CARL, MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—08:50 / 8:50 A.M. IDT
Meeting in 3 Nir thumbed on his phone, then hit Send and shot the text off to Liora.
It felt like he was a kid and the sun was going down to start the first day of Hanukkah. He had to force himself to keep from jogging to CARL. Why do I want this so much? Of course, there’s the competition, which is awesome. Gives me a chance to prove I belong among this elite group. But it’s more than that. This big play of finally taking out Iran’s nuclear program? I’ve been harping on it for years. I can’t just sit idly by and watch it get done. I need to be part of this.
As he approached CARL, he spotted multicolored streamers fluttering over the open door, creating a crepe paper curtain. He groaned.
Another birthday. Why today of all days?
Inside, the analysts were all sitting around the conference table, each wearing a pointy paper party hat. Except for Dafna, who reigned resplendent with a plastic silver birthday crown. A large, decorated sheet cake sat in the center of the table, and at his place, a party hat waited for him.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” He slid the offensive headgear aside as he plopped into his chair.
“Told you,” Liora whispered to everyone, then began to quietly sing. “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why we invited you…”
Nir had no time for this stupidity. And he was about to shut the party down when he remembered who this band of misfits were and how they operated. This team comprised cut-ups and cast-offs. They didn’t fit the Mossad mold, but they were too good at what they did for the higher-ups to let them go. So they were assigned to him, and somehow he’d pieced them together so they were the best team of analysts in the building. But he had to let them be them.
He began singing a different song. “Ha’yom yom huledet, Ha’yom yom huledet, Ha’yom yom huledet le Dafna…”
After the first two words, the whole team joined in the birthday song. Across the table, Nicole was looking right at him with a big smile. Apparently, he’d made the right choice. He hoped that smile also meant everything was okay between the two of them. They sang the verse, then the bridge, then the verse again, ending with a loud “Hey!”
“But I’m still not doing the hat,” Nir said.
“Sababa,” said an ecstatic Dafna as she stood to cut the cake. “It would look weird on that bizarre hair tuft you have growing on top of your head.”
He’d begun to grow accustomed to his marine cut. “I like my hair tuft.”
“Okay, Boomer,” Liora said.
“Don’t start with the Boomer stuff again. It makes no sense.”
“It’s shtuyot bamitz—nonsense in juice,” Nicole announced with great flourish, and everyone cheered her Hebrew.
They laughed and joked for the next 15 minutes while they ate cake and drank sodas.
When Nir could wait no longer, he said, “Let’s rein it in. Believe it or not, we still have jobs to do.”
Yossi quickly sliced off seconds of the cake for himself and Lahav, then sat down. All attention was on Nir.
“First, congratulations to all of you. Because of this team’s hard work in Syria, getting that evidence of the suitcase nukes, the prime minister has okayed an operation to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.”
The team cheered. Due to their intel work day by day, more than most people in the country they knew why it was so important to stop Iran now before they achieved weaponized nukes.
“The Saudi crown prince is even going to let us use his airspace. But he wants something in return.”
“A hot tub?”
“A cricket team?
“A penguin?”
“No, he wants a man killed.”
By their expressions, it was evident that they hadn’t been expecting to hear that. But why would they? He hadn’t.
“What? Are we the royal Saudi hit squad all of a sudden?” Liora asked.
“I thought he’d just want some technology thing,” Dafna said. “Like turbo camels or the latest in beard oil science or something.”
“Ooh, I’d take some of that beard oil stuff,” Yossi said while stroking his long hipster facial hair.
“Who is the he the crown prince wants killed?” asked Nicole.
“I don’t know much about him, and the crown prince wouldn’t say why he wants him killed.” Nir held up the folder he’d been given. “This is all we have, and it’s just the basics. Name, age…assorted facts. You know, like drinking piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.”
“I don’t even want to know what he likes to do in the dews of the cape,” Lahav said, wagging his eyebrows.
“It’s dunes on the cape,” Yossi said.
“What do you mean? It’s dews. It’s midnight, and the dew has settled on the sand, and—”
“Hey!” Nir sailed his party hat at them. Unfortunately, it caught air and fell to the floor well short of its target. Still, it was enough to get their attention. “Don’t make me regret letting you eat sugar. Focus.”
The whole team mumbled their apologies.
“Anyway, what I’m saying is that this folder contains what we would expect from a basic Mossad examination of this dude’s life. It’s more than anyone else could get, but way less than we can get. So I want the CARL deep dive.”
The analysts all broke into a cry. “CARL!”
“Exactly. I’m giving you two hours. When I get back, I want everything about him those other guys aren’t smart enough to uncover.”
He could see they were excited and ready to go. Time to drop the final bomb.
“And just so you know, the other four Kidon analyst teams are doing the same thing. Whoever comes up with the best plan will be tapped to carry it out. Now, those guys think they’re smarter than us.”
Lahav said, “Yeah, I know a couple of the guys on Zakai Abelman’s team. They’re—”
Before he could finish, empty paper plates and used napkins were flying toward him from around the table.
“Forget Abelman’s team,” Dafna said. “We’re going to win this, you chin strap.”
“And I tend to agree with Miss Dafna,” Nir said. “So you’ve got two hours. What are you doing sitting at the table? Yalla! Let’s go.”
The team stood and hustled to their workstations. Nir picked up his party hat and placed it on Chewbacca’s head. When he turned, he saw Nicole gathering the trash spread all over the floor. He hurried over to help her.
“Is chin strap even an insult?” he asked.
Nicole laughed. “Who knows? By the way, allowing them that party was so smart. They’ll work straight through the next twenty-four hours on the buzz alone.”
“Achla, I just had to remember who they are.” They walked to a trash can side by side, then dropped the plates and napkins in. “So, are we okay?”
Nicole smiled. “We’re okay. I shouldn’t have walked off like that. Sometimes when I’m feeling all the emotions, I’d rather just escape than let them show.”
Nir leaned against the wall as he spoke. “I understand that. I apologize for calling you one-note. That was wrong, and it came out of a combination of exhaustion and near-death adrenaline. Like I told you before, I listen and take to heart everything you say. It just probably wasn’t the best time.”
Nicole raised her eyebrows as she nodded. “And I take responsibility for that. Now, I’m assuming you’re about to go fill in the ops guys, but first… Something about this bothers me. If the crown prince just wants us to go kill some innocent person for him, I’m not down for that. The only way I can justify what I do is that proverb you always recite to me, the one about rising to kill first. But that’s predicated on the fact that the target is coming to kill you. That’s when you rise up and kill first.”
“I hear you, Nicole. But you need to remember one of the Mossad’s other commitments. As far as is possible, we will kill no innocents. Think of Fakhrizadeh. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to drop a hellfire on his car from a drone? Instead, we went through this elaborate scheme with a robotic rifle because we didn’t want to harm his wife. Did she know all that he was involved with? Probably. Does that make her morally complicit in his actions? Maybe. But maybe isn’t enough for the Mossad. We err on the side of innocence. So we took out the guilty and spared the possibly innocent.”
“And that’s top-down? You’re saying the ramsad never would have agreed if the target wasn’t a bad guy—and everyone around him too?”
“That’s what I’m saying. And if I personally ever feel this new operation is at all iffy in that regard, I’ll pull out. The ramsad has four other options for someone to run with it.”
Nicole smiled. “Thank you. That’s what I needed to hear.”
He watched her go to her workstation, then left CARL. His next stop was the boys who’d be pulling the triggers.