1315. Avi still hadn’t returned from his assignation, so Wonder and I examined the phone carefully to make sure it hadn’t been doctored.
Was I being paranoid? I don’t think so—do you?
Wonder pronounced it clean. So, I disconnected one of the LeClercs’ phones, connected mine (it had already been outfitted for European wiring since it had been shipped to Paris), and punched the number Brud had given me.
Kenny Ross answered on the third ring. “Ross.”
“Hi—it’s me.”
“So you got the unit. Good.”
“What’s up?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to tell me. I have a certain four-star here who’s awful anxious to know what the heck is going on.”
First things first. “How did you get the phone to me?” I was worried about being compromised.
“The Chairman had me make a direct call to someone at the embassy, and had them dead-drop it for you. You’re in the clear.”
“You didn’t get it from anyone from Christians In Action, Admiral …”
He paused to decipher my meaning. Then: “No, no, Dick—we made sure you got one of the Chairman’s own phones—the ones that don’t have those damn chips installed.”
That was welcome news. Back in the very early eighties, the then-director of the National Security Agency, Vice Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t read everybody’s mail, lobbied for and finally received permission to design and deploy a computer chip that was subsequently inserted into all of the CIA’s secure communications gear. (In fact, because Inman had terrific political clout, he also got his NSA chip installed in the commo packages of all the other government agencies that use encrypted message traffic, including DOD, State, the Department of Energy—even WHCA, pronounced “WHACKA,” and standing for the White House Communications Agency.)
That chip allowed No Such Agency to monitor even their most secure transmissions. But in 1996, the Joint Chiefs of Staff contracted with Motorola for a fifth-generation secure unit that, despite NSA’s screams of outrage, did not have the chip installed. The reason is that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as well as the other service chiefs of staff, wanted their own private network, so they could talk to their CINCs—that’s Commanders-IN-Chief-privately. And since the Joint Chiefs can exercise a certain amount of short-and-curly control over NSA’s budget and resources, they threatened, strong-armed, blackmailed, and intimidated the agency until they got what they wanted.
So, I was able to sit-rep the admiral, leaving out nothing (with the single exception, of course, of Wonder’s presence) and pausing and repeating as he took notes. I waited until I’d finished to ask what I really wanted to know about: the FORTE satellite I needed shifted. Without its capabilities, we’d be operating essentially blind.
I heard the door open. Avi waved at me as he came down the hall. “Admiral—hold on a sec—”
I cupped my palm over the mouthpiece. So?”
“They’re gone—pulled out. Chartered a plane out of Switzerland. Flight plan includes a five-hour stopover in Geneva, then an overnight in Cyprus, and a final destination of Beirut.”
The fucking plan was in motion. Had to be. It made perfect sense to me that Lantos was going to pull money from his account in Switzerland, grab some muscle in Cyprus, and then head toward Damascus from Beirut. I needed that fucking FORTE bird—and I needed it now.
“Things are about to blow wide open,” I told Kenny Ross. “There’s no time to waste, Admiral.”
“We’re facing a lot of resistance here,” Kenny Ross said. a “The bird over China can’t be moved—some code-word project for the White House. The Chairman’s pushing hard to get the Ukraine bird shifted—but they’re telling him it’s going to be at least another twelve, maybe sixteen hours until we can pull it off—if we can pull it off at all. It’s darn hard, Dick, since he can’t be specific about why he needs it.”
Didn’t he understand timing was crucial? “What’s the goddamn hold up?”
“The usual junk. The Agency is screaming that we’re exceeding our mission parameters—whatever the heck those are. The DCI even called Chairman Crocker demanding to know why we want a FORTE all of a sudden. State is convinced we’re about to dismantle two decades of careful diplomacy—even though nothing’s ever been accomplished. And that ex-journalist sonofabitch they brought in to run the NSC is demanding to know why we want what we want, too. He’s been trying to make steers out of the Joint Chiefs ever since he was appointed—I think he guesses the Chairman has something going, and he wants a piece of it, or of him, or both. Then there are the usual interservice rivalries—the Air Force wants a slice of this, even though they have no idea what we’re doing. Oh—then there’s politics. Not to mention the departmental budgets—which are allegedly due on the president’s desk in less than a month.”
His voice grew serious in tone. “Frankly, this op had better pan out, Dick, because the Chairman’s kicked a lot of butt and called in a lot of markers on your behalf.”
Had he? Well, frankly, friends, calling in political markers, wheeling and dealing budget items, and kicking interservice butt should be what being Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is all about. The sorry fact of the matter is that too few of the people wearing stars are willing to lay those stars on the line anymore when it comes to backing up those of us who are actually doing the dirty work in the trenches.
The sorry result of the sorry fact is that when the folks who wear stars don’t lead, the people who wear scars—operators like me—get a little more hesitant about following ’em. And when that happens, the whole system begins to disintegrate. So, while I was gratified that the Chairman was kicking ass and taking names on my behalf, I hoped he realized that he wasn’t doing anything more than his job.
But I held my temper in check. No use mouthing off at Kenny Ross. “Try to get the fucking thing shifted ASAP, okay, Admiral?”
“Will do. Meanwhile, what’s the plan?”
“We’re going to shift our AO eastward as soon as we can.” He paused. I could hear him scribbling something. “Is that wise?”
“Say what, Admiral?”
“Moving before we know anything specific?”
That was the nuclear submariner in him speaking. Boomer COs don’t do it if it ain’t on a checklist. And moving eastward before we had a location to go to was not a list-checkable item, even though I knew Werner and Ehud were on the move. But I wasn’t about to divulge that nugget. Too many ways for the information to run amok. Too dangerous for Dickie—and the rest of us.
So I was noncommittal. “It gives me a jump on the situation.”
I heard him scribbling again. I guess it made some sort of sense, because he responded by saying—somewhat tersely: “Check in with me in eight hours. Give me a sit-rep.”
“Will this phone work from where we’re going?”
“It should—but y’know, Dick, no one’s ever tried it before.” The phone in my ear went dead.
No one’s ever tried it before. Right. Sounds like the story of my life, Admiral.
I cradled the receiver on my own phone.
I was about to make some smartass remark when I saw the look on Avi Ben Gal’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Yeah. Right. “Avi—”
The Israeli balled his fists. “He’s a damn traitor, Dick.”
“Who?”
“Ehud. Has to be. He did the target assessment at the cultural center. No other reason for him to show up the way he did—the last time less than a day before the explosion.” He looked at me. “But why?”
Why? Why had Buckshot Brannigan, Manny Tanto, and the rest of Grant Griffith’s crew sold out? Why had Dawg Dawkins done the same thing? The answer was because when the merde hit the ventilateur, they turned out to be greedy, selfish, unprincipled turncoats who betrayed the uniform they’d worn and the flag under which they’d served—for money.
Avi had
told me the same thing about Ehud earlier—he just hadn’t paid attention to what he’d said.
So, I reminded him. “Avi—remember when I said that Ehud might not be on the side of the angels?”
“So?”
“So—what did you tell me?” Avi gave me a blank look.
“What you told me,” I said, “was, ’Ehud is on the side of Ehud.’”
The look on Avi’s face told me he’d heard what I’d said—but that he was having a hard time digesting it. Avi’s values are very strong—he loves his country. He believes strongly in what he does. I do, too. And so, I shared his anguish, his pain, and his need for revenge. But to achieve that final element, we had to go east.
“Listen up, fellow crusaders,” I said. “It’s time to sharpen the swords, pack the armor, and leave for the Holy Land.”
Wonder’s hands were on his hips. “And who the fuck are you all of a sudden, King Richard the Lionhearted?”
“What’s so wrong with that—King Richard sounds pretty fucking good to me.”
Wonder turned to Avi, who despite himself had cracked a smile. “I guess he wants to be da king.” Then he turned back to me. “So, then I guess it’s Oh, thank you, your royal pusnutted highness,” and ’by your leave, your grand sphincterfaced panjandrumcy,’” he said, bowing and scraping like one of those unctuous factotums in the B movies that starred people like John Agar, Basil Rathbone, and Yvonne De Carlo, “Well, okay, your dumb-shitted majesty—you can be King Richard the Lionhearted. But only to strangers. To those of us who know you and love you. Skipper, you’ll always be Lionheart the Dick.”
It was once said (by 60 Minutes co-editor Mike Wallace) of Ollie and me that we are somewhat alike, in that the “powers that be” went after us because we pissed off too many important people. Let me say for the record that I disagree. I believe they went after Ollie because he shredded paper—destroyed evidence. But they went after me for shredding people. Let me also add for the record that I had more fun doing my shredding than Ollie had doing his.
Baksheesh is Arabic for bribe.
That chip is called DREC—for Digitally Reconnoiterable Electronic Component. DREC allows NSA to unscramble signals and also trace the transmission location. In the early nineties. NSA convinced Congress to allow it to install DREC chip in every piece of secure communications equipment purchased by the government. The agency argued that it would prevent the equipment from being misused, and also aid in recovering stolen equipment because the signal’s emanation location could be pinpointed. In reality, NSA simply wanted to be able to read everyone’s secure comms—from the CIA’s internal e-mail, to State’s confidential cables, to White House and National Security Council memos, something that would give the huge agency additional political clout in these days of intelligence agency budgetary downsizing. Only the Joint Chiefs of Staff and its component service chiefs managed to escape NSA’s wholesale eavesdropping scheme.
Part Three: Matryoshka
Chapter 19
TEL AVIV WAS UNSEASONABLY HOT AND MUGGY—IT FELT MORE like Barbados than Ben Gurion as we stepped through the hatch and onto the patterned steel treads of the mobile stairway. We’d flown on Air France from De Gaulle Two so as not to attract attention. Most seasoned travelers coming out of France prefer the Air France or El Al flights out of Orly, the older airport that lies due south of Paris. Orly is much closer to the city, and the flights are less crowded. But since Orly is the hub for most of the flights to Africa and the Middle East, it is also blanketed by the French, Israeli, Egyptian, Moroccan, Libyan, Syrian, Iranian, and Iraqi intelligence services. My guess is that 25 percent of the people working as ticket agents, security personnel, ground crews, and various airline employees are, in fact, intel weenies, secret agents, and/or covert operators.
So, we skipped Orly, took the bus to De Gaulle Two from Porte Maillot, braved the crowds of tourists in the terminal, drank overpriced beer, and flew on a jam-packed, indifferently staffed Air France A-300 Airbus that departed three and a half hours late, and arrived in Tel Aviv long after dark. Avi left Wonder and me to ride the shuttle bus to the terminal and fight the long lines at immigration. He was recognized as soon as he started down the mobile stairway to the tarmac, waved aside, welcomed warmly, and guided into a light-colored sedan that sped off in a direction directly opposite to the main terminal.
Wonder and I took the shuttle to the huge arrivals pavilion, waited on line until our passports were stamped by a uniformed NYL—that’s nubile young lovely in case you forgot—then claimed our bags. We took the Green Lane past lounging customs inspectors, then wandered out of the air-conditioned terminal into the steamy night, working our way through the bustling throng of people milling outside, waiting to greet arriving friends and relatives. We fought our way to the curb, dropped our baggage, and looked for Avi.
He was nowhere to be seen. We stood there for five minutes or so, fighting off the cab and limo drivers who promised best fare meester, best fare meester, in Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, and Turkish. Then a small white sedan with black-and-white Army plates screeched to a halt in the no parking zone where we stood, and the headlights flashed rapidly half a dozen times.
I squinted through the windshield. It was Avi. He was waving. “Over here, over here,” he called. “I got us a ride.”
It had been some years since I’d been in Israel, and frankly, the place looked like a different country. Most people who haven’t been here visualize Israel as either a land filled with bedouin tents, date palm trees, citrus groves, and camels—kind of a Disneyland Saudi Arabia, or they see it as an extension of the Lower East Side of Manhattan—not so much the land of milk and honey as the land of bagels, lox, and kosher pastrami.
Well, friends, wake up and smell the falafel: neither is the case. Israel is a modern, vibrant country. You may be in the Middle East, but Tel Aviv resembles Miami more than it does Damascus. These days, you leave the airport, and all of a sudden you’re whipping into a high-speed merge lane that swings you out onto a superhighway that runs between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Yes, there are still citrus groves and dunam after dunam of cotton and soybeans that grow within sight of the highway as you climb toward Jerusalem past the Latrun salient. But go west, toward Tel Aviv’s coastal plain, and you’ll find yourself cruising at eighty miles an hour past kilometer after kilometer of glass-and-steel office complexes, shopping malls, and huge blocks of modernistic apartment houses.
In fact, I didn’t remember much of the route to Herzlyia at all. In the years since I’d visited, a whole new highway system had been constructed. I remembered stop-and-go traffic. This was eight lanes of uninterrupted testosterone driving.
Have I mentioned that Israelis develop an Attitude when they get behind the wheel? No? Well, let me put it this way: do not think that because some Israeli drivers look like rabbis (or other clergy), they will turn the other cheek and let you pass them on an open road.
Turning the other cheek is a New Testament canon. The God of Israel, Yahweh—the unnameable name—is the God who brought Moses out of Egypt. Yahweh is God as SEALs see God: the tough, unyielding, Old Testament God of War—the “I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amelek from under heaven” God.
Bottom line: you do not want to play “chicken” with that devout-looking bearded fellow in the Renault-2 over there, dressed in rabbinical black, wearing a knit kippa (skull cap), and sporting peyot (Orthodox side curls), because he’s not gonna say a prayer for you—he’s simply gonna run your butt into the barrier and wave litrahot—see ya later—as you roll over. Avi, whose behavior normally reflects his soft-spoken demeanor, was no less macho than your average rabbi. He hunched over the wheel, put kosher pedal to kosher metal, and we flew at 160 kilometers an hour north, skirting the Tel Aviv metropolitan area without a single traffic light, until we reached a huge interchange that I didn’t recall at all. “Didn’t this used to be berry fields?”
“Yup,” said Avi through gritted teeth as he swung the
car to the left and floored the accelerator again. We sped past Ramat Hasharon, where I’d spent many a night drinking Bombay with IAF (Israeli Air Force) officers who could go me one-for-one with the drink I call Jewish Booze—J&B Scotch—and proceeded due west, toward the sea.
Just past the huge tennis center on my left I saw the lights of the coastal highway, and all of a sudden we were at Gelilot junction. On our right just above the highway sat the low, curved silhouette of Mossad headquarters. Adjacent to Mossad, but in a different compound above a huge supermarket, sat another complex that contained many of AMAN’s offices. Avi veered into the left lane, cut past a double tractor trailer, shot across a no-pass lane, and slalomed into the northbound Haifa highway traffic. “Almost home,” he said triumphantly. “I may have beaten the old record.”
He cut off a Volvo station wagon, performed a credible four-wheel drift, and sailed onto the exit ramp that bore the word Beach in Hebrew and English. We turned left, drove under the highway, and—holy shit, straight into Beverly fucking Hills.
The last time I’d been to Avi’s home—roughly six years ago—I’d found my way by driving along a pitted dirt road through an ugly, refuse-strewn industrial zone that surrounded the beach community of Herzlyia Pituach like a rusty belt.
Nothing of that one remained. Instead, Avi cruised slowly down wide streets filled with pedestrians and lined with espresso bars and trendy Italian, French, and Oriental restaurants. I peered through the windshield. To my left, a long, curved boulevard flanked by Art Deco-style street lamps stretched toward the ocean. “What’s that?” I asked Avi.
“The road to the new marina—they finished it last year. There are fifteen hundred boats moored there.”
“Shit—I didn’t think there were fifteen hundred boats in Israel.”
“Things have changed, Dick.”
I guess they had.
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