Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen England

  Hadi flicked it on, the beam of light playing around the darkened room as he knelt by the edge of the hole—glancing up into the eyes of his young guide. “Well then, let’s be going.”

  7:14 A.M.

  Mossad Headquarters

  Tel Aviv

  “. . .there’s no certainty as to his identity or whether he’s even connected with al-Shukeiri. To describe the intel provided by Shin Bet’s informant as ‘vague’ would be an act of charity. We—”

  “Have to make a decision on whether to take him or not,” Avi ben Shoham interjected, cutting his fellow Mossad officer off. “My officers are already on their way into the Strip along with Dichter’s man and the informant. We’re coordinating with the IDF to move a quick reaction force into Ein HaBesor to stage in the event of needing to rapidly extract the team from Rafah.”

  “You’ve certainly not wasted any time, Avi,” Efraim Halevy observed from the head of the table, the first time the Mossad director had spoken since taking his seat.

  “There was no time to be lost,” Shoham responded evenly, meeting Halevy’s gaze. The older man’s face as unreadable as ever. “If Shin Bet’s intelligence was accurate, the Iraqi will arrive in Gaza within the hour.”

  “And when he does?”

  “You know where I stand on this, Efraim. Giving this man the opportunity to slip through our hands if he makes it all the way into Rafah,” Shoham shook his head, “it’s a risk we don’t need to take.”

  And this was no time to be taking unnecessary risks, he didn’t add. Not with their relations with the Americans strained to the breaking point. Not with the Iraqi military involved in. . .whatever this was. “We can take him down there at the crossing point, bring him back here for interrogation. Find out what he knows.”

  “And if he doesn’t talk?”

  Shoham just looked at him, his face cold and expressionless. The odds of that were vanishingly small.

  Halevy broke eye contact after a moment, glancing over to where Gerstman sat on the other side of the conference table, the senior officer’s face wreathed by a haze of cigarette smoke. “Eli?”

  Gerstman took another long drag of his cigarette before responding.

  “Avi makes a strong case,” he said heavily, stubbing it out in the ashtray at his left hand before continuing, “but it’s not one I agree with. These last few months of this so-called ‘intifada’—we’re balancing on a razor’s edge there in the Authority, one incident away from the kind of violence we won’t be able to control. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of launching a full-scale raid into Rafah until we have a better grasp of what we’re up against. Some idea, at least, of who our Iraqi is in contact with there in the PA. Who he’s meeting.”

  Madness. “I’m not proposing a full-scale raid, just the Kidon team,” he said, favoring Gerstman with a hard look. “They make the snatch, get him out of the Strip before anyone’s the wiser.”

  “And if they don’t?” Gerstman asked calmly, turning to look at him. “What if something goes wrong with the grab—if the IDF has to be called in to pull your people out? What then?”

  What if? Nothing ever went according to plan out there, that uncertainty the only rock-solid guarantee of field work. Of HUMINT.

  It was a risk all of his people understood. A risk they were prepared to take. But Gerstman wasn’t done, his voice even and calculated as he continued, “I think we have to remember how this all began—with a pair of soldiers in an old Ford Sierra, driving into a Palestinian city.”

  A day that had ended in death and fire, Shoham thought, the images of that lynching in Ramallah still all-too-fresh in his memory. The sight of a young Arab shouting jubilantly from an upper window, his hands stained red with Jewish blood.

  “I have to concur,” he heard Halevy say, looking up to meet the old man’s eyes. “Keep your people back. . .for now.”

  7:32 A.M.

  Rafah

  The Gaza Strip

  “Are you sure that’s the house?” Ariel heard the Shin Bet officer, a middle-aged man identified to them only as “Omri”, ask—dark sunglasses shielding his eyes as he glanced over at the Palestinian man sitting in the passenger seat of the sedan.

  Their informant.

  A quick, anxious nod—the man’s eyes darting all about like those of a trapped animal, seeming to anxiously scan the dusty street around their vehicle, the bright rays of morning sun filtering through the vehicle’s heavily tinted windows. Sweat staining the collar of his dress shirt.

  “Yes, it—it is,” he said, gulping even as he spoke the words. He was either a terrible liar or frightened half out of his mind, Ariel thought as he watched both of them from the rear seat. Perhaps both.

  He had a bad feeling about this, one that had been building ever since Shoham’s call five minutes prior. Shadow the Iraqi, don’t take him. Not yet.

  That hadn’t been the plan, and changing plans in the middle of an operation made him uneasy, his fingers tightening around the pistol grip of the Kalashnikov assault rifle laying across his lap. The variables of this operation, already far too many to be accounted for.

  “You’re certain,” Omri pressed, his hand closing around the informant’s wrist—forcing him to look at him. Clearly he was fully cognizant of their danger, as well he should be. He’d been running assets in and out of Gaza ever since the early ‘90s.

  “Yes, yes. . .this has to be the end, I’m telling you.” The man swallowed hard, his face twisting into an agonized grimace, tears of fear streaming down his cheeks, the words pouring out of him like the breaking of a dam. “If they even suspect that I’ve been passing information to you. . .they’ll kill my wife and I—they’ll take my little girl and rape her in front of me. She’s only five, I beg of you—you have to get me out.”

  “You know I’ve been working on doing just that, Daoud,” his handler replied, his eyes invisible behind the shades. His face impassive. “These things take time.”

  And we need more from you, Ariel added silently, turning his face away. Knowing all too well that the Shin Bet officer was lying to the man—that they had no intention of pulling him out.

  Assets in the Palestinian Authority were too valuable—too difficult to cultivate—to waste by pulling them out before you had gotten everything you could from them. Every last drop.

  Those were the realities of the intelligence business. Cold and brutal. It made him glad to be out on the sharp end, charged with acting upon the intelligence gathered by other men.

  Removed from it, somehow. Look away.

  The door of the target dwelling came open in that moment, a bearded man in jeans and a faded t-shirt emerging from its shadow into the street. Followed by a second. And a third. Their heads up, alert. Eyes searching the street.

  He felt Ze’ev tense in the seat beside him, heard Omri turn to his informant, demanding, “The Iraqi—is he there?”

  “I don’t know,” the man replied, his voice trembling. “I’ve never seen the man before in my life.”

  Great. Ariel shook his head as he watched the first man approach a faded white Chevrolet, swearing softly beneath his breath. It was the kind of information that would have been useful an hour earlier—before they placed themselves in this kind of jeopardy. Human intelligence. . .in all its glory.

  “But these men,” the Shin Bet officer pressed, “they are smugglers, yes? Locals?”

  “Yes, yes—part of a gang. They. . .” Ariel heard the man’s voice trail off as a fourth man stepped from the doorway, behind the others. A tall man, in street clothes like all the rest, but his bearing. . .it was unmistakably that of a soldier.

  He saw the informant’s face and knew without even hearing him say the words. This man wasn’t one of the locals.

  “Keilah-2,” he announced, toggling the mike of his two-way radio, “we have eyes on our target. Be prepared to take up following positions.”

  7:39 A.M.

  The United States Embassy

  Tel Aviv, Israel />
  It was a strange feeling being back here. . .like this, David Lay thought, still rubbing his chafed wrists as he moved through the halls of the diplomatic mission.

  He had intended to arrive early on this morning—hold the final transition meeting with his successor.

  Clear out his desk. Move on.

  Put it all behind him. Leave this part of his life forever in the past, once and for all.

  That was the funny thing about the past—it had a way of coming back to haunt you. Again and again.

  A black Marine NCO in desert combat fatigues stood guard before the door that led to the CIA station, his M-16 carried at patrol ready.

  “Sergeant Rutherford,” Lay greeted, nodding to the man as he approached. Only too aware of how he must look—his suit rumpled from having been slept in, his shirt only now drying from the cold sweat which had soaked his body.

  He could feel the man’s eyes on him—but the Marine simply nodded, a terse “Good morning, sir” escaping his lips as he took a step back, allowing Lay to pass.

  The room Lay found himself in as the door closed behind him could have passed without mention in most any corporate office the Western world over—bland white cubicles occupying the body of the space, bulky CRT monitors and fax machines perched on desks groaning from the weight of stacks of print-outs. A few conference rooms off to one side, larger offices encircling the room.

  Bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the kind of thing seen in one of Pierce Brosnan’s Bond films.

  Nothing nearly so high-tech, the station chief thought with a wry grimace. He spotted Daniel Vukovic, his deputy chief of station, standing by a cubicle talking with one of the Agency analysts and made his way over to them.

  “David!” Vukovic exclaimed, looking up as he approached. He put his hand on Lay’s shoulder, both of them turning away from the analyst as he lowered his voice. “Where have you been? You were supposed to be here an hour ago—I called your apartment, tried your mobile.”

  “I was. . .unavoidably detained,” he replied, only too aware of the irony in his words. No humor in any of this.

  “Fournier is in Conference Room #3,” Vukovic said, going on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I had to go ahead and start the transition meeting already without you. We need—”

  “And you’re just going to have to continue without me,” Lay said grimly, cutting him off. “I’ll be in my office—on the secure line to Langley.”

  7:47 A.M.

  Rafah

  The Gaza Strip

  The contrast between these men and the boy who had picked him up in Cairo couldn’t have been more stark, Hadi thought, looking into the grim eyes of the smuggler to his left in the cramped backseat of the Chevrolet Corsica—glimpsing the old, weathered Makarov he was clutching in his lap, the pistol’s bluing long since worn off.

  They might have lacked the professionalism which made good soldiers, but they had been operating under the nose of the Zionist state for years—and that made them good at what they did.

  The kind of men they would no doubt utilize to bring the shipment across once the deal was reached.

  “Abu Awad,” he began slowly, looking out the window as the car navigated the narrow streets—stone buildings a century old seamlessly intermixed with modern concrete. Graffiti in flowing Arabic script spray-painted haphazardly on the walls. Electric wires criss-crossing above their heads, seeming to tie everything together like a spider’s web. “He’s been informed of my arrival?”

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  8:01 A.M.

  The United States Embassy

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  “I understand, sir,” David Lay said, the television droning on in the background as he leaned back into his office chair, staring at the photograph on his desk, the last thing he hadn’t packed—all the rest of his personal effects, what there were of them, stuffed into the cardboard box sitting on the table across the room. A woman standing outside a hotel in Miami Beach—the wind playing with her blonde hair. Sunglasses hiding her bright blue eyes. Eyes which had enchanted him from the moment he’d first met her.

  Trisha.

  He shook his head, still listening to the voice on the other end of the line. His third call, each successive one growing more strained as he explained to the powers that be the extent to which their brilliant plan had gone completely sideways. As their initial surprise and anger over the brazenness of Mossad’s actions faded away, to be replaced with a bitter knowledge of their own peril.

  “If that’s the way you’re wanting me to play this,” he interjected finally, “I’m going to need something I can give the Israelis. Something substantive.”

  His ex-wife was looking down in the picture, away from the camera, a bright smile creasing her face. Their daughter’s tiny hand gripping her finger, her dress a splash of color against the background.

  Carol had been nothing more than a toddler then, scarce past her second birthday. They had come down to visit him that week—a week together in the Florida sun, just the three of them.

  One of the last times he could remember that they’d been happy—truly happy. Before the fall. Before everything he’d once thought certain began to irrevocably fall apart.

  The Miami operation he’d been a part of had been shut down six months after the divorce went through—the CIA cutting its losses. Moving on. Like they always did.

  “No,” he responded, cutting his superior off, “that’s not going to work. You want this circle kept tight, you want me to stay here and run this—under Fournier’s nose—you’re going to have to work with me on this. Give me something I can use.”

  The Iraqi, he thought, his ex-wife’s face drifting out of focus as his mind flashed back to the warehouse. The woman’s whispered conversation with Shoham. Someone coming across the border from the Sinai. . .

  The general mentioned in the files Avi had showed him from al-Shukeiri’s computer had been an Iraqi, a member of Saddam’s inner circle.

  Could it. . .it was a thin lead to go on, but it was something. More importantly, it was all he had. “ECHELON,” he said abruptly, scarce even realizing he had spoken aloud. “I’m going to need you to put me in touch with Mike Hayden’s boys up at Fort Meade. As soon as possible.”

  8:23 A.M.

  The Gaza Strip

  “They’ve turned north now, along the road to Khan Yunis,” Tzipporah said, her voice coming loud and clear over Ariel’s radio from the other car. “We’re entering an open stretch, falling farther back now.”

  “Roger that, Keilah-2,” he acknowledged, gesturing to get the attention of the Shin Bet officer. Move up.

  Time for them to trade off once more, taking up the tailing position and allowing the second Mossad vehicle with Tzipporah and Nadir, the youngest member of his Kidon team, to turn off.

  Leapfrogging their way across the Gaza Strip—like they had been doing for the better part of the last hour, Ariel thought, wondering for the hundredth time where precisely the Iraqi was being taken. Or whether this was all an elaborate ruse to throw them off the track, a surveillance detection run to check for tails.

  He felt the car speed up, jockeying through the narrow side streets past pedestrians and the occasional animal—Omri certifying himself as a genuine Arab driver in his liberal use of the Mazda’s horn.

  The grimmest of smiles touching Ariel’s lips as he adjusted the folds of the keffiyeh around his neck, nothing about it—like the rest of his clothing—distinguishing him from the average Palestinian in the street. One way or another, they were going to finish this. End everything al-Shukeiri set in motion, just like they had ended him there on Elba. Dead in his own bed, his blood and brains staining the sheets. Retribution.

  “We have the car,” he announced finally as they swept out onto the main road less than forty meters behind the white Chevrolet. “Keilah-2, pull back, prepare to stage for the next rotation.”

  We’re going to get you.

  8:57 A.M.


  The United States Embassy

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  “And I think that about wraps it up,” David Lay said finally, glancing from Vukovic back to his successor. “Daniel can fill in any details I’ve left blank.”

  Except for the things even he doesn’t know about, Lay thought. He cleared his throat. “It feels strange, leaving here like this. With everything suddenly thrust into the throes of chaos after three years of hard work. Almost seems like I should stay and help pick up the pieces.”

  Fournier chuckled. “That’s the Middle East for you, David. Picking up the pieces. . .it’s something we’ll be doing for years—all the way up until the next madman knocks it all apart again. I call it job security.”

  That was one way to look at it. Perhaps the only way. Lay forced a smile, extending his hand. “Well, I’m glad at least to know that I’ve leaving it in good hands.”

  That much was true enough, he thought, hearing the man’s reply as he reached out, clasping Lay’s hand in his own. Evan Fournier might not have been his first choice to take over Station Tel Aviv upon his departure, but he was a good choice all the same—having spent four years in Damascus in the early ‘90s as assistant station chief before being rotated back to the States.

  He knew the region, understood its complexities about as well as anyone Langley might have chosen. A solid pick.

  “I’ll be here a few more days, as it happens. Finalizing things with Langley, procedural stuff—nothing important,” Lay lied, feeling Vukovic’s eyes on him as he looked Fournier straight in the eye. “I’ll do my best to stay out of your way.”

  The new station chief smiled, a smile that seemed at once sincere and wary. Jealous of his newly acquired turf. “Not a problem, David. Be sure to let me know if you need anything.”

  “Of course. Daniel?” Lay said, motioning for Vukovic to follow as he turned, crossing the CIA station toward a small side office which had been vacated a few weeks earlier—a female analyst returning Stateside for the birth of her child.