Later that afternoon he dropped the envelope addressed to Ludwig Streicher in the “Damascus Only” slot at the main post office near the Sérail.
17.
SEPTEMBER 20
Ari sat at the desk in his hotel room chain-smoking, waiting for Kim to return from her tour of the Syrian prison system. On the floor by the bed lay the English-language Daily Star from Beirut, the crossword puzzle face up, the boxes completely filled in. A pot of coffee, laced with Scotch, rested on the dresser half empty. Ari closed his eyes. He didn’t want to sleep, nightmares invaded his dreams regularly now, but if he could just rest for a few minutes…
The phone rang, jolting him awake. The sound felt like a splinter of ice cold metal as it pierced his skull. There was a pain inside his head and the back of his neck ached from the position he’d assumed, slumped over the receiver, more to stop the strident ringing than to discover who was calling.
“Hans, it’s Franz Ludin.” The Nazi sounded distraught. “The Jews have gotten Streicher!”
“What happened?” Ari asked, shaking his head, trying to clear the haze from his brain.
“Some kind of letter bomb. The German colony’s in pandemonium. None of us is safe! If a package, a letter, even a note arrives that at all looks suspicious, call the police before you open it.” The words raced out of his mouth—panic was pushing them.
“Is Streicher dead?”
“I don’t know. He was rushed to the Mojtahed Municipal Hospital. I haven’t had time to call over there. I’ve been busy trying to alert the Germans living in Damascus.”
“Then I better not keep you. Thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful.”
Ari hung up, immediately got the hotel receptionist on the line, and asked her to connect him with patient information at the Mojtahed Hospital. When the connection was completed Ari inquired about Streicher’s condition. After a pause the clerk came back on the phone.
“I have good news for you,” she said. “Colonel Streicher was not seriously injured. He is conscious and out of danger. You may visit him tomorrow if you like.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll do that.”
“Can I tell him who called?”
Ari slowly dropped the receiver into place without responding. Something had gone wrong. He must have prepared the charge improperly—it should have killed its victim. Now he was in real trouble. Streicher, already suspicious, would make the connection between the attempt on his life and his probing of Ari’s credentials. It was now a race with time. Somehow he would have to see to it that Operation Goshen was executed on schedule, in forty-eight hours—hopefully before Streicher was well enough to push his inquiries about Hans Hoffmann any further. But how could he possibly complete the mission alone?
The escape valve, Operative 66. He could contact the deeply placed Israeli spy. The muscles inside Ari’s stomach contracted. But would the Colonel want him to take the risk? What would the head of Israeli Intelligence say later, at his debriefing? Ari reached for the bottle of Chivas Regal he kept perpetually near him now.
The transmitter was gone, Rachael had been arrested, the Syrians were probably onto him, Barkai hadn’t shown, Streicher might have an answer from the ODESSA at any time. Ari gulped down the Scotch, hardly tasting it. As the last of the last resorts, the Colonel said, if and only if a desperate emergency arises, you can contact Operative 66. Ari could hear the pudgy man’s voice. He stared at the bottle of Scotch, then quickly refilled his glass. He was scared, afraid of the guilt that would haunt him if he inadvertently led the Second Bureau to Operative 66. He would not be able to bear it, not now, not on top of everything else. But hesitating was pointless. As the days spun away his clutching back after them grew increasingly more futile. Everything had come apart. It was a desperate emergency.
He decided he would contact Operative 66 as soon as the sun descended and night offered a measure of protective cover.
There was a knock on the door and Ari rose to answer it, noticing that his legs did not move quite as fast as his mind wanted them to. Kim fidgeted in the hallway, impatient with the nervous energy of the young who, unlike those worn by life’s disappointments, can’t wait very long for anything.
She entered the room, closed the door behind her, and leaned back against the wood.
“What about Dov?” he asked quickly.
“I was able to speak to a pilot alone for a few minutes. His English was bad and I’m not sure I understood him correctly.”
“Did he know anything about Dov?”
“He wasn’t sure. He said there was one Israeli prisoner just brought down from Tadmor who was kept in a separate cell.”
“Did he know his name? Had anyone seen him?”
Kim shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you ask him why this prisoner was kept apart from the others?”
“Yes, but he didn’t know.”
“What about the other prisoners?” he pressed anxiously. “Didn’t they know anything? Hadn’t anyone spoken to him?”
She moved close and touched his shoulder. “There were guards with me the whole time. It was only by luck that I managed to speak to even one prisoner alone. My escort returned after a few minutes and stayed close the rest of the afternoon.”
Ari spun around and her hand fell away from him. It was Dov. He was certain of it. Biting his lip, he stared at the blank wall. He’d hoped Dov had found a way to commit suicide, to end his ordeal.
“Ari,” she said softly. “Maybe I can get permission to go back. The man from the Foreign Ministry liked me a lot. He made it perfectly clear that he would do anything he could for me if we pursued our relationship. Maybe if I offered to discuss my photography at his home one night he might do some checking on Dov. I’m sure I could think of a way to ask him without his getting suspicious.”
Ari stiffened. She moved behind him and began working her fingers into his tight back and shoulder muscles.
“Don’t,” he said, though he didn’t want her to stop.
She ignored him and dug her fingers deeper into his knotted flesh. He turned around to face her.
“Kim, I don’t want you to do it. I need to find out about Dov, but not that way.”
“Why not?” she said angrily. “You told me to believe in results, not in rules. Well, I’m offering you results. Please don’t tell me you’re trying to protect my honor, I wouldn’t want to laugh. I’m not exactly a virgin and if you were too preoccupied to notice let me assure you that you were not the first man I’ve climbed into bed with. In fact I’m pretty well broken in. One Arab minister more or less would hardly make much difference. I could probably knock him off two or three times and get him to do anything I wanted. These Arabs are crazy about blondes. They think we’re some kind of exotic sex goddesses just because none of their women are fair-skinned. I wouldn’t even have to put out much of a performance. I could just lie back and let his male ego ravish me.”
“Stop it!”
“Why?” she said loudly. “You’ve offered me nothing but vague promises about what it will be like after we leave Damascus. And now you want exclusive control over my body. Aren’t you being a bit presumptuous? I’m going to sleep with whoever I want and if I feel like screwing some fat Arab to get information to help you, goddamnit I’m going to do it.”
He backed away, bumping into a chair.
“No.”
“I don’t understand. I thought it meant a lot to you to find out about Dov. You said the Colonel wanted to know, that because of you he…”
“I didn’t come to Damascus to find Dov!” Ari said. It took a great deal of effort to push what was forming in his mind into words. “I came on a mission that must be completed in the next two days or else it will be too late. I have to forget about every other distraction or else I’ll fail, and the price of that failure will be the destruction of seven lives. I told you before I cannot let personal considerations affect my better judgment and that judgment says concentrate on my mission
and drop everything else.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked.
He knew that he had to tell her to leave, that he needed one hundred percent concentration for the next forty-eight hours and that as long as she was near some part of him would be thinking about her and not the mission. Besides, she was in danger. Her association with him could bring the Second Bureau crashing down on her. Everything he had learned in the Service demanded he send her away.
He started to speak but stopped. He couldn’t do it. He had to tell her to leave but the words wouldn’t come out. They just wouldn’t
“Just be patient for a few more days,” he said. “Don’t ask any questions and don’t do anything for me on your own. If all goes as planned I’ll be leaving Syria Saturday night. You can meet me in Jerusalem. Just go to Eighteen Ruppin Street and ask for the Colonel. Can you remember that without writing it down?”
She nodded. “But what if everything doesn’t go as planned?”
He said nothing, the answer implicit in his silence.
“What about Dov, can’t I at least try?”
“Forget about Dov,” he said loudly, but without menace in his voice. “There’s no time. I don’t want …”
Suddenly he was powerless to push back the emotion rising in his throat. He was responsible for Dov’s capture, for the suffering the boy had endured all these months. He and he alone. Ari cried softly, surprised at what was happening—he had thought himself as incapable of crying as he had been of loving. Detachment was the rule of life in the Service. He had always followed that formula, knowing no other. Now, suddenly, his whole world had pitched on its axis.
Kim remained where she was—silent, waiting.
He said nothing for a long time, vaguely aware that the flow of tears had carried away some barrier inside him. Finally he looked up. She moved close and kissed his face, drying his tears with her lips.
Tumbling onto the bed, they undressed and made gentle love, staying locked together a long time, not wanting to start the rhythm that would inevitably end too soon. Kim ran her fingers to the nape of his neck, swirling up eddies of excitement. He tried not to anticipate the ecstasy he felt as her fingernails slid with barely perceptible contact around his waist, up his sides, and outward along his upper arms. Feeling pressure in his groin he slowly withdrew from her—they were not ready yet. She leaned over and ran her tongue along the same route her fingers had explored. The excitement churned into joy. Her lips danced along his skin so softly that he could not tell when she touched him and when he felt only the warmth of her breath. She worked her way over his stomach. He lay back. After a few minutes she stretched out on top of him. He felt the wet warmth between her legs as they came together again.
When his breathing slowed, he brushed her forehead with his lips. “Nothing is going to keep us apart.”
Smiling, she outlined his nose with her forefinger. “I don’t want to be left here. Can I come with you when you leave Saturday?”
He hesitated. He didn’t even know if Operation Goshen was still viable. In either event it would be safer for her to travel by commercial airliner, alone.
“Maybe, we’ll see,” he said.
They lay entwined in each other’s arms for a long time without speaking. The sheets were soft and the touch of her skin, smooth and warm. But he couldn’t stay. When it grew dark he silently got up and made his way into the bathroom, trying to shake the haze from his brain. He’d been half asleep.
The cold spray of the shower brought his body into painful submission. After a few minutes he was alert and thinking clearly. To insure that he was not being followed he would have to proceed along the prescribed route with the utmost care. There could be no slipups. He dried himself and went into the bedroom to dress.
“Are you going out?” Kim asked.
He turned and looked at her. “No more questions.”
She dropped her head onto the pillow and watched him. “Can I ask what time you’ll be back?”
“No.”
When he finished putting on his clothes he stood over the bed. Kim lay naked on top of the sheets. She hadn’t bothered to drape anything over herself.
“Just be patient,” he said. “If all goes well tonight we’ll be leaving Syria in a little over forty-eight hours.”
She smiled.
He turned and headed toward the hallway, an uneasiness building in his stomach. He hoped he was doing the right thing. Reaching the elevator, he pushed the down button. The white plastic knob turned red. While he waited for the doors to part he ran over in his mind the procedure he was instructed to use to contact Operative 66. The Colonel had made it clear that, if necessary, he expected him to move along the predesigned route with the utmost caution. Ari was to turn around if he even suspected anyone was following him. Operative 66 was not to be jeopardized, under any circumstances.
18.
SEPTEMBER 20
Patterned on its French counterpart, Le Deuxieme Bureau de l’Etat Major—the Second Bureau of the General Staff, Syria’s military intelligence service—remains separate and distinct from the Mukhabarat, Syria’s general security service. These agencies, in bitter competition, duplicate and often sabotage each other’s work so that their leaders might achieve a further measure of personal political power. Directors of the Second Bureau and the Mukhabarat often become chiefs of staff, ministers of defense or interior, or presidents of the republic. Rarely do the two services even attempt to work together. So it was not without a certain uneasiness that Yussaf Fuad, head of the Mukhabarat, agreed to join General Suleiman Sarraj in his Second Bureau office on a matter Sarraj said was of urgent concern to both of them.
The structure just west of the walls of the inner city that houses the Second Bureau looks much like the other Kanawat district office buildings that flank it on either side. They are all under a dozen stories high, with white stone and stucco façades blackened by the exhaust spewing from the cars and buses passing noisily below them. The entrance to the underground garage below 14 Taadil Street is squeezed between the Café Tingiz and a barber shop, and signs advertising the businesses housed inside decorate the stone front of the building. There are buttons for floors one through nine in the elevator next to which a directory reveals the names and office numbers of various trading companies, insurance firms, consulting agencies, and similar corporate concerns. However, if one was inclined to count the number of stories from the outside an unlisted tenth floor would appear. In the elevator under the alarm buzzer is a slot, which, when fitted with a special key, powers the elevator to the Second Bureau offices at the top of the building.
The room in which Suleiman Sarraj and Yussaf Fuad sat displayed an opulence that would have angered the average Damascene taxpayer had he known of its existence. A thick Persian carpet blanketed the floor and ornate tapestries hugged the walls—against them hung rows of silver plates inlaid with gold. Sarraj’s large desk was of polished mahogany; on the corner a pair of hand-carved gazelle bookends supported an illuminated edition of the Koran. The suite also contained the only air conditioning unit in the building.
General Sarraj stared at the file folder that lay open before him. The Second Bureau chief was conservative and calculating; his operations meticulously planned, and executed according to a preset timetable. He despised spontaneity and treated any deviation from his exact orders with a ruthless vengeance. The fifty-six-year-old graduate of the Gendarmie, the Homs Military Academy, and the French General Staff College had built a career on his ability to foresee the demands of the future and accommodate himself to the needs of the present. He had spied successfully on the French for the British, on the British for the French, then on the French and the British for the Germans. His prowess at adapting to changes of regime was particularly important in Damascus, the scene of so many rapid and abrupt shifts of power. Physically Sarraj’s appearance was in total harmony with his temperament. His dark hair was combed to one side, each hair set in its proper p
lace. He exercised regularly, which caused his face to bear a youthful appearance that hid his actual age. His plain brown suit hung on his narrow shoulders with an effortless grace—a grace that did not carry over into his interpersonal relations. Sarraj was self-conscious about being short, particularly in the presence of powerfully built men like Yussaf Fuad.
Extracting an 8 x 10 photograph from the folder on his desk, the dark-eyed, moustached general handed it to the Mukhabarat chief. “This is Major Ari Ben-Sion of Israeli Intelligence,” he said.
Fuad, tall, heavy-chested, wearing an olive green military shirt without a jacket, took the picture in his large hands and stared at it. Fuad had propelled himself through army ranks by virtue of his viciousness, eliminating his rivals when it was necessary, and often when it was not. He produced results, no matter what the cost—monetary or otherwise. His Mukhabarat, unlike the Second Bureau which operated in Western countries, was exclusively concerned with questions of security inside the Arab world. He personally controlled the Makatib al-Khassah, a special internal police force which yearly spent more than a million Syrian pounds on some 8,500 political informers.
Fuad tapped the picture on the edge of the desk, then set it down. “And Major Ben-Sion is in Damascus now?”
Sarraj nodded, “Under the guise of Hans Hoffmann, an importer of furniture and textiles. The Zionists do not know that the Russians broke his cover some time ago.” He picked up the photo and snapped at it with his forefinger. “This one did us much harm before we found out about him and his weakness.”
“His weakness?”
Sarraj smiled. “Women—he seems to have become rather susceptible to them. It happens sometimes, when an agent’s been allowed to remain in the field too long. The prolonged, utter aloneness begins to take its toll. A need for warmth arises, interfering with the ability to function effectively. A little over five months ago he was diverted by one of my agents near Kyrenia.” Sarraj slid another photograph toward Fuad. The Mukhabarat chief laughed lasciviously at the picture of Michelle and Ari in embrace. “But do not be fooled by his falling so easily into my trap in Cyprus. This Ben-Sion is a clever one. He eluded the Russian, Czech, and Arab intelligence services for years, and did us quite a bit of damage in the process. The KGB finally broke his cover. I don’t have the details, but somehow they tied him to the assassination of an important Egyptian agent in London.”
The Damascus Cover Page 16