On a quiet street in the heart of the Neve Tzedek neighborhood, there’s a luxury villa. It is the only house in Israel designed by Santiago Calatrava. The house sits in the middle of a gated garden and is built on three levels.
Floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere. The structure surrounds a large courtyard. Light floods in. The three large guest bedrooms are seldom used, if ever. The master bedroom is on the top floor. Its bathroom is the size of a small apartment.
Every single glass of every window is bullet- and rocket-proof.
The fence around the garden has the same sensors as the fence surrounding the West Bank. In fact, the same company designed and installed it.
The basement is a safe room built like a bomb shelter. It can house eight people and is equipped to coordinate a small-scale assault on a medium-grade bunker. It’s also stocked with enough air, water, and food for six months.
Marina Petrovna takes no chances.
In the game she chose to play, mistakes are expensive. Lack of caution, more so. Rival gangs, dissatisfied customers, or overambitious underlings are threats to watch out for.
And yet, formidable as these preparations are, they’re not built to hold back the fury of the Shin Bet. When Israel’s security agency wants to bring in a target, it does. Come what may.
The squad tasked with apprehending Marina Petrovna is like those used for raiding a Hamas strongpoint.
So are their tactics.
They cordon off a three-block radius.
They go door to door, removing neighbors, tradesmen, storekeepers, assorted innocent bystanders.
The canvas brings in a small catch of Organizatsiya sentries posted about the streets, their radios and cell phones confiscated, along with their small arms and weapons.
They place small-charge explosives on the wall’s outer gate. Two Black Hawk helicopters provide air support and recon.
A third bird carries troops. The troops will rappel down once the main gate is breached and the land troops advance.
They blast the gate.
The main force runs in. They cross the garden in no time.
The airborne troops go down, station themselves on the house’s roof, take battle positions. Snipers are ready to take out anyone trying to escape.
Taking out the main door or any of the windows is a hopeless task. It’s easier to blast a hole through the wall. The sappers make quick work of it.
Shin Bet is inside Marina’s house.
When Israel’s security agency wants to bring in a target, it does. Come what may.
But not this time.
The house is empty, and Marina is gone.
Yuval Maimon is not so lucky.
He has no people inside the system to tip him off. He doesn’t have an escape hatch behind his safe room leading to the Tel Aviv sewers and freedom. He doesn’t even have a safe room.
He’s a man of habit, and habit demands he be at Café Rimon for breakfast. Not the main Café Rimon on Ben Yehuda Street. He prefers the one in Mamilla Mall, on the outskirts of the Old City, a fifteen-minute walk from the Western Wall where he said his morning prayers.
It’s also where he waits for news of his contract.
He watches the TV screen.
President Addams’s limousine drives up to Beit HaNassi. BenTov walks to it, helps her out, greets her husband.
They all wave for the cameras.
They all walk inside.
Maimon doesn’t know when the bomb’s going to go, but he knows it’ll go today. That was the agreement. That was the contract.
The news anchor drones on and on about how close the US and Israel are, how President Addams made a point of making this her first overseas trip after her inauguration. She’s trying to mend the strain left behind by her predecessor and Israel’s current prime minister.
Maimon wants to check his email on his phone.
He can’t.
He has no signal.
The other patrons have a similar problem. Probably a magnetic cloud or something.
Then he spots the uniformed police filling the outdoors corridor that makes up Mamilla Mall. They line up outside the restaurant. They’re here in strength.
Two plainclothes officers walk in. They head straight to his table.
“Yuval Maimon, you’re under arrest for complicity in a terrorist act and the sale of state secrets,” says the more senior of them.
He doesn’t make a show. He doesn’t resist. On come the handcuffs. The junior officer searches him. It’s a slow undressing without taking his clothes off.
They remove his cell phone, his wallet, an address book, and his dignity before marching him down the pedestrian street, up the stairs, and to the police van waiting for him.
Thus ends Yuval Maimon.