DeathByte, page 7
part #2 of Spies Lie Series
Her phone buzzed. “What?” Mother’s voice sounded like snapping sticks.
She paced her words with deliberation. “Willie Wing told us the truth. His computers contained records of everything he’s ever done. Cassandra Sashakovich has it all.”
“Every assignment? Are you sure?” She could hear his tension steaming through the telephone line.
Ruth steeled herself. “Yes. And she also has copies of the project plans and specs for Bug-Lok. Plus two videos of successful tests.”
“Where is she?”
Ruth had waited for Mother to ask what Bug-Lok was. But the tone of his response meant he knew all about the device. What is it? Is it one of ours? But of course it is.
“Dunno. She’s gone rogue. According to Wing, the Muslim Brotherhood is hunting her.” Ruth knew what he’d say next. She took a deep breath.
“Find her.” His voice was cool, slicing through her. She flinched. Yes, he was true to form.
She let the breath out. “I’ll need a team. Can you obtain authorization from the Prime Minister?”
“No! Not a kidon team. She may be someone we can use. A weapon. Never destroy a weapon until you know it’s going to be pointed at you. Just find and surveil her. You have my authority to do just that. Tell me where she is. Then, await my orders. Clear?”
“Yes.” She’d spat the word out, but hoped he hadn’t noticed her anger.
“Do it now.” She heard him terminate the call.
Ruth stood holding her phone, her teeth clenched. “Bastard.”
She thought of her reasons for accepting the promotion to station head in Berlin. It was considered a “training post” for further advancement. The Germans were cooperative with the Israelis, more so than anyone else in Europe. Her appointment meant she’d been marked as a rising star.
But the thought of being close to Jon made her shiver. He’d been so soft when they’d first met in London, sweet and naïve. He’d changed during the mission when he hunted Tariq Houmaz. He’d developed a reputation in the Office as a bright and logical thinker. A thinker with a temper. What most drew her to him was his sense of loyalty to his friends and his passion for justice. She knew he’d gotten that from Lisa before her death. And Lisa was the closest to a friend Ruth had ever had at the Office.
Had that figured into Ruth’s decision to accept the promotion? She would never be sure. She could tell he wanted her, and it was more than sheer lust. The rules forbade them to love each other, yet it happened often and the Office never enforced its regs. She wondered if she could restrain herself. She wondered what her true feelings were.
Ruth shook her head to clear it.
* * *
Yigdal Ben-Levy paced near the door of his office in the newly opened headquarters building in Herzliyya. His desk and the whiteboard were still there, along with a folding chair, but almost all of his possessions were in boxes, ready to ship to the embassy in Washington.
He stared at the whiteboard diagram with the title “Bug-Lok,” at the back of the room. It was filled with notes he’d been making since he arrived back from Washington. He picked up a marker and added two words on the board, under the box labeled “DARPA.” Gilbert Greenfield.
He knew what the stolen technology was designed to do. He’d worked with Lester Dushov on its design. Mother had requested most of the functions, serving to push the old concept of Promis, the computer system Mossad had designed to track terrorists from their telephone and Internet use. Promis dwarfed the NSA’s old ECHELON system, from which it was stolen and copied. Bug-Lok was a quantum jump.
What he’d intended to deliver to DARPA was a defective device that merely killed the person ingesting it. The other functions in the DARPA version were to be disabled. When the Ness Ziona pushed its design beyond the original concept, he’d ordered the Israeli scientists to say it was too complex to make reliable. But even the crippled version was far too nasty. He looked at his half-empty coffee cup. Imagine. Coffee as an assassin’s weapon. He feared his creation.
His report to Greenfield that Bug-Lok was unreliable was met with a hacker stealing the real plans and delivering them to DARPA. His jaw clenched.
He’d had William Wing hack back DARPA’s copies of the plans. Then he’d had Drapoff replace the copy Wing held with the defective plans. Someone had stolen Wing’s copy of the defective plans. Cassandra Sashakovich. If she was working for the United States, did they now know that the plans wouldn’t work? Was Sashakovich the person who broke into the Hong Kong tech factory to steal their copy of the real plans? If so, did the United States now have a working version of Bug-Lok?
He also had another problem. Who was the mole who had infiltrated the Ness Ziona? And who did the mole work for? If the Prime Minister found out, he might see the theft as an act of war.
He picked up the secure landline. “Get me the Prime Minister. This is a daylight alert,” he said, indicating a highest-priority matter. Ben-Levy had served as a sniper in Oscar Gilead’s unit decades in the past, and Gilead was the only man Mother had ever feared. In the army, long ago, when Gilead had run Shabak, he had been a sadist of the first order. As prime minister, he looked like a kind old man, but Mother knew the truth.
Within a few seconds the phone buzzed. “What? I’m preparing for a meeting with the section head of Aman.”
Mother flinched. “There is a serious problem we must make a decision on right now. More important than military intelligence. I just need a few minutes.”
The silence on the other end of the line went on for a few seconds. “Okay. You have it. Is this a result of that mole at the Ness Ziona? Has he or she stolen something else?”
“Yes. Remember the Bug-Lok project?”
“Of course. Didn’t we stop our efforts on that?”
He braced himself. The Prime Minister was a Mossad alumnus. This would bring hell down on Mother. He squirmed. “Greenfield’s agency may have a copy of the functional plans. A woman who was one of his NOCs,” he said, using the term for “consultants” operating under non-official cover. “Recently fired, now working off the reservation as an independent. She stole it from our captive production company in Hong Kong.”
He waited for the PM’s reply. There was nothing but heavy breathing for a long time. “Find her. Do it off the books. Interrogate her. If you can, turn her. If not, use the Bug-Lok to end her.”
This was exactly what Mother had ordered Ruth to do. There was just one thing he could say. “Right. I’ll let you know what we find out. We’re also determining if there’s another mole.” He heard the PM mutter something unintelligible and then the call terminated.
In the folding chair across from Mother, he saw the ghost of his niece, Aviva Bushovsky materialize. She stuck out her tongue.
Whenever the pressures of his job became too much, he’d see her. As he stared at the spot where she sat, she dissolved and vanished.
Aviva had been the pride of his life. She’d become his protégée, a skilled and ruthless bat leveyha.
About a year ago, Oscar Gilead, then the head of Mossad and Ben-Levy’s boss, discovered Aviva’s work as a mole for MI-6. Gilead ordered Aviva terminated. And Yigdal Ben-Levy had made it happen. No one outside of Gilead knew Mother’s role in her death. He’d used three levels of cutouts to contact the kidon who’d planted the bomb. Ben-Levy had destroyed the only person he ever loved, his only surviving family.
Aviva, you knew what would happen. Love is a dangerous game, and you were warned about Jon Sommers. I tried to save you. But Gilead gave me no choice. And there is only one punishment in our business.
A tear formed and rolled down his cheek.
* * *
When Jon approached his apartment’s front door after work the next day, he noticed the gray thread he always placed inside the doorjamb lying on the tile floor. It should have remained in place until he or someone else opened the door. Therefore, he had an intruder either waiting inside his apartment or long gone. Shit!
Jon had no weapon, and even his knowledge and experience with Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art, might not be helpful if there were multiple assassins waiting for him. He crouched at the door to the fire stairs and looked through the window into the stairwell. No one was waiting there. He cracked the door, careful to make no sound.
He took a step back and let the door close behind him. From inside the stairwell, he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed his apartment landline. The phone rang four times and he could hear the sound from his hiding place. His speakerphone delivered its outgoing message: “You have reached Herr Friedrich Stamphil. I am busy. Leave a message.”
Jon’s eyes had adjusted to the darker light of the stairwell. He tucked himself into a crevice and whispered into his cell phone. “Whoever is inside my apartment, I have noticed your presence. So I won’t be going in to meet you unless you pick up my phone and talk to me.”
He knew an enemy would flee. He waited, watching. No one emerged. He continued waiting.
The speakerphone erupted into his cell phone. “Jon, it’s Ruth. Come in, please.”
He let out his breath and walked back to his front door. He opened it, and saw her. And Mother. Both sat on the chrome and leather chairs at his tiny kitchen table. He glared at Ben-Levy. “Why are you here?”
Ruth’s gaze never rose from the floor.
Ben-Levy pulled a yellow folder from his attaché case. “This is a daylight priority. I didn’t have time to set a meet. Couldn’t call you first, there was neither the time nor a dead drop we could safely use. I need you to run a mission for me.”
“I did you a favor with William. I don’t work for you.” Jon took off his suit jacket. His eyes bored in on the white-haired man.
Ruth faced him. “The Prime Minister authorized this mission.”
“The PM?” Jon shook his head. “I’m not a kidon. I don’t kill. I’m a katsa. I work for Collections!”
Mother shook his head “You are what I tell you to be. Assemble a team. Include at least one kidon. Find the woman who stole our intelligence. You told me her name is Cassandra Sashakovich. Find her, and find out why. Who did she give it to? Or sell it to? Where are the Bug-Lok blueprints now? Construct a plan to destroy all copies, paper and electronic, including the backups, wherever they may be. And get back to me. Do it yesterday!” Ben-Levy handed the folder to Jon. “Read it and leave it.”
Jon read the pages as if they held a plague. He read the history of the Bug-Lok technology. Requested by the United States’ old DARPA group about a year ago. Developed within Israel’s Ness Ziona weapons development facility. At its start, it was a microscopic piece of computer hardware, a tracking bug. He read more and his jaw almost dropped when he reached the “Accessories” section of the document. It was designed to “bore into the medulla oblongata of its recipient and establish chemical bonds within the brainstem” to see what the recipient saw, hear what the recipient heard. It could “transmit the resulting data stream, encrypted, to any local wireless connection,” and it could “carry enough ricin derivative to terminate the recipient” at the touch of a button on a remote thousands of miles away.
When he came to the section labeled “Risks and Unintended Consequences,” his face changed color, red to gray. It was easy to manufacture but quality control seemed to be difficult. Many of the test subjects died within hours after they received it.
Jon shook his head. “What a piece of crap.”
Mother glared at Jon. “The stakes are high. Our mole in Greenfield’s agency reported that there are already rumors of Bug-Lok’s existence within the intelligence communities of several countries. Great Britain and China among others. A leak somewhere. And hunters everywhere.”
Jon shrugged, his expression dour. “You’re right. I’ll need a team. And access to a considerable amount of cash.”
Ruth handed him an envelope. He opened it. There was a passport for a man who looked like him, but the name was “Michael O’Hara.” Another passport for a man who looked like one of his friends, a former IDF major named Avram Shimmel, but the name inside it read “Rashid Tariq.” The third passport bore William Wing’s photograph, and its name was “Xian Chow Ming.” There were driver’s licenses in the names given on the passports, bank books for each, and, a grand total of almost a half-million US dollars.
Jon’s eyebrows rose. “You want me to include William?”
She handed him a list of all William’s bank accounts, almost all of them numbered. “Emergency funds.”
Jon thought for a few seconds. “Someone will have to get me a leave of absence at the bank. I’ve already used up my time off with pay.”
Ruth nodded. “I’ve already fixed that. Our sayanim in Personnel.”
Mother took the file, placed it back into his case, and walked to the door. “Good luck, Jon. Shalom.” He left the apartment.
Ruth waited for the door to latch. She turned and faced Jon, sighing. “He’s beginning to annoy me.”
Jon tilted his head. “Really? Well, then I’m not alone. On the other hand, if it weren’t for Mother and his ilk, what would become of Israel? Since Israel is the only Western democracy in the Middle East, what would become of the United States?”
Ruth paused. She stared at Jon. “You hate him, don’t you?”
“No. I understand him. I don’t like him. He serves a useful purpose.”
She shook her head. “Right. Dinner? I’m paying.”
Jon nodded, but his mind was already constructing a plan to fix the theft.
* * *
When they returned from dinner, Jon hadn’t said a word for almost an hour, and very few before that. Now, he faced Ruth. “It’s too late to find a hotel. Want to stay here tonight?”
Her brows arched. “Yes, and thanks. But no sex. I know being in your bed with you made you uncomfortable. If you’d prefer, I can take your tiny sofa.” She pointed at it with her head.
“Whatever.” He walked to the corner of the room where a notebook computer sat on his desk. He sat and crafted an email.
She walked behind his back to read what he was keying:
William—
I need you for work that isn’t dangerous. Mossad is paying. Your first task is, find Avram. I’ll need him also. Don’t contact or approach. Just let me know where I can find him. Reply to this email address using my RSA key for security.
—Jon
Ruth touched his shoulder. “Adding Willy is a start. Including you and Shimmel, that’s three. Still not enough, if this is to have any chance of success. You may run up against one of the American intelligence services.”
He thought about the distinction between an intelligence agency and an intelligence service. The services were so covert, their very existence was deniable. In the United States alone, there were over 1,200 of them, including privately held corporations that seemed to be art galleries, real estate agencies, travel services, and management consultancies. Many services were solely gray and black ops, their funding usually derived from obscure places such as rounding errors in the federal budget. “Yeah. You’re right. What do you suggest?” He shifted his seat around so he faced her.
“Me. I was a bat leveyha before I was promoted to kidon. I’ve killed before and you haven’t. I’ve been a katsa for six months and now chief of station. I have the skills and contacts you need.”
He stopped tapping his fingers and nodded. “Right then. But Ben-Levy made me the team leader on this one. If you’re on my team for this mission, you report to me. Clear?”
Ruth frowned. She stood still, hesitating, her arms at her sides. “Why?”
Jon turned his face away from the notebook’s screen, and stared at her. “I’ve led a team in the field. My strengths are team formation and mission planning. If you can’t live with me calling the shots, walk away.”
She frowned. “It’s not that. I’ve reported to men before. Some better than others. But Jon, you’ve only been with the Mossad for a year. Not long enough. Not enough experience. I’ve been doing this for four years. Even that isn’t really enough for this mission. You’d be—”
“I’d be more than adequate for this. If you wish to continue this discussion, take it up with Mother.” He glared at her.
Ruth took a step back. “Whatever.” She turned away, then shrugged as she walked to a cabinet in his living area. She removed a bottle of Lagavulin single malt and two tumblers. She poured them half full and handed one to Jon. “Okay. To the mission.”
He smiled. “To the mission.” His smile evaporated. “You aren’t returning to Berlin, are you?”
“No, silly boy. I’m staying to work with you on the plan and staffing for it.” She sipped the Scotch. “Oh, that’s good.”
He sipped a little into his mouth. “Always is.”
Placing the glass on the desk, he sat and opened a project planning program on his notebook computer.
She placed her glass next to his. And placed both hands on his shoulders. “Jon, this one could get sticky with us working together. But you already know that, right?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “So? Everything Mother asks me to do gets messy.” He rose from the chair and faced her. “And everything I do with you is a major frustration, but in a different way.”
She glared at him. “You think it’s just your problem? When we were both just field agents in Tel Aviv awaiting reassignment, things were different. Sex was good and kept us loose. Now it’s no longer true. I’m your case officer now. Sex might compromise my judgment and yours, too. We could become dangerous to each other. Can you work with me knowing that?”
He stared into her eyes. “Right now, not having sex with you is compromising my judgment.” He touched her hand. “Tell me you don’t feel the same way.” He pulled her toward him. “Tell me you can still think straight.” He forced his lips to hers. “Tell me.”
She pulled her face away, stepped back, and looked into his eyes. “It won’t end well.”
