TWO YEARS LATER
ÈZE, PROVENCE-ALPES-CÔTE D’AZUR, FRANCE—SEPTEMBER 27, 2020—02:35 / 2:35 A.M. CEST
Clear,” said a female voice through Nir’s com.
“Root,” he replied, acknowledging that he’d received and understood the message.
Liora Regev’s remote disabling of the alarm system from the team control room back at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv allowed Nir to insert a tool into the lock. Quietly, he manipulated the slender piece of metal until he felt all the tumblers disengage in the beach condominium’s sliding glass door. He nodded to Imri Zaid, who knelt and inserted a thin bar under the base of the door. With another nod from Nir, Imri leveraged the handle of the bar, lifting the door and disengaging the kick lock with a pop.
Nir slid the glass open, and once he and Imri had both slipped inside, he gently closed the door behind them. He clicked his com twice and then twisted on a small penlight. The two operatives began walking through the Airbnb rental.
“Entry acknowledged,” Liora said. Nir had no doubt that the rest of his analyst team surrounded her, following the action and ready to jump in at a moment’s notice.
Well, not quite the rest of the team.
Nicole had committed to working Milan Fashion Week, so he’d cut her from the op. When he told her he was going ahead without her, she was understanding. She was understanding about a lot of things these days. Some of it was due to the healing of their relationship during a recent operation in the United Arab Emirates. But much of her changed attitude came from what she called her “new relationship with Jesus.”
After her experience in Iran, she was a wreck. She spent some time with her twin brother, Christiaan, a former drug addict who had kicked his habit by going to a church or a religious 12-step program or something. Nir wasn’t totally sure what. He just knew Nicole had escaped to Cape Town a basket case and come back a new person. And whether it was Jesus, seeing Christiaan, or spending some time in her home hemisphere where the water circles the drain counterclockwise, he didn’t care. He was just happy that she was happy.
Nir and Imri made their way between the living area and kitchen toward the two bedrooms. Outside, but close by, his Kidon ops team waited. Yaron Eisenbach—still Nir’s second and an old-school agent who had more operations under his belt in his mid-forties than most have in a full career—was down the beach to the left keeping watch. Right of the condo was a massive Russian Jew named Dima Aronov, who most called Drago after the Soviet boxer in Rocky IV. In an SUV four blocks away sat Doron Mizrahi. In his late twenties with a shaved head and a bushy beard, his Millennial perspective on life was both a deep well of cultural insight for the team and a constant source of irritation.
The man softly gliding through this expensively decorated beachside condominium with Nir was on his rookie operation. After one of the team’s members was determined no longer fit for active procedures following a gunshot wound during the operation in the UAE, the Kidon team had sought a replacement. Three of the guys sent to Nir never made it past the initial interview. The fourth had accidentally shot Dima in the chest with a SIM round during a training exercise, and the Russian had personally led him off the course by his ear.
Now they had Imri, and so far Nir was impressed. When they’d sat in Nir’s office, the young man told the story of his great-great-grandfather, Alexander Zaid, who was a hero in the early years of Zionism.
After the turn of the twentieth century, he and some others founded Bar Giora, a Jewish self-defense organization. Many of the early settlements found themselves constantly raided by Arabs, and these men were determined to stop them. Then in 1909, he helped found HaShomer, “the Watchmen,” the premier defense organization until the founding of the Haganah in 1920. Eighteen years after the formation of that benchmark military organization, Alexander Zaid was on patrol in the Jezreel Valley when he was ambushed by a group of Arabs and murdered by a Bedouin, who was himself later tried and executed.
Nir had already known the story and had even seen the statue of the man erected near Beit She’arim National Park. He’d just wanted to hear Imri tell it in order to get a bead on him. There was no doubt of the young man’s passion, and Nir respected his desire to follow in his ancestor’s footsteps as a watchman of Israel. The jury was still out, though, and Nir was hoping his initial impressions would prove to be right.
Between online blueprints of the condominium and the photos posted with the Airbnb advertisement, the two operatives knew where they were going. When they reached the master bedroom, they both drew their weapons. Nir’s IWI Jericho 941 was ready with one in the chamber. The weapon’s safety was engaged in between operations but never during. Very gently, Imri turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Nir stepped in. To his left stood a tall fern, and beyond that, a large wardrobe. Two steps away, directly in front of them, was a half-meter-tall, dark-wood platform upon which lay an undoubtedly comfortable mattress. Two forms were stretched out under an oversized thin comforter. Nir approached the one nearest him. A quick flick of his penlight showed her to be a pretty blond woman in her late thirties. While he knelt next to her, Imri walked behind him for a better angle from which to train his gun on the other person.
Nir holstered his weapon and tucked his light into his pocket. Then from an armband wrapped around his left upper bicep, he removed a syringe. He really wished the woman had been on the other side of the bed so he could make the injection with his right hand. But he’d practiced both ways, and covering her mouth with his right hand, he used his left to quickly insert the needle into her neck. The result was immediate. No struggle; she was just out. Still, he kept his hand over her mouth for a count of 40.
Turning toward Imri, Nir nodded. The new Kidon agent lowered his gun, and Nir walked to the other side of the bed. He removed a photo from a pocket in his cargo pants, held it up to the sleeping man’s face, and lit both up with his penlight. No doubt about it, it was him. Nir tucked the picture and the light away and drew his gun once again. Then he waited to let his eyes acclimate to the soft moonlight passing through the gauzy curtains into the room.
The man lying on his back was Dr. Horst Lindner, a German nuclear physicist with a PhD from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and post-doctoral work at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Institute for Nuclear Theory located on the University of Washington campus. Considered one of the leading minds in centrifuge development, his career had been on a strong, if not meteoric, track. Then quite suddenly, he quit his job and disappeared from all the assemblies and functions and symposiums where those in the world of nuclear physics tend to gather. Six months later, he moved from his tract home in Seattle to a mini mansion in the suburb of Laurelhurst.
That’s when the Mossad put eyes on him. They’d been watching him for a year, recording his two months gone, one month home schedule and his regular flights to the Middle East, particularly to Tehran. Some snooping within Iran uncovered that Dr. Lindner was now one of the primary physicists involved in the engineering of uranium centrifuges in the nuclear facility in Karaj.
Nir and Imri were here to put a stop to that. It wasn’t that the man was doing anything illegal. It’s just that in the eyes of the Mossad, the doctor had made a very poor career choice.