Somewhere in a Middle Eastern desert
Several years before the Assassinations
The handler met the two men discreetly a few more times. Learned that the two men did seem to have a code.
‘We won’t tell you of any mission that doesn’t affect you,’ Shiri announced when they met in a shack at the edge of the desert. ‘You won’t learn much about Mossad from us.’
‘What’s your value to me, then?’ he countered.
‘You’ll know of the operations we undertake in your country. We can tell you about anything that’s going down against your people that we know of, which might not be much, since Mossad is compartmentalized.’
‘Can I use you to conduct my own operations in Israel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any target?’
‘We’ll decide that on a mission-by-mission basis. Now, about compensation and logistics…’
The two men negotiated hard and made the handler agree on an eye-watering sum. The handler, in turn, got them to accept that there would be an initial deposit and the larger payments would follow only after trust had been built.
The logistics were easier to work out. The three of them were well-versed in black-ops. They agreed on a communication protocol. They would use well-known websites such as property-listing portals. The handler would put up a property for sale; the two operatives, posing as interested buyers, would message, using coded language.
‘You alone will manage us,’ Shiri demanded.
The handler agreed. That had been his plan in any case.
‘How come Mossad selected you?’ he asked Magal curiously, ‘with that tattoo?’
‘That helped, actually,’ the operator grinned. ‘They went through our backstories thoroughly, as you would expect. We aced every psychological test. The tattoo … the ramsad decided it would help us in operations in your country.’
‘And what about the psych tests? They must have detected your lack of…’
‘Morals? Ethics? We were surprised at that, too. We think those flaws made us more valuable to the agency.’
The handler could see the logic in that. Operatives who weren’t driven by ideology or patriotism were rare. He transferred the first payment and they were in business.
The handler suspected a trap, however. Why wouldn’t he? Israel had carried out several espionage attacks on his country. Magal and Shiri’s approach could be an elaborate ruse by the Mossad to get inside the handler’s organization.
Over the next year, he made few demands from the two kidon. He gave them relatively simple missions. Grab an American diplomat and bring him over to his country. Bug the room of the British defense minister, who was visiting Israel.
The kidon didn’t ask him for his reasoning. They carried out each operation and reported back when complete. Every mission was clean. Zero blowback.
The handler was impressed and, after a while, gave them more difficult jobs. He also carefully let slip several pieces of sensitive information: intel on his country that would be valuable to the Israelis. Nothing happened. No Mossad, Shabak or IDF team acted on it.
One time, he accidentally dropped a file that contained intel on the country’s nuclear reactors. It didn’t seem like the information reached the ramsad.
After several such traps, all of which the two operatives passed, he gained confidence.
And then the two men told him they were tasked with taking out a prominent politician. A high-flying figure in the handler’s country, who was violently opposed to Israel and had significant popular backing.
The handler was in a dilemma. He could prevent the operation and capture Magal and Shiri. That would be a coup for him. However, he was interested in the long term.
Reluctantly, he told the men to go ahead. He would not interfere. The two men looked at him, astonished.
‘You realize we will kill him?’ Magal asked.
‘Yes. Go ahead.’
‘Why?’ Shiri’s eyes narrowed.
‘It will consolidate your position in Mossad. Despite all your psych tests, I am sure there will be people who treat the two of you differently, just because your origins are in my country.’
Magal nodded, thoughtfully.
‘All I ask is, give me sufficient notice if you’re carrying out other missions in my country.’
The two men looked at each other. Magal nodded again.
‘Remember,’ Shiri warned, ‘we won’t know of missions carried out by other khuliyot.’
‘I know,’ the handler replied.
He didn’t tell anyone in his government about the Mossad’s mission. He acted shocked when two masked men, on a motorbike, pumped several bullets into the politician and escaped.
MOSSAD ASSASSINS STRIKE!
Headlines in his country screamed accusingly. That agency didn’t take credit, but it was a trademark kill.
Years passed. The handler still hadn’t used Magal and Shiri for any significantly major mission. There were a couple of reasons for that.
A new ramsad, Avichai Levin, had been appointed and the three men wanted to see how he would treat the two kidon. It turned out the director rated the two operatives highly.
The second reason was infiltrating Mossad’s systems. Israel had carried out cyber-attacks on the handler’s country several times over the past years. One in particular had delayed the nation’s nuclear program.
The handler had been beefing up his cyber capability ever since that attack. He wanted to use Magal and Shiri for a high-profile operation only when he was confident he had sufficient electronic warfare capability.
He used the two kidon without their knowledge when his electronic warfare team was ready. He gave the two kidon an encrypted thumb drive that established secure comms with him. What the two kidon didn’t know was that there was a worm in the drive.
The worm spread through their laptops and penetrated inside Mossad’s systems. All it did was listen and pass information back to the handler. It had been built by the country’s best hackers and went undetected by the Israeli agency’s network security.
It worked perfectly. The handler now had eyes on whatever Avichai Levin received or sent. However, he knew that the worm had a limited shelf life. It would self-destruct over a period of time. His cyber team had told him that was the best approach; otherwise they ran the risk of it being detected.
Of course, it still could be found by the Israelis before its window expired. He had to use it to maximum effect while it remained burrowed in Mossad’s systems.
The worm gave him a rich trove of information, but it failed in one respect. The handler was desperate for the identities of Mossad’s operatives. The worm couldn’t find those. It looked like Levin kept those in a different database that wasn’t networked. Sure, the ramsad sent emails to his people, but he addressed them by only their first names.
The handler tried to search for people with those names but didn’t get far. They were common Israeli given names.
He could ask Magal and Shiri, but he knew what their response would be. They would refuse.
The handler wasn’t unduly upset. He could work with the intel the virus yielded. And if he was patient, the worm would deliver.
That opportunity came when he found out about the Israel-Palestine negotiations and the identities of the team members on both sides. He then had the first high-risk, high-profile mission for Magal and Shiri.
‘What will killing them achieve?’ Magal had asked when he briefed the two without mentioning the source of his intel.
‘It’s not the killing, but the reaction,’ the handler had replied in satisfaction.
He was more than pleased by how the two kidon carried out their assignment, their first major one for him in Israel.
Somewhere in the Middle East
One day after Assassinations
Ten days to Announcement
They proved themselves, the handler mused as he put down the paperweight and leaned forward in his swivel chair.
He tapped on his keyboard, and his heart beat faster when he read what the worm had discovered: the location of the remaining Palestinian negotiators. It was in an email that Avichai Levin had received very recently.
He had sent the be patient message just a few moments ago. Now, Magal and Shiri had their next assignment.
It had to be executed—he liked that word—within ten days. Before Yago Cantor and Ziyan Baruti made whatever announcement they were planning.
The handler didn’t care that there could be peace in the region. He and the Supreme Leader weren’t interested in that.
Their ambitions were higher. The death of a few Palestinians was a small price to pay.