Jerusalem
One day after Assassinations
Ten days to Announcements
The handler leaned back in his swivel chair and played with a paperweight. He was one of the most powerful people in his country. Many said he was even more powerful than the Supreme Leader, given the organization he ran.
The handler. That was how he was referred to in certain intelligence agencies. Long before he had risen to head one of the most feared organizations in the world, he had been a spy chief. He had run agents in the U.S., Israel, and several other Western countries. His operatives had stolen military secrets. They had blackmailed politicians and had infiltrated research and defense organizations.
His career had grown meteorically on the back of his successes, and when the Supreme Leader had offered him his current role, he had readily accepted.
He had been working on this plan for decades. Infiltrating the Mossad. It was necessary to achieve the bigger picture, the grand dream that the leader had, one the handler believed in: destroying Israel and placing their country at the forefront of the Islamic world.
It hadn’t been easy, and his planning had fallen apart several times. Until he had found Shiri and Magal. Stone-cold killers. They weren’t psychopaths. They took no perverse pleasure from assassination. However, they felt no remorse, either. It was as if their emotion switch was permanently switched off.
Finding such killers wasn’t an impossible task. He had many more such people in his organization. What the two had was their unique backstory.
The two men grew up in Jerusalem and had lost family members to Palestinian suicide bombings. They had grown up on a diet of Israeli TV and media that portrayed Palestine as the transgressing party.
They had joined the IDF and been operators in the Sayeret Matkal.
They had been deployed in the handler’s country to rescue two Jewish hostages. That was when the man in the room had come across Shiri and Magal.
Ten years ago, he had been interrogating one of the hostages, an Israeli journalist who had written several devastating exposes on the handler’s country. He, the handler, wanted to know the Israeli’s sources.
He was using aggressive questioning tactics—a couple of live electrical wires attached to the captive’s groin—when the door had smashed open. Two masked men burst in, both in black, wielding automatic weapons.
The handler didn’t waste time wondering why the security personnel outside the remote compound hadn’t stopped the intruders.
He dived toward his HK416, which was an arm’s length away. Simultaneously, he shoved the journalist’s chair at the masked men.
That second act slowed the shooters. They weren’t expecting the handler to use the Israeli as a shield.
One gunman swung around the captive and dived to the floor when the handler’s HK chattered. His rounds went wide. He snatched a quick glance at the second shooter. That intruder was looking to free the Israeli. Neither stranger had shot at him.
They want him alive. I, too, want them, or at least one of them, alive. To see who they are.
The handler pounced on the gunman, who was on the floor, to club him with his HK. He slapped away the intruder’s rising weapon with his left hand just as the attacker triggered and a burst of bullets streaked past his face and embedded in the ceiling.
He punched the intruder in the face. Took a blow in the ribs in return. The two men grappled for seconds, both of them trying to gain the upper hand, their weapons momentarily useless as they struggled to get a hold.
Just as the handler felt he was subduing the gunman, a blow struck him on the shoulder. He fell. Lost his weapon. Turned and landed on his left shoulder. Saw that it was the second gunman, who was now supporting the journalist.
‘WHO ARE YOU?’ he yelled and lunged at the nearest attacker.
The gunman evaded his charge and brought a knee into his groin. The handler collapsed, but not before his nails had dug into the shooter’s vest.
It stretched, exposing the attacker’s right shoulder, revealing the small tattoo on the fleshy part.
The handler recognized it.
‘YOU’RE FROM MY COUNTRY?’ he yelled and charged again, trying to unmask the intruder, not caring that he could be shot.
The second gunman struck him again, felled him to the floor and kicked him viciously.
The handler’s vision dimmed. He saw the first gunman pull up his vest and stare at him. Then the men left, taking the journalist with them.
The handler was in hospital when he came to, surrounded by his people. He ordered an investigation, which revealed that the two intruders had circumvented the security systems in the compound and had rendered several guards unconscious.
Only a few agencies in the world had such capable operatives. Fewer of those would rescue an Israeli journalist by sending in lethal operatives.
The handler had two organizations in mind: Mossad and Sayeret Matkal.
He got his proof when Israeli media reported the daring rescue of the journalist. It credited the latter organization for the act.
The handler never forgot that night. He was left with two questions.
Why did an Israeli soldier have that tattoo? Why didn’t they kill him?
He got his answers five years later, when Shiri and Magal made contact.