The Protocols of Spying, page 24
After sucking deeply at the juice, Segev spoke. ‘Not just us but a lot of actors have been engaging in active measures using cyber and there are distinct operational styles.’
‘So?’ Rafi said with a hint of impatience. ‘Everybody knows that.’
Eli turned to Rafi and frowned. ‘Ignore Rafi. Go on.’
‘If you’re going for volume in terms of cyberattacks, you have to develop efficient protocols. Distinct patterns of TTPs – that’s—’
‘Tactics, techniques and procedures,’ Rafi said. ‘And?’
‘GRU has a five-phase playbook, which they always stick to. Always. I’ve checked the procedures followed on establishing Grant D Miller’s backstory. Everything, apart from the hard-copy document at the National Archives, has followed the exact same pattern—’
‘GRU… are you saying it’s not us, but it’s the Russians?’ Eli said. ‘Are you absolutely sure, Segev?’
‘Yes. One hundred per cent.’
‘Why would the Russians put all those resources into getting us to kill someone? It doesn’t make sense,’ Rafi said.
‘Oh yes, it does. It makes a whole lot of sense,’ Eli said. ‘They want to drive a wedge between us and the US, whoever gets elected. The US is our oldest and most trusted ally; if we’re duped into killing one of their nationals, it won’t matter who’s elected – we will lose that support. And we need them more than they need us. It nearly happened when we allowed Jonathan Pollard to spy for us. The fall-out from this would be much worse. And the fact that this takes place in the UK is also part of it. It makes the UK security services look bad and Russia will enjoy that. They’ve probably never got over the British attempts to mess with the Bolshevik Revolution. It’s all part of the big plan: Putin wants to get the US to distrust everyone except Mother Russia. It’s his way back to the big table. It pains me to admit it but it’s exceptionally clever. Nearly as good as The Protocols of Zion.’
For a few moments there was silence in the room, just the sound of breathing. Then there was a trill from Rafi’s work phone. He glanced at the number and strode to the bookcase.
‘Yeah,’ Eli heard Rafi’s voice from across the room. ‘How many?’ Rafi continued, ‘Don’t take chances, Petra, not with three. Okay? I’ll call you back in ten minutes.’
Rafi closed the call and pocketed the phone. ‘It looks like Silver Dove has been kidnapped.’
‘And the Russians have fucked us over,’ Eli said. ‘How much better does it get?’
Chapter 42
‘Call back in ten minutes?’ Petra repeated to the empty car. ‘Thank you very much, Rafi.’
Petra was two cars behind the old black Mercedes, on the A404, around Kensal Rise, heading northwest. Just making that call to Rafi had meant she’d lost concentration on the car ahead of her, so she was far from pleased with the curt dismissal.
‘Git,’ she said aloud and then went back to focusing her attention on the black Mercedes.
Stay close, but not too close. Do not attract the attention of the target car.
Rafi’s voice rang in her ears. It was all very well for him to drop these pearls on a sunny afternoon outside a shooting range, quite another thing to be out here on her own with no back-up. Git. Fortunately, the driver wasn’t racing ahead and also, fortunately, despite being old, the black Merc had big fat brake lights that announced its stately presence.
‘Steady as we go,’ Petra spoke aloud again and the sound of her own voice calmed her.
If she could find out where they were taking Wasim, it would be a simple task of calling Rafi and bringing in the police if necessary. The other voice inside her head broke in with one word: simple? Let’s not think about that too much at the moment. Concentrate on not losing the Mercedes.
Just then the white Yaris ahead of Petra indicated and took a left, down a side street. It left Petra exposed behind the black car. Damn. If the Merc driver was observant, he had to see her. All he had to do was glance in his rearview mirror. Without considering her actions, Petra hunched down into her seat and kept her head down, though much good that would do.
Ahead, there was no light coming from the interior of the car. The privacy glass was effective. They could have been doing anything to Wasim and there’d be nothing she could do. Nothing. Once again, Petra glanced at the phone. Surely ten minutes must have passed.
The traffic lights changed and Petra delayed, hoping that the BMW in the right lane would lose patience and push in front of her, giving her some cover, but the boy racer didn’t. Bloody Beamers. He just hooted and shook his head at her, an action which had completely the wrong effect. It drew attention to her tail.
Christ.
Petra ignored the scowling BMW driver and continued to follow the Merc, through the traffic lights and further, further, further along the A404.
Where the hell were they taking Wasim? Bloody Scotland? Maybe she should call the police, but what would she say? I think someone I know has been kidnapped? No, not yet. For the moment it would appear that Wasim was in no danger. She chose to believe that.
Through Willesden she followed, right behind the black car, until they did a left at a T-junction and Petra was able to shift back two cars and breathe a sigh of relief. This was good. Steady progress. She could handle this. All she had to do was see where they stopped and then call it in to Rafi and he could deal with it.
To her left she recognised the white arches of Wembley soaring out of the darkness; so they were coming up to the A1 and M1, maybe they really were heading up north. But before she’d worked out how far she’d be able to go before refuelling, the Merc suddenly turned off the main road. Petra sped up and followed. Moments later she found herself in an industrial estate. There was absolutely no traffic ahead, nothing but the Mercedes, its big lights guiding her onwards. As slowly as she could, Petra cruised past small units, a sign advertising vacancies, a sign for plumbing supplies, a sign for MOTs and a sign for marble and quartz at bargain prices. The further she went into the maze of the industrial estate, the more pitted the road and, as she bumped across a pothole, she hoped she hadn’t screwed the tyres.
Now that she was deep into the deserted industrial estate, Petra felt more conspicuous than ever. Fifty feet ahead of her there was the Mercedes. It slowed and took a turn to the left. That was way too close for her to follow. Petra pulled into a space outside the MOT unit, where an external light cast a single point of illumination in the darkness, and turned off the engine.
There was no choice. If she was going to find out what they were going to do to Wasim, she would have to walk from here.
Chapter 43
‘Thank you, Segev,’ Eli said. ‘Good work. Now, go home, get some food, go to bed, and I don’t want to see you until tomorrow.’
Segev shifted from one foot to the other. It was hard to see whether he was just jittery or whether he was going to argue.
‘Go on, get out,’ Eli said. ‘If we need you, we know where you are.’
Segev turned and left the office, leaving Eli alone with Rafi, who was dialling a number on his phone.
‘She’s not answering.’ He fiddled with his own phone and studied the screen. ‘She’s somewhere in north-west London, near Wembley. She’s stationary, so she’s either in traffic or she’s at the destination. She must have got out of the car.’
Eli was looking at his laptop. He had a sudden sense of awareness that, in the midst of the moment, he’d forgotten that his marriage was over, that Gal had met someone else, that she was screwing someone else. A moment when he realised how he was so engaged in what was happening, what was important, what would have huge implications, he’d forgotten about himself.
‘Doesn’t amount to a hill of beans,’ Eli muttered as he scanned his laptop and the list of London safe houses and their current occupants.
‘What?’ Rafi said.
‘Doesn’t matter. The Kidon guys are split between the Chiswick safe house and the one in Acton. Both good for the airport and central London. We need transport, Rafi, but I want a motorbike. It’ll be the fastest way to get there. If we can’t get Harel to see reason, we’re going to have to find some other way of putting a stop to this madness.’
Rafi stood up and was shrugging himself into his leather jacket.
‘The car-hire sayan has got a brand-new BMW M1000XR in his garage. I’ll call him. Let’s take that. It’s got some guts.’
‘Rafi, I’m going to have to tolerate your driving. Don’t make this worse than necessary.’
Rafi grinned.
‘Here is the plan,’ Eli said. ‘One – we hit on the ambassador. If she knows and we warned her and this blows up, her career is over. We get the authority from her to abort. Two – we corner Menachem. Your old unit won’t use guns in the UK – my guess is that it will be poison and Menachem will have had to sign off the drug, the antidote and the delivery system.’
‘Isn’t this wasting time?’ Rafi said.
They were outside the office now and striding along the third-floor corridor. The floor of the old building creaked a little and they walked with the purpose that implied they were unstoppable.
‘No, because we need to be carrying our own supply of the antidote and the delivery mechanism, it’s insurance,’ Eli said. ‘Three – we get to Acton, pull rank on the Kidon guys in the safe house and tell them to abort. If they don’t agree to abort, we phone it in to Oliver Milne which will bring the whole of London Station crashing down and result in our swift return home. Are you okay with that, Rafi?’
‘The nuclear option.’
‘Yes. If you want to put it like that. This cannot be allowed to happen,’ Eli said.
‘What about Petra?’
‘The problem is the ambassador. If she was at home, we could have borrowed her security detail for a few hours and sent them to Wembley. But she’s not, she’s at an event. That means Petra will have to handle the situation until we get there.’
‘Understood,’ Rafi said. They were by the lift. The doors opened and both got inside. Eli pushed the buttons to the basement. ‘We need to get kitted out for the bike. We need helmets and comms as well as leathers. I’ll do that while you try to reach Petra. Make it crystal-clear that she’s there to assess the situation and not to engage under any circumstances.’
Chapter 44
‘I get it, okay?’ Petra said. ‘I won’t engage. I’ll just observe. But how quickly can you get here?’
‘There’s a problem,’ Rafi said. ‘Remember my friend’s crazy hunch? He was right. So now we have to sort it out, otherwise I’d be with you in fifteen minutes. You know I would.’
‘I see.’
Petra heard noise in the background from wherever Rafi was calling from and he went on, ‘Babe, I’ve got to go. Remember what I said. We’ll call back soon.’
Petra sat back in the Puma and stared at the screen on her phone until it went dark. She was on her own with no idea how long she’d be waiting for the cavalry to turn up. She was ‘in the mud’, as Alon would have put it. For the briefest of seconds she wondered how his wife was, alive and an ailing hostage or dead, having died alone and her body rotting in a tunnel. That was certainly ‘in the mud’.
For all the warning not to engage, she couldn’t just sit there and wait for Rafi to turn up and make a decision about what to do next. Doing a thorough scan of her surroundings could hardly be considered engaging; she was just going to observe. In preparation, Petra switched her phone to vibrate and pocketed it, then she reached into the bag on the front seat of the car to see if there was anything useful. Since she hadn’t expected to be doing a surveillance job, for once she was without her usual kit. What was there? A miniature bottle of gin she hadn’t felt like drinking on the plane back from Budapest. What was she going to do with that? It might come in handy if she had to stand outside waiting for Rafi to turn up God knows when. She reached further down into the bag. Notepad, pen, the credit-card-sized gizmo with the scissors and the magnifying glass, the Bic lighter she’d used for Sandie’s fireworks, a pouch bag for shopping and antibac hand gel. Hardly tooled up.
As quietly as she could, Petra slipped out of the car and shut the door. Keeping to the darkness, Petra crept towards the MOT centre and the turning where she’d last seen the Mercedes’s fat lights. There she stopped. She scanned ahead for movement and then eased herself around the corner of the building. Her view was blocked by a commercial waste bin that overflowed with black bags, sodden cardboard and a mangled bike. Petra had to step out and be exposed if she was going to see where the Mercedes was.
Just observe. Don’t engage.
As soon as Petra stepped away from the bin, she saw the Merc, you couldn’t miss it. It was parked in front of a run-down Portakabin. Even in the darkness she could see loose strands of wiring and dead leaves. There was a light on inside but the window was covered. Petra stopped. Waited. Nothing.
She edged closer, past a corrugated one-storey building. Outside, stacked in neat piles, were squares of granite and quartz, samples, about the size of coasters.
With all the stealth she could muster, Petra edged closer to the Merc. As close as she dared, squinting in the gloom. The car was empty. They must have hustled Wasim inside.
Just observe. Don’t engage.
Petra scanned the area, she needed somewhere where she could hide that had a vantage point. The door to the offices of the granite outlet was too exposed and, worse, white. She’d show up like a black crow against a white cloud. Turning, she saw a possible spot; a narrow space between the MOT office and the works themselves. Petra darted into the darkness. It smelt as if someone had dossed down there or taken drugs; they’d certainly pissed. She wedged herself in on top of some broken glass underfoot and wrapped her scarf around her face, just exposing her eyes so she was as concealed as possible. Despite the location’s foul smell, it was a decent vantage point; at 90 degrees, she could see any cars coming or going and, if she poked her head out, she had a clear view of the Portakabin.
Just then her phone vibrated, and Petra didn’t have to look to guess that it was Rafi checking up on her. Great timing. She ignored the call.
Chapter 45
‘This is nice,’ Eli said, as he swung a leg over the bike and stepped away from it.
‘What?’ Rafi was absorbed in the bike and running his fingers over the gleaming handlebars. He looked up at Eli and followed his gaze. They were 50 metres away from the front of the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley and, even from that distance, the small group of protestors was evident. Green, black, white and red flags were waving and they could hear the chants of ‘Fuck Israel’, ‘Genocide’, ‘Ceasefire Now’.
The police were there, stopping the protestors from touching people arriving at the cinema, but the shouting was loud and, even from a distance of fifty metres, intimidating.
Eli saw a black Range Rover sweep up to the front of the building. Two security guys got out, followed by the ambassador. She swept through the shouting crowd and looked neither left nor right. Eli remembered the woman he’d seen trembling with anguish in the meeting room at the sight of the live footage being streamed from the massacre. She had got herself together. She was majestic as she swept past the protestors. Less attractive was the sight of Nathan at her heels, but that might prove useful.
Eli and Rafi marched towards the cinema and Eli made eye contact with Hillel, one of the embassy security jocks, who was scanning the area outside. The square man in the black suit was talking to one of the cops and pointing at a protestor. It looked as if he was making his own protest at the lack of security for the ambassador, but it seemed that at least she was now inside.
‘We’re with him,’ Eli said when they drew abreast of Hillel, who nodded at the cop, and Eli had the oddest sensation of what it would be like to walk on a red carpet into a cinema. For Eli, to be exposed in this way was far from an ideal situation, but then, if the cultural attacheé of the Israeli government, as Eli was described when his credentials were presented to His Majesty’s Government, and his deputy, couldn’t attend a screening of the documentary about the massacre of 400 people at the trance music event, They Will Dance Again, then who the hell could?
Minutes later, Eli was inside and found his hand being shaken by a bespectacled man, who introduced himself as a London literary agent. Eli had no idea who he was and muttered something, trying to keep his eye on the ambassador and her progress through the crowd of people there for the event.
‘Excuse me,’ Eli said. ‘I just want to make sure that everything is ready for the ambassador’s speech.’
With Rafi in tow and feeling a little like Darth Vader in his motorbike leathers, Eli marched up to the ambassador. She was bent over a little old lady with coiffed white hair. The ambassador held the woman’s hand and presumably was saying something comforting about the hostile crowds outside. Too bad. Eli nudged the ambassador’s elbow.
‘I need a word. Urgently.’
A minute later Eli was in the empty cinema with the ambassador, her deputy Yossi, Nathan and Rafi. Hillel was at the door to stop anyone from coming in.
‘I need your authority to abort a mission that has been greenlit by the Prime Minister’s office,’ Eli said without preamble.
‘I can’t do that, it’s not my—’
‘It’s a termination operation and we’ve been duped into thinking it’s real by the Russians.’
‘You have no idea how much I hate you people,’ Yossi said. ‘Haven’t we got enough to worry about without you lot playing cowboys and Indians? Every problem we ever have always comes back to you and your so-called intelligence.’
‘Shut up, Yossi. Let me deal with this,’ the ambassador said. She held his gaze for a moment. ‘Eli, I trust you. You have my authority to abort the operation. I will make that a matter of public record.’ She knew what was at stake and Eli reckoned that she was planning to come out of this smelling sweet. And why the hell not?
