New York
One Month from the Announcement
The world changed, but in some ways it didn’t.
Riots broke out in Jerusalem following the historic declaration. Hundreds of people marched in Israel, demanding Cantor’s resignation.
Demonstrations in support of him were organized, too.
The Arab states were taken aback by the announcement. Israel was the enemy. That was what thousands of their children grew up believing. Now it wasn’t as stark as that. They were wary. They welcomed the historic decision, but also said words had to be backed up by deeds.
‘Israel is playing games,’ Iran’s Supreme Leader thundered in several broadcasts. ‘It will not allow Palestine to exist.’
His speeches won cheers in his country but not in many others.
Major General Zarab Tousi wasn’t seen in public. He was still in office, still heading the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but keeping a very low profile.
Prime Minister Yago Cantor had wanted to lodge a strong diplomatic protest against Iran and bring its involvement up in the United Nations.
Levin, Levitsky, Shoshon and Spiro reminded him that the Islamic country’s role had been hushed up.
‘Let the Supreme Leader and Tousi twist,’ Shoshon said. ‘Let them wonder what game we are playing.’
‘You think the leader knew of this?’
‘He would know some details. He and Tousi are very close.’
‘We can’t allow such acts to go unpunished.’
‘We won’t, sir,’ Levin replied, flinty-eyed.
The Israeli and Palestinian governments progressed with the negotiations. Borders, capitals, governance, settlements—legal and otherwise—were always going to be the thorniest issues. Expectedly, those would take time. Both countries said a full agreement would take at least a year to work out.
Zeb switched off from the headlines after a while. He was still bitterly unhappy with himself. Especially when he discovered how Eliel and Navon had duped him in the first place.
The two had been in Jerusalem, killing Maryam Razak and Farhan Ba. Yet their personal cell phones showed they were in Amman.
He initially thought the kidon had managed to hack into their devices’ location data. Beth and Meghan looked into that. Their finding was indisputable. The phones and even their laptops hadn’t been tampered with. Levin confirmed the same.
And then, when Beth was buying a postcard just before they left Jerusalem, it came to him.
‘Their devices never left Amman,’ he spoke aloud.
‘What?’ Beth paid for her purchase and followed him and Meghan outside the store.
He pointed at a post office. ‘That’s how they did it.’
Meghan caught on. ‘They posted the devices to themselves. So that they would reach them after the killing.’
Levin’s people took apart their residence in Ein Kerem, as did the police. The place was clean. The burner phones on the men, however, had enough data on them. Call logs, the majority of which were to a disconnected number. They didn’t have much success with that one.
‘That must be Tousi’s,’ Zeb said thoughtfully when the ramsad broke the news to him. ‘He would have set up a temporary number and bounced the calls through several exchanges.’
‘We got another number, though, and that led to an arrest. One Jud Lipman, a forger in Beersheba. He made those masks. He was also the one who mimicked Eliel’s foster mother’s voice. It wasn’t just her voice … other family members as well. He was the one who answered all our calls.’
Other pieces fell into place. Gait analysis matched a person at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to that of Magal. The timeline fit. It was before Raskov’s killing. His absences to visit his mother now made sense.
Levin’s cybersecurity team performed extensive security checks. It didn’t find any virus but said it was possible the dead operatives had installed one. The team implemented several measures and also came up with its own virus that could be deployed against Iran.
The ramsad worked on reshaping his organization. He formed a small team, with Carmel, Dalia, Riva and Adir. The five of them looked at every mission and kidon and determined whether any were compromised. They rewrote ops procedures, and how kidon were vetted.
‘We are rebuilding Mossad from scratch,’ he told Zeb, who nodded.
I would have done the same.
‘You didn’t have to kill Eliel,’ Levin told Zeb one evening when the team was back in New York.
Meghan looked sharply at the phone and then at him. Beth frowned. She didn’t understand what the Mossad director meant.
Zeb knew, and he attempted to stave off his friend’s probing. ‘I had no choice, Avichai. He had an M16. He was bringing it down on me.’
‘I have seen you shoot in the most desperate situations. You have always picked your shots.’
‘You are forgetting I was injured, bleeding. There wasn’t much time to conduct a detailed threat vector analysis.’
‘You killed him because he was better off dead. If he was alive, he could have become a thorn in Mossad’s side. He could have exposed operations, he could have revealed how he hoodwinked all of us. Tousi could have played his dirty tricks. He could have started rumors on social media. No, you killed him because you thought it would be best for my career.’
‘You give me too much credit.’
‘Perhaps I don’t give you enough.’
‘About Tousi.’
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s begin.’
And Zeb Carter and his Warriors began planning a joint mission with Mossad.
