“So what do you think?” Rendi pressed, leaning forward and trying not to topple any of the mountains of paperwork between her and Arish.
“There are only five possible sources for the nuclear material you found traces of near Megiddo,” he said, reading from the report the scientist at Hebrew University had given Habash. “The first and most likely is Iran. They could have smuggled it in through Syria or Jordan. The second possible source is Pakistan—the Khan network. We know they have sold to Iran. It’s possible they have sold to Iran’s surrogates. The third is the former Soviet Union. Ukrainian generals have all kinds of nuclear material for sale to the highest bidder. They’ll do business with anyone. Fortunately, their biggest customer is the United States, which conducts false-flag operations all over Eastern Europe, buying nuclear material on behalf of ‘bad guys’ whom their intel operatives pretend to be representing. Fourth is the United States itself—unlikely. American nukes are quite secure.”
“And fifth?” Abe asked.
“You won’t believe this, but fifth is Israel. A few right-wing fanatics have managed to get jobs in Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona. We’re a bit worried that someday one of them might steal some material and give it to fanatical settlers who will use it to prevent being evacuated from the West Bank. Unlikely, but possible. We check very carefully, but we can never be sure of the ideological bent of all our nuclear workers. Remember that traitor Mordechai Vanunu.”
“No one is above suspicion here,” Abe explained.
“There’s only one way to be sure.” Arish shrugged, closed the file, and handed it to Rendi. “We’ll take possession of the sample and follow its nuclear trail. It’s unlikely to lead anywhere. The leakage may not be continuous, but we’ll try. More important, we need to get our hands on this Dennis Savage character. He seems to be able to connect all the dots—the American Colony, Megiddo, Iran, Ruggles. Where is he?”
“Last I saw him was in Jerusalem,” Rendi said tensely.
“It’s possible—probable—that he was in Megiddo yesterday,” Abe volunteered. At his side, Rendi stiffened.
Her former boyfriend noticed, too. “You don’t think he can help us figure out what is going on?”
Rendi reluctantly admitted, “I think he probably can. I just need to know for sure which side of the law he’s operating on with this.”
“Or maybe you don’t want to know,” Abe said, a bit snidely.
Arish waited a moment before speaking. “Then perhaps he won’t answer our questions willingly. We’ll need to set a trap to get him to surface.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Rendi countered.
Abe snapped—he’d finally had it with his wife’s obstinate refusal to admit the truth. “You don’t think it’s necessary! Why don’t you pick up the phone and call him, then!”
Rendi stared at her husband helplessly. A long moment passed. Finally she said, in a small, defeated voice, “He wouldn’t answer.”
Abe breathed heavily and turned to Arish, who had sat with averted eyes during the exchange. His wife had capitulated, he knew, and so now the next thing to do was come up with a plan for getting Dennis into custody. “What do we use as bait?” he asked.
“You,” replied Arish, pointing in the general direction of Team Ringel.
“Me?” Abe asked rhetorically. Then quickly he answered his own question. “Okay, I’ll be the bait.”
“No. It has to be the whole family,” Arish insisted. “Savage knows that all of you are aware of what Rendi found. He will bite only if he can get all of you at once.”
“No way,” Abe retorted. “I’m not putting Emma and Rendi at risk again. No way.”
“You have no choice. He will not go after you alone. You must be together.”
Abe knew that Arish was right. He also knew that Rendi and Emma would insist on going along with him.
Rendi and Abe left Arish and walked the three blocks from his lab to Mossad headquarters. There the agent in charge cooked up a scheme to lure Savage into action, using the entire Ringel family as bait. Abe agreed to this only once he was assured that a crack Mossad protective squad would always be near them.
Over her cell phone—which had begun to work soon after she’d survived the car bombing—Rendi arranged for a family dinner at the Pomegranate Restaurant, a small natural-foods café on the outskirts of Jerusalem. She suspected that Denny would be monitoring her phone. All the “waiters” were Mossad operatives, as were the “parking attendants,” the “chefs,” and the other customers. As Team Ringel sat down at an outdoor table to enjoy a dinner of food grown on a local kibbutz, the trap was set. The food was terrible, having been prepared by Mossad “chefs,” but the group pretended to be enjoying themselves, wondering if Denny would appear.
After the main course—artichokes in a pomegranate vinaigrette—a car drove up to the front of the restaurant, and a man with a bald head and black goatee got out of it and walked away from the restaurant. Rendi observed this and nudged Abe under the table. When the man was about one hundred feet away, he pressed a button and began to run toward another car, parked around the corner. Mossad agents were waiting for him. They had prepared for a remotely detonated car bomb and had electronically done what they had to do to prevent the bomb from detonating. Abe and Rendi stood as they watched five Mossad agents descend upon the waiting car in front of the restaurant. Rendi gasped as they pulled Denny from the driver’s seat.
Abe couldn’t stop his wife from running to him. “Please tell me!” she screamed. “Please tell me you’re working a job!” Abe, who followed her, desperately trying to corral her, understood what she was saying. She was pleading with him to admit that he was working an undercover assignment.
“Stay back, ma’am,” one of the agents commanded Rendi. She didn’t heed the order and rushed to where the men had subdued Dennis.
“How? How could you do this?” She was agitated, her fury boiling over.
At first it appeared that Dennis wouldn’t say anything, but after a moment of tense silence he spoke softly. “Rendi, I’m sorry. I had no choice. You could never understand.” The Mossad agents dragged him into an unmarked police car.
Rendi felt as if she’d been slapped across the face. She stood on the sidewalk dumbfounded, watching as the car sped away.
There was nothing but silence as a cab drove the four of them back to the King David Hotel. Two undercover policemen escorted Team Ringel and took up residence outside their hotel door. Rendi didn’t seem to notice anything, not her husband’s attempts to console her or Emma’s exclamations of disbelief or Habash’s quiet contemplation about what could have caused such a complete transformation in Denny.
They entered the hotel room, and Rendi lay down on the bed.
“Is there anything we should do?” Emma whispered to her father.
“I don’t know,” replied Abe sadly. He’d never seen his wife take something this hard.
A knock sounded at the door, and Habash went to see who it was. A short, muscular man with pockmarked skin and a tough demeanor entered. He introduced himself as Natan, the chief inspector assigned to Dennis’s case.
“Where is he?” Habash asked, accustomed to dealing with the authorities in matters involving the many detainees he had represented over the years.
“Mr. Savage was taken to a secret Mossad interrogation center.”
Habash knew what this meant. He translated the man’s terse language for Abe. “I know where many of their ‘secret’ locations are. This is probably the one beneath the cellar of an old British jail near an abandoned Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem.”
Abe sighed and glanced at Rendi through the door of their suite. He assumed she could hear their conversation. His wife always heard everything.
“Are you going to torture him?” Abe asked, not wanting to be complicit in any illegalities.
“Not physically,” the chief interrogator assured him. “There are better ways, I can assure you, esp
ecially for a trained agent like Savage.”
“When they’re finished with him, he’ll wish they had used physical torture,” Habash said angrily.
“What will you do?” Abe asked.
“We cannot tell you, and you do not want to know. All I can say is that everyone has demons in his past, and we know how to bring the demons back. Our methods require extensive knowledge of our subject. One size does not fit all when it comes to interrogation techniques. But that is why I am here. I want to talk to your wife. We understand she knows him better than anyone. I need to know everything I can about Mr. Savage’s past—about his demons.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Rendi announced from the doorway between the front room of the hotel and the bedroom. Nobody had heard her approach, and all four of them jumped at the sound of her voice.
“Please, Mrs. Ringel. There are many lives at stake,” the inspector pleaded.
But Rendi stepped back into the bedroom and shut the door.
The chief inspector looked helplessly at Abe.
“Give me a minute,” Abe said before following Rendi into the bedroom.
When he opened the door, he found Rendi in tears on the bed. The sight stopped him in his tracks. He and his wife had been through so much together, and she almost never cried.
“Rendi,” he said gently, approaching her and sitting by her side. “Rendi—”
She took a deep breath and dried the tears from her face.
“I know you care for Dennis—”
Rendi looked at Abe sharply, but he soldiered on.
“I know you care about him, but, Rendi, he may be complicit in the planning of a nuclear attack. Anything you know that could stop it… You have to tell them.”
She shook her head sadly. “That man today in the street, who tried to kill us, that’s not the Dennis I know and love.”
“No,” agreed Abe somberly. “He’s not the man I’ve known these years. I can’t imagine what could have happened to change him so completely, but I think you know.”
They met each other’s gaze, and Abe saw that he was right. Rendi did know something.
She averted her eyes in an attempt to control her emotions. “In the field, if you can’t trust your partner, you’re dead. He’s trusted me with his secrets for decades, and I’ve kept them.”
Abe tenderly put his hand on her knee. “Rendi, the right thing to do is to help the investigators get information from him. With what’s at stake, anything is fair game.”
She covered her husband’s hand with hers. “I know. I know.” Her voice broke.
After they emerged from the bedroom, Rendi sat down next to Natan and looked into his eyes. “I will tell you what you need to know. You may use it to interrogate him. But I need you to promise that you will never publicly disclose it.”
“You have my promise,” Natan said, putting a hand over his heart.
Rendi then told the interrogators what she knew about Denny’s past. As she related the information Denny had confided to her years earlier, Emma’s eyes grew wide with shock. Abe then related his conversations with Dr. Eidelman and Nurse Mitchell. The interrogator took notes and then placed several phone calls, speaking in coded language that Team Ringel had difficulty following. Rendi managed to distinguish the word galech, which is a Yiddish colloquialism for “priest.”
Though she knew she’d done the right thing, she felt terribly guilty for spilling Dennis’s sordid secrets. The old Dennis, the Dennis who’d been her friend and saved her life, deserved better than this. But the man who’d tried to kill her and her family did not.
LIII
The Interrogation
DENNY WAS BROUGHT to the underground interrogation unit blindfolded, gagged, and shackled. After languishing for hours in a small, quiet cell, he was hustled down the narrow stairs to the cellar, and then, after a trapdoor in the floor was opened, he was lowered into a new cell. He was placed in a chair, and the blindfold, gag, and shackles were removed.
“It’s no use torturing me. I’m a trained intelligence operative. Your tactics won’t work on me. You can torture me, kill me, threaten my family. I won’t talk,” Denny said with cocky assurance.
“Why would we torture you?” the chief interrogator asked, smiling. “We know that such primitive methods would never work. We just want to ask you two or three questions.”
“What are they?” Dennis demanded. He’d been in tight spots before and rarely allowed himself to give in to fear. He was completely confident in his ability to withstand the Israelis’ questioning; he believed in the righteousness of his actions, and he trusted that God would come to his aid.
“Where is your nuclear laboratory?” the chief interrogator demanded, looming above Dennis. “What are your plans? Who are you working for or with? Iran? Pakistan? What was your role in the American Colony bombing?”
Dennis smiled calmly, in complete control of his emotions. “I won’t tell you anything. I don’t fear you. I have my God.”
They’d heard that before!
The interrogator stood over Dennis, appraising him. He’d questioned many men and used different tactics for different sorts. This kind of person, an agent of another government who believed that God was on his side, could only be broken emotionally. Physical torture was useless on a man such as Dennis Savage, who was inured to pain or threats. Fortunately for the investigator, Rendi had been thorough with her information. “I want to introduce you to someone from your past,” the interrogator said slowly.
“Rendi? Fine,” Dennis spit cavalierly. “Bring her in. I can handle her.”
“No, not her. Someone from your far more distant past.”
Denny was taken off guard by the interrogator’s reference and frantically tried to determine who it could be. He didn’t have long to puzzle over it. Instantly the door to the cell opened, the lights were lowered somewhat, a strange smell began to spread through the room, and a shadowy figure appeared.
Dennis couldn’t see who it was in the darkness.
“Hello, Dennis,” the man said. Dennis immediately recognized that working-class Boston accent. “Do you remember me? I’m Father Bulger.”
At the mention of that name, Denny tried to stand but couldn’t. The room grew darker, and the smell—which he recognized as incense, a smell he was very familiar with from his childhood in the Catholic Church—wafted toward him and mingled with the strong odor of alcohol on Father Bulger’s breath. Suddenly he felt a jab in his buttocks, as the interrogator injected him with a drug.
“This will help you relax,” the interrogator said in a soothing voice. The effects of the drug were near immediate. Denny grew disoriented; it became difficult for him to remember where he was. He tried to fight it. This is now. Father Bulger was back then. This is now. It’s a trick. Don’t fall for it. Then gradually his mind and his emotions went back to the time when he was a thirteen-year-old altar boy, when Father Bulger would take him to the dark, dank basement of his church.
Denny was transported back to those terror-filled years as he heard Father Bulger issue his frequent demand: “Lower your pants, and we will continue where we left off.” As the priest moved closer, young Denny pulled down his own pants. “I know you enjoyed it, as I did. That’s why you never told your parents. You didn’t want it to stop. But you were afraid. Don’t be afraid. I will be gentle, as I always have been with you.”
“Get away from me, you pervert!” Denny screamed.
The interrogators forced Savage facedown onto what looked like a massage table. They shackled his hands to the sides of the table, pulled his pants and underpants down, spread his legs and chained them to the sides of the table. As Denny screamed at the top of his lungs, “Father Bulger” walked slowly toward the foot of the table and put his hand on Denny’s leg. The disorienting drug was coursing through his veins and making it difficult to distinguish past from present.
“There is nobody here to help you,” the priest intoned. “You are alone with me. Y
our parents know. Yet they do nothing. My superiors know. The police know. They will not help you. Only I can help you. I am your only true friend. Put your trust in me. Put your trust in me. Tell me what I need to know to save you. Tell me. Tell me.”
Denny’s disorientation got worse. His mind was a jumble of confusion. The drug increased its effect on his brain, making him drowsy and confused. Was this a dream? Was it real? Was it back then? Is it now? Is Father Bulger really here? His emotions took control of his mind. He let out an animalistic scream. Then he blacked out, but only for what seemed like a moment. Unconsciousness would not save him from this descent to a hell that had been the source of his secret nightmares for decades.
Denny continued to scream, loudly at first, as if to drown out the priest’s importuning, and then, when it became clear no one was listening, lower. Finally his scream became whimpers. Then acquiescing silence, and ultimately a flow of words and information.
LIV
The Whole Truth
WE GOT WHAT WE NEED, thanks to you,” the interrogator said to Rendi as he entered the room where Team Ringel was ensconced. Unwilling to sit in their hotel room waiting anxiously for the interrogators to tell them what they’d learned, Rendi had insisted that the agents take them to the interrogation unit.
They had spent several tense hours in a cold room with only stale coffee to warm them. The mood in the room was heavy. Emma was adamantly opposed to rough interrogation of any kind, and instead of being thrilled to be alive, to have her family alive, she’d been arguing with Abe.
“It’s not pleasant, but it will save lives! Thousands, perhaps!” Abe thundered. “Maybe even ours.”
Emma refused to see his point. Even when Habash tried to comfort her, she remained angry. Rendi said little throughout. Her mind was on Dennis, on her former friend. She still felt empathy for him, maybe for the man she’d thought she knew. She felt guilty about revealing the secret of his sexual abuse at the hands of Father Bulger—a secret he’d long ago confided in her because his nightmares were becoming unbearable and because he trusted her never to reveal it. But trust had to be mutual, Rendi had reluctantly concluded when she realized that he’d tried to kill her and had been preparing to kill so many more.
The Trials of Zion Page 27