Assassin's Game

FIFTY-SIX

Yaniv Stein sat against his rock — after twenty days anyway, he thought of it as his — contemplating whether crushing the scorpion near his sock-clad left foot was worth the effort. The creature wasn’t a threat. Not on the big scale of things. There was perhaps some food value, but food was not his problem. He was out of water. A man could survive for a long time in the desert without food. Water, on the other hand, was nonnegotiable.

In the harsh morning light Stein looked down at his shattered leg. In a way the injury had saved him three weeks ago. The grenade he’d thrown into the truck that night had set off a large secondary explosion — how was he to know that was where they stowed their munitions? Shrapnel from the blast had ruined his leg, but the explosion also proved his salvation — it created smoke, fire, confusion, and most fortuitously, an Iranian corpse that was burned beyond recognition. Nearly delirious from the pain, Stein had removed his outer uniform and done his best to dress the victim as an Israeli commando. He’d then shoveled flaming embers onto what was left of the body until the poor grunt was smoldering again. Finally, in the most painful two hours of his life and under cover of a frenetic night, Stein had crawled eighty yards to this spot, a tiny cavern in the side of a low ridge.

The next two days he spent bettering his camouflage and watching from his hole. Bands of Iranian soldiers came and went. They carted out bodies — first his three comrades and later their own — and then began kicking boot toes through the gory aftermath. The final groups looked more like tourists, senior officers mostly, one of whom nearly made it to his position. Stein was prepared to take the man with his only remaining weapon, his trusted Glock, knowing it would start an exchange that he would not survive. Then the colonel with the big gut had stopped ten paces short and taken a whiskey flask from his pocket, emptying it before heading back to his jeep.

On the third day the visits stopped, the charred equipment left to rot. Since then Stein had been alone. He supposed it was better than capture, yet the subsequent fight for survival had stretched his training and tenacity to their limits. Hydration quickly proved the most serious problem, but after four parched days a desperate Stein had crawled to the donkey’s carcass and found two untouched water bladders beneath. A full ten liters that had lasted until this morning.

So today Stein had gone on another search, dragging himself over the sand like a bent snake, turning over burned canvas packs and looking under charred cloth. There had been no water, but he found something even more precious. At the bottom of a crater and half buried in sand — where Dani had been perhaps? — a personal locator beacon. A locator beacon with one bar remaining on the battery.

His spirits soared on the discovery, and Stein crawled back to his lair where he dusted off the device under the makeshift shade tarp. They had each been issued one of the units, an ERB-6, the latest in personal satellite technology. Stein spent ten minutes composing his text message, knowing he would likely only have one shot. He included his emergency code word, and a brief mention of his injury. His position on the roof of the Kavir Desert would be accurate to within a few yards, and automatically enciphered before transmission. Stein hit the Send button holding his breath, and watched as the screen churned and finally announced: MESSAGE SENT.

Now he could only wait.

The sun was rising high, cooking night into day, and in the distance Stein saw a dust cyclone swirling. Farther yet, in a teasing image at the base of the northern mountains, he saw the lifting billow of a rain shower. He had turned the beacon off after his one transmission — it wasn’t designed as a two-way device — but now he wondered whether there might be one more burst in the battery. Probably not, he decided. With that depressing thought, Stein pulled out his last energy bar. He almost broke it in half, but then shifted his dirt-encrusted fingers to make two breaks. Three pieces. One for each day.

If help didn’t come by then, it would almost certainly be too late.

Just after ten o’clock that morning, a bleary-eyed Raymond Nurin found himself walking lengthwise along the southern side of a steep hill outside Montvendre, France. To his left and right he saw long trellises anchored into the rich brown earth, and climbing these, matted in morning dew, were the priceless canopies of Roussette. The grapes had already been harvested and the vines pruned for the season, but that was the limit of his untrained assessment.

Nurin’s nondescript aircraft had landed in Grenoble some two hours earlier. There he was told to rent a car, and subsequently guided by a series of texted directions and misdirections. Now, certainly nearing the end of his odyssey, he found himself wandering a family-owned Savoy vineyard with a ticket for the ten-thirty tour in his coat pocket.

This too had been in the instructions.

Nurin had never visited this part of France, and he knew little about wine. He liked red with beef, and knew that some seemed better than others, maddeningly subtle distinctions he could register but never quite quantify. He also knew that the prices listed on restaurant menus varied wildly, a detail that regularly escaped his wife’s grasp. Walking over the steep, terraced terrain, he wondered if there was some logic to growing grapes on a south-facing hillside. Better drainage? More sun? Or perhaps cheaper land. If he made it to the ten-thirty tour, he would likely find an answer.

Nurin never got the chance.

“I wasn’t sure if you would come.”

The level voice came out of nowhere and Nurin froze.

He had never met the man behind him, and wasn’t sure why he’d been lured to this meeting. The secure Mossad building from which he normally orchestrated things seemed suddenly very distant. Nurin had spent time in the field early in his career, but he did not delude himself — his mind-set had long ago shifted from tactician to strategist. So he was standing on foreign soil, completely unarmed, and quite alone. And behind him? Behind him was the most lethal assassin Israel had ever built, and by all accounts a man who would like nothing better than to kill him on the spot. Indeed, the fact that he did not already have a bullet in his brain was the greatest positive Nurin could summon from his situation.

And with that lovely thought, he took a shallow breath and turned.

Slaton was there, no more than two steps away, and the director made a quick study. Tall and athletic, fair hair and opaque gray eyes that seemed to look right through him. Or perhaps into him?

The kidon said nothing, only responding with his own appraising stare.

“I am alone,” Nurin said, trying to keep an even tone, “just as you instructed.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t surprised to hear from you. When they couldn’t find your body I assumed you had egressed Geneva successfully. The Swede, the detective, I saw his statement. It was very convincing. Six rounds fired, three hits at point-blank range. His colorful narrative of how you vaulted end-over-end into the river. Quite compelling. I can only assume that you somehow conspired with this man?”

“No comment.”

Nurin nodded. “Very well. And regarding the rest — you are aware of the greater plan?”

“I had a long talk with Dr. Hamedi. He explained everything.”

“You did well to find a way to return him to Iran. Even better that you were able to eliminate Behrouz in the course of … in the course of events. Hamedi’s plan can go forward now.”

Nurin saw Slaton’s attention dart to a pair of workers walking on a nearby path. They wore work pants and brown T-shirts, and had long shovels slung over their shoulders. Slaton waited for them to pass, then reestablish eye contact.

Nurin asked, “So your plan was to abduct Hamedi? And what would you have done then?”

“I was going to demand your public resignation, along with an admission that you had committed unspecified crimes, the details of which could not be revealed for reasons of national security. You would have gotten prison time. I was going to demand ten years — but I’d have settled for five. One always has to leave room for negotiation.”

“Negotiation? With whom?”

“I was going to bring the prime minister here, to the very spot where you’re standing. I wanted his personal assurance — in writing — that Christine and I would be left alone forever. Then I was going to hand him Hamedi to do with as he pleased.”

Nurin felt more at ease, finding himself on increasingly familiar terrain. “Yes,” he said appreciatively, “that was probably the best you could have done.”

For the first time Slaton’s eyes stopped scanning. Standing on wet earth between wire frames of hundred-year-old vines, the unsettling gaze drilled Nurin directly. “It wouldn’t have worked, would it? Not even if Hamedi was the fanatical anti-Semite everyone thought him to be.”

“No,” Nurin conjectured, “probably not. You might have gotten a degree of retribution — but only against those of us in Israel who were forced to make the difficult choices. A few moments of gratification perhaps, but the outcome wouldn’t have changed.”

“So for Christine and I there’s never going to be a way out, is there?”

“Over the years you have done great things for Israel, David. But in your line of work success comes with a price. Tell me — would you consider coming back? Mossad can always use a man of your talents.”

In the ensuing silence Nurin recognized a mistake. He quickly added, “You were very resourceful last night. When you learned the truth about Hamedi, how he was planning to neutralize the biggest threat we Jews have faced in decades, you immediately found a way forward.”

“I’m not done yet,” Slaton said.

“What do you mean?”

Slaton explained what was yet to come.

Nurin gave the assassin his most circumspect look. “I always suspected you were a good Jew. In the end, you are doing the right thing for Israel, David.”

“And you?” Slaton asked. “Do you feel in your heart that you’ve done the right things?”

“Certainly not. It is the curse of my position. But I can say in good conscience that I have always tried.”

The gray eyes turned ominous. “You’ve sacrificed a lot of good men for this cause, Director.”

“No one understands that better than I. Yet in light of what you’ve just told me — there is one more important matter. In your early days with Mossad, did you ever work with a man named Yaniv Stein?”

The kidon’s eyes narrowed. “Many times. Yaniv was a competent operator — a solid soldier who followed orders.”

“Was?” Nurin repeated cagily. “A curious use of the past tense.”

“It’s my understanding that he was one of the victims of your disaster in Iran a few weeks ago. Yaniv Stein died outside Qom.”

For the first time since arriving in France, the spymaster smiled. “And this, I think, is something we should talk about…”