Assassin's Game

THIRTEEN

Raymond Nurin sat in his bunker an unhappy man. He lived, or so it seemed, deep in the bowels of Mossad headquarters. He kept a proper office, of course, one with heavy furniture and a decent view, but that was a place for formal occasions — meetings with Knesset members and the issuance of citations to the rank and file. The bunker was where Nurin’s real work was done.

The room had been designed under his exacting eye. There was a single workstation to display information, data that had already been sorted and scrubbed by the army of technicians one floor above. There was also a modest conference table with six chairs, this being the number of opinions at which Nurin drew a line — any more, in his view, generated a level of noise that was no more than static.

He was sitting alone at the conference table when the knock came, forceful and impatient. The kind of knock that would come if the building was on fire.

“Come.”

Two men appeared. Rolling in the lead, predictably, was the tanklike form of Oded Veron. Though a man of average height, Veron exceeded the human mean in every other dimension. His hulking shoulders and massive head were fitted over a thick base, all of it advancing with an air of unstoppable momentum. Sharply pressed desert fatigues, sans insignia, covered chain-mail skin that paraded forty years of sun, sand, and scar tissue. Bringing up the rear was Nurin’s second in command, Mossad’s director of operations, Ezra Zacharias. Zacharias had been promoted only recently, after the previous operations chief, a known tyrant who openly aspired to Nurin’s post, was forced to retire in the face of a life-threatening illness. Nurin had chosen Zacharias for his softer, more malleable countenance, not to mention his loyalty. Physically he was Veron’s counterpoint — small, round, and nearsighted — yet what he lacked in physical presence was more than compensated for by an unbending work ethic.

“Well?” Nurin prodded, his voice raised in a rare display of temper. “What the hell happened in Stockholm?”

Veron remained stoic. He silently set a stack of papers on the conference table and spread them out like a poker dealer fanning a deck of cards.

Zacharias filled the void, his voice measured as always, “There hasn’t been much information through our usual channels, at least not yet. It appears the target became violent. He attacked our team.”

“I told you specifically there was to be no engagement. This man is someone we need!”

“With all respect, sir, your instructions were narrow. The man was to be contacted, given a phone, and we were to track him afterward if we could do so discreetly.”

“And this is what you call discreet?”

Veron stepped in, “We don’t know what happened. One of the men was from my section, and he would not have engaged without cause.”

Nurin stared at Veron. The old soldier headed up his recent creation, a cell uncompromisingly called Direct Action. DA took on special projects for, and reported solely to, the director. It kept in its ranks not a single analyst or interpreter, but was comprised of individuals handpicked from IDF Special Forces units, Shin Bet, and Mossad’s own operations arm. Direct Action, as the name implied, was a group of individuals who got things done. Except, it seemed, today.

Nurin said, “Whatever his reasons, your man made a fatal mistake.”

The turret that was Veron’s head swiveled. “The target was fortunate.”

“No, we are fortunate to have sent only two.”

“Who is he?” Veron asked flatly.

“I’ve already told you, I can’t say.”

Veron stiffened, but demurred to Nurin’s authority with a stony silence.

“What about the girl?” Nurin asked. “Have we made any progress in finding her?”

This was Zacharias’s ground. “We have four operatives in country and eight on the way. The embassy provided six. So far they’ve found nothing.”

“She is an amateur! How could she disappear so completely?”

“Sometimes to be an amateur is the best thing,” Veron suggested. “They are unpredictable.”

Zacharias added, “The Swedes have no record of her exit, so she’s still there somewhere. We’ll find her, but I can’t say how long it will take.”

Nurin drummed his fingers on the table. He’d completely misread Anton Bloch’s loyalties, and now the man had thrown a wrench into the most important operation in years. “Do we have anything new on Bloch’s condition?”

“No change,” said Zacharias. “The embassy is keeping a discreet eye on him. At the moment, I would say it’s in our favor that he’s in a coma. It will give us time to arrange his extraction.” Clearly trying to set a more hopeful tone, he added, “We did recover the phone.”

“Where was it?”

“We tracked it to an old pensioner’s flat. One of our people slipped in and found it on the kitchen counter. The target had clearly ditched it.”

“Did he access the file?”

“He looked at it once.”

Nurin felt a ray of hope in an otherwise dismal situation.

“And he used it to send one message,” Veron added. His meaty hands fumbled through the papers he’d set on the table, a clearly foreign task. He pulled one clear and dropped it at an angle so it slid across the table and came to rest in front of Nurin. “You’ve seen this?”

Nurin glanced at the photograph, then averted his eyes. “Yes, yes. I’ve seen it.”

The room fell silent — two men waiting for an explanation, the third not giving it.

Veron broke the impasse by saying, “We will do whatever you ask, sir. But it would be a great help if we knew who we were dealing with. I must ask again — who is this man?”

Nurin glanced at his subordinates in turn, settling on Veron. “I will put it like this, Oded. In different circumstances, he might well be in your shoes.”

Veron stood very still, almost as if at attention, until Nurin said, “Go, both of you. Find this woman. She is our priority.”

“And the man?” Zacharias asked.

“I don’t think you’ll find him.”

“But if we do?”

Nurin considered it. “If you do … let him run.”

Veron and Zacharias walked out, both clearly unhappy but with jobs to do.

Alone, Nurin’s eyes fell to the photograph in front of him. The question he’d been riding all afternoon came back. Could Slaton still be convinced to carry through? In spite of their fumbling, a chance remained. If things fell perfectly. He reasoned that even if Slaton was the first to reach his wife, the threat was now implicit. Nurin might find a way to push, to manipulate one last mission from the kidon. One last sacrifice for Israel. There were alternatives, of course — Veron and his DA squad. That was a last resort, and one Nurin didn’t like, but he would issue the order if necessary. The pursuit of Dr. Ibrahim Hamedi was the most important operation of his tenure, indeed the most important in decades. There was time for one more mission, and it had to be in Geneva. The engineer of Qom would be vulnerable. The Iranians, of course, knew it as well. Farzad Behrouz, Nurin’s counterpart in Tehran, would be on high alert for a last try. Even expecting it.

But then other concerns came to mind. Concerns of a more personal nature.

Nurin looked at the photo on the table with more than a shred of anxiety. It showed the katsa, bloody and glassy-eyed in death. He understood that the photograph was no more than posturing. He was less sure, however, about the attached text message.

Slaton knew what he needed next, but walked a brisk mile before asking a passerby for directions. He selected a young man who looked Middle Eastern, perhaps even Iranian, and was given friendly instructions. Slaton reached the Internet café three minutes later.

Knowing he could no longer use Edmund Deadmarsh’s credit card, he paid cash for an access code. He surveyed the place and saw a vacant workstation at the end of a row, and as he made his way there Slaton noticed a nearby computer that had been turned off, an OUT OF SERVICE placard topping its keyboard. He stopped at this machine, set his bag on the table and began rummaging through its contents. No one seemed to notice when moments later he left with the placard in his bag.

He took a seat at the last console and established a connection. Slaton called up the local Stockholm news feeds and read everything he could find about the shooting of two days prior. He read six stories, three of which quoted Detective Inspector Arne Sanderson. Every article put suspicion on foreign-hatched terrorism, disregarding Sanderson’s quote that “We can’t yet rule anything out.” Nothing Slaton saw gave a lead to Christine’s whereabouts.

He next went to the Stockholm police website and performed a search of recently stolen property, but didn’t find what he was looking for. Slaton switched to a commercial mapping program and zoomed in on the Strandvägen. From there he dragged the cursor north, and then east along the waterways, following the Stockholm-Riga passage and weaving through a maze of islands until the widening channel was finally swallowed by the Baltic Sea. From that point Slaton reversed. He studied the largest islands and primary tributaries. He tried to imprint a mental picture, but the geography was overwhelming amid an endless network of coves and estuaries. Without knowing where to begin it was a vexing problem, but also satisfying — because that had been the idea all along.

Finished with the maps, he called up a search engine and typed in: Sweden, seaplane, charter. He was rewarded with six hits, and after cross-checking locations he narrowed his options to three. He studied the respective websites, made his choice, and entered the contact number for Magnussen Air Charters into one of the phones he’d just purchased.

The timer in his head rang, as it systematically did, and Slaton took a moment to scan the room. He saw perhaps twenty people engaged at computer stations, ranging from deeply engrossed loners, these hunched and wearing earbuds, to casual surfers with friends at their shoulders. The coffee bar ran a short line, and behind the counter a steaming espresso machine hissed and spewed. Nothing felt wrong.

Slaton returned to the computer, his last task being the most delicate. He called up the website for the Physician’s Group of Eastern Virginia, and logged in with Christine’s username and password. As the machine whirred and the connect icon circled, he felt a surge of anticipation. Or was it dread? After an interminable wait, the log of Christine’s messages from work finally lit the screen. He saw three contacts from patients and four from associates, subject lines ranging from “My Gallbladder” to “Softball Canceled.” There was also one message from an unknown address, nothing in the subject line. It seemed the only possibility. His finger hovered over the mouse button, and then one click later Slaton was staring at the simplest of messages: BRICKLAYER111029.

The release of tension was massive and immediate. Those sixteen characters brought Slaton’s eyes closed, and the air that had been locked in his chest purged. Only then did he realize how heavily Christine’s disappearance had been weighing on him. He had fallen so readily into his old rhythms — op plans, objectives, contacts — that he’d lost sight of what was truly at stake. The simple message in front of him brought undeniable relief, yet there was also a sense of unease. It served as a reminder that he was walking a very narrow wire. No room for error.

Slaton again referenced mapping software before typing a final group of characters into the browser window, an impossibly obscure sequence of numbers and special characters. He doubted the site had been disabled because its function was as relevant now as it had been a year ago. The page that came to the screen was like a million others — an advertisement for cheap Viagra, complete with a picture of a little blue pill. Below that, highlighted in red, was a lone file available for download. It was the kind of web link that anyone in their right mind, on the miniscule chance they should navigate here to begin with, would immediately write off as spam. They would close the page and never go back. More to the point, the download link would be treated by any casual user as the web equivalent of a bomb. Which, as it turned out, was exactly what it was.

Slaton clicked on the download and the computer began to hum, extracting a Mossad-designed malware that worked with ruthless efficiency. First, all information on the hard drive would be destroyed. Subsequently, the program would corrupt the operating system in a manner that left it useless and completely unrecoverable. After three minutes — or so Slaton had been briefed — the machine he was using might as well have spent a month at the bottom of the sea. He pushed back from the workstation and placed the OUT OF SERVICE placard on the keyboard.

Sixty seconds later Slaton was back on the street. It was time to leave Stockholm. With each passing hour Inspector Sanderson, or someone like him, would start making connections. When that happened his ability to move within the city would be severely constrained. Fortunately, there was no longer a need for him to be here. Slaton had a new destination, albeit ground that would be difficult to cover. His immediate need — to separate cleanly with no hint of where he was heading. Walking down a cobblestone sidewalk under an azure sky, his pace seemed to quicken with every step.