The Algerian’s words were cut off by a muffled crack like that of two hands clapping together, a warm fluid spraying over Ariel’s face.
His hands came up, a reaction born of instinct as he seized control of the man’s gun hand—his eyes briefly registering the sight of blood spurting from a wound in his shoulder. Ze’ev, not two meters away, his suppressed Beretta recoiling back into his hands as he got off another shot.
The Algerian screamed out in pain as Ariel wrenched his arm backward, the semiautomatic clattering uselessly to the ground—his elbow slamming back into the man’s throat, sending him reeling backward into the pavement.
He saw the body of another gang member collapsed lifeless on the asphalt—saw the third man catch a bullet from Ze’ev’s pistol, but he didn’t go down. His own weapon coming out, as if in slow motion. Unstoppable.
Ariel threw himself forward, his hand a blur as it flew into his jacket—fingers closing around the butt of his own Beretta as it slipped from its holster. But there was no time.
The Algerian got off a round, his bullet going wild in the dark, the unsuppressed gunshot reverberating across the water of the marina like a cannon blast.
Ze’ev’s next shot caught the man between the eyes, the 9mm hollowpoint slug smashing through the hard bone of his skull and into the brain.
He stood there for what seemed like a long moment—swaying drunkenly. Then his feet went out from under him, crumpling like a broken doll.
His own weapon now in his hand, Ariel glanced over at his partner—the older man standing there on the other side of the Passat, breathing heavily, Beretta still leveled.
“We’re going to need to clean up these bodies,” Ze’ev announced after a long moment, seeming to collect himself. “Find a place to dump them out of sight. Get rid of the brass.”
“No time for that,” Ariel retorted grimly, his words startlingly punctuated by the distant wail of sirens. “We have to get out here.”
He closed the open back door of the Passat, starting to open the driver’s door when he heard a moan come from the man he had felled—the leader of the Algerians. Glancing back to see the man raising himself up on one elbow, trying to drag himself across the pavement. Toward his gun.
He withdrew the long suppressor from within his jacket, screwing it into the muzzle of the Beretta as he walked over, kicking the man’s weapon out of reach.
The man’s eyes lifted to meet his own, full of anger and fear. Ariel bent down, shaking his head sadly—the end of the pistol’s suppressor scant inches from the Algerian’s face. “I warned you that you were making a serious mistake.”
And his finger tightened around the Beretta’s trigger, taking up slack. . .
11:08 P.M. Israel Standard Time
A cottage in the Galilee
Israel
“. . .Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami met with his Palestinian counterparts at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. today, as peace talks continue. Negotiators maintain a grim outlook toward the prospect of any deal—with the leader of the Palestinian negotiating team, Saeb Erekat, maintaining that Israel must withdraw to the borders held prior to 1967 before any deal can be achieved.”
Pre-‘67, Shoham thought grimly, nursing his drink as he stared across the living room at his television set. What Israeli diplomat Abba Eban had once referred to as the “Auschwitz borders.”
He’d been only a young teenager then, scarce past his bar mitzvah. His father, among Mordechai Gur’s paratroopers as the IDF flooded into the Old City of Jerusalem that bright summer day, unstoppable as the incoming tide. Excitement in the aluf’s voice as he transmitted back over the army’s military frequency, “The Temple Mount is in our hands! I repeat, the Temple Mount is in our hands!”
The trumpet blast of a shofar ringing off stones which had borne witness to millennia since the Jewish people had last controlled this holy ground.
Blood-stained, battle-hardened men lowering their weapons, tears streaking grimy cheeks as they strained forward to touch the stones. The fulfilment of centuries of yearning.
Next year in Jerusalem. The wistful prayer of thousands who had been herded aboard the trains in Europe, only to perish at the hands of the Nazi regime. Dachau. Buchenwald. Auschwitz.
“We have returned to all that is holy in our land,” Moshe Dayan had said upon reaching the Wall, his single remaining eye shining with barely-restrained emotion. “We have returned never to be parted from it again.”
Never again.
“Are you all right, Avi?” A woman’s voice asked, breaking in upon his dark reverie.
He half-turned in his chair—rising to his feet as he saw his wife standing in the doorway, a warm, almost motherly concern in her eyes. When they had met in 1971, he had been a young lieutenant with the 188th Barak Brigade, stationed in the Golan. Rachel, a girl raised on a kibbutz in northern Galilee.
Neither of them yet out of their teens. Neither of them prepared for the darkness that would soon try to consume them.
The kind of darkness that had now dispatched Ariel’s Kidon into the night, hunting the enemies of Israel before they could strike again.
“Of course, neshama,” he said with far more assurance than he felt, kissing her lightly on the forehead as he took her into his arms, holding her close. My soul. “Everything is going to be all right.”
6:13 A.M. Western European Time, December 20th
The hotel
Marseilles, France
“This operation has been compromised—there’s no other way around it,” Ze’ev said, the heat audible in his tone. “The chance we had of getting al-Shukeiri? It evaporated the moment that Maghrebi put his gun to your head. It’s time to get out before they seal everything off.”
“Not without doing what we came here to do,” Ariel responded, glaring down to the end of the suite’s dining table at his subordinate. “Running now is only going to alert the authorities. They don’t know who we are or why we’re here—so let’s exert every effort to keep it that way.”
“That you know of.”
“That any of us know of,” came the even response. He could have easily added that he had been a split-second away from seizing the Algerian’s weapon and taking him hostage when Ze’ev had chosen instead to open fire. . .but recriminations were pointless now. Tzipporah entered from one of the bedrooms at that moment and Ariel looked over at her. “Has the incident at the marina made the news yet?”
She nodded. “A brief reference to a shooting involving ‘criminal elements’ during the top of the hour news. No details given.”
That could be either good or bad. Good, if the killing of three gang members was being treated as ordinary, if unusually violent, crime. Bad, if the French authorities already had enough intel at their disposal to suspect otherwise and were simply keeping it away from the media.
And if they had involved GIGN, well, then Ze’ev’s worst-case would be more than justified. And likely already far too late.
Ariel shook his head. No matter. “All right,” he began, placing both hands on the flat wooden surface of the table, “here’s what we’re going to do.”
7:49 A.M.
“They’re on the move,” Ken Weathers announced into his radio, watching as two of the Israelis—the man and the woman he had first seen together in the car near the apartments the previous night—entered the BMW rental, the car’s engine revving to life moments later.
And if they were moving, then it was time to move with them. He glanced regretfully at the thermos of coffee on the van’s console—forcing himself not to drink any more of it than he already had. Knowing all too well he was better off with the bottled water in the back, even if it wouldn’t wake him up nearly as fast.
You walked a fine line with hydration on a stake-out. Too little, and you couldn’t stay alert. Too much, and you found yourself having to take a leak at the wrong moment. Which was, after all, what the other bottle was for.
He waited until the BMW pulle
d out before he put the van in gear, aiming for a hole in the traffic about five cars back. A safe following distance, far enough to let the other members of his team cycle in.
So far, maintaining surveillance on the Israelis had been nothing more than glorified babysitting. If they were actually going to do anything. . .they hadn’t given any sign of it yet.
7:51 A.M.
The hotel
“You need to come take a look at this.” Ariel looked up from his work, the Bizon submachine gun field-stripped on the table before him—seeing Ze’ev standing by the window facing the street, the venetian blinds pulled to one side.
The former Shayetet-13 operator hadn’t said a great deal since their heated dispute over the path forward an hour before, but now there was an unusual urgency in his voice.
Ariel rose, moving to the window just in time to see a nondescript grey van pull out of a side street across from their hotel, merging with traffic. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, precisely.” Ze’ev shook his head, frowning. “It was as if it was just sitting there, waiting for the BMW to leave.”
“When did you first see it?”
“I only looked out a couple minutes before they pulled away. It could have just rolled up, could have been sitting there. . .ever since before dawn. No way of knowing.”
During an active operation, it was impossible to fully analyze and rule out everything that could be a threat. You had to learn to make quick assessments and act on them. “What are your instincts telling you?” he asked, gazing keenly at the older man.
“They’re telling me we have a problem.”
All right, then. Ariel moved back to the table, gesturing to his subordinate. “Tzipporah is driving—get Nadir on his mobile and warn them they may have a shadow.”
“And you and I?” Ze’ev asked pointedly.
“We get to work. The utility uniforms—your contact has a way of obtaining them?”
“He does.”
1:17 P.M. Israel Standard Time
Mossad Headquarters
Tel Aviv, Israel
“The latest intel from the Americans just came in over the telex five minutes ago—Mustafa al-Shukeiri is still in place in the apartment, hasn’t moved.”
“Hasn’t moved” was relative, Avi realized. Even for the Americans, technology only got so precise. He could likely move a kilometer or more before anyone would notice, though the odds were against him making such a short “journey.”
But even so, the inactivity was troubling. It was as though al-Shukeiri had already gone to ground. He turned, looking at the analyst for a long moment before asking, “Do you think he suspects he is being targeted?”
“No,” the man replied slowly, “I don’t think we can reasonably draw that conclusion. There’s nothing in al-Shukeiri’s psychological profile to indicate paranoia.”
At least not beyond that normal for a high-ranking former PLO leader, Shoham thought with a snort.
After all, al-Shukeiri had been in Tunis back in ’88 when Israeli commandos from Sayeret Matkal had waded ashore and shot Yasser Arafat’s top aide, Abu Jihad, dead in his own home, in front of his wife and young son.
No doubt he still remembered that night—the panic that had swept through the exiled Fatah leadership in the days and weeks that followed. Bringing terror to the terrorists. . .well, that was the only way you won this kind of war.
“Aluf,” a Mossad officer began, entering the war room behind them, a clipboard in his hand, “we just received this over the satellite uplink from Elba.”
Shoham took the clipboard from him, scrawling his signature over the Eyes Only cover sheet before peeling it away to reveal the message beneath. “What. . .” he breathed, his eyes scanning down the sheet, the attached photo. Feeling every dark suspicion of the last week now racing once again to the fore. How was this even possible? But he knew all too well. “Has this intelligence been confirmed?”
“It has,” the Mossad officer nodded. “It’s him—Mustafa al-Shukeiri. In Elba, ninety minutes ago.”
It was a moment before anyone spoke up, each of them looking at the others. The analyst clearing his throat, finally. “I can talk with the Americans, sort out what has been—”
“No,” Shoham responded, cutting him off harshly. This was bad, worse than he’d even thought. “You say nothing to the CIA. Not a single word. Where they are concerned, you deviate not a wit from the operation as it has proceeded to this point.”
“Of course, aluf.”
“Now,” he began, turning on the Mossad officer, “I want you to establish comms with the Kidon. I need to speak with Ariel.”
11:21 A.M. Western European Time
An empty lot
Marseille, France
“It’s clean,” Ze’ev observed, climbing out the back to the utility van to stand beside Ariel on the asphalt of the vacant lot. “Looks like exactly what we need.”
“And you said you needed this for what?” the Frenchman piped up from a few feet away, his eyes darting from one man to the other.
Ariel shot him a dark look that warned him more clearly than words to press no farther along that line of questioning. “We didn’t,” he responded evenly, an edge of steel in his tone. “Now, about the uniforms—you have them?”
“Of course, of course,” the man replied, seeming to quail beneath the Israeli officers’ gaze, nervously stroking his mustache as he reached into the van and opened a duffel bag. Reaching inside, he pulled out a faded set of coveralls with the Électricité de France logo emblazoned on the left chest pocket—holding them up for inspection in the light of the morning sun. “There are another seven just like this.”
They had deliberately overstated their numbers. If their source was actually playing another angle, might as well use him as a means of sowing disinformation.
If he was straight, well no harm done. There had been no signs of anyone following when they left the hotel through an employees entrance earlier in the morning, but it still paid to exercise caution.
“Now, messieurs,” the man began hesitantly, “about the payment I am owed. I ran. . .great risk in obtaining these for you, and feel—”
Ariel’s cellular phone vibrated from the pouch on his belt and he motioned for Ze’ev to deal with their source, moving across the lot back to their car, glancing at the phone’s pulsing screen.
Tel Aviv. Something had to be wrong—this was well outside their normal comms window.
“Go for Ariel,” he began, making sure he was out of earshot. “What’s happening?”
“We have a problem,” Shoham replied, surprising him even further. He hadn’t expected to hear from the aluf himself. “The information provided by our third party has proven. . .unreliable.”
It wasn’t the first time intel had been bad—that was an uncomfortable staple of field operations. But there was a strange note of tension in the aluf’s voice—as if there was something more there than a simple intelligence foul-up.
“What are you telling me?”
“The package is not there with you in Marseille. You are going to have to look for it at the tertiary location.”
Elba. “Are you sure?” Ariel asked, too surprised to contain the outburst—glancing back to where Ze’ev was still haggling with the Frenchman. If it was true, well. . .the intel hadn’t just been off, it had been flat-out wrong.
“Eyes on in the last three hours,” came Shoham’s response. “It’s certain.”
“Then I’ll regroup my people and we’ll head out for the pick-up.” The pick-up. It was a cold, curiously detached way to refer to the thought of putting a bullet through a man’s head, but dehumanization was part of this process.
“No,” the aluf’s voice came through an instant later. “Take one with you, leave the rest.”
5:07 P.M. Israel Standard Time
The olive grove
Beit Shemesh, Israel
“We’ve had a complication,” Shoham announced, placing his han
d on the gnarly trunk of a centuries-old olive tree as he came up on Gerstman, the lit ember at the end of the senior Mossad officer’s cigarette glowing in the gathering twilight.
He’d never asked Gerstman why he preferred the two of them to meet out here, but he suspected the solitude had much to do with it. The sense of. . .peace, so damnably hard to find in their world.
“I heard,” the man responded finally, smoke billowing from his mouth into the evening sky—the sun a blood-red sliver off toward the Shephelah. “I trust you have already taken steps to redress these concerns?”
“I have. Half the team is on their way to Elba.”
“And the other half?” Gerstman half-turned toward him, taking another long drag from his cigarette.
“They’ve been ordered to remain in Marseille. Serve as a diversion.”
“A diversion for whom?”
It was a moment before Shoham responded, glancing up into the ancient boughs of the olive tree above his head. It had stood here long before he was born, and its branches would still be providing sustenance long after he had returned to the dust of this promised land. All of them naught but mere footnotes of history—if that.
But for this moment. . .he shook his head. For this moment, it was left to them to defend their own, best they could. He looked back over into Gerstman’s eyes—knowing it was a question that had to be answered. “The Americans. . .”
8:05 P.M. Western European Time
A CIA safe house
Marseille, France
“They’re back?” Ken Weathers asked, wrapping a towel around his body as he stepped out of the shower—water still dripping from the showerhead, his cellphone pinned between his ear and wet shoulder. “Good.”
Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy Page 7