The Last Testament

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

J ERUSALEM , W EDNESDAY , 3.10 PM

Amir Tal was working hard to conceal his amazement, even his excitement. He had dealt with intelligence often; since taking this job in the Prime Minister’s bureau, it was hard to avoid it. Reports, assessments, analyses, they all crossed his desk.

But he had never seen how it was done, how the raw information that formed that paper mountain was gathered. His army service had kept him inside the belly of an armoured personnel carrier. It was prestigious enough-he served in the Golani Brigade-but nothing like this. Now, in this office, he was seeing how it worked, up close. And, best of all, he was the man in charge.

‘Can I listen?’ he said, gesturing at the woman who sat at the centre of the multiple computer screens, with what looked like a DJ’s mixing desk before her. She took off her headphones and gave them to Tal, who wore them the way she had, one ear on, one ear off.

‘The man’s voice you hear is Uri Guttman, son of the deceased. The woman’s voice is the American, Maggie Costello.’

‘Irish,’ Tal murmured, mainly to himself. The voices were remarkably clear. Costello was asking Guttman for his father’s cellphone. Tal could even hear papers rustling. Say what you like about the Shin Bet, they were an impressive bunch: they had mounted this entire surveillance operation within a few hours of his demanding it.

‘And you can do all this from that TV satellite truck parked outside?’

‘With directional microphones aimed at the windows-through the glass-you can do a lot. Better if you have something on the inside too.’

‘Which you don’t. So how come the sound’s so good?’

The woman was plugging in a second pair of headphones into the side of the computer, so that she could listen in at the same time. She gave Tal a crooked smile.

‘You do have something in there! How?’ He quickly altered his features: mustn’t look too eager.

‘Well, there have been a lot of flowers arriving in that house, and food parcels, too. Let’s just say one of the bouquets does more than look nice.’

Amir took off the headphones, and put his hand on the shoulder of the woman. Keep up the good work.

There was no point listening any further. Another operative was listening closely, taking a shorthand note. Anything of substance, he would report it immediately.

‘Amir, you might want to see this.’ It was the man who had remained glued to a computer screen since they had got here, at least as far as Tal could tell. He had wondered what this man was up to, but hadn’t dared ask.

Now what he saw disappointed him. It was a standard webmail page, an inbox no different from the one he used for his personal correspondence at home. Nothing hi-tech or espionage about that.

And then he saw it. The cursor moving around the screen without any apparent human intervention; the operator’s hands remained still.

‘What is this?’

‘You’re looking at Shimon Guttman’s computer, the one his son and that woman are working on right now.’

‘Are these surveillance pictures?’

The man smiled in a way Tal didn’t like, as if he was entertaining a question from a slow child.

‘No, there’s no hidden camera. Just a simple SilentNight program.’ He waited a beat or two-standard techie practice, to let the ignorance of the explainee sink in-then went on: ‘It’s a neat little program that installs itself on someone else’s machine and gains the kind of system-level privileges we need.’ He could see that the penny had not yet dropped. ‘It gives us total access to their computer. We could operate it remotely, from here, if we wanted to.’

‘What, I could start typing at this keyboard, and it would show up on their screen?’

‘Yep. But don’t do it!’ He placed his hand protectively over the keyboard and cursor, like a swot shielding his exam paper to prevent the other kids taking a peek. ‘If they see their cursor moving around, they’ll know we’re onto them. Either that, or they’ll think it’s Guttman’s ghost trying to freak them out.’

‘So we just watch.’

‘Exactly. Anything they type, I see it. Right now, for example, they’re trying to hack into his gmail account.’

The woman with the headphones called out. ‘OK, we have a phone call. Costello’s just dialled Khalil al-Shafi in Ramallah.’ Tal headed over, waiting to be passed a set of headphones of his own. But the woman was concentrating too hard, listening to each word, to help the boss. By the time she had connected him, the phone call was over. Instead he heard Maggie Costello speaking to Uri Guttman.

‘OK. What does nas tayib mean?’

A moment later and it was the computer operator who was getting excited, forcing Amir Tal to rush back to his side. He felt slightly ridiculous, like a kid at a video arcade, watching as his older brothers played games, hopping from one machine to another to keep up with the action.

The computer guy was wide-eyed. ‘Hey, this is interesting.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Watch that window right there. They’re logging on as that name we just heard. Saeb Nastayib. Now they’re trying different passwords.’ A series of asterisks appeared in the password box on the screen. The operator clicked open a small window and suddenly real characters appeared, one by one. ‘Having a go at VladimirJ. Nope.’

‘How can you see that? Even their screen doesn’t show up the password.’

‘That’s why this SilentNight programme is such a beauty. It records every keystroke. So even if the screen doesn’t show what buttons they pressed, we can still see them. Oops, Vladimir48. Wrong again.’

‘OK, let me know when you have something useful.’

Amir Tal didn’t have long to wait. Within ten minutes the surveillance team parked in the Channel 2 truck outside the Guttman residence reported that Costello and Guttman Junior had left the house, apparently heading for the home of journalist Baruch Kishon. Meanwhile, computer analysis suggested a correspondence between the late Shimon Guttman and the late Ahmed Nour, the former using an Arab codename, combined with the intensely Zionist password of Vladimir67. They were arranging to meet in Geneva.

‘OK, gather round, people,’ Tal began, enjoying taking command. ‘I want whatever intel we can get on Nour: who was he, why did he die and what the hell was he talking about with Shimon Guttman? What were they planning? Was this some kind of alliance of the extremes, two guys both opposed to the peace process agreeing to work together to derail the talks? Talk to Mossad in Geneva. Find out whether they’d met before. Travel plans for the last year. If that yields nothing, go back further. Everything you can get, I want it.

‘Also Khalil al-Shafi. What’s he been saying to Costello? Why did she call him? And what’s his precise connection to Ahmed Nour? We need answers on this right away. Is he onside for these peace talks or not? If he is sabotaging from the inside, I want to know about it.

‘I hope the most crucial thing goes without saying. We keep following Costello and Guttman. And, whatever happens, we get to Baruch Kishon before they do. Go!’