Lion of God- The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen England

  “Yes,” Damra responded, a strange intensity in his voice as he turned to face Hadi. “Palestine. Not as it is, but as it should be. As it will one day be, insh’allah. From the river to the sea.”

  His dark eyes seemed to change in that moment, a smile breaking across his face as he clapped the Iraqi soldier on the shoulder—gesturing toward one of the chairs. “Sit—sit! You’ve come a long way and there is much we need to discuss.”

  1:37 P.M.

  The United States Embassy

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  “. . .Nasrallah has remained largely quiet thus far in the course of the intifada,” Daniel Vukovic said, glancing up from his briefing folder to look over at the new station chief. “The usual anti-Israeli rhetoric we see from all top Hezbollah leaders on a routine basis, of course, but very little more. No escalation, shall we say.”

  “We can’t count on that holding, long-term,” Evan Fournier mused, running a hand across the lower half of his face as he leafed through the notes. He cleared his throat. “My years in Damascus, the Secretary-General was never far off our radar. And if he does make a move. . .then Israel will be faced with growing unrest on their northern border, in addition to Gaza and the West Bank. It could derail the upcoming summit at Taba.”

  It wasn’t as though that would be difficult to do, Vukovic thought. The talks at Bolling Air Force Base outside D.C. had fallen apart completely scarce more than a week before—and a last-ditch attempt to establish a follow-up summit at Sharm el-Sheikh on the 28th of December had failed after the Palestinians balked at accepting the so-called “Clinton parameters” put forth by the American administration and Prime Minister Barak elected not to attend.

  Not hard to “derail” something that already so far off the tracks as to make recovery well-nigh impossible.

  Irreconcilable differences. A wry grimace passed across the deputy station chief’s face. Kind of like his first marriage.

  But Taba. . that was in the Sinai, at the tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. The Sinai, he realized, Lay’s intel about ‘the Iraqi’ flickering back across his mind. Could it. . .

  “But even if Hezbollah does decide to get involved,” he said, forcing himself to refocus on the briefing, “our analysis doesn’t necessarily indicate that they will do so in coordination with Arafat’s government. After all, it wasn’t that many years ago that Hassan Nasrallah was publicly calling for a modern-day ‘Khaled Islambouli’—Sadat’s killer—to rise up and assassinate the Palestinian leadership.”

  Which wasn’t the same as saying it couldn’t happen, as both he and Fournier knew. The term “strange bedfellows” had, he was certain, been coined with the Middle East in mind.

  “Task a few of your people to it,” the station chief said finally. “Make sure we’re up on any communications between Hezbollah and the Arafat government.”

  “Of course,” he nodded, closing the folder and rising to his feet. The briefing over. “I’ll be certain to flag anything that comes up and bring it to your attention.”

  “Tell me, Daniel. . .” Fournier began, his voice arresting Vukovic just as he turned to leave. “This with David Lay—is there something going on that I should know about?”

  “Not that I know of,” Vukovic responded, keeping his voice neutral with a mighty effort. “Why?”

  What they were doing—keeping a chief of station in the dark on an ongoing op—was as dangerous as it was unprecedented. All of their careers on the line if this went wrong, Langley’s orders notwithstanding.

  It wouldn’t be the first time CIA officers had followed orders straight into the underside of a bus.

  “Lay’s an old hand,” Fournier said, pushing back his chair. His eyes never leaving Vukovic’s face as he rose. “Knows the ins and outs of Agency bureaucracy as well as any officer I’ve ever known. No way he’d let ‘paperwork’ tie him down here. Do me a favor and poke around a bit. . .see what you can find.”

  “Of course.”

  2:01 P.M.

  Mahmoud Damra’s compound

  The Gaza Strip

  “. . .at the rendezvous point—here, in the desert fifteen kilometers southeast of al-Karameh,” Hadi said, spreading out the map on the colonel’s desk—marking the spot with the tip of his pencil. A single mark, seemingly only inches from the border crossing with Jordan. Surrounded by blank space representing the Syrian Desert, the small Iraqi village of Turaibil not even labeled on the map.

  Forbidding terrain, as he remembered it—the westernmost part of Iraq’s Al Anbar Governate. A wild, desolate expanse.

  “You have a way of getting it back across the border?” he asked, watching Mahmoud Damra carefully. That was critical—there was no way they could risk it falling into the wrong hands, not so close to home. Not with the risks so high.

  The gallows for all of them if Saddam learned of what they had done.

  “Of course. We have made. . .arrangements with the border guards,” the colonel replied, gesturing with his hand. “Both there and on the border with Palestine. There will be no problems.”

  No problems. It was a confidence he wished he could share. But it would have to be enough. “And this will all take place on the night of the 8th?”

  “As previously arranged with al-Shukeiri, yes.” Before Jewish assassins killed him, Hadi didn’t add. The possibility that their operation could have been penetrated with his death never far from his mind.

  That car, following them from Rafah this very morning. Hamas? Perhaps, but none of it made sense.

  “That should be in sufficient time,” Damra said, still studying the map. Something in his voice sending a chill down the Iraqi’s spine.

  For what?

  “What do you mean?” he asked, only too aware that he was treading on dangerous ground.

  “The summit at Taba, of course.” The man looked at him, a dark smile spreading across his face. “That’s what this has been all about, from the beginning.”

  6:23 P.M.

  A cottage in the Galilee

  Israel

  Home, Avi ben Shoham thought, hearing the sound of music coming from the kitchen as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it in the closet. The lilting voice of a woman singing along to the radio in Hebrew—ever so slightly off-key, but he found himself smiling all the same.

  Remembering the first time he had heard his wife sing. Back when they had first met, long ago on a kibbutz not far to the northwest of where their cottage now stood.

  Scarce two years before the Syrian Army washed over the Golan Heights on the afternoon of Yom Kippur like an incoming sea, finding Shoham’s unit waiting squarely in its path, an immovable rock of men and tanks amidst the tide. Over a hundred of his fellow tankers dying in the hard fighting that followed, giving their blood as an atonement on that most holy of days.

  The 188th Barak Armored Brigade nearly wiped out to a man before they were reinforced by reservists rushed up from the south with scarce time to boresight their main guns.

  To this very day, he could still hear the chatter of machine-gun fire lashing the heights, smell the burning. . .he shuddered, pushing the memories aside with an effort. Memories of darkness, like that which hung over them once more. As it so often had.

  He nearly hadn't returned home this night, had considered remaining there at the headquarters of Mossad—sleeping on the couch in his office. Ever at hand. Like he had so many nights before when the security of the Jewish state had been threatened.

  But there was only so much any of them could do. The Iraqi, gone to ground since his disappearance in the market, no sign of him in the hours following—not even any whispers from Shin Bet’s network of informants in the Authority.

  Nothing for it but to wait. And get what sleep he could. This storm would break upon them, soon enough.

  He removed the Browning Hi-Power from his belt, placing the still-holstered weapon on the small endtable by the closet. Reaching to place his cellular phone beside it—the phone beginning to ring even as he took it
out of its pouch.

  Every fiber of his body suffused with tension, an unfamiliar number displayed on its small screen. “Yes?”

  “Avi,” a familiar voice replied simply, Shoham’s face darkening at the sound of his name. David Lay.

  “How did you get this number?” he demanded, casting a glance back toward the kitchen as he walked into the living room—away from his wife. Glancing out the window into the darkness of the night.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Lay responded, his voice even. Certain. “What matters is that we meet, as soon as possible.”

  The Mossad officer shook his head, struggling to keep the anger out of his voice. “I thought I made myself quite clear, David. You’re out.”

  “Nothing would make me happier. But Langley had different ideas. They want to keep the circle of knowledge on this close, so you’ll deal with me or you won’t deal at all. And you need to see what I’ve uncovered, Avi.”

  “Listen to me,” Shoham began. Time to put an end to the games. “You—”

  “It’s about your Iraqi.”

  6:31 P.M.

  Mossad Headquarters

  Tel Aviv

  “Someone has to have seen him,” Ariel said, shaking his head in frustration as he tossed the just-developed photograph back on the desk, running a finger along his upper lip as he leaned back in his chair.

  It was one of a dozen pictures taken of the Iraqi that morning by a Shin Bet undercover officer—one of Omri’s colleagues—in the moments before the Kidon team took up pursuit.

  Before they lost him.

  “It’s not your fault,” Tzipporah said quietly, seeming to read his thoughts. “If I hadn’t been made there in the market, we could have—”

  “No.” He brought his fist down solidly onto the desktop, cutting her off. Its metal frame vibrating under the impact. “They wouldn’t have diverted into Firas in the first place if they hadn’t suspected something. What, we don’t know. All we know is he’s still in Gaza.”

  “And given how much time has passed,” Ze’ev observed, standing there in the doorway, “we can assume that he’s already met with. . .whomever he came to meet.”

  Likely enough, Ariel thought, closing his eyes. Remembering that night on Elba. The look in Mustafa al-Shukeiri’s eyes when he’d glanced up to see them enter in his bedroom.

  Fear, raw and naked.

  His own voice cold as ice as he’d circled the bed, reciting the names of the reservists butchered in Ramallah. The muzzle of his pistol never leaving the Palestinian’s head. “Vadim Novesche, Yossi Avrahami. The Jewish people do not forgive. We do not forget.”

  The suppressed cough of the Beretta punctuating his words. Followed by the screams of a woman wakened from her sleep by her husband’s death.

  And that had been the end of it, or so he’d thought. He’d been wrong. That night, only the beginning. The end, still nowhere in sight.

  The phone on his desk rang a moment later, its insistent buzz breaking through the silence that had fallen over him and his team.

  “Yes?” he answered, bringing the receiver to his ear—his body coming to full attention as he heard the voice on the other end of the line. Listening for the space of a couple minutes. “Of course, sir. We’ll leave immediately.”

  8:02 P.M.

  The shores of Galilee

  Galilee. The waters upon which once Christ had walked, the hills which had once borne witness to His ministry on earth.

  David Lay killed the engine and removed the key from the ignition, the lights of the Agency Crown Victoria going out as he sat silently there in the darkness, staring out over the waters of the sea toward the glittering lights of Tiberias in the distance. The only sound that of light rain spattering against the car’s windshield. Peace be still.

  But his business here tonight. . .it couldn’t possibly have less to do with peace. Or God. A grim shadow passing across his face as he pushed open the door of the sedan—stepping out onto the gravel.

  His eyes searching the night as he moved toward the boathouse, the waters of the Galilee lapping against the lake shore. Making out a dark figure standing by the water’s edge, the visibility hampered by the rain.

  “It looks peaceful, doesn’t it?” Avi ben Shoham asked as he approached, coming up to stand alongside the Israeli in the shadow of the rusting hull of a fishing trawler. He went on without waiting for an answer. “In ancient times, my people called it ‘the abyss.’ A place of darkness. . .waiting to swallow us all. Sometimes I think they were right. That the Jewish state—Zion—is still right there, on the edge of the abyss. There was another bombing earlier tonight, southwest of here in Netanya. A car rigged with improvised explosives, next to a bus stop. Dozens injured, no final casualty report as of yet—won’t be one for hours.”

  A grim shadow passed across Lay’s face, no words seeming sufficient in such a moment. He had seen the emergency vehicles on the drive north from Tel Aviv, heard the news bulletins on the radio—his Hebrew still rough after three years in-country, but enough to make it out. Tragedy.

  Shoham turned toward him then, his face unreadable in the darkness. “Peace is a beautiful dream, but we won’t see it. Not in your lifetime or mine. So, what do you have for me?”

  “Your Iraqi,” the former station chief said, pulling a folder from within his coat and passing it over. “We know who he is, and most likely where he is. He’s—”

  His voice broke off suddenly, movement out of the corner of his eye as he glanced up to see the woman from the bar standing there not fifteen feet away, her face masked in the shadows of the night. Her right hand shoved deep into the pocket of her jacket, clearly holding a weapon. “I thought I made it clear that we were to meet alone.”

  “And I thought I made it clear that you weren’t the one making the rules here, David,” Shoham returned evenly, inclining his head toward where Ariel stood at the opposite corner of the boathouse, just under the eaves. “So I took. . .precautions. You were saying?”

  Lay just looked at him for a long moment, clearly weighing his options. Then he shook his head, seeming to think better of it. “Your man,” he said finally, gesturing toward the folder in the Israeli’s hands, “is Lieutenant Colonel Umar Hadi, of the Iraqi Army. He’s a decorated veteran of the Iran-Iraq War and a member of Siddiqi’s inner circle. He flew into Cairo International aboard a Royal Jordanian Airways flight from Amman last night, according to what information we were able to obtain from the Mukhabarat.”

  Shoham opened the folder, the hulk of the fishing trawler looming above him shielding it from the rain as he leafed through its contents. Taking in the file photos of Hadi. Younger, the pictures dated half a decade or more—but without doubt the same man who had crossed over the border into Gaza. But even yet. . .

  “And what makes you think this is our man?” he asked, glancing shrewdly up into his counterpart’s eyes. “An Iraqi Army officer flying into Egypt—it’s not so very uncommon.”

  “You want to talk of rules, Avi,” David Lay said, Shoham reacting almost imperceptibly as the American reached into his jacket, bringing something out in his fingers. “You don’t even want to know how many of them I had to bend to receive authorization to hand these over to you.”

  He reached out, pressing a pair of compact discs into Shoham’s hand. His voice low and earnest. “These are recordings of ECHELON intercepts from a few days ago—telephone conversations between senior members of the Fatah leadership. They’re talking about the arrangement of a meeting between Hadi and Abu Awad. . .to discuss the delivery of a ‘weapon.’”

  8:16 P.M.

  Mahmoud Damra’s compound

  The Gaza Strip

  “My meeting with our friends here in Palestine has gone well,” Hadi replied in answer to General Siddiqi’s question, the phone pressed close against his ear as he glanced across the room to where Mahmoud Damra stood, a few feet away from the desk. “I believe we have sorted through any possible misunderstandings or miscommunication w
hich might have proceeded from the unexpected departure of our colleague.”

  “Good, good, and just in time for planting,” he heard the general respond, something of a chill running through his body at the words. Colonel Damra had been telling the truth. The strike against Taba had been a part of the plan, ever since the beginning. Madness. “Everything is now back on schedule?”

  “It is,” Hadi answered, struggling to keep his face neutral. Knowing that the Palestinian was watching him closely. “They will take delivery of the agricultural equipment as previously arranged.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Siddiqi said after a moment. “I’ve always been able to depend on you. May you have a safe flight home.”

  “Insh’allah,” the soldier responded as he began to sign off, the words devoid of feeling. As God wills. But what did God will? This? It was impossible to believe.

  He replaced the phone in its cradle, looking up as he heard Damra begin to laugh. “Agricultural equipment? I love it.”

  “You can never be too careful, Colonel,” Hadi warned, an unintentionally sharp edge to his voice. “It’s impossible to know who might be listening.”

  “Listening?” The Force 13 commander laughed again, approaching the desk and taking out a bottle of brandy and a pair of glasses. “You worry too much.”

  And you, far too little, the Iraqi thought, watching the man as Damra opened the bottle, liquor splashing into the glasses. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that the incident in the market had been more than it seemed—that his mission had been compromised even before it began.

  “So,” the Palestinian began, taking one glass for himself and extending the other in an outstretched hand—his sharp eyes searching Hadi’s face. “We have a deal?”

  “We do,” Hadi replied slowly, accepting the drink. “I’ll leave within the next few hours, before morning light.”