The Perfect Assassin

Chapter Twenty-Two

Slaton left the hotel at 9:20 that evening, having settled on the time after some deliberation. He would have to climb up the fire escape and let himself into Dhalal’s upper flat, the type of task usually best left for the small hours of the morning. The problem was the box. Home improvement shoppers weren’t typically out at 3:00 a.m. lugging packages around. This in mind, he’d settled on the late evening. It would be dark, but the streets still busy with people ending their day’s business and beginning a night’s leisure. He would blend in on the sidewalks, then disappear into the alley behind Dhalal’s.

He took a cab, not wanting the exposure of the tube on a busy Friday evening. The driver tried to chat at first, but Slaton was minimally receptive and the fellow finally gave up. When they arrived at the prescribed address, two streets south of the tobacco shop, Slaton handed over his fare along with an average tip and bid the driver a courteous good evening.

From that point Slaton walked quickly, a man with things to do. There were plenty of people about, and he realized that by holding the box upright as he carried it, he could partially shield his face from oncomers. When he reached the mouth of the alley, he stopped. Slaton pulled the receipt from his box and pretended to study it. He might have been looking for an address that had been scribbled down, or double-checking the price he’d just paid. When the sidewalk was clear, he slipped deftly into the narrow passageway.

To his left were the businesses that lined Crooms Hill Road. Among them, fifty yards ahead, was Dhalal’s smoke shop. To the right the configuration was similar — the backsides of small buildings, some with residences above. At this hour the businesses were all closed, except one at the very end which Slaton recalled was a restaurant. The alley was much darker than the street had been, only a few shafts of illumination straying from the flats above. To each side lay a shadowy assortment of trash cans, crates, and grungy boxes. Slaton heard a stereo playing soft jazz, and somewhere overhead two jagged voices, a man and a woman, were locked in a profane argument.

He reached the back of Dhalal’s shop and gauged his task. The building opposite was unlit and quiet. Unfortunately, Dhalal’s was not. A light shone brightly from the window of the owner’s second-floor flat, and Slaton could hear a television blaring a variety show. The fire escape was also a problem. It looked in worse shape than Slaton remembered, rusty and crooked. Strangely, something else came to mind — another fire escape, the one that had been by the window at Humphrey Hall. Slaton had spent hours looking past it as he tried to concentrate on The Excelsior Hotel. As he tried to spot the enemy. As he tried not to watch her. She had fallen asleep on the couch, her long limbs stretched languidly under a blanket, her lovely profile silhouetted in a soft, indirect light. It was a captivating, distracting picture. Until the two men had come. Then he’d woken her and brought her back to the nightmare of reality.

A loud voice echoed at the end of the alley, interrupting Slaton’s mental excursion. Backing into the shadows, he waited and listened for a full minute before deciding there was no threat. Slaton cursed under his breath. He studied the ladder, briefly wondered if there was any better way up. He felt exposed standing at the bottom of the fire escape.

With a good look to make sure no one had just entered the alley, he scrambled up the steps. The crusty metal framework creaked and groaned under his weight, flakes of rust sprinkling to the ground. He was making too much noise, but there was no turning back now. Sacrificing stealth for speed, he made it to the third floor in seconds. Fortunately, Dhalal had not discovered the open lock on the window. Moments later, Slaton was in with his package, closing the window behind. He fell to the floor and listened.

The television still blared from below. He heard voices outside, but soon realized it was only the argument flaring louder in the other building. He realized how incredibly stupid that had been. Why had he been in such a hurry? What if the window had been re-locked? Slaton lay still. He closed his eyes tightly, but the vision would not be pressed away. She was there, sitting on the beach, an inquisitive look on her face as she tried so hard to understand—

The television suddenly went silent in Dhalal’s flat. He heard rustling downstairs, then someone on the inside staircase. The soft, quick steps were receding, going down. Creaks as the front door of the shop opened, closed, and then a faint click as the lock tumbled into place. Shrivaras Dhalal was going out. Slaton remained motionless. What was happening? He’d lost focus and done a completely amateurish thing. It had to be the fatigue.

Slaton forced his mind to acquire order. He listened carefully for ten more minutes, then went to work. It might have been a simple task had it not been for the small confines of the attic. It was little more than a crawlspace, and he had to keep movement to a minimum as the business end of forty-year-old roofing nails scratched at him from above. It also didn’t help that he had to perform the entire job by illumination of a small pen light, held in his mouth. After forty minutes, though, the preparations were complete. Complete to give him the one chance he needed.

Ehud Zak looked out the window of the BBJ, Boeing’s 737 business jet derivative. The night sky was clear and the blinking lights that had been their escort of Israeli F-16s were no longer in sight. The aircraft had peeled off, he was told, back when they’d entered Italian airspace. Over the open Mediterranean you could never tell, but the Italians didn’t shoot down transiting heads of state.

The pilot announced that they were over central France, and Zak looked down to see a network of lights across an otherwise black void. It reminded him of a starry sky, except the lights were clumped together in bigger groups, impossibly dense constellations connected by spindly offshoots that must have been roads. He had never been to France, but he would go soon.

Zak settled into a huge leather chair and played with the buttons that made it move. The back tilted down, a leg rest moved up, and something bulged under his lower back. He chuckled. He’d been on the new state aircraft once before, having taken it to a funeral in India. It hadn’t been quite important enough for Jacobs himself to attend, and the Foreign Minister had been in South America, so the duty had fallen on Zak to convey official condolences. On that trip he’d traveled up front. Nice enough, but nothing better than a typical airline’s first-class section. The rest of his entourage was milling about there now, while he enjoyed the solitude of the Prime Minister’s suite that had previously been off-limits. Zak looked around appreciatively. He was surrounded by the finest in furniture, fittings, and accessories. Dark wood, royal colors, crystal fixtures. And in back, in an adjoining room, was a sleeping compartment with a huge bed, an entertainment system and mirrors everywhere. Zak delighted in the prospects.

A knock at the mahogany door interrupted his thoughts. “Enter,” he said loudly. He had meant the reply to be weighty and important, but it came off sounding imperious. No matter.

A steward marched in and directly replaced the warm coffee pot with a fresh, hot one. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No,” he said, “not now.” Zak suppressed a smile. That had been better. Dismissive, but keep the fellow on the hook.

The steward disappeared, and Zak again looked out the window. A huge area of lights was coming into view. It could only be Paris. Zak sat mesmerized and reflected on how far the merchant’s son had come. He wished his father could see him now, the bastard. He had gone and died four years ago, but even then the old goat had seen him rise to become a Knesset member, far above what anyone could have expected from the son of a second-rate peddler. The old man might have had money, but his son had acquired power, now more than ever.

Strangely enough, Zak and his father had been born with the same gifts. They had used them, however, in very different ways. His father had been the definitive trader. Imports or exports, textiles or condoms, whatever sold. Talk fast and think faster, that was the key. As a boy, Zak had watched and learned. Learned it was all right to buy out a struggling partner for pennies on the dollar, or foreclose on a competitor’s widow whose insurance had lapsed. It wasn’t being heartless. It was simply business. Send a check to the local homeless shelter and the conscience always came around. The trader’s son had shown great promise, and expectations were universal that he would carry on the family business, perhaps even exceeding the mercantile standards set by his elder.

Unfortunately, those dreams were dashed — as so often is the case for young men — by a woman. At nineteen Zak became infatuated with Iricha, a waitress at the Café DuBres. It was a romance both fast-paced and passionate, and after four weeks young Zak had gone to his family to declare enduring love for the woman. And to announce their intent to marry. His father gave no doubt that, in his eyes, the union was beneath consideration. Not only was Iricha a divorcée and ten years older than young Ehud, she was also Palestinian. Zak brought Iricha to meet his father, to prove what a wonderful wife and mother she might be, but the elder refused even to see her.

He had fumed at his father’s bigotry, but the rift solidified. Soon his father decreed that if the marriage should come to pass, Zak Trading Ltd. would not. In fine adolescent form, the defiant son answered with the most rebellious act he could imagine. He joined the Israeli army.

This had two results, first being that his father made good on his threat to sell the business, retiring early and well on the proceeds. The second, and the one that took him completely by surprise, was a sudden coolness that developed in his relationship with Iricha. She eventually made a tear-laden confession that, although her love for him was boundless, life as the spouse of an enlisted man in the IDF was not the idyllic future she had envisioned. She then went about devising any number of schemes by which they could rescind his enlistment and return to the good graces of his family. Her favorite idea was to fake a pregnancy, which she imagined might lead to a hardship discharge for Ehud, and a softening of his father’s stance. Then, a quick marriage-miscarriage strategy would put them back on the road to enduring happiness and prosperity.

It was here that Zak united the concepts of love and war. He had grown up watching his father, the master artisan of trade, deal his way to success. Getting a customer to pay more for less while believing it was he who had gotten the bargain — that was the elusive masterpiece. Yet it was Iricha, the buxom, raven-haired waitress from Haifa, who made him realize that slickness and manipulation were not limited to the world of commerce. He finally saw that his fervent Palestinian lover had been negotiating her own contract, one in which he, and the security of his family’s wealth, were the commodities in question.

Then there was the matter of his enlistment. Zak’s father was not without influential friends who probably could have orchestrated the loss of his enlistment papers. But the choices had been made, and his father would make him live with them. Stung by this realization, Zak did the only thing he could. He jettisoned his bride-to-be and stuck with the Army.

The string of events served to form Zak’s life in many ways. He knew in the recesses of his mind that he could just as easily have been duped by an Israeli woman, or for that matter a Greek or a Latvian. But resentment grew within, and he started to despise and distrust that entire race of people who were generally considered “the enemy.” This ember was fanned easily, as Zak lived and worked within the IDF. Like most military sub-societies, the culture was close-knit, conservative, and completely suspicious and intolerant of the enemy. That meant all things Arab, and particularly all things Palestinian.

Within the first year of his service, Zak received word that Iricha had gone on to marry a wealthy Lebanese banker, a man more than twenty years her senior, and the flame was stoked ever more brightly. First Zak had lost his family and fortune, then his soul, all to an amoral temptress. It created a vast emptiness within him. But the void filled quickly with hatred, with an urge to extract payback on the people, the way of life, whose product was Iricha and her carefree evil.

He was not a warrior in the conventional sense. He had never been one to strike out with fists, nor was he physically strong or athletic. Yet he looked for ways to use the weapons that had always served him. Wits and cunning, the ability to manipulate. Those were the instruments he’d use against the vile people who were both his national and personal enemy. Iricha had turned the tables on him, but Zak vowed to never let it happen again. And someday an opportunity for retribution would come.

Early on, he made every attempt to put these troubling thoughts aside in order to focus his considerable talents on a fledgling military career. It got off to a promising start when, as fate would have it, he was assigned to be the supply clerk of a large infantry unit, something akin to placing an arsonist in charge of a fireworks factory. He quickly learned the intricacies of the military bureaucracy and turned them, wherever possible, to his advantage. Within eighteen months, the 6th Infantry Regiment had caviar and the finest Scotch each Thursday afternoon, the commanding officer was riding around in a Mercedes staff car, and corporal Zak had found himself recommended for a commission.

Having never intended to make the military a career, he reconsidered, and decided life as an officer might not be bad, especially in view of his limited prospects outside the service. That in mind, he accepted the promotion, but only with his commander’s personal assurance that he could switch specialties. A career in supply and logistics was tempting, but Zak had already seen its limitations. In choosing a new field, he fell back on one of his estranged father’s favorite maxims — scientia est potestas. Knowledge is power. And so it was, Lieutenant Zak requested, and was granted, appointment to a new division. Aman. Military Intelligence.

For the merchant’s son, it was an atmosphere in which to flourish. Lies and deception were the stock in trade, a veritable playground for Zak’s shrewd mental games. It was also his chance for payback. He felt increasing satisfaction each time he embezzled money from a Hamas bank account, or bribed a shopkeeper in Gaza. Each success brought gratification, but also whet his desire for more. His stock rose quickly in this shadowy corner of the IDF, and his commanders gave him increasing freedom, opportunities for bigger and more meaningful operations. However, here Zak had gotten carried away. He lost sight of the fact that this obtuse branch of the military was still just that — a branch of the military.

Zak hatched a plan to place a bomb at the upcoming meeting of a pro-peace Palestinian group. The bomb wasn’t supposed to go off. It would simply be a dud, one that could be readily identifiable as being of Hamas origin (easy enough, since the Israeli military was constantly defusing and confiscating just such weapons). The resulting in-fighting amongst the Arabs, Zak reasoned, would be a joy to watch.

His commander, a recalcitrant lieutenant colonel, didn’t see it that way. He thought the whole idea absurd, if not downright dangerous, and ordered Zak to kill any further thoughts of it. Two weeks later, a bomb did indeed detonate at the meeting in southern Gaza, and an anonymous caller claimed credit for a rogue offshoot of Hamas.

Zak’s commander launched a ballistic accusation up the chain of command. Things always fall heavier than they rise, and the lieutenant colonel was immediately reassigned and told to shut up. An ominously quiet investigation got underway. Zak, of course, insisted he had nothing to do with planting the bomb, which was true in the most literal sense. He passed a lie detector test with flying colors, an easy thing to do when you understand how they work, and in the end there was scant evidence. Certainly nothing to hang a court-martial on. Still, the military has its ways. The senior leadership was highly suspicious, and Captain Zak was quietly informed that he would never be anything more than Major Zak. He was reassigned to Signals Intelligence Division, or SIGINT, graveyard of careers lost.

Zak’s remaining years in the service seemed professionally quiet. This, however, was not a consequence of his having been idle. In his eyes, the bombing in Gaza was a great success. The Palestinians quarreled and became suspicious of one another. Editorials in the Arab press pointed fingers everywhere. Everywhere except at Israel. If nothing else, Zak’s time in the intelligence world taught him the value of the media, and of public opinion. Time and again, governments made decisions based not on facts, but rather on opinion polls, the mood of the people. This caused Zak to expand his original ideas, and give them one further, devastating twist. He quietly espoused his thoughts to those who had helped in the first attack, along with a few other carefully chosen friends, men who felt as adamantly about the cause as he.

The second operation took place six months after the first. A small car bomb at a pizza shop. An Israeli pizza shop. One Jew killed, two wounded. The headlines were loud, and the Israeli response clear. Helicopter gunships took ten times as many Arab lives. Zak found the success intoxicating, and his group grew larger. More attacks were arranged, but each with the greatest of care. He realized the inherent danger. If his group were ever discovered, the media’s sway that now aided him would deal a massive counterpunch. Israelis attacking Israelis, blaming the Arabs. The world would cringe.

After a dozen attacks in the first three years, Zak began to feel the risks outweighed the benefits. He scaled back, making the strikes big newsgrabbers, but fewer in number, and only when the chance of detection was low. They were also planned to coincide with the occasional efforts at peace, torpedoes to any truce that might give land to the dirty squatters.

Zak muddled through four years in SIGINT before accepting early retirement, with the rank of major, as promised. It was a divorce, in a sense, one that caused both parties to breathe a sigh of relief. By then, his organization was well established. Still young, and with a clear goal in mind, he searched for even more effective ways to manipulate the will of his countrymen. He found it in politics.

The merchant’s son was a natural. All he had to do was tell people what they wanted to hear. Tough words at the Veterans Society fundraiser, suggest peace at the university commencement speech. It took two years to land a seat on the Knesset. There, his career might have stalled among the lawyers, generals, and other merchants’ sons, had it not been for one stroke of luck. Zak managed to tie himself to the coattails of a rising star by the name of Benjamin Jacobs. The timing was impeccable. Within ten years of leaving the service under a cloud, he had become the second most powerful man in Israel, at least on paper. From there, there had only been one place to go.

And here he was. The lights of Paris had faded, along with those of the French countryside. Now he saw nothing but blackness below, and he decided it must be the English Channel, that little strip of water that had so often saved the British from their enemies. Zak wished he had a Channel. One he could throw all the Palestinians into. A chime sounded and he saw the light flashing on his private intercom. He waited a few moments before picking it up casually.

“What is it?”

He recognized the pilot’s voice.

“We’re beginning our descent, Mr. Prime Minister. It might get bumpy and I wanted to make sure you were buckled in.”

“How long until we land?” Zak demanded.

After a slight pause, the pilot replied, “Seventeen minutes, sir.”

The pilot was a colonel in the Israeli Air Force, and had probably received his commission about the same time as one retired Major Ehud Zak. Timing was everything.

“Make it sixteen.” He hung up and smiled.

By coincidence, ten miles to the south another Israeli executive transport, this one much smaller, was climbing as it began its six-hour journey back to Tel Aviv. Inside, Anton Bloch was also talking on a handset, he to a hotel in Casablanca. His expression was both grim and determined.

When Anton Bloch arrived in Tel Aviv there was no limo waiting. Instead, he’d called ahead and his wife was there to give him a ride, escorted by two bodyguards. For all the privileges Bloch would lose, the muscle would be around for many years. No one would particularly care if he were blown to bits, but ex-Directors of Mossad knew far too many dirty secrets to risk capture.

Bloch was exhausted after the all-night flight from London, and he sat with his wife in the back seat as they went straight to his office. Or what used to be his office. On the way there, the Blochs made a feeble attempt at conversation. They covered the weather, their leaking bathroom sink, and finally ventured to more tender ground, the status of their recalcitrant daughter who had been mucking up her first year at university. The last subject was a sour one, and they both knew he couldn’t give the issue the attention it required. At least not now. Arriving at Mossad headquarters, Anton Bloch shot his wife a look that told her she’d have to handle it for the time being. As he was about to get out of the car, she grabbed his arm.

“Oh, wait. I have something for you.” She dug into her purse and handed over a message, scripted in her own meticulous handwriting. “Some fellow named Samuels called you at the house. He said this was important.”

He took the note, kissed his wife more than dutifully on the cheek, then hurried inside.

Bloch was recognized immediately by security at the entrance and ushered straight to his old office. His successor, Raymond Nurin, wanted a word with him. The choice didn’t surprise Bloch. Nurin had never spent much time in operations, but he was competent, and a safe pick who would neither stir controversy, nor go in and turn the place upside down to put his personal stamp on things.

Once alone on the elevator, Bloch read the message his wife had taken.

Bloch crumpled up the note and vowed to call Nathan Chatham as soon as he could with the name Broadbill. He suspected there might have been a second boat, one to carry the second weapon. The first had been chartered in Casablanca, by Wysinski and his bunch. From there it had been a dead end — but now Rabat. Roth’s name had been the key. Bloch suspected a little research might turn up more on the man. Find him, and maybe they could get to that second weapon in time.

The elevator opened and Bloch was shown to his old office. Not much had changed. There were some new, half-opened boxes of junk to take the place of his own lot, which was presently shoved against the far wall. The desk was already buried under a maelstrom of papers and files.

“Anton,” Nurin said with false familiarity and a smile. Bloch had met the man a few times, but he’d always worked in other sections, socialized in different orbits.

“Where have you been?” Nurin asked guardedly, clearly uncomfortable in the company of his predecessor. The man almost seemed intimidated, and for the very first time Anton Bloch wondered how the rank and file of the Mossad had always seen him. Perhaps some gruff and surly tyrant? Bloch discarded the thought. He didn’t much care.

“In England,” Bloch grunted, “but you already know that.”

Nurin looked embarrassed. “Well, yes. But what were you doing there?”

“Trying to figure out where that missing weapon is.”

The new boss tried to exert some control. “Anton, jetting off to Europe is not the Director of Mossad’s job. We have people who do that kind of thing. And you left your personal security detail behind.”

“I’m not the Director anymore.”

“There’s a lot of people who were nervous about where you’d gone.”

“Like who?”

Nurin huffed, clearly not liking the vector of the conversation. His tone eased, “Look Anton, we’ve got to figure this out. I’m sorry about all that’s happened, but we have to work together.”

The last thing Bloch wanted was a togetherness speech. “I went to England to find Slaton and look for any leads on where that second weapon might be.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“No,” Bloch said, not bothering to add, And if I did have anything, I wouldn’t share it with you right now.

Nurin sighed, glancing at his watch. “I’m expecting a conference call from the Prime Minister any minute, but I’ve got to see you later today. There are some ongoing projects I’d like you to brief me on.”

Bloch tried to look enthusiastic. Then a thought came to mind.

“Yes, I’ll brief you on everything this afternoon. You know, it would help to have the files. That way we could go over them together.”

Nurin looked at a day planner on his desk. “How about three o’-clock? I’ll cancel the rest of my afternoon.”

“Fine,” Bloch said. “Do I still have authorization? Two days ago I was the Director, but if they’ve gone by the book, those pencil-necks downstairs might have pulled my access.”

Nurin looked surprised, “Oh, of course. I’ll make sure they give you whatever you need.”

Bloch retained his business-like expression. The new Director had just made his research a lot easier.