Chapter 12
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
WHAT happened?”
Lieutenant Colonel Ben Friedman considered the man seated across from him at the immaculately laid table before replying.
They were a study in opposites. While Friedman’s balding head, broad shoulders, thick forearms, untucked short-sleeved shirt, and simple trousers gave him the look of a common laborer, his tablemate was the epitome of blue-blooded sophistication.
Dressed in a Western-style suit and tie, the man’s slender build and cultured accent brought to mind an effete academic.
Someone more at home at Cambridge, where the man had completed his secondary degree, than in the executive dining room of Israel’s national intelligence service.
“Friedman?”
Friedman’s delay in answering wasn’t driven by a lack of knowledge.
He’d spent the last hour telephonically debriefing the team in Italy precisely to determine what had transpired in Verona down to the second.
While nothing in the intelligence business was ever ironclad, he thought he had a pretty good handle on why the operation had turned out differently than expected.
In the parlance of his profession, Friedman had the take.
But he wasn’t sure that his interrogator was truly interested in what had transpired.
“The Pakistani was snatched off the street before the Italians could arrest him,” Friedman said.
The statement was true from a clinical perspective in that each word was factual and the thought they conveyed was an accurate representation of what had happened to the scientist. It was also woefully incomplete in the same manner in which the Mona Lisa might be described as some streaks of color on an oil canvas.
Left unsaid were several salient points, chief among them being that Friedman had argued against this entire approach precisely because it placed too much of the operation’s success or failure into Italian hands.
This wasn’t so much an indictment of the Italians as it was a difference in philosophy. Friedman believed that the security and well-being of the world’s sole Jewish state was too important to entrust to anyone other than its citizens.
His boss disagreed.
Or at least he was willing to gamble operational success in the name of internationalism.
It wasn’t that Friedman spurned the goodwill of the global community so much as he wasn’t willing to earn it.
From his perspective, Europe had shown its true colors when its nations had stood by while a madman slaughtered six million of his ancestors.
The moral high ground had long since been ceded.
Unfortunately, David Rothenberger, the current director of the Mossad, saw things differently.
“Snatched by who?”
Friedman sighed.
Though Friedman was Rothenberger’s only guest in the director’s small but luxuriously appointed dining room, the man was in full performance mode. No doubt practicing for his upcoming audience with the prime minister.
Not for the first time, Friedman found his thoughts drifting to retirement.
He’d joined the Mossad back when the brash intelligence agency was hunting the perpetrators of the Munich massacre across Europe.
That mistakes had been made, and an innocent person had been killed, was tragic, but the man’s blood was not on Israeli hands.
A Mossad operative might have pulled the trigger, but the Palestinians who’d orchestrated the attack against defenseless Israeli Olympic athletes were the true reason for his death.
In war, collateral damage was an unfortunate but inevitable reality.
Maybe that was Friedman’s real problem. He still believed his nation was at war with its enemies, while men like Rothenberger treated the endeavor as a public relations campaign.
This, perhaps beyond any other reason, was why Friedman wasn’t sitting on his cabin’s front porch with a bottle of Yarden Katzrin Red for company.
The defense of his nation was serious business, and until its intelligence service was again led by serious men, he would have to continue the fight.
“We lost the van after it disappeared into traffic. Our team wasn’t equipped for vehicular surveillance.”
Rothenberger opened his mouth and then slowly closed it.
For one exhilarating moment, Friedman had been convinced the chatichat ch’ara would ask the obvious question—why not?
How he would have relished reminding the director that he had proposed exactly such a contingency, only to be shut down in the name of maintaining a small operational footprint.
The Italians had promised to act on the tip the Israeli ambassador had provided.
It wasn’t proper to have a Mossad team in place just in case.
Wouldn’t want to embarrass an ally.
So, in the name of trying to earn overseas goodwill, Friedman had overridden the team leader and forbidden Eliana from establishing a secondary vehicular-based surveillance team.
The results would be humorous if they weren’t so tragic.
A scientist in Pakistan’s WMD program was now in the hands of an unknown entity instead of sitting in an Italian jail facing trial for selling his services to the Syrians.
What could go wrong?
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
“How do you propose to deal with your operational failure?”
Were Friedman a man who still cared about career progression, the question would have been infuriating. Fortunately, he’d given up those aspirations long ago. It was amazing what you could accomplish when you no longer cared about being promoted.
“Our team wasn’t mobile, but neither were they napping,” Friedman said, deciding that the farce had gone on long enough. “Several members were on the street when the abduction occurred. We were able to get the van’s tag.”
“I’m sure the vehicle was stolen.”
Friedman scratched his chin.
He was sure of no such thing, but it was probably true.
Any halfway-competent intelligence operative would have used a stolen vehicle for the snatch, and if that wasn’t possible, switched license plates before and after the rendition.
That said, the license plate was still a starting point.
A connection to the Pakistani scientist that the Mossad wouldn’t have needed to devote precious resources toward had Rothenberger heeded Friedman’s warnings.
But he didn’t say that.
Instead, he played his trump card. “Something unexpected happened.”
Rothenberger’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t tell me that one of your team was arrested.”
“Of course not. But a member of the surveillance element observed an interesting interaction. An Italian police officer had been on the verge of intercepting the target when someone interfered, allowing the scientist to escape. That person, a military-aged male in his twenties, was observed speaking with a second man, who is known to us—a Lebanese businessman who we suspect uses his global shipping empire to launder money for Hezbollah.”
Rothenberger froze with a forkful of salad midway to his mouth.
“Did your team—”
“No,” Friedman said. “Your instructions in this matter were crystal clear. No killing on Italian soil.”
“Yes, well, I…”
Friedman let the director twist in the wind for several delicious seconds.
While he would have loved to savor the moment longer, experience told him this wasn’t wise.
Like most political animals, Rothenberger had a tendency to cover embarrassment with bluster.
The intelligence business was a delicate endeavor on a good day.
On a bad one, a politician’s idle boasts could easily translate into dead men and women in the field.
“Our team had to make a split-second decision,” Friedman said, “cover the Lebanese businessman or the military-aged male he was speaking with. We chose the newcomer.”
“Why?”
“Because our job is to gather intelligence. As I said before, the Lebanese man is known to us. The newcomer is not. Radical Islamic terrorism is a cancer, and it is impossible to fight the disease without first knowing how far it has spread.”
Rothenberger set his fork on his plate and dabbed the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin. Even his mannerisms were European. Why the prime minister had chosen this man to helm Israel’s intelligence service was beyond Friedman’s comprehension.
“What is the status of the surveillance operation on the second man?” Rothenberger said.
And there it was.
In the language of his profession, the director’s question was known as a gate.
An opportunity for a handler to probe into a heretofore unavailable topic because the asset had opened a rhetorical door.
Normally, this came in the form of a topic change or a bit of information volunteered by the asset.
A throwaway comment that was actually an invitation for further discussion.
But sometimes a gate manifested as a question.
Friedman knew he should feel equal parts disgusted and frustrated that his relationship with his superior had degenerated into that of a handler and his asset. He didn’t. Friedman was an agent runner and if Rothenberger wanted to be treated like an agent, so be it.
“We have the man boxed,” Friedman said. “He’s taken no overt countersurveillance precautions, but an SDR only manifests itself over time. That said, my team feels confident the man is acting alone.”
Friedman rendered the update as clinically as possible.
Even though the field operative in him was jumping up and down at the chance to interdict the unknown target, he kept his eagerness masked behind a wall of detached professionalism.
Showing even the slightest bit of enthusiasm would run the risk of spooking the director.
If the operation in Verona had any chance of progressing, the idea needed to come from Rothenberger.
The director stared at Friedman over the lip of his wineglass for a long moment, as if he could read the chances of the operation’s success or failure by analyzing his subordinate’s wrinkles the way a mystic might ponder tea leaves.
Friedman gazed back, his expression blank.
Who would have thought that some of his greatest handling moments would take place while speaking to the head of his intelligence service?
Surely this preposterous scenario merited some sort of reaction, but should it be laughter or tears?
Friedman didn’t know.
“As the director of operations, what is your recommendation?”
He’d been waiting for the conversation to head in this direction.
This question, and Friedman’s answer, would undoubtedly be deployed by Rothenberger as a shield in response to questioning by the Knesset should things go wrong.
And things would go wrong. Friedman’s officers were operating on foreign soil, targeting what was probably a member of a foreign terrorist organization, with a spontaneous kinetic operation.
Of course the mission wouldn’t go exactly right—that was the nature of the intelligence business.
All of this the director undoubtedly knew.
What he was really asking was whether Friedman was prepared to take the fall if his team’s covert actions were later featured on Italy’s evening news.
Yes, it was amazing what could be accomplished when one no longer cared about being promoted.
“I recommend allowing the team to approach the subject, interrogate him, and further develop the situation.”
“By develop the situation do you mean kill the operative?”
“If that is what is required.”
Friedman surprised himself with his directness.
While the Mossad was no stranger to foreign assassinations, these killings were not carried out on a whim and certainly not at the team leader’s discretion.
Each assassination required what was known as a Red Paper—an order signed by the prime minister that authorized a subject’s killing.
Speaking this bluntly could have detrimental effects on matters of far more weight than his career.
Like his freedom, for instance.
Perhaps he was ready to retire.
“Approved.”
Friedman nodded his thanks, got to his feet, and was preparing to leave when the director held up his hand.
“One more thing. This new intelligence on Iraq—have you reviewed it?”
Friedman frowned. “Not yet.”
“Do so at your earliest convenience. You’re going to Washington.”
“Why?”
“I asked Director Stansfield for a meeting to discuss Iraq. You will represent me.”
Translation—Rothenberger was once again badgering the Americans to take ownership of the Iraq problem.
Since they weren’t listening to him, the director was sending someone else to carry his water.
Friedman thought about reminding Rothenberger that he had an active operation to manage, but he knew it was no use.
The director of operations always had active operations to manage.
“When?”
“Within the hour, I’d expect. The meeting’s tomorrow.”
Somehow, Friedman wasn’t surprised.