All eyes turned to Lahav. In his right hand, he held a small bowl of hummus. On his chest, directly on his T-shirt, was a large piece of naan. With surprising dexterity, he tore off a corner one-handedly and popped it into his mouth.
“Is there more to that statement, or are you just throwing it out there as a conversation starter?” asked Nir.
“Oh, there’s a lot more. I just wanted to be invited to talk. I don’t want to be an intrusion.” He tore off another piece of naan, dipped it, and tossed it in.
Nir knew this was part of Lahav’s games. Experience also told him when he was this obnoxious, it was usually because he was holding on to something good. “I don’t think you could be more intrusive than you are now with your feet in the middle of the table. We don’t know where your toes have been.”
“What? Oh, sorry,” he said, pulling his feet off and sending the rest of the naan tumbling from his chest toward the floor. He made a quick swipe to catch it but failed. “Crud.”
“It’s remarkable that you don’t have a girlfriend,” said Gil.
Lahav voiced his dislike of Gil’s remark using two words that drew a sharp look from Nicole.
After apologizing to Nicole, Lahav asked Nir, “So, should I speak?”
“Have you ever needed my permission before?”
Lahav thought a moment. “Not that I can remember. So, I’ll take that as a yes.” He reached across the table and pulled another piece of naan off a dwindling stack. Eating as he spoke, he said, “I was tasked with keeping my eye on Erdoğan and his sick old country. He had made his threats, and everyone thought that our next focus would be on Turkey. Pretty soon, though, his blustering became background noise. ‘I’m going to kill you and blah blah blah.’ No one paid attention anymore. That became doubly true when Russia started popping off with their troop movements and Iran started their militias shooting off rockets at us and at the US forces in Iraq and Syria. Suddenly, everyone’s eyes were on them.”
“But not yours,” said Nir.
“But not mine, because you said to watch the old man. And I did. And it looked like he had settled in for a long winter’s nap during which he’d occasionally bluster in his sleep.” Lahav then spoke very softly. “But he wasn’t sleeping.”
Nir looked around and saw that everyone had been pulled in to Lahav’s story—even the ops guys.
“I set up some algorithms.” Turning to Nir, he said, “That’s a fancy way of saying I set up some programs to track certain activities.”
“I know what an algorithm is,” Nir grumbled.
Lahav looked genuinely surprised. “Anyway, I was looking for movement of some kind. How do you tell whether someone is really asleep or if they’re just pretending to be sleeping? You watch for any movement that gives them away.”
“And you spotted something?” asked Nicole.
“I did. I saw a lot of things going on that weren’t normal. But most of them I set aside as new projects or desperate actions to try to save their rapidly sinking ship. I mean, at the rate they’re going down, not even Rose would stand a chance of survival.”
“So those projects you categorized as being like involuntary twitches when we’re sleeping—they’re movement, but they don’t really mean anything,” said Nicole.
“Exactly! You are so smart, Nicole. It’s no wonder Nir’s in love with you.”
Nir started to protest, then realized there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t sound horrible. Thankfully, he was saved by Efraim, who said, “Well, that’s today’s awkward moment.”
“Go on,” Nir managed to say, knowing that his face was beet red. He didn’t know whether Nicole was blushing also because he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
Lahav seemed a little put off. “I don’t know what I said that’s wrong. It’s so obvious. Anyway, about two weeks after Mousa got his final rubdown, one of my algorithms pointed me to new activity in İskenderun. I had put special emphasis on areas down the eastern Mediterranean coast, just because of proximity to us.”
“Sababa. What’d you see?” asked Efraim.
“Construction. A lot of it. We’re talking a massive project with hundreds of people in a huge open field east of town. In a matter of one month, four huge warehouses were erected, each around two thousand square meters.”
Efraim was sitting straight up now, jotting down notes. “How did we miss this?”
“We didn’t. Once again, we were told it’s for humanitarian aid. There are still a ton of refugees from the Turkey and Syria earthquake a year ago. And to prove their point, massive amounts of grain began to be shipped in as soon as the first building was finished. Inspectors came by and said, ‘Yep, that’s grain alright. Nothing to see here.’ They gave it their stamp of approval, then turned their attention back to the noisy people—Russia and Iran.”
Dima spoke up. “So you are saying that they filled the warehouses with grain? How will that hurt us? Are they going to overfeed us so that we become obese and die?”
“Nice try, you muddleheaded post-Soviet dolt. All I said was that they started filling them with grain. The grain came pouring in for a few weeks, but it never went out.”
“So, it’s just being kept in the warehouses?” asked Dafna.
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Then what?” asked Nir. “My head is hurting too much for riddles. Where is the grain?”
“I don’t know for sure. But I do know that preparing the foundations for the other warehouses involved moving a lot of dirt. Yet if you look at the dirt piles behind the warehouses, they seem a little disproportionate—a little big.”
It was Nicole’s turn. “Are you saying that this starving country buried tons of grain in those dirt piles just so they could pull a switchy-fakey?”
Lahav pointed to his nose, but then added, “I mean, I can’t give a definite answer, but that’s what I believe.”