The Protocols of Spying, page 14
Lies
This generation is seeing a boom in propaganda… technical progress has vastly increased the power of the propagandist. His campaign may be open or he may operate silently, like a thief in the night, moulding the pattern of a people’s mind by subtle suggestion.
A J Mackenzie, 1937
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte, France 1769–1821
Chapter 24
It was mid-January and cold in London. God knows what it was like in Israel and, by default, Gaza; the news had been unrelentingly bad for the past month. In mid-December Israeli forces had killed three Israeli hostages by mistake; the news made Petra wince. Meanwhile the trail of displaced people dragging their pathetic belongings continued across news outlets, coupled with escalating incidents of anti-Semitism. It had even come to her own Surrey village where a couple of sisters, daughters of a neighbour, had been abused for wearing Stars of David. According to Sandie, one of the young women was told by a stranger in a shopping centre that it was a pity her family hadn’t all been burnt to death.
Petra’s Christmas had been quiet and, besides having drinks with Sandie and Bob, who seemed to be edging towards a romantic attachment, she’d spent a good amount of time with Wasim. They spent sunny days walking in Hyde Park, wrapped up against the cold, they strolled around the Serpentine and talked. Much of the conversation was to build up the levels of trust and communication between them. The other part was talking about his future.
Silver Dove was an original thinker, a mix of liberal attitudes peppered with ideas that hadn’t occurred to her. There was more than one occasion when, despite her crash course in geopolitics and continued reading, she felt out of her depth and recognised that Eli, in some other cover that wasn’t Abu Marwan, would have connected better with the young man. Case in point was on a Saturday afternoon, when they got caught up in the tail end of a demonstration and had to manoeuvre through a crush of people with placards that said ‘Fuck Israel’ and ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’.
‘This is their Vietnam moment,’ Wasim said, as he took her arm in a protective way. ‘Most of them have no idea where Gaza is and the anti-Semitism has very little to do with how they’re positioning themselves, it’s just being part of a protest movement. You see, climate change is amorphous, there’s no single specific, clearly identifiable enemy with climate change. Who do you target? The oil industry, aviation, fracking? And as for the attacks on paintings, that was one fucked-up idea. It only served to alienate the public. Or colonialism, it’s too general, and it’s grounded in history. The Romans were colonialists, Persians, Vikings, Venetians, take your pick, all colonialists, so to say that it’s the UK or Europe or the US, it’s too general. But Gaza is easy. Like Vietnam, good guys, weak but brave and bad guys, powerful and evil. And Jews.’
Later, over a hot chocolate in a noisy cafe on the Strand, Wasim described how he saw the current rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and how it was being appropriated by the far right to bludgeon the millions of Muslims in Europe.
‘As I see it, that’s the real risk and I don’t think our zippy activists have considered how this may play out.’ Wasim stirred the glass of hot chocolate to break up the cream. ‘It’s just fun and social to march and chant and conflate Jews with the actions of the Israeli government and churn up the old tropes without realising what they’re actually doing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Feeding the far right with a narrative that will be acceptable to centrists. Okay, the far right have a head start with issues about immigration, but what better way for them to promote Islamophobia than by claiming that they are trying to protect Jews, who have been historically discriminated against? To say that they’re coming to this position not from a platform of being racist and discriminatory but because they’re protecting people.’
‘That’s a pretty depressing way of looking at it,’ Petra said.
Wasim shrugged. ‘Sorry, I just get really frustrated when I’ve gotta listen to some of the garbage that floats around the student body, most notably from the regional student union organiser. Man’s a total dick.’
Unfortunately, it was this total dick that Wasim had to get onside. Petra had discussed it at length with both Eli and Rafi. Sam Scedding, or Samir, as he sometimes liked to be known, in his role as regional student union organiser, was connected to all the groups that would be needed to endorse Silver Dove as a person with a future career in Gaza politics.
Petra was less interested in Wasim’s world view and more concerned about how this arrogant young man was going to get the endorsement he needed.
‘You may not like Sam or even agree with what he’s saying but you need to find a way to connect to him.’
Wasim leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘The only thing I like about him is his girlfriend. She’s much too good for him.’
‘Do you think flirting or even screwing this woman is a good way for you to get Sam onside?’
Wasim put his head onto one side and smiled at Petra. It was a warm smile and one that would charm any young woman away from a worthy activist, as she imagined Sam to be. But Wasim’s next comment brought Petra right back to the here and now.
‘There is no think tank,’ Wasim said.
‘I’m sorry? I thought we were talking about Sam,’ Petra said.
‘You’re a Jew, aren’t you?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘For one thing, you answered a question with a question,’ Wasim smiled.
‘That’s hardly scientific,’ Petra said.
Wasim changed his position and leaned across the table. He lowered his voice. ‘I don’t have a problem with it, neither do I have a problem with the notion that your think tank is the Mossad. That’s because I know you, Petra, and I know that you tried hard to save my sister’s life. I also know what she thought of you from her journal and, despite her religious beliefs, Sahar wasn’t stupid when it came to people.’
Through the designer specs his eyes were magnified, and it gave his words a heightened intensity. The sense of just how pivotal her response was going to be to the future of the relationship and, by default, the operation was acute. It was like an out-of-the-box kitchen knife, dangerous but functional. It was either going to slash through the dross of maintaining the cover story or finish the operation in one move. Petra opened her mouth, ready to deny, deny, deny. She was sure that’s what Rafi would have told her to do, but something held her back. This was about respect and about judgement. It was her call. If she was going to ask him to risk his life, she at least should show him some respect and tell him the truth.
‘Yes, I am a Jew. And yes, this idea of you going back to try to make Gaza a better place is an initiative coming from the Israeli government, in other words, the Mossad.’
‘Good. That makes life a lot easier, doesn’t it?’
She paid for coffee and they left the cafe. Now warmed, they crossed the road into Green Park and walked among the bare trees, trees that had shed their leaves and had no secrets. Wasim was right. The rest of that afternoon’s meeting was a lot easier. For one thing, Petra was able to set up the safety codes for when they spoke on the phone without dressing it up as some weirdness dreamt up by a paranoid think tank. Wasim got it immediately, even adding his own enhancements.
‘Words associated with heat are a warning code. Words associated with cold are an all clear.’
‘Exactly, simple to remember, hard to identify,’ Petra said. She was already wondering how she was going to explain the change in Wasim’s status to Rafi and Eli. The need for Wasim to understand safety codes was not going to convince them that it was necessary to break the agreed recruitment protocols. Would she have to tell them?
It was only later that evening when they were sitting on the sofa at Wasim’s flat, watching a Christmas movie and eating popcorn, that she realised she would; the flat was wired.
‘It’s not just because of my sister. Though that’s certainly a part of it. It’s also about a friend I had in Kansas.’
‘Go on,’ Petra said, careful to give him space to explore the idea.
‘It started when I came back… after Sahar. At first I didn’t go in to classes at all. Just stayed in bed all day, watched the lectures on the feed. When I didn’t turn up to anything my roommates set the counsellors on me, so I had to go to lectures. Day after day, I sat at the back of that lecture hall, didn’t take anything in. Just looked at the clock, counted the minutes until I could get back into bed and sleep. Jonathan was in my biophysics group. He used to walk me back to the dorm, didn’t speak, didn’t nag. Sometimes handed me a takeout in a bag. Dear Jonathan. He brought me back. He said I was like a bird with a damaged wing.’ Wasim smiled at the memory.
‘He was right.’
Wasim sighed heavily. ‘Jonathan was Jewish and his mom was okay with it when we got closer. She was a bit like you. His father was an asshole. I never worked out whether he hated me more because we were having a thing or because of my background, but Jonathan was everything anyone could want in a friend, a partner, a son. Big, big heart, and funny, so funny.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was the stupidest thing. He never cleaned his car windows before he started driving, there was heavy snow, it was early in the morning and he was late for class. He was driving too fast, hit some ice, smashed over the barrier, hit an oncoming truck.’
Petra took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m sorry.’
Wasim stared ahead at the cavorting women in skimpy Santa costumes surrounding Bill Nighy on the TV. ‘I blamed myself. You see, we’d made a bit of a night of it, the night before. I told him all about Sahar, and we talked about whether we had a future together. You know what he said?’
Petra shook her head.
‘He said, “We have to live,” and said that’s what l’chaim, the toast was all about. To life. Not the death cult that killed Sahar. That’s what I want to bring to my people. The mindset that life is precious.’
The fall-out from the change in Wasim’s status wasn’t as bad as Petra had anticipated. Much of that was due to the benefit of the wired environment of his flat. Eli and Rafi had heard exactly what was said and seen the images.
‘It’s clear that he trusts you,’ Eli said. ‘And it’s clear that he’s acting out of idealism that he can associate with a particularly positive experience. If we’d known this before, it would have made our lives easier and we could have got to him through the family, but Gaza was never a priority. Anyway, I’m happy with the development. Rafi?’
Rafi’s expression said otherwise. ‘I’m not convinced by him. Nor the l’chaim crap. It strikes me that’s exactly the type of string we might tug if we wanted to shift an operation. But I still agree that we go ahead with the next stage; we just do it with clear fallback procedures.’
The university cafe at Westminster had long trestle tables that striated the floor space where pockets of students chowed down while they simultaneously flicked through their phones and talked at each other. To one side of the cafe, there were small tables for people who wanted to sit alone or share with just one other person. Petra had insisted on getting into the space a full hour before necessary so she might bag one of those side tables. That meant with her back against the wall she had the optimum 180-degree view of the space.
For the last week she’d been using the earpiece and, despite it looking like a commercial earbud, she was conscious of it. She was also uncomfortable with the chatter in her ear, much of it in Hebrew, in which she could understand only every few words. If she was going to make a habit of this, she would have to find a better way of staying in touch with the Techtruck that didn’t give her a headache.
Her work phone was also connected to the Techtruck so, when she seemed to be talking on a call, she was waving the phone around so that Rafi and Segev had as clear a view as possible of the location.
‘Just relax,’ Rafi said. ‘I’m sure your golden boy will do fine. This is his chance to impress.’
‘I’m not worried about him. I can’t work out how to lower the volume on this thing.’
‘Is this a little more comfortable?’ she heard Segev’s voice. ‘I’ve taken down the treble.’
‘Yes… yes… thank you.’
‘Okay,’ Rafi said. ‘We’re all set. Our guy has just exited Baker Street Station, and he will be with you in just over seven minutes.’
‘Got it.’
‘Enjoy the show.’
Besides his position as regional student union organiser, Sam had further attributes that made him a desirable target for Silver Dove. He was already on an MI5 watch list, he had an established social-media profile in antifa and he even had connections to Hamas’s political wing.
Yet his background was unexceptional. Originally from a small town in Devon, Sam’s father was a Tory councillor, who owned a chandler’s shop. His mother was a teacher and, according to the document Petra had read, Sam himself was a postgraduate media-studies student. After failing to get a job in the creative industries, he’d found his niche in the student union. Here he was able to use his skills writing copy and designing posters for the events that they ran. He also did the data gathering and ran the social accounts, which, in the three years that he’d been doing the job, had grown exponentially. While it was nothing like the sort of money he’d have earned if he’d got himself into an advertising agency, nonetheless he was able to sustain himself in the flat he rented in one of the blocks near Shepherd’s Bush. There were other perks to the job, among them the supply of admiring undergraduate students.
As Petra studied him from her table on the other side of the cafe, she considered that he was exactly where he was supposed to be in life.
At that moment he was leaning against the makeshift stall, handing out flyers and information for the weekend rally to everyone who passed by. The stall itself was draped with the red, white, black and green of the Palestinian flag and a young woman with green hair and a Medusa cut was trilling on a recorder, while a fellow student banged on kettledrum and chanted, ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.’
Behind them Sam smiled with the beatific indulgence of the senior student. Petra noted, from both the file she’d studied earlier and from observing him in the flesh, that he had a particularly interesting face. It was long, his brow was lined and he looked older than his documented 26. There was a worn-down look about him, as if he’d done some serious drugs and compromised his health before he got clean. He was pale and, from time to time, he held up the keffiyeh around his neck and coughed into it. That hadn’t come up on the file but, as Eli said, they didn’t know everything.
Regardless of Sam’s status as a student union man and an activist, Petra was confident that Silver Dove had all the smarts needed to make this first contact. Petra was thinking about that when her earpiece buzzed into life.
‘Shin Daled has just entered the building.’
Minutes later, Petra spotted Wasim as he walked into the cafe.
‘Eyes on him,’ she said and, at the sight of the agent, she almost shook her head in amusement. Almost, but not quite. For all the world he looked like someone strolling along the boardwalk at the beach, not making a contact with a prickly activist who might well be aggressive. In loose jeans and an overlarge sweatshirt, baseball cap and a bowling jacket, Wasim looked cool. No question about it.
‘Stand by. He’s at the desk,’ Petra said.
Petra heard the channel switch as the young man bent over the stand and smiled at Sam.
‘Hey,’ Wasim said to Sam, ‘I’ll keep it brief. I’m a PhD at Imperial. Name’s Wasim Al-Arikhi. I’ve seen you around and I’ve stayed away because…’ Wasim pointed a finger. ‘You’re being followed.’
Sam frowned deeply, shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Wasim shrugged, ‘Salaam aleichem, bro. I’m just telling you what I saw because I saw the same guys on me.’
Then Wasim picked up one of the flyers, ambled over to the coffee stand and ordered. While he was there, Petra saw him chat to the girl with the green hair in that charming way he had. Then he sauntered towards the exit.
‘All okay,’ Petra said. ‘Shin Daled leaving location. Target looks worried. I don’t think it could have gone any better.’
‘Let’s see,’ Petra heard Rafi say.
Chapter 25
Ever since Eli had met with Milne and Charlene, he’d been ruminating about Grant D Miller. It was like muscle sprain, always there. He’d spent hours both in his office and at home, at the kitchen table looking at footage on social media sites of the tall, urbane American with the slicked-back grey hair. He’d been filmed at Trump rallies, among a group in the White House and Mar-a-Lago when the former president was in power, giving a talk at an Ivy League university on the benefits of isolationism, and there were also posts about his association with Jeffrey Epstein that lent credence to the reasons why he had to meet Harel in London.
Eli delved further and found a print interview with the man for a local British newspaper, where he talked about his British ancestors, who’d been mill brokers in Nottingham but had fled to the US in the eighteenth century. There was even supposed to be a house associated with the man’s family in some remote village in the area.
Despite all that colourful corroboration, something continued to nag at Eli and, as yet, he couldn’t work out what it was.
Who was this Republican mover and shaker who’d got the ear of the former US president and was now the point of contact for this operation? How much influence did he really have over a quixotic leader? There were always satellites swirling around authoritarian powers who thought they were bigger than they really were. Look at Prigozhin, blown up mid-flight. Eli asked himself, was that it? The notion that Grant D Miller wasn’t a power broker at all, and they were being led down a dark tunnel with a bomb at the end of it?
This generation is seeing a boom in propaganda… technical progress has vastly increased the power of the propagandist. His campaign may be open or he may operate silently, like a thief in the night, moulding the pattern of a people’s mind by subtle suggestion.
A J Mackenzie, 1937
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte, France 1769–1821
Chapter 24
It was mid-January and cold in London. God knows what it was like in Israel and, by default, Gaza; the news had been unrelentingly bad for the past month. In mid-December Israeli forces had killed three Israeli hostages by mistake; the news made Petra wince. Meanwhile the trail of displaced people dragging their pathetic belongings continued across news outlets, coupled with escalating incidents of anti-Semitism. It had even come to her own Surrey village where a couple of sisters, daughters of a neighbour, had been abused for wearing Stars of David. According to Sandie, one of the young women was told by a stranger in a shopping centre that it was a pity her family hadn’t all been burnt to death.
Petra’s Christmas had been quiet and, besides having drinks with Sandie and Bob, who seemed to be edging towards a romantic attachment, she’d spent a good amount of time with Wasim. They spent sunny days walking in Hyde Park, wrapped up against the cold, they strolled around the Serpentine and talked. Much of the conversation was to build up the levels of trust and communication between them. The other part was talking about his future.
Silver Dove was an original thinker, a mix of liberal attitudes peppered with ideas that hadn’t occurred to her. There was more than one occasion when, despite her crash course in geopolitics and continued reading, she felt out of her depth and recognised that Eli, in some other cover that wasn’t Abu Marwan, would have connected better with the young man. Case in point was on a Saturday afternoon, when they got caught up in the tail end of a demonstration and had to manoeuvre through a crush of people with placards that said ‘Fuck Israel’ and ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’.
‘This is their Vietnam moment,’ Wasim said, as he took her arm in a protective way. ‘Most of them have no idea where Gaza is and the anti-Semitism has very little to do with how they’re positioning themselves, it’s just being part of a protest movement. You see, climate change is amorphous, there’s no single specific, clearly identifiable enemy with climate change. Who do you target? The oil industry, aviation, fracking? And as for the attacks on paintings, that was one fucked-up idea. It only served to alienate the public. Or colonialism, it’s too general, and it’s grounded in history. The Romans were colonialists, Persians, Vikings, Venetians, take your pick, all colonialists, so to say that it’s the UK or Europe or the US, it’s too general. But Gaza is easy. Like Vietnam, good guys, weak but brave and bad guys, powerful and evil. And Jews.’
Later, over a hot chocolate in a noisy cafe on the Strand, Wasim described how he saw the current rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and how it was being appropriated by the far right to bludgeon the millions of Muslims in Europe.
‘As I see it, that’s the real risk and I don’t think our zippy activists have considered how this may play out.’ Wasim stirred the glass of hot chocolate to break up the cream. ‘It’s just fun and social to march and chant and conflate Jews with the actions of the Israeli government and churn up the old tropes without realising what they’re actually doing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Feeding the far right with a narrative that will be acceptable to centrists. Okay, the far right have a head start with issues about immigration, but what better way for them to promote Islamophobia than by claiming that they are trying to protect Jews, who have been historically discriminated against? To say that they’re coming to this position not from a platform of being racist and discriminatory but because they’re protecting people.’
‘That’s a pretty depressing way of looking at it,’ Petra said.
Wasim shrugged. ‘Sorry, I just get really frustrated when I’ve gotta listen to some of the garbage that floats around the student body, most notably from the regional student union organiser. Man’s a total dick.’
Unfortunately, it was this total dick that Wasim had to get onside. Petra had discussed it at length with both Eli and Rafi. Sam Scedding, or Samir, as he sometimes liked to be known, in his role as regional student union organiser, was connected to all the groups that would be needed to endorse Silver Dove as a person with a future career in Gaza politics.
Petra was less interested in Wasim’s world view and more concerned about how this arrogant young man was going to get the endorsement he needed.
‘You may not like Sam or even agree with what he’s saying but you need to find a way to connect to him.’
Wasim leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘The only thing I like about him is his girlfriend. She’s much too good for him.’
‘Do you think flirting or even screwing this woman is a good way for you to get Sam onside?’
Wasim put his head onto one side and smiled at Petra. It was a warm smile and one that would charm any young woman away from a worthy activist, as she imagined Sam to be. But Wasim’s next comment brought Petra right back to the here and now.
‘There is no think tank,’ Wasim said.
‘I’m sorry? I thought we were talking about Sam,’ Petra said.
‘You’re a Jew, aren’t you?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘For one thing, you answered a question with a question,’ Wasim smiled.
‘That’s hardly scientific,’ Petra said.
Wasim changed his position and leaned across the table. He lowered his voice. ‘I don’t have a problem with it, neither do I have a problem with the notion that your think tank is the Mossad. That’s because I know you, Petra, and I know that you tried hard to save my sister’s life. I also know what she thought of you from her journal and, despite her religious beliefs, Sahar wasn’t stupid when it came to people.’
Through the designer specs his eyes were magnified, and it gave his words a heightened intensity. The sense of just how pivotal her response was going to be to the future of the relationship and, by default, the operation was acute. It was like an out-of-the-box kitchen knife, dangerous but functional. It was either going to slash through the dross of maintaining the cover story or finish the operation in one move. Petra opened her mouth, ready to deny, deny, deny. She was sure that’s what Rafi would have told her to do, but something held her back. This was about respect and about judgement. It was her call. If she was going to ask him to risk his life, she at least should show him some respect and tell him the truth.
‘Yes, I am a Jew. And yes, this idea of you going back to try to make Gaza a better place is an initiative coming from the Israeli government, in other words, the Mossad.’
‘Good. That makes life a lot easier, doesn’t it?’
She paid for coffee and they left the cafe. Now warmed, they crossed the road into Green Park and walked among the bare trees, trees that had shed their leaves and had no secrets. Wasim was right. The rest of that afternoon’s meeting was a lot easier. For one thing, Petra was able to set up the safety codes for when they spoke on the phone without dressing it up as some weirdness dreamt up by a paranoid think tank. Wasim got it immediately, even adding his own enhancements.
‘Words associated with heat are a warning code. Words associated with cold are an all clear.’
‘Exactly, simple to remember, hard to identify,’ Petra said. She was already wondering how she was going to explain the change in Wasim’s status to Rafi and Eli. The need for Wasim to understand safety codes was not going to convince them that it was necessary to break the agreed recruitment protocols. Would she have to tell them?
It was only later that evening when they were sitting on the sofa at Wasim’s flat, watching a Christmas movie and eating popcorn, that she realised she would; the flat was wired.
‘It’s not just because of my sister. Though that’s certainly a part of it. It’s also about a friend I had in Kansas.’
‘Go on,’ Petra said, careful to give him space to explore the idea.
‘It started when I came back… after Sahar. At first I didn’t go in to classes at all. Just stayed in bed all day, watched the lectures on the feed. When I didn’t turn up to anything my roommates set the counsellors on me, so I had to go to lectures. Day after day, I sat at the back of that lecture hall, didn’t take anything in. Just looked at the clock, counted the minutes until I could get back into bed and sleep. Jonathan was in my biophysics group. He used to walk me back to the dorm, didn’t speak, didn’t nag. Sometimes handed me a takeout in a bag. Dear Jonathan. He brought me back. He said I was like a bird with a damaged wing.’ Wasim smiled at the memory.
‘He was right.’
Wasim sighed heavily. ‘Jonathan was Jewish and his mom was okay with it when we got closer. She was a bit like you. His father was an asshole. I never worked out whether he hated me more because we were having a thing or because of my background, but Jonathan was everything anyone could want in a friend, a partner, a son. Big, big heart, and funny, so funny.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was the stupidest thing. He never cleaned his car windows before he started driving, there was heavy snow, it was early in the morning and he was late for class. He was driving too fast, hit some ice, smashed over the barrier, hit an oncoming truck.’
Petra took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m sorry.’
Wasim stared ahead at the cavorting women in skimpy Santa costumes surrounding Bill Nighy on the TV. ‘I blamed myself. You see, we’d made a bit of a night of it, the night before. I told him all about Sahar, and we talked about whether we had a future together. You know what he said?’
Petra shook her head.
‘He said, “We have to live,” and said that’s what l’chaim, the toast was all about. To life. Not the death cult that killed Sahar. That’s what I want to bring to my people. The mindset that life is precious.’
The fall-out from the change in Wasim’s status wasn’t as bad as Petra had anticipated. Much of that was due to the benefit of the wired environment of his flat. Eli and Rafi had heard exactly what was said and seen the images.
‘It’s clear that he trusts you,’ Eli said. ‘And it’s clear that he’s acting out of idealism that he can associate with a particularly positive experience. If we’d known this before, it would have made our lives easier and we could have got to him through the family, but Gaza was never a priority. Anyway, I’m happy with the development. Rafi?’
Rafi’s expression said otherwise. ‘I’m not convinced by him. Nor the l’chaim crap. It strikes me that’s exactly the type of string we might tug if we wanted to shift an operation. But I still agree that we go ahead with the next stage; we just do it with clear fallback procedures.’
The university cafe at Westminster had long trestle tables that striated the floor space where pockets of students chowed down while they simultaneously flicked through their phones and talked at each other. To one side of the cafe, there were small tables for people who wanted to sit alone or share with just one other person. Petra had insisted on getting into the space a full hour before necessary so she might bag one of those side tables. That meant with her back against the wall she had the optimum 180-degree view of the space.
For the last week she’d been using the earpiece and, despite it looking like a commercial earbud, she was conscious of it. She was also uncomfortable with the chatter in her ear, much of it in Hebrew, in which she could understand only every few words. If she was going to make a habit of this, she would have to find a better way of staying in touch with the Techtruck that didn’t give her a headache.
Her work phone was also connected to the Techtruck so, when she seemed to be talking on a call, she was waving the phone around so that Rafi and Segev had as clear a view as possible of the location.
‘Just relax,’ Rafi said. ‘I’m sure your golden boy will do fine. This is his chance to impress.’
‘I’m not worried about him. I can’t work out how to lower the volume on this thing.’
‘Is this a little more comfortable?’ she heard Segev’s voice. ‘I’ve taken down the treble.’
‘Yes… yes… thank you.’
‘Okay,’ Rafi said. ‘We’re all set. Our guy has just exited Baker Street Station, and he will be with you in just over seven minutes.’
‘Got it.’
‘Enjoy the show.’
Besides his position as regional student union organiser, Sam had further attributes that made him a desirable target for Silver Dove. He was already on an MI5 watch list, he had an established social-media profile in antifa and he even had connections to Hamas’s political wing.
Yet his background was unexceptional. Originally from a small town in Devon, Sam’s father was a Tory councillor, who owned a chandler’s shop. His mother was a teacher and, according to the document Petra had read, Sam himself was a postgraduate media-studies student. After failing to get a job in the creative industries, he’d found his niche in the student union. Here he was able to use his skills writing copy and designing posters for the events that they ran. He also did the data gathering and ran the social accounts, which, in the three years that he’d been doing the job, had grown exponentially. While it was nothing like the sort of money he’d have earned if he’d got himself into an advertising agency, nonetheless he was able to sustain himself in the flat he rented in one of the blocks near Shepherd’s Bush. There were other perks to the job, among them the supply of admiring undergraduate students.
As Petra studied him from her table on the other side of the cafe, she considered that he was exactly where he was supposed to be in life.
At that moment he was leaning against the makeshift stall, handing out flyers and information for the weekend rally to everyone who passed by. The stall itself was draped with the red, white, black and green of the Palestinian flag and a young woman with green hair and a Medusa cut was trilling on a recorder, while a fellow student banged on kettledrum and chanted, ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.’
Behind them Sam smiled with the beatific indulgence of the senior student. Petra noted, from both the file she’d studied earlier and from observing him in the flesh, that he had a particularly interesting face. It was long, his brow was lined and he looked older than his documented 26. There was a worn-down look about him, as if he’d done some serious drugs and compromised his health before he got clean. He was pale and, from time to time, he held up the keffiyeh around his neck and coughed into it. That hadn’t come up on the file but, as Eli said, they didn’t know everything.
Regardless of Sam’s status as a student union man and an activist, Petra was confident that Silver Dove had all the smarts needed to make this first contact. Petra was thinking about that when her earpiece buzzed into life.
‘Shin Daled has just entered the building.’
Minutes later, Petra spotted Wasim as he walked into the cafe.
‘Eyes on him,’ she said and, at the sight of the agent, she almost shook her head in amusement. Almost, but not quite. For all the world he looked like someone strolling along the boardwalk at the beach, not making a contact with a prickly activist who might well be aggressive. In loose jeans and an overlarge sweatshirt, baseball cap and a bowling jacket, Wasim looked cool. No question about it.
‘Stand by. He’s at the desk,’ Petra said.
Petra heard the channel switch as the young man bent over the stand and smiled at Sam.
‘Hey,’ Wasim said to Sam, ‘I’ll keep it brief. I’m a PhD at Imperial. Name’s Wasim Al-Arikhi. I’ve seen you around and I’ve stayed away because…’ Wasim pointed a finger. ‘You’re being followed.’
Sam frowned deeply, shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Wasim shrugged, ‘Salaam aleichem, bro. I’m just telling you what I saw because I saw the same guys on me.’
Then Wasim picked up one of the flyers, ambled over to the coffee stand and ordered. While he was there, Petra saw him chat to the girl with the green hair in that charming way he had. Then he sauntered towards the exit.
‘All okay,’ Petra said. ‘Shin Daled leaving location. Target looks worried. I don’t think it could have gone any better.’
‘Let’s see,’ Petra heard Rafi say.
Chapter 25
Ever since Eli had met with Milne and Charlene, he’d been ruminating about Grant D Miller. It was like muscle sprain, always there. He’d spent hours both in his office and at home, at the kitchen table looking at footage on social media sites of the tall, urbane American with the slicked-back grey hair. He’d been filmed at Trump rallies, among a group in the White House and Mar-a-Lago when the former president was in power, giving a talk at an Ivy League university on the benefits of isolationism, and there were also posts about his association with Jeffrey Epstein that lent credence to the reasons why he had to meet Harel in London.
Eli delved further and found a print interview with the man for a local British newspaper, where he talked about his British ancestors, who’d been mill brokers in Nottingham but had fled to the US in the eighteenth century. There was even supposed to be a house associated with the man’s family in some remote village in the area.
Despite all that colourful corroboration, something continued to nag at Eli and, as yet, he couldn’t work out what it was.
Who was this Republican mover and shaker who’d got the ear of the former US president and was now the point of contact for this operation? How much influence did he really have over a quixotic leader? There were always satellites swirling around authoritarian powers who thought they were bigger than they really were. Look at Prigozhin, blown up mid-flight. Eli asked himself, was that it? The notion that Grant D Miller wasn’t a power broker at all, and they were being led down a dark tunnel with a bomb at the end of it?
