how things are going with the money? It’s the reason you’re here, after all.”
There was a gleam in his eyes.
“I suppose so.”
“I had to get special permission from the memuneh, the Head of Mossad, to share this with you, Harry. But you performed an incalculable service for our country, and he is grateful. And the memuneh’s gratitude is something special.
“Given the way the Russians reacted to their theft, we believe the disks we recovered from Stankov and Yudin might well be the only copies. The moment the disk you gave me arrived in Tel Aviv our people began setting things in motion to empty the Russian accounts. This will take time and a lot of preparation that I don’t fully understand, but the idea is to grab as much of the liquid assets as possible before the Russkies take countermeasures. This is not a thing that can be accomplished overnight, and it is not a task that can be completed without a certain amount of risk. Some of the accounts in private banks require a personal appearance to initiate a funds transfer, and our people must be prepared carefully – the Russians know they have a problem. We also have to open new accounts and ensure that they will accept the transfers. But it is a delicious irony, is it not, that Israel will use Russian funds to pay some of the bills for our own defense? That could be a lot of fighter planes and tanks.
“We can’t get at the investments in private companies and certain projects around the world, including many we identified that are tied to criminal activities. We will wound Voskreseniye, but we won’t kill it. They’ll still control of the majority of their activities and reap the benefits, but even so, we now have a long list of Voskreseniye-funded enterprises that we can monitor and perhaps even penetrate and disrupt. This information alone is invaluable. And it is information we can use as trading material with the intelligence services of several countries, including your own.
“You should be proud of what you have done,” he concluded with a passion that surprised me.
My eyes strayed to the window and the cloudless blue sky beyond.
“I’d be a little careful about sharing anything with American intelligence, if you know what I mean. In a way, I can’t help wishing none of it had happened. People lost their lives because a long time ago I recruited Stankov.”
Ronan sat back in his chair and folded his arms.
I couldn’t hold back the bitterness and no small amount of self-pity that colored my voice leaving the words bitten off, hurling staccato bullets at Ronan. “It might have been more fitting if that guy’s aim had been better in Marbella. Then you wouldn’t have this loose end to tie up.”
I looked hard at the big Israeli. “Like a loose end named Yudin. That’s no way to kill a man, Eitan. He was tied to a chair!”
Ronan released an exasperated sigh, rose to his feet, and stepped over to the window. He stood there with his broad back to me for a few seconds before turning back. When he did, his face was serious and his eyes appraising.
“Your country practices capital punishment, doesn’t it? Do they give condemned criminals a fair chance to get away after sentence is passed or do they strap them down and shove a needle into them before they can do more harm?”
I said nothing.
“Yudin was no different. Sasha was convinced that the Russians could still use him, and this would endanger our operation and our people. He set up many of the accounts and, given more time, may well have been able to access them. In fact, he was already working on it. We were not prepared to take him prisoner, especially with you wounded and needing care. There was no other choice.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t enjoy it, you know. We are not wanton savages. But you must understand one basic fact about Israel and Israelis: we are in a war for survival and have been since our country was re-born. We don’t have the luxury of fighting our enemies far from our own shores. They are here in our neighborhood, surrounding us and among us, and there is a fanaticism growing that promises to make the future even more dangerous. And now the fucking Russians have decided to come after us, too, by helping our enemies. We don’t have time for post-traumatic stress.”
It was hard to argue with him. From Ronan’s perspective killing Yudin had been a justifiable battlefield decision. Ronan could square the act with his own conscience, and he didn’t have to worry about a Headquarters lawyer throwing him to Justice Department wolves, either.
I pushed the lunch tray aside and swung my legs over the side of the bed. The pain in my side was not so bad now.
“What now? I can’t see the future, and I sure as hell can’t go back.”
“I have an idea or two. Are you ready to hear them?”
I was instantly alert. “Go on.”
Ronan displayed his toothy smile again.
"You know that my service has never had a non-Jewish sochen, officer, and it never will. But I know a good man when I see one. I’m not easily impressed, and frankly never thought I would be impressed by anyone from the CIA. But you, Harry, are an exception to the rule. I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
CHAPTER 52 – Something to Think About
No intelligence officer likes being pitched by a foreign service. It happens all the time, but it’s something to be avoided because it causes a lot of problems. Standard CIA practice is immediately to report a pitch to your superiors. Then comes the polygraph accompanied by the fear that the effectiveness of its highly imperfect technology could be further eroded by an imperfect or over-zealous operator. And there is always the nagging, persistent concern amongst one’s peers as to why anyone might have thought you were “vulnerable to recruitment” in the first place. That’s the question you assume your superiors will worry about most, and they'll go to extreme lengths to probe for weaknesses. Careers have been cut short for less. The Mossad was not exactly a hostile intelligence service, but I had never considered it to be a particularly friendly one either. Now I had been driven into a corner by Jake Liebowitz and the Russians, and the only escape lay with Israel - and Ronan knew it.
I was the prime suspect in at least three murders and the subject of an international manhunt by several police services. I had been declared a traitor by the American press (and so, it must be true). The Russians wanted my head and were probably looking for me under every rock. Russians believe in revenge, and they had literally billions of reasons to exact it on me now.
In light of all this, the suggestion Ronan was offering merited consideration. Things just couldn’t get any worse.
“Make your pitch; broaden my outlook, if you can.”
“It’s really not so bad.” Ronan made an effort to soften his normal gravelly rumble. “You hated what you were doing at the Agency. You are a widower and have no family ties left in the United States.”
Sasha obviously
had passed on to Ronan what I had told her that night in her apartment after the hotel attack. It seemed ages ago.
The Israeli continued, “I detect in you, my friend, a man who craves action, who NEEDS to be in the field. It’s what you know and what you do best. I would not like to see you deprived of that life.”
He rose and came to stand next to me at the window and pointed a finger toward the hills in the distance.
Oh, we could resettle you here in Israel. You could live out the rest of your days quietly in the shadows, taking no risks. Perhaps you could take up horticulture and live on a kibbutz somewhere in the Golan Heights. Speaking for myself, I could not tolerate such an existence. I would wither quickly and await my own death with hearty anticipation. I suspect it would be the same for you. Am I correct?”
This struck close to home. He’d just described the way I had been living in my cabin in Virginia. I suppose so.”
“Nevertheless, I can make such an offer, and I make it freely – no strings attached, as you say. We will resettle you, and we will provide a stipend that you could live on comfortably.”
“What‘s the alternative?”
The Israeli leaned forward. He had prepared his presentation well, as any good case officer would do, leading me logically through the steps that had brought us to this point, enumerating the difficulties I faced, and finally proposing a solution.
He launched into his peroration.
“I offer you a new life with a mission. You can never be a Mossad sochen, of course, but I’ve convinced the memuneh that you possess knowledge and qualities that would be of use to us in the Kidon unit. We are somewhat unorthodox. You are not Jewish, and you are not Israeli. I can imagine many instances in which this could be very useful, such as false flag operations.”
The conversation was making me intensely uncomfortable.
“Before you go any farther, I have a nonnegotiable condition.”
“You would refuse, of course, to undertake any activity that would harm your own country.”
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