Jerusalem
One day after Assassinations
Zeb acted instantly, without haste. He turned to the vendor and presented the map to him.
‘How can I get to the Temple Mount?’ he asked in broken Hebrew.
From the corners of his eyes he saw the two operatives check out the street. He felt their gazes linger on him. Apparently, he wasn’t a threat, because they headed toward Mahane Yehuda Market.
The two women had replied to Levin’s email, said they were open to meeting Epstein. The quicker it happened, the faster they could get back to their missions.
Twelve of the kidon replied to Levin similarly. Nothing can be read into those replies.
He thanked the vendor, stuffed the map in his backpack and decided to follow the women. He had to detour first, however, to keep the vendor from becoming suspicious, since his directions had pointed in a different direction.
He followed the length of the operatives’ building and, once he was out of sight of the kidon and the vendor, sprinted around it.
He used the cover of a car to bend down swiftly, don tinted shades, turn his jacket inside out to reveal a different color, and remove his baseball hat.
A slight change to the way he walked, with his left shoulder drooping, and his new disguise was complete.
He hurried until he caught sight of the women, who were walking leisurely.
They aren’t on a mission. These times must be rare for them. They’re making the most of it.
He got as close to them as he could risk. Heard snatches of their conversation.
Neither Carmel nor Dalia talked about killing the Palestinians. They were conversing about the weather, their families, a movie they had seen.
Zeb hung back when they went inside the market and checked out vegetables.
An hour to complete their shopping?
Zeb figured it would take that long, from his limited experience of women.
He returned to the apartment building in ten minutes and entered its deserted lobby. No security. A camera in the ceiling. He lowered his head and went up the stairs at a jog. Entered the fourth-floor hallway through a service door.
Two apartments on each floor. Two elevators in the middle of the hallway. Carmel and Dalia’s apartment was to Zeb’s right. Dark windows, thick glass, overlooking the street, on the sides of the corridor.
He inspected the door from a distance. Didn’t see any cameras. The apartment could be alarmed. Don’t want to risk an entry that way.
He went back to the staircase and looked around for a maintenance door.
There it was, painted white, the same shade as the wall. He opened it and went inside a narrow corridor filled with cables and air-conditioning ducts … and reached a dead-end.
He went down the stairs as another idea emerged. Twenty minutes since he had left the kidon at the market. Forty to go.
He left the building and checked out the balconies. He could leap to the bottom of the first one. Get onto it. The vertical wall was uneven, with stones jutting out, an architectural motif.
Zeb looked around casually. Not much traffic. The vendor was out of sight. The balconies on all the floors were unoccupied, their doors shut.
He put on gloves and leapt without further thought. Caught the bottom railing of the lowermost balcony and pulled himself up.
Leaped sideways and grabbed a jutting stone. He had done a fair share of bare-hand mountain climbing, and those skills were useful. He used his shoulders to take his weight and climbed fast, his feet instinctively and easily finding footholds.
In fifteen minutes, he was on the fifth-floor balcony, breathing easily.
No one had shouted at him. No one had taken shots. He looked down. No upturned faces, either. No sign of Carmel or Dalia.
He tested the doors and sent up a silent prayer of thanks when they slid easily.
That’s the second mistake those operatives made. The first one was to rent in this building, with that kind of outside wall.
He entered the living room silently, the carpet beneath his feet killing all sound. The apartment was air-conditioned and cool. A dining table in one corner, around which were four chairs. A TV against a wall. A couch set against another wall. An ornate showcase in another corner. Two doors that led to bedrooms, each of which had a bathroom, and a hallway that went to the kitchen.
He couldn’t see any security cameras; nevertheless, he removed a rectangular device from his backpack and turned it on: an RF detector that could sniff out electronic devices across a broad spectrum of radio frequencies.
Broker and the twins had customized the device further to detect a wide array of surveillance and counter-surveillance equipment.
No cameras. There weren’t any in the apartment. No bugs, either. A standard security alarm that he could easily turn off and on, next to the entrance door.
Zeb wondered for a moment at the lack of surveillance equipment. Maybe these two aren’t the killers.
The device in his hands had a screen that indicated two pieces of equipment that interested him.
Laptops.
One was beneath a pillow in one bedroom. A quick look around indicated it was Carmel’s. A set of passports, a Beretta and a wicked-looking knife in a drawer.
He picked up the device and turned it on. Grimaced when the screen asked for a password.
He removed more gear from his rucksack and inserted a thumb drive into the machine. A light on it blinked as it got to work, copying the hard drive. He removed the flash drive when the light disappeared and returned the laptop to beneath the pillow.
His eyes lingered on the bed. Sturdy bedposts. Wooden. He fingered one. Yeah, it would do. He used his knife to make a hole in it, inserted a listening device and filled the hole with putty. Same color as the wood. The material wouldn’t keep the bug from working.
He went to Dalia’s room and found her laptop in a bag in a closet, along with a bunch of passports and fake IDs. He didn’t search the room anymore. He copied her laptop, too, and left another bug in her room.
He planted the last listening device in the living room, by gouging out the bottom of the dining table.
He went to the balcony and peered out cautiously. No traffic, still.
He extracted the last piece of equipment from his backpack. A cellphone tower shaped like a miniature TV antenna. He coated it with adhesive and went outside. Climbed to the sixth-floor balcony, next to which was a dish TV antenna. He attached his tower to the wall behind it, smoothed down the excess adhesive and dropped to the kidon’s balcony.
Ten minutes more.
He didn’t want to risk an exit through the exterior and decided to leave through the front door.
That was his mistake.