CARL, MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—13:50 / 1:50 P.M. IDT
The helicopter is five minutes out,” Nicole heard Dafna say. Her teammate was following its progress on a large monitor at her workstation.
“Kamal’s phone is on board,” Liora added. She turned toward a separate monitor and typed on a keyboard. “Nir’s next ping is scheduled in seven minutes. His last one placed him in Mumbai. We can’t confirm yet if he’s on board the copter.”
“Very well,” the ramsad said gruffly.
To Ira Katz, Nicole had reported that Mousavi had been visually confirmed to be aboard Saad Salim’s yacht off the coast of Mumbai. She also informed him that Ali Kamal’s phone had landed in a private jet at the Maharashtra capital’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. Soon after, it had lifted off in a helicopter owned by ASEnergy in the direction of the yacht. However, they were yet to receive a visual confirmation of the man’s presence. The last ping from Nir had placed him eight minutes ago in the private hangar to which Kamal’s Gulfstream V had taxied.
“Come over here,” Lahav called to the ramsad as he walked toward Dafna’s workstation. That made Nicole cringe a little. When Ira Katz just glared at him, Lahav added, “Ha’mefaked.” The old man rose and followed him.
From among the row of pens in his shirt pocket, Lahav pulled a long green one with a metallic end. “Lightsaber,” he said to the ramsad with a grin. Then he waved it around making lightsaber-y sounds as if he were expecting some sort of reaction. When he received none, he pushed on the end, and an internal laser projected an X-wing starfighter onto Dafna’s monitor.
Circling the image around one man standing on the top deck of the yacht, he said, “This is Saad Salim. He is the owner of the boat. Exiled Saudi. Owns ASEnergy, an oil company—no surprise there. Also major financial and weapons supplier to militias, including Hezbollah and Hamas. Probably supplied a whole bunch of the four thousand Katyusha rockets that landed on us from Gaza back in May.”
He shifted his starfighter to the man next to him. “This is General Arash Mousavi, head of the Intelligence Division of the Quds Force of the IRGC. He is very close with General Esmail Qaani, who took over Quds force after Mousavi’s previous BFF, Soleimani, played catch with a hellfire missile. Torture, murder, rape—he’s a real turd. The rest of these guys around here are the IRGC soldiers Mousavi brought. Best we can tell, that’s unusual for his little yacht excursions.”
“Got it. And I’ve already read up on Ali Kamal, so there’s no need to brief me on him,” said the ramsad. He looked the young man over. “You’re Lahav Tabib. The analyst from the Fakhrizadeh operation.”
“Yes, Ha’mefaked.”
“I thought so. That was some good work.”
Yossi started making kissing noises from his workstation but quickly broke into a coughing fit when the ramsad turned toward him sharply.
To Lahav, he said, “And this view is from Chinese satellites?”
Lahav pointed to Nicole. “She’s the one you want to talk to about that.”
She was sitting at the conference table with a laptop open in front of her, watching everything happening, including the exchange between Lahav and the ramsad. After spending so many hours at her workstation, she’d needed a different view. She’d wiped everything else off this portable computer and reprogrammed it to be a home base from which she could control all her work, then moved to where she now sat.
“Yes, it’s Chinese, Ha’mefaked,” she said. “Our satellites are good. The Americans’ are better. The Chinese satellites are best.”
“How much longer will they let you have access to their cameras?”
“Until they realize I have it. I’m guessing we have 15 to 20 minutes before I have to find us another Chinese bird.”
The ramsad chuckled. “Oh, what we could have done with you during the Cold War.”
“One minute out,” called Liora.
“Excuse me, Ha’mefaked.” Nicole waved her hand sideways.
The ramsad turned. “No, excuse me,” he said, stepping over to where Efraim Cohen was watching after realizing he’d been standing directly in her line of sight to the large monitor showing the satellite feed.
Nicole’s heart was racing. Lord, please let me get a glimpse of Nir. Let me see him being led out of the helicopter or even carried out. Just let me know he’s alive. Please protect him. Please reach him. Please encourage him to reach out to You.
As the helicopter touched down, Yossi said, “Look at Salim and the general’s body language. They don’t seem all that happy to see their friend. I doubt there’s a lot of love lost between them and him.”
“It’s true,” Nicole said. “When I was on the yacht, Salim and Mousavi were quite jovial and casual. Now they’re standing straight up and down. No movement toward the chopper at all.”
“Could be because of the IRGC soldiers present,” Cohen said. “They figure they need to keep it professional.”
The door to the helicopter opened, and Ali Kamal followed a steward out.
“He certainly looks happy to be there,” Liora said. “Waving his arms in the air like he just doesn’t care.”
“His friends still seem a lot less ecstatic,” Dafna added.
Nicole kept watching for Nir. Uniformed men followed Kamal off, eight in all. But that was it. Nobody else stepped off except the pilots. Four of the men removed what looked like their equipment trunk from the rear of the aircraft and carried it over to where Kamal had met the men.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Ping in ten seconds,” Liora said. She counted down, and a loud electronic chirp sounded throughout the room. A red dot covered most of the monitor.
“What is that?” demanded the ramsad as the dot slowly faded.
“That’s just the location indicator of Nir’s tracker. We’re too far away to know exactly where he is on the boat. We just know he’s most definitely on it.”
If he’s there, why haven’t we seen him? Why haven’t they taken him off the chopper?
On the screen, Nicole saw one of the men who’d carried the trunk from the helicopter raise its lid. Saad stepped back quickly, but Mousavi peered inside. Nicole couldn’t make out what was there.
“Oy vey,” said the ramsad softly. That’s when she recognized the contents. A body. She couldn’t make out the details, but she knew who it was. The dark line of the mended wound on the side of Nir’s head was all the proof she needed.
She started to cry. She couldn’t stop herself. This man she loved, this hero of the country, had been beaten and stuffed into a trunk. It was more than she could take. She put her head down on the table and wept.
An arm wrapped around her. She looked up and saw it was the ramsad. Putting her face into his shoulder, she felt his arms embrace her. All the tension and fear and exhaustion and sorrow poured out through her tears.
“We’ll get him back. I promise you,” he said in his low, gruff voice.
“We don’t even know that he’s still alive.”
“He’s alive. He has to be. They still need his information.”
Nicole pulled back, and the ramsad offered her a handkerchief. She thanked him, then dabbed her eyes and wiped her cheeks. “But what if they’ve already broken him? What if…what if he already told them all about the timing of the attack?”
The ramsad smiled gently. “He can’t, my dear. He doesn’t know.”
Confused, Nicole blinked. “He doesn’t know?”
“Of course not. I would never tell him that. Besides, he was the one who first insisted on maintaining his ignorance. He knows the only person who can never be broken is the person who has no information to give.”
Relief flooded into Nicole, as did hope. She turned back to the monitor to watch as the trunk was closed and then carried away. “So they still need him.”
“Yes, they still need him. These next hours will be very rough going for him. But when night falls, our boys will be there, and they will rescue that man from that boat.” A hard look came across the ramsad’s face. “And then they will make those men pay for what they have done.”