The Protocols of Spying, page 25
‘Thank you.’ Eli turned towards Nathan and pointed a finger at him. ‘You’re with me.’
Nathan looked like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of a car but, before he had the chance to dissemble, Rafi’s hand was on his elbow, guiding him along. As Eli swept through the lobby of the cinema and out onto the street, without looking back, he knew that the two men were bringing up the rear.
They frogmarched Nathan through the crowd of protestors, who were banging drums and chanting an enthusiastic ‘From the River to the Sea’ refrain. Once past them, they turned down the street towards the bike. There they stopped and, by a garage door, Eli put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder and pushed him hard, up against it.
‘Where’s your fucking boss?’ Eli said. ‘Where’s Harel? You heard the ambassador. The mission is aborted.’
‘He’s at the jumping-off safe house,’ Nathan said. ‘But it’s too late, Eli. They’re doing it tonight.’
Chapter 46
It was quiet on the industrial estate. And it was cold. All Petra could hear was the sound of traffic on the A406.
What was going on inside the Portakabin?
Petra poked her head out from the passage and saw light leaking out from the sides of the covered window. If she was going to see inside the Portakabin, then she’d need to get a lot closer. That would be risky. But there had to be something she could do that was more effective than just hanging about in the stinking passage.
Observe. Gather operational information.
Yeah, yeah, yeah – she’d got the message. But nonetheless she was the one there, ‘in the mud’, and while there seemed to be low activity from inside the Portakabin, it would be madness not to take advantage of the opportunity to check out the area.
After poking her head out of the passage, Petra slid out and edged away from the Portakabin. With each step, she looked up and around, noted loose wires and some decrepit scaffolding. No security light switched on and, as far as she could see, easy entry to the MOT garage workshop could be gained through a cracked window.
Down another small road, away from the Portakabin, there were three ice-cream vans. They were old and shabby, with different brands and logos. In the winter night, they were tawdry ghosts of summer, scuffed, faded and filled with battered boxes of stale cones.
After five minutes of exploration it seemed to Petra that her first choice of hide might be about as good as it was going to get. It was at least close to the Portakabin. Just then Petra heard a noise. A car. She saw the headlights of a car coming around the corner. Petra squeezed next to the overflowing industrial waste container and crouched, head down.
The car drew closer and slowed. It went right past where Petra squatted. She heard it stop. Still keeping low, Petra stepped around the waste container and peered around the corner. Parked outside the Portakabin was a Volkswagen Golf. Silver. A few years old but in decent condition. The car door opened, the internal light came on and Petra got a clear view of Sam as he stood up, leaned back into the car and took a bag from the passenger front seat. The door to the Portakabin door opened and she heard a few indecipherable words. Sam disappeared inside. The door shut and she was alone, behind the skip, in the dark.
After a few moments Petra straightened up. The arrival of Sam demanded a better view of the Portakabin door. Further away, across the rutted path in front of the MOT centre, rows of dumped cars were either being rebuilt or stripped for parts. The shell of a Toyota truck was propped up on two old wooden sawhorses. Behind it a black Fiat 600, its upholstery ripped out and piled on the roof.
Petra looked around – if she slipped into the Fiat wreck, she would be concealed and she would also have a direct view of the Portakabin.
Taking out her phone, she dialled Rafi.
Chapter 47
They were making steady progress down Hoop Lane, towards the Finchley Road, and, while Eli was far from relaxed riding pillion behind Rafi, he had stopped clenching both his hands and jaw. He was surprised. Rafi might be casual to the point of dangerous behind the wheel of a car, he might slide from lane to lane with zero traffic awareness, but on the BMW he showed both concentration and riding skill. Maybe it was because it was a fancy new motorbike, but it was still impressive. While Rafi would never approach Segev’s skill as an operational driver, Eli was confident that they would reach Menachem, the embassy doctor’s flat in one piece.
The Bluetooth link between the two helmets was live, so that when Petra’s call came through, it became a conference call.
‘I don’t know how long it will take us to get to you,’ Rafi said. They were at traffic lights. ‘But it makes no difference. The situation is still the same. You observe. You do not engage. Do you understand?’
Rafi sounded tetchy. He should know better. That was never going to work with Petra, that was like encouraging her to do something. With his gloved hand, Eli dug Rafi in the ribs; it was a signal to shut up while Eli prepared to modulate his voice, to be both reassuring and authoritative. If Petra recognised it, it’s what she would have called his spy-runner shit. He only hoped that in the moment she didn’t recognise it for what it was.
‘It’s extremely significant that Treesmith is there,’ Eli said, using Sam’s code name. ‘I’d be lying if I said this looks like a great situation. It’s not. Something must have happened that’s put Silver Dove under suspicion. So much so that Treesmith felt empowered to effectively kidnap him and presumably try to interrogate him.’
‘My point entirely,’ Petra said. ‘What am I supposed to do, leave him there and let him get beaten to a bloody pulp? He’s my agent.’
‘You know this as well as I do. Sometimes we lose agents—’
‘Oh, no. Don’t you say another word. That’s not happening. I promise you that’s not going to happen. I’m not losing him.’
The motorbike had stopped at traffic lights and, while the lights were on red, Rafi’s helmeted head turned to look at Eli. Even behind the visor his face looked grim and he shook his head. Eli ignored it.
‘Listen to me,’ Eli said. ‘If he’s at risk, really at risk, you take action. That’s an order. You get in your car and drive to a call box at least half a mile away from your current location. Okay? Then you put in a call to the emergency services. You cannot compromise yourself, Petra. Remember that interview you had with our British friends? You have to understand this. Promise me.’
‘Half a mile away? That’s crazy. That’s not going to help him.’
They were now outside the block of flats where Menachem lived and Rafi had pulled into one of the bays reserved for bikes.
‘I’m sorry but I have to go. We will call you soon and we will be there as soon as possible, but please, I’m begging you, Petra. Please do not engage.’
Chapter 48
It was all very well for them to tell her not to engage and slope off to a phone box and call it in, even if she could find one that worked, but could she really do that? Could she do that and live with herself? As Petra sat in the wreck of the car, watching the Portakabin, she could only imagine what was going on beyond it. At the very least they would be trying to frighten Wasim. At worst they would be torturing or killing him.
She thought about his sister, Sahar. Petra could see her big eyes behind specs, the same wiry hair that Wasim had. And in her case, the trust that she had in Petra, her friend, her imagined friend, that she hoped she’d see in Jennah after she became Shahida.
How that young woman had been betrayed. Sahar, with her belief that she was going to make a difference by blowing herself up. Sahar, who never found out that she was just a tool, something to be used to further other people’s political agendas and even careers. Sahar, who had been rejected by her husband’s family because she was unable to have children. Sent back to her own family as a disgrace and becoming Shahida to win respect.
Petra had failed her. She’d tried to save the young woman, but she’d failed.
Even more unforgivable was Tom. Petra had used him. She’d manipulated him and lied to him; she used his young ambition to be an investigative journalist who was going to change the world to recruit him.
Oh yes, Eli might mouth the refrain that we lose agents, it’s part of the job. But she knew him better than that, she knew the pain he’d felt when he’d lost an agent who’d been more than an agent, who’d been a friend.
Over and again, as Petra hunched inside the shell of the gutted car, watching her breath cloud despite the scarf wrapped round her face, her mind returned to Alon. Alon, whose wife was dead or dying in a Gaza tunnel. She remembered how he spoke of his childhood with her father, the grim story of loneliness, danger and privation her father kept from her. Alon talked about it, but he always spoke with a casual shrug, as if dismissing the pain. ‘Everybody in Israel has got a story of survival,’ he’d often say. ‘Everybody. Everybody has a story about decisions that were right or wrong. Of getting on the train to occupied Germany, where work was promised, or waiting for the Russians to come. Of running away from Turkey after the Thrace pogroms and finding it more dangerous in the British Mandate of Palestine.
‘Right decisions and wrong decisions,’ Alon had said the last time they’d met.
Her wrong decision had been not to keep in touch with the man who’d looked after her father when he was a child. Not to see him before he died. That must have hurt him. Her right decision would be to keep faith with him and his wretched wife and do the right thing by Wasim.
There was no way she was going to lose him, nor would she drive off to try to find a functioning phone box half a mile away and make an anonymous call the police would probably think was a crank call. Either she called the police right now and dealt with the fall-out of being on an MI5 watch list. Or she got Wasim out of there herself.
Either way, she was not going to lose her agent.
Chapter 49
Menachem, the embassy doctor, looked worried as he led Eli and Rafi through the sitting room, where Yiscah, his wife, nestled on the sofa under a throw and an episode of Bridgerton was frozen on pause. She was an exceptionally beautiful young woman dressed for an evening in on a cold night in a cashmere hoodie and tracksuit trousers. At their entrance she started to get up, possibly to offer them coffee but, at a glance from Menachem, she sank down again into the sofa’s plump cushions.
The fact that Menachem looked worried was normal. It was his perpetual expression but, as the young medic shut the door of the small room next to the sitting room and the three men crowded in next to desk, computer and a bookshelf, he was sweating with anxiety. Eli perched himself on the corner of the desk and Rafi followed his lead and settled himself into the ergonomic office chair. The Mossad men had history with the embassy doctor, and it hadn’t been that long ago when Eli had been compelled to write a report describing Menachem’s work and attitude as obstructive to the activities of the unit. It seemed that for Menachem, the posting to the London Embassy was a sinecure. Vaccinations, health checks, sick notes and first aid.
The disconnect between Menachem’s job expectations and its reality collided when there’d been a first-aid requirement to set the broken arm of an intelligence source, a source who’d jumped out of a first-floor window, trying to run away. Menachem’s performance in setting the man’s arm so that the unit could avoid a visit to A&E and embarrassing questions had been woeful. Mutual animosity had only grown. Eli could see from the deep cleft between the doctor’s brows that the notion of being involved in any way with the Office and a termination operation was making him wish he was back in the medical centre in Herzliya, dealing with ingrown toenails.
This was all to the good.
‘I’ve got it ready for you,’ Menachem said without preamble. ‘It doesn’t have to be kept refrigerated. Only the Scoline does. But you do have to sign for it before I can give it to you. Protocol.’
Eli ignored the tablet with the authorisation document that Menachem was thrusting at him. ‘How much has the Kidon team got?’
‘Two multivials of the Scoline, in case one isn’t enough.’
‘Enough to kill a horse,’ Rafi chipped in and earned a glare from Eli.
‘How about the antidote?’ Eli said.
‘Again, two. Dantrolene. But it needs to be administered within minutes of the Scoline to work. If the target goes into cardiac arrest or has pre-existing conditions, it’s not going to work.’
‘Great.’ Eli reached for the tablet and touched the box on the screen.
Instantly, Menachem looked relieved. His face said it all. Off his desk. Onto someone else’s. Not his problem.
From the bottom drawer Menachem pulled out a small padded bag. It was turquoise and looked like a child’s sandwich bag. Menachem wrenched the Velcro seal open and showed Eli the contents.
‘Two vials of Dantrolene, already loaded into the delivery mechanism. If he’s coming round, don’t use the second dose; it will make him vomit.’
Eli reached in and took out a white plastic device only a little smaller than a pen. It had a rectangular head at one end.
‘It’s a transducer that works a little like ultrasound. It doesn’t pierce the skin but, for best results, you need to locate a main artery or the thoracic cavity.’
‘He means heart,’ Rafi said. He was flicking through the pages of a theatre programme that was on the desk.
Eli glared at his deputy for the self-evident explanation, though, of course, this was Rafi’s area and it would be foolhardy to deny it.
In the lift on the way out, Eli asked, ‘Have you actually used one of these devices before?’
‘Of course I have,’ Rafi said. ‘No matter what that shmock thinks, this isn’t new technology, not for Kidon anyway. Incidentally, Scoline is the same drug used in intubation or thoracic examinations. It’s just the quantity that kills people.’
‘Well, I’m pleased that’s settled.’ The two men came out into the lobby and approached the exit and the bikes. ‘If we get through this, I promise you one thing, we get our own medic who is attached to the unit. That guy proves time and time again how totally unfit he is for our requirements.’
Rafi paused in the process of strapping on his helmet. His tone was conversational and he might have been asking for Eli’s view on the results of a soccer match. ‘Do you actually think we will get through this?’
‘I don’t know. Ask me in half an hour; meantime, we need to check in with Petra, make sure that situation is contained.’
Eli mounted the bike, Rafi engaged the ignition and it roared like the machine beast it was. As Rafi nosed out of the private parking area and onto the Finchley Road, Eli called Petra. There was no reply.
Chapter 50
Now that she’d made up her mind that she was going to act, Petra stopped feeling cold and tired and guilty about her failures. She had a plan. Keeping the Portakabin in her direct view, she eased herself out of the Fiat and crept towards the bin and the mutilated bike. It had one wheel that was flat and almost hanging off the outer rim. That would do. With cold hands she picked up the bike and carried it back to her post and knelt by the shell of the Fiat. There she used the letter opener to lever off the outer tube and unwind the soft rubber off the inner tube.
Petra retired inside what was left of the car and pulled the tiny scissors out of the credit-card gizmo. There she unwound the grey scarf around her neck.
The viscose scarf was going to make the ultimate sacrifice, along with the rubber tubing from the bike. Petra cut both into multiple pieces and blessed the size of it. Next she slid out of the Fiat and straightened up. With resolution she approached the Portakabin but stopped ten metres away, outside the offices of the granite works, where the samples had been stacked on the ground for potential buyers. Petra picked up four squares of granite and slipped them into her unfolded pouch bag. If the polyester fabric could hold her shopping of a litre of milk and a bottle of wine, it could certainly hold the granite samples.
Petra checked her watch. Sam had been in the Portakabin for ten minutes. If it was going to get ugly, and even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t delay. At pace Petra moved towards the ice-cream vans around the corner. She picked the one that had the most cardboard cartons piled on the front seat and, after positioning herself to swivel for maximum shoulder power, she raised the shopper-weapon and swung it into the side window. Crash.
Then she waited. Her breath from the exertion sent clouds of moisture in front of her. She waited but was poised to run.
All quiet.
Next Petra took off one of her gloves and reached through the broken window to feel the cardboard box that was closest to her. It was cold but it was dry. Result. Petra spread a handful of the scarf remnants over the boxes and sprinkled some of the precious gin and some drops of hand gel. Then she went round the corner to the overflowing bin. Petra did the same thing but this time, before she distributed the remaining pieces of scarf, she doused them in the rest of the flammable liquid. Standing back for a moment, she looked at her work. There was more chance of the ice-cream van burning up but there might be something combustible in the commercial bin – oil or petrol-soaked material from the MOT site. She thought about what Eli had said on the train to Newark. ‘Give me generals who are lucky…’ She was no general but she was owed some bloody luck.
Chapter 51
Eli and Rafi climbed the safe-house steps two at a time and together. For once they skipped the protocol of arriving separately and doing a security sweep of the area. If the operation was underway, corners had to be cut and Eli was cutting them. The jumping-off safe house wouldn’t be re-used for another operation and, if London Station was going to go down in flames because of Harel’s ambition and stupidity, then the exposure of a Mossad safe house wasn’t going to make any difference anyway.
