Cornfield wobbled into the room, late as usual to the division heads Monday morning meeting. His face looked tired and his artificial eye constantly shed tears. Hushed, scurrilous whispers accompanied his entrance. “He’s all washed up,” whispered the head of Tevel.
“That’s what happens when you keep mixing amphetamines with alcohol,” confided the head of Neviot.
Alex weighed in. “Don’t celebrate just yet. Cornfield is like the phoenix. Every time people thought he was down, he managed to rise up and destroy his enemies. And I certainly don’t intend to be one of them.”
Cornfield heavily sat in his oversized chair, contemptuously rejecting the support offered him by his second in command, Mot’ke Hassin. “Gentlemen, life is an endless collection of unplanned circumstances, but we can’t complain about presents that fall right into the web we’ve spent long years spinning and spreading.”
The director’s sudden outburst of poetic musing caused a surprised wave of whispered murmurs to pass through the room.
“I’m referring to the news about the Syrian plutogenic reactor brought to us to the head of Caesarea.” Cornfield’s voice now wore a tone of mockery. “Who literally sacrificed his body and soul to obtain this particular bit of intelligence, I must add.” He snickered to leave no doubt as to his thoughts on the matter. “And, well, the prime minister is asking me to present him with operative recommendations. What do we know and what can we recommend?”
Alex, head of the Research and Intelligence Division, was the first to speak. “We already knew of surface-to-surface missiles being developed by the Syrians, aided by Iranian funding, but the fact the Syrians are about to have a nuclear reactor as well is both disturbing and surprising.”
“What’s surprising about it?” Mot’ke Steak face barked at him. “You guys have had almost a month to deal with this. Just give us your operative recommendation and spare us the empty speeches.”
Alex looked at him with distaste.
Breiness, head of the Neviot Division tried to help. “The Directorate of Military Intelligence, with the approval of the prime minister, has been instructed to provide us with the intercepted communications between the Syrian president and his aides via ComInt.”
“And?” Cornfield asked with impatience.
“Nothing. Nada. The bastards don’t use cellular phones. They maintain radio silence and conduct their communications with extreme secrecy in private rooms.”
“In other words, you have nothing,” Cornfield summed up.
“It’s not like we’re not doing anything,” Alex got back to the conversation. “The Military Intelligence’s 8100 Unit has been instructed to change the course of the Ofek Nine satellite and start looking for dugouts and new constructions in the mountains close to Damascus to locate the whereabouts of a nuclear reactor under construction.”
“And what have they found so far? Let me guess, nothing?”
“Not exactly,” Jonathan Soudry, head of Tzomet, remarked. “A month ago, my reconnaissance officers sent out an urgent request to all agents in the field, asking them to keep an eye out and to send us any piece of information regarding large-scale digging and construction activities in the scope of moving a mountain.”
“Moving a mountain?” Cornfield muttered.
“Yes, that’s the amount of digging necessary for the construction of a plutogenic nuclear reactor. Ruth the Moabitess’ men, who are training in the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, have spotted Iranian trucks headed to the Syrian border.”
“So what? These could have been part of the convoys regularly transferring weapons to the Hezbollah,” Cornfield yelled at him.
The head of Tzomet lingered for a brief second, preparing the surprise he had in store. “No! We are talking about double-trailer trucks carrying heavy machinery and engineering equipment,” he said victoriously.
“Is that it?” Cornfield failed to be impressed. “Anybody else have some information? Recommendations?”
He looked at the Tevel Department head, who added, “We’ve asked the Americans to have their Icarus satellite pass over Syria to check for any large-scale, new dugouts. The answer we received was that it’d take them about a month to fit our request into their schedule.”
“Those people would ask you to wait for an opening in their schedule even if the next World War started,” Hassin remarked, and Cornfield silently answered him with a content smile. The remaining people in the room simply kept quiet.
“And what does our renowned Caesarea Division chief recommend that we do?” Cornfield wondered aloud without establishing eye contact with Arik.
Before Arik could answer, the door buzzed open, and a soldier secretary came into the room. She held a folded note that she presented to Shlomo Zimmer, Cornfield’s bureau chief.
Zimmer opened the note, read it and transferred it to Cornfield with a big smile on his lips. Cornfield read it as quickly and said, “All right, this is the breakthrough we’ve been expecting and it happened no thanks to you. Our satellite, Ofek 9, has just discovered major earthworks taking place in the mountains near the Deir ez-Zor military base, next to the Iraq-Syria border.”
He turned to Arik. “Yes, we’re still waiting for Caesarea’s operative angle on this. What do you have to say?”
“I met with the head of the IDF Operations Directorate and the head of the Directorate of Intelligence. Tonight, a unit of IDF agents, along with teams from the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit and the Navy Seals are supposed to infiltrate the area of the targets we’ve marked. They will penetrate the zone from the American Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. Their objective is to look for signs of new, special construction being built during the night. One of the places they’ll check is the area in which earthworks are taking place near Deir ez-Zor.”
“No! I won’t authorize sending our soldiers over there,” Cornfield erupted. “I don’t want to take unnecessary risks. Send Tzomet’s local agents over there. The Arabs who worked with us when we took out Husniyah.”
“With all due respect, that’s not your call to make,” said Arik. “The chief of staff is the one authorizing IDF operations. Neither you nor I are the ones determining who to send to perform special military operations. In general, every cross-border military operation requires the authorization of the Security Cabinet. This is out of both our hands and responsibility.”
Cornfield and Arik stared at each other like two stags in mating season about to lock antlers.
Alex hurried to try and get the discussion back to practical terms. “The IDF won’t be enough in this case. We need to send our own people there to check the place and collect ground, water, and vegetation samples to determine whether any radioactive activity is taking place in the area. If the answer is positive, the reactor is already operational, and we have a big problem on our hands.”
Cornfield wrinkled his forehead in an attempt to understand Alex’s last remark.
“Supposedly, we have some leeway to operate while the reactor is still under construction,” Alex explained, “but the minute it’s operational, any strike would cause a vast ecological disaster. This is why we don’t have any time to spare.”
“Trying to cover your ass by saying opposite things in the same sentence again?” Cornfield scolded him.
Alex didn’t reply, but a sarcastic smile snuck into the corners of his mouth.
“I’m against this entire thing,” Cornfield said after thinking for another moment. “I’m not sure this is even something Mossad should handle. This is now strictly a military issue. They’d end up using the Air Force anyway. If it destroys the reactor, IDF and the chief of staff will get all the credit. But if something goes wrong, the politicians are going to blame it all on us.”
Arik couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Why can’t you military men ever see the bigger picture?”
“What’s all this talk about you and us?” Mot’ke Hassin shouted at him from the other end of the table. “Did you serve in another
army? Weren’t you a part of Flotilla Thirteen?”
“I think we need to take a look at the wider angle,” Arik answered calmly. “If we nail down the plutogenic reactor along with the Syrian general in charge of it, we’ll double our gain: eliminating the problem and discouraging the Iranians from further developing nuclear facilities at the same time.”
Cornfield demonstrated his discomfort with a series of coughs. “Mossad won’t take any action regarding this matter, and that’s the end of it.”
Everyone sitting around the table, other than Mot’ke Hassin, lowered their eyes.
As soon as he headed out of the meeting and retrieved his cell phone from security, Arik felt it buzzing in his hand. He took a look at the message Eva had sent him: Darling, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. Love, Eva.”
At that particular moment, he liked the thought that he was loved.
Chapter 40
The Aquarium—The Prime Minister’s Office, Jerusalem
That very night, an Israeli Hercules transport aircraft took off from southern Turkey and headed south, toward the border of Iraq and Syria. A combined team of twenty-five IDF elite unit soldiers, commanded by Captain Yuval Ebenstein, was dropped by parachute next to Ras al-Ayn, about six miles off the city of Deir ez-Zor, off the banks of the Euphrates River. From afar, the lights of the hanging bridge could be seen above the river. The soldiers gathered in one of the wadis, buried their parachutes and started their dirt bikes, and sped east to the barren hills of the Syrian desert, toward the area in which the giant dugouts had been located. The force took well-concealed positions and prepared for a week-long stay in the field.
At the end of the week, the force returned to Israel with photos of the facility as well as ground and vegetation samples that were immediately sent to the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona.
The results weren’t conclusive, but in the meantime, the Israeli satellite, Ofek, provided further photos of the site. Those were sent by the Tevel Division people to the CIA headquarters in Langley to be compared with photos the American Icarus satellites had taken across the world.
A day later, the deputy director of the CIA called Alex. “There’s no doubt about it,” he told his Israeli colleague. “This is a plutogenic reactor, the twin brother of the North Korean reactor in Yongbyon. We assume this isn’t a strategic cooperation but a simple transaction. The motive is money. North Korea sells missile production and nuclear technologies to the highest bidder. We can only assume there are also North Korean scientists, engineers, and technicians in Syria to supervise the construction and create a training system.”
Alex hurried to update Cornfield, who was on his way for his weekly meeting with Prime Minister Lolik.
Lolik, an experienced veteran, spat at him as soon as he entered the room. “Come on, spill the beans. I know you have something you can’t wait to tell me.”
Cornfield reported everything he knew. The prime minister listened and said, “We’ve declared more than once that we won’t allow enemy countries to develop nuclear capabilities. So we definitely need to attack. The only question is when, and the answer depends on another question: Do we operate on our own or with the Americans?”
“We have a problem with the current American administration,” Cornfield recited the summary he’d read in the intelligence reports Alex and his men had provided him. “It’s the end of the current president’s term, and he is busy with clearing his own table. It’s not probable he’d be willing to get involved with another adventure in the Middle East. Especially after the mess the Americans had gotten themselves into during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We think the Americans would only agree to take diplomatic actions against Syria.”
“So we’re completely on our own here?” the prime minister asked, and his little eyes sparked.
“Yes, and there’s a price to pay. Should we attack on our own, without American involvement or assurances, Syria might attack our home front. They have missiles that cover most of the country’s territory, not to mention the possibility of Hezbollah joining the party, along with Syria from the north, and possibly Hamas from Gaza. The entire country could be under attack. Besides, if we take out North Korean scientists and technicians, we’d be opening a new front and creating new enemies for ourselves.”
The prime minister hesitated, but suddenly had an idea. “I’ll turn to the chief of staff and ask him to conduct a ‘war game’ with your people and the IDF. The game is going to be based on the information you’ve given me without the people being involved knowing its real background. As far as they will be concerned, it will only be a theoretical game, but it will give us all options and situations we might be faced with should we decide to attack. Enlist the finest minds from the universities and research institutions and have them sign confidentiality statements. I want Alex Abramovich to be in charge of this operation, understood?”
Cornfield muttered something unintelligible.
“Wasn’t Alex’s division the one that conducted the evaluation you’ve based your survey on?” Lolik asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Yes, sort of,” Cornfield had to admit.
The prime minister pressed the intercom button. “Ask Bar-Nathan to come in here.”
Cornfield cringed in his chair. The motion had not gone unnoticed by the prime minister, and he flashed a mean smile. “Come in,” he called with pronounced friendliness to Arik. “Arik and I have been discussing a few things. It’d be a shame to let him wait outside when he can contribute so much to our conversation.”
“I…had no idea you two were having meetings.” Cornfield gave Arik a menacing look.
“I meet with a lot of people,” the prime minister said with exaggerated cheerfulness. “I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I?”
All three of them knew the prime minister was allowed to meet with Arik. However, protocol demanded Arik to report the meeting invitation to his supervisor unless he had been specifically ordered not to do that. Cornfield wondered what could have caused his friend, the prime minister, to undermine him. Was it just Arik, or were there more people in the organization he was heading who were in direct contact with the prime minister?
“Sir,” he said angrily, “you appointed me to—”
“Sure, sure. I appointed you to run Mossad, but this doesn’t mean I can’t pull my own weight in it, right? It’s just that I had the impression—how can I say it?—that your organization wasn’t willing to take some of the burden involved with the intelligence-gathering tasks and preferred the army to perform them with the Air Force and its elite units.”
Cornfield felt furious. Who had leaked his position in the division heads meeting in which he had demanded the army would take care of the nuclear reactor problem? The only one who had something to gain from it was Arik. He must be the informer then, and both he and the prime minister had set him a trap. “I don’t think Mossad is ready to undertake such a type of operation yet, Mr. Prime Minister,” Cornfield tried to excuse his latest decisions. The prime minister rewarded him with a cynical smile.
“And in any case, Tzomet agents…weren’t there,” Cornfield mumbled. “It was the IDF’s Magellan special forces unit who parachuted there and brought us the samples.”
“Begging your pardon. That’s not entirely true,” Arik said with the generosity of winners. “It was our Tzomet people who brought and verified the initial information…”
“Brought by you,” the prime minister hissed. Arik recalled all the times he had been told about the prime minister’s tendency to turn his subordinates against each other so he could increase his level of control over them. This was the first time he encountered it firsthand. “Before you came into the room, I suggested to Cornfield we conduct a war game.” The prime minister turned to Arik. “What do you say?”
“I don’t know what the results of such a war game would be, but I believe it would show us our w
indow of opportunity is quickly closing. If Israel wants to act, it needs to do it right away. We mustn’t allow Syria to pass the threshold and possess an operational nuclear reactor. Should this happen, any attempt to attack it will cause a large-scale environmental disaster that might influence millions of people in Syria and Iraq, a disaster the entire world will blame us for.”
“What are you suggesting, then?”
“Skip the war game. We’ve no time to spare.”
Cornfield looked at Arik in amazement. He himself had never dared to contradict the ideas of his supreme commander in such a manner. Surprisingly, the prime minister smiled contentedly. “And why, pray tell, is that?” he asked in the sarcastic flowery language he loved so much.
“Because if it turns out the reactor isn’t active, we’ll have to attack anyway. I’m not especially worried about the American reaction. The American president is still furious at Syria because it allowed terrorists to infiltrate Iraq from its territory last year and harm American soldiers.”
“Good point.” The prime minister flattered him.
“It’s obvious to me we need to provide the Americans a general notification,” Arik continued, encouraged. “But we mustn’t share the details of the operation or the exact timing of the attack with them. Something like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ This way, they’ll be able to say, in retrospect, that they weren’t asked and didn’t know.”
“Agreed!” The prime minister called and turned to Cornfield. “I want you to go and meet the head of the CIA and update him. If there’ll be any problems, I’ll talk to the president directly.”
“All right,” said the defeated Cornfield.
“Take Arik and Alex with you. They speak better English than you do.”
Cornfield took the insult with a grim face. “I thought of taking Major General Hassin with me,” he said quietly, but was completely ignored by the prime minister.
“Are we agreed, then?” the prime minister asked.
Arik rose to his feet. “Am I dismissed, sir?”
To Kill a Shadow Page 20